Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780975383605
ISBN number: 0975383604
Label: Crazy Heart Publishing houses
Manufacturer: Crazy Heart Publishing houses
Page Count: 229
Printing Date: July 01, 2006
Publishing house: Crazy Heart Publishing houses
Sale Popularity Level: 116047
Studio: Crazy Heart Publishing houses
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John Perks was Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's butler, attendant, and personal secretary for seven years. This is a book about their personal relationship--a book Trungpa Rinpoche asked the author to write. ________ Quotes about the book: 'Ven. Seonaidh Perks played a crucial role in the creation of many of the Vidyadhara's institutions and his story of their mutual dance is hilarious, wild, shocking, and poignant. This book is a rare thing.' Douglas Penick, author of 'Gesar of Ling,' Wisdom Publications. 'It is the very first intimate and authoritative account of Chogyam Trungpa, arguably the most important spiritual teacher in America's last century...' Kidder Smith, Professor of Asian Studies, Bowdoin College
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Rated by buyers 
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All books that introduce a reader to Dharma are potentially liberating and life-changing, and John Perks's book appeals to circles of readers beyond Buddhist practitioners. Besides being an honest accounting of his years as attendant to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the author offers glimpses into the Crazy Heart of the Dharma, where gypsies, poets, dancers, and wrathful and peaceable women and men hold a wheeling, kaleidoscopic mandala, interlacing samsara, nirvana, and the True Nature of Mind in a dazzling array.
Recall that it is the yogins and yoginis of Buddhism who have in the past many many centuries offered profound teachings and skillful means, and that the monastic life has been, in fact, an experiment that was overlaid on the yogis' and yoginis' difficult and effective path. This is not to say that the monastic approach is lesser or that it diminishes Buddhism in any way whatsoever. It is to rather to say that Buddhism excludes no one who is on the path to achieving enlightenment, and that the monastic model is not the sole way.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was blazingly brilliant in establishing the taste for Dharma in every possible way and every possible permutation for the widest possible array of practitioners... including the crazy manner in which he encourages the sangha to fulfill their samsaric desires, and then elevates them through his mirrorlike wisdom. Wow.
Where the Dharma exists, may it increase!
Rated by buyers 
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I'm probably in the minority, coming to Perks' earnest and rambunctious account via my research into Celtic spirituality rather than Buddhism. So, I had no bias really one way or the other starting this brisk book-- regarding the reputation of his idiosyncratic "mahasiddha." Having known only of Chogyam Trungpa's reputation by its coverage in Rick Fields' "How the Swans Came to the Lake," read over a decade ago, Trungpa hovered as a hazy presence to unenlightened me. Francesca Fremantle, a student in the same era as Perks (although she's not mentioned by him here) and co-translator with Trungpa of the "Tibetan Book of the Dead," mentions him with affection in her preface, but somewhat gingerly regarding "crazy wisdom" in her scholarly commentary on the TBoD, "Luminous Emptiness" (also reviewed recently by me). So, when I found out Perks' current interest in "Celtic Buddhism" via a web search, I tracked down this autobiography of the servant and the man he served.
It's advisable-- as probably the vast majority of readers will already possess-- surely to know about Buddhism first. As one of the few opening this narrative with rudimentary understanding, it helped that footnotes explain most of the terms. The book does skip about, and it's wise that Perks interspersed short chapters analyzing his earlier escapades from a somewhat more chastened perspective. It's fast-paced, if heavy as many such first-person, small-press tales tend to be, on whatever the author wants to chat with us about at the moment.
As another reviewer found to his disdain, but I thought typically off-kilter for Perks' attitude towards his adventures in its unexpected profundity (but I have an unpredictable mind too), the juxtaposition of a consideration of oral sex with our passage through the birth canal showed how Perks' erotic and spiritual tutelage under one who appeared quite experienced in the sacred as the profane had progressed to fruition. However, Perks' embrace of the promiscuous and the liberated under the guise of enlightenment and privilege also led me into growing unease at the course such an example might have effected the trust of many followers, not only Perks from his intimate level of observation.
Perks, as Elbert Porter's detailed review summarizes, covers his checkered past with vim. Our protagonist's obviously quite a conniver, and he reckoned Trungpa'd be no match for him when he stumbles across him in the early days of hippiedom in Vermont. But how, I kept asking myself, did such an extended lost weekend sustain itself practically? I did wonder, reading the jet-setting flights, the frequent globe-trotting holidays, and the considerable expense that kitting out a retinue of servants and hangers-on as the entourage of "Shambhala" masquerading as the royal retinue of Bhutan cost, as it trundled across the Aquarian Age into the Me Decade. How many students paid tuition for a three-month "seminary" retreat in good faith that these funds would be furthering serious investment in Buddhist teaching in America? I wondered at what seemed to me the play-acting, the role-playing, the debauchery and drinking and drug-taking under such auspices.
Perks does wrestle, as anyone with a conscience, with such dilemmas, even if he does not in the text articulate the ethical conflict as I have. It's more visceral: Trungpa's alcoholism and his decline. I sensed when I read Fremantle's carefully worded longing an echo of the feeling that the master must have inspired in his servants, but I also wondered about the damage done by such a leader in the eyes of those not as skilled as the inner circle of Shambhala's court jesters. Perks circles around this delicate matter, but I wanted him to take it on directly.
Perhaps, like Fremantle as another intimate, Perks cannot do this wholly. The contradictions may be too painful. The moral relativism of the Seventies certainly presents a far different guru than the Dalai Lama's monkish asceticism, and I understand intellectually Perks' struggle to reconcile the hedonistic "holy fool" with his relentless testing and teasing of his self-appointed butler.
Still, there's a jarring gap between ideals and reality here, and no wonder Perks felt he tempted madness in navigating between subservience and dominance of quite an unstable individual. I wonder what ever happened to Max's poor dog, Myson? I get the point of Trungpa's lesson in attachment and renunciation, trust and discipline, but it does appear needless cruelty to a trusting pet to teach Perks his dharma lesson. Did Myson ever return from running out the door into a Vermont chill?
That being said, the narrative does give, in perhaps inevitably uneven fashion, how one gets initiated into wisdom as a devoteé of a guru. It's an unsettling tale for those of us less courageous or daring, but the insider's entry into a heightened state-- with or without drugs-- ... Read More
Rated by buyers -
...if only to get a more balanced view of Chogyam Trungpa than you'd get from reading most of the Shambhala-approved, hagiographic stuff, such as the autobiography by his widow, Diana Mukpo.
It's good to keep in mind that the author himself is not exactly the most mentally stable (at least in any conventional use of that term) individual, which becomes obvious through his wild visions/dreams that he continually goes back to throughout the book. From this book, Perks is probably best described as a spiritual eccentric, with a very colorful background, mercurial and impulsive personality---yet he does have a decent understanding of Buddhist psychology and teachings as well, underneath the sometimes outlandish, sometimes flaky and silly devotional zeal he has towards Trungpa as his guru.
[....]
The entire guru tradition is very problematic especially within a Western setting, and Trungpa is a good example of why---Perks is not shy about relating what we might perceive as the hedonistic excesses of Trungpa's personal life, though he does not dwell on them in any sensationalistic tabloid manner.
This book simply provides a fascinating glimpse into the reality of living up close and personal with a fascinatingly enigmatic and charismatic teacher, without whom it could be argued that Western Buddhism would not be what it is today. For better and for worse.
Shame on the whole Shambhala empire to suppress this book!
Rated by buyers 
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This book is tremendous fun and an exceptional look at at life in Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche's inner circle, which seems to have been quite a place to be.
Rated by buyers -
Fair to say I'll never forget this book.
I actually consider it rather bad: the four stars are for its originality. Nevertheless I have something of a soft spot for it.
John Riley Perks was for many years an acolyte, manservant, and general factotum to the famously dissolute Tibetan lama Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
His narrative describes how he got into the movement (originally just to meet girls) and how it changed his life. After Rinpoche died, Perks went on to found his own branch of Buddhism: Celtic Buddhism. (This group is still active today: they meet regularly in Ireland and have their own website.)
You should be aware, though, that Perks has no hesitation in holding up his tale to expound on whatever he believes to be of vital interest, such as when he goes into vibrant detail on how to orally pleasure a woman. (I'm not skylarking here.)
As a result, Perks's book is much more far-ranging than a mere autobiographica buddhistica. Perks has led a variegated life and is never hesitant to stray from the main road. The reader may often find himself many meadows away from Perks's proposed route, but he will never have cause to complain of boredom.
Not all of Perks digressions are unwelcome, to tell the truth. Much of what Perks has to relate, such as his childhood in London during the bombings, and his relationship to his parents, make for memorable, albeit bizarre, reading. But there sure are a lot of them.
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