24
Nov/11

CRAZY WISDOM: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE

24
Nov/11

Buddhist bad boy Chögyam Trungpa is focus of colorful new documentary playing at the Rubin Museum (photo by Bob Morehouse)

CRAZY WISDOM: THE LIFE AND TIMES OF CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA RINPOCHE (Johanna Demetrakas, 2011)
Rubin Museum of Art
150 West 17th St. at Seventh Ave.
November 25 – December 3, $12
212-620-5000
www.rmanyc.org
www.crazywisdomthemovie.com

Born in February 1939 and recognized as an enlightened reincarnation of the Trungpa tülkus when he was just thirteen months old, Chögyam Trungpa escaped his native Tibet during the 1959 Chinese invasion, eventually becoming a central figure in the spread of Tibetan Buddhism throughout the West. Filmmaker Johanna Demetrakas (Right Out of History: The Making of Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party), a former student and friend of Chögyam Trungpa’s, recounts his unusual story in the adulatory Crazy Wisdom: The Life and Times of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. “From the first seminar, called ‘The Battle of Ego” in Los Angeles, to filming his cremation on a cloudless but rainbow-filled day in Vermont, Chögyam Trungpa literally blew my mind,” Demetrakas explains on the film’s official website. His fascinating tale is liable to blow your mind too. Chögyam Trungpa invited Demetrakas into his inner circle from 1983 to 1987, allowing her intimate access to his wild life, which included exchanging his monk’s robes for a business suit and later a pseudo-military uniform, confusing his followers and angering his critics. A proponent of what he called “crazy wisdom,” Chögyam Trungpa studied at Oxford, suffered partial paralysis in a car accident, married a sixteen-year-old westerner, smoked cigarettes, was a heavy drinker, and carried on dalliances with many of his female students while teaching about fear, self-deception, the ego, spiritual materialism, and the importance of meditation. “You can survive by doing nothing,” he preached, but he alienated some with his nontraditional actions, leading him to be known as the “Bad Boy of Buddhism.” Trying to get to the bottom of the complicated man who founded such learning centers as the Naropa Institute and Shambhala, Demetrakas speaks with Chögyam Trungpa’s wife, Diana Mukpo, his lover Agness Au, and his eldest son, Sakyong Mipham; such fellow teachers as Pema Chodron and Ram Dass; poets Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman; and various other scholars, journalists, and former students, supplemented by archival footage and clips from his teachings, which together paint a compelling portrait of a most colorful and singular individual. Crazy Wisdom is scheduled for a one-week limited engagement at the Rubin Museum beginning November 25, with all screenings (several of which are beginning to sell out) followed by Q&As with such special guests as Demetrakas, Waldman, Au, Meredith Monk, Tulku Jamyang Rinpoche, and others.