prose

Interview with

Acharya Samuel Bercholz

by Kathleen Gregory

Acharya Samuel Bercholz was recently in Melbourne as a visitor at E-Vam Institute, teaching at the annual Buddhist Summer School, E-Vam Institute and Maitripa Contemplative Centre. Sam is a long-time student of Buddhism, receiving teachings and empowerments from many of the great Tibetan teachers of the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages. He was a close student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and since Trungpa Rinpoche's passing, has been a student of Thinley Norbu Rinpoche. He established Shambhala Publications, which has become the leading publisher of Buddhist books in the western world. He is co-editor of the book, Entering the Stream: An Introduction to the Buddha and his Teachings. This was Sam's first teaching tour to Australia.

Ordinary Mind: Could you please start with saying something about your early years, where were you born?

Samuel Bercholz: I was born in the southern tip of Sweden, in Malmo, after World War II as a displaced person. My parents were refugees from the concentration camps of Poland and were reunited in Sweden, shortly after which, I was born. At the age of seven, my family moved to California and I grew up in San Francisco. That is my life story!

OM: How did you first come in contact with the Dharma?

SB: As a young man I was extremely interested in Democratic Party politics and was very politically active. I was a precocious teenager: at thirteen I become part of the American political world by actively working in the campaign for the election of Kennedy for President. By circumstance, I served as an assistant to Ted Kennedy and his secretary, who were running the western states campaign from San Francisco. Amongst my jobs was to organise gatherings of students to appear at political speeches by John Kennedy. I was also allowed to attend meetings with the Kennedys, various senators and congressmen - my main job being to get their favourite brand of cigars from the local tobacconist. After graduating high school, I went to attend university in Washington, D.C. I was extremely idealistic, but while I was there, my idealism was smashed by the reality of what politics really was. It was 1965 - the Vietnam War era - and I could see that my idealistic heroes were involved in backroom antics that were both deceptive and damaging.

I was an avid, young reader and my political reading changed to spirituality, including all the different world religions, the occult and so on. Buddhism looked most promising and this soon became my interest. I was able to find a Buddhist temple in San Francisco - I had moved back there by then. In Chinatown there was an old Ch'an temple that had been established in the 1850s and there was a Ch'an master, Abbot To Lun, and an American teacher, Joe Miller, and they were teaching on the Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch. I found a home - I was very interested in that sutra and I learned how to meditate. Studying that sutra in that context was wonderful.

OM: Can you say something about that sense of 'finding a home?'

SB: Mahayana Buddhism just made a lot of sense to me, and meditation also made sense. I was an extremely disillusioned and confused young man. Dharma provided an antidote to my confusion. I also was just interested in a lot of things; and Dharma made sense.

OM: You actually became ordained as a Buddhist priest. How did that come about?

SB: By circumstance, a Korean Zen master named Kyung Bo Seo-sunim came and visited the Ch'an Temple and, in a flurry, declared my friend and myself as having been disciples of the Sixth Patriarch in a 'previous lifetime' - who knows if any of that is true. But he immediately made us Zen priests in the Korean Chogye Order. He took our measurements, sent off to Korea for robes, gave us certificates and the right to teach Dharma, perform weddings, et cetera. It was a little bit of a joke - we were barely twenty years old!

OM: Where did you go from there?

SB: At that time I was going to university in San Francisco. I was a book maniac. I spent all my money buying books and reading. I became very interested in wanting to spread information about Buddhism and other contemplative traditions, so I started a bookstore called Shambhala Booksellers, in Berkeley, California, right next to the University of California. This is when I was still twenty. I had no money, of course, and there was a large bookstore in Berkeley and the fellow who owned it allowed me to open an offshoot in the back annex of the bookstore. Later on in early 1969, I became interested in publishing books on Buddhism because there weren't enough good ones. By circumstance, a manuscript came my way when I was visiting in London called Meditation in Action by Chogyam Trungpa. I thought it was absolutely the most wonderful Buddhist text I had read. The publishing house was started by publishing that book with a very small edition of 1,000 copies for America. At first, they were mainly for sale in our own bookstore.

Trungpa Rinpoche told me a couple of years later that he was extremely surprised when he received a copy of the American edition of his book (he was still living in Scotland at the time) because it said 'Trungpa Rinpoche - Meditation in Action - Shambhala' and he happened to be the holder of the Shambhala lineage. He said to me that when he saw 'Shambhala' on the spine of the book he had to put the book down because he thought he might be hallucinating! We had this interesting auspicious coincidence that brought us together.

OM: How did you meet Trungpa Rinpoche?

SB: I received a 'phone call from one of his students saying that Trungpa Rinpoche had arrived in America, and asking if I would sponsor a talk in San Francisco. Of course, I said 'yes.' He came to San Francisco, I met him at the airport and we immediately became good friends. Gradually, over the next couple of years, I became Trungpa Rinpoche's student and a practitioner in the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions.

OM: Can you speak about those years with Trungpa Rinpoche?

SB: Trungpa Rinpoche was a rather unbelievable person. For me, it was too good to be true that there was someone from this tradition who was so well-versed in the ways of the western world. Meeting him that first time at the airport, I was expecting someone in flowing robes with Pidgin English. However, I met someone in a tie and coat who spoke the Queen's English. My preconception of what this Tibetan lama would be like was totally blown away. There was a kindness and softness to him that was incredible. He was of an extremely artistic temperament, soft-spoken and a lot of fun. In the early days I was just his friend, I didn't have a relationship with him as a teacher. Later, when I saw how he taught, the power of his message, I began to see him not as an ordinary person, but as someone who embodied the qualities of the Buddha.

Actually, I remember the exact time when my mind changed. He had been giving a poetry reading with these famous poets at the University of Colorado. It is a very famous poetry reading because the so-called 'Naropa Poetry Wars' began at that reading. He was reading with Robert Bly, Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg and Nanao Sakaki.

That evening, Trungpa Rinpoche was totally outrageous. While the other poets were seriously reading their poetry, he was making faces and, at one point, he put the meditation gong on top of his head and was pretending to bang it. He was apparently making a statement about the smugness of the poets and their presentations Afterwards, Rinpoche invited the poets and a couple of his friends, including myself, to his apartment. All the poets were extremely mad at him for causing so much laughter in the auditorium, and told him he was just like Jack Kerouac - a brilliant poet, but a drunk. Contrary to them, I saw this person as a spiritually realised being. I think I cried during the whole evening. What happened to me was that I fully became his student at that point, because my experience of him was completely different. I think Allen Ginsberg had a similar experience later; I don't know what happened with the other poets.

OM: Can you say a little more about that shift from friend to student?

SB: It is extremely subjective. In the books, it is said that it is 'entering the mandala of the guru.' I could see that this was the teacher, and for me, the ultimate teacher. Suddenly, I was in that sphere and it was unmistakable. There was no question in my mind - this person was my teacher, my Vajra Master. This was the equivalent of meeting the Buddha in person.

OM: How did Shambhala Publications develop?

SB: By a set of consequences some of Shambhala's books, including those by Trungpa Rinpoche, started becoming popular. The turning point was in 1973, when we published a little cookbook that came from Tassajara Zen Mountain Centre, Shunryu Suzuki's Zen monastery in California (the first Zen monastery in America). The head-cook Ed Brown had written a book called The Tassajara Bread book. Ed had a unique way of talking about Zen through this cookbook and it became a runaway best-seller, selling something like one million copies - and putting Shambhala Publications on the map. Then Trungpa Rinpoche's books started doing extremely well, particularly Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. The company, which had started on a shoestring - literally three people investing US $500 each - began growing. By a set of good circumstances, almost every major publisher in New York became interested in distributing Shambhala Publications. We entered into a good arrangement with Random House, who is now the largest publisher in the world, and they have distributed us for over thirty years. So, this tiny thing became a major force in publishing. We have published well over a thousand titles and nowadays we sell over a million books a year, and it is still growing. A lot of it was simply hard work and another part of it was just being in the right place at the right time.

OM: Can you talk about combining business and Dharma?

SB: This was one of Trungpa Rinpoche's teachings - how to live in the world and live in a Dharmic way. Always with Shambhala Publications we tried to apply principles of Dharma to the way we dealt with people - whether they were employees, suppliers or authors. We worked hard and we tried to do things in a Dharmic way - it's just basic - don't cheat anyone, respect others' situations and so on. It is no big mystery, but it does work. We had times when we were totally, financially strapped, but our intention was always to be fair to everyone and I believe we always are. Shambhala has grown to be a very solid company after thirty-four years.

OM: Can you comment on the development of Trungpa Rinpoche's enormous legacy in America, for example Naropa University?

SB: Trungpa Rinpoche arrived in America in 1970 and passed away in Nova Scotia in 1987, so there was this seventeen-year whirlwind of Dharmic activity and establishment. In addition to teaching Dharma to thousands of students throughout North America and Europe, he established NaropaUniversity in Colorado, which is now a fully accredited university. He established various art programs for his students - there is a photography society, a tea society, an ikebana society, an archery society, et cetera. He established Shambhala Training to present meditation in a secular manner. He also developed a Dharma language, a way of using English so that Dharma could be presented, and which spoke to people and was translatable into other European languages.

He taught unceasingly and worked with so many different students to establish a basis for Dharma, especially Vajrayana, in the western world. It is hard to imagine that all of that could be done in seventeen years. I've heard that Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche said that if Trungpa Rinpoche hadn't done what he did in the west, it would have taken at least a hundred years longer for the Dharma to be established as firmly as it is now.

OM: Can I ask you something about when Trungpa Rinpoche passed away?

SB: In those seventeen years we were very close. When I lived in California, whenever he came to Northern California he almost always stayed at my house. And when I visited in Colorado, I stayed at this house. In 1976, I accepted his invitation to move to Boulder, Colorado, to become more closely associated with him and his activities. With most of his closer students, there was an intimacy in spending endless hours and days with him. In fact, we thought it would go on forever - it had that sort of flow. By circumstance, I was extremely fortunate in being involved in administrative things and helping establish his various centres and so on. I just was one lucky guy. His passing was a shock, even though he had described many years before how he would do things in the end. He said he would appoint a successor and then just watch for a few years without interfering, and leave us to sort things out for ourselves.

OM: Thinley Norbu Rinpoche is now your teacher. Could you say how that came about?

SB: Trungpa Rinpoche gave a complete outline of the Buddhist path. Actually, he was kind enough to teach everything. However, he left certain things for his students to find out for themselves regarding the tantric teachings. After he had passed away, I went with a friend to the airport because his teacher Dodrup Chen Rinpoche was coming to Boston and my friend wanted me to meet him. I went to the airport and Thinley Norbu Rinpoche was also there. Thinley Norbu Rinpoche started shouting at me at the top of his lungs; complaining about me (I had never meet him before), and about Vajradhatu and Dharmadhatu.

Somehow, years before, Trungpa Rinpoche had given me instructions on how to respond if a Tibetan lama ever accosted me. I remember thinking at the time that this was a very strange instruction, but somehow in this moment I remembered what the instructions were. I did what Trungpa Rinpoche had told me to do and Thinley Norbu Rinpoche started laughing. The whole intensity of the situation changed; he became extremely friendly and I was invited to have a conversation with him in another part of the airport.

It certainly made an impression on me. I mentioned this to one of my Dharma friends and then I went on retreat for three months. While on retreat, my Dharma friend sent me this note saying that he couldn't get what had happened at the airport out of his mind. He said, 'This man is making you an offer and you should take him up on it.' At the end of the retreat I went to visit my friend in Cambridge, England - he was studying with Ato Rinpoche at the time - and I asked Ato Rinpoche to give me instruction in Mipham Rinpoche's Guru Yoga of Padmasambhava, which he was kind enough to do. Somehow, after doing that, I realised that my friend was right; I should go and find out more about this lama who had accosted me.

I did, and by good fortune, this man has been my second teacher and I have been with him for about eleven years. Trungpa Rinpoche is my root teacher and my mentor for the early period of my life; Thinley Norbu Rinpoche is my second root teacher and has given me instruction for the rest of my life. Thinley Norbu Rinpoche is an extremely profound teacher. In terms of practice, his main instruction to me is to put into practice what Trungpa Rinpoche taught me. He has also been wonderful in filling in what I thought were loose ends.

OM: How many years were there before you became a student of Thinley Norbu Rinpoche and what were those years like?

SB: There were about three or four years. It was a confusing era because all kinds of things were happening in Trungpa Rinpoche's community. There were issues about his successor and all kind of political issues - that if one allowed them to, took away from one's practice. Fortunately, at one point I decided to get out of the politics and to just try and put the teachings into effect. I have to be frank; I became ill and depressed by some of the politics that happened. It was a breath of fresh air to be pointed back to practice with pure Dharma as the main focal point.

OM: What plans might you have for the future?

SB: The only worthwhile plans I have are trying to put the teachings of my teachers into practice. I have simplified my life; I only work occasionally at Shambhala Publications. I am mainly trying to put the teachings further into practice and learning how to practice properly. My future plans are to do more of that, this includes doing more teaching, also. I am still very actively involved in teaching in Trungpa Rinpoche's centres and in other venues. I feel a certain responsibility to teach, because Trungpa Rinpoche encouraged that so much.