Chogyam Trungpa & Allen Ginsberg on Poetry

Chogyam Trungpa died in 1987 on April 4. Almost to the day ten years later Allen Ginsberg died on April 5, 1997.

Year of the Iron Rabbit

Image from: ewamchoden.org

Year of the Iron Rabbit

Losar Poem

Be fruitful

when you wander the warren

of your mind

Burrowing deep into the ground of stability.

To broaden your field of vision,

Scan the sky for predators of distraction.

Then, stop in your tracks,

O Fearsome Bunny--

Proverbial Trickster whose cunning

Outwits pundits of sophistry.

For your path

is a zig-zag

To liberation.

Time to change course in a flash

Defy convention

Give into laughter like Bugs BUNNY

Show your mettle and step up to the plate.

For this is your lucky year!

Jacqueline Gens

Tsegyalgar East

2011

Poem by Verandah Porche for my 61st Birthday

Jacqueline (1982)

Rock walls hold the forest like a cash crop:
...some massive stand of late maturing corn.
A cellar hole, a hearthstone topped with
beaten brick, a spring box like a covered dish:
some raw ingredients of myth. Time is still
the laughing chef. Her favored trick: tectonics.

Six burner blaze on our modern stove.
You whip or simmer with no recipe;
know what to coddle,
when to bruise. Try glacier.
Use avalanche.

Verandah tweaked this older poem circa 1982 for my 61st birthday on January 20, 2011, which she posted on Facebook. We lived together for a time at Total Loss Farm AKA Packer Corners Farm in Guilford, Vermont (1976-1982) which she founded in the late 1960 along with friends Raymond Mungo, Marty Jezer, Richard Wizansky among others. Verandah has continued to live on the farm for decades raising her two daughters and scribing her poems.

Listen to a great VPR interview with Tom Fells originally of Montague Farm and Verandah Porche of Total Loss Farm

PHOTO: V. Paige

Packer Corners Farm

The Small Light at the Turning of the Solstice Dark

Photo: Dharamsala by Rosemary Rawcliffe

Solstice Greetings and wishing you all endless possibilities of harmony, good health and prosperity in the New Year and such small light to illuminate our path

I dwell in Possibility – (466)

BY EMILY DICKINSON

I dwell in Possibility –

A fairer House than Prose –

More numerous of Windows –

Superior – for Doors –

Of Chambers as the Cedars –

Impregnable of eye –

And for an everlasting Roof

The Gambrels of the Sky –

Of Visitors – the fairest –

For Occupation – This –

The spreading wide my narrow Hands

To gather Paradise –

E. Gene Smith (1936-2010)

On December 16, 2010 E. Gene Smith, founder of the Tibetan Buddhist Resource Center passed away. Gene was universally known among both Western born and Tibetan scholars as the man responsible for saving the vast treasury of Tibetan Literature. His digital library is the most comprehensive in the world. The leap from the centuries old tradition of printing with carved woodblocks to storing an entire library of millions of pages in the palm of your hand is one of digital technologies most interesting stories.

A memorial service is planned in NYC at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on February 12.

There is a blog dedicated to Remembering Gene Smith with a rapidly growing list of eulogies.

NY Times Obituary

I met Gene once on a trip organized by the Shang Shung Institute where a number of us (Jim Valby, Stephanie Scott and myself) accompanied Chogyal Namkhai Norbu to visit Gene at his home in Cambridge, MA. Every square inch of the multi-storied townhouse was filled with colorful cloth-covered Tibetan texts in various stages of digital scanning. Not only was Mr. Smith responsible for collecting rare Tibetan texts over the past 40 years but his digital library with over 4 million scanned pages preserves for future generations the vast treasury of Tibetan culture. The availability of these texts also ensures access by everyone of complete manuscripts, a major advantage of digital formats over printed folios used in Tibetan books. To read more about his contribution to Tibetan Culture, see the links below. A film about his work is currently in production.

Biographical details from Wikipedia

Smith was born in Ogden, Utah to a traditional Mormon family. He studied at a variety of institutions of higher education in the U.S.: Adelphi College, Hobart College, University of Utah, and the University of Washington in Seattle.

At Seattle, he was able to study with Dezhung Rinpoche and members of the Sakya Phuntso Phodrang family who had been brought to Seattle under the auspices of the Rockefeller Foundation grant to the Far Eastern and Russian Institute. He studied Tibetan culture and Buddhism with Dezhung Rinpoche from 1960 to 1964 and spent the summer of 1962 traveling to the other Rockefeller centers in Europe to meet with other Tibetan savants.

In 1964 he completed his Ph.D. qualifying exams and traveled to Leiden for advanced studies in Sanskrit and Pali. In 1965 he went to India under a Foreign Area Fellowship Program (Ford Foundation) grant to study with living exponents of all of the Tibetan Buddhist and Bönpo traditions.

He began his studies with Geshe Lobsang Lungtok (Ganden Changtse), Drukpa Thoosay Rinpoche and Khenpo Noryang, and H.H. Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. He decided to remain in India to continue serious studies of Tibetan Buddhism and culture. He traveled extensively in the borderlands of India and Nepal. In 1968 he joined the Library of Congress New Delhi Field Office. He then began a project which was to last over the next two and a half decades, the reprinting of the Tibetan books which had been brought by the exile community or were with members of the Tibetan-speaking communities in Sikkim, Bhutan, India, and Nepal.

Announcement on the Tibetan Resource Center's site of Gene Smith's passing

Buddhadharma article on "Gene Smith's Mission"

Click here for News about the Lifetime Achievement Award Bestowed on Gene Smith by the Nyingma Sect

Click here for Patron King article on Gene smith and TBRC

Click here for BBC article on the Tibetan Resource Center

A few videos on You Tube about Gene's work and achievement on behalf of Tibetan culture. There are probably more on the internet.

Homage to E. Gene Smith from Gelek Rinpoche

Produced by Jewel Heart