stripping the gurus - Brahma Kumaris Info

A WILD AND CRAZY WISDOM GUY 109
but repeating the most essential idea of mainstream Vajrayana
[i.e., Tantric Buddhism] (Butterfield, 1994).
Q [student]: What if you feel the necessity for a violent act in
order ultimately to do good for a person?
A [Trungpa]: You just do it (Trungpa, 1973).
A perfect example of going with energy, of the positive wild
yogi quality, was the actual transmission of enlightenment
from Tilopa to [his disciple] Naropa. Tilopa removed his sandal
and slapped Naropa in the face (Trungpa, 1973).
We could, of course, have learned as much from the Three
Stooges.
Q [student]: Must we have a spiritual friend [e.g., a guru] before
we can expose ourselves, or can we just open ourselves
to the situations of life?
A [Trungpa]: I think you need someone to watch you do it,
because then it will seem more real to you. It is easy to undress
in a room with no one else around, but we find it difficult
to undress ourselves in a room full of people (Trungpa,
1973).
Yes, there was plenty of undressing. At the Halloween costume
party during an annual seminar in the autumn of 1975, for
example:
A woman is stripped naked, apparently at Trungpa’s joking
command, and hoisted into the air by [his] guards, and
passed around—presumably in fun, although the woman
does not think so (Marin, 1995).
The pacifist poet William Merwin and his wife, Dana, were attending
the same three-month retreat, but made the mistake of
keeping to themselves within a crowd mentality where that was
viewed as offensive “egotism” on their part. Consequently, their
perceived “aloofness” had been resented all summer by the other
community members ... and later categorized as “resistance” by
Trungpa himself.
Thus, Merwin and his companion showed up briefly for the
aforementioned Halloween party, danced only with each other, and
then went back to their room.