Ep8: Wisdom Eccentrics - Ngakpa Chögyam
In this interview I am joined by Ngakpa Chögyam a blues loving, horse riding Ngakpa, who with his wife Khandro Déchen, is the Lineage Lama (principal teacher) of the Aro tradition, a tantric Buddhist house holder tradition.
Ngakpa Chögyam is the author of many books and today we discuss Wisdom Eccentrics. It is ‘a rare account of remarkable lamas in the final years of a lost era’ …which chronicles his education with Kunzang Dorje Rinpoche, ‘a highly reclusive master known for mercurial wrath and facility with Dzogchen’.
In the book we follow this 19-year old Englishman in 1971 into the heart of the Himalayas to seek the highest teachings from a notoriously wrathful and elusive Lama.
In this fascinating and candid conversation we delve into the themes of the book, including the culture clash of Dharmsala in the 70s, the true face of Crazy Wisdom and it’s abuses, how to access the realised state through the emotions themselves, and why Ngakpa Chögyam sees the crossover between the arts and Vajrayana as vitally important.
Topics include:
– Ngakpa Chögyam’s childhood fascination with Buddhism and Tibet
– Parallels between the Viking religions and Tibetan Buddhism
– Travelling to India at 19 in 1971
– An instant rapport with the Tibetan people
– Fundamental clashes with the other Western students
– Meeting the nomadic yogi Kunzang Dorje
– How Dudjom Rinpoche trapped Kunzang Dorje
– Tackling Ngakap Chögyam’s chronic politeness
– Stories and interrogation as teaching tools
– Tibetan culture vs Western culture
– The sophistication and limitation of the Western mind
– Principle and Form as the key to understanding Buddhism
– Emptiness and Form applied to shiné and lhaktong meditation
– The evening when Chögyam received the transmission of the nature of mind
– How the nature of mind transmission works
– The difference between a realised master and a well-educated scholar
– Art an the Varjayana
– How Chögam uses the Doc Togden instagram account
– Wrathful lamas and Crazy Wisdom
– Wrathful Compassion and Crazy Wisdom as an excuse for abuse
– The genuine use of Wrath and Crazy Wisdom
– The prerequisites to using Wrathful Compassion
– Kunzang Dorje’s wrath in action
– Why Ngakpa Chögyam is not a wrathful teacher
– Chogyam’s occasional use of wrathful means
– Psychopathic spiritual teachers and sexual exploitation
– Crazy Wisdom as disintegration of religious pattern
– Stories of Crazy Wisdom in action
– Chi’imed Rinpoche’s expression of yeshe chölwa
– The use of the full spectrum of emotions in Tantra
– Accessing the realised state through the emotions
– How to use powerful negative emotions in spiritual practice
– The role of the personality display in teaching Tantra
– The teacher student relationship in the Vajrayana
– Is the teacher student relationship a professional or personal one?
– The importance of two-way respect between teacher and student
– Blind devotion vs informed devotion
– Informed devotion vs romantic infatuation
– Ngakpa Chögyam’s parting words and why everyone is an artist
To find out more about Ngakpa Chögyam:
-http://arobuddhism.org/
-https://www.instagram.com/doctor_togden/
