Tue, 17 Oct 2006
Reminiscing
Kenneth Greene was one of the top figures in Chögyam Trungpa's organization, Vajradhatu. Both he and his buddy Thomas Rich, who later crashed and burned spectacularly after assuming control of Vajradhatu after Trungpa Rinpoche's death, were originally students of Swami Satchitananda. Kenneth recounts his days as a student of the Swami in the the latest interview on the Chronicle Project, the Shambhala web site preserving Vajradhatu's history. It's a window into the life and times of spiritual practice in the Seventies. They lived in an ashram in Hollywood, where they had a good old time while ministering to the rich and famous. Ah, the sweet days of my youth.
It was splendid. At any one time there were about ten to fifteen people living there. It was an ashram and a commune of sorts, but it never got sloppy. We were very neat, especially Narayana [Tom Rich], and the place always looked impeccable, and in many ways we had a lot of discipline. We woke up early. We did do our meditation and yoga. We taught. We did retreats, and we were pretty orthodox about certain things. And about other things we weren't.
So Narayana and I became friends with Carole King who was a lovely person, very self effacing. She never wanted anyone to know she was this famous person. And other Hollywood celebrities started to come by: James Taylor, Tina Louise, who played Ginger in Gilligan's Island, Felix Cavaliere of the Young Rascals, Stacey Keach, and a whole array of folks from the music, film and television world.
While I'm reminiscing, Laura, who lived at KTD with her parents when she was a child, has some photos from the old days on her weblog. Here are some old photos of Khenpo Karthar and some photos of the Sxteenth Karmapa at KTD and in the Yukon. I met Laura when she visited KTD two years ago.
