Kenneth H. Green
executive director
Golden Sun Foundation for World Culture
The following is edited by Beezone from a talk
Ken Green, Chogyam Trungpa Rimpoche and Tibetan and Hopi Prophecy
….that’s when (Rimpoche) said, We’re going to Nova Scotia and that was the beginning of the Shambhala Wisdom for me that very day. He really shifted.
He said, This is going to happen. We need it to happen and he said something interesting. He said, North America is like the three Kalashas: Mexico, his passion, the U.S., his aggression, and Canada, his ignorance and ultimately we have to work with ignorance.
There was a question about well what about America. He said, It’s going to be too problematic. It’s actually workable now but it’s going to get extreme. And then over the course of the month and the months to follow we spoke about prophesies that came up a lot, the Shambhala prophesies, and he asked me to look into the native American prophesies.
Many years later I went down to Hopi Land to meet a medicine woman and questioned her about that. That’s a very interesting story and maybe we can talk about it to some point.
Grandmother Caroline, this was 1986 I think. She had met Karmapa. Karmapa found her or they found each other. And they shared stories. When I went down there years later with my wife and son we talked about the Tibetan prophesies and the Hopi prophecies and how they are one in the same. She said come the turn of the century, the first ten years between 2000 and 2010 there would be tremendous environmental disaster and economic upheaval.
This time is what the Hopi call the Fifth Time or the Fifth World I believe. They measure in time cycles and were entering into the fifth time and will be difficult.
So shortly after having that meeting with Grandmother Caroline, I was back at Rocky Mountain Dharma Center and this was one of my last business meetings with Vidyadhara.
One of the first things we spoke about was my trip to Hopi Land and he got really interested and he wanted to know all about it in great detail.He really wanted to know one thing more than anything else. He said, When do the Hopis think things will change? Did she give you a date?
I said, Well, she gave me an approximate date and she said it would be somewhere in the first decade of the new millennium, and he smiled and said, She has it right.
Tapestry Initiative senior partner and advisor, filmmaker, theater producer and executive director of the Golden Sun Foundation for World Culture, studied with the Tibetan Buddhist meditation master, Chogyam Trungpa for 16 years and was authorized by him as a Buddhist teacher and meditation instructor. Ken is producing a documentary film through the Tapestry Initiative called Boundless Moment, exploring the lessons of impermanence and potential . He is also currently producing Luminous Emptiness a multimedia theater piece based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. www.goldensunfoundation.org
Ken Green, new media, film, audio/music, theater, festival producer, production designer and artistic director; Buddhist practitioner and mentor; and founding director of Golden Sun Foundation for World Culture has dedicated himself to produce cultural productions and events that inspire wakefulness, authenticity and elegance. Applying the teachings he received during 17 years from the Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Ken seeks out collaborations with diverse artists, like-minded individuals and groups to produce original works that join the wisdom of the past with the culture of the future.
Kenneth H. Green – bio
Ken Green, new media, film, audio/music, theater, festival producer, production designer and artistic director; Buddhist practitioner and mentor; and founding director of Golden Sun Foundation for World Culture has dedicated himself to produce cultural productions and events that inspire wakefulness, authenticity and elegance. Applying the teachings he received during 17 years from the Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Ken seeks out collaborations with diverse artists, like-minded individuals and groups to produce original works that join the wisdom of the past with the culture of the future.
During the past three decades, he has produced events locally, nationally and internationally. He has focused on the convergence of video and theater with new media technology. In addition, Ken is a highly experienced and dynamic administrator for the non-profit sector. He is also a tea consultant for Teance, the premier tea purveyor of Asian teas. Ken, a long time student and teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, has taught Tibetan Buddhism and its application to the arts. He is currently designing and producing a multimedia theatrical adaptation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead.
His first major venture into filmmaking was working with Martin Scorsese as an assistant art director for Box Car Bertha. He went on to produce a number of documentaries, which include The Lion’s Roar, a highly acclaimed and award winning documentary on Tibetan Buddhism and Discovering Elegance. He produced a series of art installations with Trungpa, Rinpoche in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver. Ken produced a series of educational films for the Province of Nova Scotia and the Canadian Parks Service, as well as a documentary on the art of Peter Max.
Ken directed and produced A Night on the Silk Road, a multimedia concert performance of music, poetry, dance and media projections with Kitaro; Dust to Gold, an evening of Himalayan performances; Sacred Dances of Bhutan at the Asia Society; and PlantAsia, a festival of Central Asian culture at the Denver Botanic Gardens. He produced a 2005 summer program of 44 concerts in Boulder, Colorado including world music, dance, film, and theater, and will be producing an International Buddhist Film and World Culture Festival in 2011, to be held in Bhutan. Green recently produced Secrets of the World, an eight-part award winning audio international storytelling series, with renowned storytellers, published by Sounds True.
Ken is currently producing, designing and collaborating with world- acclaimed composer Philip Glass along with a stellar team of CGI artists, filmmakers, traditional thangka painters, musicians and performers on a major multimedia theatrical adaptation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. It has been previewed as a work-in-progress September 2008 at Asia Society, NYC. An upcoming series of lab/workshops scheduled for the fall 2009 is being planned in partnership with Naropa University,
Ken was the president of Centre Productions, a Boulder based film company. He is currently the president for Windhorse Productions LLC, a film and new media company in Nova Scotia and Boulder. He is the founding director and executive director of Golden Sun Foundation for World Culture, a not-for-profit cultural foundation whose mission is to foster an enlightened society through sustaining and promoting world cultural traditions and providing the opportunities for an exchange of ideas and experiences between the keepers of these traditions, contemporary artists and the public.
As a new media and multimedia producer/designer he spent ten years in Nova Scotia, creating numerous interactive programs and live mixed media events for museums, government and corporate clients. Collaborating with the National Film Board of Canada, Green designed and developed BARDO, an interactive new media journey. Some of his other clients include: Mi’kmaq Native Council of Nova Scotia, the provincial government of Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia Power, New Brunswick Power Company, Point LePreau, Parks Canada, The Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, the NS Children’s Museum and others.
An early pioneer of multimedia, he designed nightclubs, installations and organized festivals starting with the first BE-IN in NYC with Peter Max (600,000 attendees). He produced multimedia light shows for such notable musicians and groups including The Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, Country Joe and the Fish, and The Byrds.
Ken founded Tendrel Technologies, a multimedia software development company in Nova Scotia that created interactive authoring tools for digital animators and designers.
Ken served as a founding board director and Vice-President for Nalanda Foundation, an educational organization, in Boulder Colorado; in this capacity he was one of the founding directors of Naropa University. He also served 17 years as Vice-President and member of the board of directors and as Director of Internal and Cultural Affairs for Vajradhatu, an international not-for-profit network of meditation and study centers, under the guidance and direction of the renown Tibetan mediation master, Trungpa Rinpoche. Ken was responsible for administration of all major educational programs and centers throughout North America. He was one of the original developers of the Rocky Mountain Dharma Center (now called the Shambhala Mountain Center). He collaborated on the design and implemented the Vajradhatu advisory system used internationally to counsel members on individual, family and livelihood issues. Likewise, he helped design and implement the delek system, a neighborhood focused program. This social experiment was created to foster local identity, to be a vehicle for exchanging ideas, and to provide feedback to the international organization. The model was a success in providing a powerful path for members to work closely with each other in a caring environment. As Cultural Affairs director, Ken designed and organized festivals, theater performances, celebrations, museum installations, film projects as well as administered and ran Dharma Art programs, a Buddhist approach to the artistic process.
As an ordained teacher and meditation instructor in Tibetan Buddhism, he taught the practice, philosophy, aesthetics and Buddhism for over fifteen years in the US, Canada and Europe.
Ken currently sits on the Board of Directors of the World Council of Elders, a not for profit organization dedicated to integrating authentic indigenous wisdom cultures.
When not producing an event, Ken enjoys spending time reading poetry and drinking high mountain oolong tea.
