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To: soc.religion.eastern From: Gary S. Trujillo (gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us) Subj: Merwin Affair (Trungpa) (0000.trungpa.gst) Date: unknown Quoting: |wachniew@ftjibm.ftj.agh.edu.pl (Przemyslaw Wachniew) |Does anyone remember "the Merwin affair" ? |Few years ago I became acquainted with Chogyam Trungpa's writings that |are stil very inspiring for me. Lately I've read about so called "the |Merwin affair" in which Trungpa took part. W. S. Merwin and Dana Naone |accused Trungpa of using violence against them during the drunken party. |I was able to find only small pieces about that incident so I'd like to |know your opinions, if anybody still cares about it... In the various followup articles I read here, I didn't find any that really dealt with the first part of the question. I would like to refer anyone who is interested to an excellent feature-length article in the February 1979 issue of _Harper's_ Magazine. The seventeen-page article, by Peter Marin, is entitled "Spiritual Obedience." It goes into great detail about what happened at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado during the summer of 1977. The author says that many details of his story were taken from a manuscript of over one hundred pages compiled at Naropa by the members of a class in investigative poetry. At the date of writing the article, that manuscript was still on file at the Institute itself. The account tells of the drunken party, and how two people, one male and one female, were physically taken from a room where they had retreated after the party staged by Chogyam Trungpa had grown too wild for them and forced to return to the party, despite the man having broken a bottle and used a shard of glass in self-defense to injure several people who had been sent to the room to bring him and the woman back. When they got back down to the place where the drunken party was being held, they were forcibly stripped of their clothes. The point of the exercise was ostensibly part of a lesson in forsaking the ego. The author of the article seems to find this idea to be a rationalization for very questionable behavior. The piece is very thoughtful and well done, and I highly recommend it, particularly to those who have written in support of Trungpa's brand of "crazy wisdom." Gary -- Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us Somerville, Massachusetts {wjh12,bu.edu,spdcc,cdp}!gnosys!gst
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