April 4 – Thirty-one years on since the death of Allen’s great spiritual teacher and the founder of Naropa Institute (now Naropa University), Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Naropa just recently announced the establishment of the Chögyam Trungpa Institute, a new academic research center, to encourage ““critical assessment by scholars and practitioners of Chögyam Trungpa’s body of teachings and his place in the development of Buddhism in the West,” It will seek to “support new directions that honor the spirit of his work, through expositions, classes, research, debate, and other means”, (including, most significantly, the development of CHELA, the Chögyam Trungpa Electronic Library and Archive, an ambitious, wide-ranging, digital platform, under the directorship of Carolyn Gimian, that will host Trungpa’s lectures, poetry, and art, linking it to archival material of scholars, artists, writers, and poets who were influenced by him). For more on these exciting new plans – see here
For previous observations and celebration from the Allen Ginsberg Project on this day of the parinirvana – see here, here, here. and here