NAROPA
2 The Great Unblessed
Funneled inside along with the great unblessed, I'm immediately drawn to a series of oversized satin streamers emblazoned with the vibrant Tibetan iconography Naropans are so fond of—snow lions, golden lotuses, endless knots—streaming from the grade school gymnasium's rafters like so many championship banners. Huge bouquets of exotic blooms bookend the podium. As the facility fills up, a prototypical New York Jubu (Jewish Buddhist) couple perched next to me in the bleachers strikes up a conversation.
"You do realize how lucky you are that the Regent chose you out of everyone in that crowd, right?" the male asks.
"Uh, yeah, I guess so," I sputter. I could have wisecracked, "It's nothing. Another day, another blessing," but thought better of it, opting for the vanilla, "He seems to be well-regarded in the community."
"Well regarded? That would be one way of saying that everyone here wants to fuck his brains out," the female chimes in, dreamily. I'd been there for ten seconds and had already uncovered the nexus of the Naropa experience.
After another exchange, I gather that in this ecosystem, fucking Ösel Tendzin is the next best thing to fucking the Karmapa himself―and it is just as good if you're gay.
"Of course fucking Rinpoche is even better."
Turns out the zoftig Brooklynite has a real flair for imagery, especially imagery depicting the sexcapades of demigods and deities. She goes on to describe a singular twist which insures that any neophyte hooking up with the Karmapa has a never to be forgotten experience: his colorful personal militia, the Vajra Guards, playing the role of wingmen. They're entrusted to pluck the more succulent Naropans from their boudoirs at all hours of the night, escort them to Rinpoche's Mapleton manse, then deposit them at the meditation master's side. Receiving permission to venerate his renascent vessel was a big deal. Select congregants found themselves purified with essential oils, plied with magical elixirs, wrapped in gossamer silk nothings—before being embued with the next best thing to reincarnation.
Vajra guards came for Elizabeth, who lived above me in a Pine Street mock Victorian. Their purposeful clomping woke me around 3 AM. She appeared transcendent as they marched her off. It's not every day a Sarah Lawrence grad gets commandeered to serve the noble Tibetan cause.
Tibetan Buddhist #1, the Dalai Lama, seemed to belong to the world, making it difficult, if not out-and-out impossible, to interact with him in any one particular place on any sort of a regular basis. Tibetan Buddhist #2, Rinpoche, took the opposite approach. Secure in his Mile High bastion, he was everywhere you'd want him to be. You could take calligraphy classes from him. He'd design a customized meditation just for you. If you wanted to serve in his personal militia, he'd train you. The personal touch was appealing for an entire subculture of sensitive types feeling dehumanized by corporations and ad agencies which had downgraded them from persons with free will to "consumers" easily manipulated into buying this, that, and the other thing. Naropa offered an escape hatch from all that heavy programming. Sweetening the deal, the Institute also threw in a roadmap to enlightenment. The Naropa Way was endorsed by none other than the Dalai Lama himself, who made a point of staying with Rinpoche during a highly publicized sojourn in Boulder. That's like landing Joe DiMaggio to endorse Mr. Coffee.
I get the general appeal. Still, I have the feeling that I'm missing something, something fundamental that galvanizes followers from near and far. Besides the obvious desire to escape another sweltering summer in the city, what is it exactly about Naropa that attracts so many affluent, hedonistic New Yorkers in particular? I pose the question to the ones sitting right in front of me. Heads knowingly nod up and down.
Perhaps it's the palatable precept that you don't have to give up your material vices to achieve your spiritual goals?
Aha! True, material vices don't have to be forfeited, the students confirm; however, should you develop an earthly desire to fast-track your ascent to nirvana, a hefty portion of your net worth does. You'll fork over roughly forty thousand 1980s US dollars to purchase Rinpoche's brainchild, Shambala Training. I wondered if that included an enlightenment guarantee.
I learn another reason Naropa's summer program is so well attended: Rinpoche never singles out free love—which I have a sneaking suspicion the contented-looking couple in front of me may have dabbled in within the past few hours—as a hindrance to spiritual growth. Au contraire. In fact he's quoted as saying he "tries to meet peoples' spiritual needs in many different ways." Those different ways surface at a series of, shall we say, "immersive" retreats.
Even with a Dalai Lama connection and a scenic Rocky Mountain stronghold, Naropa Institute never could have gained the transcendent sort of notoriety it did dedicated solely to Buddhist studies. Allying with the smoldering embers of the Beat movement was the masterstroke that really put it over the top. Naropa's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, with luminaries like Alan Ginsburg, William Burroughs, Dianne DiPalma, Gregory Corso, Larry Fagin, and Anne Waldman wielding the chalk, fanned and flamed the Beat embers till it became the international poetry hotspot.
The Rinpoche/Kerouac mutual admiration society dates back to when a then curious Tibetan student became hooked on Beats after attending an On The Road reading at San Francisco's City Lights bookstore circa 1955. Equally enamored, Kerouac began practicing Buddhism as a means of keeping his alcoholism at bay. It worked, for a while anyway. Rinpoche was a Buddhist first and an alcoholic second. Kerouac was an alcoholic first and a Buddhist second. Close enough. They went together like red robes and Scotch.
The do-the-dog dogma promoted by the Karmapa combined with the pull of the Beats pumped vitality into a college town previously disposed to believe nothing on God's green earth could possibly approach the cosmic proportions of the annual Big 12 Conference clash between the hometown Colorado Buffaloes and the mighty Nebraska Cornhuskers, the generally undefeated juggernaut to the east. Much of the liberal citizenry found Tibetans and a Buddhist lama a lot more palatable than Nebraskans and CU's fundamentalist football coach. It didn't take long for townsfolk and newcomers alike to discover that Naropa had the best action in town for spiritual aspirants who happened to be a little arty-farty, liked hobnobbing with literati, and had an insistent hankering for anything a little strange. In other words, anyone with half a brain.