Bob Price: > Willy was upsetting you with those photos of Rama... > Barry himself has written the most embarassing Rama stories. There's something funny about almost every guru or teacher.
http://www.ramalila.net/RoadTripMind/index.html But, I actually liked Fred Lenz - I love almost all gurus. I mean if you can't laugh at yourself and your guru, who can you laugh at? After Trungpa died, we had a big ceremony just before he was about to be cremated. All the senior students gathered inside the enormous, orange-pillared big Dharmadhatu shrine hall, with its blue, red and gold trim. It was standing room only with the Trungpa disciples sitting in rows, upon the softy pillows, in practiced posture, evoking the mantras and the visualizations just like the lama had instructed. There were rows and rows of solemn meditators sitting with eyes half closed. Everything was in acordance with Tibetan tradition, down to the clicking of the prayer beads and the empty throne where a photograph of the late Rinpoche had been placed. Up on the dais sat the Vajra Regent, appointed by the Trungpa Rinpoche, Osel Tendzin; and the visiting high lamas of the Tibetan Kagya sect; the monks and the VIPs and the laity. I got to sit down in front because I, among six others, had taken the Vajrayana vows and had been intitiated into Shambala training by the lama himself. In the back of the temple a special cadre of advanced students sat in a circle grinding the bones of the Trungpa Tulku, once the spiritual leader of the Surmang group of monesteries in Tibet. We recited a hundred thousand dharanis, performed a thousand bows in order to empowered the Rinpoche's bones. And to what avail? Years later, I learned that both the Trungpa and his Vajra Regent were gay alcoholics who had built, out of money donated by hapless students, a vast beaucratic organization in the form of a co-dependent support group, i.e., both the Trungpa and the Vajra Regent literally drank and screwed themselves to death right in front of the whole organization! And they called it Tantra, blessed by none other than the great Kalu, himself a Tibetan philanderer. Go figure.