The Time Capsule Project
In 1975 Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche requested that a high tech time capsule be constructed to house his teaching legacy. Since his passing, that legacy has become recognized internationally as one of the most significant contributions to the continuity of the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual tradition into the 21st century.
The sole intent of this capsule is to bring the benefit of this legacy to people of future generations. Trungpa Rinpoche asked that the time capsule be built to 5,000-year specifications to insure its protection from the ravages of time, noting that it could be discovered as soon as 500 years from now.
The director of this project was fortunate to connect with many experts in relevant technologies, and one group in particular who has helped to bring this project towards fruition. Through over a decade of research and development, they have come up with an unequalled design.
The capsule will contain over one hundred, four by four inch square white ceramic almost indestructible tablets. Both sides of each tablet shall be inscribed with sixty-three pages of the teachings. Each page shall be in black letters against the white tablet background. Quartz magnifiers will be included so that the thousands of pages of reduced text can be read with relative ease. The tablets will be installed within a cylindrical titanium vessel with an outer dimension of approximately one by three feet.
To date, of a total budgeted cost of $230,000, $200,000 has been raised. Most of the funding has been invested in fruitful research and development that generated the existing prototype described above. An additional $30,000 is needed to begin the production and to finish this project. With timely funding the capsule will be completed sometime in 2012 and will be buried within the Great Stupa of Dharamkaya at Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado.
