Monk House by FLOWER. “Chakra House” is a home on the western edge of Boulder, Colorado, USA, built in a western variation of Japanese vernacular style. Built c. 1978 for Chögyam Trungpa – a Tibetan Buddhist meditation master. Photography by Heather Burns Knieram.

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Trungpa’s presence in Boulder, and the establishment there of the ‘international headquarters’ of his institution, had a great impact on the mythology and reputation of Boulder in the national (and perhaps world) consciousness:

In 1974, Trungpa founded the Naropa Institute, which later became Naropa University, in Boulder, Colorado. Naropa was the first accredited Buddhist university in North America. Trungpa hired Allen Ginsberg to teach poetry and William Burroughs to teach literature.Trungpa had a number of notable students, including Peter Orlovsky, Anne Waldman, John Steinbeck IV, Francisco Varela, and Joni Mitchell, who portrayed Trungpa in the song “Refuge of the Roads” (1976 album Hejira). In 1981, Trungpa and his students hosted the Fourteenth Dalai Lama in his visit to Boulder, Colorado.* Trungpa moved away in the 1980s, and the house fell into disrepair. New owners approached us to help them revitalize the house and to recapture the place that it once was – a calm oasis on the wild western edge of town.