Wednesday

The Teacher: Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Commemoration of the 25th Anniversary of the Parinirvana of the Vidyadhara, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

This year marks the 25th Anniversary of the Parinirvana (death) of the Vidyadhara, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the founder of our community. The video below is a teaching from his seminar on the Sadhana of Mahamudra, in which he presents the principle of the teacher in the teacher’s own words. It reminds us of the brilliance and profundity that are the foundation of the Shambhala lineage. As the Vidyadhara states in this talk, the relationship between student and teacher is like a dance. The talk was presented on November 24, 1975 to the Karma Dzong sangha in Boulder, Colorado.

“In relating with the teacher, your critical input and your surrendering work together at the same time. They’re not working against each other. The more you get input from the teacher and the phenomenal world and the more you develop, at the same time the more you question. So there is some kind of dance taking place between the teacher and yourself. You are not particularly trying to switch off your questioning intelligence and switch on some sort of mindless devotion. Rather, the two – cynicism and devotion – are synchronized together.

The subject we are going to discuss at this point on the sadhana itself is a basically vajrayana-oriented kind of topic. And it has a lot of implications at the same time, connected with the basic practice of hinayana and mahayana Buddhism as well. And generally the first point I would like to get across tonight is some sense of, or the notion of devotion, in some sense. Which the sadhana is based on.”

The Teacher
from The Sadhana of Mahamudra Seminar, November 1975, Boulder, Colorado

Vidyadhara 1980, photo courtesy of Liza Mathews, from Shambhala Archives

Videographers:
Don Donaghy
Randy Sunday

Video mixers:
Ruthie Astor
Peter Goldfarb

Audio technicians:
Bruce Wauchope
Wendy Nelson

Preservation of the original video was made possible by the Video Recovery Project of the Shambhala Archives.

Produced by Shambhala Media
Co-directors: Emily Sell and Terry Rudderham
Video Editor: Gordon Kidd
Video Consultant: Carolyn Gimian

The digital video editing suite which made this possible was funded by the Shambhala Trust.

For information on the Shambhala Archives visit www.archives.shambhala.org

Visit Shambhala Media online to see what else is available.