Chögyam Trungpa: The Teacup and the Skullcup (Zen and Tantra)

The Teacup and the Skullcup contains Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche s important teachings on Zen. The heart of the book is a series of seven talks given to students and the public in 1974, under the title Zen and Tantra. The talks provide a warmly appreciative survey of the roots, meditation, training techniques, results, and the historical places of Zen and tantra particularly the crazy wisdom tradition in the development of Buddhism. Trungpa Rinpoche delineates the underlying philosophies and aesthetic expression of the two traditions through vivid example, personal experience, and especially through a lively give and take with the audience. At times enigmatic, often humorous, and always challenging conventional ideas, Trungpa Rinpoche sheds a unique light on practice and the path. The Teacup and the Skullcup also includes his tantric commentary on one of Zen s most famous teaching devices the ten Oxherding Pictures as well as his eulogy for friend and mentor, Zen master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.

For years Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche dazzled us with his diamond wisdom at various venues from coast to coast. We delighted in his insights into the arts of Zen and its relationship to the tantric teachings. A whole generation of Buddhists was thus nourished. Now, The Teacup and the Skullcup: Chogyam Trungpa on Zen and Tantra skillfully makes available the heart of this extraordinary master to a new generation of practitioners. It should be on the bookshelf of every serious student of Buddhism --John Daido Loori (artist, abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery)

A profound exposition and unique demonstration of the brilliant, subtle, clear wisdom of Zen and tantra... This book is a challenge to all serious Zen-tantra practitioners or anyone who is committed to the way-seeking mind ... an example of how the moon and sun both share and illuminate the endless azure mind sky. --Jakusho Kwong-Roshi (abbot of Sonoma Mountain Zen Center and author of No Beginning No End and Breath Sweeps Mind)

This elucidating compilation is a unique milestone in the annals of philosophical and phenomenological thinking, as well as Buddhist practice. Scholarly and poetic, The Teacup and the Skullcup takes on the provocative nuances of Zen and Tantra as consociational allies in a new western matrix. The compilation of discourse shows the inimitable brilliance of one of the 20th centuries greatest meditation teachers whose Socratic rap and generosity to students is unsurpassed. East also meets East here, one could say, with wit, aesthetic grace, profound and subtle insight. I am so grateful. --Anne Waldman (poet and teacher, and with Allen Ginsberg, co-founder of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics)