businesspeople, for those dealing with addiction, and for the mediation of disputes, including divorce. He founded a preschool, Alaya; a middle and high school, Vidya (forebear to the Shambhala School in Halifax); the first Buddhist college in America, Naropa; and nearly 150 meditation centers, both rural and urban, including the Boulder Shambhala Center, Shambhala Mountain, and Karmê Chöling. In his final coup de grace, he asked many of his students to move from the liberal, hip, affluent Boulder, Colorado to the traditional, ocean-bound, relatively poor Canadian city of Halifax.

And in the 17 years since his death, time has not stood still. When I came of age, having completed the 16-year-old Rites of Passage with Will Ryken and Mitchell Levy, the kingdom in which I had been raised wasfalling apart. The sad controversy surrounding the Regent was just fading, and the various gates, or spokes of Trungpa Rinpoche’s dharma wheel were spinning off from one another. Then, as if on a white horse, the young Sawang (now Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche) arrived on the scene, and took his seat. Suddenly, the various elements of our mandala had a sun, once again, to revolve around. I attended his first seminary that next year, in 1992. He was, by most accounts, a little green for the job of leading 500 students through the first two yanas and, with the pointing-out transmission, into the Vajrayana teachings. He was known to mumble a little, to go off on tangents, to clear his throat an awful lot. But he sat up there