Dragon Thunder My Life with Chogyam Trungpa

"It was not always easy to be the guru's wife," writes Diana Mukpo. "But I must say, it was rarely boring." At the age of sixteen, Diana Mukpo left school and broke with her upper-class English family to marry Chogyam Trungpa, a young Tibetan lama who would go on to become a major figure in the transmission of Buddhism to the West. In a memoir that is at turns magical, troubling, humorous, and totally out of the ordinary, Diana takes us into her intimate life with one of the most influential and dynamic Buddhist teachers of our time. Diana led an extraordinary and unusual life as the "first lady" of a burgeoning Buddhist community in the American 1970s and '80s. She gave birth to four sons, three of whom were recognized as reincarnations of high Tibetan lamas. It is not a simple matter to be a modern Western woman married to a Tibetan Buddhist master, let alone to a public figure who is sought out and adored by thousands of eager students. Surprising events and colorful people fill the narrative as Diana seeks to understand the dynamic, puzzling, and larger-than-life man she marriedand to find a place for herself in his unusual world. Rich in ambiguity, Dragon Thunder is the story of an uncommon marriage and also a stirring evocation of the poignancy of life and of relationshipsfrom a woman who has lived boldly and with originality.

The compiler and editor of The Collected Works of Ch÷gyam Trungpa, Carolyn Rose Gimian, has been editing the works of Ch÷gyam Trungpa for more than twenty-five years. Following his death, she became the founding director of the Shambhala Archives, the archival repository for Ch÷gyam Trungpa's work in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Diana J. Mukpo was born in England in 1953. She attended the prestigious Benenden School until she left at the age of sixteen to marry the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Mrs. Mukpo moved to the United States in 1970, where she remained with Trungpa Rinpoche until his death in 1987. During their marriage, she pursued intensive study of dressage. She is now the owner and director of Windhorse Dressage, and she travels and teaches dressage clinics throughout the United States and Canada.