stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

106 STRIPPING THE GURUS
That same center later became of interest to the police as they
investigated allegations of drug abuse there. Trungpa, not himself
prone to “missing the point,” avoided that bust by hiding in a stable.
The Buddhist nun Tenzin Palmo (in Mackenzie, 1999) related
her own experiences with the young Chögyam in England, upon
their first meeting in 1962. There, in finding his attentive hands
working their way up her skirt in the middle of afternoon tea and
cucumber sandwiches, Trungpa received a stiletto heel to his sandaled
holy feet. His later “smooth line” to her, in repeated attempts
at seduction beyond that initial meeting/groping, included the
claim that Palmo had “swept him off his monastic feet.” That, in
spite of the fact that he “had women since [he] was thirteen,” and
already had a son.
In 1969 Chögyam experienced a tragic automobile accident
which left him paralyzed on the left side of his body. The car had
careened into a joke shop (seriously); Trungpa had been driving
drunk at the time (Das, 1997), to the point of blacking out at the
wheel (Trungpa, 1977).
Note, now, that Trungpa did not depart from Tibet for India
until age twenty, and did not leave India for his schooling in England
until four years later. Thus, eleven years of his having “had
women” were enacted within surrounding traditional Tibetan and
northern Indian attitudes toward acceptable behavior (on the part
of monks, etc.). Indeed, according to the son referenced above, both
his mother and Trungpa were under vows of celibacy, in Tibet, at
the time of their union (Dykema, 2003). Of the three hundred
monks entrusted to him when he was enthroned as supreme abbot
of the Surmang monasteries, Trungpa himself (1977) remarked
that
one hundred and seventy were bhikshus (fully ordained
monks), the remainder being shramaneras (novices) and
young upsaka students who had already taken the vow of
celibacy.
Obviously, then, Trungpa’s (Sarvastivadin) tradition was not a
“monastic” one without celibacy vows, as is the case with Zen.
Further, Trungpa himself did not formally give up his monastic
vows to work as a “lay teacher” until sometime after his car accident
in England. This, then, is another clear instance of demonstration
that traditional agrarian society places no more iron-clad