The Rubin Museum is well-known for its ability to combine Buddhist and Asian culture with tantalizing spiritual events. Over the next weeks it presents “Crazy Wisdom,” a film about Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche who is considered to be one of the first pioneers to bring Tibetan Buddhism to America. “Crazy wisdom is a fast track to enlightenment,” says Tim McHenry, Producer of events for the museum. The aim is, through tantra, to attain enlightenment in this lifetime.

“Crazy wisdom is in fact very serious,” McHenry says. It means behaving outside of conventional, societal modes as seen in babas, fakirs, and gurus who punish themselves to prove their control over the mind. “They tap into energies and resources to transmute them into something purposeful,” McHenry says. The Rubin is screening the film of the same title, “Crazy Wisdom” which is about Chogyam Trungpa, who founded Naropa University. The film is not devotional and reverent, but seeks to paint a multifaceted picture of the Rinpoche and his unorthodox lifestyle. In addition to being a revered spiritual teacher who fled from Tibet at the same time as the Dalai Lama, the Rinpoche also drank heavily, slept with his students and smoked cigars. The Oxford graduate’s wife (yes, the Rinpoche actually married) confessed that her husband had always remained an enigma to her. But McHenry says, “Most of the women felt privileged to spend this intimate time with him, it seems, and their husbands and lovers were even envious of that relationship because they could never have that same intimacy with their teacher.”

“Part of the crazy wisdom is Rinpoche drinking himself to death,” McHenry says. “I’m not sure he was entirely happy,” he said of the lama. “Being uprooted from his homeland in Tibet had a powerful effect.” At the same time he was followed by the likes of poet, Allen Ginsberg and singer, Joni Mitchell, and he communicated Buddhist teachings with great humor and wit.  “Everybody commented how funny he was, and he even saw the humor in his drinking. As Johanna [the film’s director] put it: he died because he was ready to die, as he felt he had finished what he had accomplished,” he says. On the other hand, Robert Thurman, professor at Columbia University, on the other hand regarded his early death at 47 as a terrible waste and thought he might have  accomplished more.

In many ways the film is a warning to those who might be tempted to surrender their own wisdom to gurus and spiritual teachers and give them authority over themselves.  The film, “Crazy Wisdom” will continue to screen at the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City through December 18^th.

 Bio: Debra Moffitt is author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life. A visionary, dreamer and teacher, she’s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices at the Sophia Institute and other venues in the U.S. and Europe. Her mind/body/spirit articles, essays and stories appear in publications around the globe and were broadcast by BBC World Services Radio. She has spent over fifteen years practicing meditation, working with dreams and doing spiritual practices. Visit her online at http://www.awakeintheworld.com.