In the Buddha's Realm: A Physician's Experiences with Chogyam Trungpa, a Modern Day Buddha

By Fred H. Meyer M.D.

In this book, a physician suffering from Major Depression turns to spirituality in an attempt to save his life.

Through luck or karma, his quest brings him to one of the worlds greatest spiritual teachers, a living Buddha, Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche.

As he seeks to attain enlightenment in order to end his psychological pain, his experiences in the worlds of Western medicine and Buddhism are described.

The central theme involves the magic and risk inherent in the sacred bond that exists between a guru and his student. This theme is developed through the many graphic experiences the author has with his teacher.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 9, 2002
• ISBN: 9781469115702

Fred H. Meyer M.D.

Fred H. Meyer, MD is a practicing Internist and Rheumatologist in Fort Collins, Colorado. For 30 years he has studied and practiced meditation in both the Zen and Tibetan Buddhist traditions. He is married, and has a 15-year-old son. During his free time, he trains and competes horses in the sport of Eventing.

Book preview

In The Buddha’s

Realm

A Physician’s Experiences

with Chogyam Trungpa,

A Modern Day Buddha

Fred H. Meyer M.D.

Copyright © 2001 by Fred H. Meyer M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage

and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the

copyright owner.

Cover picture from www.tibetshop.com

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-7-XLIBRIS

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CONTENTS

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY TEACHER, THE

VIDYADHARA, CHOGYAM TRUNGPA, RINPOCHE.

WITHOUT HIS HELP, I WOULD HAVE LIVED IN

DARKNESS.

Chapter One

Chogyam Trungpa

One of the great teachers in Tibetan Buddhism, Padmasambhava, established Buddhism in Tibet some twelve hundred years ago. In the following account, I will relate my experiences with Chogyam Trungpa, a man considered by many to be the Padmasambhava of North America.

Chogyam Trungpa reached our shores by a circuitous route. Born in Tibet, he crossed the Himalayas on foot to India to escape the Chinese who invaded his country in 1959. In the years that followed, he received a scholarship to Oxford University, and while in Britain, co-founded the first Tibetan Buddhist meditation center in the West in Scotland. He then moved to Canada and shortly thereafter to America where he settled in the early nineteen seventies.

In the relatively short time he lived in North America, up to his death in nineteen eighty-seven, Chogyam Trungpa planted the seeds of Tibetan Buddhism in our land. More importantly, he nurtured those seeds by taking the time to learn our language and customs, and in the process, the foibles of our mind. No cultural gap existed between Chogyam Trungpa and his students; he was as Canadian or American as we were, and he made it his business to examine, and in many cases test, the various aspects of our culture, from our slang to our taste in cars and clothes. Although his assimilation of our ways appeared effortless, as did everything I observed him do, his accomplishment was impressive for one raised as a Buddhist monk in an area of Tibet where electricity was unknown.

At the time of his death, Rinpoche—which means precious one in Tibetan—was regarded as the most powerful Buddhist teacher in North America. One reason for this arose from his profound realization of Buddhist truth and his ability to transmit that realization, in an unspoken manner, to others’ minds. This ability, known as mind transmission, is difficult for the uninitiated to comprehend or believe, but its existence has been well documented in the Buddhist canon for 2500 years. In a ceremony I attended in the mid 80’s, my teacher’s exceptional spiritual qualities were certified by his religious peers in a ceremony where he was recognized as a Vidyadhara, or teacher possessing the highest level of Buddhist wisdom. It was common knowledge that his level of spiritual ability was seen but once in hundreds of years.

His reputation also stemmed from his teachings. During his lifetime, in a systematic way, he taught volumes on Buddhism and Shambhala Training, a secular approach to enlightened society that he created. Through the years, his books, talks, and seminaries prepared others to experience the most advanced insights into spirituality. Although trained from youth in Tibetan vajrayana Buddhism, Rinpoche incorporated aspects of other Buddhist schools to aid his students on the path to enlightenment. Examples of his eclecticism include the practices of Ikebana, or Japanese flower arranging, and Oryoki, a formal method of eating derived from the Zen tradition. Tibetans who observed our ways commented that our Buddhism differed from theirs, and so it did, because through my teacher’s determined efforts, we received spiritual assistance from many Buddhist traditions.

Rinpoche offered, without hesitation, the most profound teachings and practices to those students who demonstrated adesire to learn. As a result, his students, myself included, enjoyed a level of training accessible to only the religious elite in Tibet, since a great master taught us in person. We not only derived benefit from his teachings, but from the added blessing of seeing his enlightened activity in everyday life. To bring the experience of Rinpoche’s students into a Western context, our spiritual education resembled that given to Catholic priests or Rabbis. More to the point, and I say this having been raised as a strict Catholic, learning Buddhism from Rinpoche was like learning Christianity from Christ. This is credible from a Tibetan Buddhist standpoint due to the fact that Gautama Buddha’s realization is still alive, thanks to the miraculous ability of authentic teachers who have transmitted his enlightenment from mind to mind through the ages. Because of this up-to-date transmission, being with Chogyam Trungpa, in a spiritual sense, differed little from being with the Buddha himself.

Rinpoche created important institutions during his life. He founded Naropa Institute, the first college in the West to be based on a contemplative tradition and, at this writing, an internationally recognized institute of higher learning in Boulder, Colorado. Many cities in the world host centers where his teachings are promulgated. Major centers in Vermont, Colorado, and recently in France, provide prolonged in-house teaching and meditation for those who wish to immerse themselves in Rinpoche’s world. Similarly, my teacher established the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West, Gampo Abbey, in Nova Scotia. The list of Chogyam Trungpa’s gifts to this world is lengthy, and what I have outlined is by no means exhaustive, but it serves to support the reasons my guru was so highly regarded.

To portray the full extent of his accomplishment, it is instructive to understand those who realized the fruits of his labor. In reality, the recipients of his largesse are a group of barbarians who differ little in their attitudes from the Tibetans Padmasambhava encountered in the eighth century. Compared to Rinpoche, most of us in the West are barbarians. This may bedifficult for an American to accept, since we belong to the most technologically sophisticated nation on earth. Our adherence to this credential, however, supports our lack of sophistication by demonstrating our limited frame of reference. If we assume a more enlightened view, we are faced with the startling and incontrovertible fact that most of us in the West are asleep.

If you doubt this, look up for a moment and note the area you presently occupy. Now observe how long you can maintain this awareness before your mind drifts off into thoughts or emotions. To say it another way, observe how soon you lose contact with the present, and fall asleep to everything before your eyes. After doing this little test, I would like you to reflect that in the many hours I spent with Chogyam Trungpa, I never, for an instant, saw his attention stray from the present. This is but one small example of the nature of enlightened mind, a mind that is lacking in our world. As a result, we daily encounter a society scourged by the barbaric activities of aggression, greed, and an ignorance of the very awareness that defines our humanity. Indeed, one of the major reasons Chogyam Trungpa enjoyed universal respect from his peers was the surprising success he had with our experientially challenged culture. In the story that follows, I will describe my experiences with that culture and the man who devoted his life to its betterment.

Chapter Two

Connecting

My connection with Chogyam Trungpa began with a poster. It was attached to a bookseller’s door that I passed on a hot Baton Rouge, Louisiana day in the summer of 1979. The poster announced to passersby that a talk would be presented that evening by a senior student of Chogyam Trungpa on a Buddhist topic that I have long since forgotten. It caught my attention for two reasons. First, its artistry stood far above the usual bookstore fare, and second, I recognized the name Chogyam Trungpa. Years before, I had read a summary of Buddhist teachers in America, and the author of the summary stated that of the teachers he had encountered, Chogyam Trungpa appeared the most authentic. I then recalled a book by this teacher, which I had found difficult to comprehend, and this further piqued my interest. I decided to attend the lecture, to be presented by Danielle Staffler.

Danielle Staffler turned out to be a man, his name notwithstanding, and an interesting one at that. Upon first impression, he projected a sense of amusement, almost to the point of smugness, as though he was privy to something beyond our understanding. The possibility that this might be true dawned when he responded to a question I asked by saying, So you don’t just say the hell with it, and go back to being a doctor. It so happened I was a doctor, but there was no way Danielle Stafflercould have known, for I had never laid eyes on him prior to the talk. Ann, a lady friend who accompanied me, equally astonished by Danielle’s display of insight, asked him how he knew my profession. He responded Don’t get caught in the small stuff. At that point, I realized Danielle was indeed in touch with something special.

After the talk, Ann and I, still in a daze, found ourselves at a post-lecture party where the magic between this teacher and myself continued. Upon entering the party, I met Danielle formally and immediately I noticed that his eyes were unlike others I had seen, for they held my gaze with their intensity. Unbeknownst to me, I was experiencing the quality of mind first realized by Gautama Buddha 2500 years before. Spontaneously Danielle said to me, You are going to go far, very, very far, and then, I am so happy I found you. Immediately I felt a direction in my life, and I knew it would involve him. After the party, although the summer night was warm, my friend began shaking as we walked to the car. She had witnessed the magic and knew I would follow it, even if it destroyed our relationship. As we approached the car I asked her if she thought Danielle was the real thing. She replied softly, Yes.

It is instructive at this point to outline the events that brought me to Baton Rouge. Two months before, I had quit my job as an academic physician at LSU Medical Center in New Orleans. A number of forces were at work that prompted my decision to leave, but the most important, and the one that I failed to realize at the time, was that I suffered from major depression. This malady manifested as guilt about the quality of my research and insecurity about my worth as an academic physician. The logic I concocted, to offset the anguish I experienced, entailed quitting my job and becoming involved in what I called a right brained lifestyle, one that involved less thinking and more intuition. My immediate plan was to liquidate what equity I possessed and outfit myself for a trip to the California desert, where I planned to live in solitude until I attained enlightenment.

Five years before, Katagiri Roshi in Minneapolis had introduced me to Zen Buddhism, and since then, I had continued practicing meditation and reading Buddhist literature. Several months prior to quitting my job, and while under intense mental stress, I smoked a marijuana cigarette, an exercise I have repeated maybe ten times in my life. After several drags, I began an internal conversation with myself. As I addressed myself by my first name, Fred, in a flash, I saw that no one was there. Fortunately, I knew enough about Buddhism to recognize that I had just experienced a pivotal Buddhist insight known as egolessness of self, the understanding that I did not possess an abiding entity commonly referred to as I or me. This insight fueled my resolve to live in the desert, as I felt I had some idea of where the path to enlightenment lay. The fundamental reason for my decision, however, arose from the hope that through enlightenment I could allay the mental anguish driving me to the point of suicide. Saving one’s life is an excellent impetus for attaining enlightenment, but having experienced it, I feel sure most people would not choose it as a form of motivation.

In any case, at the age of thirty-nine, I reduced my worldly possessions to a newly purchased camping outfit and prepared for the desert. In retrospect, I realize I was not only being pushed by an illness, I was also being pulled by something else. This leads to an area without objective support, but one I know in my heart to be true. I had entered a force field created by a Buddha. This force pulled me to my former wife, living in Baton Rouge.

My former wife Judith, generous as always, allowed me to move in with her. In short order I proposed another marriage, but my proposal fell flat, in large part because her lady friends recommended, for her sanity and social life, that I be asked to leave. This was sound advice. I was a confused person in those days, as illustrated by the fact that I had a serious relationship with another woman at the time of my proposal to Judith. This confusion is understandable; I spent most of my time trying to unravel the reasons for my psychological pain, and not on issues of whethermy activities were injurious to others.