Chogyam Trungpa was among the most influential and controversial Tibetan Buddhist lamas to live and teach in the West until his death in 1987. Tony Cape became his devoted student in the mid-70s and eventually one of his kusung or personal attendants. Diamond Highway is a loving tribute that recounts the story of Trungpa’s community from this privileged viewpoint, without flinching from questions surrounding his teacher’s drinking and sexuality. From the post-beatnik milieu of Boulder’s Naropa Institute to the high ritual of Trungpa’s cremation ceremony, Diamond Highway tells the fascinating story of the author’s relationship with his extraordinary teacher, with his American successor Osel Tendzin, and with his eldest son Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, who leads his father’s Shambhala organization today.
Tony Cape was born in 1951 in Swansea, Wales, grew up in West Yorkshire and attended Cambridge University. After working as a journalist in Northern Ireland and England, he moved to the United States in 1977 to join the buddhist community of Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche in Colorado. He has also lived in Vermont, Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts. He has taught writing at Bard College and Yale University and now teaches at Hartsbrook Waldorf School in Hadley, Massachusetts. He is the author of four works of fiction.
