Chögyam Trungpa

More recent analysis has shown the journey to be directly comparable to such sagas as Shackleton’s 1914/17 Antarctic Expedition.

Chögyam Trungpa (Wylie: Chos rgyam Drung pa; March 5, 1939 – April 4, 1987) was a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master and holder of both the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages of Tibetan Buddhism.

Born in the Nangchen region of Tibet in March 1939, Chögyam Trungpa was eleventh in the line of Trungpa tülkus, important figures in the Kagyu lineage, one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism.

Among his three main teachers were Jamgon Kongtrul of Sechen, HH Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, and Khenpo Gangshar.

The name Chögyam is a contraction of Chökyi Gyamtso, which means "Ocean of Dharma".

Trungpa means "attendant".

He was deeply trained in the Kagyu tradition and received his khenpo degree at the same time as Thrangu Rinpoche; they continued to be very close in later years.

Chögyam Trungpa was also trained in the Nyingma tradition, the oldest of the four schools, and was an adherent of the ri-mé ("nonsectarian") ecumenical movement within Tibetan Buddhism, which aspired to bring together and make available all the valuable teachings of the different schools, free of sectarian rivalry.

At the time of his escape from Tibet, Trungpa was head of the Surmang group of monasteries.

In 1954, shortly after giving the monastic vows, Karmapa turned to Trungpa and said, "In the future you will bring Dharma to the West."

At the time, his students wondered what in the world could he be talking about.

In exile in India, Trungpa began his study of English.

In collaboration with Freda Bedi, who had initiated the project, Trungpa and Akong Tulku founded the Young Lamas Home School and, after seeking endorsement from the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, were appointed its spiritual head and administrator respectively.

On April 23, 1959, twenty-year-old Trungpa set out on an epic nine-month escape from his homeland.

Masked in his account in Born in Tibet to protect those left behind, the first, preparatory stage of his escape had begun a year earlier, when he fled his home monastery after its occupation by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

After spending the winter in hiding, he decided definitively to escape after learning that his monastery had been destroyed.

Trungpa started with Akong Rinpoche and a small party of monastics, but as they traveled people asked to join until the party eventually numbered 300 refugees, from the elderly to mothers with babies – additions which greatly slowed and complicated the journey.

Forced to abandon their animals, over half the journey was on foot as the refugees journeyed through an untracked mountain wilderness to avoid the PLA.

Sometimes lost, sometimes traveling at night, after three months’ trek they reached the Brahmaputra River.

Trungpa, the monastics and about 70 refugees managed to cross the river under heavy gunfire, then, eating their leather belts and bags to survive, they climbed 19,000 feet over the Himalayas before reaching the safety of Pema Ko.

After reaching India, on January 24, 1960 the party was flown to a refugee camp.

In 1963, with the assistance of sympathetic Westerners, Trungpa received a Spalding sponsorship to spend time at Oxford, and was granted "common room" access to St Antony's College, Oxford University.

In 1967, upon the departure of the western Theravadan monk Anandabodhi, Trungpa and Akong Rinpoche were invited by the Johnstone House Trust in Scotland to take over a meditation center, which then became Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West (future actor and musician David Bowie was one of Trungpa's meditation pupils there).

In 1970, after a break with Akong, Trungpa moved to the United States at the invitation of several students.

Shortly after his move to Scotland, a variety of experiences, including a car accident that left him partially paralyzed on the left side of his body, led Trungpa to give up his monastic vows and work as a lay teacher.

He made that decision principally to mitigate students' becoming distracted by exotic cultures and dress and to undercut their preconceptions of how a guru should behave.

He drank, smoked, slept with students, and often kept students waiting for hours before giving teachings.

Much of his behavior has been construed as deliberately provocative and sparked controversy.

In one account, he encouraged students to give up smoking marijuana, claiming that the smoking was not of benefit to their spiritual progress and that it exaggerated neurosis.

Students were often angered, unnerved and intimidated by him, but many remained fiercely loyal, committed, and devoted.

Upon moving to the United States in 1970, Trungpa traveled throughout North America, gaining renown for his ability to present the essence of the highest Buddhist teachings in a form readily understandable to Western students.

Between 2006 and 2010, independent Canadian and French researchers using satellite imagery tracked and confirmed Trungpa’s escape route.

He was the 11th of the Trungpa tülkus, a tertön, supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries, scholar, teacher, poet, artist, and originator of a radical re-presentation of Tibetan Buddhist teachings and the tradition of Shambhala, as an enlightened society that was later called Shambhala Buddhism.

Recognized both by Tibetan Buddhists and by other spiritual practitioners and scholars as a preeminent teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, he was a major figure in the dissemination of Buddhism in the West, founding Vajradhatu and Naropa University and establishing the Shambhala Training method.

Among his contributions are the translation of numerous Tibetan Buddhist texts, the introduction of the Vajrayana teachings to the West, and a presentation of the Buddhadharma largely devoid of ethnic trappings.

Trungpa coined the term crazy wisdom.

Some of his teaching methods and actions, particularly his heavy drinking, womanizing, and the physical assault of a student and his girlfriend, caused controversy during his lifetime and afterward.

In 2012, five survivors of the escape in Nepal, Scotland and the U.S. confirmed details of the journey and supplied their personal accounts.

In 2016 accumulated research and survivors’ stories were published in a full retelling of the story, and later in the year preliminary talks began on the funding and production of a movie.

Rangjung Rigpe Dorje, 16th Karmapa was known for seeing the future and made plans accordingly.