Fifty for 150: Naropa Institute offers its first classes in summer of 1974

More than 2,000 people gathered in the auditorium at Boulder High School in 1974 for the first summer sessions at Naropa University in Boulder, then called The Naropa Institute, one of only a handful of Buddhist-influenced universities in the country.

This story is part of Colorado at 150. Each Fifty for 150 story focuses on an event that helped define Colorado over 150 years of statehood. Newsline is publishing one Fifty for 150 story every weekday in reverse chronological order until the sesquicentennial, Aug. 1, when the final of 50 stories, about the declaration of statehood, will appear.

Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, a pivotal figure in bringing Buddhism to the West, founded the school in the model of the ancient Nalanda University in eastern India, which operated from the sixth to the 12th century. Its principles rest on meditation training and Eastern and Western religion, as well as traditional academics like writing, psychology and sciences. Trungpa taught at the school until 1986, the year before his death.

He also established the meditation and retreat organization Boulder Shambhala Center in 1974. That organization, as well as Naropa, connects Boulder to a global network of Buddhist organizations.

“Trungpa spoke of the enormous amount of unchannelled energy in the United States. He compared it to the pilot light being out on a burning stove. Naropa will seek to channel that energy, he said,” according to an article from the Colorado Daily on June 11, 1974.

Classes for the first summer included meditation, Tai Ch’i Ch’uan and sensory awareness.

That first year, Trungpa charged American poets Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman and Diane di Prima and composer John Cage to establish the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at the school, named after the famous Beat writer. Colorado, specifically Denver, was a major backdrop for Kerouac’s novel “On the Road.” In 1982, Naropa hosted The Jack Kerouac Conference to celebrate the 25th anniversary of “On The Road” and Ginsberg’s poem “Howl.”

“In a sense, the conference is not only a celebration of Mr. Kerouac, although he is clearly the central figure, but also a whole fraternity of writers, poets and musicians who rebelled against what they saw as the stifling, conformist cultural values of the 1950’s,” journalist William Schmidt wrote in the New York Times of the event.

Naropa offered its first degree program in 1975 with a master’s offering in psychology. It expanded the next year with bachelor’s degrees in Buddhist studies and visual art. It was officially accredited by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools in 1986.

Colorado was the 10th most Buddhist state in the county in 2020, according to the U.S. Religious Census, with a little over 27,000 people practicing the religion. Buddhism is the largest non-Christian religion in Boulder County.

In 2022, Naropa’s student population exceeded 1,000.