Free The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Seven by Chögyam Trungpa Page A

artists. Andy Karr reported that, in this talk, Rinpoche connected very strongly with many of the people there. Jean-Claude van Itallie says of Robert Wilson’s piece and the “furor” that unfolded around it:
     
I think Andy Karr’s and David Rome’s descriptions of the Bob Wilson performance are fairly accurate. It took Bob several days to prepare his piece. He was, as always, very serious about it, working behind closed doors. Watching the piece after being kept waiting for several hours, the meditators were shocked. Some giggled. A few booed rudely. They didn’t know what to make of what they were seeing. The piece was slow, visually beautiful, and devoid of story. Rinpoche was respectful toward the work. If he was angry at his students, he didn’t reprimand them in front of the theater people. Indeed, as David Rome and Andy Karr point out, he instead delivered a lecture to the theater people about ego. I felt that everyone, including Rinpoche, enjoyed shocking the others by what he or she said, wrote, or performed. This was theatrical in the best sense—we shocked each other’s preconceptions of the world. 47
     
    Toward the end of the conference, in addition to presenting the sound cycles, Rinpoche’s students built a huge newspaper installation that was divided into a number of rooms. Participants made their way through this maze, and in each of five rooms they encountered a person who represented one of the buddha families and who would, if supplicated properly, answer questions. Rinpoche himself was in one of these rooms. David Rome told me that “he was somewhere in the middle of the maze, maybe toward the end, just sitting in a simple chair in the middle of a newspaper room, saying nothing.” 48
    Jean-Claude van Itallie commented:
     
I remember the newspaper maze pretty much as you describe . . . Rinpoche sitting in an armchair toward the end of the newspaper room. . . . Sitting in his chair, he said nothing if you asked him nothing. People didn’t expect to see him there—he was a surprise. He said, “I’m curious if people will speak to me.” He was ready to answer anything anyone asked. He was being a fortuneteller, but you had to ask him a question to find that out. If anyone asked him anything, they were the exception. Most people passed through the newspaper room respectfully and asked Rinpoche nothing. 49
     
    The day after the conference ended, Rinpoche introduced the first series of Mudra Space Awareness exercises, which became the foundation for the theater work done by his students for many years. The exercises involve assuming various postures and then intensifying the space around oneself. Very slow, deliberate movements and intensified breathing may also be part of an exercise. Rinpoche described his motivation for introducing these theater exercises as follows: “The problem in acting is not being able to relate with the space which surrounds the body. In other words, the problem is in the relationship between the projector (which is the actor in this case) and the projections (which is the audience). Unless we are able to develop a sense of sympathy with ourselves and a sense of sympathy with space, there is a tendency to become hostile and feel a need to impress the audience.” 50 He also described the approach to intensification as follows: “In order to learn to relate with space we have to learn to intensify the body and build intensive situations as much as possible. Can you just try to feel the space around your body? Pull your muscles as if space is crowding in on you. Clench your teeth and your toes. . . . Very strange to say, in order to learn how to relax you have to develop really solid tenseness. You can breathe out and breathe in but don’t rest your breath, just develop complete intensification. Then you begin to feel that space is closing in on you. In order to relate with space you have to relate with tension.” 51

    Chögyam Trungpa and students encounter one