It is most important that anyone wishing to practice in this lineage understands how deeply grounded our work is in Trungpa Rinpoche\u2019s teachings and how we strive to maintain faithfulness to his particular Vajrayana lineage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I began instructing others in Rinpoche\u2019s teachings five decades ago, I was a thoroughgoing literalist. I came close to an approach quite common in historical Buddhism, where a teacher takes a revered text, reads a line, and comments on it. I was also a purist in the sense that I devotedly tried to follow what Rinpoche had said, not only about what the teachings were, but what to emphasize and how to communicate them, as well as how to work with the various students and situations one met.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While part of me might wish to remain a literalist and a purist, continuing to follow Rinpoche\u2019s teaching and other instructions to the letter, as a historian of religion, I know that such can never be the case. Rinpoche\u2019s legacy had to evolve in response to a world that has turned upside down since his day. Otherwise, like so many other charismatic spiritual movements over history, it would end up being no more than an archive or a museum piece, gathering dust, out of sight of the suffering world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over time, with the freshness of the teachings as my guide, and learning daily from my students, I gradually made room for Rinpoche\u2019s dharma to evolve in my teaching, always in form, never in content. I have sought to emphasize certain aspects of Rinpoche\u2019s dharma and de-emphasize others. I want to stress this point: none of this has come out of my own imagination or my own opinion. All of it has emerged from what I have discovered in my own practice and life, and what I have observed and seen in the students I have worked with.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It is most important that anyone wishing to practice in this lineage understands how deeply grounded our work is in Trungpa Rinpoche\u2019s teachings and how we strive to maintain faithfulness […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":239551,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-239892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dharma-ocean-blog"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/cdn.dharmaocean.org\/online-resources\/vector-2150008_640.png","author_info":{"display_name":"dharmadev","author_link":"https:\/\/www.dharmaocean.org\/es\/author\/dharmadev\/"},"yoast_head":"\n