Stop Glorifying Abuse in the Name of "Crazy Wisdom"!

students should not be subjected to cult indoctrination. Chogyam Trungpa was an abusive man who preyed on underage women, tortured animals, drove drunk, and ordered the abuse and forced stripping of poets.

Show a survivor documentary instead!

Suza Francina

I've lived in Boulder 41 yrs and have witnessed over an entire degeneration of Buddhism fostered by Shambhala.

Time to grow up.

So much harm has been done by people who explained narcissistic abuse by power hungry idiots as "crazy wisdom". They bypassed their sane mind and heart and were willing to throw anybody, even their children, under the bus of this craze, because they 'believed'. Their lack of discrimination and responsibility is a crime. Without them the crazy would have been just that. And not a sign of spiritual advancement. This doesn't belong on a University indeed!

Show a survivor doc instead.... it would be more honest and relevant

This film should only be viewed in context as a propaganda film, not as a documentary about the subject. It is not objective and fails to show all the ways Trungpa hurt people and animals.

Completely inappropriate for a university event.

Carolyn Clark

There is nothing wise about dying from alcohol abuse at age 48, surrounded by people who think you are so enlightened that your addiction is holy. Chogyam Trungpa was a cult leader. This whitewashed documentary shows only the good from the perspective of devotees and covers over the institutional abuse he helped create, perpetuated in people like his own son who has raped and sexually assaulted many women himself. None of Trungpa’s victims are interviewed, and they are still alive and kicking. If you want to show this movie, interview one of Trungpa’s secret wives like Leslie Hays or some of the women “The Sakyong” raped too, how about it. Otherwise you are just perpetuating the lie.

This dangerous man and his cult have been glorified enough. Screening this film would silence the voices of his many victims and empower other abusers to use similar methods.

May we all wake up, and may we be kind in the process of doing so. Stop glorifying and normalizing abusive behaviour.

This film is lazy propaganda. If you want to study these men, attention must be paid to the wounds and scars inflicted by their abusive and manipulative behavior in the name of religion.

I've seen this and the filmmaker's other film about his son. Both are relentlessly fawning as though these people are demigods. Both have been credibly accused of a very long list of exploitative crimes involving sexual misconduct with teenagers, rape, alcoholism (Trungpa selfishly died of it at 47), and the madness of self infatuation that comes with leading a cult. If you present this film as a study in how cults work, that might work, but lean on those who've lived through the hell these people created if you do so. Their voices are FAR more important. It's a discussion which sadly needs to be had for the protection of the innocent seekers of the future who will be as we were in the past ~ starry eyed and impressionable.

Stop the madness. Buddhism was never meant to be cult of personality.

This film is about a person and culture that actively promoted rape as a way of relating to the world, and people have been sexually assaulted by all three teachers in this lineage. Showing such a film is misleading at best, and dangerous at the worst.

The glorification of an abusive man and his methods is dangerous.

Trungpa was a terrible man.

People who see this movie need to understand it for what it is: utter hagiographic propaganda that presents a distorted and one-sided view of Trungpa's behavior. The culture of minimizing abuse that we now see rampant in Shambhala sprang directly from his and his students' confusion over the term "crazy wisdom", which Demetrakas fails to analyze. This movie would best be viewed in the context of a sociology class examining the messaging mechanisms of cults.