The Founding Vision of Naropa University "Let East Meet West and the Sparks Will Fly" Reed Bye Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche arrived in Boulder, Colorado, in early 1970 to teach a course on Buddhism at the University of Colorado at the invitation of two faculty members who had read his first book, Meditation in Action. Quite quickly, he began to attract other students who wanted to explore Buddhist spiritual teachings under his guidance. It became clear to those living in Boulder at the time that there was a great deal of energy and creativity in Trungpa's style of presenting the Buddhist tradition to Western students. He had found receptive ground upon which to create situations for teaching. By early 1973, among other projects, Trungpa began to suggest to students the idea of beginning of a school where Buddhist teachings could mix with Western intellectual and artistic traditions. Marvin Casper, later to become a professor of psychology at Naropa, was one of those involved in the initial conversations and described the inspiration for starting such a school: "The basic idea was an institute that would create an interface, a dialogue, between Buddhism and the intellectual culture of the West, as well as with other spiritual traditions. ... I remember at some point Rinpoche talked about creating sparks by juxtaposing different traditions. The idea was that if you look at things from different perspectives, you can get to their essence. If people from different traditions challenge and com' pare their approaches, they could go beyond conceptual mind to new perspectives."1 The colorful history of the birth and development of this idea—into what is today a fully accredited university with a four-year undergraduate college, six graduate departments, a school of extended studies, and numerous online degree programs—is a many-chaptered story beyond the scope of this article. Here I wish to simply shed light on the educational vision that produced Naropa University. The Founding Inspiration It is important to note that from its inception Naropa has grown quite literally from the ground up. There have been very few large donations that might have allowed it to skip any steps in the growing process, and step-by-step growth, seems to have been an important part of its vision: that a timely idea can be realized from a simple inspiration, through cooperation and dedicated effort. An emphasis on process and journey, personal and institutional, was integral to Trungpa's teaching in all the endeavors he and his students undertook. "In his style, Rinpoche would just start something and then see how it developed, going step by step. We didn't have any great master plans in terms of how Naropa could evolve in time," Casper recalled.2 Trungpa evoked the image of organic growth as follows: "The usual way of cooperation is based on the sense of sculpturing a product rather than just letting it grow.... 'Letting it grow1 is not based on the end product, you are simply concerned with the developmental process. You nourish what needs to be nourished, care for what needs care, and destroy what needs to be destroyed. You are not particularly concerned with what 'die outcome will be or how long it will take. There is no need to dwell on the details of your own contribution. At the same time to let it grow does not mean total wildness in which everything is allowed."3 In 1974, Naropa Institute began its existence as a summer program, with a luminous visiting faculty of artists, intellectuals, historians, and psychologists, including Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Bateson, Gary Snyder, Anne Waldman, Ram Dass, John Cage, Herbert Guenther, Barbara Dilley, Joan Halifax, and Stanislav Grof. All were invited on the basis of life work seen as "resonating with the essence of dharma."4 Although the operating budget and resources were very small, almost all of those invited to attend and teach accepted. On June 1 o, fifty-five faculty and sixteen hundred students gathered at Naropa's opening convocation ceremony, held in a large auditorium on the University of Colorado campus. On that occasion, Trungpa spoke to the heart of the new project: "The Naropa Institute developed from the idea of working with what exists in this country and also with traditions around the world The basic point here is that we could work together, we could relate with each other on the basis of trust—which seems to be lacking enormously in the Western educational tradition."5 He went on to say that such a project did not require or imply a reformation of the Western educational tradition per se but rather a "new way of looking at education." One of the problems he found in U.S. culture as he was encountering it at this time was its attitude toward its own traditions. A large-scale rejection of what were felt to be outmoded societal mores and values spurred generational suspicion and cynicism about tradition altogether and doubt that anything vital and relevant to contemporary life could be found in established cultural institutions. So, perhaps ironically, the first spark from the meeting of East and West in the vision of Naropa University was the suggestion that students should think twice about rejecting their own heritage: "We could reignite our pilot light by respecting, trusting, and acknowledging the tradition in which we have grown up. Whether it is Eastern or Western does not really matter, we could still do it. There are enormous possibilities in relating with the dignity of our culture, which we haven't acknowledged."6 Thus, Trungpa argued for recognition and appreciation of one's cultural heritage and its accumulated wisdom. Such wisdom, he explained, is held in cultural customs and practices, so that to ignore or reject them is largely to reject oneself and one's access to human wisdom. "We can regard tradition as the foundation and stepping stone for learning rather than something to be rejected. You cannot grow if you cut off your root."? In his later book Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, he wrote: How to construct a building has thousands of years of history behind it. First human beings lived in caves; then they learned how to build huts. Then they learned how to construct a building with pillars and columns. Finally they learned how to construct a building without columns in the center, with arches spanning the ceiling, which is a remarkable discovery. Such wisdom has to be respected. Many people must have been crushed when they tried to build a structure without central columns and it collapsed. People must have sacrificed their lives until a model was developed that worked. You might say that such an accomplishment is insignificant, but on the other hand, the failure to appreciate the resourcefulness of human existence . has become one of the world's biggest problems.8 At the same time, to idealize or dwell in the forms of the past can lead to blindness to the circumstances of one's present situation. In order to incorporate both knowledge and respect for tradition and awareness of the particular present, Trungpa explained that we must learn to open our eyes to newness, "the magic of the present moment, [which] joins the wisdom of the past with the present."9 The nonconceptual experience of nowness keeps wisdom fresh and adaptable; without it, our inherited wisdom shrinks into cultural habits and dogma. When corruption, enters a culture, it is because that culture ceases to be now, it becomes past and future. Periods in history when great act was created, when learning advanced or peace spread, were all now. You have to maintain nowness ... so that you don't corrupt now, and so that you don't have false synonyms for now at all. The vision of enlightened society is that tradition and culture and wisdom and dignity can be experienced now and kept now on everyone's part.10 The founding inspiration of Naropa University as an educational institution, then, involved the weaving of academic study and the practices of mindfulness and awareness. This was to be a school where scholarly disciplines would be pursued along with contemplative practices that uncover the direct experience of nowness. In this way, the wisdom within cultural traditions and academic disciplines could be received and extended into the world with fresh life. Normally in secular academic study, one does not find much direct involvement with the wisdom traditions of cultures. Nonconceptual religious practice, for instance, is not often brought together with historical and doctrinal study. This kind of engagement, even at an introductory level, requires a depth of instruction and trust that purely intellectual study can only suggest. As a result, the Western academic tradition tends to look at religion from a scholarly perimeter. Perhaps the same generalization could be made about psychology, the arts, and other disciplines as well. There are, of course, many challenges that arise when wisdom traditions are presented with attention to their spiritual as well as historical and doctrinal dimensions. The first is that of ensuring trustworthy and authentic presentation of the material, and addressing the question of how that authenticity can be gauged. Over the years, Naropa has had to work with a number of such challenges, while attempting to remain true to its specific educational mission "to encourage the integration of the teachings of world wisdom traditions with modem culture."11 "Integration" implies more than the objective study of history and belief systems within such traditions; it involves inner or spiritual understanding as well. This kind of teaching demands authentic presentation and reception of living traditions in a world susceptible to materialism, fundamentalism, and various forms of aggressive factionalism and appropriation.