Chogyam Trungpa torturing a dog

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   « One night after supper Rinpoche said, “Get [the dog] Myson and bring him in here.” I dragged the shaking dog into the kitchen and following Rinpoche’s instructions I sat him on the floor and covered his eyes with a blindfold. I set up stands with lighted candies by either side of his head. Myson couldn’t move his head without being burned. Rinpoche took a potato and hit Myson on the head with it. When the dog moved, the fur on his ear would catch on fire. I put out the flames. Now and then Rinpoche would scrape his chair across the tiled floor and whack him again on the head with a potato.

   “Sir,” I began hesitantly, trying to stop him.

   “Shut up,” snapped Rinpoche, “and hand me another potato.” I started to empathize with the dog. In fact, I became the dog.

   I was blindfolded and was banged on the head with a spud and if I turned my head my cars would bum and there was the squealing sound of the chair on the floor. Pissing in my pants I was that dog not being able to move, feeling terrified and at the same time excited. Finally, the scraping chair and the potato throwing stopped and we released the shaking dog, who ran upstairs to Max’s empty room.

   “That’s how you train students,” Rinpoche calmly stated to me. »

   The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant, John Riley Perks [Trungpa’s butler], Crazy Heart Publishers (2006), p.60-61

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Page 60 of John Perks' book

The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant 

additionally

http://radiofreeshambhala.org/2010/12/the-wheel/

1. John Perks on December 20th, 2010 9:11 pm
   

   I was very interested in Mr. Castlebury’s comments. Many times when we talk about Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, we talk about the magic of his actions. But it’s very important, I think, for one to look at the nature of one’s own mind in terms of what Rinpoche was saying, or acting on. Most of the time I did not understand what his actions were saying on-the-spot. So it’s taken many years of replaying the situation and trying to remember the state of my mind at the time. And I think that this is possibly what’s led to my label as narcissistic, which by the way, I don’t mind. I’m limited by the ability of my own mind to understand my own actions.

   Thanks to Mr. Castlebury I had to think about that. So I would like to tell the story of the killing of the bird from the point of view of where my mind was at the time, and how Trungpa Rinpoche worked on-the-spot with that, which I suppose you could call magic.

   At that time I was invested very heavily in being a Buddhist. That is, I wanted to become a compassionate, loving, kind person. So in order to do that, I had to shun much of my previous conditions, and take on the aspects of being a Buddhist. My former lives of hunting and killing did not fit in to my new Buddhist approach. So I just switched it off. Trungpa Rinpoche had been asking me to take him hunting. This I refused to do because I was now a Buddhist. It was my practice as a Buddhist to feed all the little birds on the outside with crumbs and seeds from the house, whereupon I would stand in front of the window and feel great about how wonderful I was to be providing for these little beings.

   Trungpa Rinpoche came into the kitchen and seeing me looking out of the window at these birds, started to jump around and say, “I want to kill something. I am a monk and I have never killed anything,” whereupon he grabbed the .22 single-shot rifle that was in the kitchen, which we used for target practice to shoot things that I set up called maras. I became very alarmed at this and said, “No we can’t do that sir. We cannot kill.”

   And he said, “Well, I’m going to.”

   Seeing that there was no option I moved the rear sight of the rifle way out of line, so when he picked up the gun and shot, using the sights, the gun would be totally inaccurate. He did shoot, and of course did not hit anything. I did not know whether this was on purpose, but Max and I laughed a
2. John Perks on December 20th, 2010 9:15 pm
   

   (continued)

   Seeing that there was no option I moved the rear sight of the rifle way out of line, so when he picked up the gun and shot, using the sights, the gun would be totally inaccurate. He did shoot, and of course did not hit anything. I did not know whether this was on purpose, but Max and I laughed and Rinpoche said to me, “Oh, you’re such an English gentleman, you couldn’t possibly kill anything.” At that point, I picked up the gun and without any hesitation I shot the bird. Trungpa Rinpoche was very surprised that I had done this. And at first he didn’t believe it until I went outside and showed him the dead body.

   I had no idea at the time what was going on. It was only after many years of replaying the scene that I had some understanding of what he was showing me about my fixation on Buddhism, amongst other things. Everything that Trungpa Rinpoche did was specifically on-the-spot teaching. Most of the time, practically all the time, I did not get it. And it was only after years of replaying the many scenes that I could even begin to understand what I was being shown.

   So I hope this will be of some help. And I thank Mr. Castlebury for his comments, which made me think about it again.

   Thank you,
   John Perks