The Truth About Naropa University's History

Naropa University is a private, non-profit institution (a 501(c)(3)) founded by a Tibetan Buddhist lineage holder who wanted an accredited school offering both bachelor's and master's degrees. It sits in Boulder, Colorado, a choice tied to the high-elevation, mountainous setting that echoes the classical Tibetan world. Its sister organization, the Shambhala Mountain Center, is up in Red Feather Lakes.

For much of its history the university ran across three campuses: Arapahoe, Nalanda, and Paramita. The stated aim is the spread of an 'Enlightened Society' by way of a strong liberal arts education in fields such as psychology, neuroscience, religious studies, and interdisciplinary studies, among others. Students have long been able to sit with recognized Tibetan Buddhist lineage holders to go further with the mindfulness practices the school teaches.

Training in those practices is demanding. The methods are built to develop self-awareness, executive attention, and self-regulation, and the curriculum pairs academic study with contemplative work so that students can get the most out of what they learn.

So what makes the place worth a closer look? Three things, really: where it came from, how it teaches, and what it could become. On the first point, Naropa was started by a Tibetan Buddhist teacher named Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, recognized at birth as a reincarnated tulku of the highest rank and regarded as one of Tibet's sharpest scholars. He also adapted to Western life with surprising speed after he and his companions were driven out of Tibet under threat of execution. Alongside the Dalai Lama, he spent the rest of his life carrying Tibetan Buddhism westward.

On the second point, the school runs a rigorous academic environment woven together with meditation practices from the East. By letting students meet one-on-one with Tibetan Buddhist religious figures inside an accredited classroom, it built a base for mindfulness-centered higher education in psychology, religious studies, neuroscience, and other fields. And on the third, there is the matter of its reach. The institution is meant to be a source of clarity in a culture that keeps reinforcing cognitive belief systems while neglecting the mind's direct perception. Students get to train their minds hard through combined scholarly and contemplative work.

The experience on offer stands with the strongest programs in the country, and in some respects nothing else in the US matches it, because the roots run deeper than most other schools can claim. Meeting privately with Tibetan Buddhist lineage holders, Zen lineage holders, and others, students can earn a fully accredited degree and cultivate their inner awareness with masters of mindfulness at the same time.

The bachelor's offerings span Contemplative Art Therapy, Contemplative Martial Arts, Contemplative Psychology, Creative Writing and Literature, Early Childhood Education, Environmental Studies, Interdisciplinary Studies, Music, Peace Studies, Performance, Religious Studies, Visual Arts, and Yoga Studies.

The Founder of Naropa University

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche was a prolific teacher, author, poet, and artist. He is remembered most for carrying Tibetan Buddhism to the West: more than 200 meditation centers and the first fully accredited Buddhist university trace back to him. His was a life worth recalling, though to grasp what he and the school came to mean, you have to start at the beginning.

He was born in February 1939 in the Kham region of Tibet. Before his second birthday he was identified as the eleventh reincarnation of the Trungpa Tulkus, a line of significant teachers within the Kagyu school. Kagyu is one of the six principal schools of Himalayan Buddhism, often called the 'oral lineage' school, and it counts among the 'newly interpreted' schools that grew out of Vajrayana. Vajrayana itself is one of three vehicles to enlightenment, the other two being Sravakayana and Mahayana. That tradition is where Naropa's own roots lie.

Trungpa's upbringing was a punishing round of study and training. Three of Tibet's foremost teachers guided him: Jamgon Kongtrul, Dilgo Khyentse, and Khenpo Gangshar, preparing him to become supreme abbot of the Surmang monasteries and governor of the Surmang region. He completed his studies, earned the degrees of Khyorpon (Doctor of Divinity) and Khenpo (Master of Studies), and was fully ordained at twenty.

Not long after, he followed the Dalai Lama out of Tibet during the 1959 uprising, a failed bid for freedom against communist China. He led a group of roughly 300 monks on foot and horseback across the Himalayas into India; only 13 made it. He lived in India from 1959 to 1963, and at the Dalai Lama's urging he worked as an advisor to the Young Lamas Home School. During that exile he took up English, convinced that language could link mind and body. In time he would teach English to Americans themselves.

His appeal to Westerners grew, and in 1963 he received the Spalding Scholarship, left India, and went to Oxford to study comparative religion along with philosophy and fine arts. In 1967 he moved on to Scotland, where he co-founded a meditation center with Akong Rinpoche. That place, now called Samye Ling, became the West's first Tibetan Buddhist monastery.

A turning came after he left Scotland in 1969 for Bhutan and spent ten days in solitary retreat. There he wrestled with a problem: he could not figure out how to reach Western students who were at once dazzled by his robes and teachings and kept at a distance by them. The world's drift toward materialism weighed on him, and he spoke often of what he saw as the dark ages of his era. He had no clear path forward. Soon after he returned to Scotland he was in a car crash with a female companion. The details are still debated, but the accident left him permanently paralyzed on his left side.

That crash pushed him toward a decision. In 1970 he gave up his robes and his vows, arguing that the West needed a Dharma stripped of its cultural trappings. He married his young English wife, Diana Pybus, and crossed to the United States at the request of his students. In North America he traveled widely and quickly opened his first retreat center, Karma Choling, in Vermont. Westerners gathered around him and his teachings, though plenty doubted he was a Buddhist leader at all, given how unconventionally he behaved. His following was unorthodox but devoted, and that same year he set up Karma Dzong, a Buddhist community, in Boulder, Colorado.