Trungpa’s escape from Tibet

Chögyam Trungpa, the Tibetan monk who became a renowned lay teacher of Buddhist teachings in the United States and founded the Shambhala organisation, was born 80 years ago today. When the Chinese invaded Tibet, he was no more than 20 years old. At first he went into hiding, but then took part in an heroic expedition across the Himalayas to escape into India. For a few weeks during the latter part of that journey, he kept a diary which he included in his first autobiographical work, Born in Tibet.

Trungpa was born in the Nangchen region of Tibet on 5 March 1939, and was eleventh in the line of Trungpa tülkus, of the Kagyu lineage, one of the four main schools of Tibetan Buddhism. He was trained in the Kagyu tradition, receiving his degree at the same time as Thrangu Rinpoche (who would go on to become another important Buddhist figure in the West). Trungpa was also trained in the Nyingma tradition, the oldest of the four schools. 

In 1958, aged only 19, Trungpa’s home monastery was occupied by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, and so he spent the winter in hiding. The following year, he started out with Akong Tulku and a small group of other monastics to escape China. As they travelled, often through mountain wildernesses, others joined them swelling the group to some 300 refugees. They eventually reached the  Brahmaputra River. Under heavy gunfire, about 70 managed to cross it, but they then had to climb 19,000 feet over the Himalayas, with little food, before reaching the safety of Pema Ko. On reaching India, in early 1960, the party was flown to a refugee camp. The full story has been told by Grant McLean’s in his 2016 book From Lion’s Jaws: Chogyam Trungpa’s Epic Escape To The West.

In India, Trungpa had one son (who is today the head of Shambala network) with a nun he had met on the journey. He set about learning English, and by 1963 had won a scholarship to study comparative religion at St Antony’s College, Oxford University. In 1967, he and Akong were invited to take over Johnstone House Trust in Scotland to run a meditation centre, which then became Samye Ling, the first Tibetan Buddhist monastery in the West. Around 1969, he married Diana Judith Pybus, a wealthy rebellious 16 year old, with whom he had at least one son. He also had a car accident which left him partially paralysed for the rest of his life. When Trungpa split with Akong, in 1970, the former moved to the United States. By then, he had dispensed with his monastic way of life (allowing himself to be promiscuous and drink heavily), and set course as a lay teacher. He travelled widely around North America, gaining renown for his ability to present the essence of the highest Buddhist teachings in a form readily understandable to Western students, in particular he introduced and opened up, to the West, the esoteric practices of the Vajrayana or Tantric Buddhism.

Trungpa soon began to establish many meditation centres and retreats, all managed by an umbrella organisation, Vajradhatu, based in Boulder, Colorado. Also in Boulder, he found the Naropa Institute which would become the first accredited Buddhist university in North America. Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs were hired at one point to teach poetry and literature respectively. (Joni Mitchell even sang about Trungpa in Refuge of the Roads, on the Hejira album.) From 1976, he began a series of secular teachings, some of which were gathered and presented as the Shambhala Training, inspired by his vision, when younger, of the legendary Kingdom of Shambhala. His whole organisation eventually took on the Shambala name.

In 1981, Trungpa hosted a visit by the 14th Dalai Lama to Boulder. In 1983, he established Gampo Abbey, a Karma Kagyü monastery in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada; the following year, he observed a yearlong retreat in a rural community in Nova Scotia, and in 1986 he moved his home and international headquarters to Halifax. However, he was, by this time, suffering failing health; after a heart attack in 1986, he died in 1987. Further information can be found at Shambhala, Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, or Stripping the Gurus.

A diary kept by Trungpa for a few weeks during his heroic escape to India was first published by George Allen & Unwin in 1966 as part of the autobiographical Born in Tibet (as told to Esmé Cramer Roberts). This has been republished several times, and can be previewed at Googlebooks. Born in Tibet is also included in the first volume of The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, edited by Carolyn Rose Gimian, and published by Shambala in 2003. Furthermore, the diary itself can be found online at The Chronicles, ‘a repository of teachings, articles, interviews, news and podcasts pertaining to the life and teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’.

Here are several extracts (as found at The Chronicles).

‘With the morning light we started off and walked down the slope and as we turned uphill again we met the peasant husband carrying a large bag of tsampa. To our amazement he said that he and Tsepa had overtaken Akong Tulku’s elder brother in company with Dorje Tsering’s wife and three nuns and they had given him the tsampa to tide over our immediate needs. They told him how they had been captured by the Chinese near the backwater, but managed to escape from the headquarters where they were being held and had afterward joined up with some Kongpo peasants who were also escaping. The party had heard Tsepa’s gun the night before and had been so frightened that they had rushed away. It appeared that the gun had only been fired to scare a wild animal which seemed as if it might attack. Tsepa had sent the peasant husband back to us while he himself went up to the village on the mountainside to buy provisions. He sent us a message saying that we were to go to a cave below that place where the other party was waiting for us; he would join us there later with the food. We soon reached the cave and spent a very happy morning telling each other of our experiences. They told us that a group of them had crossed the river and the backwater and had tried to follow us; however, they had lost their way and after lying hidden in the long grass for a time they reached the village. When the Chinese discovered them, there was no fighting; all the refugees were taken prisoner and removed to a village which was a local Chinese headquarters, on the south side of the Brahmaputra. Their baggage was thoroughly searched; all the contents of their amulet boxes were thrown out and all religious books were immediately destroyed. Each person was privately questioned to find out if their stories tallied; they were asked where they came from and where they were going. Most of them said that they were trying to escape to India, though a few said that they were going on pilgrimage to that country. The lamas and leaders were separated from the rest and put under guard to be interrogated more closely. They were given the most menial work to do, such as cleaning out latrines. One of the lamas despaired and hanged himself, he had already escaped from one prison camp in Derge and this was the second time that he had been captured. As other prisoners were brought into the camp all our party were relieved to find that no members of our little group were among them; but when the Chinese could not trace Akong Tulku, Yak Tulku, or me among the senior prisoners, they thought we might be lurking disguised among the crowd, since they knew that we had been the leaders of the party; so the prisoners were checked again, especially the younger ones.

At night everyone was locked up together in a single room, but women and the less important men were allowed to go out into the village during the day: They were, however, called in for individual questioning from time to time. The Chinese would then tell them that now that Lhasa was liberated they could go there whenever they wished to, there would be no trouble on the roads; but of course there were more useful things to be done than wandering off on pilgrimages, which were indeed only superstition. The prisoners were even told that should they wish to go to India for this purpose, the Chinese administration were quite ready to let them out; however, such a journey would be exceedingly dangerous, for anyone might die of starvation or fall ill from the hot climate there.

When a rumor went round the camp that all the able-bodied refugees were shortly to be sent north to join labor camps on the other side of the Brahmaputra and that the senior people and those too old for work were to be sent to concentration camps, one of the nuns contrived to buy food for herself and Akong Tulku’s brother, she also obtained information about the best way to reach Doshong Pass. Dorje Tsering’s wife and two other nuns were also able to procure some food and all five managed to escape together. They stopped in a wood the first night and crossed the Doshong Pass the following day. Here they met the family from Kongpo who knew the country and were also making their escape, so they joined forces.

The Kongpo family were camping in a valley below our cave and the man came up to see me, bringing a jug of soup made of meat and barley which was much appreciated. He told me how he and his people had escaped: It had been very difficult to get out of their village as permits were only given to visit friends in the near neighborhood and when the visit was over the holder had to apply to the local authorities for permission to return to his own home. Having obtained the permits to leave his village, our friend and his family took the opposite direction toward the mountains to the south. A number of the villagers had wanted to do the same thing, but knowing the danger they would have to encounter in crossing the snowbound Doshong Pass, they had not dared to undertake the journey.

Some refugee lamas from Lower Kongpo were sheltering in the small monastery in the village above our cave. A monk came down with Tsepa to request me to conduct a devotional service for them as well as for the villagers. I was surprised to see him wearing a long dagger which looked somehow wrong for a monk. He was particularly friendly and invited us all to stay in the monastery. However, we felt that this village was too near Lower Kongpo and might not be a safe place for us so, seeing that one could not get to the monastery and back again that same afternoon, we stayed where we were in and around the cave. We had an excellent meal with some pork the villagers had supplied and made dumplings with their wheat flour which they also gave us. We tried the local dish of millet, but found this difficult to swallow.

23 January 1960
‘No one knew how we could get to India proper, for there was a waiting list for the few airplanes flying to and fro. However, we no longer felt anxious: We were free at last and were able to wander about the town at will. I was struck by the fact that people here were much gayer and more cheerful than in the Communist-controlled Tibetan towns. As we were having our midday meal, a messenger came to tell us to go down to the airport, as there was every possibility that we would get a lift that same evening. A tractor arrived with a trailer behind it, into which we all bundled. The winding road led through a valley and we came to the gate of the airport. It was built in decorative Tibetan style, surmounted by the ashoka emblem. We disembarked and waited. No one knew of any airplanes likely to arrive that day. The evening drew in and it was quite dark. A jeep came to take me to see the local district administrator; he gave me a bag of rice and a few vegetables and apologized that supplies were so scanty and the accommodation so limited. However, he was sure that the plane would come the next day. He asked me to leave my blessing in the place, that things should go well. I thanked him and presented him with a white scarf. We spent that night in the hut.’

24 January 1960
‘In the morning an official came and read out a list of our names. He told us that we would be given priority on the next plane. It arrived that morning and, since it was a transport plane, its cargo of building material was first taken off and seats screwed in afterward. There was only room for six of us: myself, my own attendant, Yak Tulku and his attendant, Tsethar, and Yunten; the rest of the party followed in a second plane that same day.

This, our first flight, was a strange new experience, skimming over cloud-covered mountains, seeing far below us the small villages and footpaths leading up to them; only by the moving shadow of the plane on the ground could we gauge how fast we were traveling.

We thought about the teaching of impermanence; this was a complete severance of all that had been Tibet and we were traveling by mechanized transport. As the moments passed, the mountain range was left behind, and the view changed to the misty space of the Indian plains stretching out in front of us.’