First Thought, Best Thought: 108 Poems

Chogyam Trungpa (February 29, 1939 -- April 4, 1987) was one of the most visibly active of the Tibetan Buddhist refugees to come to the West and to lay the foundation in Europe and North America for the study of the Tibetan traditions. Born the son of a farmer and considered the eleventh incarnation of Trungpa Tulku, he was given a traditional show more training in religious philosophy but in his teens had to be hidden from the invading Chinese. Fleeing in 1959 when the Communists invaded Tibet, he ultimately moved to Great Britain, where he studied comparative religion at Oxford University and established a Tibetan meditation center in Scotland. He moved to the United States in 1970 and established the Buddhist university, Naropa, in Colorado. Naropa became the center for seminars, many of which he cotaught with prominent American artists, scholars, and scientists. Among his contributions are the translation of numerous Tibetan texts. On September 28, 1986, he suffered cardiac arrest, requiring intensive care at the hospital, then at his home and finally, in mid-March 1987, back at the hospital, where he died on April 4, 1987. (Bowker Author Biography) show less