Did Trungpa Die for Our Sins?

There is a quip -- usually attributed to Gyaltrul Rinpoche, who has been saying whatever pops into his head, and getting away with it, for many decades -- and said quip has been rummaging around in the recesses of my that was then, this is now braking mechanism.

"You Americans are always going on and on about the 'Second Coming' of Jesus Christ," he is supposed to have said.

"Well, he came, and you missed it."

I wasn't there when he made the remark, but I've heard from several people who were, and they all tell the same story:

He was talking about Trungpa Rinpoche.

I guess if I had to summarize how I feel about the matter, that quip would come very close to spot on. Since the crystal clear moment when I heard he died, I have always held the belief that he had taken up all of our poison and died for us.

Since that moment I have always asked myself the same question:

Did he die in vain?

Time is a crazy river under a spotless bridge, and time has bubbled and surged away between that was then and this is now. When you heard Trungpa in the then, and read him in the now, you are left with the inescapable evidence that the man was right.

Righteously right.

He foresaw. He foretold. He forewarned.

He understood us so much better than we understand ourselves, that he laid out precise instructions in advance. My question now is why we seem to so blithely ignore those instructions?

"Let us present the definition of buddhadharma," he wrote. "In the sutras, dharma is referred to as the 'path' and 'that which is knowable.' It is 'passionless.' Passion in this case refers to the dualistic fixations of the ego, which has two aspects. The first aspect is the ego of conceptualized confusion -- the notion of the other, that form exists. The second is the ego of personality -- if form exists, then there must be a perceiver of the form, an individual knower. These two aspects of ego are mutually dependent and constitute the samsaric mind. The seeming existence of other is a continually repeated proof of the existence of I, which is actually another other. I does not exist but takes the seeming existence of form as its credentials. The existence of form, credentials, is what maintains the illusion of I. Thus, if a person is self-righteously claiming to practice the buddhadharma, is using his practice as credentials, then he is simply playing ego's game."

In another post, elsewhere in this blog, I ventured the opinion that there are dramatically opposing currents developing in Tibetan Buddhism as expressed in America.

I want to give them a name.

The first understands the above instruction from Trungpa Rinpoche.

The second does not, and is attempting to assert "ownership" of Buddhism in the West, showing all the signs and wonders against which he gave repeated, ample admonition.

It is actually fruitless to recognize the first, for it doesn't require any recognition.

It is simple to recognize the latter, by the angry mob in which it hides its spears and thorns.