The world and beyond - reflections of a dharma nomad

Here on the dharma mountain the summer is really hotting up. The staff alone number 120 and we filled the huge dining tent for a meeting last week. There is a month long study retreat happening on the adjacent campus with sixty folk, and my next course begins today with 150 expected! The energy continues to rise and grow and the teachings on how to work with that and integrate it into a grounded and joyful practice are brilliant. It feels as though Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche (who founded this lineage and established this Centre and died in 1987) is here holding the whole thing, even when the wind blows strong and a number of tents were blown down last week, including the vast shrine tent which got ripped and had to be taken down (all hands needed) sewn up and then re-erected (again a community event). There is a sense of everyone contributing and finding their own place, and we share great feasts of food three times a day, and easy friendships around the land. On Sunday I hiked up around the perimeter trail, discovering a new section of ponderosa pines with huge long eared black squirrels(almost like a cat, or fox!) bounding to safety as we approached. The ten days before that I was in a program studying some of the Shambhala 'terma' (literally 'treasure' - specific teachings which appear when they are needed) received by Trungpa RInpoche here in the States - teachings which feel so lively and poetic - deep medicine for the Western neuroses, and great opening to brilliant sanity. It was a wonderful group of fairly experienced practitioners, and I made a number of new friends (including falling completely in love with a very gentle gay man which was an unexpected pleasure in a kind of safe non-sexual way) Now he has returned home and I am sorting out a few things, doing washing, reading, replying to emails before immersing the the next ten days of Warriors Assembly - the culmination of these teachings on enlightened society. Well I'll let you know in a couple of weeks if it culminates or just continues to grow... as you can tell I am very happy here in my mountain home, my tent survived the winds and a friend who I met last year in Canada has just arrived to share it with me for Warriors gathering. The image of the warrior is about having the bravery to cut through any deception and the courage to relate genuinely. For me it leaves no space in the radiance of love for any depression or hoarding or meanness. A wonderful way to spend the summer...I'd better go and get ready!