75 Nookie

John remained skeptical of both teacher and sangha. On the one hand John agreed that there was no substitute for sitting in a circle and participating in ceremony and communion with fellow believers, exposing your innermost character to the community, and receiving in return a deep and intimate knowledge of others. On the other hand his personal experience at The Farm, in the Native American Church, and at the San Francisco Zen Center had persuaded him that all such human communities were hotbeds of envy, intrigue, and struggle for political power. It is easy for believers to be taken advantage of, John explained, and, worse, even easier to yield to the temptation to join in petty manipulation. For these reasons, John argued, there is an enormous burden of responsibility on the teacher of the community since if he is not really and truly enlightened then his leadership of the community of believers offers an irresistible temptation to whatever trace of ego remains in the Teacher, which this final time now John spelled with a capital T.

Teacher.

"It is a golden opportunity for self-aggrandizement," John wrote, "and nookie of all kinds."

Nookie!

It had been forty years since I'd heard that word.

I laughed and laughed.

I am laughing now as I record our correspondence.

John himself felt deeply the need for the sangha, he told me, but he had been traumatized by his experience of it; and he felt deeply the need for the guidance of one further along on the Way, but John had been traumatized by his experience of it, too; so he practiced on his own, he said, and he sat and he read books and he swung back and forth between cursing his fate and realizing that the big "it" was also the little "me" and he agonized and he agonized and he agonized and then sometimes, John added, he went insane.

"So I am torn," John wrote.

Divided.

John's allusions to the scandals involving Zen Master Richard Baker, Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin, and Trungpa Rinpoche himself sent me back to my research. An old Newsweek article referred to Trungpa as "the renegade" Tibetan monk. I knew of his smoking, drinking, and drug use. Was that what the word "renegade" referred to—or to something more? The writer of the article also called Trungpa a "sexual libertine." What was that about? Billy and I had talked briefly in the past of Trungpa's addiction to tobacco and alcohol.

"But," I told Billy, "I guess I missed the really juicy stuff."

"Yes, his smoking, drinking, and sexual freedom disturbed many people including some of his own students," Billy responded.

Billy explained that in Tibetan Buddhism there were two traditions—the more ancient that of the wild tantric yogi and the more recent that of the monk or nun living in a monastic community. As Billy understood it, Trungpa had exchanged the life of the monk for the life of the "crazy wisdom master" and that transformation was what had helped him to establish such a powerful connection with our own crazy generation in the United States.

Billy brought my concern to a head.

I asked.

"Was Trungpa fucking his students?"

"Yes."

Billy told me that he knew personally a man whose wife had become a lover of Trungpa Rinpoche. The man and his wife had split up as a result, Billy added, but neither the man nor his wife ever regretted the affair. But Billy said that Richard Baker and Ösel Tendzin had not been so lucky. One of Baker's lovers had taken her own life, Billy said, and at least one of Tendzin's lovers had contracted HIV from Tendzin and died of AIDS. Billy and I had both been unfaithful more than once in our first marriages. After so many years I was not sure how Billy felt now about his own conduct in this matter but I was ashamed of mine—

With one exception.

Ruth.

We fell in love and married.