Speaker: Bill Bothwell. Fresh out of retreat, Bill shares his journey from a young poet and songwriter to his encounter with the Buddhadharma and becoming a student of Choygam Trungpa Rinpoche. Taking to heart Rinpoche’s instruction that working within society is a necessity on the spiritual path, Bill became a lawyer. He recollects the essential teachings of his root teacher who challenged his students to embrace the view that conventional society was an expression of the ultimate truth, and that our tendency to judge others and our habit of wanting to fix things disrupts our ability to experience the natural purity of the world. Bill also shares experiences of his time at Naropa University with Alan Ginsburg, and Trungpa Rinpoche’s instruction that his students call themselves Buddhist in order to establish an enlightened society of serious practitioners while living a conventional life.