The Last Word at the Great Stupa
The founder of Shambhala Publications, Sam Bercholz, described Trungpa Rinpoche as “not just another great Buddhist teacher. He was Padmasambhava, Guru Rinpoche, for the West.” And on September 13–14 at the Great Stupa of Dharmakaya the final reading of his The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma will occur.
In keeping with the tradition of oral transmission of important texts like The Profound Treasury, a reading tour has introduced sections of the text to the public at a variety of places like the Rubin Museum in New York City, the Harvard Divinity School, and the Halifax Shambhala Center.
Between 1973 and 1986, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche conducted a series of annual study and practice intensives, called “Vajradhatu Seminaries.” The talks were organized around the three yanas, or major stages, of the Buddhist path: hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana. It was a landmark moment in a practitioner’s life to be accepted to seminary and even moreso to be able to hear the vajrayana teachings in particular. In these programs he presented heart teachings to his most senior students and transcripts were restricted at Rinpoche’s insistance. However, beginning just a few years after the seminaries started, he began talking about compiling this material and editing it for a general audience. Now, forty years after the first Vajradhatu Seminary took place, Acharya Emeritus Judy Lief has completed the work of compiling and editing the seminary material into three volumes totaling more than 2,000 pages. With the publication of The Profound Treasury, for the first time, these teachings have become publicly available.
Rinpoche himself talked about looking at traditional literary arrangements of such teachings, referring to shila, samadhi and prajna, for example, as organizing principles for some material. But reviews of The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma have been full of praise for Judy Lief’s editorial acumen. So please join Acharya Emeritus Judy Lief at the Stupa built in honor of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche for the resounding, or recitation, of the final chapters of The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma. This program is open to all and includes a Friday night talk, group meditation practice, listening and reciting, and discussion.
