CompleteMartialArts.com - Dragon Thunder: My Life with Chögyam Trungpa
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List Price: $24.95
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Manufacturer: Shambhala
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 294.3923092
EAN: 9781590302569
ISBN: 1590302567
Label: Shambhala
Manufacturer: Shambhala
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 384
Publication Date: 2006-09-12
Publisher: Shambhala
Release Date: 2006-09-12
Studio: Shambhala
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Editorial Reviews:
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"It was not always easy to be the guru’s wife,” writes Diana Mukpo. “But I must say, it was rarely boring.” At the age of sixteen, Diana Mukpo left school and broke with her upper-class English family to marry Chögyam Trungpa, a young Tibetan lama who would go on to become a major figure in the transmission of Buddhism to the West. In a memoir that is at turns magical, troubling, humorous, and totally out of the ordinary, Diana takes us into her intimate life with one of the most influential and dynamic Buddhist teachers of our time.
Diana led an extraordinary and unusual life as the "first lady" of a burgeoning Buddhist community in the American 1970s and '80s. She gave birth to four sons, three of whom were recognized as reincarnations of high Tibetan lamas. It is not a simple matter to be a modern Western woman married to a Tibetan Buddhist master, let alone to a public figure who is sought out and adored by thousands of eager students. Surprising events and colorful people fill the narrative as Diana seeks to understand the dynamic, puzzling, and larger-than-life man she married—and to find a place for herself in his unusual world.
Rich in ambiguity, Dragon Thunder is the story of an uncommon marriage and also a stirring evocation of the poignancy of life and of relationships—from a woman who has lived boldly and with originality.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: Not very enlightening
Comment: I really wanted to like this book. I am a practicing Tibetan Buddhist of the Drikung Kagyu lineage, and I really wanted to come away from this book with a better understanding of Chogyam Trungpa. I wanted to be able to stop thinking of him as a womanizing drunk.
Unfortunately, this book didn't help me. The author spends a great deal of time explaining away Trungpa's behavior by stating that he just wasn't like other people and that the normal rules didn't apply to him. It felt like someone who is abused making excuses for her abuser. I didn't gain any clearer dharmic understanding of Trungpa's outrageous actions or his reasons for having affair after affair after affair, drinking to excess, or taking drugs.
Brilliant teacher he may have been, but from what I read in this book, he doesn't strike me as any sort of a dharmic role model or a spiritual friend on whom I could rely.
In addition to not feeling like I gained any sort of higher understanding of the main character, I feel that the book dragged on and on and on. It read at times like a list of dates and places, overly specific and uninteresting. The author seemed to be trying to account for every event in her and Trungpa's lives and explain how and why it showed Trungpa's brilliance. It got boring long before the book concluded.
I give this book three stars because some of it is very interesting, and it gives a decent account of how Shambhala Buddhism came to be, but it doesn't offer any sort of scintillating window into who Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was.
Customer Rating:
Summary: definitely worth reading
Comment: this is a good read because mukpo doesn't try to convince anyone, including herself, of anything. she tells her story as it happened and is happening, willingly opening herself to possible criticism and raised eyebrows. this is a real life, a real marriage, not, as her husband said, "one of those suburban couples" who pretend everything is real when it isn't. trungpa may have had some issues, but he profoundly impacted many lives. whether his impact was positive or negative is irrelevant--buddhism does not judge.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Thunderous Personality
Comment: "Enlightened Master"
"Egomaniac"
"Genius"
"Fraud"
"Compassionate"
"Cruel"
It is difficult to imagine one person attracting so many different sobriquets.
Yet Chögyam Trungpa gathered all of these and many more.
A recognized reincarnation of the Tenth Trungpa, he came to India after the Chinese invasion of Tibet and faced enormous hardships. He eventually came to Britain and met and married the sixteen-year-old Diana Probus, who took the name Diana Mukpo, and finally wrote this extraordinary memoir, almost twenty years after his death. They were married for a tumultuous period of seventeen years during which he established meditation centers throughout Europe and North America, attracted a large number of students and founded Naropa in Boulder, Colorado, the first Buddhist-inspired University in the United States.
Chögyam Trungpa was a key figure in the dissemination of Tibetan Buddhism in the West, and apart from the testimony of his personal students, he has left a substantial body of written works, many of which are widely recognized to be spiritual masterpieces. He was always controversial and heavy alcohol abuse contributed to his early demise.
I never met Chögyam, but I well remember many of my Buddhist friends being scandalized by his behavior. Most of them had acquired an extraordinarily ascetic view of Buddhism that many still hold today. The idea that an Enlightened Master may smoke, drink and have sex is anathema. They have an idea of the way that a spiritual being should behave, and if he or she does not, well that simply proves that they are not enlightened! I have known so many people who never realized that this view of spirituality is a projection based on just one spiritual current. There are many others, and it is a sad reality that rather than practicing tolerance, many of the different spiritual schools and traditions really dislike each other.
This book paints an intimate portrait of a master of "crazy wisdom." It is particularly fascinating to see the juxtaposition of the early life of someone born into a life of privilege in England, with a man born in poverty half a world away. And what an unusual and complex man he was, with a colorful and powerful personality. Not only was he someone who transmitted teachings, he was also believed to be someone who found and uncovered lost poetic and philosophical treasures.
This is a very personal book, but it is not a rose-colored one. Diana was not only Rinpoche's wife she was also his student, and he did many things that must have been very hard on her. There was evidently a clash of cultures and even though she was very young when they got married, she was concerned about some of the questionable decisions that were being made. Though at the end of it all, she says that she has "no regrets." The book gives some extraordinary insights into the inner workings of Tibetan Buddhism during its early encounter with the West. Though not designed to be a book of teachings, it contains a great many acute observations about the Buddhist path.
This is a book that will be of interest not only to Buddhists, but also to anyone who would like to learn more about the development of meditation and spirituality in the West.
Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wild Outrageous and Outstanding
Comment: This is an amazing and compelling story. One of the few spiritual bios that is a total pageturner!
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Generous Revelation
Comment: I was a close student of Trungpa Rinpoche for 16 years. I never closed a door in Diana's face; I did spend a bit of time caring for Taggie, yet even though I was "close in" to Rinpoche's family, I did not appreciate or have much empathy for Diana's challenges or for the fact that she was facing them at such a young age. Now at 60, having raised 4 children and being grandfather to 4, I humbly beg her forgiveness and bow to her strong Dharma Heart.
This book is a generous and bold revelation of life with a rare Great Being. It will help any spiritual seeker break out of their limited notions of spiritual life and practice.
The way in which Diana perservered in preserving and strenghtening her own spirit under extraordinary circumstances will be an inspiring example for any reader. It with help you develop a mature relationship to meet your own challenges on the path.
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