On Differing Views and Paths
July 16, 2009 by Andrew Safer 
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Interview with Richard Reoch, by Andrew Safer
On-line discussions on the Radio Free Shambhala web site and various listservs have been pointing out that there are students of Trungpa Rinpoche who are continuing along the path he set out for them, and who don’t feel welcome within the current-day Shambhala community. It no longer feels like “home” to them. Sometimes they are disparaged by community members who cite their “lack of loyalty” to the current Sakyong.
Andrew Safer of Radio Free Shambhala recently had the opportunity to ask Richard Reoch, President of Shambhala, to comment on this state of affairs.
Radio Free Shambhala: As you know, there has been tension and disagreement between some of Trungpa Rinpoche’s senior students and some of the students of the Sakyong, regarding changes to the practice path and differences of view. Many of these senior students do not feel that there is room for them within the Shambhala mandala.
Richard Reoch: It’s true that some of the long-term students of the Vidyadhara feel like they’re not supported. I and others have been in conversation with some of the long-term acharyas to see what is the practice support that is needed that would continue to nurture their path, and not make them feel excluded.
RFS: Sometimes the samaya of these senior students has been questioned.
Richard Reoch: That’s not what I feel Shambhala vision is about. I do not believe we should be commenting on or having the presumption to comment on another practitioner’s samaya. We all have a common, deep karmic connection. Probably most of us can’t even fathom it. We are all in this extraordinary lineage stream. We have a deep shared vision, at least about what Shambhala means, in an archetypal sense, in our subconscious.
To regard someone who is maintaining samaya within the Shambhala lineage as a dissenter is a mistaken view. It is not helpful to comment on the legitimacy of another person’s practice of samaya. Perhaps this happens because we don’t have the ground for the perpetuation of lineage in this culture. If you think several generations ahead, are we going to say that the students of the next Sakyong are dissenters because they’re following the teachings of Mipham? This is a fundamental misunderstanding of lineage.
One problem with the transplantation of egoless devotion from a culture like Tibet to a culture like we have in the West is we don’t have a tradition of lineage in modern form. We don’t have the cultural roots to support that. We are all grappling with how to understand this profound teaching.
I try to use the office I hold (as President), and the authority that goes with it to deal with this issue. When members of our community are described as “border tribes”—when they write me or meet with me—I devote a lot of time and try to learn from them. I think there has been a kind of polarization in which extreme language is used. We genuinely have to go deeper, beneath this level of argument, to find the commonality. I’m definitely doing that, person to person.
Maybe now that the current orientation of the path is getting clearer, we need to have a conversation with the senior acharyas about precisely what could be the support that can be provided for people who started on a particular element of the path of Shambhala and that needs to continue and be supported?
Five Sakyongs down the road, there will be people who say “I make a personal connection by reading the works of the Vidyadhara.” Others will day “How fortunate it was for Shambhala that Mipham the Great reincarnated as the Sakyong.” Eventually, it’s not just about tolerating differences; it’s about appreciating the incredible richness that’s available in our kingdom.
RFS: The real question is: how are the teaching stream and legacy of Trungpa Rinpoche going to continue?
Richard Reoch: I’ve been in discussions with Carolyn Gimian since the beginning of the Chögyam Trungpa Legacy Project about the importance of that initiative. The analogy we have used is that the Legacy Project is like a presidential library, so things don’t end up moldering and being lost. I’ve had some initial conversations with some of the longer-term students and acharyas about how to create an identifiable and helpful framework so no one is seen as being on one track or the other, or as renegades which is antithetical to the long-term survival of the lineage.
RFS: Many people who are devoted to Trungpa Rinpoche and who don’t consider the Sakyong to be their teacher don’t feel welcomed by the community, and they’re afraid to speak up.
Richard Reoch: One of the earliest statements issued by the Mandala Governing Council created after the first Shambhala Congress was a statement on the commitment to openness. I asked members of that council to list the issues that people are afraid to speak up about. We seemed to have inherited an incredible atmosphere of fear, and I did not understand that. I had no idea the extent to which this community was traumatized. When I asked what issues were not being addressed, people were afraid to name the issues. I think we all realized, ‘Wow, we can’t even talk about what we can’t talk about!’ Opening up that discussion was like Glasnost and Perestroika in Shambhala.
I talked to Larry Mermelstein, and asked, “Is there anything we can do to reduce this climate of fear?” Some people were experiencing this fear in a very palpable way. If we can’t create a social framework in which we understand that people will have different points of view, then all the notions of fearlessness and openheartedness—everything we’re so proud of about the Shambhala inheritance—absolutely won’t take root. We can’t build an enlightened society on a basis of fear.
Wherever I go, I invite people to talk to me about this so I can find out more about it. Sometimes, because someone has said something extremely abusive, we feel like we’re going to lose membership. There are people hiding out, as if they’re the old Chi Kung masters at the height of the Cultural Revolution hoping they’re not noticed by the Red Guards. It’s a slow process of personal conversation, trying to address these tendencies of people persecuting each other.
When Radio Free Shambhala was established, people contacted me as if this was the end of the world. “No, just think ahead,” I said. “If we think about the new golden age of Shambhala, there will be countless Web sites and social networking opportunities where people express their experience of the dharma and of different teachers, including what others might disagree with. If there’s one thing that prevents establishing the kingdom of Shambhala, it’s called fascism, and I‘m not having anything to do with that.”
Thanks to this site and thanks to Richard.
This is interesting – another interview re the structure of the organisation.
Firstly why has this interview happened at this time – is it that more people are having qualms about the way SI is evolving – dont think Richard would have done this interview if he was not getting a lot of questions from everyone, afterall he was the communications officer for Amnesty. However I dont know if he can hold or encompass all the divergent views arising now in the greater sangha as to the way the
Vidyadhara wanted an enlightened society to evolve. I think the Sakyong by instituting the changes within the organisation has really made people out there really question what the Vidyadhara envisaged as an enlightened society and to bring these views, feelings back within SI as a whole I am not sure if this is possible.
So Richard is having talks with the greater sangha and the acharyas about how SI can not exclude people -
how they can nurture our paths. I dont know perhaps now there has to be a reframing of that question how can the ‘dissenters’ nurture your path?!
Maybe there has to be split -myself I see SI emphasis on financing the whole thing to the nth degree abhorent and shambhala buddhism I still find questionable especially in regard to the wishes of the Vidyadhara for the shambhala teachings to be open to everyone. In addition the level of scholarship going on in the propagation of the shambhala teachings is abysmal – as far as I can see we have the Sakyong and three other people deciding on the whole future curricula of the organisation at the
pesent time – is this reasonable?
There is the slim possibility that teachers now on there own path -teaching streams could be re-integrated within SI as separate colleges maybe agreeing on an ethical level about how they can conduct themselves but as to finances and governance I think the die has been somewhat cast. We can all see that Ray is getting students and that older students of Trungpa are also getting students. Is the Sakyong getting students – I cant see now a rapid increase in the level of the memberhsip within SI -perhaps Richard could enlighten us on this. Myself I like Richard – I thought he was a good choice to be President but maybe he should have been having open conversations like the one above much earlier. In the UK communications have to done with the public almost within days when issues errupt.
Anyway for me SI has come to tipping point – hence the interview I think – at present I think I am following my own conscience as to how to proceed perhaps due to my northern bolishiness – I hope people everywhere in all your separate organisations become more ‘deviant’ and ‘unpredictable’
on your religious journeys.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Stockport UK
This is disappointing. Something more specific would have been better. For example the status of relations with the Oaji sangha or with Reggie. The Legacy project, at least in Boulder, foundered for lack of support from SI.
I’m curious: is there anything still happening with it?
Oops. I’m posting again because I forgot to check the “Notify me of follow up comments” box.
Apologiex.
From the end of the Shambhala Times posting of the same interview:
“President Reoch writes: “I was asked by Radio Free Shambhala to talk about the current guidelines for inviting teachers and, in the course of that, asked if I could talk also about the issue of fear in our mandala. I am delighted that Radio Free Shambhala is posting that interview on its website. Along these very same lines, I was deeply touched to hear the Sakyong say recently: ‘It is not a matter of us all agreeing. It is a matter of us not giving up.’””
Interesting to have the topic of “fear” be the central thread in this interview, and at that the first congress that fear was palpable.
My experience of discussions here has been less a sense of fear and more irritation and judgment, ie. statements about the organization or the Sakyong as wrong for doing this or that. It’s had a more vajra quality to my ear. (or perhaps that is my own vajra ear hearing it that way)
Rita: the membership role has had regular growth for the last few years – per the SDB that is tracking that data with some precision now. Not sure I would call it “rapid” growth though, more steady. And seminaries and abhishekas are regular so that should be some indication of how many people are entering those mandalas.
I’ve obviously missed something. Can somebody please explain what it is that people are afraid of?
Howard, personally speaking–and for what it’s worth–I do fear certain potentials within Shambhala, heightened more and more by the direction it has been going.
Not because I believe in good guys and bad guys, obviously. Shambhala is filled with loads of kind, dedicated, wonderful people. But because I’ve personally experienced a number of times within Shambhala the ways in which a big Agenda (very, very big in this case), peer pressure and conformity, collective defensiveness, a seeming fear of dissent and desire to monitor and control as much as possible, and other of those ancient temptations of power can simply erode our best intentions. That the leadership of Shambhala has the best of intentions I have no doubt. That’s not the issue.
This is all the more poignantly applicable to dharma organizations. Because, well, dharma is the Truth, right? How could we possibly deviate very far from the Truth so long as we’re a dharma organization? It just can’t happen. It could never happen. We don’t have to worry about it at all…
For me this question trumps everything else: is the organization fundamentally healthy, wholesome? Does dharma come before everything? Everything–even the survival of the formal entity in its present form and ambitions? If so, then it seems to me all other issues can resolve themselves over time. If not…
So to answer your question very specifically: what I personally fear are the dynamics of power within Shambhala. In my experience it has become ever more opaque, secretive, and tightly controlled. It has the biggest possible agenda. It is close, it seems to me (and in the absence of anyone answering my question about this) to having effectively left the larger body of Tibetan Buddhist lineage. And it has all kinds of ways of marginalizing or simply ignoring dissent.
These are the things I have seen, and honestly they have frightened me very much. I realize this view is different from probably the great majority here, but I can only share what I have experienced.
Richard Reoch: “One of the earliest statements issued by the Mandala Governing Council created after the first Shambhala Congress was a statement on the commitment to openness. I asked members of that council to list the issues that people are afraid to speak up about. We seemed to have inherited an incredible atmosphere of fear, and I did not understand that. I had no idea the extent to which this community was traumatized. When I asked what issues were not being addressed, people were afraid to name the issues. I think we all realized, ‘Wow, we can’t even talk about what we can’t talk about!’ Opening up that discussion was like Glasnost and Perestroika in Shambhala.”
Very telling, Mr. Reoch…and how come you missed this all these years?
Comparing Shambhala to the Soviet Union is also telling…(I didn’t say it, he did). Will there be another committee to study the issue of openness,
the way there is one to study the issue of diversity? Am I being critical, or, just observant? The whole thing begins to seem absurd…thanks to Mr. Reoch for his honesty….it is so revealing.
dear damchö, i think a number of factors point to SI being just as close to Tibetan Buddhism as always; not separating further from it. Things like:
- cohosting probably the largest Rinchen Terzod abhisheka ever held
- cohosting H.H. the Karmapa’s first visit to America
- rebuilding the Surmang shedra
- helping to support Choseng Trungpa Rinpoche’s education
- the Sakyong’s responsibilities and visits as Mipham Rinpoche in Tibet
- and the marriage with the Ripa family and lineage
i’m sure i’m forgetting many other indications too. i don’t see any contra-indications really either. namely, having a terma tradition as a “specialty” in a lineage is not a new concept nor causes you to be your own thing. many nyingma lineages also specialize in particular terma, even though they may do many other things too. so we can i think have our “specialty” shambhala terma that we’re known for, as well as hold the “specialty” surmang flavor of chakrasamvara, plus lojong, etc etc. without needing to create a whole new lineage or separate in any way (in my opinion.)
Davee
One could as easily say that the SMR is doing these things because he has become a pawn of the Tibetians. It depends on how you want to look at it.
I’m not saying you’re wrong in your view. I’m saying what you want as an outcome may determine how you see things. Your comment has nothing to do with this thread, actually…in my opinion
damchö,
I appreciate your sharing your concerns about the ‘temptations of power’ in SI, and I don’t know whether you are in the minority on this site at least. But perhaps it would be even more illuminating if you could tell us why you personally feel the need to retain anonymity by using a Tibetan name when you express yourself on this site. What are the personal fears you have about revealing your identity here – the name you are known by – you know, first and last names? I think that sharing those fears would open the discussion further.
President Reoch spoke of “trying to address these tendencies of people persecuting each other.” ‘Persecuting’ is a strong word. Usually it refers to the victimization of a minority by a more powerful majority, doesn’t it? The strong persecute the weak, right? Like the Germans persecuting the Jews and Gypsies, or a boss picking on an employee? Doesn’t persecution carry a connotation of vindictiveness?
Is it accurate to say that dissenters on RFS are “persecuting” anyone with their complaints, questions and criticisms? I’ve never heard anyone speak of dissidents as ‘persecuting’ their powerful oppressors, although plenty of powerful oppressors are known to have literally persecuted dissidents.
However, it may be that the marginalization of those students of CTR who question what is being done in Shambhala Intl. IS persecution. I have heard of attempts to shut people up – to the point of condemnation, ridicule and slander. Is there a culture of persecution in SI? Is this what you fear, damchö? I haven’t personally experienced this because I instinctively moved out of the line of fire about 10 yrs ago.
It’s so interesting that Pres. Reoch “had no idea the extent to which this community was traumatized.” That means that nobody let him in on the ‘family secrets’ when he was inducted into SI. Now why was that, I wonder. Well, all dysfunctional families hide their family secrets in order to appear respectable. “We don’t hang out our dirty laundry,” as my grandmother used to say, especially with such a profound and brilliant inheritance as we share in Shambhala, right? So perhaps to protect the faith of those who believe in the bright and shining mythology of Shambhala, we hide our dirty laundry. But in the process we’ve become a bickering dysfunctional family, burying fearlessness, openness, genuineness, authenticity and all the other virtues we’re supposed to embody. What irony!
Methinks Trungpa Rinpoche would have wanted a bit more of truth telling. Truth telling washes the dirty laundry. I know it’s hard work, and scary, but until it happens, the mandala will not be fundamentally healthy and wholesome.
Let us hear your fears, damchö, and start the ball rolling!
Warm regards,
Suzanne
Please check this out.
http://www.rememberingthemasters.org/2009/06/tribute-to-jamyang-khyentse-chokyi.html
John, I agree that Richard Reoch’s speaking of the beginning of Glasnost and Perestroika within Shambhala is an interesting choice of metaphor. We would have to see how far it could proceed. But certainly for it to succeed, it seems to me some really fundamental things would have to change in the organization.
Dear Davee, I’m not sure the particular examples you bring up touch my real concern. For the most part these activities are only to be expected, I would say. To *not* help support the current Trungpa Rinpoche would be inexplicable. Ditto to *not* cohost the Karmapa, given the former Trungpa Rinpoche’s profound connection with the former Karmapa–not to mention the fact that Shambhala still presents itself as a Buddhist sangha within the Tibetan tradition. And of course the Sakyong is going to visit Tibet as Mipham Rinpoche, since he was named as such and has responsibilities as such. I don’t believe Shambhala would throw any of these activities and duties away. Why should it? But this isn’t the point.
More the point for me concerns your last paragraph, where you speak of Shambhala as merely having a “specialty” within a lineage. I agree that “specialties” exist, but then the question remains: which lineage is Shambhala a part of, within which it has its specialty teachings? Is it within the Kagyu lineage? In that case it is ultimately subject to the Karmapa, isn’t it? A few years ago for instance the Karmapa very earnestly, even sternly, issued a statement asking all of his centres to become vegetarian. Have Shambhala centres become vegetarian? If not, and if they are still part of the Kagyu lineage, then they are consciously disobeying the Karmapa.
Likewise, if Shambhala remains within the Kagyu and / or Nyingma lineages, where are the lineage holders represented on the shrine? Where for example is Penor Rinpoche, the Sakyong’s main teacher I believe? This is why I asked that question, because the shrine really is a place where a centre or sangha does express its connectedness and continuity with lineage. It’s such a basic, answerable question, isn’t it? Yet seemingly no one will answer it.
So yes, Shambhala isn’t going to suddenly turn and cut off all contact with the rest of the Tibetan Buddhist world. It would obviously not be in its own interest to do this, apart from anything else. But I think on a *deeper* level this is what seems to be going on. For example, as I understand it, only the Sakyong–alone in the world–can give the empowerment to what is now *the* central vajrayana practice within Shambhala, thus isolating Shambhala in a profound way from all other sanghas. And I believe John Rockwell was recently quoted by someone on this board as saying that in the future the Kagyu and Nyingma vajrayana will have to be specifically requested, will not be ordinarily taught? Such a state of affairs is quite unique.
I appreciate the view President Reoch is expressing. However, exhorting people to hold a view has limited efficacy without a supporting practice, and one practice that seems to me to be particularly helpful here is that of asking questions.
If you are a “newer” student who has an opinion on the “older students,” an appropriate question might be “How would you know?”
The Vidhyadhara, the Sakyong, and many teachers remind us that as we practice and seem to progress or become inspired, ego is inflating right along side in subtle and maybe not-so-subtle ways. Seeing this is a mark of insight, let alone of developing decency and a sense of humor. So we could all ask, “In what ways am I pretending to be a buddhist or Shambhalian but actually acting like a cult member?” If the answer is “not at all,” seek an honest friend to have the discussion with.
Similarly we could ask, “How is our organizational neurosis manifesting?” If we are human beings in this world and have an organization, its not possible that we don’t experience organizational neurosis. And that neurosis is going to mirror what’s going on in the larger society. So we could look at that and reflect back. How much in our own organizations are we subject to the worship of the “new,” to theism, to shortening attention spans, to demonization of the other, etc?
The Vidhyadhara taught us not to get caught in the trap of idealism and perfectionism, where we regard our own neurosis as a source of shame, rather than as good manure. If we can’t look at it squarely, we will never have the robust container that can hold differences and therefore a society.
Speaking as an older student, one reason many of us are so sensitive to this is because we’ve experienced being led by a genuine teacher, manifesting as cult members, being inflated and deflated, and being ground down at the intersection of practice, wishful thinking and real life for many years.
I appreciate Michael Chender’s comment – I met you briefly when I was Halifax – Michael do you remember the incident with the turtles on Halifax Common?! Perhaps I should have gone with the turtles I may have got a better story!
Anyway as to your advice I think I have gone through all the processes you suggest and although I do have a big, big ego – I feel quite liberated about stepping out of SI for some time. Perhaps just as a one-off people should try it in the organisation, dont be SI members for a month just open up to the world………that emptiness experience might change your mind about things.
Well to get back to the debate I really need all religions, humanists etc etc
to be given the chance of going to the xth degree with the shambhalian teachings – I dont know perhaps its the ‘buddhist/shambhalian gene’
theory that CTR talked about……….but walking round Manchester one sees so many desperate people hanging out on the streets-you cant ignore the possibility that transforming society through these teachings has to be attempted.
I like things to be free – its part of my northern upbringing. Recently
I went into a Quaker Meeting House to book a room for an event you
know the people in that room were so happy -the man that dealt with my query was so gentle, amusing and almost a relic of a bygone age, and as
Richard has brought up the idea of prerestroika I will bring it up too with that famous phrase of Mrs T (even tho I detested the woman it was a good
phrase) ‘I thought we could do business with that man’- and that is now my position. These teachings have to be open to everyone we have to do business with everyone. SI, the Sakyong maybe even CTR couldn’t and cant do it on their own. Lets make no mistake we are talking about a
revolution in human discourse and society. I am not going to be limited by the SI organisation in doing what I and now perhaps others feel to be right-I am tired of second-guessing myself. Life has to move on.
Well think thats all
best
Rita Ashworth
Stockport UK
rita ashworth on July 16th, 2009 8:36 am wrote:
“Anyway for me SI has come to tipping point – hence the interview I think – at present I think I am following my own conscience as to how to proceed perhaps due to my northern bolishiness – I hope people everywhere in all your separate organisations become more ‘deviant’ and ‘unpredictable’
on your religious journeys.”
‘Outliers’ x Malcolm Gladwell goes a long way toward disabusing the reader of the notion of the Horatio Alger-style, self-made, individual success story..
Rather, he points to an alternate story of success as determined by such factors as environment, timing, and community, which support the unfolding and ripening of an individual’s talents.
Cheers,
Ian
I think it’s also worth saying with regard to the Richard Reoch interview that if any of us down in the lowly ranks were to use the metaphors of glasnost, perestroika, the Red Guards, and fascism, we’d be dismissed as a fringe loony.
hi damchö, the sakyong’s root teacher is the vidhyadhara. so in that sense the shrine is consistently showing the current lineage holder and his origins. but again i don’t think we have to show a certain amount of lineage holders on a shrine. if there were no faces on the shrine at all, that might be fine too? like the shambhala shrine setup. how much is just enough?
re: requesting nyingma and kagyu practices. it’s my understanding that relates to seminary specifically. one does what one’s teacher asks, yes? but if one feels strongly, they can request to do kagyu ngondro and that path instead of the shambhala ngondro path first. but it has to be requested. not sure if anyone gets their request, but hey this is the vajrayana. no promises. and beyond that there is always a notion of requesting a lung and to be introduced into a mandala. nothing new there. but after scorpion seal, as far as i know, one still goes onto one of our other specialties.
interesting question you posed about ‘which’ lineage are we. normally i would say we’re the “Surmang” lineage; because we really came from there; and they held a synthesis of kagyu and nyingma streams for some time, and they had heart relationships with both the karma kagyu lineage as well as certain nyingma lineages. Trungpa Rinpoche went to shedra in a neighboring nyingma monastery that also had a kagyu synthesis. I’m not sure it’s exactly cut and dry there what the hierarchy is. does his holiness the karmapa dictate what happens at sechen monastery even though it’s historically a nyingma monastery? yet they also have a heart relationship with the karma kagyu. who’s in charge! my sense is that it’s not so black and white actually, but more shades of gray with respect to hierarchy and when someone issues a dictum who it might apply to. especially in the monastery complexes that are not solely karma kagyu, but hybrid lineages like what was going on in surmang (and sechen and dzongsar and other monasteries). they hold multiple lineages, probably the lineage holder of each valley has a certain loyalty and sense of hierarchy to the different lineage leaders perhaps not as fully as a lineage solely in the karma kagyu hierarchy.
and to rob’s related link above concerning Jamyang Khyentse Chökyi Lodrö Rinpoche (who was also a terton), he preserved distinct lineages that were dying out and was careful not to muddle or confuse them. i don’t think he would have a problem with what was going on at surmang, or with the vidhyadhara’s terma like the “sadhana of mahamudra” that completely mix the kagyu and nyingma symbols into one practice. also, one of khyentse rinpoche’s students was ju mipham rinpoche, who is known for his shambhala terma discovered in the 19th century.
I was thinking the same thing, Damcho. It’s quite a statement coming from the President of Shambhala!
[VCTR, “Words to ‘My Favorite Things’”, Charlemont, MA, 1977, lines 1-82:]
Tigers with cubs licking their young
Snow lions rustling their manes
The Garuda fluffing and ready to fly
Dragons thundering beyond heaven
This is the way I awaken and serve.
Watching the Sakyong buttoning his coat
Wearing the armor of Shambhala mark
Seeing the innocent perk up
Watching the hummingbirds do their seeking
This is the way I awaken and serve.
Mo-mo with noodles
Uniform with lace
Sweet smiles that suggest the court
Gleaming expressions
That lead to good manners
Without being hampered
By dog bite or bee sting.
I simply regard myself
As the courtier of Kalapa
That Kingdom of Shambhala
Then I don’t feel weak or idle.
I simply remember
I’m a part of the vision
Let us resound
The thunder of Shambhala.
Not being a parrot
Trusting in the mind
Yet devotion at heart
Proclaiming as god
This is the way I awaken and serve.
Not being crocodile
Seeking for no pleasure
Outstandingly elegant
I feel part of the family
This is the way I awaken and serve.
Not being kangaroo
Jumping into conclusions
Genuinely loving the master
I feel truly honored
This is the way I awaken and serve.
Not being mosquito
Taking my chance at an inappropriate time
I am a good servant
Sensitive companion to the court
This is the way I awaken and serve.
Not being too much of tortoise walker
Efficiency and no mind
Play an important part
I take my duty as a good bureaucrat
This is the way I awaken and serve.
No peacock fancy dressed
With a good cologne
Doesn’t quite proclaim
As good guard or good attendant
Genuine willingness with perkiness
Provides good landmark
This is the way I awaken and serve.
Not being new-age watchdog
Be kind and willing
But at the same time
Nasty and bite through whoever deserves
In the protection of the king
This is the way I awaken and serve.
Rhinoceros will never make good servant
Metaphysical speculation occupies one’s mind
So one should come off it
Probably good shock
Will do you good
This is the way I awaken and serve…
[concluding lines 83-150 in next post]
VCTR, “My Favorite Things”, [lines 83-150]
Whenever I serve it is in the fashion
Of lion-dog and good-dragon
I feel good despite my peacock pigeonness
I simply remember this goodness is sanity
Let me pray otherwise
Sky may fall on my head.
Bright blue sky
Beyond your mind
White light of sanity
Beyond speculation
Intellect that is totally beyond scholarship
This is the way I wake from confusion.
Genuine mind
Taking tortoise walk
Genuine discipline
In the snows and in the caves
Fantastic meditation
Sitting and dancing
Fantastic phenomena that wake up the mind
This is the way I wake from confusion.
We go beyond our mind
In the name of our heritage
Catch or kill the phenomenal world
Love or hate
I go and dance with them
This is the way I wake from confusion.
When there is a gap
Mind spins
When there is a trap
Mind relaxes
This is the way I wake from confusion.
When I feel so so so confused
When I feel utterly wretched
When I feel truly degraded
This is the way I wake from confusion.
Then I feel like the tiger
Like the lion
Like the garuda
Like the dragon
I simply find myself as the universal monarch.
Bright blue sky
Crisp real kippers
Polished good books bound in leather
Good old traveler smuggling foreign jewels
These are a few of the wonders I trust.
Green stinging nettles boiling in a pot
Celebrated monk turning into yogi
True monkey-lion wearing Black Crown
These are a few of the wonders I trust.
Consuming nectar beyond cats and dogs
Grandchildren surpassing their fathers
Conquering foreign lands with self-snug smile
These are a few of the wonders I trust.
When the head aches
When the gut quakes
When I’m feeling lost
I simply remember my innate heritage
And then I don’t feel so insane.
[End]
RFS: The real question is: how are the teaching stream and legacy of Trungpa Rinpoche going to continue?
Richard Reoch: I’ve been in discussions with Carolyn Gimian since the beginning of the Chögyam Trungpa Legacy Project about the importance of that initiative. The analogy we have used is that the Legacy Project is like a presidential library, so things don’t end up moldering and being lost.
This exchange struck me as encapsulating the chasm in a nutshell.
Andrew asked how we can ensure the continuity and preservation of the Vidyadhara’s teachings and transmission. Richard answered by creating the equivalent of a presidential library.
The Vidyadhara’s teachings are a living, breathing transmission of ego-shattering wakefulness, brilliant sanity, and unceasing compassion — not a stack of dusty books to be shelved away in a library or museum.
Also, what does Richard mean by “… the transplantation of egoless devotion from a culture like Tibet?” Tibetan culture ego-less? He’s got to be kidding! Richard should listen to the Vidyadhara’s seminars on the Sadhana of Mahamudra where he recounted and deplored all the intrigues, power-tripping, corruption, feuds, and petty intrigues in the Tibetan monasteries and government. Or watch the movie “Kundun.” If Tibetan culture was ego-less and united the Chinese Red Army wouldn’t have been able to march right in and take over their country in such a short time.
Jolly good luck to us all!
(p.s. I seem to have lost my gravatar.)
Dear Ian
Just a brief reply to your comment. I too have read that most popular author Malcolm Gladwell. I remember the story in my brain about what was it the brown shoes – how someone in New York just created a fashion and it grew and grew. I used tipping point exactly because of the
divergent streams now evolving within and without SI -thats why I believe
Richard has done the interview to kind of show that SI is still open to diversity. But is it really if you look at the whole thing concretely, in toto,
factually. What was once almost a call for a ‘universal’ religion encompassing complexity and desires one could almost say has been
narrowed down in to Shambhala Buddhism and at the present time in history that just wont do.
I dont seek individual success – I seek community but a community that
is spiky, questioning, mad,divergent, and uncompromising in protecting that critical intelligence that CTR goes on about so much.
Its strange I was thinking about buying the Outliers book recently but I did not have much cash so that got blinked. Now I am reading a critique of
Foucault- I find Foucault very interesting with his ideas on sexuality and prisons as a social construct-have you read him?
I am also into Michael Haenke – I have bought three of his dvds -he is
so learned about everything cinema -hope you can catch his films.
Anyway I digress community is fundamental to everything that I am
proposing, buddha, dharma, sangha you know but not at the cost of open dialogue and rigid conformity thats where the western tradition points to role of the individual in seeking to articulate new ideas about life as we know it, Jim. I would be ingnoring my own braincells if I did not question, and study life’s vicissitudes.
Anyway would welcome more criticism of my position it makes me ponder things more.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Stockport Uk
Back over at the Shambhala Times site, Bill Karelis has some direct and incisive comments.
All I can say to Mr Karelis’s comments is wow yet again -and perhaps what is indeed really happening in Boulder and Halifax.
People please post we need to hear you.
best
Rita Ashworth
Stockport UK
Thanks very much for your post Davee, which contained a lot of new information for me. I see that the lineage question can get fairly complex. I also appreciate simply your effort in trying to explain.
I’m trying to keep an open mind on that question. It troubles me however because it is so much of a piece with so many other things. And because of the seeds of distrust which have been sown.
You say that the Sakyong’s root teacher is his father. Okay, but still what you’re going to have on the shrine over time is a single family. People sometimes say, “oh there are hundreds of family lineages in Tibetan Buddhism,” but are there really “hundreds”? Or just a handful or two? And how many were successful, thriving lineages, and for how long? That last question is rarely asked, it seems to me. And do we even know about the ones that *weren’t* so successful? Or do they tend to just not be remembered?
Because even the Dalai Lama and Dzongsar Khyentse for example freely, even bluntly speak of how much Westerners still romanticize Tibetan culture, still believe that the system somehow miraculously didn’t contain corruption. And also when I look at the history of hereditary rule in general, it seems there are more-or-less invariably one or two successful or at least fairly decent monarchs, and then at some point (usually by generation 3!) somebody quite, quite disastrous… Doesn’t that stand to reason when you’re limiting your choice of leader in every generation to just one or two people? And power does corrupt ever so dependably. Even, *especially*, when we simply “know” that we have God / the dharma on our side…
As you have shown, the question of lineage and authority can become quite nuanced in Tibetan Buddhism. But I also think it’s crucially important that there are individual lamas and others *outside* Shambhala that the Sakyong and his acharyas are genuinely answerable to.
I heard Ken McLeod once say that early in his teaching career he asked several people to look after him in that respect, to be unafraid to be totally honest if they felt he was engaged in anything that might become unhealthy. This is partly what I’m talking about in terms of checks and balances. When the Kagyu and Nyingma lineage holders disappear from the shrine, a new exclusive central vajrayana practice is introduced, effectively a fifth school of Tibetan Buddhism proclaimed etc, alarm bells do go off for me, especially in the context of my full experience with Shambhala.
Furthermore, has “Shambhala Buddhism” been recognized as such by the rest of the Tibetan Buddhist world? Or at least most of it? Or at least some of it? Or even any of it? If not, then isn’t Shambhala effectively going its own way, doing its own thing? This is what I am wondering about.
I find this interview disingenuous, not because I don’t like Mr. Reoch as a person, and not because I don’t appreciate his apparent commitment to openness. The problem is that that commitment is a commitment of the mouth, belied by the actions of Shambhala International. Essentially, Mr. Safer’s incisive questions in this interview go unanswered.
Mr. Reoch seems unaware that the actions of the current administration of Shambhala International have perpetuated the fear and sense of intimidation among senior students, which Mr. Reoch admits he does not understand. There is, to begin with, the well-known reality that teaching permission is granted in proportion to perceived fidelity to current Shambhala International policy.
To take another example, there have been recent “harmony” meetings, where at least two acharyas have been bullying the senior students present into a silent compliance with the current policy on devotion.
To take another example, the very presence of the Dorje Kasung in the speech realm in Boulder, attending in force every administrative and community meeting within Karma Dzong over the last 15 or 20 years, suppressing dissent with pacification techniques, even making sarcastic remarks about individuals–basically acting as the thought police–has contributed to virtually the entire senior community absenting itself from Dorje Dzong. Withheld and carefully managed microphone time has overwhelmed (by controlling the discourse in) every so-called Congress and group gathering that I have attended over the last five years.
Mr. Reoch’s repeated references to senior acharyas helping to solve the problem of inclusivity does not jibe with one of the main functions of the acharyas, which is to propagate adherence to new curricular and practice policy, for instance, in the current “teacher trainings,” whereby teaching permission is given in exchange for conformity to the new practice and study stream–a bargain not unlike the one the acharyas themselves have themselves been asked to make. (Not every acharya has gone along with the pressure, but some have bought it hook, line and sinker, and now impose it on others.) Therefore, it is not the acharyas, as a body, but the thousands of the Vidyadhara’s direct students, to whom the task has clearly fallen to propagate the Vidyadhara’s teachings.
On the point of samaya, I appreciate that Mr. Reoch sees it as a personal matter, but this view does not accord with the letters Chris Tamdjidi sent out as Director of Shambhala Europe to a number of senior students in the last couple of years, ordering them to return their Vajrayana materials, if they did not conform to Shambhala International dues payment policy. If this isn’t intimidation in the name of corporate policy, it would be difficult to imagine what would be.
With regard to the title of the article, “On Differing Views and Paths,” is it really appropriate for the foremost representative of Shambhala International, the President, to be welcoming and “supporting” the view and practice of the Dharma espoused by the Great Vidyadhara, whose umbrella actually protects Shambhala International from falling into spiritual disrepair? When it comes to the hearts and minds of the Vajra Sangha, who represent the body of the guru, it is not a matter of “support” by a corporate entity, and its representatives. The real question, as Mr. Safer asks in different ways, regards how the institution continues to box out so many of the Vidyadhara’s students, minimizing their presence and contribution, by displacing his teaching and practice stream.
Personally, I supplicate that the Vidyadhara’s Dharma teachings flourish in all societies, including the Shambhala community. I believe history will look dimly on the current developments in the very organization he established to establish and further his teachings.
I’m still blown away by some of the statements Mr Reoch makes in this article. He’s basically admitting that the criticism coming from RFS and other sources about the current state of SI is absolutely spot on!
I don’t see that at all, Mr Tischer.
Davee,
Either one might agree with Mr. Karelis’ assessment that Mr Reoch is being disingenuous in his answers, or, if one feels Mr. Reoch is being honest when he stated ” I did not understand that. I had no idea the extent to which this community was traumatized.” after how many years of being President, could be construed as evidence of incompetence. The other possibility is that Mr. Reoch wishes to expose some of the problems he sees in the organization. I would have no idea why he would choose this method to do that. So, then, sir, how do you see it?
From the article:
there are students of Trungpa Rinpoche who… don’t feel welcome within the current-day Shambhala community. It no longer feels like “home”… Sometimes they are disparaged by community members
If you’ll forgive me for saying so… maybe this is good? perhaps even fantastic?
My old teacher used to work really hard to make his students feel this way, at least his older students who had been meditating for a while.
As a matter of fact– I’d forgotten this– he literally criticized his older students in front of the newer students, suggesting that the old fogeys’ practice was not so good. The old students were “holding things back”, they had lost their edge, were worn out and jaded, and were just hanging on to their memories of how things used to be, he said. The new students gobbled this up like frappucinos on a summer day.
I suppose I loved this as a new student, but I resented it and felt betrayed by it as an older student. It was completely offensive to me, in every way possible.
Much later I began to wonder if everyone had gotten what they needed– the new students were encouraged & “romanced”, while the older students had their “home” taken away from them.
While in a way this seemed brutal, unnecessary, not to mention untruthful to me, perhaps my teacher had his reasons for doing this.
More about home:
I have no home.
Home I have none.
I have no home.
While growing up, since I was little up to now, I have never had a family. Having no family seems very sad, but when I think how I have no home, it is very strange. Home and family – my parents couldn’t create it. My friends couldn’t create it. No one has been able to create it. Why? the family created by my parents and friends was just a family according to their own way of thinking.
In particular, my own situation is due to the fact that no one could understand everything all together: both worldly and spiritual views and how to live one’s life….
Therefore, since I have no ultimate heart friend other than myself alone, I think that it is definite that no one can create an ultimate home or family for me. Still, strangely, this home of being homeless is my home wherever I go. Everything is my home, the home of being homeless.
-CTR
Rita writes:
“What was once almost a call for a ‘universal’ religion encompassing complexity and desires one could almost say has been
narrowed down in to Shambhala Buddhism and at the present time in history that just wont do.”
As well, I suppose that from one perspective you could say that acknowledging your family of origin limits the possibilities that this life presents you.
From another perspective, acknowledging and respecting your origins could open you to becoming a universal citizen, a citizen of the world, since everyone has a family of origin. That is something we all have in common.
The fact that the Shambhala lineage traces itself to a king who received teachings from the Buddha gives some orientation to the family of origin of that tradition.
“…community is fundamental to everything that I am proposing, buddha, dharma, sangha you know but not at the cost of open dialogue and rigid conformity thats where the western tradition points to role of the individual in seeking to articulate new ideas about life as we know it, Jim. I would be ingnoring my own braincells if I did not question, and study life’s vicissitudes.”
Well, seeking open dialogue, you risk rejection. Seeking freshness, you risk brushing up against peoples’ comfort zones. Seeking articulation you risk looking like a fool.
I think what the Shambhala Buddhist tradition points to is braveness to extend yourself genuinely, gentleness to support yourself naturally extending in that way, and intelligence to experiment with timing between the two.
I would be happy to hear your thoughts on these matters..
All the best,
Ian
It is odd but instructive that so many of the comments on Andrew Safer’s interview with President Reoch miss a rather obvious difference between Mr. Safer’s questions and President Reoch’s answers. That is, they are coming from very different points of view.
In essence, Mr. Safer’s questions are based in his opinion that the Vidyadhara’s teachings and legacy are not being perpetuated by Sakyong Mipham. In contrast, President Reoch speaks from the point of view that the Vidyadhara’s teachings and legacy ARE being perpetuated by Sakyong Mipham.
With this understanding, President Reoch is not being disingenuous at all, and Mr. Safer’s question is not being answered. This is the perpetual risk of PR and attempts to bridge gaps when there is no ground of good faith. (to the webmaster: You really have to do something about the problem of text entry in IE8 at this particular line).
Nick Wright
P.S.: The Gravatar site instructs one quite blandly that “To request a gravatar from our servers, you simply add an image to your users activity with an “src” attribute that points to our gravatar image generator and includes an MD5 hash of the user’s email address.”
Is there a more helpful (dumber) way of getting avatars linked with comments? (not that my avatar image is all that helpful after all!).
Avatar now manifested, in some mysterious way . . .
Nick:
I beg to differ. Please re-read this section of the Q&A:
—–
RFS: The real question is: how are the teaching stream and legacy of Trungpa Rinpoche going to continue?
Richard Reoch: I’ve been in discussions with Carolyn Gimian since the beginning of the Chögyam Trungpa Legacy Project about the importance of that initiative. The analogy we have used is that the Legacy Project is like a presidential library, so things don’t end up moldering and being lost. I’ve had some initial conversations with some of the longer-term students and acharyas about how to create an identifiable and helpful framework so no one is seen as being on one track or the other, or as renegades which is antithetical to the long-term survival of the lineage.
—–
What I understand from this is that Richard is aware that there is a danger that there are elements of Trungpa Rinpoche’s teaching stream that could become lost (“so things don’t end up moldering and being lost”). He also acknowledges that there are two paths–the one set out by Trungpa Rinpoche (which is quite clear cut, identifiable and specific) and the one the Sakyong has evolved/is evolving (“so no one is being seen as being on one track or the other”). Furthermore, he pointed out the importance of the Chogyam Trungpa Legacy Project in the context of ensuring that Trungpa Rinpoche’s path and teachings continue.
(As some others have mentioned on this thread, I too feel that a “presidential library” as such falls short of being able to perpetuate the living quality of Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings and practice stream, but that is another issue. )
I very much appreciate Richard’s straightforwardness in this interview. I think one of his strengths is his appreciation for diversity. He did not pretend that there is no elephant in the room. I suspect he has spoken with a number of individuals who see significant differences between the two views and paths. Considering this, if he had simply said that Sakyong Mipham is perpetuating Trungpa Rinpoche’s legacy, full stop, THAT would have been disingenuous.
Also, you wrote:
“This is the perpetual risk of PR …”
I assume you are referring to Richard’s responses here. If this is the case, I find it insulting. He is not a PR flak. He is the President of the Shambhala organization.
Nick Wright wrote on July 18th, 2009 8:24 “In essence, Mr. Safer’s questions are based in his opinion that the Vidyadhara’s teachings and legacy are not being perpetuated by Sakyong Mipham. In contrast, President Reoch speaks from the point of view that the Vidyadhara’s teachings and legacy ARE being perpetuated by Sakyong Mipham.
“With this understanding, President Reoch is not being disingenuous at all, and Mr. Safer’s question is not being answered. This is the perpetual risk of PR and attempts to bridge gaps when there is no ground of good faith.”
For one thing, Nick, the basis of Andrew’s questions is not just his opinion that the Vidyadhara’s teachings and legacy are not being perpetuated. That concern has been expressed by many on this site.
But your analysis also does not address the issue of why people are afraid to speak up, why people feel intimidated. If President Reoch admits to an “incredible atmosphere of fear” and observed about the Mandala Governing Council, ” I think we all realized, ‘Wow, we can’t even talk about what we can’t talk about!’” – obviously there IS something weird going on – “no ground of good faith,” as you put it – within Shambhala International itself.
Mr. Karelis has shared his observation that “the actions of the current administration of Shambhala International have perpetuated the fear and sense of intimidation among senior students,” backed up by several examples. One of those examples is the “very presence of the Dorje Kasung in the speech realm in Boulder, attending in force every administrative and community meeting within Karma Dzong over the last 15 or 20 years, suppressing dissent with pacification techniques, even making sarcastic remarks about individuals–basically acting as the thought police–has contributed to virtually the entire senior community absenting itself from Dorje Dzong.”
Nick, since you were a loyal kasung while the Vidyadhara was alive, and are now a loyal senior kasung serving Sakyong Mipham, I wonder whether you can remember the atmosphere of the kasung during the Vidyadhara’s reign in contrast with the current atmosphere. Can you? I can. The kasung did not act as ‘thought police’ while Trungpa Rinpoche was alive, except to police themselves. Remember?
So, what do you have to say about the ‘ground of good faith’ in relation to Mr. Karelis’ observations? I’m very curious.
Suzanne Duarte
Andrew, was the interview with Richard a sit down, face-to-face affair or was it conducted over the phone. Or was it a series of email exchanges? Was it edited down from something longer? Did Richard have approval rights on the results?
I find the issue of the Kasung being used a “thought police” very strange. Bill Karelis has been doing a lot of good work, especially involving the finances of SMC (I’m not acquainted with his dharma activities). He does tend to be a little immoderate in choice of words. I’m sure he’s a burr under the saddle of a number of people in SI. No harm in that whatsoever, imho, but I wonder how representative his experiences have been.
Dear Chogyam Trungpa Legacy Project [2006: these notes were sent in response to a call for suggestions about how best to preserve and perpetuate VCTR’s Legacy]
Here are a few notes since I’ll not be coming [to Halifax for an exploratory CTLP meeting], if they can help; at least I want to make a gesture of support by offering some ideas. There’s an idea to have touring exhibits, is it? That reminds me of how the Krishnas would pull up to Pearl Street with their semi-trailers full of exhibits and gear and set up on the court house lawn in a sort of carnival atmosphere; they had the most amazing lifesize diorama of the life-cycle of a man from placenta and newborn through corpse and skeleton and a dozen stages in between in a big glass case.
So, beginning with the Legacy of body, speech and mind of CTR model, seeing KOS as the embodiment of the vision that needs to be perpetuated, and such a Legacy should support the present Sakyong’s activities as the principle perpetuator of the living Legacy of CTR.
Beyond that, I’ll just run through this list without too much elaborating:
- Cultivate sangha children; mentorships; apprenticeships
- A la Robt Burns, a Mukpo Night celebrated mandala-wide
- Commission a bust of CTR sculpted by Joshua Muldar for Halifax Centre [and make mini-busts like the plaster casts of the Great Stupa for Surmang fund-raising]
- Free distribution of CTR books
- Free introductory ST levels
- Commission illustrated comic on the life of CTR like the Milarepa one
- Circulate sangha dohas
- Preserve and display relics
- Commission new Mudra theatre and performances of CTR plays
- Sponsor micro-grants and loans for legacy-oriented activities
- Sponsor a worldwide literary/essay prize w/ Shambhala Sun
- Sponsor daylong public readings of Sacred Path of the Warrior on Parinirvana Day April 4, like James Joyce’s Ulysses is read on Bloom’s Day June 16.
- Sponsor scholarships; endow Mukpo Chair of Buddhist Studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax…
So these are some spontaneous ideas for how a Legacy might work. As important as it is to propagate CTR’s heritage by taking positive steps, also important is not taking steps that could injure CTR’s reputation and create obstacles for ordinary people who don’t know what a mahasiddha is. Emphasis should be on the root teachings and not on stories. So I hope this contributes a little to a successful summit in Halifax. If there are minutes taken, could they be posted on sangha-announce? Best wishes, John
[I would like to add one more idea: forming a league of teachers in the cities to do outreach to outerlying under- or unserved areas, offering meditation instruction in public libraries in the boondocks, do book study groups, etc., or even consider moving to a frontier town where there is no institutional Dharma and offer what you have to offer: this would advance the Legacy tremendously.]
Any more ideas?
“He’s basically admitting that the criticism coming from RFS and other sources about the current state of SI is absolutely spot on!”
He acknowledges fear of speaking out and fear generally at the first Congress a few years ago, without asserting the causes of that and listing some things he’s doing to address it as he volunteers for the organization. How is that any assertion that RFS as a whole is spot on? I don’t get that.
This web site is perhaps an example of how that fear of speaking out is being overcome, because people are here speaking their mind (whether we agree with each other or not). Maybe it’s an expression somewhat of his success over the last few years in championing the importance of diverse views and accommodation, via the congresses and personal mission. Since this is mostly a volunteer organization, it’s probably a mistake though to expect the nebulous “them” or “him” to fix it though and more on all of our shoulders.
Richard was the PR man for Amnesty International. That was his job : Public Relations.
I don’t know why people forget this. He was hired specifically for his PR skills which he is very good at, in that universe of discourse.
PR experts are very very good at saying little of substance, but leaving the person or group feeling that they have been heard. Then you go away, afterwards, and nothing has changed, no feeback has really been implemented, the course of the organization continues on the same course.
It is about assuaging, not hearing or implementing.
I
ad hominem, chris. and it’s funny suggesting “PR for Amnesty International” implies some kind of professional spin doctor. I mean what does Amnesty International need spin for ever? Do they have skeletons in their closets somehow?! He must be really good if I’ve never heard of those! lol.
Andrew wrote: “He (PR) also acknowledges that there are two paths–the one set out by Trungpa Rinpoche …and the one the Sakyong has evolved/is evolving (”so no one is being seen as being on one track or the other”).”
I think that is a misinterpretation. If it were correct, then President Reoch would have to agree with Mark Szpakowski’s statement that I think sums up the view behind Radio Free Shambhala.
“Shambhala vision and kingdom is not being attended to: its throne sits empty. It is the Sakyong’s to take, if he so wishes. But he has chosen to take up a different throne, in a different kingdom.”
I haven’t talked with him for some time, but I feel safe in suggesting that President Reoch would not agree with Mark’s statement. Rather, he is talking about perceptions of there being more than one Shambhala, not about their actual existence (at least I hope he is), and about the physical work of preserving records of the Dorje Dradul’s activities.
President Reoch seems to think there is a way to accommodate within Shambhala those who don’t think Mipham Rinpoche is the Sakyong. I think that has the same inherent problems as trying to incorporate whole Patrick Sweeney’s Satdharma group within Shambhala. The problems are primarily about divided loyalties and sharply differing interpretations of the Dorje Dradul’s intentions. I really doubt whether there are “accommodations” that will hold long term.
The inclusiveness of Shambhala is based on all the different groupings under its umbrella recognising the Sakyong as the hereditary king of Shambhala. I don’t currently see that happening with either the Radio Free Shambhala folks or the Satdharma folks.
Suzanne: As I see it, an opinion is an opinion, whether it is held by one person or many. I don’t think we are talking about “facts” here, we are talking about people’s different interpretations and understandings of what the Dorje Dradul said and intended.
As to the Kasung question, I am surprised that you who are normally so skeptical are so credulous about Mr. Karelis’s claims. (I have developed a “sophisticated” method of dealing with unsubstantiated hearsay claims: 1) If it sounds far-fetched it probably is. 2) Suspend judgement pending corroboration—especially if the claim seems to be intended to play to my hopes, fears or biases. 3) Don’t pass on hearsay to others as fact.)
I was just teasing you. Seriously, I became a Kasung in May, 1977, and since that time I have occasionally heard people accusing the big bad Kasung of intimidation, enforcing the party line, suppressing dissent, etc. I actually heard much more of that while the Dorje Dradul was alive; hardly ever these days. Apart from the occasional individual kasung losing his or her mind on the spot, none of it was true. I know of no current or past Kasung policy or directives regarding dissenting views in Shambhala (although if someone at a meeting loses their mind and becomes abusive of the space and inconsiderate towards others, I can see the kasung on duty asking them to cool it).
Hey! Kids! We have the President of Shambhala acknowledging that, maybe, he missed the point !!!! Can no one relate to that here?
Am I totally off, wrong view, or what? Please, feed back on this. To me,
this point is very important. Thanks in advance…… J.T.
I’ve been following the discussions here and I’ve hesitated before writing basically for 2 reasons: I’m a new Shambhala practitioner (I’m doing my Rigden ngöndro) and I’m from Brazil, where the Shambhala group is small and where, with the exception of one person, no one has been a student of Trungpa Rinpoche. So it’s another context in relation to this discussion.
However, what surprised me since the beginning is a kind of common “culture” we seem to share. Before I knew Radio Free Shambhala, I had tried to start a discussion within the Brazilian Shambhala group about the way our group new leadership has been dealing for 18 months with different views, different backgrounds and open communication — basically, presenting different views (even from people that has had a decisive role starting Shambhala in Brazil, or from some of our main senior teachers from US or Canada) as “non-Shambhalian” (basically because they have different views); systematically denying any opportunity for conversation (the group doesn’t have regular channels or practices for this, and particular demands are never answered); and the consequences of this not only to the “old” ones (in our context, some “old” ones are new ones like me) but also to the new ones, presented to a version of Shambhala without dissent, in which only the ones who agree are heard and encouraged, and in which in the future we’ll have only one flavour (as the denied voices are being discouraged and some of them are looking for other ways to live their connection to Shambhala).
For me it’s difficult not to feel an identification of this to some topics discussed here: the notion of sangha as a herd; a kind of “cult culture”; leadership practice without inquisitiveness, in which questions asked are explicitly silenced as a way to promote exclusion.
I’ve been discussing this with some of my senior teachers, and also with people from the Office of Practice and Education — as of course it’s disheartening to realize that these are the values of the Shambhala vision been practically implemented in a relatively new context like in Brazil.
As the new leader works closely with the Office of Practice of Education, I’ve told how this policy of silencing and exclusion was being perceived as a deliberate choice coming from Halifax. I’ve been told it is not, although sometimes it’s been presented this way here.
But of course it’s a challenge to work with one’s connection to Trungpa’s and Shambhala teachings and practices and this kind of culture, that sometimes I see as closer to a coup d’état or to an ethnic cleansing.
And I’ve thought it may be worthy to share this with you, as in spite of the different contexts, it’s as if some similar core values are being implemented and reinforced, at least in practical terms, in different parts of the mandala, or at least are being perceived this way.
Regarding Richard Reoch’s role in this interview and these communications, yes, he is a former PR person for Amnesty International, but now he is President of Shambhala (legally, Varjadhatu) and Chair of the Kalapa Council (legally, Kalapa), in the first report of which is (or probably he) stated:
This is from a remarkable document, linked to from the governance page on the shambhala.org web site.
When have the Dorje Kasung acted as “thought police?” Can someone please give an example? That’s a pretty heavy charge.
I don’t believe the Dorje Kasung have acted as “thought police.” That’s far too subtle a role for them. They function as protectors of the external environment — not the realm of thought. That would be the domain of the mahakalas, I would think.
This is in response to Nick.
Both The Sakyong and Richard Reoch were very much enthusiastic about having Satdharma be in cluded in the Shambhala communinty at the urging of Khenpo Tsutrim Gyamtso.
Lady Diana objected to having Patrick Sweeny included within the Shambhala mandala., and it was called off.
In Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s will, he did say that Lady Diana could be asked for advice, but did not have the final say. The Sakyong did.
Apparently she did in this case.
I’m sure there are other factors invoved, but at the time, many of us wondered who was in charge?
And that is the way things are.
Mr. Wright impugns my character generally, but fails to address the specific events I mention in my comment (above), regarding the role of the Dorje Kasung in influencing civilian affairs in Boulder over the last two decades. Not only is what I wrote true, it is demonstable in detail, and it is reflective of a larger phenomenon affecting our whole community–increased Kasung intrusion into civiilian government and the daily life of the community.
I am grateful to Mr. Wright for offering his views, as it provides an opportunity to examine this downturn in greater detail.
In Boulder, during an interregnum period of having no Director for the Center, in the 1990′s, Dapon Mark Thorpe and Dapon Dennis Southward took central positions on the governing body then in place, the Shambhala Council, steering actions (such as moving Shambhala Training into Dorje Dzong, which downsized the market share of the Boulder Shambhala Training program), and such as signing documents on behalf of Shambhala Intennational (giving away the asset base [the value of Dorje Dzong] for borrowing purposes, to SMC, unbenounced to the local sangha–a predicament that has lasted, so far, nine years, much affecting the growth of the Boulder Center).
Now in Boulder the practice and study head is a member of the Kusung Division, ready to execute central policy, including, it is rumored, to diminish the place of the great Vajradhara thangka. Dechen Choling has been run by a ranking Kasung officer for many years, Simon La Haye; Karme-Choling was run for some years by Dapon Suzann Duquette. I believe the Halifax Center is also run by a longstanding Kasung member.
These appointments are and were deliberate attempts to control what one Kasung described to me as the “:chaos” afflicting the major centers, namely the influence of senior students on policy, as opposed to the influence of central governmental thinking.
The tone of this Kasung-executed control is often threat and repression, even without specific threat of reprisal. The examples I gave in my previous comment hold true. When Dapon Southward made his not-so-invisible presence known (along with others in the Desung Division) at every community gathering and in Boulder for 15 years, it had the general effect of emptying out the meetings. They dwindled to a handful of stalwarts, many of them Kasung. It was the end of an era–the era of open communication in the shrine hall of Dorje Dzong. I don’t believe Mr. Wright was in Boulder during this period.
The other administrative meetings of the Boulder Center were and are similarly controlled from the inside by Kasung presence.
The two siginificant changes in Kasung manifestation in the last decade or more, of which I am aware, are the abandonment of the uniform in public, and the growth of the Desung Division, purported to help those in dire need. I believe these two developments have both represent ed significant problems for the Kasung involved, as well as for the community, and should be subject to open discussion among the sangha.
Ashoka, the first reference in this thread to the Dorje Kasung acting as ‘thought police’ in Boulder in recent years is in Bill Karelis’ post of July 18th, 2009 2:06 pm. Perhaps those from Boulder who have attended the gatherings Bill mentions can confirm or deny his observations. damchö lives in Boulder and speaks of fear on July 16th, 2009 7:10 pm. Martin lives in Boulder, I believe, but he may be one of the many students of the Vidyadhara that Bill says have absented themselves from Dorje Dzong (aka Shambhala Center). Then there is Carlos A. Inada writing from Brazil on July 19th, 2009 8:22 pm, regarding the suppression of dissent that he has observed there.
On the other hand, Nick Wright writes on July 19th, 2009 6:55 pm: “I became a Kasung in May, 1977, and since that time I have occasionally heard people accusing the big bad Kasung of intimidation, enforcing the party line, suppressing dissent, etc. I actually heard much more of that while the Dorje Dradul was alive; hardly ever these days.”
That’s funny, because I was in Boulder off and on while the Vidyadhara was alive and even worked within Vajradhatu during his last year there, and I don’t recall those charges being made about the Kasung in those days.
Richard Reoch said, “When I asked [the Mandala Governing Council] what issues were not being addressed, people were afraid to name the issues. I think we all realized, ‘Wow, we can’t even talk about what we can’t talk about!’
Could it be that suppression of dissent – or feedback – has advanced to the point that people who have internalized the ‘thought police’ automatically deny this phenomenon when others bring it up? From a living-systems perspective, creating a closed container that blocks feedback is suicidal – that is, unsustainable. Unfortunately and sadly, that seems to be the direction in which the current manifestation of Shambhala is going. Denial of feedback, rather than self-reflection and responsiveness, is a fairly reliable sign of a closed system.
Martin:
To answer your question about this interview, I was talking with Richard (on the phone) about another matter, and at some point the conversation shifted to the topic covered here. Later, when I looked at my notes, I realized that this piece could stand on its own. I e-mailed my suggestion to Richard and he concurred. I did not edit his remarks. What you see here is what he said. As a courtesy, I sent Richard his quotes to ensure accuracy and he acknowledged that they were accurate.
Cheers,
Andrew
ps I don’t think I ever thanked you enough for the wonderful music tapes you gave me when I drove from Boulder to Halifax in 1987. (Go Count Basie, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, James Brown and the rest!)
‘Well, seeking open dialogue, you risk rejection. Seeking freshness, you risk brushing up against peoples’ comfort zones. Seeking articulation you risk looking like a fool.
I think what the Shambhala Buddhist tradition points to is braveness to extend yourself genuinely, gentleness to support yourself naturally extending in that way, and intelligence to experiment with timing between the two.’
Dear Ian
Thank you for your further comments.
I have not been a kasung for a long time but was not one of the slogans ‘Don’t afraid to be a fool’ Not totally sure about this because I have been reading lots of books recently. So yes I am prepared to be a fool if that is what it takes for people to engage with me . I am experimenting with relationships and how to be with people in this world.Did not CTR challenge us to see life as an experiment. Of course you have to do it with mindfulness aswell.
As to gentleness what do we really mean by this concept – what may appear gentle to some people maybe compliance with authority to another. I think gentleness in our culture is some what suspect – I think it needs to be explored most acutely that’s why I like Michael Haenke because he flips things so much emotionally in his films. Foucault is even more transgressive in regard to gentleness in that his own personal relationships with his friends may appear provocative and ‘ungentle’ to the outside observer.
Now as to the SI generally at the present time Shambhala Buddhism still seems to me to be an unnecessary diversion from the real task of getting to grips with our own culture in the west. For example take the art of the Rigden King that is now on SI shrines for me personally I don’t see the concept of King or Queen in this way. My own religious experiences seem to tie in more with the Art that the Pre-Raphaelites evolved (perhaps that’s a karmic thing don’t know for sure). Think my next read will be John Ruskin’s work on Art. Any way I digress but in relation to Art both CTR and indeed Khandro Rinpoche have urged us to explore our own culture in order to evolve our own connection to Mind as we know it, Jim. I also think we should explore governance in the same way that we explore Art because the occupations are somewhat similar. A Kalapa court that would work would encompass many political variations one has to allow for diversity here. Africa does have its chiefs you know indeed I spoke with one or two of them in London and from speaking with them I found their manner to be inclusive and one could almost say ‘gentle.’
Well think that’s all for now – hope to hear more from you.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Yes, one of the slogans of the Dorje Kasung was “Not afraid to be a fool.”. Another was: “If you can distrust the rules laid down around you, and maintain a sense of humor, sucess will surely follow.” One of the greatest disappoinments among many in the direction of the mandala , has been the transformation of Kasung into palace guards. One of the most successful strategies, was to both disempower and “empower the Kasung” in this way by making them palace guards, instead of wrathful protectors of the dharma. At the time of the Regent, he really didn’t like the Kasung, and was in the process of disempowering them . They were becoming almost obsolete in terms of appreciated presence. So a more conservative position was better than nothing, I imagine.
And even now — way different views:
Personally it makes me quite nervous to send a comment to this board. My own experience in the past is that I am jumped on (that’s how I feel, it might not be QUITE that bad) for my views. Once I responded on sangha-announce to a post of Barbara Blouin’s about a new article on finances and had a response from Mr. Karelis that seared my hair. Several others in the community responded to me privately saying not to feel badly.
So, when those of you mention fear in the Shambhala community and a feeling of alienation please take a moment to recognize that you are creating that for some of us in a different context. In your cyber world.
As for exaggeration that Mr. Wright speaks of — I was at one of the congress’ that Mr. Karelis spoke of which I believe his post mentions not being allowed the microphone. (Cologne ’07) My recollection was that immediately after Carolyn Mandelker spoke about the new proposed curriculum, Mr. Karelis was given the microphone and he spoke at length about how bad the new curriculum was and how 98% of new people would not want it or something like that. (in other words, I believe Mr. Karelis has exaggerated not being able to speak at Congress’)
But I remember being struck by the 98% figure. Since I was NEW at the time, I took the microphone and refuted his comments, saying I would LOVE the new curriculum and I guess I represented the 2% that Mr. Karelis had not spoken to.
Later, in the same Congress Mr. Karelis was again given the microphone and spoke about the Shambhala finances and how bad they were.
It didn’t appear to me that he was in the least denied the opportunity to speak his mind.
Moreover, with regards to the recent post about the Kasung presence in Boulder — since I’ve only once visited for a few minutes, I do not have a direct experience but all the Kasung I’ve ever had the opportunity to speak directly with have been warm, friendly and quite intelligent.
Once again — it’s just a different view point.
Unfortunately I’m guessing not many who read this board attended or watched Pema Chodron yesterday at a Sangha Retreat in SMC — she spoke at LENGTH about those who irritate us — jokingly calling the person “Joe” — how we can be kind to everyone EXCEPT Joe — because we’ve known him since he was five and he IS NOT a nice person. On and on.
Perhaps we need to start calling each other Joe –
That would be more direct — like calling a spade a spade, right. That those of us on Side A — know that Joe(s) on side B just do not have basic goodness, that their motives are impure from the GET GO – that they don’t have the SAME intentions as Side A. And then we can flip it — and point the same fingers back at side A from Side B.
With love –
From Joe
Edit: For further clarity — Mr. Karelis didn’t mention WHICH Congress’ specifically just that he didn’t feel he or others were allowed microphone time at Congress’ nor at community meetings. I only experienced the ONE Congress with Mr. Karelis in Cologne. Perhaps the others his claim is true BUT he said — ALL Congress’ — thus my comment on exaggeration.
I took a look at some of the governance pages referenced above and especially this one: http://www.shambhala.org/community/govdocs/Governing_Structure.pdf
Like much of what comes out of SI, it was verbose and self-referential. It needs to be tightened up and simplified.
Anyway, in principle, it the orginizational structure doesn’t seem all that bad: advisers to the Sakyong, a council for affiliated groups and a board of directors for the legal and financial stuff.
Briefly, a number of things jumped out at me:
First, Richard Reoch has almost unlimited power. He chairs everything and appoints the administrators of the various centers. I assume he can replace them as well.. Regardless of his virtues and vices, this seems too much for one person.
Second, there are very view people from the CTR era represented in the higher councils. There are a number of their children, which I think is great, btw. I think many of the earlier generation feel excluded. This is, after all, an organization we worked very hard to build. It would be nice to be included in determining it’s fate.
Third, it does seem top heavy. The “Mandala Services” (which I think means the administration) gets pretty short shrift — too many chiefs and not enough Indians (as we used to say back in the day). “Vision” and “planning” are all well and good, but I wounder how they’re to be executed.
I didn’t see anything that showed how the adminisration was organized, what the head counts are and who runs what departments. This is, of course, the essence of how power is exercised in an organization. It’s also where they live and die.
It’s common for non-profits to create lots of committees, some charged with “organizing the volunteers” when there aren’t any volunteers to organize.
“The inclusiveness of Shambhala is based on all the different groupings under its umbrella recognising the Sakyong as the hereditary king of Shambhala. I don’t currently see that happening with either the Radio Free Shambhala folks or the Satdharma folks.”
This is an interesting comment that Nick Wright has made but whether the concept of hereditary king crosses over into formulating how people should practice and carry the teachings forward is debateable. We have had wars in the UK about the powers of Kings and in fact where a kings power can not reach. All of laws in the UK still have to signed in by the Queen and I think the Queen still has the power to remove a Head of State in her commonwealth terriotaries witness Gough Whitlams removal from power as prime minster in Australia in the 1970′s. I wonder if the same applies to Canuckland?!
But really religious practice has slowly be gleaned over the centuries from the influence of the monarch and it has been left up to each persons conscience as to how they wish to practice their religion. If ones samaya is with Patrick Sweeny, Chogyam Trungpa or even now perhaps Reginald Ray you are asking people too much to remain in the shambhala umbrella by showing alleigence to the Sakyong and his own personal way of appreciating the shambhala terma before all else.
Alleigence to a King does not preclude a divergent point of view from that of a King – in UK history many kings have come and gone and those that are successful allow their people to have essential freedoms to practice as they wish to. Compare for example the flowering of the arts in Queen Elizabeths I time with that of the repressions that her half sister Queen Mary exerted on her subjects.
This insistence on the shambhala buddhism as the way forward to the detriment of others belief in another conception of CTR’s shambhala terma I think will make many more people jump ship. So yes I think it is a crisis of sorts – maybe for people on the edge of the whole thing these views on rfs will contribute in them staying or leaving.
As to the role of the kasung in the whole thing – I think there are kasung lite and there are kasung proper…..in the UK all Her Majesties Forces have to make an oath of alleigence to the Monarch but when that Monarch transgresses shall we say the bounds of proper conduct it is the duty of the military to remove that monarch under the direct orders of the government. I think we came close to this with the Duke of Windsor in the Uk in recent history – I think if he had not abdicated the government may have removed him in due course. Where is this digression relevant to the present debate perhaps in the brief reply posted in regard to the relations with the Kasung and the Regent, so yes there has to be a balance of power between the military, the king and government for the country to be blessed with good governance.
Perhaps we should have more discussion on the role of the kasung in the differing views thread as Mr Wright has made some incisive comments on this debate.
best
Rita Ashworth
Hi Rita,
Thanks for your thoughts and insights. Here is what comes to mind–
“As to gentleness what do we really mean by this concept – what may appear gentle to some people maybe compliance with authority to another. I think gentleness in our culture is some what suspect – I think it needs to be explored most acutely that’s why I like Michael Haenke because he flips things so much emotionally in his films. Foucault is even more transgressive in regard to gentleness in that his own personal relationships with his friends may appear provocative and ‘ungentle’ to the outside observer.”
Another question could be asked: can gentleness actually manifest separately from fearlessness and intelligence, or do they, in practice, become ineffective or dormant once you try to remove or isolate one from the others?
Similarly, you could look at symbolism of the three central bodhisattvas in Buddhism and ask: can you actually engage in intelligence without energy and a concern for others?
“I also think we should explore governance in the same way that we explore Art because the occupations are somewhat similar. A Kalapa court that would work would encompass many political variations one has to allow for diversity here. Africa does have its chiefs you know indeed I spoke with one or two of them in London and from speaking with them I found their manner to be inclusive and one could almost say ‘gentle.’ ”
My own personal approach to organizational diversity is to stay connected with a few communities– my professional work environment, an exercise community, the Shambhala Buddhist community in capacity of volunteer, and so on..
In terms of societal variation and diversity within Shambhala Buddhist community, my experience has been that it is welcome, included, and invited– with art openings, poetry readings, music performances, and photography exhibits offered within the actual Shambhala Center..
In regard to organizational variation and diversity within the Kalapa Court, and by extension, the wider Shambhala Buddhist organization– in terms of practicality, it could be a bit unwieldy..
Should hospitals and public utilities also be run with a diversity of governance styles, the more the better? Or should they be run in a streamline manner by trained people of buoyancy and humor, in order to provide you with good service and get you on with your full day of creating art and practicing religious freedom?
What do you think?
Cheers,
Ian
Dear Ian
Thank you for your comments.
I agree it would be possible to work with SI in the art realm I am not arguing for the segregration of artists into political groupings as was done in the Soviet Union with bourgeoise art and socialist realist art.
Rather I am trying to get at the ideas of what CTR wanted to see in this world as an enlightened society. And here he urged us to use our critical
intelligence in the formulation of politics in our world. For example his criticism of politics in Washington but his praise of the Boulder council in the way it conducted its affairs – he thought the actions of the City Council more considered rather than the rush of senatorial politics in the capital.
And what does a city council do in our present system in the UK – it has to work with many diverse groupings, it has to accommodate their wishes as of course they pay their taxes too. In fact most councils in the UK I think
now have Diversity and Inclusion Officers. Diversity is also considered at a national level within the UK aswell with the creation of various committees on relationships with people of different faiths. So the whole thing might appear to be unwiedly but you have to construct your society in this way if it is to work properly.
As to religious organisations in regard to the present debates within SI
I was thinking of Archbishop Rowan Williams and his management of the Anglican church and how capably he has done that in keeping on board say reactionaries and liberals. Good marks to him for doing this!
So why could not the same be done within SI – I think at one point it may have been feasible for the Sakyong to do this but he preferred to be exclusive instead of inclusive in that Ray lost his position as an acharya and others are now contemplating whether to stay in the organisation because the teachings at present do not match with their own conception of the Vidyadharas teachings. The timing I think was on his side but he preferred to go with his own conception of things. I think a Shambhalian ruler should resolve things by bringing people on board if you want to run things properly. Why are so many people not on board if the whole thing is supposed to be the best thing since sliced bread?
As to gentleness I am testing it out in its many guises- for example I am attending a class on the Meisner Acting method which might appear confrontational to some people in that it has the exercise of people facing each other and commenting in rapid fire succession on physical attributes and mental conceptions. I think it is close to maybe the rinzai zen attitude to things – but anyway my point is that at the end of the whole thing people have become gentler and appreciative of each other. So gentleness is a big subject – can you really see when it is happening? I really have become most interested in acting. Trying to get some copies of Trungpa’s plays to see how they went. Been on this board a lot today because of day off -now running out of time…..
Also run out of spac….R!
To Ms. Baranay’s remark about my not being denied the microphone at the Cologne Congress, it is true that I was able to speak to the assemblage twice; however, she misrepresents how much. She said I spoke “at length” regarding the new curriculum. Actually, I spoke for about 30 seconds, after Ms. Mandelker’s 45-minute presentation–which is quite a bit of time, but not what Ms. Baranay said it was. Regarding finance, I spoke for a shorter time. Perhaps Ms. Baranay is confusing my remarks about curriculum on the conference floor with other remarks I made in the curriculum subgroup.
A significant problem at the Cologne conference was the division of the subgroups. They were structured in such a way that made it impossible to participate in more than one dialogue meaningfully, even though there were six or so principal subgroups. The subgroup discussions were then “summarized” by their leaders: I recall that the finance subgroup leader, a significant donor in Europe, summarized the subgroup conversations with nothing but a fundraising pitich, ignoring the call for transparency from the floor by another donor, who had said, “I don’t mind giving 10% of my money, so long as I know where it is going.”
Regarding Ms. Baranay “refuting” any statement about the shortcomings of the new curriculum, she did protest the crticism, but didn’t refute it, because she didn’t present any reasons, aside from her personal impressions of her own education, which have to be somewhat circumscribed by lack of contrast. Interestingly, the Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche threw out the curriculum she was defending a few months later.
My remark about the curriculum, incidentally, was that it didn’t address the needs of 97% of the people coming through our centers. I have visited about two-thirds of the Shambhala Centers in a teaching capacity many times, and I will stick by that estimate. Ms. Baranay is one of the lucky 3%, seemingly. That doesn’t refute what I said. Since 2007, the curriculum has lost even more of its Buddhist basis.
As far as my exaggerating my impressions of the Congresses, I did attend two of the three. The first Congress in Halifax was a nightmare of microphone abuse. For example, when an older, very honest and brave accountant stood up to criticize the SMC financial disclosure, she was silenced by fast-talking representatives of the SMC Board. The level of aggression from the official side, so to speak, was so high that very few dared to approach the microphone in the larger assemblage, for fear of being talked down. This is exactly why I decided to speak up at the third Congress in Cologne.
Also, at the first Congress, meditaton practice was used, and even presented, as calming the anticipated discontent from participants–a use of meditation I hope I never see again in my life.
In short, the Congresses aren’t Congresses in the sense that they represent the expressed concerns of the sangha in a meaningful way.
“The tone of this Kasung-executed control is often threat and repression, even without specific threat of reprisal.” – Bill Karelis
What’s this mean? General threat? Like, “Why I oughtta!”? Bang zoom!
Or is it a Buddhist form of Threat and Reprisal which is Threat and Reprisal, Not Threat and Reprisal, Not Both Threat and Reprisal, and Not Neither Threat and Reprisal?
Crikey. Panties are definitely all bunched up. Practice, cry, work, sleep, practice, laugh. It’s nice to know y’all are all so psyched to propogate the teachings but the first thing any students see is your bunched up panties.
“When Dapon Southward made his not-so-invisible presence known.”
-Bill Karelis
Dude. Are you saying he is fat? That’s cold.
Bill’s not-so-poverty-stricken presence can be somewhat room-emptying as well, I’d venture.
In fact, except for straight dharma and crazy old stories, very few “Senior Students” should be allowed to have microphones. It makes sense, by the way. I hope that in the next 30 years I learn to keep my mouth shut, too.
Dear Davee:
Myso called ad hominem remarks about President Reoch are not throw away insults, or changing the subject. They are on point. My experience from years of dealing with him, is that he is primarily there to soothe away problems, not implement input from the sangha, or substantially address concerns. Unlike you, I have spent hours and hours on the phone with him, first about property that was possessed illegally by a rich donor, promises led to nothing. He is now in state care custodially and physically. No sangha take care of him any more, and the family has no longer any final say in his care, unless they want him back. She still possesses my property.
And again about preventing Tagi Mukpo from being put in total custodial and state care, promises, verbally and to the larger sangha in Shambhala addresses, again led to nothing. These remarks about listening and making people feel like they are being heard, and then nothing is prevented or changed, comes from direct experience. Either Richard Reoch is powerless to make changes he has literally promised with tears in his eyes or he is simply there to make people “feel good” momentarily and make the latest crisis go away.
Apologies for the paragraph confusion. It is very difficult to make changes and type on this site.
Richard Reoch is very good at what he does, that is all I am saying. He is very good at listening, and making people feel that they are listened to, and then nothing changes. One of the skills I assume he learned as a PR person for Amnesty international. Public Relations is what it is, crisis management at the first intervention level, and making sure that appearances are taken care of. It is not about solving or resolving the problems in a fundamental way. As he himself once said on Chronicles, he “channels the Sakyong” thus he is simply implementing corporate policy, not creating it.
Humorism. Yes, maybe you should keep your mouth shut, but not just yet. Your take on the seriousness of this thread, as well as the laughs, are priceless.
Rob, re Both The Sakyong and Richard Reoch were very much enthusiastic about having Satdharma be included in the Shambhala community at the urging of Khenpo Tsutrim Gyamtso., from what I knew Richard Reoch was the driving force for that, pulling the Sakyong along and negotiating with Lady Diana, but in any case the Sakyong’s condition for accepting Patrick Sweeney was that Patrick not have a lineage successor. Not really a feast of dharma. Transmission isn’t really transmission if you can’t propagate it.
A good example of a feast of dharma, by the way, was the “other” Rinchen Terdzod, where many tulkus and tertons and practitioners celebrated their many intertwined strands and traditions. How about having that kind of open and generous approach within our greater community, and with our lineage siblings of many generations?
Hi. I think it is better to talk about happy things like skateboards. I like Buddha. I like Bill Karelis, though he is a little whacked. I like white clothes. I think the Sakyong must not eat scambled eggs before a talk.
White umbrellas are not that good for sun.
my pencil is only good for writing things temporarily.
Did you all guys know that digital storage can sometimes get lost, like if the hard drive crashes and stuff?
I have a lot of theories.
I know a lot of things.
I don’t need to meditate because I have used my concept to become invincible.
Like Reggie Ray.
I used to drink a lot of coca-cola, but not really much anymore.
tonight I ate chicken because I thought it was tofu.
Mind is deceptive.
Democracy is silly.
I don’t eat scambled eggs much.
maybe the talking is getting bothersome to the talkers.
Read maxim, airbrushed boobies.
See you later
the cow says. . .
Maha-moo-dra.
Comparing attempts to heal late 1980s split in Vajradhatu with the inclusiveness of the Rinchen Terdzo seems inappropriate to me, to say the least. For one thing, the Chronicles article on the Rinchen Terdzo does not mention the healing or accommodation of splits as profound as the one that happened surrounding the Regent appointing his own dharma heir in defiance of those he had split with. I won’t go so far as citing of the Rinchen Terdzo as disingenuous–perhaps instead as another example of the “anything goes” view that often caused the Vidyadhara heartburn–as I experienced him. Others may disagree.
Martin, what stands our for me from the Kalapa Council report linked from the governance page:
- the direction of power is 100% outward from the center: there is no circulation of power/energies. The center is solidified and protected, with access to it filtered.
- as such it turns mandala into hierarchy, as opposed to energy that’s both chaotic and naturally ordered around a center that is open, radically empty, and communicative.
- two new legal, corporate entities are introduced. Kalapa has previously been discussed on this site. This document makes clear that Kalapa, a corporation distinct from Shambhala International (which legally is Vajradhatu), is moving to transfer and hold all the power, rights, and ownership of key assets (including of Chogyam Trungpa’s legacy and of the Stupa and of Kalapa Valley), with what looks like no accountability or checks and balances, and no effective role for sangha or even government in a larger sense.
- the second new corporation is Sakyong Ladrang, the family/household entity: committed to the protection and support of the lineage of Sakyong kings—past, present, and future. It is the repository of the wealth and sacred legacy of the lineage.
In a way the forms and entities themselves are not really the core of the issue – it is the energy they embody. People experience that energy differently, pretty obviously, and that affects how they see the forms. However, to me dharma means that it’s not all relative, and is to some extent the practice of seeing through your projections, to pretty ordinary relative truth (“things as they are”). I think it’s important to hold your seat, to care for the world, and to look at this both clearly and kindly.
Mark
A lot of what I knew about Patrick Sweeney was what Vajradhatu / Shambhala openly reported. I had know idea there were conditions attached to his lineage holdership.
I do recall second hand information where Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche wondered how a Regent could have a Regent.
This is news to me.
What you quoted from the Governance manfesto reminded me of a quote from some Iceland college kids fresh out of business school in America who ruined Iceland financially, and bought 8 percent of American Airlines, and was dictating to American Airlines what to do, never mind they new nothing first hand about business, but airlines.
I still wonder to this day who is in charge.
If what you quoted was a direct quote from the Sakyong (the Governence statement), I’ll back off (for some reason, my spell check isn’t working here for the moment).
Make sense out of the people who from Icelaland bought 8% of American Airlines in a press release before Iceland lost all of their country’s money:
“our suggestions including monetizing assets..that can be used to reduce debt or return capital to share holders”.
Huh?
It didn’t make sense.
Rob
“danny goldberger” writes:
Hi. I think it is better to talk about happy things like skateboards.
Hi danny. Taking your comment at face value, this sounds like an attempt at censorship, doesn’t it?
You would like us to only talk about happy things. Unhappy things– e.g. dissent, or disagreement, or not liking something– is not so good, not so approved by you. This is not censorship in a top-down gestapo manner, but more an attempt at mild-mannered peer-pressure censorship. Wouldn’t you say?
I don’t mean to single you out. Speaking as an outsider, I think this sangha as a whole (and probably English-speaking society as a whole) has a taboo about dissent or about sharing raw and rugged emotions, or just about disagreements. Whenever there is a heated discussion on this website, there are always people who seem to jump in and try to diffuse the “heat” and make it into an unheated discussion.
But perhaps the heat or the tension or the conflict or duality is not as threatening as we think it is? Does trying to control the duality reduce the aggression in the situation?
If we are afraid of duality, there will always be a taboo about dissent, I think.
[VCTR, from the unpublished poetry, 30 October 1969:]
Polarity makes two love
Polarity makes two love
It is polarity where the music starts
It is polarity where the true emotion lies
But this polarity makes a bridge
Where the two poles meet at the summit
It is the skillful means and wisdom where two things could coordinate
Or co-exist in one
As two wings of a bird
It must be in the state of harmony
Or for that matter
Birds could have eight wings
And still remain in the state of co-existence
That is Plato’s philosophy of freedom and humanistic wisdom
I am in the West
Therefore I could be regarded as a Westerner
What is most interesting is not what Richard Reoch, President of Shambhala International , actually said or didn’t say in this interview with Andrew Safer, but the fact that he even agreed to an interview to be published on this site.
When a repressive organization or authoritative regime approaches a final crisis a certain thing begins to happen: a mysterious and unstoppable fissure begins to take place. All of a sudden people just know the game is up and they cease to be afraid. More and more, speak out, indifferent to the censure rules set out by the repressive regime any longer. For the President of Shambhala to be even giving an interview on RFS seems to be one of those panic reactions .
The apologists for SI laughed, I remember, at the name “Radio Free Shambhala” but it seems to have been more apporpriate than even RFS knew.
Like you, Chris, as I’ve said here before, I’m surprised by the interview and Mr. Reoch’s statements. I’m also surprised that other’s aren’t more surprised.
I sense a hesitancy of some sort here, to really examine what Mr. Reoch had to say.
I welcome Edwards comment on Danny’s post but Danny’s post is also quite funny too!
Yeh I agree Edward dissent has to be debated -one just cant get away with it in ordinary life or in the arts – climaxes to all things! I dont think
we would be human if we were not annoyed by stuff.
Re the seariness of the whole debate I remember an image that CTR
used about a pterodactyl. He said even if you see a pterodactyl in the sky
you could just say ahhhhhh-there is pterodactyl in the blue sky. So yes
I think we can have arguements as you stated and still remain mindful in
the fierceful quality of them.
So I hope Mr Goldberger posts again and asks or makes some suggestions about the whole debate.
best
Rita Ashworth
stockport uk
I see both in Andrew Safer’s questions and Bill Karelis’s comments that “Many of these senior students do not feel that there is room for them within the Shambhala mandala.” and there is “fear and sense of intimidation among senior students”. I am genuinely sorry that that is the case, but are such comments based on the notion that there is nothing but innocence in the hearts of all these parties?
I’m not denying the verity of any of these comments, but I want to point out that many senior students and many newer students have had to bear many insults and much ridicule about their intelligence and their devotion to the Sakyong—including their love for the lineage of Sakyongs—for many years, as well.
There are a rare and few innocent parties, here at this gathering, and unkind comments always come back to haunt us.
Perhaps I misunderstood danny goldberger’s comments.
It sounded like he was saying “I have no soft spot. This discussion does not affect me in any way, I am above it. My hands are clean. Other people are whacked, but I am amused with skateboards.”
Quite possibly this was not at all what he was trying to communicate, but it’s how I interpreted his remarks. I’m sorry if I was too critical, or trying to censor other people, or being a jerk, or not being patient enough to listen more closely.
. . . .
I’m still curious about something I was told last year by the designated speaker at a Shambhala Buddhism intro event. I was told “The Sakyong has said that we have to say the goal of practice is to attain a calm state of mind.”
I have two questions about this:
1) Is this Trungpa Rinpoche’s teaching, that SMR is helping to preserve?
2) If our goal is to attain a calm state of mind (and perhaps to preserve that state once we attain it), does that leave any room for discussion, or disagreement? Would we be better off not having open microphones, just friendly people to politely silence discussion and help calm our minds once again?
Or am I misunderstanding this? Am I the only one confused by this?
Hi Edward, I doubt this is the best place for practice questions. Perhaps finding a meditation instructor that you work well with would be better.
But to your question, no. A calm mind is not the ultimate point. But stability of mind is a prerequisite for doing other practices like contemplation, compassion practice, sadhanas, etc. Therefore, the Sakyong recommends practices like Shamatha that develop stability among other things so then one can move further. And intro events are usually teaching what we call Shamatha. CTR also had us do a lot of Shamatha, I believe for the same and honestly quite traditional reasons. Nothing really innovative about it, though he taught more formless versions of that technique here than is traditional and the Sakyong has suggested students start with a more precise variant.
Does this prevent dissent? I don’t think so, but it might help ensure that discussion and dissent is born out of intelligence more so than klesha.
“the censure rules set out by the repressive regime”
Chris you’re really wacky; lol. help! help! i’m being oppressed! Clearly basic goodness, in accord with openness and diversity, has nothing to do with it! It must be the calm before the collapse of the regime!! pfpfpf
This is an organization for and run almost entirely by volunteers. Try to get anything done, and you’ll see quickly if there is any real power being in a “position of authority” here. ha!
“Shamatha” means the development of peace, and stability of mind, meaning not being swept away by thoughts and emotions, is certainly necessary to proceed along the path. But the goal is full awakening, enlightenment, if you will, which, at least in Tibetian Buddhism, at least from VCTR’s approach, requires the Mahayana and Vajrayana paths. In “As It Is”, Tulku Ugen speaks on the limitations of shamatha practice, as one example. I am doubtful that SMR would be teaching that “all you need is shamatha”, but then, I don’t really know.
“Chris you’re really wacky; lol. help! help”
So much for admonishments about ad hominem arguments. Your really funny , Davee. I guess you forgot about the ad hominem admonishments, when it comes to you own arguments. Must have hit a soft spot. You compliment me . Do you think your insults would stop most of us anymore? That’s the point I was making. Social kudos or insults all the same now when it comes from people who only want “peace” and conformity. We are beyond that because we don’t care anymore about appearances. That’s my point.
I will say it again, if all was right in the current scene in SI, you all wouldn’t even be paying attention to what is said here. You just wouldn’t. . Particularly Pres. Reoch and Shambhala loyalists who always are on the ready with ad hominen remarks when they can’t answer in the universe of discourse .. It means that there is some kind of panic spreading, within the organiza tion and it will crumble from within.
By the way, the rumour out “on the streets” outside this mandala, far and wide, amongst those watching from a more bird’s eye view, is that SI doesn’t have long here in the States or Canada. The loyalists are always the last to know, in a closed system, what is happening. Lost of luck to you too, Davee sincerely. Perhaps learning Chinese is advised.
“Chris you’re really wacky; lol. help! help”
So much for admonishments about ad hominem arguments. Your really funny , Davee.
.
I will say it again, if all was right in the current scene in SI, you all wouldn’t even be paying attention to what is said here. You’d be doing whatever you do, within the mandala.. Particularly Pres. Reoch. It means that there is some kind of panic spreading, within the organization and you can’t stop the flow of the shift that is taking place.
Believe it or not, this site was not set up to convince loyalists like yourself. .Why are you feeling that it is? I believe it was a forum set up, and had to be set up because of repression within SI. Its very existence demonstrates the repression.
Chris writes:
“By the way, the rumour out “on the streets” outside this mandala, far and wide, amongst those watching from a more bird’s eye view, is that SI doesn’t have long here in the States or Canada. The loyalists are always the last to know, in a closed system, what is happening. Lost of luck to you too, Davee sincerely. Perhaps learning Chinese is advised.”
Hmm, could be.. that’s where The Onion seems to have headed.
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/internet_adds_12th_website?utm_source=a-section
Cheers,
Ian
I didn’t mean wacky as in crazy, I meant wacky as in funny. But my apologies for being insulting. I found your comment so unexpected it gave me a good laugh. I need more shamatha clearly.
Learn Chinese! You’re cracking me up again.
Really though, do you actually think the most likely reason that people – whom are still inspired by the direction shambhala is going in – would be here to discuss with those who are not so inspired is because there is some kind of panic spreading ?!? Or that Mr. Reoch would talk to Mr. Safer for such reasons? I find that assertion beyond bizarre. I thought folks here *wanted* more discussion generally. Maybe it’s just me. I’ll try to shut it, I’m creating censorship apparently.
Thank you for your clarity. What I mean is, loyalists who are going along with the program and are happy with the current situation, would not experience repression. They would experience reinforcment and appreciation for being on the side of the “good” in little letters. So, for you to argue with other’s expression of a different experience, is not given much weight. No offence, but you cannot mystify or argue people out of their experience. I would imagine, that those that go along are made to feel very very appreciated. That all is fine in the world, and you are fine, and everything is wonderful. Nothing wrong with that. The good Germans in Nazi Germany had the same beautific smiles about there version of “Shambhala” to use an extreme example. It was only when things so fell apart that even they couldn’t deny what was happening anymore, to use an extreme version of “in” group out group.
I recently spoke with an old dharma friend who attended a program as a helper. This person sat in on dharma discussions, and as an old Trungpa student naively tried to shareexperiences with the way CTR taught mediation, or S-V. This person was censored, made to feel crazy, and the director scheduled a meeting with to discuss waywardness. This friend is by no means an “anarchist” or trouble maker. Even people now, that have been on fence somewhat, are made to feel censored by the slightes variation with the current program and correct way of doing things. This is not Shambhala view. Sorry, Davee, but you couldn’t really know whether their is repression/oppression because you sound like a happy camper..
I can’t argue with someone’s experience true, nor you with mine. But a lot more gets posted here than someone’s experience and there is still much that could be discussed.
Mmm, comformity is not an all or nothing kind of thing. You could even argue that in Shambhala Training a discipline of the practice is how one dresses and holds themselves. But even at a basic level, we need some conformity to have a culture and socialization. We don’t take off our shoes and pick our toes in front of a class while teaching. That’s conformity. But you’re talking about presenting only one dharma? Well in a curriculum, there is a range of things that are recommended. Otherwise you’re teaching a muddle. We don’t teach all techniques in level 1, we teach open technique. Some directors diverge from curriculum, but only so far. So there is some conformity that is quite reasonable. And I’m sure I can think of some stories that would *not* be appropriate to share at a level 1 program, can you think of any? Not because they’re all that secret, they’d just be tacky to share or confusing. But then it’s a judgment call, and people have a mix of opinions about what is appropriate at a setting. Some are in the Shambhala Training manual, though picking one’s toes in public is not explicitly mentioned, so sure you could say Shambhala International is setting standards for presenting the dharma. But that’s the job of SI too, to a certain degree, since what we do is teach the dharma. There must be *some* quality control yes? That doesn’t mean conformity to a single presentation, but it does mean a certain range of reasonableness and accuracy. The Vidhyadhara explicitly asked us not to corrupt the dharma. He also asked us to hold ourselves a certain way and be descent and wear ties and all sorts of things to conform to.
But I have no idea what stories your friend told, so I can’t comment upon my experience of them as censorship or just told in poor judgment or if i would agree or disagree with the leadership of that center. Sounds like you experience them as censorship. I certainly see other possibilities knowing no more detail. I’ve seen a range of situations already in classes from what I saw as helpful to not so helpful. And as a community that holds and transmits the dharma, i posit that our job should be to find what is helpful and discern what is not helpful and avoid what is not helpful. But that’s ongoing discernment as we go along, requiring sensitivity and intelligence.
You guys bait the best hooks. With the best bait too!
Chris: do the rumor specialists you refer to indicate that SI is just going to collapse or that it’s going to be packed up in shipping containers and sent to Hong Kong?
Mark S. and Bill K.: is it possible that the SI investment portfolio is wobbly or has been dimished to such a degree that the organizational moves to protect assets is actually that? I ask from a completely innocent and naive place, but nevertheless wonder if that could be the thinking at Corporate? Contained and protected so that if the whole portfolio become close to worthless in the market those artifacts, copyrights and so on could not be seized by lenders or investors or whomever might be able to mount litigation to claim them?
(moments later) Huh. I can’t really believe you played the Nazi card, Chris. So we’ve got foamy AIDS hysteria (20 years later) and Nazi comparisons. Huh.
Dear All,
Not sooner than today I had the chance to read the interview with President Reoch. I’m glad I’ve read it, because it seems to me that Richard revealed one very important point, which is how he uses – as he wrote – “the office (…), and the authority that goes with it.”
I would like to invite everybody to a heuristic joke with a leading idea of how to decode what Mr. President says.
1) So how he uses the office? He talks.
“I and others have been in conversation with some of the long-term acharyas (…)”
“Maybe now that the current orientation of the path is getting clearer, we need to have a conversation …”
“I’ve been in discussions …”, “I’ve had some initial conversation with some of the longer-term students and Acharyas…”, “I talked to Larry Mermelstein, (…).”, “Wherever I go, I invite people to talk to me…”
And last but not least:
“When Radio Free Shambhala was established, people contacted me as if this was the end of the world. “No, just think ahead,” I said. (…)”
2) What is the quality of those conversations?
Some did not arise yet (“Maybe now … we need to have a conversation”), other were just “initial” or about something which at this stage just “could be” (“what could be the support”).
3) What is the intention to lead those conversations?
“to see what is the practice support”, “how to create a …helpful framework”, “(to) create a social framework in which we understand that people will have different points of view”, “so I can find out more about it”, “try to learn from them.”
…to me nice and polite but useless.
4) Are those conversations enough? No.
“We genuinely have to go deeper, beneath this level of argument, to find the commonality.”
Where?
“in an archetypal sense, in our subconscious.” – I admit this phrase was used differently but somehow fits in this logic emerging from above quotations, doesn’t it?
5) Does this entire approach make sense?
“Probably most of us can’t even fathom it.”
It is striking that we can’t learn from the President what he actually did. After so much talking taking any action would be a proper thing to do, wouldn’t it?
6) “I had no idea the extent to which this community was traumatized. When I asked what issues were not being addressed, people were afraid to name the issues.”
Hmmm, I would not mystify this fear in its most simple form. Most of us are capable to lead our lives and work sometimes with much bigger and more complex challenges. After all this community is not that big. I’m sorry to state that, but in many cases it is the level of nonsense which might be taken as some sort of traumatizing power.
If this is time for Glasnost and Perestroika it is good to remember that Glasnost only created auspicious environment for Eastern Europe to regain freedom. Russia however was left in the cold with Yeltsin, the drunk , who paved the way for Putin. The conversations are not the essence of what is needed at all. What the people need is reality with no artificial administrative obstacles for their freedom, so that they could fulfill their lives with no intervention of usurpers who are stealing their live.
7) President Reoch wrote:
“One problem with the transplantation of egoless devotion from a culture like Tibet to a culture like we have in the West is we don’t have a tradition of lineage in modern form. We don’t have the cultural roots to support that. We are all grappling with how to understand this profound teaching.”
Well, Mr. President, I’m honored to completely disagree with you. In the West we have countless brilliant traditions and people working tireless and egoless for the benefit of others even if not being supported by the heritage of the Buddha. One important stream is the tradition of debate starting from Greek agora including e.g. at Wittgenstein (“What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence.”) Also if I may offer kind of common sense idea, it seems it is better to deal with a decent man and disciplined thinker even if he or she never had heard about egolessness than with smart charlatan using the “dharmic” jargon. So in the case Mr. President is right, that we don’t the sufficient cultural roots, there is still a huge potential in this situation we are dealing with. Since as far as I know only few are truly enlightened the ideals of decency and precise, consequent thinking are quite good.
“Huh. I can’t really believe you played the Nazi card, Chris.
FYI people outside the SI mandala, who have even briefly been through the revolving doors, are referring to it as the Buddhist Facist wing of buddhist religious groups.
What Buddha Taught: A Doha from the Talk on Abhiseka
When “this” is beyond words,
How does “that” work?
How do we know “that” works
If we don’t understand what “this” is all about?
When we transcend “this” and “that” altogether,
How do we perform bodhisattva actions,
Which seems to suggest having full understanding
Of “this” and “that” put together?
If “this” and “that” are simply mirage-like,
Pure conception alone,
How do we understand that “this” and “that” are in the state of one taste,
Or they are co-emergent?
Nonetheless, realizing “this” and “that” are one in the all sense,
We begin to find vast space which neither has beginning nor end.
Hey ho!
Why don’t we come together in that particular state
Which is free from “that” and “this”?
Let us experience the ultimate joy which transcends any petty joy.
Let us think bigger.
Let us develop greater vision
Which consists of mixture between intense blue and vermilion red.
Let us sing and dance.
[VCTR, Bedford Springs, PA, March, 1982]
re: fascism; that criticism was laid first against the Vidhyadhara in a very public way (see his wikipedia article).
but that criticism was mostly, in my opinion, simply people misunderstanding devotion and the vajrayana approach. comparing us to the theravada and other groups – who are now prolific in many cities – we do look quite different and i can see the confusion.
though perhaps the Vidhyadhara did use a sense of exclusivity and inner circle as a motivation tool or a way to inspire further effort? I don’t know. I don’t experience a sense of inner circle really with the Sakyong because there is not much of a “scene” going on. I experience it as pretty straightforward and simple teaching situation. Of course in a volunteer organization, the more one volunteers the more one is plugged in or the more responsibility one might be asked to take on, so there is inner and outer in that sense. But that’s voluntary. And there are social dynamics in any volunteer organization.
Again, I suspect Mr. Reoch is mostly talking to people as a course of action because it’s a volunteer organization. One can’t really order people around so much, you know? If you want something done here, you have to do it yourself. That isn’t a kind of non-theism ethic so much as just the reality in any volunteer organization. Though we might consider how much our demands on the organization can become a kind of theism.
Dear Roman:
Thanks for that break-down of Richard Reoch’s interview.
Hours and hours of talking, and listening with him. He is just amazingly skilled in this. And then you realize, after nothing is done, or changed, that it was just a phenomenal waste of time because of the wrong expectations. He was simply there to garner the differing “views” of people and to help develop another public relations /marketing strategy that will incorporate some aspects of what was said and “talked about” in the latest introduction in the Shambhala Address, or Harvest of Peace Address, or the 16th version of the curriculum/Shambhala view of reality.
One realizes, too late, that your hours of “sharing” were actually hijacked into the latest PR spin to simply “protect” the mandala from current or anticipated dissent or trouble and to spin out the next magic show of delusion.
The reason there was a “scene” around VCTR was that he was relating directly and constantly with his students, beyond the formal teaching situation. The reason there is no “scene” now, is because SMR is not doing that.
different teacher, different style. if you want a scene, there are plenty probably.
am i the only person who sees this organization as voluntary and run by volunteers? why are we so demandy all the time. sure Mr. Reoch has some ability to do things, but to me it seems incredibly limited by just the reality of a volunteer, donation-based organization. at other volunteer, donation-based organizations mostly what one does is inspire the volunteers. and that’s all you can do to get anything done. and that is mostly talking, no? what else would he do, use a whip? there is some budget decisions, but international does not have a surplus of income to throw around at solving problems. the services provided are most basic still. so i think the bottom line is it is up to us, and always was that way. nothing new there.
Volunteers? Yes at the lowest level. Just like medieval monasteries. But this is not a volunteer situation anymore, like it was.
Adminstrators and Acharyas are paid with salaries and teaching gifts, the former director of SMC , I heard, had also a SUV as a perk , and believe me, when you are approaching retirement you are not going to jeopardize your livelihood by “speaking out”.
People who literally wrote the books were “paid” by being appointed Acharyas, which then led to livelihood salaries , teaching gifts and perks.
Goodness Davee, you can’t be this naive.
I’m not naive. Sure there are a few jobs in the sangha, especially at the land centers where there’s full time work to do. But really there isn’t much of that. And the salaries are not great.
Does SI have a big staff of 50 people or something? no it doesn’t. Maybe it has 1/10th of that. Mr. Reoch did for a long while work for the sangha without drawing a salary at all, maybe that’s still the case. The international organization that people here like to harp on so much has as much staff as a corner coffee shop. It’s not a “government”, it’s a coffee shop! (a pretty uplifted and nice looking one though, with some damn good coffee to share) And you can talk to the President of the cafe if you want, even the cook if you are so inspired. The last cook was pretty outrageous, the current cook is less so.
i’m just surprised when anyone complains that something isn’t getting done the way they want. it’s like we’re sitting at the counter complaining that the place is unkept. well pick up a broom, dammit. ok, some things you can’t sweep yourself. if you don’t like the special today, pick something else on the menu. or add a grain of salt. or eat somewhere else if you really can’t stomach it. but it’s rude to sit at the counter and endlessly berate the customers as to how much better the food was with the last cook. would anyone decent really do that at a cafe? some of us do like the food. ok, i took that metaphor way too far.
Hi Davee,
I would like to invite some non-Buddhist friends and associates to donate hundreds of dollars to Shambhala International.
They would do this in return for being able to consider VCTR’s Shambhala teachings and sit with others for a weekend. And as part of the deal, the person tasked with protecting the Shambhala tradition (the Sakyong) would agree not to combine it with Buddhism, so my friends could feel like full participants, rather than second-class citizens. The Sakyong would also agree to take advice from VCTR’s students, as VCTR suggested in his commentary on his will.
Do we have a deal?
I fear that the more SI turns away potential customers, or alienates older students, the more its revenue could diminish.
Being poor might be a fantastic credential to some volunteers or employees, to show how dedicated they are, but part of their poverty could be directly related to SI’s corporate policies, or to SMR’s decision to break with his father regarding Shambhala.
I personally don’t have any desire for SI to crumble to dust, I just wish it had something to give that I wanted to receive and that it wanted to receive what I have to give.
On a side note, can someone tell me what VCTR said about doing Shambhala training inside the Vajradhatu centers?
I heard that initially he was very much opposed to this, and wanted Shambhala training to take place OUTSIDE of the existing Buddhist centers, but the students said this was not possible because of financial reasons.
What happened after that? Did VCTR make further comments about this?
I ask because I wonder if this is one of the roots of the whole desire to gradually do away with Shambhala training today, as a set of separate programs. Maybe there really are major problems that come from doing two separate traditions in the same spaces.
Did VCTR ever approve of this? Did he say more about it?
Re Chris’s comment that SI doesnt have much longer in the states and Canada – I dont know if this is true or not but I do know that older students are forming their own organisations like Ray and Midal and they are probably garnering students that would have formerly gone to SI – so this is a concrete fact and it is happening, and I think there will be more older students doing the same thing in the future aswell.But of course these older students will have their own new students and they will take their tradition forward aswell.
All this reminds me about what happened with John Wesley the founder of the Methodist church in the UK -he did not want to split from the church
of England but he was forced to do so and as he was such a charismatic
figure he got many people to follow him to the extent that our social
reforms in the UK were influenced by prominent Methodists of the time.
Perhaps an older student will write a book that just hits people – the
success of religion just spins on ordinary factors such as these matters
at times, witness for example CTR writing Meditation in Action and it
having a profound effect on Samuel Bercholz.. So in this early time
of dharma propagation in the west things can change wildly an organisation that was up I think could down just as quickly. For the organisation to stay up I think it would take practice in all its facets – I think this because in trying to organise events over here I have been going round to some churches – I was impressed by a Christian Science group in my local area who had an open bookshop for people to drop in – it was a very inviting atmosphere and the people were really helpful. So yes there is that people factor to the whole thing.
Re the incident about the old CTR student at the new Shambhala level – in London we had a really, really old student from the Samye Ling days in the 60’s –people were into him or not into him – I personally liked him as he upset the apple cart of the discussion groups a lot –it was so much fun to me. I see you have to get over so much information in a Level I I know that but could not the space just be an open space –screw it up a little……I think it would be great. You know the person who
ends up the winner of Big Brother is a not person that follows all the rules –people need transgression as they need a cup of tea in the morning!
Best
Rita Ashworth
Just a brief reply to Edwards question re the original set up of the two
teaching streams.
I know from living in Halifax from 1991-1995 that a separate location was
used for Shambhala -it was above an office building near the city -but at some point Shambhala moved into the Tower Road building.
Even curiouser in the London Shambhala centre they would hang the shambhala banner on the partition so that you were facing away from the
Buddhist shrine – so it became a shambhala environment – at some
point also a shambhala shrine was set up with the ashe -so there were two shrines. Its interesting that you said CTR wanted the traditions in
two separate buildings I had not heard that -where did you get that
information from thats an interesting spin on things. Hope you can tell me
about this……
Best
Rita Ashworth
Well, Edward, my cafe analogy is perhaps too materialistic. But the menu has been changing true. Shambhala Training as I know it has not changed explicitly. Just asking a Director to avoid any Buddhist analogies, which always had a risk of occurring.
What is explicitly changing is the Buddhist curriculum which is going to be taught with Shambhala metaphors to a greater degree. So the Shambhala Training entrees and appetizers are about the same. But the Tibetan cuisine portion of the menu is getting some fusion influences from the new cook, more Japanese flavors, and not everyone likes it sure.
I don’t think anyone is a second class customer – though not everyone likes all cuisines (of course). Fine to be selective with the menu, unless you want to learn to cook the cuisine too. And every seat is in the VIP section.
Rita Ashworth writes:
interesting that you said CTR wanted the traditions in two separate buildings I had not heard that -where did you get that information from thats an interesting spin on things.
Rita, please see Mr. Martin Fritter’s comments of June 22, 2009 at 2:51pm on this page: http://radiofreeshambhala.org/2009/06/new-curriculum/
He says:
when Shambhala Training was started the was not supposed to take place in any of the Vajradhatu facilities – Dharmadhatus, KD, RMDC and so on.
I personally would like to hear more about this. What did VCTR say about it initially and over time?
Although the Vidyadhara encouraged a healthy skepticism/cynicism in us, he also warned us about the problems with cynicism. He said that it was too easy to become cynical—all one needed to do was to criticize everything.
Alternately, having just returned from Scorpion Seal retreat, I can tell you that it was a massive, heartwarming, brilliant and unrelenting Trungpa-fest with endless and constant quotes from the Vidyadhara; with many incredibly thorough teachings on CTR’s brilliant teachings on the ayatanas; hearing inner outer and secret instructions on the practice; and hearing from many senior students who were simply amazed at this event intended to carry forward these most profound teachings and heart-blood of the incomparable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Based on that experience, I would have to say that in order to keep the vast majority of these arguments on RFS afloat, I would recommend staying far away from the Scorpion Seal teachings.
On the other hand, if many of you are feeling courageous and daring, I’d highly recommend getting to the Scorpion Seal Assembly asap. You’ll be amazed at how CTR is so alive and so well and so vital in the current Shambhala scene. Don’t stay away from this—your root guru’s precious terma—it is your inheritance. This is the Sakyong’s courageous gift to you.
Alan:
You wrote:
“On the other hand, if many of you are feeling courageous and daring, I’d highly recommend getting to the Scorpion Seal Assembly asap.”
It’s a Catch-22. In order to go to Scorpion Seal Assembly, you have to be a student of the Sakyong, i.e., receive abhisheka from him. In other words, you can’t get there from here.
Yes, I wonder if by the time you reach Scorpion Seal if you haven’t had all the “courageous and daring” whipped out of you, so it seems really
fantastic….which could work, by the way…it’s a matter of contrast.
Personally I feel slightly “courageous and daring” to continue my path
without guidlines….although, I must add, I have a teacher now that has more
confidence in me than I do…
…exactly the same as VCTR did. Funny, isn’t it…these words?
John – I believe your teacher is now Khandro Rinpoche. I have had the good fortune of hearing (over and over as I love it) a 2 CD talk she gave in Boston Shambhala Center about emptiness. As well as a talk I attended of hers in Vershire at Dzigar Kongtrul retreat in 2006. A general dharma talk.
In both she was quite clear about kindness — about how it’s important to be kind to each other regardless of lineage.
She goes on in the Vershire CD to talk about NOT being the type of Buddhist who people make a U-Turn when they see you coming. That that type of Buddhist misses the point — kindness, generosity, compassion.
At this point, if I see you coming — I’m tellin’ ya — I’m taking a U turn — along with many others who post here.
And not because I don’t have courage and daring but because I have courage and daring and have chosen to recognize what HE Khandro Rinpoche says “An absolutely enlightened heart would be of no value if it wasn’t a sympathetic heart.” Why would I want to meet up with you. I wouldn’t.
I’m happy though for you John that she has confidence in you. That is way we seek teachers, isn’t it?
Perhaps you might TRY to be happy for others who have found teachers as well without telling them they have been whipped and subdued to a point of mindless discernment.
Tsk tsk
Joe
Hmmm — in re-reading your post John — perhaps you were saying something actually kind.
Not sure – I just can’t tell.
In any case, I’d probably stop to ask if I did see you. Not turn around –
Joe
Dear Joe:
Self-righteous moralizing about someone’s style of expression, is not usually what is meant by kindness in Buddhism.What your doing/ perpetrating is a Christian view, and a fundamentalist view at that. Admonishing others and moralizing them into your view of kindness.
I can guarantee that you would have done a U-turn
if you had tried to enter the Vajrayana gate of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his students.
You are starting out with a view that is biased toward the ‘good” in little letters. This is not an auspicious start. Very tiny view.
I remember the then Director of Karme Choling, Judy Robinson, in her departing speech after her five year tenure, before the age of moralizing kindness in Shambhala, thanking those who had seemed to be mean to her, not “appearing particularly kind”,, because she realized now that they had been the most kind, the one’s with the “wrathful masks.” They didn’t care about being “seen as kind” but were really kind but having an allegiance to the truth. They were willing to be honest. And that was the only kindness, to oneself and others.
You also have no idea of how Khandro teaches her students, by a 2 part tape for a general audience.
I agree — nothing more irritating than moralizing.
Thanks for the reminder Joe.
Joe
John Tischer said:
Right on target, so direct. This is really worth contemplating, by everyone on all sides.
And this permeated the community, society, and government.
There’s a radical difference in atmosphere here. In 1981 (I think) Chögyam Trungpa met with his students, and notably with Barbara Blouin, who had written a very critical letter to him. He took the time to compose a personal response, by letter, and then came downtown to Halifax to meet in person.
That may have been then, but that is the way to be!
Huge amounts of teachings occur in non-formal-teaching contexts. With VCTR you were liable to have your mind handed to you on a platter in many seemingly “mundane” interactions.
Hopefully it is also like that with SMR. The paucity of stories of that ilk lead me to think otherwise. Or perhaps the Great Divide manifests in SMR’s students not sharing with the VCTR Geezers…..
My current teachers transmit constantly in informal situations, and also communicate with students directly via email especially regarding non-trivial questions / issues.
Lets get off this “being mean is good ” garbage.
One thing the Vajradhatu sangha did have was a well known reputation of being mean and arrogant. Something the “old fogies” should not be proud of as being their heritage. I don’t recall the Vidyadhara being mean. Scary maybe, but not mean.
Chris saying to Joe
“You are starting out with a view that is biased toward the ‘good” in little letters. This is not an auspicious start. Very tiny view.” is outright trash.
I guess kindness is evil.
Us vs. them. Arrogance to an extreme. Condescending lecturing to anyone who takes an opposing view (especially those who don’t have your vast experience). An absolute obsession with being critical of the practices of “the other side” as if it constrains your own practice (and as if they are hanging on your every work). Gee, who am I talking about? No egos running amok here? Let’s show those guys how enlightened we are with the strength of our criticism! Debate is cool and criticism can indeed be constructive, but please, how about a little perspective and a reality check? Time to move on already. And please, no elightened put down is necessary to explain to me how I don’t get it, because I wasn’t there.
Andrew,
Yes you can get there…your prajna is better than that. This is your guru’s teaching; it’s the path he laid out. Not from me; not the Sakyong; it’s Trungpa Rinpoche’s. In other words, it’s yours. Go get it.
John,
“courageous and daring” whipped out of you”?—a most presumptuous and baseless comment….Does it make you feel better to imagine that we who love both Sakyongs are fools? Is your courageousness and daring whipped out of you? I would never presume that despite your snide comments. HEKR is in town this weekend, I’ll ask her what she thinks about this and hopefully report back.
Michael,
re: “Hopefully it is also like that with SMR. The paucity of stories of that ilk lead me to think otherwise.” And what actual, direct personal experience of yours is this based on? There are certainly as least as many stories to the contrary that I could supply you with. It really depends on who you choose to listen to—don’t you think? You listen to conservatives and Barack O. is a scourge; you listen to others and he is salvation. Some older students say “there is no room for us in Shambhala.” others say this is the true expression of Trungpa Rinpoche’s mind and the Sakyong is brilliantly carrying forth his most profound teachings—are the latter liars and misguided fools? Are all your comments hearsay? Sure sounds like it. Do you think that it’s at all possible that the Vidyadhara told his son more about how he wanted the Shambhala teachings to proceed than he told you or your sources? Do you think that is worthy considering?
Samsara is endless, n’est-ce pas?
Alan
Chris said on July 22nd, 2009 11:52 am
*“Huh. I can’t really believe you played the Nazi card, Chris.
*FYI people outside the SI mandala, who have even briefly been through the
*revolving doors, are referring to it as the Buddhist Facist wing of buddhist
*religious groups.
So what Chris? I’m talking about the frothing Bill O’Reilly kind of tone you’re bringing to the conversation.
What’s it for?
What does it accomplish besides you letting off steam in somebody elses direction?
What’s the 80′s style AIDS phobia in some previous thread for? What does it accomplish besides S. Duarte letting off steam in a dead guy’s direction?
Is it really feedback? Honestly?
The fourth grade is back. We are back in the school yard. Time for a break.
Do you ever notice that you are always using names, and personal insults on here, when you are offended? That the level of klesha activity arises exponentially when usually a group of Sakyong loyalists arrive.
I suspect that there is a member here who is stirring things up behind the scene, someone who, because I don’t take his telephone calls anymore, sick to death of his rants about Shambhala, the Sakyong and particularly the dharma brats that ignore him, that he is personally stirring things up as he threatened he would if I posted anything. Switched sides now that you find a few dharma brats that are paying attention to you?
Alan Anderson wrote:
“Michael,
re: “Hopefully it is also like that with SMR. The paucity of stories of that ilk lead me to think otherwise.” And what actual, direct personal experience of yours is this based on? There are certainly as least as many stories to the contrary that I could supply you with. It really depends on who you choose to listen to—don’t you think? You listen to conservatives and Barack O. is a scourge; you listen to others and he is salvation. Some older students say “there is no room for us in Shambhala.” others say this is the true expression of Trungpa Rinpoche’s mind and the Sakyong is brilliantly carrying forth his most profound teachings—are the latter liars and misguided fools? Are all your comments hearsay? Sure sounds like it. Do you think that it’s at all possible that the Vidyadhara told his son more about how he wanted the Shambhala teachings to proceed than he told you or your sources? Do you think that is worthy considering?
Samsara is endless, n’est-ce pas?”
A bit touchy, aren’t we? My first sentence implies that I don’t have experience, but am not ruling out the possibility that SMR interacts in that style. The second sentence notes that I have not heard the anecdotes about his interactive style…. I HAVE heard from his students that he gives excellent teaching talks, but that wasn’t the subject of my comment – the comment was on the informal teaching aspect.
Your zealous defense / advocacy of all things Sakyong shows your loyalty to him – but there is no need to beat others on the head and shoulders with it, much less based on a not-so-precise reading of a comment.
and yes I would agree that samsara is notorious for being endless!
The Vision Free from Frivolity
The sun has not risen out of impulse,
Nor has the moon.
For that matter Vajradhatu has not developed out of impulse.
The vision of Vajradhatu is entirely free from fear and impulse.
It is the product of careful consideration and wisdom,
And inheritance of the lineage.
So we keep expanding, continuing, maintaining our dharmic world that way:
We earned what we deserved.
Our exertion and practice are free from regret;
We will never change our mind.
Let us work together in this vast vision.
Please join us.
Thank you for your support and dedication;
Without that we would not have achieved what we have achieved so far.
But we have furthermore to go.
Let us proclaim the dharma in all the ten directions.
[VCTR, Kalapa Camp, Chateau Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada, 17 January 1981, from the unpublished poetry]
I hope the Scorpion Seal retreat brings benefit to lots of beings. I think anyone on the Buddhist path has to be “courageous and daring”. I was just using that phrase in a different way than Alan used it to make a point.
I thought I was being slightly humorous….but perhaps this debate is
deadly serious for a number of people….or, what I said wasn’t at all funny.
Perhaps I could have just asked Alan why he used those words….
But I’ve heard lots of mention on this site of students in SI being intimidated in various situations….so phrases like “if many of you are feeling courageous and daring,” start to stick out….sound like propaganda….maybe they’re just innocuous words….if so, why did I get jumped on for using them in a different way? Please, if anyone runs across me, and doesn’t feel “courageous and daring” just walk the other way. And, have a nice day.
Dear Brad,
You say, “What’s the 80’s style AIDS phobia in some previous thread for? What does it accomplish besides S. Duarte letting off steam in a dead guy’s direction?”
Well, gee, I’m sorry I offended you, Brad, and I’m really sorry you missed the point I was making, which is: if the Regent had not picked up a guy off the street in the Castro District – presumably a total stranger, since he later threw him out of the car – to have sex with in his limousine, he might not have contracted AIDS and died, which prevented him from carrying on the Buddhist lineage of his guru, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche. It is indisputable that the Regent died of AIDS. If he had been more careful in his pursuit of pleasure, or whatever his motivation was, he might have been able to fulfill his sacred duty as the Vidyadhara’s Regent. The fact that he was not careful in his sexual activities had vast and profound consequences for the entire sangha and for the legacy of the Vidyadhara. In fact, we might not even have Shambhala Buddhism and the conundrums it has posed for at least some of the students of Shambhala and of Buddhism. Does that answer your questions? Can you connect the dots and acknowledge cause and effect?
Suzanne
Alan:
You wrote:
“Andrew,
Yes you can get there…your prajna is better than that. This is your guru’s teaching; it’s the path he laid out. Not from me; not the Sakyong; it’s Trungpa Rinpoche’s. In other words, it’s yours. Go get it.”
This is in reference to a comment I posted about the Scorpion Seal Assembly and Retreat. My “Catch-22″ coimment must have been cryptic. Let me explain.
It’s my understanding that in order to do this practice, one must first attend the Rigden Abhisheka. That is the sine qua non. No Rigden Abhisheka, no Scorpion Seal. I do not regard the Sakyong as my teacher. I feel it would be dishonest for me to attend the Rigden Abhisheka and make whatever commitment goes along with that.
I find it ironic, and sad, that what is purported to be the pinnacle of the Dorje Dradul’s Shambhala teachings is not available to people like myself, who went through Shambhala Training, Warrior’s Assembly and Kalapa Assembly in the 1980s and have staffed and assistant directed numerous Shambhala Training levels over the years.
The gate has narrowed. It doesn’t have to do with prajna. It has to do with being on the other side of the divide.
John C, that’s a great quote, that poem of CTR’s (hopefully it’s not a fake, like that infamous paranirvana day letter last year).
Roman S, great to hear from you, and hope you continue to bring in an Eastern European perspective, and perhaps the humor special to that.
Alan A, re
Well, yes, it’s my inheritance, and doesn’t need the Sakyong’s courageous gift of it to me. It’s also the inheritance of all human beings, and doesn’t need a buddhist gate. It’s all around, in fact.
Alan, what you are experiencing is great, and it could also work for me, since I am also a buddhist, but what about all the other people? That what this terma (I’m starting to wince at this word, since it’s starting to be used in such a religulous way) is about. It is a response to “people in the future who have doubt… caught in the sickness of the dark age”. And it is a response from and speaking to their own best nature, which is no man’s land.
Cheers,
Mark
Rest assured that the poem “The Vision Free of Frivolity” and all the poems are genuine and not fake. They are Rinpoche’s true voice.
You’re welcome for the great poem, but also let us acknowledge Rinpoche’s presence is a genuine and true presence at RFS, at least as genuine and true as everyone else’s presence.
His speech in these poems makes Rinpoche as much a commentator on this and other threads as anyone else’s comments.
Suzanne I’d be happy to take this tangential conversation private, y’re free to e-mail me at wll.wait@gmail.com. You can e-mail me there free of fear of being harassed or badgered and you hold the unequivocal power to cut off the correspondence at any time you wish, should you post me there.
Which is to say–everybody else uninterested skip this chunk of wordage. Please. Take my wife.
To wit:
I didn’t miss your point Suzanne, not at all.
You didn’t offend me, you alienated me. I accept your apology.
I’m not with you 100% on your single-Castro-sex-encounter-equals-AIDS theory. Not that the sexual event didn’t occur, as you had been told it did. Rather, the chances of an individual sero-converting as the result of a single unsafe sexual encounter w/an HIV positive partner are dramatically (perhaps surprisingly) small. Established medical fact.
By 1987 the bathhouses in San Francisco had all closed up shop, Act Up was solidly formed and operating passionately, and safe-sex was the nationwide order of the day.
And the general US population was completely wigged out over the “gay disease”. Fear, panic, loathing, violence upon the well being of individuals, and so on.
We (us homo-whores (sorry, can’t resist)) were also wigged out but we were likewise preoccupied with keeping ourselves alive and out of harms way.
Now, as an insider I can tell you with certainty that if the Regent had been interested in a prostitute he would have patronized any one of the several hustler bars in Polk Gulch, but why pay when you can get it for free in the Castro? I said as much originally but that reply might have been inflicted with a bit too much poesy. Sorry for the muddle.
Here’s the thing: the phrase in your original post, “…homo-whoring in the Castro district…” is incredibly dense, packed, packaged up tight and potent like a roadside bomb. Here’s why: in it is the implication that anyone the Regent could have picked up in the Castro was diseased and capable of infecting him, in it is the implication that anyone on the sidewalk in the Castro would have been a whore.
It’s not that your logic is suspect, logic is entirely absent. I will neither support nor condemn your judgement of the Regent. Neither am I going to allow you to believe that you’re speaking truth. I will not let sneering references to my neighbors or my neighborhood stand without making a public fuss as riposte.
To further clarify: Suzanne, I am not requesting or demanding your compassion, though it would be a boon.
Here’s more: I’m sure this has all been through the grinder more than a bazillion times, nevertheless it is not fruitless to consider hypotheticals. IF the Regent had died crashing a car which he had been driving in which were several sangha members were also killed the trauma would have been, in my speculative mind, certainly as great. But the fervor and tumult of the trauma would have been far far less.
TO BE CONTINUED…
CONTINUED:
Even if it had been determined he was drunk and high on peyote and crack and acid and smack while driving this speculative car it would have been much easier to consider such an event a tragic accident.
(Skipping the Vidyadhara’s somewhat flagrant disregard for his own liver function… I know I KNOW, I said I’m skipping it!)
So, my final opinion is this: even the most discursvely enlightened individual (DIDEROT!!!) is no longer required, in the year of Our Lord 2009, to make disparaging comments, much less theorize disparagingly, about homo-whore activities, no matter who it is that activates them.
Less consicely, not cool Suzanne. Not cool at all.
Chris: I am only who I am (which sounds kind of like a disparaging version of Popeye…) My last name is Self. My gravatar is my profile pic on my facebook page. E-mail me and I’ll send you my cell phone number. So, no paranoia neccessary, if that’s any consolation. Good luck with the Nazis.
Andrew and Mark , re: yr most recent posts re: Scorpion Seal’s and Shambala’s (general) unavailabilty: I empathize, deeply and sincerely and with a heart colored by pain. I stand where you cannot. I wish there were a swift solution. I truly wish you didn’t have to live with the particular dilemma, the disappointment and the disheartening situation. In my heart of hearts I hope for a clear shot for everyone that’s stuck where you are, a straightaway, an impossibly wide sky, and a strong river’s rush to carry you where you need to go.
rgrds,
Brad
Hmm, I hadn’t thought before about the problem of lineage succession with respect to abhishekas. If a lineage holder dies, and the next succeeds, then it seems natural that the vajra sangha would receive abhishekas from the successor (ie the loppon or regent or next sakyong). But this notion of “not my teacher” for the successor sounds like quite a bind. Or worse, you could actively dislike the successor. If you just didn’t feel inspired by them, perhaps that would be much less of a problem than real dislike. Or maybe dislike would be more of a connection than indifference? Hmm, that logic implies that people here who really dislike the Sakyong actually have a really strong connection to him.
Which gets into a discussion I guess of samaya and devotion and what that means, ie. if there’s a sense that the preceptor of the abhisheka has to “be your teacher” or if that is not necessary. Maybe this isn’t such a great place for that kind of discussion. But my impression is there is quite a lot of flexibility there really.
Didn’t Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche send out a hilarious letter to folks taking Vajrakilaya in recent years to the effect that this was a very one sided relationship because he’s terrible at relationships? I’d really love a copy of that wit if anyone has it. He puts me in tears of laughter.
[From HEDKR:]
This is a message for those who are thinking about receiving the
upcoming Vajrakilaya abhisheka [in Halifax, Jan 28 - Feb 2, 2005].
I would like to give you all some time to think about this, as an
abhisheka is not a small matter in the Vajrayana tradition. I’m
sure that some of you know this already, and that this knowledge
must be making many of you uncomfortable. Some of you might feel
that receiving an initiation from another master might be an act of
disloyalty to your own master, such as Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
This is completely understandable.
In Tibet, lamas apparently do things in two different ways. Some
lamas stress that students should follow one guru and one practice,
with obvious benefits such as not confusing the students or
dispersing their energy.
Other lamas take a different approach. In my case, I have been
labeled as an incarnation of Jamyang Khyentse Wangpo. When once in
a blue moon I remember this, I aspire to emulate his example. He
had more than 100 gurus, and Jamgön Kongtrül Lodrö Thayé, his close
associate, claimed a similar number. So in trying to follow in
their footsteps, I have not really discouraged my own so-called
students, who are really my victims, from following other teachers.
In fact, in the case of some lamas, I could not encourage them more
strongly.
I have also been fortunate in receiving teachings from many
masters, more than 30. And I also have personal and completely
selfish reasons not to be too possessive when it comes to my
students. I’m afraid of committed relationships because of my
completely unreliable nature. Nevertheless, if you choose to
receive the abhisheka from me, our relationship will be changed for
a long time, if not forever. And I should warn you that from a
mundane point of view, there will be no equality in this
relationship, and no negotiation!
There are only two ways you might find solace. First, you might
assume that I have compassion and kindness, and that I will not
mislead you no matter what happens. But this doesn’t mean that I’m
promising you that I have any compassion or bodhicitta! Second, and
more reliable, is the fact that I am a completely samsaric being,
and because of my own insecurity and love for attention and fame,
and my fear of developing a bad reputation, I’ll behave properly.
But let me tell you honestly: I’m not an enlightened being, and
even the wish to attain enlightenment doesn’t come to me every day.
I don’t even have any of the qualities of a Shravakayana master or
Mahayana master, let alone those of a Vajra Acharya. And as a human
being, I’m completely unreliable. But I have received teachings
from some of the greatest masters, Buddhas in the flesh, so the
lineage is definitely there.
Isn’t it painful to be in a situation where you need something
from someone who is completely unreliable, especially when you know
that if you ask for what you need, you’ll be stuck with him forever!
So please think twice.
Davee:
I can’t commit myself to “Shambhala Buddhism” because it is my understanding that Shambhala and Buddhism are two separate (though closely related) paths. As Chogyam Trungpa said in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior:
“Over the past seven years, I have been presenting a series of ‘Shambhala teachings’ that use the image of the Shambhala kingdom to represent the ideal of secular enlightenment, that is, the possibility of uplifting our personal existence and that of others without the help of any religious outlook. For although the Shambhala traditiion is founded on the sanity and gentleness of the Buddhist tradition, at the same time, it has its own independent basis, which is directly cultivating who and what we are as human beings. With the great problems now facing human society, it seems increasingly important to find simple and non-sectarian ways to work with ourselves and to share our understanding with others.”
The current approach within Shambhala International is a mixing of these two paths. Unfortunately, it apears that the Scorpion Seal teachings are not available to people who believe that Shambhala “has its own independent basis.”
HEDKR, Mind’s ultimate nature
[Rinpoche’s poem appeared together with his article entitled “Distortion” which appeared in the Shambhala Sun, September, 1997:]
Mind’s ultimate nature, emptiness endowed with vividness,
I was told is the real Buddha.
Recognising this should help me
Not to be stuck with thoughts of hierarchy.
Mind’s ultimate nature, its emptiness aspect,
I was told is the real Dharma.
Recognising this should help me
Not to be stuck with thoughts of political correctness.
Mind’s ultimate nature, its vivid aspect,
I was told is the real Sangha.
Recognising this should help me
Not to be stuck with thoughts of equal rights.
One cannot disassociate emptiness from vividness.
This inseparability I was told is the Guru.
Recognising this should help me
Not to be stuck with depending on chauvinistic lamas.
This nature of mind has never been stained by duality,
This stainlessness I was told is the deity.
Recognising this should help me
Not to be stuck with the categories of “gender” or “culture.”
This nature of mind is spontaneously present.
That spontaneity I was told is the dakini aspect.
Recognising this should help me
Not to be stuck with fear of being sued.
It would be interesting if the Buddha’s successor had announced that Buddhism was really part of Hinduism, and that he was going to be combining the two traditions, to help simplify things and prevent confusions. And to clarify the inherent oneness of the two teachings.
namaste
http://radiofreeshambhala.org/2009/06/new-curriculum/
Thanks Edward for the reference to Martins post on a previous thread
where intially CTR requested for shambhala training to be held in the
70s in separate buildings from Vajradhatu.
This fact I find very pertinent to the discussion underway as to different
teaching streams for the whole thing. Did anyone take any notes of this
meeting at the time so that we could have what CTR wanted to happen
in toto.
I feel at times that historical meetings such as this one are missed in the general debate about what way SI should go. It would be good to get back
to what was said at the beginning by Rinpoche as regards shambhala training perhaps even before the book the Sacred Path of the Warrior was published as I have heard that this book was edited quite a lot.
So it would be interesting to hear from Martin again about this meeting in more depth and to hear from older students what other aspects of shambhala training that Trungpa discussed with people.
I still want the unadulterated teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche on Shambhala and I feel we are not getting the whole picture of the way he wanted things to go with enlightened society.
It would be interesting to hear peoples comments
Best
Rita Ashworth
I don’t remember the details. I worked in the administration for maybe eight years, first at Naropa (Comprtoller) and then at Vajradhatu/Nalanda (Business Manager/Director of Dharmadhatu Affairs). There was a fairly robust central office, maybe twenty or thirty people actually on salary: a pittance for all, to be sure.
Rinpoche (Trungpa) was very involved in the day-to-day decision making and it was really the chance to rub elbows with him that attracted most of the people to the “Mandala Services” (which, of course, is a recent coinage). That changed, of course, but it was after I left to work in the real world. It seemed to change a lot more after the fall at the Court which marked the beginning of the decline of CTR;s health.
For all the (seemingly endless) yammering about SI, I have no idea how it’s run on a day-to-day basis and who does what. I have the feeling that it’s become very decentralized with the centers having a great deal of de facto autonomy. Maybe I’ll pick up the phone and find out! I still know people.
Dear Davee and Brad:
You leave people with the impression that you are sorry for us, because somehow we have “missed the boat” by not following the Sakyong and his teachings. And that its not too late, if we just bite the bullet and cough up another few thousand dollars, added to the 10′s of thousands we have spent over the years in programs, to reinforce the conceptual baggage we have been carrying for years.
You need to realize that many on this site do not want the Sakyong as our teacher, feel like we have broken free from a cult, and are joyous that we have moved on and happy that we have found others that have moved on.
What you don’t know, by being embraced in a seamlessly reinforced group think, is that there is a whole cutting edge happening in Western Buddhism, freeing us also from the mind-numbing,moralizing Tibetan cultural baggage that has travelled along with the pith dharma for thirty years and is over.
So why on earth would one want to be involved in something that has rejected lineage, one of the pith aspects of dharma, and embraced so much of the cultural baggage, that is about to be left in the dust?
You seem , because you are all still in the trance of group think, to mistakenly believe that you have something that we want, when in fact, what is really happening “out here” is that Western students, everywhere, thanks to many honest and kind teachers, such as Dzongsar Rinpoche in his letter linked here, are trying to wake us up and re-empower us as Western students. Tibet as the center of dharma is over, the dharma has moved to the West. .
Unfortunately, Shambhala, in its return to the cultural baggage of Tibetan Buddhism, with its rituals, and rites, mixing that with Shambhala , seems to many of us, to be going backwards in “Time.”, with a capital T. And newer students are not going to be interested in a western educated son from Boulder High School , pretending to be Tibetan, and carrying that baggage as some kind of prop. It is the wrong prop when props are what are being shed.
That is the problem with a closed system, and systematically becoming more and more exclusive and insular. Its like the frog that has fallen in the well, and only knows the well and wants everyone to appreciate the well. When there is a whole vast sky of” waking up” outside the well that you can’t see in your chauvinism about what you have.
What is also quite remarkable is how you crash this site, and insult and moralize and lecture and cojole us, with no one censoring you. When in your venues of SI we can’t even mention CTR’s way of teaching shamatha. You actually try and censor on this site as well, when you don’t like the content. And RFS allows you this freedom. And yet you accuse people on this site of being “unkind”. Amazing.
Hi Rita,
I would love to read an article about this subject someday– about how Trungpa Rinpoche (originally?) wanted Shambhala training to take place outside of Vajradhatu buildings.
Perhaps there are records of what he said, or of what happened, and people who could be interviewed.
I can’t really imagine a more interesting article, though it would likely take time and energy to research & write.
I have bought this up before. Andrew had a quote from THE WAY OF SHAMBHALA where the Vidyadara points out the distinction(s) between the path of Shambhala, and the Buddhist path. In the book that can be bought through the Shambhala Shop (or maybe used to) which stresses how the Vidyadhara wanted to create Shambhala Buddhism, did the book distinguish the difference between the two paths? I’m asking because I didn’t read it, and I wonder if somebody out there did and tell us a few things about it. Also, I was wondering if that book suggested if the two paths were the same, and who put that book together.
If Mark is reading this, my picture is hold hat. How does one remove or change their picture?
Rob.
Dear Martin
Re Edwards further comment and my query -it might be good if you did
pick up the phone in the sense of just collating stuff about the
emergence of the shambhala teachings as you were so near to CTR.
I think it would make an interesting article on this site as a lot of the
older students are in Boulder.
I know from older students of CTR, Mike Hookham and Alf Vial and others
stuff about Trungpa in the UK but not in detail the finer points of what happened re Shambhala Training in the US – have done some articles
in the past myself and the whole process of research is quite interesting
and I think you may find it so aswell. Can you remember people who were in on that meeting for example? Any way whole thing just a thought about way you could go around it.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Rita,
I was going to pick up the phone to find out about the current organization of SI. My memories of the early days of the STP (Shambhala Training Program) are correct because we had a lot of problems trying to figure out how to pay for it. Plus the, the first Kalapa Assembly (in Showmass) left a lot of people in shock. The KOS seemed weird.
RFS: perhaps somebody might interview the surviving members of VDH Board of Directors – Ken Green, Ron Stubbert, Karl Springer plus David Rome, Lodro Dorje and Micheal Root about this period of our history.
As for myself, I think the whole “original intentions of Vidyadhara” line is pointless. It is universally agreed that Osel Mukpo is the lineage holder of his teaching. If there is room for debate, it’s as his status as lineage holder of the Kagyu/Ningma teaching of his father.
In any case as Shambhala lineage holder he has no external point of reference — there are no other lineage holders for him to consult with or be accountable to. So he can pretty much do with it what he wants.
While I had no interest in going to SMC for the Scorpion Seal, I was pleased when I heard that there were over 1,000 people there. (Is this true/) Signs of life.
re Kagyu / Nyingma lineage holder: There is, at least on the Nyingma side, another option – Michael Hookham / Rigdzin Shikpo.
His Longchen Foundation was set up at the behest of VCTR and had the blessing of both VCTR and Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche.
His recent book “Never Turn Away” is excellent, especially regarding the “Trungpa style” formless meditation aspect.
Worth a look for any student of VCTR – http://www.longchenfoundation.org
Thanks for the further clarification Mr Fritter-it would be great if some one
could interview the remaining VDH board for rfs on the emergence of
the shambhala teachings.
I am not arguing that the Sakyong is the lineage holder of the shambhala
teachings I am arguing for a more comprehensive view point of what
occured at that time. In biography for example in the west you give people
the historical facts of what happened in a persons life and you leave
the reader with the ability to make up their own mind about what
occured. The added facts of what occured will give me personally more
food for thought about how to proceed as I too have no interest in
following the present way SI is going with the shambhala teachings.
I think I am more of the Robin Kornman school in that he stated in his
lectures that the older students were the lineage holders of CTR – it is really a question of conscience here I believe because beyond the present set up I think others in the west can manifest the shambhala teachings just as well as SI.
Of course such a viewpoint puts one beyond the pale of some in SI but I am still prepared to raise these questions because I really do believe people in the west can create a wholesome enlightened society.
best
Rita Ashworth
Dear Michael:
Thank you for putting that link up re: Michael Hookham/Rigdzin Shikpo. I discovered him by accident abou 7 years ago, and find it so refreshing and “proof’ futher that when CTR first came out of Tibet to the West in the 60′s , he was teaching Dzogchen and empowering Dzogchen students.
All his early teachings/ poems, like the one that was put on here by John Castlebury,above, about “Buddha, Dharma and Sangha” as emptiness and vividness, totally Dzogchen, are much more radical, and precise Great Perfection teachings and seem to connect so much more with the original.Shambhala teachings of CTR.
This poem is a jewel discovery . I had not read that before. “chauvanistic Lamas, Political correctness i.e. equal rights, not to be “stuck with gender or culture”. Way ahead.
Now in Shambhala we have “feminine principle” and, “diversity” and “gay buddhism” and all kinds of isms. Dualisms, as compromise, to market the dharma. People should really read this poem above.
When he realized that many in the States didn’t connect with Dzogchen teachings, it seemed he went to a more Mahamudra , gradual path approach. I have heard anectodal stories from those who were in India in the 60′s re: this transformation. Even the VY sadhana was changed from a much more Nyingma, short version with a blonde Vajrayogini, to the 6-8 hour, monastic Kagyu sadhana. I saw that VY Sadhana, shortly after L Mermelstein “discovered” it in archived material and it was circulated amongst us. It would hav More proof that CTR was always trying to empower us as Westerners, and was concerned about the cultural Tibetan baggage that would travel with the essential dharma.
Even the Sadhana of Mahamudra’s name was changed, to please the 16th Karmapa. (according to rumours circulating Asia, after CTR came out of Bhutan, he showed the Sadhana to the 16th Karmapa), and even though it is totally a union of Mahamudra and Dzogchen sadhana. So the name has even kept his Dzogchen stream “secret” until after many got specifically the Dzogchen pointing out from other Nyingma teachers.
Michael Hookham seems to have gotten the Dzogchen transmissions from CTR , before the Kagyu Mahamudra teaching stream period, and I would think that more CTR students would be curious and interested in this, particularly if one wanted to keep the Nyingma lineage stream of CTR . I have found his writings and teachings imbued with CTR.
That is what is so surprising to me, that people chose , out of some idea of loyalty to SMR to “narrow” their view, and just stick to the Shambhala/Buddhist teachings propagated by SMR, and actually dismiss other streams of CTR.
And as for Shambhala, why would people think that CTR, to make it simple, would want to mix Tibetan/monastic, vajrayana stream dharma with Shambhala teachings, when CTR was always trying, it seems to me, to be cutting through to what was essential, pith dharma, and that the Shambhala teachings seem to have been his way of trying to Westernizing the dharma and free it from Tibet cultural baggage?
Correction: Dear Chris, that thrilling poem “Mind’s ultimate nature” was *surprise* composed by Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. As noted above, DKR’s poem appeared together with his article entitled “Distortion” in the Shambhala Sun, September, 1997.
Doesn’t matter. Awake Mind is Awake Mind. It’s the same Mind.
I am soo grateful to Dzongsar Rinpoche for his bravery. That talk, response to T. Carreon. has lifted about 30 years of cultural baggage weight from me. Plus it is going to save us some money. He, like CTR and other teachers, such as Kieth Dowman with his teachings on Radical Dogchen, is trying to free us from our “trances”, layered over by Tibetan cultural baggage that has to be shed now for the essence of dharma to take hold in the West.
SI has missed the boat.
A recent quote from K. Dowman:
the time has now come to be taking an “eternal vacation from vacuous rationalization, unctuous Tibetan culturalism, and self-serving institutionalism”. He feels that it is now “imperative” that American dharma become “existential.”
[VCTR, from 1980 VY seminary transcript, Talk Twenty-Two, “Transmission: Trikaya and the Eight States of Consciousness”, Chateau Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada, March, 1980:]
When you hear the genuine teacher
When you hear the genuine teacher,
It brings the sunrise of genuine teaching.
When you transcend all those genuinenesses,
You find an utterly wordless, unspeakable vacuum.
When tigers become sheep,
Lions behave like worms.
Garudas crawl like wounded mosquitoes.
Profound teachings are questionable.
Such doctrine has been taught for the right or for the left.
Is it true that the deaf hear properly,
And the mute can speak good language,
And the lame can dance, as has been promised in the book of mahamudra?
I still would like to ask that question.
Reverend Naropa,
Can you come and tell us at Chateau Lake Louise
The truth of your discovery?
Dear Chris
You said “Now in Shambhala we have “feminine principle”…..
I would like to share a little personal history, in the mid 70s I was a student at Naropa when I heard that VCTR was giving a class at Karma Dzong titled “The Feminine Principle” I asked Ken Green if I could attend and was informed that it was for Members of Karma Dzong only but he would let me attend this class that one time but if I wanted to attend any future “ATS” (Advance Training Seminar) I would need be become a member and be fully payed up on my dues. After attending the ATS on the “feminine principle” I went on to become a member of Karma Dzong and devoted student of the Venerable Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
So the more things change the more they stay the same, the feminine principle was taught then and it is still taught today, there were requirements and cost to hear the teaching then and there are requirements and cost to hear the teaching now……
Yours in the Dharma
James
Dear James:
What I remember as “feminine principle” was not an idealized , reified, abstraction that is happening now. There were actual consorts. There is no doubt that CTR loved women, real women. Not the concept.
The Sakyong, in my personal experience, has always preferred the company of his buddies. His own relationship to “feminine principle” has always been suspect. I have never felt that he ever really liked women much, unlike his father. So of course now, we have a reified “feminine principle”. And have you read the view of feminine principle in vogue now? It sounds like something out of the Confuscianism court. No wrathful crones allowed now, that’s for sure. A cowardly view of feminine principle if I ever saw.
CTR would never have pandered to the latest political correctness, or “isms” occurring in the current , conceptual reality. He was trying to help us cut through this all the time. Feminine principle was certainly not meant as something to “abstract” from the living, nondual reality of our being.
Chris
I have no reason to “suspect” the Sakyong’s relationship to the feminine principle, nor have I ever experienced any of the teaching as a idealized , reified, abstraction. I am not questioning your experience, I am only trying to point out that “the way thing were” in some ways are not that different than they are today. Let us not forget how often the “scene” changed, I recall many times people questioning what the VCTR was presenting. The only thing that did not change was change its self.
Yours in the Dharma
James
Michael brings up Michael Hookham’s book (which is, yes, excellent) wherein we see proof that CTR taught great skillful means all over the world and throughout his life…Dzogchen at one time and place; Kagyu path at another time and place; and Shambhala at another time and place. CTR said so many different things and gave so many different instructions…..and yet many here are *so assured* of what he wanted, backed up by a mere handful of supporting quotes. Yet, there are equally as many—if not more— CTR quotes supporting the inseparability of Shambhala and Buddhism, and still, some people make insulting little jokes pretending that they actually got more instructions than the Sakyong did and are truly doing a better job than him in carrying out his father’s instructions.
Let me clarify one thing: I’m not saying I’ve got it right; I’m saying that the assuredness of this denial of even the possibility that CTR may have instructed his heir properly and accurately, as he wished, is stunning. To disregard the possibility that perhaps the Sakyong may have received some actual direction and actual instructions from his father beyond our 5 favorite supporting quotes is insupportable for any student of emptiness and compassion.
I only have one real point to make based on my experience (and these are my thoughts, alone): Having gone to the Scorpion Seal, I saw that we have been teaching Shambhala in bits and pieces that we all know hang together sometimes—and sometimes not. That’s because we’ve mostly been wrapped up in the “Path” of Shambhala. Alternately, the clarifying View and Fruition of Shambhala have been incomplete up till now. At this point, it lands right in your lap like a big present (in the Scorpion Seal and its commentaries). It’s staggeringly vivid and clear. It all hangs together now like the net of Indra—not just an arrangement of parts and particles. And…you should see this Sakyong now that he is getting to do the job that he was trained for. It just might make you cry.
I’m sure many of you won’t believe this—and some will insult me for my apparently fawning allegiance, I’m sure. Nevertheless, if my comments can help even one person to go and see for him or her self, directly, whether there is something very favorable to gain for a student of the Vidyadhara, that would be good and beneficial, I think.
Hello, I am new student. I am wanting to take some studies from the angry ladies with the real transmissions and the stripping of this and that and the certain knowledge of the bad things done by the people who don’t understand and need to realize. Please email.
[SMR, from Smile of the Tiger, Vajradhatu Publications, Halifax, 1998:]
CIRCLE OF MUSHROOMS
Jumping from a high cliff,
I have landed in the clear blue pool of loneliness.
I, Ösel “Luminous” Rangdröl “Self-liberated”
Am fortunate to have the inheritance of my family.
Chögyam was alone,
A stray dog in his time.
Chögyam was a warrior
Chögyam was a lover
Chögyam was MAD
Chögyam was truth.
Following and leading have become interchangeable.
He said he was me and I should be him –
The dark ages have come and we should
Spread it like marmite on toast,
Drink it with mountain water,
Drink it with fresh saké.
Perseverance is my friend –
Aloneness.
Being alone, I have many friends,
But I remain alone.
Some try to please my ear, and others my heart;
Nonetheless I, Mipham,
Remain alone like Kunga Sangpo.
I, Mipham Lhaga, will always be “unconquerable.”
Beauty is desolate
Beauty is round
Seeping in the cold air of an autumn morning.
I feel proud to be alone,
To be a Mukpo.
I feel proud of my aloneness.
[St. Margaret’s Bay, Nova Scotia, 28 April 1992]
*This poem uses two of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s Tibetan names: his given name Ösel Rangdröl, “Self-liberated Luminosity”; and his Buddhist refuge name, Mipham Lhaga, “Unconquerable Divine Joy.”
If people have samaya with SMR and keep it, that is wonderful. If people have samaya with VCTR and keep it, that is wonderful. My personal opinion is that samaya isn’t an inheritable thing, it has to be a personal connection.
Some students of VCTR don’t have that connection with SMR. It can’t be forced or wished into existence, or logic’d into existence. No matter how many handfuls of quotes are tossed into the mix on either side. So, there are many broken hearts when they experience the teachings moving away from what they have cherished for so long.
Alan, I’m glad you had a great experience at the Scorpion Seal retreat. Mazel Tov!
Dear Timku Champo:
“angry ladies” / Not good. Tsk Tsk.
You make my point.
Chris
Before the Vidyadhara went on retreat in 1977, he sent out some of his senior students to give talks on Shambhala Training. Those talks turned out to be, by all accounts, a disaster. This was before Shambhala Training was established. In the retreat, the Vidyadhara and the Regent created the Shambhala Training program….as far as I know.
I assisted many Shambhala levels and directed quite a few through the 80′s. When they went well…which wasn’t always…there was the perception of enlightened society on the spot…even at level one. If the director took to heart the teachings and practices, the magic of basic goodness…mind of the Rigdens…whatever you want to call it, happened.
Directing Shambhala Training was the end point of the Shambhala Path in those days..and a great challenge it was.
I saw an old venerable teacher of Shambhala Training teach a couple of years ago. Unlike the “old days”, instead of an environment of the teachings being created, it was as if he was simply dispensing information. It was a shocking contrast from the way I had seen him
teach Shambhala before.
So yes, things have changed. Alan may be absolutely correct in his assertion that the “bits and pieces” that people get now come together
in the Scorpion Seal Retreat. As others here have pointed out, the Shambhala Path is now being funneled into Scorpion Seal Retreat.
I dare not say here whether I think one approach is better than another.
But it is different. And, to quote D.D. Eisenhower, “Things are more the way they are now than they ever have been.” The carrot seems much bigger and the stick smaller.
Chris, I’m not a member of SI or a student of the Sakyong.
But being as perverse as I am I have to say I am now absolutely dying to find out what the guy’s game is all about.
Best of luck you, sir, sincerely so.
Here’s a little history. After the Vidyadhara went into a year retreat in 1977, Karl Springer (Director of External Affairs) went out and hired a Public Relations firm to get Shambhala Training off the ground, “launch it” as corporate types would say. I was on staff at Vajradhatu at the time, and Karl gathered the Vdh staff to meet with the PR people. I was young (early 30s) and naive, and had just been to Seminary in 1976 where the Vidyadhara had performed the first stroke of Ashe that many of us there had witnessed. (Probably some people had seen him perform this before.) In any case, the PR presentation felt all wrong to me, so I asked a question. (I don’t remember what it was.) It embarrassed Karl and I got reprimanded for asking the question.
However, the Vidyadhara nixed the PR firm, and started training his students to present Shambhala Training. I don’t remember the exact dates or timing, but maybe Martin can remember. Soon there was a Shambhala Education program, which I participated in in Boulder, and then again when I moved to Karme-Chöling in 1979. Whether Shambhala Education was the training for Shambhala directors I’m not really sure. (Martin?) All I know is that I totally loved the material and passed the course twice, and was soon assistant directing Shambhala Training. (Beginning in 1982±, I directed levels.)
Somewhere between 1978 and 1979, Lady Rich (the Regent’s wife) was given the job of laying out the logic of Shambhala Training levels. I remember this because I was asked to write an article about this process for the Vajradhatu Sun – I’d already been writing articles for this paper – our sangha newspaper that preceded the Shambhala Sun. I met with Lady Rich once or twice, but she was struggling and the article never came to fruition – maybe because I moved to KCl, I’m not sure.
In response to Alan Anderson, I have to say that I NEVER felt that Shambhala Training and the Shambhala teachings in general didn’t hang together. Years of joyful Werma practice and directing Shambhala Training gave me a feeling for the view, practice and fruition as a whole. It was NOT an arrangement of “parts and “particles,” or bits and pieces. If it degenerated into that after the traumas of the Vidyadhara’s death, the Regent scandal, and so forth, that is very sad to hear. But for me, it was all there from the beginning. The view, by the way, was always the first thing presented by the Vidyadhara, whether in Buddhadharma or Shambhala. You know, 3-fold logic is the way VCTR taught everything: view/practice/ action, definition/nature/function, etc. That’s the way we were trained to teach. Don’t students get that now?
Alan says, “we’ve mostly been wrapped up in the “Path” of Shambhala . . . the clarifying View and Fruition of Shambhala have been incomplete up till now.” It sounds like somebody’s been holding back on you. How much did you have to pay to get the view and fruition?
To be continued . . .
Continued:
Silly me, I could have asked to receive the Scorpion Seal a long time ago – before the new regime. I wouldn’t have had to pay thousands of dollars, and take an abhiseka with Sakyong Mipham in order to get it. But I wasn’t ambitious. Everything had already come to me at the right time and I felt complete with what I got from the Vidyadhara while he was alive, and soon after he died, I felt it was time to take what I’d been given out to the world. Now I’m being told that I didn’t get it all and that I should . . . . I’m not convinced.
Suzanne – your recollections are generally congruent with mine. It should be noted that Rinpoche had great plans for Shambhala Training. He was expecting thousands of students. This was the reason Karl was interested in bringing in an outside PR firm.
Could you post me directly at mfritter@gmail.com? I’d like to have a little side bar with you!
Is that all there is? Think, people, think! There are clouds on the horizon!
(Oops…sorry…I just watched all the “Terminator” movies in succession.)
Mr. TIscher writes:
[Speaking of Shambhala levels in the 1980s] If the director took to heart the teachings and practices, the magic of basic goodness…mind of the Rigdens…whatever you want to call it, happened.
For what it’s worth, I’ve taken four levels in recent years, and three of them were magical. And I don’t say that lightly. The fourth was a bit like dispensing “knowledge” or something.
But the other three were quite magical. People had tears in their eyes during the toasting, one guest said it was the most transformative weekend of his life. A lot of juicy stuff came up during one.
I’m very, very impressed with Shambhala Training weekends. And I’ll be very sorry to see them go if the “Sakyong” nixes them, at least for people who do not fit his religious criteria. (I do like his poem posted here though.)
I love the way people are introduced to the director for their interviews, and all those little details. Amazing stuff.
Thank you, Edward. Great to hear.
Chris, I’m perfectly fine if people have no interest in studying with the Sakyong. I just want people to be respectful. You know, decent. Just have some basic human decency and decorum, even if one is upset with the direction things are going. Even in the midst of disagreement and heartbreak there’s the possibility of decorum.
Same if a group separates from Shambhala, as others have. No need to self-justify with some kind of slander. There’s the possibility of decorum and decency in separating if the group is true to the vision of the lineage.
COLD TURKEY
Umbilical cord is cut,
Cut like a bad habit,
Like a tectonic shift
Or turning-point or
A point of no return.
We change our mind,
Or mind changes us.
Truth and half-truth
Push us to abandon
All ideas whatsoever.
Every idea is a view,
Every view, a habit,
Every habit, a trap,
Trap of an absolute
Theory of everything.
Views are so fickle,
Fickle as whims but
Crushing the habit
Of clutching a view
Kills our fickleness.
[from White Clouds, Samurai Press, 2009]
Dear Davee:
From the number of posts you make over the last year you must spend your whole life on RFS. Are they paying you? Because if they are not, and you are on some kind of mission, I can guarantee you, “no good deed goes unpunished in this mandala”, and no one in Shambhala, not the Sakyong, , not the rest of the administration, cares what you are doing. They are probably laughing at it all as they laugh at all the slaves of Shambhala who keep this wheel turning and keep the inner court in self-indulgence and luxuries. . So keep on lecturing others about “decorum”. You are simply entertainment for the “gods” whose own view of “decorum” would differ from yours, I assure you. WAKE UP.
Chris
Many thanks Suzanne for the brief history -that clears up a few points.
I think of the old directors the more I would like to hear more from
is Ken Green – I have listened to him on the chronicle project but
I dont think the interview went in enough depth about his own role
and how he felt CTR wanted enlightened society to be ‘politically’
Can also the old directors be interviewed more concisely -perhaps rfs contributors could submit queries to them through the website so we could get a more cohesive interview than was held on the chronicle project.
I also welcome Davees comment re the Sakyong and everyones different
samayas and intuitions about the way the whole thing could be in the
west.
Certainly at Shambhala levels and in public talks there does seem
something magical happening when you talk about basic goodness – people prick up their ears at this ‘concept’.
So I look forward to some more history lessons!
Best
Rita Ashworth
Chris writes:
“From the number of posts you make over the last year you must spend your whole life on RFS. Are they paying you? Because if they are not, and you are on some kind of mission, I can guarantee you, “no good deed goes unpunished in this mandala”, and no one in Shambhala, not the Sakyong, , not the rest of the administration, cares what you are doing. They are probably laughing at it all as they laugh at all the slaves of Shambhala who keep this wheel turning and keep the inner court in self-indulgence and luxuries. . So keep on lecturing others about “decorum”. You are simply entertainment for the “gods” whose own view of “decorum” would differ from yours, I assure you. WAKE UP.”
So, Chris, is there a particular, currently-existing organization that you would recommend that does not model this unhealthy-sounding behavior, but instead models healthy organizational behavior?
Name? URL?
Thanks,
Ian
VICTIMENTIA
Where self is not
Split against self
There’s no schism
Mind and universe
Are homogeneous
So there’s no mind
To be persecuted
And no phenomena
To persecute mind
In the state of grace
Pain on your face
Your frantic pace
And obvious angst
Are heart-breaking
To say the least
The truth of peace
And light appears
Whenever runaway
Mind slows down
Enough to notice
[from Aspiration Highway, Samurai Press 2007]
Chris writesto Ion:
“From the number of posts you make over the last year you must spend your whole life on RFS. Are they paying you? Because if they are not, and you are on some kind of mission, I can guarantee you, “no good deed goes unpunished in this mandala”,
It’s ironic Chris would write this because she is on not only RFS several times a day, but has been on all the sangha related listseves and sites for a number of years, usually with the message of her hatered towards the Sakyong, Shambhala, his students, or who she thinks are students. It seems it has become her new religion. Being on a vendenta is not Buddhism. Also, because it’s a public forum, I wish people would stop trying to turn this space into their own personal opinion page. Daily opinions, and second (or third and forth) hand information doesn’t help much. Also accusations don’t help very much, and nobody learns much when it boils down to fighting between two people on s public forum.
Chis at one point sad “Do you ever notice that you are always using names, and personal insults on here, when you are offended? That the level of klesha activity arises exponentially when usually a group of Sakyong loyalists arrive.”
Was she talking to a mirror?
Needless to say, I’m sure sadly I , or anybody who crosses her path, will will get a not so pleasent response.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear a libblous or slanderous remark. Worse, I may be accussed of being a student of the Sakyong or Shambhala..
Perhaops a one posting a day rule might help here.
Warm greetings:
Andrew Safer, thank you so much for writing the following (re Scorpion Seal):
It’s my understanding that in order to do this practice, one must first attend the Rigden Abhisheka. That is the sine qua non. No Rigden Abhisheka, no Scorpion Seal. I do not regard the Sakyong as my teacher. I feel it would be dishonest for me to attend the Rigden Abhisheka and make whatever commitment goes along with that.
I find it ironic, and sad, that what is purported to be the pinnacle of the Dorje Dradul’s Shambhala teachings is not available to people like myself, who went through Shambhala Training, Warrior’s Assembly and Kalapa Assembly in the 1980s and have staffed and assistant directed numerous Shambhala Training levels over the years.
Davee wrote:
Hmm, I hadn’t thought before about the problem of lineage succession with respect to abhishekas. If a lineage holder dies, and the next succeeds, then it seems natural that the vajra sangha would receive abhishekas from the successor (ie the loppon or regent or next sakyong). But this notion of “not my teacher” for the successor sounds like quite a bind.
I think you’re underestimating it a bit, and also it’s not about ‘liking’ or ‘disliking’ the lineage holder. Christopher Columbus, if we’re still not questioning liking and disliking then maybe it’s time to consider embarking on a spiritual path, preferably with Tilopa’s lineage.
What has been removed for many people of good heart is the possibility of continuing with the advanced practices with trust in the integrity of the lineage transmission. Now, if as Alan Anderson says, this Sakyong is coming into his power then all I can advise is that he starts to manifest some kind of presence in the mandala that is a bit more representative than the fumbling meditation instructions that appear on virtually every page on the Shambhala site. He looks like a young footballer unaccustomed to public speaking, and out here, apart from a framed picture of a golden boy, some romantic hearsay and some pleasant books, this is all I know of him. (No, I don’t count occasional podcasts as Vibrant Proliferation of the Thunder of the Lineage into All Quarters.)
We were all the Mukpo clan, as was Dilgo Khyentse and 16th Karmapa. Mukpo clan are lions, always were. Now we seem to be playing at being peasants of the realm and maybe we might wrap a bit cloth around our hips or wear a little cut-off top like Khandro Tseyang and scurry about with little nervous feet. It’s all very confusing.
To convince me around the embodiment of the lineage, I would be looking for certain clear signs and understandings within Shambhala Buddhism:
• I took refuge into the Kagyu lineage, I felt the welcome. The moment those Kagyu gurus leave the chants (is this for real?) I am cancelling my sub. I hope they roar on the way out and set fire to the curtains.
• The Kagyu lineage insists on ngedon (not trangdon which is just learning the model and the words), and there are fierce penalties for any self deception here, which were certainly not implied in e.g. this student’s recent experience of Sutrayana Seminary. I applaud some of the elements of the new curriculum, particularly the discussion groups, but if the only conditions of shooting through from L1 to Rigden Abisheka in 3 years are funds and free time, then there is surely something rotten in the state of denmark.
• It is understood that a ‘contracted’ relationship with a spiritual friend who knows you better than you do is not dispensible. Presumably this would provide some quality management re the point above.
• It’s not about conditionality in relationships, or strangling the Tea Boy from Nepal.
• It’s about being a monarch with a broken heart not worshipping a monarch and getting points for looking positive
• It’s about the tradition of the spiritual warrior which resonates in virtually all spiritual traditions to the extent of culthood, and involves training in virtue, shila, nobility, self mastery and vastopenheartedness and which requires uncompromising truthfulness and the willingness to be completely open without obscuration, because only by doing so are we invulnerable. Thus heaven meets earth, the feminine principle contains and births the masculine principle, and the Great Eastern Sun arises.
• Spiritual materialism has to be routed out at the core – it is a concrete barrier to authenticity. It needs to be debunked and defragulated at source to erase separation between ‘spiritual’ and ‘personal’ life, including work, sex, peeing, financial reporting and peeling vegetables. This instant. No excuses. We have to save this world.
I reiterate that I would greatly prefer Shambhala Buddhism to embody these things. Perhaps it is doing so outside my realm of experience, and I must admit the possibility of complete projection of my own inadequacies onto the Shambhala container.
Maybe the alternative is to bank on the vajrayana arising spontaneously from the mahayana, and that I learned dzogchen in Level 5. Hey ho the happy yogini!
Susie, New Zealand
Greetings once more.
Feminine principle has been mentioned. This is good, of course. For an informative experience, grab VCTR Glimpses of Space. It really isn’t about bonking (. . . particularly) or proportional representation on Shambhala boards. Integration of Feminine principle is absolutely unequivocally essential for spiritual path, sine qua absolutely non. In Shambhala, despite some pretty Cynthia Moku banners and a whole committee set up to proliferate the teachings (presumably?) it’s pretty obscure. To what extent is it apparent as a cultural norm and embodied in the Inner Court?
I’d like to hear more of the voice of Samyung Agnes Au, whose talk on feminine principle is a delight that still lurks as an MP3 (I hope) at the bottom of Khandro Tseyang’s page on the Shambhala site, but not on the Search facility, which would of course improve its accessibility. Insight (all-encompassing) must provide the container for action. First scan the field. The snake coils before it strikes. Before engaging vajra sword, count to nine. Be the gap.
A superb protocol and absolute minimum prerequisite for any attempt at deeper democracy in any environment and particularly in virtual ones.
Susie, New Zealand
Greetings to all for the third time, and thank you for your indulgence.
Davee, in your words, ‘There’s the possibility of decorum and decency in separating if the group is true to the vision of the lineage.’
Again, I do think you’re simplifying it a bit. To ‘separate’ is not simple at all.
Additionally, we need to examine the value, and even the morality, of quietly, decorously (sp?) ‘separating’.
There are some things that should rightfully be snaffled by decorum, we don’t want to spew all our petty little issues onto people and if it’s workable, then there is consensus. There are others where the most vigorous protest must be raised.
It is also really a kind of rankism to make Not Being Angry a condition of entry into dialogue, and much abuse has occurred in this world because of this. I definitely haven’t grown out of it, but it’s important to monitor, I think.
A few years ago a radical black South African gave me a new insight into the principle of forgiveness and why there is often shortfall in many existing formal ‘reconciliation’ processes. He said, “Imagine you get your bike stolen. Nobody admits they’ve stolen your bike, and so you go through this process whereby eventually they get to admit they took your bike, and you have this ritual and everybody gets to talk and then they forgive each other.
And when it’s time to go home, you find yourself standing on the pavement saying to yourself – ‘But hang on – what about my fucking bike?’
Susie
I thank John Castlebury warmly for continually channelling the profound profound intelligence of the lineage holders onto these threads. I have Dharma Rain as part of my bodhisattva name, and as a model of aptness you make me gasp.
How do you do it – do you open books at random or is your mind simply one with the dharma (!)?
I promise not to post anything else today.
Susie
Of course there is the possibility of anger with decorum, disappointment with decorum, heartbreak with decorum. That’s what I’m requesting, nay what the lineage would ask of us, yes? And I need that reminder myself.
So a Lion’s Roar of Decorum?. I don’t know, sounds like a non sequitor.
Here is a little slice from the “eternal Victory Banner” from Keith’s Dowman’s translation of Vairotsatva’s 5 original Transmissions Chapter 14″
Verse: Some believe that by designating cause and effect,
both virtue and vice are clearly defined
and the mundane world is transcended.:but moral discrimination is supreme presumption.
from commentary: Familiar with the moral causal process and skilled in the discipline of moral discrimination the result of any action can be predicted; but this facility may produce enormous complacency and arrogance that can result in exclusivity and intolerance”.
Exclusivity and intolerance..
Vajrasattva is not about being good, neither was Basic Goodness about being good. They both point to the ALL-Good. Even moralists are encompassed by the ALL-Good whether they see it or not.
Thank you so much for grabbing the steering wheel, Susanne Vincent, whomever you may be. Talk about fresh air, lungs full! And congratulations on very recently moving just a little bit closer to Australia.
Dear Susanne Vincent:
I found your posts very poignent and I am sure they will be helpful,
However , these sentiments I dont understand:
I find it ironic, and sad, that what is purported to be the pinnacle of the Dorje Dradul’s Shambhala teachings is not available to people like myself,”
I can only assume that what is the pinnacle is treckcho and tobgyal practices, with other Dozgchen practices such as a “Dark Retreat” Why would any one feel that there could be anything beyond the Great Perfection? That is not possible and to believe that the Dorje Dradul believed that, is not possible. He held the lineages of Kagyu / Ningma. The Shambhala Level I teachings were vview path fruition as one, as Dzogchen is view path and fruition,as unity, from the beginning in the pointing out. This , in my opinion, is a marketing technique and a BIG CARROT. A “pinnacle teaching” is by definition not a gradual path, laid out to synchronize with needed programmatic revenue. Therefore one is not excluded from anything. Dzogchen is not a “gradual path teaching” So you find a qualified Dzogchen teacher, with a Dzogchen lineage, as many CTR students hav e done.Holding the pinnacle teachings of the Great Perfection, and thats it. Its that simple.And you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to do so to support a self-serving institution. It is so telling that that is what Robin Korman did, at the end of his Shambhala road, i.e. found a qualified, Dozgchen master of the Great Perfection, Lama Wangdor, to study and train with. I bet he didn’t feel deprived bby doing so.
My personal opinion is that the Shambhala Teachings were VCTR’s skillful means for teaching Dzogchen to westerners. The reference to Robin Kornman is spot on. If you listen to the full set of talks he did beginning here:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&oi=video_result&ct=res&cd=3&url=http%3A%2F%2Fvideo.google.com%2Fvideoplay%3Fdocid%3D-4042924371389663223&ei=9VlsSq7FJcOHtgee_P2aAQ&usg=AFQjCNHNAP3_nP73PcPsLXTHakG4fTO3kA&sig2=ZIJPv89SjlnnA4PZM5XOyw
through all 5 talks, he addresses the issue of Shambhala as a re-framing of Dzogchen that broadens the cultural context drawn upon.
I never begrudge supporting local centers at all – they are a wonderful resource, and indeed Wangdor Rinpoche has taught at the Milwaukee Shambhala Center many times, more than any other Tibetan has AFAIK. I am indebted to the kindness of the center in allowing Robin and I and our cohorts in the motley “Ad Hoc Rime Committee” to arrange for Wangdor Rinpoche’s teachings there.
84000 paths to the dharma. all good.
Davee writes:
it’s not about ‘liking’ or ‘disliking’ the lineage holder
One thing history teaches us is that successors are different than predecessors.
Is the pope the equivalent of Jesus?
Is Patrick Sweeney the equivalent of Trungpa Rinpoche?
Was the Buddha the equivalent of the Hindu ascetics who were said to teach him in the forest?
I think each teacher is unique, with his or her own variety of realization, point of view, motives, purposes in life, and karmic connections with others.
I believe in some traditions it is said that making a strong bond with the wrong teacher, or taking the wrong student if you are a teacher, is the karmic equivalent of jumping off a cliff.
In those traditions you are advised to *carefully* examine the teacher (or the student) before agreeing to such a bond.
Anyway… If there is no gut-level feeling of attraction for a teacher, then what is there to work with? It would be like trying to cook dinner with make-believe ingredients.
Interesting topic, Edward. I have experienced people who have a strong longing for their teacher that appears to me as a kind of strong attraction, but I don’t think that’s the only route to the vajrayana path of devotion. My amateur guess is there is a range of ways to relate to devotion and to teachers and to lineages. I mostly experience a mirror of my own neurosis around the Sakyong, more so than any particular emotion.
And perhaps also there is a transition that can occur in one’s path, like Milarepa who starts off in misery from not being around Marpa to his later poems where that desire to return to Marpa falls away completely.
And Chris, re: decorum, someone wiser than me once roared “Never forget the Hinayana!” and printed it on T-shirts. That was during the Vajrayana section of a seminary I hear (1981?). Sure decorum isn’t the Hinayana, but if one were to look for the basic discipline practice of the Shambhala teachings it would be decorum. Which is not to say that one *has* to practice the Shambhala teachings here, but I think that decorum is fair game to request on this web site. It seems in accord with the lineage to avoid slandering the Sakyong and SI and each other, even in the midsts of expressing criticism or disagreement or anger or heartbreak. And that seems clear from the Shambhala teachings on decorum and also from the Hinayana teachings on the non-virtuous actions of speech which reinforce ego-clinging (eg. divisiveness, indignation, harshness, etc.)
Sorry if that sounds like moralizing and lecturing. So far some subset of comments (and perhaps some articles) on this site really fall short in my opinion, and in bringing it up I’m hoping to remind myself as well.
Davee,
I couldn’t agree with you more about decorum. Sooo important as a basic ground for relationship here.
My feeling about decorum on RFS is that, on the whole, it has been pretty good. Certainly not perfect. There have been exchanges from time to time which definitely fall short. In particular, presuming negative motivations in others is a regrettable thing to see, especially within the Buddhist sangha. Not helpful either.
I think where I might differ from you is in bringing in the power dynamic. But first of all, let’s not forget how much slander, harshness, unkindness etc. can occur from those defending Shambhala International. For a reminder, I invite anyone to wander over to the dharmabrats forum… There used to be some excellent, open exchanges there. And outrageousness, in the best sense, in the spirit of Trungpa Rinpoche. Now…well, you could check out any number of threads (eg, since they address people who post here, “DOOOOM” on page 3 of “General Discussion,”, or “Edward” on page 2), for a random sampler of what’s going down–and I mean down… It looks like the dralas have made a pretty thorough exit from what used to be a worthwhile, needed place. (Not saying by any means of course that the site defended Shambhala International all the time, but am merely pointing to the tone of virtually all comments about RFS. I think if you compare *that* level of decorum with what is seen here, there is no contest.)
Now you might say: well, what do you expect? It’s a high school locker room over there, or whatever–not representative. Okay. But then I must say this: the least decorous, most slanderous and dehumanizing speech I’ve ever heard in my life has come from teachers (and kasung) within Shambhala. That’s not hyperbole: we mean it maaan, as someone named Rotten used to sing… So I have a different perspective here.
This doesn’t mean that lack of decorum can be defended because power succumbs to it. That’s not what I’m saying. Only that in any given situation power has at its disposal tactics and strategies for marginalizing–silencing, ridiculing, excluding, humiliating, or just completely ignoring (a Shambhala specialty, it seems)–those who criticize it in a way that touches a sensitive nerve. When I see undecorous speech from someone on the underside of a power dynamic, my first thought is: hmm, what have they been through to bring that on? Something has happened. There has been wounding, or worse. This, again, isn’t defending undecorous speech. Just pointing out that power dynamics are present here, and they most definitely affect how we communicate, sometimes are even *able* to communicate.
I must say, it is a more than a little suspect, when slander and vitriolic , incoherent, personal, public attack on this forum is alright, when its directed at those who don’t agree with the current Shambhala incarnation. All these Sakyong loyalists say nothing about decorum in that case.
So for me, It undermines all arguments about decorum, and makes it seem that “decorum” arguments are not what is at issue here at all. Decorum arguments are a red herring then. Another attempt at silencing people.
This site, was created it seems as the last place that could discuss issues that had been censured as taboo topics for decades within “corporatized Shambhala”.
Taboo topics, such as, bizarrely, CTR’s meditation techniques.This was taboo in the Sakyong’s Shambhala since 1999, almost a decade. We watched the lineage pictures taken down from the shrine, the protectors removed. The curriculum re-invented over a dozen times, and not a word of protest or concern allowed. No concern then about treating CTR students with “decorum” and respect. “Get with the program , or get out” was the motto, and is more true now than ever. Some experienced extreme forms of bullying when we refused to see the Sakyong as “enlightened” or as our teacher. I have experienced these slices of insanity, and I have heard many stories from other CTR students, “who refused to get with the program.” Its all decorum now, and diversity, and inclusion talk, but the the underlying message is even more true now, in 2009, “Get with the program , or get out.” just as it was in 1999.
So to have people come onto this site with the same proselytising/censoring is really remarkable . If you want an example of real “decorum” is the accomodation to that on this site. If we occassionally loose it when we experience it again, it is understandable, I would say. I am amazed at the “decorum” and accomodations, patience and openness of CTR Students,, and how much “decorum” and accomodation to Sakyong students is being used on this site, to allow them to come in here attempting “pro forma” to silence people, even here. That we don’t hit them over the head with a club, is “decorum.”
Hi Damcho
As an occasional visitor to DBF I must point out that probably the main reason for the lack of posting there lately is due to Gesar no longer participating and Ashoka rarely these days.
Not much drala if the main uses don’t use, right?
Bit like a Palace with only some of the staff and court jesters hanging out . . . (maybe a bored dark Prince or two throwing coins at available targets)
Don’t think you can claim its because anyone dissed RFS, or overly defended S.I. !
While on that note Chris I think you confused Brad with me . . I am the Ozzie who appears on there, rarely and usually with some embarrassing comments. Have decided to leave well enough alone as lately the whole point of blogs seems lost on me other than to avoid real conversations or write utter tosh for the hell of it. Also prefer to meet people I don’t know before assuming I know them or their intentions, via the written word.
Thats a personal observation, not a judgement on anyone elses motives.
OK thats it from me. Glad you guys seem to be generally finding a positive voice and clarity with what you want.
Peas and love from down under
p.s. Decorum, if not defined by awareness of a situation, is definitely over-rated.
Chris: You wrote in response to my post:
“However , these sentiments I dont understand:
I find it ironic, and sad, that what is purported to be the pinnacle of the Dorje Dradul’s Shambhala teachings is not available to people like myself,”
I can only assume that what is the pinnacle is treckcho and tobgyal practices, with other Dozgchen practices such as a “Dark Retreat” Why would any one feel that there could be anything beyond the Great Perfection? That is not possible and to believe that the Dorje Dradul believed that, is not possible. He held the lineages of Kagyu / Ningma. The Shambhala Level I teachings were view path fruition as one, as Dzogchen is view path and fruition,as unity, from the beginning in the pointing out. This , in my opinion, is a marketing technique and a BIG CARROT. A “pinnacle teaching” is by definition not a gradual path, laid out to synchronize with needed programmatic revenue. Therefore one is not excluded from anything. Dzogchen is not a “gradual path teaching” So you find a qualified Dzogchen teacher, with a Dzogchen lineage, as many CTR students have done.Holding the pinnacle teachings of the Great Perfection, and thats it. Its that simple.And you don’t have to pay thousands of dollars to do so to support a self-serving institution”
The sentiments I quoted were Andrew Safer’s, and I do find it ironic and sad and feel it needs more airing.
To be honest, when I ask for dharma to progress on the path, I’m quite happy for the next snippet to come out of the mouth of my cat, or a local blackbird. However, I’m aware there is a map for this kind of thing.
You seem to show a route out of the hole in your reply, but my ignorance is a barrier – I would like to be able to understand your words above, up to ‘Dzogchen is not a gradual path teaching’. I don’t mean this as a negative comment, I genuinely don’t understand what you’re saying, and I’d very much like you to expand, as though speaking to someone who doesn’t know the terrain as well as you do.
Lama territory seems like rather a muddled world. I went to a weekend by a wacky Dzogchen teacher, he looked wonderfully disreputable and played a red hot violin. I think he was actually a reasonably big wheel. The practice did seem exactly the same as Level 5 Open Sky. Sometimes I also join eclectic Buddhist friends to attend a whole range of events (phowa practice, Tara practice, Vajrasattva practice, etc) in a range of little multicoloured halls with lots of prostrating and chanting (chang shey ja rig chho dra ur). I guess I could pass my phone number to the teacher when they put the scarf round my neck, but I’m never sure why.
Diverging re this thread, I am also interested in a couple of points. Firstly, Richard Reoch seems very interested in conversations, dialogue and so forth – which of course is a jolly good idea, and of course this isn’t one. We’re responding to his purported words as one might respond to a message from the Taliban or ET. I heard an enthusiastic comment recently that the Sakyong is now talking to everybody from the old sangha who has an issue about the way things are going. So using the same rule of thumb, if Mr Reoch thinks he’s having a conversation at the moment, I do hope that he will soon make this apparent.
Secondly, thank you so much, Chris, for the link to Robin Kornman’s talks, which are now on my laptop and which remind me of the peculiar stabling arrangement of the Acharyas within Shambhala. Apart from Pema’s work, there are, to my knowledge, no publicly available talks or videos by Acharyas anywhere. I regard this as completely potty in the dark age. Why on earth not? There are some outstanding teachers in the mandala (and talk of salaries notwithstanding, as far as I know it’s $200 per diem when actually teaching) who are not allowed to accept direct students and although, for example, Dale Asrael was recently ‘rated’ as one of the top ten Buddhist teachers in the West, nobody outside the mandala would know a thing about it.
Gidday Brad, appreciate your comment. I’ve lived in New Zealand for 28 years . . . but I guess that’s very recent compared with the Dreamtime eh.
Oh, and finally, FYI I understand Mr Reoch formerly held the position of Head of Press and Publications in Amnesty’s appallingly under-furbished and politically war-torn International Secretariat, focused on keeping its million-plus members in 85-odd countries informed and actively engaged, probably with a 486 pc and sitting on an orange box. This experience seems relevant.
Susie
Dear Susie:
It is thanks to Michael Sullivan that the link to Robin Korman Shambhala talks in Milwaukiee were put up as a link.
As for Dzogchen not being a gradual path. It’s like “you can’t get to here, from there”. Or, as long as you are locked in time, and on a spiritual path with a goal in some future,or you think that you have to improve yourself, purify yourself, or that the timeless moment is far away, and not right here in each awake moment, you are that obscured from Dzogchen. So a gradual path to reach natural awareness of the timeless moment is not possible,Dzochen is outside time and cause and effect. As Namkai Norbu once said, “Dzogchen occurs in 13 cosmos of which this is only one, and Buddhism could be a vehicle for it (but not necessarily) because it was the least dualistic of spiritual paths, or at least it was pointing in the right direction, to nondualism. People confuse Dzogchen with Buddhism. Just as Shambhala teachings are being confused now with Buddhism.
I really think that when you have the genuine pointing out from a qualified Dzogchen teacher, then it becomes clear that CTR was trying to teach Dzogchen, stripped of the Buddhist, monastic, vajrayana overlay, in his own way . A way that would be appropriate for Westerners, who were just as bedazzled by Tibetan monastic lamaism then as now.
So the merging and Shambhala and Buddhism seems way off, and is why , I think, people have such trouble with it. It is intuitively off. Because this was CTR’s way, it seems, to strip the cultural monastic overlay off, and empower students, i.e. point, as you alluded, that we are already seated on the royal seat of the timeless moment of the here and now, , i.e. the pinnacle, with nothing to do, nothing to improve, we just don’t know it because we are always locked in time, distracted by being in the past or future. When I really heard the radical Dzochen teachings, it was like a 500 lb weight was laid down. I realized that for 25 years I had been carrying this “cause and effect” weight, the next program,the next abhisheka, the next teaching, the next ,,the next… the next. And that there was a reason to keep us thinking this, it keeps the revenue flowing, the cash coming in. When really what we needed to do was relax into timelessness , recollect , remember. I would only trust a teacher now that is unequivocally teaching this: Relax and “capture the royal seat: No buddha elsewhere, look at your own face, nothing to do, rest in your own place.” There are qualified teachers who can point this out, i.e. they don’t give you anything you don’t already have, they just remind you to relax into the timeless moment.
“I heard an enthusiastic comment recently that the Sakyong is now talking to everybody from the old sangha who has an issue about the way things are going. So using the same rule of thumb, if Mr Reoch thinks he’s having a conversation at the moment, I do hope that he will soon make this apparent.”
Re above this is an interesting comment from Suzanne – is this just
a rumour or is it actually happening? Personally if it was happening I
would not be one to go in on a one to one basis, I think if such a thing
was to occur you would have to go in with a list of queries if not such
a strict thing as an agenda. It also begs the question that there may be
quite a few ‘rebels’ out there if such meetings are happening.
I like Chris’s comments I dont care if she is one this board every minute
of every day if she has something interesting and useful to say as likewise Davee and everyone else as I thought blogs/boards were for conversations that could go on for a long time. In this respect I loved being on the phone in the US and Canada as you could have long conversations whereas at the time in GB every minute cost money -that now has changed!
Anyway I have definately left the org re teachings in ordered fashion of
Shambhala International.
I think in the west it is possible to go the Robin Kornman way -this is not
to say that it will be easy but at least we will have more democracy happening from the grassroots and with the help of older students I think we can do great things.
I was listening to Tsem Tulku yesterday over the web and although
he is a Gelugpa and very traditional in his way of teachings he definately
said he wanted Asian and by implication western lineage holders. Thats
what I want too – I want Tibetans to give the whole thing to the west I
dont think they need to hold back on this. But if they dont give it I think we
will always get people like Ray trying to hit it without confirmation from the
east and personally I think this is good way to go. I dont really care
if Robin Kornman did not get the full switcheroo of the teachings perhaps
his students who were younger might get it – and that is what I am willing
to risk by studying with Trungpa’s older students.
Anyway think that is enough – look forward to peoples comments.
Best
Rita Ashworth
As a “older student” of VCTR I would like to share a few thoughts that might be helpful to this discussion.
1) Even when VCTR was alive it was questionable to assume that one knew what was on his mind, or how he would react to any situation, Having said that it is my recollection that he was not a big fan of “democracy” but rather worked to establish an “enlightened monarchy”.
2) One of the first classes that I attended at Naropa was on the life of Milarepa where it was pointed out that Marpa would not give teaching to Milarepa until it was “payed for”, so the fact that today the teaching are not free and will cost one to receive them is nothing new.
3) No one knows how VCTR would manifest were he still alive today, what we do know is that he trusted and empowered his son as his lineage holder.
so in the words of VCTR
” Good Luck ”
James Hoagland
Dear Hoagland
Everything that you have pointed out is true but I feel the climate has
changed over the years and I feel the best way to go to really propagate
these teachings as much as we can is for the
teachings to be really given in toto to westerners – I dont think the
Sakyong is going to do this so I am going the Robin Kornman way.
There are democracies and democracies – Trungpa has commented
favourably on some democratic institutions such as the Boulder City
Council and some Christian organisations. But I really would like to
hear more from Ken Green on the politics that Trungpa was clued into.
Trungpa also said that there should be a National Assembly with voting powers in his will which I have alluded to many times before which is not
now happening.
I think yes we should contribute to the finances of dharma organisations
but they should be supremely transparent. Perhaps even budgets put to the whole sangha for them to comment on and pass by voting or by their
elected representatives voting as happens in virtually all societies in the world.
But I dont think money is the main bugbear here I think in essence we are in a transition period the teachings can go with the west or get locked into
a hiatus with eastern teachers – my intuition, feelings call it what you will
is that the shambhala teachings will have to be propagated by western
lineage holders. Religions modify themselves over the centuries to the
environment they land up in -witness Christianity freeing itself from its Jewish roots and adapting and changing in the west.
Yes I too in the words of our great founder Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche wish you Good Luck and many jolly escapades in Nova Scotia!
Best
Rita Ashworth
Response to James Hoagland (JH):
JH: Even when VCTR was alive it was questionable to assume that one knew what was on his mind, or how he would react to any situation, Having said that it is my recollection that he was not a big fan of “democracy” but rather worked to establish an “enlightened monarchy”.
SD: It is true that VCTR had his doubts about democracy and dedicated his last years to preparing his students to carry out his vision of the Kingdom of Shambhala, an enlightened monarchy. He did, however, include in that vision the means for enabling feedback to the center of the mandala in a number of ways, including the Delek system, which was to be relatively non-hierarchical and uncensored, as I recall.
JH: One of the first classes that I attended at Naropa was on the life of Milarepa where it was pointed out that Marpa would not give teaching to Milarepa until it was “payed for”, so the fact that today the teaching are not free and will cost one to receive them is nothing new.
SD: As I recall, enabling students to have access to the dharma was VCTR’s first priority, so he was concerned that programs not be prohibitively expensive. I imagine that many old dogs who visit this site, especially those who, like myself, staffed the Vajradhatu mandala – such as Mark Szpakowski and Martin Fritter, who both worked in finance – can attest to this view. It did not seem that lack of money was allowed to be an obstacle to serious students. Work-study in one form or another was always available. It was, in fact, the way many students entered the mandala until recent years.
Another point: there are many stories in the Buddhist tradition of teachers putting aspiring students off, making them wait and/or go through trials before teachers would grant teachings. In my understanding of the logic of this practice, the teacher was assessing the students’ readiness for and receptivity to the teachings. Sometimes students’ ambitions and arrogance has to be worn down before they can properly receive the precious dharma.
This was the case, I have always assumed, with Milarepa. He did not go out and get a ‘proper job’ in order to pay for the teachings. Rather, Marpa repeatedly made this desperate supplicant build towers of stone and then tear them down, over and over. This was ‘work-study’ that brought the admittedly materialistic Marpa no profit. We can assume, in fact, that Marpa’s materialism received quite a devastating blow when Naropa tossed all Marpa’s teaching gift of gold dust into the air and declared that he – Naropa – had no need for it since all the world is gold.
So, Jim, I find your market logic to be at least simplistic, if not a distortion of dharmic logic.
JH: No one knows how VCTR would manifest were he still alive today, what we do know is that he trusted and empowered his son as his lineage holder.
SH: The Vidyadhara entrusted the Kingdom of Shambhala to Osel Mukpo and empowered him to be his successor as ruler of KOS. That is as far as it goes, in terms of the Vidyadhara’s stated wishes.
To continue
Continued response to James Hoagland (3):
I have never seen any written documentation, nor did I ever hear from the Vidyadhara himself, that he envisioned that the then Sawang Osel Mukpo would become the sole lineage holder of all his teaching streams in the Kingdom of Shambhala, nor that the enlightened monarch of Shambhala would be the Vajra Master of all the subjects of Shambhala. The Vidyadhara clearly stated that KOS was to be secular.
I believe it was Andrew who posted this quote earlier, but it bears repeating again:
“Over the past seven years, I have been presenting a series of ‘Shambhala teachings’ that use the image of the Shambhala kingdom to represent the ideal of secular enlightenment, that is, the possibility of uplifting our personal existence and that of others without the help of any religious outlook. For although the Shambhala traditiion is founded on the sanity and gentleness of the Buddhist tradition, at the same time, it has its own independent basis, which is directly cultivating who and what we are as human beings. With the great problems now facing human society, it seems increasingly important to find simple and non-sectarian ways to work with ourselves and to share our understanding with others.” — CTR, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
There are enough senior students still alive who attended Kalapa Assemblies – I believe that having attended Kalapa Assemblies does qualify one as a senior student, in general – that there are a fair number of us who still remember the Vidyadhara’s/Dorje Dradul’s vision for KOS. That vision was quite different from what we have now, in many respects. The expansiveness of that vision was quite bracing – pure, uplifted, inspiring Chögyam Trungpa. Are the Kalapa Assembly transcripts still available? Does anybody read them? Has Richard Reoch read them? Or are they now regarded as old hat? What a shame – in fact, a tragedy – that would be.
Dear Susie:
“Lama territory seems like rather a muddled world. I went to a weekend by a wacky Dzogchen teacher, he looked wonderfully disreputable and played a red hot violin”
That is why lineage is so important. There are more charlatans out there than ever and why we have to question, and use our intelligence and our cynicism.
Cooks from Nepal, claiming to be Rinpoches. Jumping on the gullible West band-wagon.
We were never taught to “blindly follow ” someone, and if it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. That is also what became so crazy making for older CTR students. Never, were we taught to blindly follow some teacher, not even if he was the son of our teacher. The teachings say to question and examine for up to 12 years before you take someone as you teacher and commit. To try and stop us from “examining” and questioning flies in the face of Buddism and what we were taught.
Dear Rita
You stated “…the best way to go to really propagate these teachings as much as we can is for the teachings to be really given in toto to westerners – I don’t think the Sakyong is going to do this…”
I can only say it has been my experience that like his father before him the Sakyong has not held back from transmitting “in toto” the hart essence of the linage to his western students. He continues to reveal the vast treasure of oral instructions and practices and works tirelessly to bring to fruition the vision of the Kingdom of Shambhala.
While not perfect the Shambhala governance continues to improve though the congress of members, working groups and councils. As far as financial transparency the organization of Shambhala is probably more transparent today than it was years ago. Can Shambhala do thing better no doubt it can. While it is always easier to sit on the sidelines of a origination and find faults it is much harder work with in it and work to improve the situation. I have watch Richard Reoch work to expand Shambhala and improve the organization, while at the same time continuing his efforts to broker peace which began when he was with Amnesty International. Richard still works to bring genuine peace to world risking his life traveling to such war torn places on the planet as Srilanka trying to use constructive dialogue to resolve conflict. Richard has not always been successful but I have never seen him stop trying.
I am sure there is a vast diversity of interests among the people contributing to this site. I hope that all would want the vision of VCTR that the Kingdom of Shambhala be fully realized. With all of the critical intellect gathered here please let us use it as constructively as we can to try to improve the situation and not to delight in the faults of others. There remains life times of work to complete the vision of VCTR those whom believe that the Sakyong was appointed by VCTR to cary out his vision then help the Sakyong and Shambhala to do so, those whom have doubts and are interested then find a Shambhala Center take a class or go online and study with Shambhala online, and those who are not interested then move on.
James
James:
I appreciate your posting on RFS.
You wrote:
…”those whom believe that the Sakyong was appointed by VCTR to cary out his vision then help the Sakyong and Shambhala to do so…”
VCTR’s vision of Shambhala as a separate path has been lost. It’s difficult to see how mixing Shambhala and Buddhism together could result in carrying out that same vision.
I believe that people who are questioning what’s going on, and who may be critical of the direction the Shambhala community is heading in, ARE “helping the Sakyong and Shambhala” to carry out CTR’s vision. That’s the whole point!
You wrote:
“those whom have doubts and are interested then find a Shambhala Center take a class or go online and study with Shambhala online, and those who are not interested then move on. ”
I think you’re suggesting that those who are not buying into the current direction of this community could benefit from some form of indoctrination. And if that doesn’t work, they should “move on.” …go softly into the night.
That reminds me of George W. Bush’s famous line: “You’re either with us, or you’re against us.”
I don’t think that approach is going to work here. I haven’t “moved on” so far, and it’s clear that a lot of others haven’t either, judging from the interest expressed on RFS by people in Canada, US, UK, Brazil, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, and parts unknown.
More realistically, I think we’re all in this soup together, and it’s just going to keep cooking.
I could perhaps have said it a little differently than Andrew, but I agree with what he is saying. “Get with the program or move on.” Does seem to be a consistent message from those invested in the current direction of Shambhala. Luckily, such statements won’t stop the debate.
Suzanne
You asked “Are the Kalapa Assembly transcripts still available?”
Yes as a matter of fact they truly are, Vajradhatu Publications (still a part of the Shambhala) has just published “Collected Kalapa Assemblies Book 1978-1984″ and are available to those who have taken the Kalapa Shambhala Vow (formerly the Shambhala Lodge transmission)
As to the question of the Sakyong being the linage holder of not just the Kingdom of Shambhala but his fathers Buddhist linage, I can say having been present at the Surmang monastery in 2001 where in the presents of the 12th Trungpa the Sakyong was not just recognized as the linage holder of the 11 Trungpa but also the head of the Surmang kagyu.
As regards to “So, Jim, I find your market logic to be at least simplistic, if not a distortion of dharmic logic.”
I am not sure what “market logic” your are referring to. I had no intention of using any “market logic” I only wanted to point that there have always been cost involved in receiving the teachings a point that I must say you expanded better than myself in reminding us of how hard Milarapa worked and the costs that he payed to hear the teachings of Marpa.
As for ‘work-study’ to my knowledge it still exist today. I do know that some Centres build into the cost of their programs money to cover scholarships.
Your truly
James Hoagland
Dear Mr Hoagland,
Thank you for your reply – I have moved on.
In toto I meant there should be western lineage holders -that is an intuition about the way things should progress, and as the Sakyong is going to have a family lineage and pass the whole thing down to a lineage of Sakyongs that does not allow for the possibility of others in the world manifesting the shambhala and Buddhist teachings completely. I think there will be crazy wisdom holders in the west and all other kinds of dharma teachers – it is up to the individual to choose who to follow in this regard.
I was not aware in my previous post that I was fault-finding – I was perhaps suggesting ways that the dharma could be carried forward in a cohesive and inclusive mannner with a politcal structure that includes the input of every member from the highest to the lowest. I think all dharma organisations that are evolving in the stream of VCTR’s teachings should embody these principles as much as they can.
I too, like Richard, have been involved in political action by going on marches with CND, and at Greenham Common, I have also organised a group for unwaged people in the UK and helped to publish a magazine on unemployment here. I also have been in the past a volunteer for many events at the London Shambhala centre and now events in Manchester So we all do our politics as much as we can like Richard but as he was employed by Amnesty obviously he can do much more.
Finance wise I still think the teachings are too dear for a lot of people.
When I was working in Nova Scotia in the 1990s the minimum wage was $6.25 and alot of the people in the province were on this minimum. I have also read in the past over the web that some in the province could not afford to pay their fuel bills and that they were freezing in their appartments in the depths of winter.
In addition for a weekend price for a level I for one person I think I could run a six week course on the shambhala teachings for many people – in the UK you could do it at an Adult education centre and it would be free for unwaged people -paid for by the government. I think there are adult education centres in Nova Scotia why not run the courses where people are at. I think everyone should consider the possibility of making these teachings as free as can be the case for the low-waged. For example just run a level 1 for free -try it out -SI can afford to do it now and again.
I think I have covered most of your points and provided a more thorough
explanation of my position.
I would welcome your further insights on how it is possible to get these teachings out to people much quicker than is done at present because
that is the task that I have now set myself for the near future.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Stockport UK
Rita Ashworth
Stockport UK
Andrew and John
As far as I know the Shambhala training still exists
http://shambhala.org/shambhala-training.php
“I believe that people who are questioning what’s going on, and who may be critical of the direction the Shambhala community is heading in, ARE “helping the Sakyong and Shambhala” to carry out CTR’s vision. That’s the whole point!” I have no problem with questions I have only been trying to share some of my experiences in a small attempt to respond to a few issues that were presented here.
“I think you’re suggesting that those who are not buying into the current direction of this community could benefit from some form of indoctrination. And if that doesn’t work, they should “move on.” …go softly into the night.”
No that was not my intent in any way rather just the opposite, what I tried to convey was that if one was interested in seeing VCTRs vision realized with in the Shambhala Mandala please join in the hard work and if on the other hand one was not interested in working with the Shambhala Mandala then move on with no regret.
I am in no way suggesting that one should give up their critical intelligence
I am NOT saying “Get with the program or move on.” just that I think as during the time of VCTR change was all ways happing and nothing was solid. I know that when Karma Dzong moved from 1111 pearl st. to the “pick building” some were upset at how the change was taking place but most found it “workable” If anyone thinks that Shambhala is no longer workable for them I am truly saddened but that persons experience is not the same as mine.
Yours in the Dharma
James
Pick a nit! It was the “PIC” (Physicians’ Investment Club) building.
A couple of years ago, I ran the rates for the basic tent-dweller rates at SMC through the inflation calculator — http://www.westegg.com/inflation/ — and it seemed that adjusted rates were pretty much the same as they were in 1980. Of course, this doesn’t apply to the various lodges and more up-scale accomidations, which didn’t exist then.
What did the Scorpion Seal retreat cost?
Rita
Yes I agree that there should be western lineage holders and there are no doubt some already. Yes the Sakyong lineage is a family linage which started when His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche empowered VCTR as the 1st Sakyong of Shambhala. I am sure some day the Sakyong of shambhala will be a “westerner”. Right now though we have the Sakyong who is nether of the east or the west.
I am glad you are able to help others less fortunate than your self, I remember that when the Sakyong introduced volunteer service as part of the Shambhala path some took offense because the path was being changed from how it “had always been”. Also I am not sure that you are aware that for years the Sakyong has given free or nearly free public Friday night talks before many of his weekend workshops.
I do recall VCTR saying how if one pays for the Darrma then one is more likely to value it than if it is given away. And many “old dogs” will testify on how expensive many of VCTRs teaching were perceived at the time. I for one knows that it will take many many life times to repay debt I owe for receiving his priceless teachings.
Rita please keep up your good works and if you have time or inclination I am sure your local Shambhala Centre could use some of your wisdom and experience.
Best to you
James
Martin
I believe the cost for the Scorpion Seal retreat in Nova Scotia at DDL are
Full Cost: $995 CAD
Low-Income: $840 CAD
plus teaching gift
James
“Are the Kalapa Assembly transcripts still available? [yes] Does anybody read them? [Of course.] Has Richard Reoch read them? [This is mean-spirited] Or are they now regarded as old hat? [what are you implying about the intelligence of those who don't feel and think the way you do? That we don't study?] What a shame – in fact, a tragedy – that would be. [Look at these last four sentences--they are a shame and tragedy]
Having just taught a Kalapa Assembly class in Milwaukee based on SI’s Werma Practice & Study curriculum I can assure you that the KA transcripts are studied and greatly appreciated. How could it be otherwise? (I can also tell you that the curriculum is 90% CTR’s and 10% SMR’s.)
As I am signing off (at least for a while) from any further postings. I want to present a possible scenario that may seem nearly impossible for some to accept:
There are students who love CTR & SMR;
A great many of these study both these teachers intently;
A great many, based on intelligence and devotion, are carrying forth this powerful lineage forward in the best way possible. They have concluded that this is a powerful lineage, and it is of the utmost importance to benefit the world this way.
They are genuine—they are not just following blindly.
Their ability to gather intelligence, history, etc. and come to an intelligent conclusion is no less than yours.
They have no less evidence than you have to conclude that the Sakyong IS following his father’s instructions
Some of you can make a great case for speculating that there is no lineage here. I can make a great case speculating that Trungpa Rinpoche is the Padmasambhava of our time and he is changing the Buddhist world as we know it into a Shambhala world and that will be his legacy and lineage for centuries—and that the Sakyong is doing exactly what he father wanted him to do.*
In truth, neither conclusion can be verified. Anyhow, the point I’m suggesting is that “Don’t Know Mind” would be much more appropriate than mudslinging or the audacity of suggesting that the Sakyong is deluded; Reoch is a sycophant; and that the rest of us Lineage of the Sakyongs folks just don’t get it due to a major prajna deficit which causes us to simply jump on a convenient bandwagon.
There is great intelligence across the aisle, so-to-speak, and there is a lot of pain and suffering there. Nevertheless, it is pure delusion to think that the “others” are so sadly mistaken and ignorant for not seeing what we see. It’s a conundrum, so we can all let the subtle war-making and degrading of others subside and sit for a while with our sad and breaking heart.
Au Revoir,
Alan A
*From today’s CTR Ocean of Dharma quote: “…Christ, came from the Jewish tradition, and one, the Buddha, came from the Hindu tradition. Both were stepping out of their traditions and beginning to teach a new kind of truth, or an old truth in a new way…”
And next, Trungpa moving beyond traditional Buddhist format to teach old truth in new (Shambhala) way?
I think Alan and James are very intelligent people and thank you for your contributions here. Maybe it does seem to some that there is some kind of “warfare” going on here, but I think that there are those that would agree that
most are moved to post here exactly because of their sad and breaking hearts, as Alan referred to it. I have “moved on” too, but after putting thirty
years into helping build Vajradhatu/Shambhala, I’m still interested in what
happens to it, not about to say “oh well…whatever” and turn my back on it.
I wonder if anyone really thinks that if we all stopped being critical and/or observant if that would really help?
John
Thank you for your post.
I do not want you to stop using your critical intellect nor stop observing. Having invested so manny years of this life helping build the foundation of our mandala if you have any energy or desire left please if you can with your tender open hart find a way to share your wisdom and compassion to help fix the problems you see. The situation is still workable. If we are to create an enlighten society then it should be one that is able to contain many points of view and many different experiences.
James
Dear Chris
Thank you for the clear response to my request, I do appreciate it.
Dear all
My name is Susanne and I am known as Susie. This is maybe helpful to differentiate me from Suzanne, despite any positive reflection that may accrue to me from that error.
Thank you
Susie
Alan (and James), from how you present the CTR Ocean of Dharma quote (“Christ came from the Jewish tradition … Buddha, came from the Hindu tradition. Both were stepping out of their traditions and beginning to teach a new kind of truth, or an old truth in a new way…”), you seem to have not hit on the essential point that some of us have been trying so valiantly to communicate.
Put simply: Christ presented Christianity not just for Jews (even though he and his early followers all were Jewish), Buddha presented Buddhism not just for Hindus (even though he & his early followers were Hindu), and Chögyam Trungpa presented Shambhala not just for Buddhists (even though he and 99% of this early followers were Buddhist).
To offer Shambhala teachings and practices to all who need it and can respond to it means that there cannot be a buddhist gate blocking access to the practices and teachings of the Scorpion Seal text, Werma sadhana, and so on.
To many of us it was and is clear that the Druk Sakyong’s vision of Shambhala was of a secular/sacred society that did not give preferential status to one religion. That’s a leap he took, and we take with him; and some of us leap from traditions other than buddhism. Such a vision and intention is clearly evident to and resonates today with 19 year olds and 90 year olds, and to anybody who reads the key buddhist and shambhala books and texts, and across that age spectrum there is disappointment at not finding that vision resonating in the halls of Shambhala International.
There is, however, great interest in having it resonate further, and hopefully those within the Shambhala Buddhist organization (Alan, James, Davee, …) can help us do so in an unimpeded way.
Cheers,
Mark
Thanks, James…
I think RFS is one way interested parties can express themselves openly….in that way it is what you suggest. Anyone can read what’s here and find out what people are thinking…even the powers that be, if they are interested.
The Vidyadhara said something to the effect that if there is an obstacle…go around it. This site seems to be an expression of that. Many of us old doggies, certainly myself, have not been around Shambhala for a while….so we do tend to loose touch with what’s actually happening.
That’s why. for me, it was heartening to hear Edward’s description of his
experience of Shambhala Training. There are other voices that say other thngs…Chris for example…who are also valuable to hear from.
If there wasn’t a need for RFS, I doubt that it would have ever come to be.
The best to all,
J. T.
Thank you, Chris and Suzanne particularly, for your arguments. I feel an opening into a clear field of insight through many of your words.
I think that to continue to debate the differences in view here and to reach the heart of what is being seen and said by all is very important and not just for the benefit of those in this small zone of interaction.
Suzanne’s thread around Deception, Corruption and Lies points to the unequivocal need for truthfulness – in all the Courts – because otherwise we are just thrashing about in some bardo where investment in personal gain and loss, hope and fear underpins all standpoints. When this happens, words get weasly and loaded, and accusations get personal. It is invariably so obvious that one might as well put up a sign saying, “Attempting to solidify ground here!”
I need to comment on a number of statements or implications, and hope you will forgive me for not attributing each to its author. I invite comments on whether what I say is true or not.
As far as I am aware, having researched this not infallibly, but with all the determination of an Earth Rat:
- The question of whether VCTR empowered his son as the lineage holder is not answered by a ceremony carried out in 2001 at Surmang.
- The fact of the 12th Trungpa being present doesn’t imply an act of ‘delegation’ of any kind by the 12th Trungpa to the Sakyong unless the 12th Trungpa says it does.
- Comprehensive feedback to the centre is essential for the health of any mandala. If the ruler doesn’t know what is happening in all corners of the mandala, there is avoidable risk to the mandala, and that is not acceptable for a ruler. (Options for ‘mandala’ could be: body, motor car, farm, mind, school, community, computer system, Shambhala, etc.)
- Nobody has said the Sakyong does not work tirelessly; the issue is indeed bringing to fruition the vision of the Kingdom of Shambhala.
- The extent of career effort or moral standing of Richard Reoch is not in question.
- The on-site cost of a programme for some students is only a fraction of the cost of attendance. With the cheapest accommodation at e.g. SMC and travel, a two-week programme would cost me around NZ$10,000, and partly because my dollar is worth about US65c. It’s not a matter of blaming the organisation for not making programmes cheaper, but of working out how to make the most profound and brilliant teachings available to the largest number of receptive people, using all the available resources to the absolute maximum, as indeed the Vidyadhara did in his life, and then building the whole system around that.
- It is legitimate in any non-authoritarian state to criticise the strategy and tactics of any leader who doesn’t have a complete view of the context and particularly the opportunities, risks, threats or potentialities present. The extent to which this is heard and addressed by leadership is often directly correlated with the success of that organisation’s mission, whether the organisation is a family, corporate or state.
- Richard Reoch’s ability to use constructive dialogue in peacebuilding missions is to be applauded! Like all of us, he is welcome to join this one at any stage.
- The fact of the number of people who love both SMR and CTR, their moral standing, intelligence or personal qualities, or the extent they are deserving of love and respect do not affect in any way the ability of a student to accept the Sakyong as their teacher. Chris has commented incisively on this. It is a vast commitment, greater than marriage and unbreakable over successive incarnations, purportedly. People do not go along with it in order to fit in with the community, and this applies both to those who have done it and those who haven’t. Other students’ integrity is not the issue.
But who was it who said something like: if I come with you – so you can die happy and go to your heaven for following your conscience, and I go to hell for betraying mine – will you come with me?
With love, Susie
Rita: you said
‘ Trungpa also said that there should be a National Assembly with voting powers in his will . . .’
and
‘ . . . my intuition, feelings, call it what you will is that the shambhala teachings will have to be propagated by western lineage holders . . .’
In the spirit of good brainstorming, although you haven’t filled in details on ‘how’, I’d like to invite people to discuss both these statements as opportunities, radical though they may seem.
Cheers,
Susie
James, your reply to John T and I think by implication to others was:
“I do not want you to stop using your critical intellect nor stop observing. Having invested so manny years of this life helping build the foundation of our mandala if you have any energy or desire left please if you can with your tender open heart find a way to share your wisdom and compassion to help fix the problems you see. The situation is still workable. If we are to create an enlighten society then it should be one that is able to contain many points of view and many different experiences.”
James, you are seeing indeed what one would devoutly wish. If you include (and presumably you do) those who don’t see the Sakyong as their vajra master, and take into account the access to decisiontaking forums that is available to them, please would you propose how this could be done?
Regards, Susie
I like the word “truthiness”….
Alan, thank you for your last post. I can’t imagine how anyone could express the feelings of (some) of the Sakyong’s students with any more clarity and genuineness than that.
The Kalapa Assembly transcripts are not only still available, they have been compiled into a beautiful blue and gold bound volume. I travel with it.
Grains of sand in the Ganges, as they say.
James thank you for your reply – I might return to some shambhala centres for arts programmes but otherwise I do not have any plans to re-engage with the organisation.
A level 1 in London now costs £115 that is too much by far for the growing
army of unemployed people in the UK and for people on low incomes. Even at a reduced price the charge would approximate to £75 -its just not on! I plan with the help of others to make the shambhala teachings as free as is possible -perhaps even only covering the cost of hiring a building – I can do this because another Buddhist facility in my locality will only charge to cover expenses.
Are there not other halls/rooms in Nova Scotia where the teachings could
also be given at a lower price I would say do it if you have the inclination- a Shambhala level I is a Shambhala level I wherever you do it. Do we really need a central organisation that wont play a compassionate ball on these matters – the most important thing is to get the teachings out there in what ever way possible. Just look at the fee for the Scorpion Seal Retreat in Nova Scotia $840 -when I was living in NS that was some peoples income for a month. I well remember giving people dollars just so they could get home on the bus.
Governance
Re the National Assembly -some time ago I got a brief email from Richard saying that he and the Sakyong had discussed that the Congress
and the National Assembly were the same thing-well such discussions may be fine for them as an academic exercise but as for the great unwashed out there who really want to debate enlightened society politics such a brief discourse wont do especially as the Vidyadhara said there should be voting in such an assembly in his will.
Re my intuition about other western lineage holders for the Shambhala and Buddhist teachings Robin Kornman said it most succinctly in his broadcast on google -he stated that he and others were the lineage holders of CTR. Of course he did also state that people should remain in SI and not split like Ray and Midal but he died before all the present revisions in the curriculum occurred so he could have possibly changed his mind about staying.
I took refuge with Dilgo Khyentse in 1976 -and others have been practicing these teachings more diligently than I for years – are we saying that there are no people around at the level of being vajra masters in the west? Are there no more Regents out there? The teachings are in the west I hope the older students will rise to the challenge of really spreading CTRs unadulterated teachings to millions of people for that is now what has to be done.
I will keep posting on rfs forever and forever to put my points across. I say to you all out there keep posting even if you dont like what you are reading. For example I hate the Daily Telegraph as a tory paper but they sure did a good job on the expenses scandal in the government. Lets have more discussion – tho I cant always make a computer as its in libray (another financial problemo!)
Well again best Rita
Susie
To your question as to how do those do not see the Sakyong as their vajra master take part in decision taking forums?
By becoming a member
http://shambhala.org/community/membership.php
I am not aware of any requirement that a member needs to take the Sakyong as their vajra master. The new head of Shambhala’s finance office is not even a Buddhist, as well there are many members who have other vajra masters.
best
James
Mark wrote:
“Put simply: Christ presented Christianity not just for Jews (even though he and his early followers all were Jewish), Buddha presented Buddhism not just for Hindus (even though he & his early followers were Hindu), and Chögyam Trungpa presented Shambhala not just for Buddhists (even though he and 99% of this early followers were Buddhist).”
Sounds like a new religion on the block. I don’t doubt it, but I don’t think it’s complete yet or truly stands alone without additional terma being uncovered when the time is right. Sure DKR claimed it was complete, but I would guess that was in the context of Buddhist terma not a whole new thing separate from Buddhism.
It is bold of me to claim that the terma is not finished if it were to really present a complete form of non-Buddhist dzogchen path or equivalent without additional Buddhist practices. The Scorpion Seal retreat is described in the terma but what I’m suggesting is that the full path to get to it might not be detailed enough without using Buddhist methods still (that require Buddhist samaya).
I’m surmising this is also the view of the Sakyong, because these Scorpion Seal assemblies are organized around teaching four years worth of preparatory practices corresponding to each week of the Scorpion Seal. Arguably four years is not enough, but we’re trusted with this short preparatory work. And the sense I get is that most of the new material necessarily comes from the Buddhist dzogchen lineage, eg. trekchö, tsa lung. And that these additional practices are pre-requisites for any dark retreat worth its metal. Therefore, the Vidhyadhara spelled out the full range but didn’t create a completely non-Buddhist path before he died, even if that was his ultimate vision.
This doesn’t preclude of course a terton of the future receiving further terma that provides a fully non-Buddhist form of trekchö, tsa lung, etc. – that would empower a path to the Scorpion Seal without having to leverage the Buddhist lineage nor therefore require Buddhist samaya. But i’m not sure it is even possible to supplicate for terma, one just has to wait until the proper time yes? Maybe in a generation or two or maybe next year?
I guess one could argue that inner yoga like tsa lung is not necessary for the Shambhala path to the Scorpion Seal, that the Shambhala path of the Vidyadhara includes enough practices to be complete already without leveraging anything further. My sense though is that the Sakyong does not believe that to be the case. So currently in order to unlock the Scorpion Seal, one will have to study these various additional practices first like tsa lung and the only pure transmission of them available to us currently is through Buddhism still – though I too would rejoice if a future terton were to unlock non-Buddhist equivalents someday of the various pre-requisite practices.
A Poem
(found near the teapots at the Seattle
Shambhala Center)
Hold the sadness and pain
of samsara in our heart
and at the same time
the power and vision of the
Great Eastern Sun.
Then the warrior can
make a proper cup of tea.
[VCTR, date unknown, from KiKiSoSo,
issue 11, Summer 1997]
Re the path to the dark retreats instituted by CTR is it possible for Mark to
lay out the whole thing in an ordered fashion as was done by CTR so that the general reader will have a good overview of the whole thing.
From briefly talking to others I believe it was at one time possible in the
shambhala tradition to do these dark retreat practices without reference to Buddhism and I think Mark posted something on this but I can not now locate it on this site.
I think I also vaguely remember that CTR stopped people going further with some shambhala practices because they were not being careful about relating to the teachings.
I have also heard but dont quote me on this that at some point there were other practices that the Vidyadhara envisaged people doing before they
did these dark retreats.
So although I understand some of Davee’s ideas on possible ways forward with dark retreats in the future it would good if some one could be quite linear in explaining the whole process according to CTR only.
As regards terma I think Davee has made some interesting comments
which might indeed subvert the way a Buddhist persay would see the
whole thing going. I was thinking about terma myself recently what various
forms it took in relation to my own experiences -perhaps we could have a discussion on terma in all its facets. I feel the concept of terma relates to my feeling, intuition that westerners will take the whole thing forward because I have just got a hunch that there are people out there that will discover terma if they are introduced to the shambhala teachings without the Buddhist context. I think it is something about the timing of the shambhala teachings coming to the west at this time and peoples attraction for them – the attraction is almost instantaneous and that to me that is kind of magical and weird thats why in some respects I really want to get these teachings out there quickly.
Many thanks Davee for your thoughts and I hope Mark can fill us in with his thoughts on terma and dark retreats in the shambhala context only.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Stockport UK
Maybe someone else can help me out here. To my knowledge, the only tertons are Tibetian lamas, specific ones, not that many and mainly from the Nyingma lineages (VCTR was Kagu/Nyingma). Will there be western tertons? Well, I’ll bet there will be people that claim they are, (Reggie and Perks are getting pretty close), but I think it all goes back to lineage…without that, who’s to say? And, personally, I shy away from anyone that declares they are a teacher without the blessing of their own teacher, their own lineage. The danger seems to me to be that words like “terma” and “terton” slip out of context and just become more fuel for the marketplace., watered down and meaningless. “if Joe Schmidt can do it, so can I, the great Joe Blow.” It’s already happening, it seems.
There’s a fake Shaman down here that’s got the local Shambhalians in his thrall…claims to channel the god of fire, to be infallible and know everything. And these people can’t see through that. If there’s an audience, someone’s bound to be selling tickets.
Davee, RE “Sounds like a new religion on the block” – well that analogy (previously discussed here) is just that, an analogy, and only goes so far. Shambhala in the vision of CTR is not yet another religion, but a rethinking and rediscovery of the sacred in the heart of the secular. It’s an attempt at a new radical understanding, and a process on the way to creating that – because that’s exactly what this 21st century, as well as the next millenium, needs. Of course it’s a challenge: there’s no guarantee it can be accomplished: it could become a religion (
, it could become embroiled in internal and external politics, but – the world needs a new ratio of the secular and the sacred in the guts of all its institutionst. It’s not just for, or owned by, a small cultural/religious minority. This has to be tangible and expressable by people of all cultures and traditions, because that’s what populates the world we’re in. (Again, the very last chapter of Shambhala The Sacred Path of the Warrior says it all.)
I find the use of the word “terma” here a bit odd – it’s wrapping a very direct experience in layers of approvals and myth and power. Terma is a lot simpler than that. The truth of your vision does not come from someone else giving you an okay, or from people agreeing that the latest holograms of Hari Seldon were in fact authentic (viz. Foundation Trilogy). That stuff is after the fact. If something is true it’s not because it’s terma, but because _you_ recognize it as the truth. That’s what validates Shambhala vision. That’s why people connect with it – they find the terma was in them all along! My experience is that people, including myself, connect with CTR because he speaks the simple and direct truth, and connects with that part of you. He was a deeply truthful person, and was able to pull truth out of situations and objects and people – because it was already there. That intention is what enables what we can sometimes after-the-fact bless as terma or whatever, but frankly doing so is unnecessary and too easily becomes both kind of ersatz mystical and controlling.
CTR certainly never emphasized that. Re the Sakyong empowerment of CTR, here’s how it worked. First, CTR empowered Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche. Then, DKR empowered him right back. Someone’s got to make the first move
We’re all invited to do so.
“I will turn you into terma.”
– Chögyam Trungpa at a meeting of the Standing Committee in Halifax, November, 1981.
I’m also beginning to realize the extent to which so much of this is already out there – people, individually and in groups, are starting to act from our global heritage of depth traditions of many times and places, and using those as starting points for meeting each other, mutually waking up and seeing how to be in a more aware world together. We can contribute to that, and share its non-ownership.
Ah! Samsara….the immaculate deception!
Mark–beautiful. Thank you.
Mark Szpakowski writes:
Shambhala in the vision of CTR is not yet another religion, but a rethinking and rediscovery of the sacred in the heart of the secular.
Well put Mark.
You know, up until recently, there was no such thing as separate religions, or multiple religions. There was just religion, what the locals in your valley practiced. Every now and then you might hear strange tales from travelers about weird stuff folks in foreign lands practiced, but generally those things were not available to you.
If you took birth in Tibet, you probably had Buddhism or Bon as your local religion. If you incarnated in Africa, you had a different religion. (I bet there are people reading this who feel they have only taken birth on earth since the time of the Buddha and only as Buddhists!)
If you were a realized person, a mahasiddha, then whatever place you found yourself in, whatever religion you were surrounded by as you grew up, you found a way to be of service there as an adult. Even if you were a fisherman or a farmer.
The Buddha didn’t say “all this Hinduism is a bunch of crap, what could these people possibly teach me, they basically suck.”. Instead he went and studied with the local wise-men, who happened to be Hindus, and found some goodness there. Eventually, he discovered his own view of things, which has now become a fancy and famous religion, just like Hinduism was back then.
I’m kind of rambling, but my point is that everyone has basic goodness, and people recognize it and express it to varying degrees, no matter what religion they practice.
Thanks again Mark for your excellent comments.
It’s not just for, or owned by, a small cultural/religious minority.
Yes.
If we think we own something like basic goodness or bravery, we might ask a good friend to let us know if we are engaging in cocoon behavior.
Mark you’re reminding me of this essay by Brother Steindl-Rast, and his views on a tension between the origins and direct experience of spirituality and resulting religious institutions:
http://csp.org/experience/docs/steindl-mystical.html
And I laud your sense of non-ownership; very fruitional. I just think there’s also a room for more path oriented approaches, that we don’t have to reject the path and structural details to value the fruition.
In general I find most of the debates about curriculum and organizational approach to be issues of path instead of fruition, of how things are relatively organized and presented more so than their ultimate view. And within those relative details of path a relative trustworthiness.
Trust seems to come in many forms though. Direct experience or direct transmission seems best, sure, and if that’s available who needs the texts to be stamped with labels of authenticity from authorities? But is that kind of trust possible or sufficient for everyone, especially beginners? I think many people still need to see the stamp in order to enter the path and some kind of relative world quality control for teachers and all kinds of similar institutional things, including the sense of pure transmission and being in good standing with Tibetan lamas with funny hats. That results in power dynamics and institutional structures, which not everyone likes.
At least those structures are for the benefit of beings, so that more can enter who do not have the trust of direct experience yet or a close experience of a transmitting teacher. I would also really wonder if it’s possible to scale this big vision without such institutional dynamics or relative labels like terma. Therefore, whether something is stamped as terma or not might seem ‘after the fact’ from the point of fruition, but the label might be quite important to the rest of us. And the folks well on the path are already in good shape, so we mostly have to shape the path for the benefit of the rest of us in less good shape, practically speaking.
So I don’t disagree that the Vidhyadhara’s teachings transcend the validity or relative authority of a terma stamp. I just see some merit in the relative forms and labels that the path and structures take as well. And I mostly see those forms as enabling more people to enter, who won’t have the benefit of meeting him in person or like myself who have trouble getting any stability of direct experience. People like me have to relate to all the relative forms and practices mostly, I need something to do still.
There must be an analogy here also comparing Milarepa’s approach and Gampopa’s more institutional approach, but I’m too tired and foggy to draw the dots.
So I agree that the world needs more connection to the direct experience of the ground, to basic goodness, however each tradition and culture connects to that. And to support that we might best present specific paths, things we can focus together on and do well.
Mark your reply re terma was stunning! Very much food for thought.
I am printing it out to read it thoroughly.
And the quote from Trungpa was also mind-blowing aswell.
I think I am making first moves in my own way aswell – this really opens
up the question of whether we need the ‘validating’ institution of SI to do
things in the world. Perhaps if SI was just some huge resource institution like a University that might at the present time serve the whole thing better and leave people on their own to create their visions of ‘enlightened society’
Maybe we just need older students to just come in and say this is the
vision of CTR what do you think – what do you want to know about -do- besides meditation? Maybe sociologically this is again turning the whole applecart upside down.
So maybe the thing with dark retreats is seeing the path too goal-orientated perhaps the emphasis should be more on the vision. Perhaps the process of dark retreats we can come to when we want too and see the whole thing as just another practice not some standard way that everyone within and without of SI has to follow. This is may be more a wholesome way of seeing the matter.
Myself I am seeing SI now more as an ethics body like maybe it stating that the people who are on our list follow this basic morality in the way they give out the shambhala and Buddhists teachings – I think we could all sign up to some ethical basis for the teachings after some discussion. SI could be like an Ecumenical Council that various Christian churches belong to in the UK.
Re the quote from Trungpa were you there when he made these comments – it would be good to hear about the situation there if you were. Could you tell us more of your direct encounters with Trungpa when he taught on Shambhala vision that would be great.
I look forward to your further posts.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Stockport UK
Davee, like James and Alan and other defenders of Shambhala Buddhism and Shambhala International, keeps missing a point that is so often made here on RFS, over and over again. And that point is that Shambhala Buddhism cannot manifest the Kingdom of Shambhala that was envisioned by the Dorje Dradul, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.
VCTR’s Shambhala vision was of a society of people who are all empowered with their own direct connection with their own lungta, their own spirituality, and their own experience of sacredness. It is a vision of a secular society that is uplifted and rich in the diversity of different traditions that all express their own ways of experiencing the goodness and sacredness of humanity and the Earth, in which the citizens can appreciate each others’ traditions and experiences without feeling the need to corral others into their own spiritual tradition. It is a society that openly recognizes that no tradition or ethnicity “owns” the direct connection to spirituality, sacredness and lungta, and that we can each cultivate that direct connection in ourselves – and can maintain it once we’ve found it – without needing to be ‘refueled’ by some authority figure or other. That is what the Shambhala practices that VCTR gave us are intended to do for us – to empower us with our own confidence, courage and integrity, so that we are not corralled into somebody else’s power trip, so that we can stand on our own two feet as a “naked man or woman sandwiched between Heaven and Earth,” with our own connection with the dralas and all the energies of the cosmos.
That empowerment is supposed to be what the enlightened monarch of Shambhala, the “Universal Monarch,” is supposed to give to the citizens of Shambhala. It is the empowerment that VCTR gave his students in Kalapa Assemblies and all his Shambhala teachings, so that we could go out and spread the good news of Shambhala through Shambhala Training. Shambhala Training was supposed to – and did, in the old days at least, and maybe sometimes now – manifest a mini-version of the Kingdom of Shambhala. We were all empowered to become the kings and queens of our own mandalas under the beneficent rulership of a Universal Monarch who had no need to protect his own territory, but wanted only to empower more and more people to find their own lungta, their own sacred outlook, so they could join the Kingdom of Shambhala in benefitting this world, this Earth.
What many of us have objected to is the narrowing of the path to Shambhala, the subsuming of Shambhala into Buddhism, the removal of Shambhala’s independent secular existence. Some of us, which I have gathered from private conversations, feel that both Shambhala and Buddhism have been weakened in Shambhala Buddhism, especially in its new curriculum. But for lovers of the original vision of Shambhala, what may be most alarming is the narrowing of access to that vision and that experience of an uplifted secular path to the Kingdom of Shambhala, a kingdom that exists nowhere but in our own hearts.
Thank you , Suzanne, for your clear articulation of what Shambhala is all about, that it’s not for “us”.
I can’t help but wonder how it is that in a relatively short period of time–22 years since VCTR’s death–this vision of Shambhala has gotten so submerged. It has become radical to talk about it, to surface it.
For people who are both Shambhala and Buddhist practitioners, it’s easy to lose sight of this bigger view, which calls to mind the tagline of Radio Free Shambhala: “Think Bigger”.
Suzanne
you said “…And that point is that Shambhala Buddhism cannot manifest the Kingdom of Shambhala that was envisioned by the Dorje Dradul, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.”
As this thread is titled “On differing views and paths” I thought that I might share some of my views based on my own direct experiences which I have done on my prevues posts. The term use on this site “Think Bigger” I guess does not apply if the thought presented does not concur with your belief that “Shambhala Buddhism cannot manifest the Kingdom of Shambhala”. While it is plainly clear that many here hold to the view which you have expressed, many other old and new students have a alternate view. I have no interest in participating in a family feud, or participating in the creation of a Shambhala/ Vajradhatu fundamentalism. The world has too many fundamentalists already.
If any of my post have helped in any way it is do to the kindness of others,
If I have offended any one in any way, it was not my intention, but I accept responsibility.
James
Dear Suzanne, you’re missing my point. We need earth principle as much as heaven, and emphasizing earth for a generation or two does not mean that heaven is gone. I can certainly see that once you get down to pragmatic path, one gets concerned that the big vision is lost. But this path has always been about being tremendously pragmatic with path (like sesame seeds, and holding samaya and all kinds of institutional structures) while holding a big vision. I don’t see anyone expunging the big vision from the record, just getting down to practical reality for this generation.
It’s not saying much to criticize earth principle for lacking vision or for being narrow.
In other words, I seriously doubt the Vidhyadhara’s vision of KoS would be realized if we did not focus and work within our means. You may disagree. The quakers, considered fringe, have 50 times as many practitioners. Yes we have very big vision. But this vision of a kingdom on a practical level (beyond the inner kingdom that you mention) is more of a 700 year plan realistically. And I really don’t think marginalizing our Buddhist core and centering the sacred secular as our new core identity is going to work nor is it going to get us there. I really don’t. Maybe in a few generations that will be more of a possibility, in my opinion, for the core to begin to shift. Maybe my opinion will change on this, or maybe the current or the next Sakyong will shift it all of a sudden. But just looking around, I see the Buddhist emphasis organizationally as earth principle not as a new heaven principle. Do you really see it as a new heaven principle supplanting the Vidhyadhara’s vision? I don’t see that.
Dear Davee, I don’t know what you are talking about here: “I see the Buddhist emphasis organizationally as earth principle not as a new heaven principle. Do you really see it as a new heaven principle supplanting the Vidhyadhara’s vision?”
“A new heaven principle supplanting the Vidyadhara’s vision?” Where on Earth did you get that?
Who is criticizing earth principle for lacking vision or for being narrow? Who said anything about marginalizing the Buddhist core? Is that the current propaganda: that what SI is doing is pragmatic earth principle, as if the paths laid out by the Vidyadhara were not pragmatic, as if his vision of KOS was all heaven and no earth? Is that the way people in SI are rationalizing the changes?
Well, thanks for the inside dope, but I think it’s a ridiculous way to frame the debate. If SI thinks that appealing to the current popularity of Tibetan Buddhism is how it can increase its market share and that it can afford to marginalize Shambhala Training as a secular path, and that it is doing so for ‘pragmatic’ reasons, why doesn’t it come out and say so? That might provide more ground for honest debate.
We could debate, for example, whether marginalizing Shambhala Training and channeling people who are attracted to CTR’s Shambhala teachings into SMR’s Shambhala Buddhism is actually losing people who want a Shambhala path without Buddhism. Has anybody tried to calculate how much market share SI is losing by doing that? We could also argue, using your terms, that SI is “supplanting the Vidyadhara’s vision” with a ‘new earth principle.’ Then we could begin to unravel the opaque finances of SI.
Thank you for introducing this intriguing way to look at the discomfort many of us feel about the changes in SI. We now find ourselves accused of some very strange things. It’s almost Orwellian. This helps me understand the groupthink on the “other side of the aise,” as Alan Anderson put it.
Meanwhile, Davee, please do not put words in my mouth. It sounds like gobbledegook to me.
Suzanne
Well Suzanne you brought up heaven and earth and I’m asking if you see Shambhala Buddhism is the new vision and the new heaven principle at SI, and if that is why you were concluding that it cannot realize the vision of the Kingdom of Shambhala. I see a greater emphasis on earth principle, without the loss of vision.
And please stop calling me a shill for SI, these are my reasoned opinions (for what that’s worth). Is the idea that people would disagree with your assessment so hard to swallow that it must be propaganda?
FUNDAPHOBIA
Mind bedevils itself
What it calls reality
Is reality within its
Own naivete only
Like schizophrenia
It’s stressful to box
In one’s intellect
Like a tight corset
It forces complexes
Oedipal in nature
Squeezed by truth
One’s mind starts
To persecute mind
Through paranoiac
Self-martyrdom
So original mind is
Stifled by righteous
Hearsay that sucks
Out all the oxygen
With its zealotry
[from Aspiration Highway, 2007]
Davee, I was quoting the Vidyadhara when I referred to “a naked man or woman sandwiched between Heaven and Earth.” I believe he said this in reference to warriorship at a Kalapa Assembly. I used this quote in a paragraph describing what I understand to be the Vidyadhara’s vision of Shambhala or enlightened society. This quote was the only thing I said about Heaven and Earth in my post on July 29th at 10:00 am. To be naked and sandwiched between Heaven and Earth implies that one is able to be without masks and to balance vision and practicality or Heaven and Earth. Presumably this would be the spiritual state of the warrior citizens of an enlightened society.
The reason I do not think that Shambhala Buddhism can manifest the Kingdom of Shambhala that was envisioned by the Vidyadhara – and that I described – is that Shambhala Buddhism has narrowed the path to Shambhala, subsumed Shambhala into Buddhism, and removed Shambhala’s independent secular existence. Shambhala Buddhism apparently now restricts access to the highest Shambhala teachings to people who are willing to become Buddhists and to accept Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche as a vajra master.
This is what I refer to as narrowing the path to Shambhala: the vision and experience of an uplifted secular path to the Kingdom of Shambhala – which is for the benefit of the entire world – is no longer available to people who do not want to become Buddhists or to have a vajra master. This is not what the Vidyadhara had in mind.
How do I know? Because in 1985 he told me directly in a private interview: “We need more Shambhalians. They don’t have to become Buddhists.” He seemed quite definite, and I believed him.
Davee, I sincerely hope that whatever practice(s) you are doing will transform confusion into wisdom.
All the best,
Suzanne
Davee, I could see someone saying things like “I can only do so much, so I’ll only do a buddhist version of the whole thing”, or, “I can’t express or teach or practice this Shambhala stuff without using buddhist language”, as long as they also said, and acted on, “in principle, Shambhala vision can be studied and practiced and manifested using its own language and forms, all the way.”
I don’t hear this message coming from the top of the mandala. I do hear some of that in what you’ve just said, and I’ve also been in conversations with acharyas and others who admit that yes, there is this greater Shambhala, and that yes, in principle people should be able to prepare for advanced Shambhala practices using the language and practices of Shambhala itself, but that they themselves only know or can conceive of doing this through buddhism. It’s not a problem per se that a Shambhala Buddhist branch is developing. It is a problem that that branch sees itself as the whole deal, and in control, or would-be control, of the root and any other branches.
That’s a kind of pandita schematization, which can start out a bit abstractly, but that can probably lead to intention/action emerging from its contemplation.
Walking the walk here is to acknowledge that even a non-buddhist could become king of themselves (rigden king), and Sakyong of Shambhala kingdom. That would fully express the confidence of Shambhala. That’s where it gets nitty-gritty, but also where it touches the earth.
I don’t see so much a shift in view as a shift in method and path, basically, and perhaps that’s just how my experience of the changes differ.
The path seems to narrow out of practical considerations – like we only know how to transmit tsa lung in a Buddhist context still – without the view being tarnished in anyway or omitted. For example, nothing posted on this thread so far about KoS or Rigden Principle has been news to me in any way, so it must be getting passed on still: I’m a relatively new student compared to most here. I do have all the Kalapa transcripts and have studied them in Werma programs and in solitary retreat, etc. yet I cannot think of one single teaching of the Vidhyadhara’s that has been explicitly critiqued or remanded in any teaching I’ve received.
We have to guess somewhat because he chose not to unlock the Scorpion Seal, but I’m not sure the Vidhyadhara wanted a secular form of tsa lung presented yet, for example. Maybe he was ready but we never were?
And we have plenty of members of Shambhala centers I frequent that have not taken refuge, do not plan to, and have no pressure to do so, and are quite happy and inspired. I don’t see that changing nor should it. Similarly I don’t think there generally is nor should be pressure for Buddhist folks to enter the Vajrayana, even though we offer a cornucopia of practices for those who do. Similarly I don’t see any reason why over time more non-Buddhist practices and path components won’t evolve beyond the Gesar Sadhana (the current terminal) and that we similarly would offer more Bodhisattvayana path practices as well (like debate and madhyamaka.) So I hear the concern that with a more clearly articulated “core” of the organization as Vajrayana might then cause less of a secular path or less of a non-Vajrayana path but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case nor that the ultimate view has fundamentally changed. But yes I agree that’s not as explicitly articulated in official communications. Of course I also think the “official” organization is about the size of a coffee shop so there’s not much official really anyway, much much easier to hear what’s going on at retreats than on the fringe and that could be better.
And thank you Suzanne, I also sincerely hope that whatever practice(s) you are doing will transform confusion into wisdom.
There has been a lot of talk about “Shambhala Buddhism” here.
Will someone please tell us if there is any basis for “Shambhala Buddhism” in the work of Chogyam Trungpa, the person who introduced the Shambhala teachings to the world in modern times?
“But this vision of a kingdom on a practical level (beyond the inner kingdom that you mention) is more of a 700 year plan realistically. And I really don’t think marginalizing our Buddhist core and centering the sacred secular as our new core identity is going to work nor is it going to get us there. I really don’t. Maybe in a few generations that will be more of a possibility” Davee
Yes nobody knows about how shambhala will evolve not even the older
students – I think possibly when people of all religions and none just
having a hit on basic goodness, just studying the Vidyadhara’s books
and meditating that possibly many religious experiences may happen. I dont know what kind of karmic links people have out there to the whole thing perhaps some one will just receive the teachings in a revelation of sorts – people in groups meditating and taking retreats within and without of Shambhala is a relatively new thing for the west – so the whole thing is up in the air. I dont think even your highest lama knows what is going to happen.
But I think the main thing to start this all off is just people contemplating
basic goodness and meditating together.
For example re Marks last post on terma -there maybe people out there
who because of their life experiences and some meditation experience
might receive terma – I think anything is possible. Thats why myself
I am moving away from structured paths just to get the most basic teachings out there such as the teachings that are given in the book the Sacred Path of the Warrior – I will leave it up to the great multitudes out there to do what they want to do. A top-down approach now is not working as well as it could be – we need to turn the whole thing around and go from below -the emphasis has to be from the grassroots as has happened in history with the development of all main religions such as Christianity, and Islam.
Best
Rita Ashworth
I agree, Ms. Ashworth, in that it’s entirely up to us really. And when I think about people entering in a secular way, it seems straight forward. Probably similar for the other lineages, people aren’t coming to meditation retreats and programs to become Buddhist particularly. And most practice lineages I’ve seen like zen and theravada are similarly quite happy to share their practice with people without any demand of or even encouragement particularly to become Buddhist. But there’s the question of how far one can go secularly into advanced practices in each lineage, but I don’t know to what degree those other lineages also have a sense that the highest ultimate truth is beyond religion. I suspect it’s not that foreign a concept really – that Buddhism doesn’t have the only full path – even if they don’t propose an explicitly non-Buddhist path toward that.
There probably are more resources, Mr. Safer, but Vajradhatu Pubs at least has this sourcebook with that question in mind:
http://www.shambhalashop.com/pubsonline/asp/product.asp?product=709&cat=141&ph=&keywords=&recor=&SearchFor=&PT_ID=
It must have some restricted material though, perhaps from Vajra Assemblies or Kalapa Assemblies, since there are some requirements for ordering it (being an MI it seems basically). I just ordered a copy. It’s described as “Teachings by the Dorje Dradül on the inseparability of Shambhala and Buddhism taken from a wide variety of situations over a span of 18 years, and arranged in both topical and chronological order. Included is the essay by Sakyong Mipham on Shambhala Buddhism. An invaluable resource for both teachers and students of Shambhala Buddhism”
Teachings by the Dorje Dradül on the inseparability of Shambhala and Buddhism
It would be hard to separate bravery and basic goodness from any religion and still feel you’ve got a true understanding of that religion, I suspect. It’s my belief that VCTR had a decent understanding of Buddhism, in that sense.
Anyway… if people feel that Buddhists such as themselves have a monopoly on goodness and bravery, and that this kind of ownership is the goal of Buddhism and the best way to honor VCTR, or the best way to develop calm minds, then good luck to you.
Sometimes all you can do is do what you feel is best, and see what happens.
re: Teachings by the Dorje Dradül on the inseparability of Shambhala and Buddhism
Hmm. If that was his intent, why did he go to the trouble of setting up separate entities and mentioning over and over Shambhala as a secular, non – Buddhist approach? On the surface at least, it is easy to get the impression – even by just the description – that the document cherry-picks quotes to forward an agenda or rationalize a decision in light of subsequent blowback.
Low humor example: ” International House of Pancakes debuts new line of blue pancakes with incredible spiritual qualities, endorsed by VCTR as proven by these quotations…….”
I’m jus sayin’….
A local Center’s diversity of vajrayana practice report: We have a small ngondro study group that has been meeting weekly for three months. Some of the group are doing Kagyu Ngondro by numbers, some are doing the Rigden Ngondro by time, and some are doing Rigden Ngondro by time after having done the Kagyu Ngondro by numbers. We practice for 2-3 hours and then meet and discuss readings for an hour. After 9 classes, reading two or three talks for each class, from a curriculum offered in 2005, we have just read one talk by the Sakyong. Next week it’s back to VCTR. It is a lot of material, mostly ngondro basics, samaya, some advanced theory, lots of co-emergence. The first couple dozen talks came from Vajrayana transcripts and the Vajra Assemblies. All intend to go to the Rigden Abhisheka eventually so as to be able to practice Werma, some still have not been to Warrior’s Assembly due to scheduling snafus, all are looking forward to studying the Kalapa Assembly transcripts. We are also reading Gaylon Ferguson’s new book, the Sakyong’s new book on Ashe, and the Dorje Loppon’s teachings on Vajrayogini, and dabbling in those fat books by Ponlop Rinpoche’s translators. Some plan to eventually go to the Scorpion Seal Assemblies, and eventually do the Scorpion Seal retreat while some would like to follow the Fire Puja – Chakrasamvara route if they can come up with the time. Some have done only a week’s solitary retreat, while others have done months and months. Some have staffed Sutrayana Seminary as MI’s recently, most AD and Coordinate for Shambhala Training. Some are Kasung, some are involved in Shambhala Arts. It’s difficult, the weekly meetings, amazingly hard to get the reading done, especially when attending or coordinating a practice program all weekend, as has happened at least once to some of us and most of us twice. Oh, and monthly we practice all weekend. Double Vajrayana nyinthun with the Padmasambhava Feast this weekend for example.
Toby that sounds wonderful in a lot of ways!
I’m also going to sneak in my own idea mostly unrelated: the possibility of forming Shambhala study and practice groups at some point in near future led by well trained folks who don’t set themselves up as guru, and THEN maybe reaching out to other sanghas and churches. Isn’t this one of the promises of Shambhala- its secular approach, and abiliity to connect to many traditions and nonreligious folk?
This is a dream of mine. Thoughts? Anyone already doing this?
Toby it is great to hear that you are hard at it. It is easy for us old farts to say “they don’t practice / study like we did, we walked uphill both ways to Dharmadhatu, and ran home for Oryoki lunch!”
I don’t think anyone here questions the devotion of the newer students. At least I don’t.
Maybe Shambhala is not evolving. Maybe it’s mutating. Maybe there is
nothing to explain what’s happening. Maybe it’s a process
completely new that has no reference to anything else. The myths and
mysteries of the past have never been analyzed with
any certainty. Yet peoples, civilizations have built themselves on
some sort of esoteric knowledge. The Etruscan civilization knew how
long it would last and dissolved exactly when it’s time was up. We are so
fixed to the scientific paradigm that we try to justify what’s
happening with SI using a rational model. We seek understanding when
all understanding has done is brought the roof down on our heads. Most
people are alienated from their senses. That’s why most Americans stay
in their homes, watching football on television. Something is going to
have to clear the air….and something will. Thank goodness.
Davee -Advanced practices? What really are advanced practices – I dont know I have a feeling that they will just develop organically from people
meditating together. I did read once of a zen practitioner who had a
vision of a dharma protector so all the talk of advanced practices seems
to be too goal-orientated to me. I think I will work with what happens from my own mind, other traditions, or maybe other Buddhist teachers…….I think my mind is opening up to the world, perhaps in a small way from certain practices I have done with Vajradhatu/Shambhala but I am an individual I take what works for me and what doesn’t work for me – and at the present time shambhala buddhism doesn’t work for me. I feel SI could be as eclectic as me -thats how I see an ‘enlightened society’ panning out – for example why not have acharyas from all religious traditions besides the Buddhist tradition, I think I am pretty sure that CTR would have allowed this to happen as he could really clue into peoples state of mind. What is SI to do when it engages with other religious traditions say you will never get it because you are not in the SI club or could it be more adventurousness and see where those traditions slide into each other – I think a true Sakyong would work with all religious traditions to make such an enlightened society happen and I think the world needs a Sakyong to strike across religious divisions and empower everyone that is capable with his/her authority.
So I suppose you could say I am going the Sikhs way because a Sikh
sees the holy book Gurū Granth Sāhib as his guru and I guess that
is what might be happening with CTRS published books if we cant get
access to ‘advanced(?!) teachings’ we will have to use these and with
the help of other lamas possibly and our own inherent basic goodness
forge ahead. I think it is possible to do this. I think it will be wonderful and liberating for people to go this way.
Well best again
Rita Ashworth
Stockport UK
Chris mentioned a couple of things I would like her to expand on. Who has been calling Shambhala International the fascist branch of Buddhism? Was it small talk gossip or a meaningful statement? Please give some examples that a message like Richard’s coming from within a power structure presages a collapse. Curious.
Whether it’s that dire, Richard was not simply assuaging the people of RFS. He was also sending a message back home, and one has to wonder who the target is and why this venue.
I now know a few people referred to by Mr. Karelis as receiving official letters which said they had abandoned samaya by not paying dues and should herewith return all their practice materials and texts.
One of those people had this threat revoked after communicating with the central office, but it still had an effect, and I don’t think everyone made that effort. The people who received those letters don’t have to imagine, as Richard suggests, “several generations ahead” to know what it’s like to be called not just a dissenter, but as having abandoned samaya. Richard was clearly not addressing RFS when asking for that much empathy, which, by the way, is still failing in responses defending current policy. If responses do not consider results of said policy, then it’s ungrounded ideology.
Whether that was policy that will be reconsidered or a renegade official is unclear because I have now heard both versions. Richard sounds a little circumspect here because he doesn’t say ‘that’s not policy’, but rather “That’s not what I feel Shambhala vision is about”. Great, but I think it’s weak to blame Western culture for not having a tradition of lineage. If officials given implied temporal and spiritual responsibility don’t have basic understanding about these kinds of principles, universal in Buddhism, that failing has nothing to do with a greater Western culture.
It is equally questionable that “we seemed to have inherited an incredible atmosphere of fear”. I can’t speak for others, but I am not acting out of traumatized fear when for only one example a letter like that shows up and I develop mistrust. It is not trauma from a past event that expands that mistrust to include an impersonal administration, when in spite of communications no one with responsibility does anything tangible to correct obvious wrongs. The Regent debacle is to be sure a high profile example, but laying blame there is a poor substitute for taking care of things as they arise.
Better than worrying about cultural tendencies, and suggesting a glacially slow process of changing individual views in private conversation, Richard would do well to openly stop appointed officials involved in detrimental behavior and respond in ways that show concern not primarily for the official or the image and reputation of Shambhala International, but above all for the people affected.
Lasting impressions develop not from protected or projected images, or PR which in certain contexts may be justified, but from how things are actually dealt with when they arise.
Thank you, James Elliot, for your very incisive response to Mr. Reoch’s interview. You bring up excellent points. Thank you.
Suzanne
James Elliott wrote:
“I now know a few people referred to by Mr. Karelis as receiving official letters which said they had abandoned samaya by not paying dues and should herewith return all their practice materials and texts. ”
I always thought that samaya was between teacher and student, and student and vajra brethren. I have never heard of it being between a student and the accounting branch of an organization, or the ongoing sustenance of samaya being conditional on regular payment to an organization.
Or maybe I’m wrong.
Davee, here’s the quote, complements of Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week, August 1, 2009:
THE HEAVEN AND EARTH SANDWICH
Imagine that you are sitting naked on the ground, with your bare bottom touching the earth. Since you are not wearing a scarf or hat, you are also exposed to heaven above. You are sandwiched between heaven and earth: a naked man or woman, sitting between heaven and earth. Earth is always earth. The earth will let anyone sit on it, and earth never gives way. It never lets you go — you don’t drop off this earth and go flying through outer space. Likewise, sky is always sky; heaven is always heaven above you. Whether it is snowing or raining or the sun is shining, whether it is daytime or nighttime, the sky is always there. In that sense, we know that heaven and earth are trustworthy.
From “The Genuine Heart of Sadness,” in SHAMBHALA: THE SACRED PATH OF THE WARRIOR, Shambhala Library Edition, page 28.
What a coincidence that the exact quote should show up – straight from the Shambhala book! Heaven and Earth are trustworthy. Therefore, we can afford to be naked and have a direct relationship with them.
Yes, I think I’ve read that somewhere.
And to the question of advanced practices, or rather practices that require some kind of permission or prerequisite – possibly including a refuge vow or samaya – I agree one’s path need not include anything like that. There is a long tradition that predates us of having these kinds of things and structuring a path that way, but I’ve never been told that I necessarily had to nor does anyone have to follow that kind of path or enter into those vows. Just that they’re required to receive certain things.
This has me wonder how much is a refuge vow really what we mean when we say that a program is non-secular. I would expect any philosophic system to be relatively compatible or not with other tenet systems, and in the case of Shambhala Training I suspect ashe principle is not really that compatible with all other religious tenet systems. It’s likely compatible with buddhist tenet systems (though not all even maybe). Which is not to say that one has to adopt *any* tenet system no matter what religion or philosophic view one self-identifies as. I just still question the degree to which something like Warrior’s Assembly – an advanced program with prerequisites – can really be called secular to begin with.
This is of course separate from the larger question of whether or not the Shambhala teachings and Shambhala vision is secular. I think that is a separate question. But when we talk about path, instead of vision, then it seems more questionable to me that the particular tenet systems that we present is truly secular or non-religious. But again I’d like to bring in the view/vision versus path distinction when we’re talking about curriculum.
[VCTR, Boston, MA, 27 March 1980,
from Rinpoche's unpublished poetry:]
THINKING OF YOU
While declaring the dharma of Shambhala
My mind is constantly flashing on the sangha at the Chateau -
Faint spring and harsh winter are an interesting contrast.
Please keep sitting -
I miss you all.
Blessings,
The Vajracarya
Davee, thanks for your thoughtful, as always, post. I think this word “secular” causes some miscommunication sometimes. It’s used in two quite distinct ways, isn’t it?: as a contrast to “sacred” / “spiritual”, and as a contrast to “religious” / “churchly”.
The first way tends to be used by people who believe that Science tells us all we need to know / can know about reality. They tend to be strict materialists who scoff at anything that even smells “spiritual”. Obviously no one here considers Shambhala to be “secular” in this respect. The idea of the sacred and sacred world of course permeates the Shambhala view. So we can all agree on that.
The second way is used by a great many people who are not at all antithetical to the idea of “sacredness” or “the spiritual”. These are a natural audience for the Shambhala teachings–people who have no desire to join another religion, who indeed would never dream of doing so, but who also recognize that a materialist view of reality doesn’t answer their questions, doesn’t speak to their heart.
They come along to the first few levels and are inspired by these extraordinarily direct, positive, powerful teachings. They want nothing to do with a Church, with a denomination, with sectarianism of any variety. And they seem to have found what they’ve been looking for. Over time however they find themselves in a Church… (Or a Sect even, increasingly not answerable to anyone else.)
They discover that the culmination of what they have been exploring involves various loyalty oaths to a King, and that they may receive these culminating practices literally only from him. They might discover other ways too in which the organization they’ve joined seems to diverge from the vision they first contacted in “Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior” and the early levels. And many will and do wonder just what they are beginning to subscribe to, when all they sought was a genuine path free from Church.
It is with regard to all these people–potentially a very great number–that we bring up Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings on a “secular” path complete in itself.
“…Richard would do well to openly stop appointed officials involved in detrimental behavior and respond in ways that show concern not primarily for the official or the image and reputation of Shambhala International, but above all for the people affected.”
James, yes, many thanks. Is it cheesy to say that a Buddhist community must aim always to put the dharma first? That is, above its self-image and “success,” even ultimately above its own organizational survival?
I think that if we can embody it, the dharma will flow and prosper regardless of “market share” or worldly power. And if we can’t, if agenda and strategy become too embedded and unquestionable, then I think ultimately it’s all for naught.
Michael,
Of course you’re right. Samaya as well as other principles are well defined and universal within the Buddhist tradition.
The samaya principle is not in any meaningful way a method to garner dues, organize groups or maintain common goals. Those things are not irrelevant. I don’t see that PR or advertising is always negative, it can sometimes be very inspiring and meaningful, and community activities like Mid-Summers Day, community meetings, the deleg system, Harvest of Peace and so on that help bolster group identity are probably essential, but samaya is simply not about that.
That’s why it was so disturbing. I think those letters are a good example of ways in which politics and religious cosmologies cause confusion when jumbled together, and it may be worth considering whether such a dynamic is in some way encouraged within the Shambhala Buddhist matrix causing further marginalization, of which the letters referred to are only an example.
For equanimity’s sake, I have heard that Richard Reoch in talking with people has emphatically said that relating samaya to dues is not a policy of Shambhala International. I believe he really said that. I believe he meant it. But I can’t myself imagine taking such an approach without having it approved at some level. Given Richard’s outspokenness on the issue I doubt he would sanction that approach… but sent they were.
All kudos and respect to Mr. Reoch for expressing his concerns openly. And now having heard different versions along with his circumspect way of saying that’s not what Shambhala vision is about, I have to wonder whether he is the only one pushing agenda in the Star Chamber. Maybe that’s the room he was actually addressing.
Again, those letters are only an example and should not be confused with the issues raised of marginalization and dissent. Generally, whether misunderstandings or real problems, approaches can be taken that bespeak concern for the organization and those officials involved, or ways that show tangible concern for those affected. (Concern for both ought to be possible, but let’s not get too complicated.)
In my perhaps limited experience the latter has received short shrift if any at all, and in my opinion that – above any ideological assertions about the Vidyadhara, Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s or Sakyong Mipham’s views – is why these issues have become a sore point that won’t just go away. Whether speaking of politics or religion, humans create these institutions for the well being of humans, not the other way around, as important as those institutions may be. When that is lost sight of, dissent in one form or another is a fairly predictable result.
(Dissent, just in case, is not a call to riots or traitorous attempts to fall a regime. It only means disagreement. It can happen in a mutually supportive environment… or not. Some philosophers have argued that a healthy society needs not only to protect, but also to encourage dissent.)
In the inspiration that “In every land, Hamlet’s question sounds different.”
(S. J. Lec)
.
.
.
[Untitled]
Thoughts like elephants leap into the sky.
The bird of impulse is trapped in a net.
The horse of energy is saddled.
The song of the cuckoo arrives from the north.
Wisdom shines in the realm of non-duality.
The dance of discriminating wisdom takes place.
When the sun and moon are imprisoned,
The castle of sectarian bitterness crumbles –
Listen, hear the flute of eternal joy?
[from VCTR's unpublished poetry, 20 March 1972]
Damchö,
No it’s not cheesy, but it’s also not that simple.
What does always putting dharma first mean?
First before what?
Can it be a problem when dharma takes precedent over absolutely everything?
Which principles are maintained always?
Which can be applied selectively?
And so on…
I’m sure you grok this but please understand that some people, for example in sending the letters referred to, or in marginalizing members into irrelevance, or lying, bullying, manipulating or conning people, believe themselves to be putting the dharma above all else; above the people they are harming, the principles they corrupt, above social norms and justice, above honesty, all in order to serve dharma and the ‘bigger picture’ of establishing enlightened society or Shambhala.
They can genuinely believe they are putting dharma first.
Inside a Buddhist religious school, I suppose one relies on the vajra master and his senior students to reign in students when they have strayed. That hasn’t worked out very well for us so far.
If we expand a little into social structures and politics rather than a narrow religious school, which some of us believe the vision of Shambhala is about, then in complex modern cultures we also rely on rules, laws, checks and balances, evidence, a justice system, cultural norms, and so on. As a religious school with a vajrayana core those things seem to be generally scoffed at as politically correct mamsy pansy stuff. We either trust the enlightened mandala of the master as it is or we are not worthy in some way.
However, at an address given by Trungpa Rinpoche’s at I believe his last birthday party at the Elk’s Lodge in East Boulder, given veeeery slooowly and not primarily about this theme, he mentioned “we shouldn’t be so naive; we need rules and laws for society to function.” (I remember wondering why he had interjected a comment like that.) I think this is also discussed in “Great Eastern Sun” his posthumously published book.
I agree absolutely that when embodied, dharma attracts people automatically, no sales pitch, agenda, or complicated strategies necessary, and it would be best to focus on that. But given that’s not where we are yet; the concern is about what happens in the interim. I bet even an enlightened society would in any case have social structures, rules, laws and so forth, which can be relied on.
Do we have any?
In this regard, what are we? Some say a school, some say a fledgling society. And what do we have to protect the well being of the community, not only from obvious abuses, (for that we can call the police) but also from those who do harm because they believe they are putting dharma above the well being of members?
In the inspiration that “Sometimes the crime is the alibi itself”
(S. J. Lec)
Thanks James, lots of good points.
I think all I meant by my comment was something quite basic, directed towards the specific quote of yours. Namely, that when someone has been harmed, this must be dealt with properly, fully, completely. Period. Even if it makes a teacher or Shambhala look bad. Shambhala looks really, *really* bad when it strategizes over how to protect itself from any real criticism–at the expense even of someone’s health and well-being.
One would hope that such letters are merely overzealousness on the part of a few people. On the other hand, they seem to reflect a real misunderstanding of a basic principle of the dharma.
hello damchö, thank you for that distinction. it did seem surprising to me how much the initial vision that’s so wide becomes a more specific path with lots of ritual, chanting, etc. at the level of the graduate levels and warrior’s assembly and beyond. bait and switch? feels less churchy in some sense, but not in another. the loyalty oath seems very much like refuge, and that was in that path formulation from fairly early on right? (maybe first kalapa assembly?)
i think there is another definition that’s been used here for secular too, which is whether or not one has to renounce their existing faith be it christianity or something else to engage in the full measure of the shambhala teachings. At least that is a litmus test I’ve seen mentioned on this site.
taking refuge in buddhism may not explicitly require renouncing another faiths, but i’ve heard it described as ‘becoming buddhist’. so then does the loyalty oath in the shambhala teachings avoid that sense of becoming? perhaps less so, i just don’t think it’s so black and white when you look in detail at the shambhala teachings. the ultimate view is certainly of a society that holds many paths, but then the specific shambhala training path details are more particular and i doubt they really now nor twenty years ago fit the definition of a truly secular path. so there’s some distinction between a wide view and a specific path.
but i also don’t see a problem when the path is more narrow / less wide than the ultimate view. that’s perhaps a feature of all paths. buddhism claims the fruition of the path is beyond buddhism, especially in dzogchen. so the same sense is even there that the path is more narrow. the first mipham rinpoche explained in the 19th century that specificity or narrowing was so more students would have practical things to work with than just sitting contemplating the big view (or direct experience/transmission) which is not enough for most folks he argued. Then of course we can argue endlessly about ‘how much’ specificity or how narrow a path to offer.
that doesn’t preclude many paths to the same fruition, or trying to create a path that has fewer handholds or have handholds that look less like buddhism but i think it does suggest that trying to avoid all hand holds doesn’t work. And if you have some hand holds (practices, rituals, tenet systems to contemplate) then you have a religion in a real sense. is your request is to have less ritual and structure and churchiness generally? we already have much less for a lineage from tibet even in our buddhist forms, and i appreciate that bias personally too. but maybe it’s more aesthetic than philosophic (as in more about the shape of a path than about the ultimate view)?
And to Ms. Ashworth, I was thinking more about this notion of advanced practices that require pre-requisites (or even refuge) and encountered a distinction by designer Derek Powazek on barriers for entry in community. He drew three distinctions:
- Informal: for example aesthetic, like you really want a Tibetan-styled meditation center or you really dislike a Tibetan-styled meditation center, and you join a community based upon the aesthetic at that particular one. Something implicit basically about the community.
- Formal: for example pre-requisites, like having to complete a certain amount of sutrayana training and curriculum before you enter into the vajrayana practice path. or a certain number of mantras before an abhisheka.
- Extreme: for example invitation-only or interpersonal situations. mmm, being asked to be an acharya. or a continuity kusung. not sure how many of these we really have.
He posits that any community will have informal barriers of entry, and you may also have formal ones. And shambhala seems to traditionally have lots of formal ones (from mantras to oaths) in both the buddhist and non-buddhist paths.
But I agree the ultimate view is beyond specific paths or specific communities, and it may be possible to just practice with basic goodness and what’s offered without overcoming a specific paths’ barriers of entry, more pratyeka style. For someone like me, it’s probably harder. I need the busyness of the so-called “advanced” stuff because i’m such a restless person maybe. I also need community of some sort.
Taking refuge does specifically mean renouncing other faiths.
No, it doesn’t.
Yes, it does. If I’m mistaken then all the refuge vows that VCTR gave, including my own, as well as many I’ve seen from the Regent, Pema Chodren, the Loppon, and many others are mistaken….are false.
I’m sorry, you have no idea what you’re talking about. Try to find reality, my dear. Don’t be an idiot here.
Davee to tell you the truth re my own feelings re the shambhala teachings
I dont think we know where we at present with ‘advanced practices’ because the shambhala teachings are so revolutionary.
Re Mark’s comment that CTR would make people become themselves terma anything could happen – the concept of basic goodness in itself is so opposite to any conceptions of goodness in western religions that people just connecting with it over sustained period of time might just clue into ‘advanced practices’ and here we can equate this with ‘revelation’in the Christian ideal of religious thought.
There might be other practices that develop over time re the present ‘advanced practices’ in SI and this is where spreading the ‘good news’ of just ‘basic goodness’ might result in a lot of religions in the world focusing in on it – I dont know for example what allied practices they might evolve for themselves in this period of time. So this is why I dont believe that SI has the handle on the way the shambhala teachings will develop-I think it has one approach with many attributes but as the concept of basic goodness is and was prevalent in many cultures the whole thing could just go mega in a totally separate culture from that evolving within SI.
I think this is why people are debating the shambhala teachings so much on this site because they have the possiblity of overpowering a lot of established thought in philosophy and other branches of western knowledge.
As to the figure of the Sakyong principle being at the head of the whole thing I also believe this will mutate over time. If one fully embodies the sakyong principle oneself how could you yourself not be the sakyong. Maybe we will have several or several thousand sakyongs – I dont know for sure its all so revolutionary and all up in the air. Its a bit like the beginning of Christianity and Christs concept of the Kingdom of God within you -here we need more discussions with Christians about this. But with CTR’s thing we have meditation that we can access that the Christian church has not accessed as much recently – so that is why again the whole thing is just dynamite.
Re more pratical issues on the vrot.org site they have put up a talk that the Regent gave on shambhala -its very good – I hope you can listen to it. Maybe some one could transcribe it as well.
Again best
Rita Ashworth
I think the real issue underlying all the discussions centers on CONTROL. So, while the Shambhala teachings have this extremely vast, pan – religious notion of Basic Goodness (kadag, IMHO….), which is very appealing ( and eminently marketable!), it appears to this outsider that SI really focuses on the hierarchical stuff – the King and Queen and court. I don’t think that has any where near the resonance with the average person, who tends to view royalty as a quaint anachronism, or as a sort of sentimental historical re-enactment.
I would venture that it also appears to outsiders that SI takes the power / control aspect of kingship VERY seriously. While the books talk about each practitioner becoming a king or queen — in effect, democratizing it, the center of the mandala seems to manifest the top-down, classic control mechanisms of pre-Magna Carta royalty, mixed with the limited liability / tax shelter aspects of multinational corporate structure.
Which explains why this site seems threatening.
Perhaps what our card carrying, anonymous Buddhist friend is suggesting
is, now that it’s “Shambhala Buddhism”, it changes the meaning of taking refuge…that one could be a “Shambhala Buddhist “and still be a Christian.
That was the point of Shambhala, wasn’t it, to create a secular path? This is one of the primary criticisms, isn’t it, of the idea of “Shambahla Buddhism”….
that it muddies the water so that whatever “Shambhala Buddhism” is, it is neither Buddhism or Shambhala?
Hi Davee,
For the most part I don’t disagree with your reply to mine. But I was contemplating it yesterday evening and considered the phrase you offered–”bait and switch”. Now, to describe anything like this is a tricky business, because it implies knowledge of someone’s motivations. If someone were to use this phrase for real they would be saying that Shambhala intentionally draws people into itself via these wide-open, immediately attractive, radically inclusive teachings with the hope that ultimately, step by step, they will end up pledging themselves fully and completely to the organization / Church / Monarchy via an unbreakable samaya vow. (This would be opposed, of course, to the simple hope that all may become fully awake beings, each via whatever specific pathway is most suited to them.)
Applying that analysis (“bait and switch”) is something I’m not comfortable doing. My view is that the basic motivations of the Shambhala hierarchy remain bodhisattvic–and therefore undeceptive. But here is where James’ post (a few before yours) and Michael’s (a few after) come in. James well and rightly points out that all kinds of highly undharmic actions can be committed by those who sincerely believe that the dharma is precisely what they are serving and propagating. And Michael I think highlights the other crucial aspect of this possibility: the very human desire for control, for ever more secure territory. The mechanisms for maintaining power which end up compromising all manner of things. Often subtly, sometimes not.
I was already a Buddhist before discovering the Shambhala path. But I’m guessing that phrase “bait and switch” has passed through the minds of many who begin the levels believing Shambhala to be a truly secular approach, and then discover that its culmination involves exclusive samaya vows to Church–and King…and Family!
It’s undeniable (isn’t it?) that the vast majority of Westerners are not going to become Buddhists. For decades they have been deserting the established churches in droves, and tend to be highly suspicious of organized religion in general…for excellent reasons! (Fundamentalist and evangelical groups are growing, but of course those who belong to them are even less likely to touch anything Buddhist with a ten-foot pole.) Add hereditary monarchy into the mix and you have something that much less palatable to the average Westerner.
The fact remains that the culmination of the Shambhala path does now involve a samaya vow to a King-Guru. And it requires accepting all kinds of churchly elements and structures. I believe this realization in the mind of someone whose introduction to Shambhala came via a reading of “Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior” (the founding text, after all) will tend to create some major cognitive dissonance.
I thought this might add to this discussion
James H
“August 2009
The Sakyong Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche
Creating a Sustainable Internal Environment
When the Buddha was on the verge of realizing enlightenment, he was attacked by the daughters of Mara. Mara is the seductive quality of mind that continually tricks us into thinking that the endless circle of samsara contains some kind of essence or fulfillment. There are many kinds of maras, but we generally talk about four.
The first mara is called skandha mara. The five skandhas—form, feeling, perception, formation, and consciousness—bind things into appearances that are seemingly real. As a result of this process, we think the self is real, when it’s actually only a pile of elements. The mind that considers itself solid pulls the environment together and tries to make it solid, too. This is the mara of becoming.
The skandha mara sees our table as separate and says that it’s “mine.” This is faulty prajna, a process of misjudging appearances and trying to make them something they’re not. As we do this, mind itself becomes an object; we think our thoughts are real.”
continued…
http://sakyong.com/teachings.php?id=27
[H.E. Namkha Drimed Rabjam Rinpoche is teaching Flight of the Garuda by Shabkar at HSC August 14-17, 9 am-5 pm. This translation of Song 1 [of 23] is unattributed, however Thinley Norbu Rinpoche approved.]
SONG ONE
Emaho!
I, the untroubled and carefree renunciant,
Will now sing this song about the view,
Entitled, The Flight of the Garuda.
It enables one to swiftly traverse all the levels and paths.
Listen carefully, fortunate children of my heart!
In both samsara and enlightenment, the renown of the enlightened state
Is widely heard like thunder throughout the sky.
As this always remains within the minds of beings of the six realms,
How amazing that one is never separate from it for even an instant!
Not knowing that this state is within oneself,
How amazing that one searches for it elsewhere!
Although it is clearly manifest, like the radiant disc of the sun,
How amazing that so few see it!
Having no father and mother, one’s mind is the true Buddha,
How amazing that it knows neither birth nor death!
No matter how much happiness and sorrow is experienced,
How amazing that it is never impaired or improved even in the slightest!
How amazing that without being fabricated,
This mind, which is unborn and primordially pure,
Is spontaneously present from the beginning!
This self-awareness is naturally free from the very first.
How amazing that it is liberated by just resting,
At ease in whatever happens!
Hey James,
That was a great article. Not sure what you see is the connection here.
Heady stuff all this, but not fearing to be a fool, I ask:
How does one embark upon the Buddhist Path at Shambhala? What are the prerequisites?
I have asked this question of several and received several replies. Is there a correct person to ask? I have sent an email and received none.
How does someone gain access to Refuge Vows and Precepts. What are the prerequistes? Once again, an email to Shambhala in Halifax did not bring any response.
Kevin, beginning on the path is as simple as walking in the door and requesting meditation instruction. A good place to start. Then some reading and looking into what classes are offered is advisable. There are also a number of introductory programs, weekends and otherwise offered in city and land centers. Refuge, is not offered on a particular schedual, but happens often, offered by most of the Acharyas(maybwe all of them?), and occaisionally by the Sakyong. One can experiment with the precepts at Dathun(or a weekthun) or request tempoary ordination at the Abbey, though that requires a bigger commitment. Of these things the only one that requires a ‘prerequisite’ is refuge, and that is basically the recomendation that one meet with an MI to make sure that he/she understands what taking refuge is, but like everything there are ways around that too. One also meets with the preceptor(usually, but not always) the day before or some time before the ceremony to recieve a name interview, and possibly to ensure that it is in fact the right thing for the individual, hope that is helpful.
“How does one embark upon the Buddhist Path at Shambhala? What are the prerequisites?”
Sitting. Get meditation instruction at a local center:
http://www.shambhala.org/centers/
The rest will follow.
That’s it!
[VCTR, Kalapa Camp, Lake Louise, Alberta, Canada, 25 February 1980, from Timely Rain, page 37, and First Thought Best Thought, page 173, to the seminarians:]
FISHING WISELY
From the samsaric ocean,
With the net of your good posture,
The fish of your subconscious gossip
Are exposed to the fresh air.
No praise, no blame.
The fish of your subconscious mind
Look for samsaric air,
But they die in coemergent wisdom.
Danny, your reply to Kevin is helpful, but there is more to all this.
As another new person, please let me tell you (briefly) of my experience as a way of “fleshing” out Kevin’s remarks.
I went to meditation instruction. One of the things that sticks out in my mind is the instructor, in his opening remarks, intimated to the group there was a division in Shambhala. The message (paraphrased) was that some were now calling this “Shambhala Buddhism”, where in fact it was not. He further explained he would probably get in trouble eventually for saying so. It is not an uncommon remark.
More than this, if you inquire about the Buddhist Path of some, this message is either relayed in kind or you are ignored. Another explaination I received was that I must finish the levels of Shambhala Training before I could embark on the Buddhist Path.
Sadly there is little to explain the steps in the (Buddhist) path on Shambhala’s website. The division in thought on the subject is painfully obvious. Is the cliquishness at Shambhala to which some refer the result of all this?
Do you see the effect on those who are newly come to the organization?
[VCTR, Vajradhatu Seminary, Bedford Springs, PA, 1982,
from the unpublished poetry:]
How Typical Student Poetry Should Be
When the enlightened one is with us,
When he talked to us,
When he walked with us,
When he fixed his robes,
When he washed his hands after a meal,
The enlightened one is always precise, accurate.
He possessed ideal total shinjang, without reference point.
He was playful and he was accurate.
He was clean, neat, tidy.
Watching his fingers, it is beautiful,
The way Buddha’s hands handled his begging bowls,
He had no discrimination against or, for that matter, rejection of the way
phenomena works:
Buddha worked with a blade of grass,
Pebbles, dirt, in his begging bowl,
He washed his robes with such precision,
We like the way the Buddha is in action.
Watching, working Buddha is magnificent.
There is no discrepancy.
Buddha is the best friend.
He is best at working with the unworkables,
Therefore he is the king.
The best monarch we could ever find is the Buddha.
The Buddha’s gaze and the Buddha’s hands —
The way he washed his hands –
He washed his hands as a monarch would.
He is not arrogant,
He is humble and genuine and imperial.
We like Buddha’s way:
Imperial humbleness.
There is no one like him.
That is why we called him Samyaksambuddha.
O how much I love you Buddha –
The way you do things properly,
The way you feel the world around you,
You have no aggression –
O Buddha! O Tathagata!
You are so tamed,
You are so beautiful,
You are so royal,
You are so humble.
O to be like you, the genuine Buddha!
Who need not clarify or validate you are Buddha as Buddha.
O how gorgeous to be Buddha!
We love your simplicity.
We are glad that you took human birth and that you conducted yourself in
the human realm.
O Buddha, Samyaksambuddha,
We love you,
We are astonished that you are Buddha,
Fascinated that you are Buddha,
Totally captivated that you are Buddha,
We are inspired and follow your example.
Shakyamuni, O Buddha, we love you,
We are your best friend, best friend.
Homage to the Sambuddha, the perfect being.
I, Chögyam, emulate you.
O Buddha,
Namo Buddhaya
Buddham sharanam gacchami
[James: The 1982 Vajradhatu Seminary at Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, where this poem was written, began only a few months after the passing away of His Holiness the Gyalwa Karmapa. At this seminary Trungpa Rinpoche composed a number of poems as examples of devotional poetry for his students. The last two lines are Sanskrit and mean: “Homage to the Buddha, I take refuge in the Buddha.” “Seminary” refers to annual three-month teachings with Trungpa Rinpoche, beginning with two weeks of sitting meditation, followed by two weeks of Hinayana teachings; followed by two weeks of sitting meditation, followed by two weeks of Mahayana teachings; followed by two weeks of sitting meditation, followed by two weeks of Vajrayana teachings. Don’t get discouraged.
from Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the Week, August 12, 2009
SPIRITUAL PIZZA
People have different experiences of reality, which cannot be jumbled together. Invaders and dictators of all kinds have tried to make others have their experience, to make a big concoction of minds controlled by one person. But that is impossible. Everyone who has tried to make that kind of spiritual pizza has failed. So you have to accept that your experience is personal. The personal experience of nowness is very much there and very obviously there. You cannot even throw it away!
From “The Four Foundations of Mindfulness,” in THE SANITY WE ARE BORN WITH: A Buddhist Approach to Psychology, page 37.
James Mc & Kevin W,
There’s what one might corporately describe as a ‘communication breakdown’ within SI. Don’t worry about lapsed responses to e-mails, odd responses to e-mails, & etc. Every once in a while you’ll rcve a reply to a query that’s as clear as a bell. Mark your calender. Celebrate this date in the years that follow.
Press on, that’s the best advice I can offer.
Cliqueishness happens everywhere, bars are a great example. Don’t worry about it. Dig. I believe the example is the earth rat. That’s the best advice I can offer.
best,
Brad
What a lovely interview, Andrew. Thank you for publishing this.
Just read through this whole thing: scattered notes:
Refuge: we have practicing Christians taking refuge. I find it strange, but it depends how you define refuge so really no problem. Furthermore, anyone can take refuge at any time on their own, formally by saying it three times (according to old tradition). What matters is whether you take it to heart.
Bait and switch from open I-V versus taking oath of loyalty to Sakyong etc. This is a good issue and to my mind more important than whether or not Shambhala-Buddhism works/doesn’t. Both systems had this same problem/issue. I mean, if the culmination of Shambhala is a dark retreat after doing extensive tsa lung, what does it matter if it’s for everyone of any faith? It’s still just for one person in a million practically speaking. That’s deep yogic stuff, no?
If Shambhala does not lead into a tunnel/bubble, then where does it go? I suggest via organic individualized, versus centralized, human transmission. Is there any other way? Or do many here feel that doing Levels I-V is basically it? That there need be no further relationship with Level V grads unless they want to go further into the journey that leads to the dark retreat and other high falutin’ esoterica?
This relates to control mentioned above as well as Mark Sp later observations in other threads about the lack of two-way flow in the new organizational setups. This is all the same issue to my mind.
Snippet from Kornman’s talk I had playing in the background whilst reading: the key to shamanistic power is working within the context of local energy.
THAT is it! This is what I personally started to glimmer after moving to Cape Breton and setting up a Keltic Music venue in Kalapa Valley (which would have changed into a more quiet eco-campground with occasional music, square dances and so on. Good old fashioned sacred stuff, local style!)
This is what is missing (working with local energy/culture). Our entire setup looks towards the throne all the time, which has no physical place. We are not grounded in Nova Scotia, the actual Nova Scotia, which is Nova Scotian people and earth and weather and above all, local community culture and individual people. That is the living ground in which the Shambhala teachings, in the vast sense, will take actual root. And in similar fashion across the world. Our emphasis is on our own internal dynamic, on increasing esoterica. On bringing people from outside to inside ‘our’ world.
It’s the wrong direction, the wrong emphasis. It’s like only breathing in.
I have a story about Richard Reoch which is relevant to the origins of this thread:
As I mentioned in an earlier post (don’t worry, I am now winding down!), I was essentially forced to leave Kalapa Valley in an untimely fashion mainly because it was impossible to get basic communication through to the formal hierarchy even though I made it clear in introductory requests that it was necessary that I touch base with someone.
After this, I requested an Upaya Council hearing. This goes back to James’ mention about law. Yes, we are supposed to have a mechanism, but in fact it is no longer functioning. (Nobody gets paid for it of course and its an exhaustive affair, so no blame there.)
So when Richard was appointed President a year or so later, I think he appealed to people to bring their grievances to him because he was aware of the turmoil. I drove down to Halifax, told him my tale and also that I felt that Shambhala owed me the money because their abuse of authority had caused unnecessary losses on my part due solely to their refusal to pick up a phone or answer a letter. After trying to mediate himself between me and another party involved, who refused to discuss the issue at all, Richard decided that his organization was indeed ultimately to blame and within four years they began to repay me the funds (it took a while for them to get out of terrible deficit situation) and a year or so ago I was fully repaid.
So I have to say that from my experience not only did he just listen or try to say the right things, he followed through, and impeccably. I honestly do not think that any official in his position in our mandala in the past would have done what he did.
Now in terms of Jamie’s law question: this is another example of how we have this huge vision that is way ahead of our immediate situation and resources. How can we have law in a population our size spread over the entire globe? It’s impossible.
But more importantly: how can we keep building all these huge palaces etc. when we can’t take care of the basics properly. What are the basics? Maintaining steady sanghas of older and new generations of students in simplicity, continuity, harmony and sanity and in a way that becomes increasingly a part of the local culture. That is the true way forward. It does not require new transmissions or higher teachings. It involves becoming more simple, more direct, more human, and more immediate in terms of our local situations.
I have a specific proposal on how to accomplish this in a central programmatic framework (surprisingly enough) which at some point I will submit to the editors here.
Finally, I am both disturbed, moved and astonished by the display of emotion, commitment and insight expressed by so many on this thread and this forum – on all ‘sides’.
Thank you.
Ash,
It would be believable that conflict resolution was not possible due to no funds and the size of the community, if I had not seen energy put into preventing conflict resolution from being allowed to proceed. If that same energy were used to resolve conflict instead of preventing their exposure, we would have nothing to discuss on this matter.
It’s nice to hear you had success with Richard Reoch. How much effort was required? Did he have support from any other administrator or official? Is he the only person who is listening and is personal contact required? Who was held responsible? What was done to ensure that did not happen to others?
When our group was having a lot of problems the involvement of a dishonest and manipulative official was making everything worse, our attempts at relating to the center of the mandala were meaningless. Our last attempt included a letter to the European Council and the Executive Board in Halifax, 18 people in all. Richard Reoch was one of them. Not one of those 18 people responded to us. Our efforts were useless… perhaps less than useless because we experienced negative repercussions, the echoes of which still resound.
Our situation is perhaps unique. The response doesn’t seem to be. I know of other stories as well. Unfortunately there seems to be a pattern.
I wasn’t referring necessarily to an entire legal system. I would agree that the organization is not responsible for disputes between people, although Karuna Council and the defunct Upaya Council were created for that purpose (all volunteer work, by the way.) That’s something that may need wider support, and could be less effective when centrally controlled or sponsored.
However, when problems arise that are directly because of the infrastructure of the organization, for example, appointed officials given explicit authority who may not be able to handle it responsibly, or something to do with the structure and demands made on people by the institution itself, then Shambhala International has no choice but to get involved.
Ignoring it in the name of poor finances, or to nurture an image, or to express devotion and loyalty, or some other cockamamie reason shows a level of care and concern for members that is far and away below the standards the VIPs and acharayas etc. claim to espouse and exemplify for the wretched masses.
It isn’t a choice or a matter of funds. It’s a matter of straightforward responsibility, and when done timely may require nothing more than a simple decision and a couple of phone calls (or vice-versa). If we don’t have that, then we got nothin’.
Claiming there are no funds to take care of things like that is like a restaurateur saying he can’t wash his dishes because he has no soap. Should customers be held responsible? He may not have soap, but if he doesn’t correct that and continues in that way, than it is predictable that he and at least some of his customers will get sick.
It’s that simple.
In the inspiration that conflict resolution is a keystone of society that can’t be scheduled for later.
James, v. sorry for late reply. I missed the alert in the Inbox until just now.
I think my case was helped because it involved KV which is regarded as a special situation and arguably it was not a good thing to leave something like that hanging. But the reason for the need/request for mediation was initially because, similar to yr. description above, I was unable despite repeated attempts to have any official communication and in one case, when I offered something, it was not delivered to the addressee (SMR) and the Secretary involved did not see fit to inform me of that decision. So when a couple of weeks later a meeting occurred and nothing was mentioned of my request/suggestion/input at that meeting, my questions were not directly raised at the meeting (mistake!) since it was assumed they had already been delivered prior to the meeting, and so lack of any mention of those issues was assumed to be a Royal ‘No’. The only reason I had addressed the concerns ‘to the top’ was the total inability to get even 10 minutes on the phone with a single official.
So yes, I have had similar experiences in dealing with the administration.
Not that this is the place to do do it, perhaps (!), but in their defense I think sometimes we tend to forget that the entire thing is run on a shoestring with a full-time staff not much larger than corner grocery store! But there are two sides to that: perhaps the organization should not project so far beyond its actualities and capabilities.
This creates quite a bit of confusion, distance and cynicism. We seem to have a multimillionaire-style leadership situation supported by a few private donors, no doubt, but also a rather tiny congregation.
My impression from afar the past few years is that things seemed to be stabilizing and feeling better and I thought a couple of years ago that maybe, finally, had turned a corner. I am still not sure if this website reflects the disgruntled views of a few, or is the tip of a much larger, and mainly silent, iceberg and have no way of knowing of course.
My view on these sorts of things is that where there is so much obfuscation or lack of guidance, so also should there be less control. But too often there seems to be situation where various protocols block X,Y or Z and if they were not there, many other things would and could go forward with far less fuss because there would be no need to be checking back, getting permission etc.
And so it goes.
How many in the group by the Saar now, anyway?
Ash Wrote:
I am still not sure if this website reflects the disgruntled views of a few, or is the tip of a much larger, and mainly silent, iceberg and have no way of knowing of course.
Mark, could you post how many people are reading RFS?
Thanks,
Madeline
Posting the readership count would more likely show a different metric. I’m not disgruntled with SI or its direction but I’m here sometimes because I’m interested in a dialog.
Office-holders of Shambhala International (Vajradhatu) who manifest behavior which is repugnant to The Precepts shall and must remove themselves from office
Stuart, good luck getting even the merest recognition of the barest possibility of wrongdoing. Let alone of treating others in ways “repugnant to the Precepts”. To admit having made a mistake, of being less than perfect–at least with regard to the treatment of “inferiors”–just doesn’t fit the system now in place.
The system which was created by the historical Buddha Shakyamuni has been in place for 2,500 years. Any system which is repugnant to this system is a wrong-view and is non-buddhist in essence.
“Claiming there are no funds to take care of things like that is like a restaurateur saying he can’t wash his dishes because he has no soap. Should customers be held responsible? He may not have soap, but if he doesn’t correct that and continues in that way, than it is predictable that he and at least some of his customers will get sick.
It’s that simple. ”
I agree with the sentiment but there is another solution, which it seems many have opted for: to opt out, stop paying taxes etc. Organisations are slow, cumbersome things to deal with and if internally they are unresponsive, there is little an individual can do past initial attempts at raising objections, an alarm etc.
That said, it is surprising that there is not an official forum for SI members given this is no longer new technology, and I can’t help but suspect is that they prefer to avoid the inevitable messiness and controversy that such a thing would bring to the fore. On the other hand, without any such mechanism, there definitely is a one-way feeling to the whole thing. That’s why I reluctantly drifted away. Actually, it felt more like I woke up one morning and realised I was now outside the perimeter which had somehow moved, i.e. it was not so much me that had moved out, but the mandala which had moved elsewhere. At some point I made a decision not to try to play catch-up and that was that. Soon after that, I stopped saying ‘we’ about S.I. and started saying ‘they’. When that happened, which was spontaneous on my part, that’s when I finally realised consciously what had happened. It was never a decision, put it that way. I suspect many others have had the same sort of experience.
I oscillate between disappointment, frustration and relief, although until coming here on S.Day I must confess I rarely thought about the mandala any more whereas 10-20 years ago it was front and center in my life. Also, I think that part of the reason I am out is due to the deliberate generosity of SMR who let me go have a life outside the bubble. Whether or not that is the case, for me the mandala had become a trap and as such unhealthy. So even if offered an ‘in’ again, I have finally come to appreciate how much I value being ‘out’ and at this point would never want to ‘return’. That said, I have not resolved the absence of sangha principle and thus the maintenance of even basic refuge vows. The sangha principle is necessary and powerful. Just from the brief exposure to this website, as seemingly ‘radical’ as it is, I have started sitting again for the first time in years, and yesterday even did VY practice, just for fun (the best motivation I suspect!), and moreover felt no real distance or conflict with the whole thing. That, I believe, was because I feel, however cybernetically so to speak, the sangha principle at work and it instantly auto-liberated various dormant obstacles which I had long ago ceased to pay attention to consciously.
So thanks again to the originators and hosts of this site.
I like your posts, Davey, btw, and have found them very encouraging.
“That said, it is surprising that there is not an official forum for SI members given this is no longer new technology, and I can’t help but suspect is that they prefer to avoid the inevitable messiness and controversy that such a thing would bring to the fore. On the other hand, without any such mechanism, there definitely is a one-way feeling to the whole thing.”
~ Ash on February 26th, 2010 1:02 pm
Buddhist Jurisprudence
Upaya Council Working Model (Draft)
http://upayacouncil.110mb.com/flatpress/index.php
Welcome back to practice, Ashley. I have appreciated (and been astonished by) your lengthy and thoughtful comments here.
Regarding on-line forums — isn’t there a lot of participation in sangha talk, sadhaka talk, etc.? I’ve never been on these myself — I am not that interested and can barely handle the email traffic from sangha announce. But doesn’t this provide an avenue for discussion?
Thanks Ash. I’m really appreciating your posts. In particular I’ve liked how you’ve talked about your feelings in the experience. That’s a dimension I’m appreciating more.
By that I mean, it’s easy for me and I think others to get swept into a right/wrong dynamic and we could loop endlessly on the organization being orthodox or not-orthodox enough and if what it does is right and wrong (eg: Boulder shrine room). But sometimes I miss the phenomenological dimension, of how it feels for each of us when we experience these changes. We talk a lot about the meaning that we take from it (Husserl?), but less about the actual experience and how our feelings relate to it (Merleau-Ponty?)
But I think it would be both healing and would bridge more gaps, for me personally at least, if we talked more about how it genuinely felt for each of us to experience these changes in community and formal organization alike. To talk about the sadness and fear… directly…
Some of the changes – expressed here as negative – I have experienced as positive. For example: before I saw completely separate ST and Buddhist “camps” at my Shambhala Centers, now it feels like we’re much more friendly. Like we’ve been through marriage therapy and it actually helped. Before it felt like parents who didn’t talk, civil but somewhat adversarial. Putting up with each other. Maybe that was just the centers I knew or I just wasn’t seeing the true friendliness. But the centers I have related to lately on the west coast have felt more energized and more synchronized over the last few years. The increased energy is something I’ve been experiencing. I have no idea what it is like in Halifax or Boulder though.
As an aside, I was at an “IT” conference for Shambhala a few years ago. Many flew to Boston on their own dime to talk about technology and the sangha and presented ideas. Having more community discussion spaces was discussed at length. The new center web site template and support for that was the main thing that had both momentum and budget at the time, because it was cheap and clearly needed, but the need for better spaces to communicate online and get with the 21st century was well expressed. Without a significant IT budget though I think that will only happen via volunteerism, like this web site has demonstrated, and not necessarily yet through SI. Ironically, this web site for me feels like it’s undermining energy to fund things at SI, such as more community spaces online. But volunteerism is always possible.
When Mark first told me about the site I was excited that there would be a place for frank dialog and fresh air. I get concerned sometimes though that people here more use it to reinforcing views rather than making space for diversity of view. That causes some feeling of fear arise for me, that our community will talk less and less to each other over time – like a dysfunctional family – instead of getting to know each other more. That’s kind of heartbreaking. Fine to see Karelis do his own thing, but sad too.
D, good points. I forgot totally about Sangha Talk which I checked out briefly a long time ago and didn’t like. Can’t even remember why. So I take back my comment on fora etc. since clearly they were based on shoddy research!
As to diversity, perhaps I am wrong, but there seems to be a sense that this place is here, at least in part, to allow people to express those things which they have felt unable to express for whatever reason, and that includes things which are often regarded as ‘negative’.
I am glad the hear the Centers are perking up. My impression – from very much afar – is that there is a real issue for many of CTR’s students and it goes beyond simple dissatisfaction with the change in forms. But these are not easy things to get at in any venue because they combine very personal, individual perception with a larger general context which itself is not nearly as homogeneous, or perhaps monolithic, as it might appear. Still, there is clearly a sense that many of CTR’s students have felt for some time that in regards to S.I., they are viewing it from the outside. Speaking personally, I feel – though have no evidence necessarily to present – that this is both due to arrogance on my part and also due to deliberate policies on the part of the leadership, policies which often seem to have been designed to undermine my original connection, even denigrate it, to the point where I simply cannot identify with the current organization as much as I wish it were otherwise. I empathise with those who express anger and hatred, even though myself I prefer not to go down there. If I cannot contribute in a cheerful fashion, or feel that things are going in a basically misguided direction, it seems to me best to just fade away since I am not willing to re-learn everything ever few years and/or find that what I have learned is now regarded as basically bad. Sorry, not acceptable, or at least I can’t work with it, or perhaps better to say: it’s a turn-off instead of a turn-on so why beat a dead horse?
I also have this sneaking suspicion, or maybe it’s a belief that in the tantric mandala – or at least a deeply personal one like ours was/is to use ordinary language – that we are all interconnected in a more heightened fashion than is true for all sentient beings. That being the case, disaffection amongst many old hard core members who put a great deal of work and heart into what is now S.I. remains a part of body-mind politic, an ongoing drag on the overall lungta and virtue of the sangha as a whole. So for good or ill, ‘we’ are stuck with ‘you’ and ‘you’ are stuck with ‘us’, albeit seemingly in a somewhat dysfunctional, and thus unhealthy, fashion.
I have heard that SMR’s policy now is to just move forward without ‘us’, which I understand.
Just don’t think it will work – unless we really are talking about a handful of whiners. Possible, but I suspect there’s much, much more to it than that.
Re: “So for good or ill, ‘we’ are stuck with ‘you’ and ‘you’ are stuck with ‘us’, albeit seemingly in a somewhat dysfunctional, and thus unhealthy, fashion. ”
If that is correct – which of course it might not be from various aspects – then it actually might be better to encourage a more formal division, but just as with a corporation, this division doesn’t have to be like an amputation or hostile divorce, rather an identifiably different ‘wing’ of the overall body politic, similar to how the Kasung is a distinct wing or branch. In other words, for those who don’t want to regard themselves as students of SMR, or samaya-bound to him in the same way as they were to his father, fine. Indeed, now that he has unified Shambhala-Buddhadharma paths into one corpus and his role as Sakyong is indistinguishable from that of Vajra Master, this sort of has to be done.
Yes, CTR was both VM and Sakyong, but his Sakyongship emerged, as it were, from the population comprised of his students. SMR inherited the role of Sakyong, but nobody can inherit the role of the relationship of VM to a particular student, it just doesn’t work that way.
Now CTR students, if they do not have that sort of connection with SMR as their Buddhist teacher, are essentially cast out if they can’t go along with his many changes to the Buddhist Path, or latterly, for example, even though many of us have the Scorpion Seal text from days of yore, cannot study them formally without having first done a new ngondro and abhishekha with samayas that we do not feel comfortable taking. Perhaps this is as it should be. But for me personally it’s just all too serious and complicated and fundamentally joyless. Even the recent talk on Love for this year was joyless. Again, maybe this is the viewpoint of someone stuck in vajra hell / arrogance. Then again, maybe not!
A good example of joy, this video clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQMKSqx0XmQ
Jeremy H cruises into the Milarepa Seminar. No words. Plenty communication/transmission/profundity/fun. Dzogchen 70′s style, basically!
Awesome video.
I’ve had some good laughs and sense of lightness with the Sakyong, but probably he’s not as playful in large groups. He’s different. And one has to show up to see him in any case.
I fear separations, but would love to see people find what nourishes them that also felt fully included and honored and not hostile. That would feel so good to me. Reggie’s split, and the Ojai split, feel unnecessarily pained somehow. As does Mr. Karelis’. I’m really likely projecting all that though. But I can imagine the possibility of a healthy “separate but not separate” group, honored and yet self satisfied. No sense of poverty from not being part of any “new” things particularly. And not having to completely separate at the same time. To be acknowledged. At least for me that sounds like enlightened society.
Ironically, I heard directly from the Sakyong some of the views of the new shrine, and there was never expressed a sense of excluding; the opposite really. Because of the glass used and simpler arrangement it was more about ground nature, more about the common ground between the different wisdom streams in our lineage. To be more Buddhist or more Shambhala warrior style would inherently exclude. The new shrine was not nirmanakaya Rigden, but more dharmakaya Rigden. That inherently might offend some who view Rigden principle as incompatible with Buddhism. But the intent was to have the common ground represented as the main shrine, so that all the different wisdom streams could be included within the larger mandala and make space for greater diversity – not less diversity. That’s what I heard at least.
In that same retreat, the Ojai sangha and Patrick Sweeney were invited and asked to talk. So that sense of inclusiveness extended even for our vajra siblings that had been separated for some time. And to a sangha that has maintained more of the orthodox vajradhatu/shambhala training split too. So that was fine to have included and there was a reaching out for inclusiveness occurring.
Then later when centers were invited to change to the new shrine, I experienced that as an invitation – never a command. I was involved with center admin at the time. It was up to each community to decide at least then what to do. But I find it somewhat ironic that a shrine designed to accommodate more diversity is now the center of a letter writing campaign about boulder, and that people are appealing to SI for help. In my experience it was SI from the start who left space for each community to decide for themselves what to do. So there’s some irony in what’s going on, along with the genuine sadness and frustration. I’d like to hear more about the sadness though. That helps me to hear it articulated more so than just purely heady presentation, which I’m mostly guilty of expressing as a very heady and wordy kind of person.
“And one has to show up to see him in any case.” And since I haven’t done that since the 90′s, clearly I don’t have much say in all this despite my verbosity on this forum the past 10 days! And well said.
As to the shrine, the particular issue on the Thangka thread was about a rather unique and special thangka. And certainly if perceptions are anything to go by, at the very least one can say that it’s not being handled very well. But as to your general remarks, I had exactly the same impression about it which your more informed reports confirm. Except I also feel it is a not-so-subtle control play as well, sort of like re-branding everything. Personally, I don’t care about such things very much since change is one of our only constants in life. But I do like things to keep moving forward, growing, adapting, having fun, deepening.
Don’t know about Karelis or Reggy, though did watch a vid today by the latter from a link here. Seemed fine to me. Sorry it’s sad/painful but that seems to have more to do with how we view ourselves and the institutional control mechanisms than that it’s inherently sad that he had to split away in order to do his own thing. And therein lies the rub: why should he have had to break away? Or actually, has he broken away really? Perhaps he is just continuing the whole thing in a particular fashion, style and location? Or is he a bandit Rudra principle perverting the teachings? If so, a proclamation should go out to that effect. If not, then it really shouldn’t be sad for anyone involved. And so on.
I was thinking about Ojai etc. today and thinking that what they did has proven to be jolly good. Took a lot of guts and determination but they have stuck it through and on the surface at least it looks like yet another offshoot of VCTR’s dharma activity which they are owning and perpetuating. Good for them and hopefully good for those who learn the dharma from them too.
I am in a good mood about the whole thing now. Fights in families are inevitable. Even break-ups.
Davee, you are mistaken if you think there is any element of local decision making concerning the new shrine. No should there be — transmission of a lineage is not a do-it-yourself process.
I don’t disagree with you concerning the reasons why SMR has made changes. And I appreciate what SMR has accomplished in carrying forward the Shambhala terma and in creating a genuine practice path through to the Scorpion Seal retreat.
However, in my case, since I have focused on Karme Kagyu practices for the past fifteen years, the changes have left me behind. I attended Vajra Garchen at KCL with SMR until they discontinued the Vajrayogini “track”. So now, I find myself engaged in practices that are not being actively promoted for new practitioners.
It is a lonely path anyway — I’ll just continue what I am doing and circle back and focus on Werma at some point. So it doesn’t make much difference to me, personally.
The removal of the Boulder Vajradhara thangka (empowered by CTR and blessed by the Sixteenth Karmapa) and without even a thought or discussion of what to do with it — other than to place it in storage — just seems to me to be the clearest example of the lack of any emphasis or energy being devoted to the Karma Kagyu path.
And yes, given the depth and breadth of CTR’s teachings on the Vajrayogini sadhana alone and the amazing quality of the English translation of this sadhana and the detailed practice manuals available only through SI — it is sad that these teachings are no longer being passed to the next generation within SI nor being made available to other Karme Kagyu sanghas.
I don’t see why we can’t do it all. I am hopeful that SMR will reaffirm the importance of the Karme Kagyu lineage in Shambhala at some point.
“…when centers were invited to change to the new shrine, I experienced that as an invitation – never a command. I was involved with center admin at the time. It was up to each community to decide at least then what to do… In my experience it was SI from the start who left space for each community to decide for themselves what to do.”
Davee, I had a very different experience. About 4 or so years ago I was doing a program at a land centre and the question of the shrine came up in discussion after a talk. The program director, an acharya, answered that the new shrines were being changed gradually, centre by centre, but that eventually there would be the one uniform shrine. So unless this person, who is close to SMR, was misinformed (very doubtful), a decision was made from the beginning that this is the way it would be. Which of course does not ultimately allow for individual communities who prefer the shrine as is.
Davee:
You wrote:
“Ironically, I heard directly from the Sakyong some of the views of the new shrine, and there was never expressed a sense of excluding; the opposite really. Because of the glass used and simpler arrangement it was more about ground nature, more about the common ground between the different wisdom streams in our lineage…. But the intent was to have the common ground represented as the main shrine, so that all the different wisdom streams could be included within the larger mandala and make space for greater diversity – not less diversity. ”
You expressed this view very well.
There is another view which is what the Vidyadhara/Dorje Dradul presented: Shambhala is “independent” and “non-sectarian” which makes the path of meditation, basic goodness, gentleness and fearlessness accessible to billions of people (including the many who will never gravitate towards Buddhism). From this point of view, the “common ground” that joins Shambhala and Buddhism is a hindrance.
If we’re interested in making it easier for *us* to join and integrate the two paths, the “common ground” approach works. If we’re interested in opening the treausure chest to non-Buddhists, which involves not *owning* the teachings, I think this approach misses the point.
Countless spiritual paths are contained in the three vehicles and countless worldly paths are contained in the five skandhas.
All paths are illusions, but some illusions are better than others.
Nevertheless, please refrain from confusing or otherwise obfuscating “Differing Views and Paths” with behaviour which is repugnant to The Precepts.
Behaviour which is repugnant to The Precepts is misconduct, an example of which is to disparage the three vehicles (i.e. “Differing Views and Paths”), for which behaviour one would necessarily plead fortnightly before the Noble Assembly.
“…a shift that has taken place in our community…”
“…as Shambhalians if we have something to offer we have to demonstrate that within our own community and I believe that that is beginning to happen…”
~ Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, Shambhala Day Address, February 14, 2010.
The Sakyong’s 2010 Shambhala Day Address (Iron Tiger Year)
http://www.shambhala.org/media/2009/S_Day_address_2010.mp3
Stuart, I think the two things you are contrasting are thoroughly connected here.
In the case of Shambhala today, I see a very, very tightly controlled hierarchical setup. One in which certain kinds of harming behaviour can never even reach the point of someone “pleading before the Noble Assembly”.
Why is this? Because its model is neither the monastic sangha nor the lay sangha. The model is monarchy, and monarchy with samaya involved at every important level. Because the senior teachers and kasung all take oaths of absolute loyalty, practically speaking, to SMR, and indirectly to each other. Because there is no independent judicial branch of Shambhala government. Just one unitary thing going on.
Kasung would be extremely reluctant (to put it mildly) to censure an acharya, because an acharya is a representative of SMR, and the kasung are not allowed to criticize SMR. Samaya has entered the realm of politics, and it’s a very dangerous brew. The model is theocratic, and fundamentally, no one in power can admit to any important mistakes. This is the path Shambhala has taken now.
Every time this kind of institution or movement or party appears in history, it always believes: but no, we really **are** the exception. We really are, well, simply the Good Guys. We really are the Movement which could never become corrupted in any way. That’s why we don’t need checks and balances, safeguards. Because we’re simply, well … sorry folks, but we’re simply the ones that are actually Right. We have God or rather Buddha on our side, even more than all other sanghas. We’re truly special, we just are–can’t you see that? So there’s no point in ever looking back and questioning anything we’ve done, because we’re just, you know, Right.
Damcho, I think you hit the nail right on the head with that last paragraph on Shambhala exceptionalism. I saw a video of Tom Cruise the scientologist where he said, if a scientologist sees a car wreck he/she has to pull over and help because ONLY a scientologist can really help. What a steaming pile of cult bullshit. Only we have the Truth, Only we can save the world,(send money now) Sounds familiar somehow.
Yes Damchö, you really nailed it.
For me (and I am NOT assuming anyone else agrees!) there is a very real danger built in to monarchy , especially when applied to both a political and spiritual model…..
I have no problem with samaya regarding a spiritual teacher at all.
I have very real trepidation about “political samaya”, and am scared sh_tless regarding an organization predicated on a unity of spiritual and political samaya.
I think that SI places too much emphasis on monarchy and all that it represents / assumes. It is a very tough sell to Joe Sixpack, and until Joe Sixpack learns to look at his mind, any notion of ascendancy of Shambhalian society is doomed. Cart before horse.
We are all kings and queens, and I think that is what CTR was teaching I am not so interested in the Unitary Monarch and political governance from a Tibetan feudal model. So I guess that puts me waaay on the Outside.
The way I see it, a lot of what CTR did was an attempt to purify Buddhism– and his own sangha especially– of certain problems and misunderstandings. This is the job of a genuine realizer.
Since CTR has gone, other people have taken it upon themselves to bring back those same problems and misunderstandings. This is the passion of non-realizers.
If you look at the Christian tradition, you can see how some people use that tradition to achieve fame and fortune for themselves, while diluting and confusing the actual wisdom in the tradition, and promoting tremendous vanity in the followers. Other people appear in the tradition (including that chap CTR met; can’t think of his name) who are more interested in helping people find the actual value and wisdom in the tradition.
The Shambhala teachings and container were a great gift to CTR’s sangha. They were a protection against cultism, sectarianism, cocoon-like group behavior, among many other things.
HOMAGE TO THE MAGISTERIUM!
Dämcho has hit on what I believe may be a fundamental quirk with joining Shambhala with Buddhism. The problem isn’t monarchy per se; I can imagine good monarchies. FYI, Trungpa Rinpoche made favorable remarks about parliamentary monarchy – he didn’t, from anything I was told or heard, encourage absolute monarchy.
The problem is rather not being able to separate or even discern the difference between politics and religious practice. (Or church and state)
In any case, samaya and politics have not a thing to do with each other. Using politics to control in any way samaya, or conversely samaya in any way to control political views is anathema to either one. If that happens in some way, then corruption is inevitable, of the religious tradition of course, but just as well to any healthy political system.
If Shambhala is simply and humbly a particular school of Buddhism, then that’s maybe OK in some sense; the dictatorship of the vajra master within his student body/sangha is part of that tradition. But Shambhala doesn’t seem to be limiting itself in that way.
In a wider society, and in light of of the mission statement of creating enlightened society, quite apart from whether it is a responsibility to hold the sangha together or not, such an absolute central control of society is virtually always problematic.
There are a number of ways to describe how that dynamic virtually ensures corruption and an elitist system, but better to look at history and any examples of state sponsored religion or theocratic governments.
Are there any examples contradicting that dynamic? If so, how long did they last, how did they end, and why do countries touting state sponsored religions or theocracies today seem so virulently problematic?
Jamie, that was very well put together.
I am not sure if ‘religion’ per se is the issue since I suspect a society where most people share essentially the same fundamental value systems are the strongest, be that a dynamic tribe or the Chinese Empire in the time of Yung Lo centuries ago. So having a certain level of unity is not necessarily a bad thing. The real issue is the flow of power from fringe to center and from center to fringe.
The ‘parliamentary monarchy’ model supposedly addresses this. However, I have never been clear on exactly how that would function between Monarch and Peoples’ Representatives, though I suspect there has been good analysis of this in both East and West over the centuries.
In any case, clearly when DDM was going on about the deleg system, which supposedly was to have several levels and would also feature several officials therefrom with a seat at the Table of Governance, this center-fringe quasi parliamentary-monarchy dynamic was envisaged.
For me this gets back to our weakness at the Nyen level. And I think everything you said about the samaya issue is bang on.
There is an excellent little book about this which is hard to find: “Systems of Survival’ by Jane Jacobs in which she analyses how different societal organs actually have – and need to have – different value systems. For example, within the military, unquestioning loyalty is a necessity. To a certain extent also for government and religious operations. However in the fields of commerce, for example, there has to be room for competition and diversity, also in the arts, academia and so forth. In any case, there are – in a healthy society – zones with actually different, and sometimes conflicting value systems. I think that is an important insight and I have never read about it anywhere else apart from that little book.
With Shambhala specifically, clearly there are some core inner teachings – to which there will no doubt be additions – that need to be ‘held’ by some central authority principle over time. And yet if that holding authority is also the main container for how they are experienced and transmitted throughout wider society, clearly that will not work. I am not sure, though, that this conundrum necessarily relates to discussion about governmental/societal models.
Only two authors are relevant to The Current Situation (TCS), Niccolo di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) and Saul Alinsky (January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois – June 12, 1972, Carmel, California), with perhaps the exception of the third great religious king of Tibet, Tri Ralpachen, (806-841) who wrote as follows:
“In the degenerate era, when red faced beasts have ruined the Vajrayana teachings, those with white skirts will benefit sentient beings! Thence arises the need for longhaired practitioners! A carefree body donning a white skirt and head adorned with braids – this is the sky-like appearance of the trul-ku! Carefree uncut hair – this is the sky-like appearance of the long-ku! Carefree view of pure Mind – this is the cho-ku. Achieving the three spheres of being within oneself – this is the practice of Dzogchen!”
~ from the Kuntuzangpo Ralpa Nakpo mDo (Kun tu bZang po ral pa nag poi mDo), The Primordial Black Sutra of Ralpachen.
Stuart, thanks for an auspicious post (for me). After thirty years of short hair cuts, I have let mine grow the past 9 months. Also, I am (playfully) researching starting a small baking operation here and was just (no less playfully, or perhaps ‘carefree-ly’) considering donning a white apron (skirt) as the ‘uniform’. Lo and behold, I find this was predicted by Ralp Nakpo MDo as the manifestation of one who benefits beings in this degenerate age.
I will put secret mantras and other blessed fluids into the starter yeasts, whose influence will then, in a matter of months, permeate the body-mind essence of virtually everyone on my island. Stealth infiltration using microbial tactics.
And if the beings in question don’t get enlightened, at least they will get a mite enleavened.
Well this is all very interesting,if I remember 1215 was the year of Magna Carta we could jump the gun on 2015 and organize the Shambhala peoples Magna Carta which has to be done without input from the king or the kings ministers or is that to far to jump ?any ideas ?
Mr Perks -what is the Order of Good time -or is it a joke!?
Do you need to drink gallons to belong to it -what are the intiation rites?
Magna Carta very good -seriously I suggest Sydney, Cape Breton for signing it -dissenters and the general throngs. Could you talk to Ash about it? I think the outsider clans should gather there to create their shambhala.
Hey-ho the Happy Yogi.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Manchester UK
There is no democracy in the Empire
But you can always vote with your wings.
There is no such thing
as a garuda coop
Well you know there are no insiders or out siders there are just us Shambhalians The Sakyong and his court are not the enemy,We as the people have to take responsibility for our part which means organizing our ideas about how we want to govern Shambhala in union with the Sakyong,Strong People Strong Sakyong,one Shambhala,
So want to join a evolutionary movement ?
Rita Hello,I do not know anything about the order of the good time,lots of love JP
John, doesn’t that presuppose samaya with SMR? There are many that don’t have that connection. I would say that not having that connection doesn’t make SMR the enemy at all.
But it seems the organization puts that particular form of loyalty as a test of one’s suitableness to teach or attend certain classes etc.
Is there a reason to have the One True Shambhala?? or could a thousand Shambhalas bloom?
Let me be clear. The KOS is not the Empire. Phillip K. Dick said ” The empire never ended. The empire is the lords of materialism, the setting sun cowards, the authoritarian assholes. The KOS should be the anti-empire. To the extent that it isn’t , that is all our failure.
John, having it a little myself, I can empathize with the difficulties involved with managing multiple personality because the bureaucrat person is not allowed contact with the others whilst on duty and therefore the ‘file’ is unavailable.
But if you bring that Buddhist one out of his cage, he would remember all about the Order of the Good Time! I always meant to join, but didn’t.
Rita, another small point: I don’t live in Sydney but 30 minutes away. In Cape Breton, that’s like being in a totally different community. Think England 75 years ago. I remember even as a boy leaving London and getting only as far as, say, Surrey, it was already a totally different local culture you were entering into. Devon or Cornwall, or Manchester, Yorkshire were worlds away! It’s not quite like that here since we have telephones and internet and passable roads (barely), but similar…
For membership info etc. google search but meanwhile:
http://www.jfolse.com/whiteoak/ordergoodtime06/history.html
Established 1606. Oldest (white) social organisation in North America. Whether the Chinese set anything up when they were in Cape Breton in 1421 has not yet been established. In any case, it was just a scouting party. Now, almost six hundred years later, they are coming in greater numbers and changing the produce selections in the local supermarkets. One of them was even at the farmer’s market getting people to sign a petition to encourage Chinese production of organic produce for us. I declined the offer saying that I don’t agree with exporting Chinese water and thus depleting its watersheds and thus creating long term problems for their people just to give us vegetables we should be able to grow ourselves and sell in the very same farmer’s market he was getting saps to sign his petition in!
Micheal perhaps a thousand and one,And David,yes our failure,we were to quiet ,but timing is important ,now something is stirring within the kingdom,I think we need Government the question for us is what form of government ? all of this means work envolvment,serious debate,and forming committees of subjects{the people} alot of work,sobering methodical work,the question is then are we up for that ?
I have no idea which manifestation of the infamously unquenchable Perks wrote this:
“Well this is all very interesting,if I remember 1215 was the year of Magna Carta we could jump the gun on 2015 and organize the Shambhala peoples Magna Carta which has to be done without input from the king or the kings ministers or is that to far to jump ?any ideas ?”
and this:
“Well you know there are no insiders or out siders there are just us Shambhalians The Sakyong and his court are not the enemy,We as the people have to take responsibility for our part which means organizing our ideas about how we want to govern Shambhala in union with the Sakyong,Strong People Strong Sakyong,one Shambhala,”
but whoever he/she is: very well said! In a way, that’s it in a nutshell. The reference to Magna Carta is apropos, although if I remember correctly it was as much a baron’s as a peoples’ movement. I’ll have to crack some books on that…
Footnote: was originally called ‘Order of Good Cheer’. Even better. Description from Parks Canada site:
“This person had the duty of taking care that all around the table were well and honourably provided for. This was so well carried out that, though the epicures of Paris often tell us that we had no Rue aux Ours (this street, still in existence in Paris, was the street of the rotisseurs, or sellers of cooked meat). Over there, as a rule we made as good cheer as we could have in this same Rue aux Ours and at less cost. For there was no one who, two days before his turn came, failed to go hunting or fishing, and to bring back some delicacy in addition to our ordinary fare. So well was this carried out that never at breakfast did we lack some savoury meat of flesh or fish, and still less at our midday or evening meals; for that was our chief banquet, at which the ruler of the feast or chief butler, whom the savages called Atoctegic, having had everything prepared by the cook, marched in, napkin on shoulder, badge of office in hand, and around his neck the collar of the Order, … after him all the members of the Order, carrying each a dish. The same was repeated at dessert, though not always with so much pomp. And at night, before giving thanks to God, he handed over to his successor in the charge the collar of the Order, with a cup of wine, and they drank to each other….Membertou and Messamoet, Mi’kmaq chiefs in the area, were frequent guests.”
I can’t swear on this, but I think Atoctegic is actually a native incarnation of the Celtic-Buddhist sage currently posting on this thread!
http://www.pc.gc.ca/lhn-nhs/ns/portroyal/natcul/histor.aspx
Membertou’s progeny is now in Sydney. They run a fine casino there, I have been told! Maybe I’ll call up the current chief and suggest he revive a local chapter of the ‘Order of the Good Time’ by hosting gatherings in his restaurant there once a month. Not a bad idea…
More:
The Order of Good Cheer (French: L’Ordre de Bon Temps), was an event founded by Samuel de Champlain. Many of the men were sick and bored because of the long winters in Port-Royal, Champlain thought that some good food and music would liven their spirits.
On the 11th of May 2001 the Speaker of the House in Nova Scotia, Canada, the Hon. Murray Scott reaffirmed official recognition of the Order in Canada as grant of the Province under the custodianship of the Nova Scotia Ministry of Heritage. According to resolution 1111, as a minimum condition of membership a pledge to visit the Canadian Province Nova Scotia must be made. The Order is presented in recognition of individuals valued by the Province of Nova Scotia and or in Honour of the Acadian tradition in Canada.
One becomes a member of the Order of Good Cheer by receiving an invitation of the Canadian Province of Nova Scotia or by a Chevalier / Member of the Order.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Good_Cheer
Order of Good…
Non nobis, Domine, non nobis: sed Nomini Tuo da gloriam
“Our word is addressed in particular to those who contemn to follow their will and wish to serve with purity and courage in the Chivalry of the true and supreme Sovereign.”
- Rule, Prologue -
Magna Carta: yes, it was the Barons who did it. I think the notion of ‘Freeman’ does not include the peasantry but will research further. Still, interesting in principle:
“By 1215, some of the most important barons in England had had enough, and with the support of Prince Louis the French Dauphin and King Alexander II of the Scots, they entered London in force on 10 June 1215,[3] with the city showing its sympathy with their cause by opening its gates to them. They, and many of the moderates not in overt rebellion, forced King John to agree to the “Articles of the Barons”, to which his Great Seal was attached in the meadow at Runnymede on 15 June 1215. In return, the barons renewed their oaths of fealty to King John on 19 June 1215. The contemporary chronicler, Roger of Wendover, recorded the events in his Flores Historiarum.[4] A formal document to record the agreement was created by the royal chancery on 15 July: this was the original Magna Carta. An unknown number of copies of it were sent out to officials, such as royal sheriffs and bishops.
The most significant clause for King John at the time was clause 61, known as the “security clause”, the longest portion of the document. This established a committee of 25 barons who could at any time meet and overrule the will of the King, through force by seizing his castles and possessions if needed.[5] This was based on a medieval legal practice known as distraint, but it was the first time it had been applied to a monarch. In addition, the King was to take an oath of loyalty to the committee.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta#Rights_still_in_force_today
Of possible related interest: common law which I believe is still the basis of law in both the US and Canada.
Loyalty & Samaya are different things. It should be quite possible to have loyalty to a Sakyong (or at least more generally to the lineage of Sakyongs if a current sovereign is not to one’s taste) w/o the requirement of a samaya bond to the Sakyong.
The failure of SI and SMR’s current obligatory Shambhhala Buddhist synthesis to make & clearly honor this distiction is probably the most significant problem. SI/SMR appear to be insisting on combining and conflating these items.
As a result of this error, Shambhala (at least in its full manifestation) becomes inaccessible to those without/unwilling to enter into a vajrayana guru samaya relationship w/SMR including all non-Buddhists even if they have loyalty to Shambhala & the Sakyong lineage.
‘…Enjoyment for all was your great teaching…’ (VROT re CTR): the basis for my actual and aspirational membership in the Order of the Good Time in each moment…
mark
I have not yet found out how to join, but am getting closer:
“Article by C.B. Fergusson; 5 pages. “Today membership in the Order of the Good Time is a vivid reminder of a colourful tradition which began …at Port Royal…. Any visitor who remains in Nova Scotia for three days qualifies for membership. Only four things are requested of members – to have a good time, to remember us pleasantly, to speak of us kindly, and to come back again”.
http://www.gov.ns.ca/nsarm/virtual/habitation/archives.asp?ID=35
Not bad guidelines for the Dragon Society.
I have given up with Google and instead sent an email to The Honourable Mayann E. Francis, the Lieutenant Governor of the Province of Nova Scotia, and Grand Master of the Order of the The Good Time. Hopefully we will get authoritative information from her Secretary, Mabel Perks.
Personally, I don’t think we are ready for good government for the same reason that the deleg system did not (yet) work, which boils down to two factors:
1. Insufficient population
2. Related to 1 but also more generally, we lack identification with our local situations and since the ‘dharma’ – for lack of a better term in this societal-political context – is not a prevalent feature in our local communities, we tend to identify our Shambhalian personalities – split or not! – in a way that is essentially para-local; and thus our very own identification itself creates a church-style, authoritarian and thus centralized model because our vision and experience of it is not grounded, either literally or figuratively, in our immediate local situations.
Frankly, I don’t see how it could be any other way at this stage unless certain local sanghas with larger numbers (Boulder, Halifax, NY?) were to try to more fully integrate the deleg system into the national governance protocular dynamic. This was done in Halifax years ago and perhaps still is, but I wonder if the citizenry involved has ever really been able to make the deleg system into a viable and potent political force within the larger body politic, and again because of how most of us, pretty much unavoidably given our numbers again, identify with the teachings and sangha principle as something outside the norm of everyday society and thus really more like a church than anything else.
So like it or not, at this stage it seems like we are stuck with Shambhala as a Church, despite philosophical statements to the contrary, which is why Shambhala Training, for example, runs almost entirely on church-sourced volunteer labour and funding. Regrettable? Perhaps. But somewhat choiceless.
As is the current Governance structure which is basically that of a single denomination Church.
I believe that over time if the Nova Scotia initiative takes good root, that gradually there will develop inroads into the union/yoga of dharma practice and view with ordinary local culture. That is the key dynamic and lesson that Nova Scotian experience will offer to the international Shambhalian community. Personally speaking, during the year or two I lived at Kalapa Valley, this was the message I kept receiving loud and clear on outer, inner and secret levels. I was unable to make a link between this message and the main sangha in Halifax, however, apart from a few notable exceptions. Although frustrating, more importantly that too was a message: our community is simply not attuned to this sort of thing yet (even though many individuals therein are of course, and far more than myself I should add). You know you are getting an inkling of it however, when you start to feel more loyalty to your immediate local community who become a veritable ‘we’ versus the official Shambhala Community which is usually interfaced with (for those not living in Halifax) via various officials, divisions, organizational structures and so on who gradually, and to your surprise, become ‘they’.
Is this abandoning the sangha or violating samaya? I don’t think so, rather it is expanding the sangha principle and fulfilling the view and purpose of the Shambhala initiative.
At this point, for example, I regard anyone I meet personally here as essential sangha members, or Refugees, whether they know it or not. And why not? Their Buddha Nature is at least as developed as mine, since such Nature transcends any notion of development or lack of development. So ‘they’ are becoming ‘we’ – at least for me, and I suspect this sort of thing will gradually develop more over time until ‘they’ really are ‘us’. At that point, proper governance will begin not only to make sense, but be practically viable.
Until this sort of bedrock merger evolves, however, we are basically a church (not here being used in any negative sense).
Mark Smith wrote “Loyalty & Samaya are different things. It should be quite possible to have loyalty to a Sakyong (or at least more generally to the lineage of Sakyongs if a current sovereign is not to one’s taste) w/o the requirement of a samaya bond to the Sakyong.
The failure of SI and SMR’s current obligatory Shambhhala Buddhist synthesis to make & clearly honor this distiction is probably the most significant problem. SI/SMR appear to be insisting on combining and conflating these items.”
I used the term “that particular form of loyalty” upthread in response to John Perks’ “Strong People Strong Sakyong,one Shambhala” comment, with loyalty as the larger container and samaya as a vajra subset of it….
I’m in total agreement with you that the Big Issue is combining / conflating loyalty and samaya. This insistence (perhaps driven by a wishful assumption of “hereditary samaya”) combined with the perception of an ongoing devaluation of CTR’s explicit instructions and the perceived loss of voice of the “old dogs” is a perfect recipe for dividing a sangha.
Micheal Sullivan wrote earlier:
“Is there a reason to have the One True Shambhala?? or could a thousand Shambhalas bloom?”
then later the loyalty/samaya rub from Mark Smith: ““Loyalty & Samaya are different things. It should be quite possible to have loyalty to a Sakyong (or at least more generally to the lineage of Sakyongs if a current sovereign is not to one’s taste) w/o the requirement of a samaya bond to the Sakyong.”
Then Perks:
““Strong People Strong Sakyong,one Shambhala”
I think that the One Shambhala would have a thousand Shambhalian communities. Just like Cape Breton, which is a ‘community of different communities’. The various local communities here have exceptionally strong local character, perhaps because of their small numbers over many generations. Again, it reminds me of Europe fifty years ago where in France, for example, I met an eighty year old farmer in 1972 who had not visited nearby Blois (4.2 miles away) since the 1945 end-of-war celebrations and had never either been on a train or visited Paris 90 miles away. He was the norm, not the exception, for a typical ‘country type’. Similar people like him were all over England, Scotland, Ireland.
For Shambhala to be truly One it has to accommodate the Many who are in different places and with different styles, needs, strengths, weaknesses and driving passions. That is why I believe the franchise delivery model for disseminating the teachings is ultimately more of a hindrance than a help.
Before closing down the web page, took a gander at the LG’s biography wherein found this nugget of governance-related vision:
“Her Honour says Nova Scotia, like the British Commonwealth, is one big community that reflects the input and activities of a variety of people and backgrounds. As Lieutenant Governor she will ensure that the richness of those differing perspectives is represented and put to active and good use. She says together Nova Scotians can explore ways they can make a difference, for themselves, for their communities and their province.”
Here we have a simple but excellent example of the One = Many principle mentioned above, versus One = One principle we seem to be operating under too much. The first barrier is the view held by the individual who projects that view out into the/our community which then assumes a shape largely created by the combined views of its constituents. Whether by ballot, spontaneous insight or whatever, the members each contribute to the form of the body politic. In other words, ‘we the people’ create the basic structure whether we do so consciously, willingly, unwillingly or unwittingly. It begins with view.
She ends with:
“”I hope that my journey to this point in my life can be an inspiration to anyone who is somehow discouraged by the hand they have been given. Where there is hope there is a way. Barriers are meant to be climbed over, they help make us stronger as individuals and as an inclusive community. This new path on my journey is an exciting one that I am eager to share with Nova Scotians.”
Substitute Shambhalians for Nova Scotians at the end of the last sentence, and it’s not a bad summary of the situation in which many of us here, seemingly, find ourselves.
PS. She comes from Sydney!
Dear Ash
I think I know why Perks is saying Strong People, Strong Sakyong, One Shambhala because for one reason hes British! -And thats the way the whole thing is in the UK anyway. People do dismiss the monarchy in the Uk and rightly so but you cant get away from it in the literature, the plays, the law, etc, etc, ad nauseum in my mind. And Her Majesty is of course on everything aswell – the stamps, the postboxes, the marmelade, the eggs even! So there we are – you will never get the Brits to give up this strange loyalty to the monarch -its really quite nutty!
As to the Sakyong -no dont consider him as an enemy just a trifle too much of unallowing things to develop naturally and organically with westerners taking the whole thing forward in the arts and government without the need for stringent samaya bond.
Look even the most stupid governments on this planet still employ people of different religions in their institutions -the Middle East is Islamic but before the Americans went in Christians served in the government for example in Iraq.
So yeh I agree with you the one shambhala should have thousands of shambhala communities -maybe in the fullness of time they will have thousands of teachers nay even gurus – let a thousand flowers bloom -open the doors -dont close them!
Still think it would be good to discuss all this in the Cape – as it is supposed to be the capital of Shambhala. If anyone wants to send me stuff on the Cape tell Mark Szp -maybe I could publicise it over here myself.
You know theres lots of business men/women outside NS -who knows what they want to invest in -just a few months ago some billionaires bought a football club here which is worth a billion now – money everywhere. Maybe they would want to invest in the Cape if the Sydney harbour is so brilliant.
Interesting so there is a Order of Good Time -thought you were concocting a Perksian ruse……..it sounds fascinating -based on Oxford/Cambridge or was Oxford/Cambridge based on it a la dining.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
“thought you were concocting a Perksian ruse”
Truth is always stranger than fiction, just as reality is always far more magical than samsara.
PS. Nobody here calls it ‘The Cape’. Sometimes ‘the island’, but mostly ‘Cape Breton’. If you say ‘the Cape’ they will assume you are talking about Superman or something! (Actually, come to think of it, some people do say that, but not many…)
The harbour is a no-go at least in currently configured Federal Canada. People have tried off and on for 200 years, but also every few years in the past thirty. Halifax and Montreal are dead set against and that is that.
The CBC heard of my development work a while back and asked me to submit something. I proposed a ‘Cape Breton Representative Assembly’ whose initial mission would be to elect 2 officials from each community and send them for a weekend pow-wow in Sydney to come up with three priorities for the island in the upcoming year, which priorities would be formally submitted to the Press, the Municipal Leadership on the island, the MLA’s and the Halifax legislature. (This initiative would not be paid for by any public funding, rather from the constituents themselves.)
Needless to say, CBC neither published the article nor invited me on the show! Being a Maritime Province, ‘rocking the boat’ ain’t welcomed!
Re the Order of Good Cheer (L’Ordre de Bon Temps), this was established by Samuel de Champlain in 1605 at Port Royal, Nova Scotia. When John Leon and I arrived in Halifax in September, 1979 (we were subjects 4 and 5 of KOS Nova Scotia), we researched this extensively, because it resonated so well with Shambhala basic cheerfulness. John wrote some articles about the order. Nevertheless this place, with “your mountains dark and dreary be” relishes cheering from the inside out (especially this time (fake-wannabe-spring) of year).
- Mark
Dear Ash
Re rocking the boat – I thought you were stil in some way a subject of Her Majesty -and the job of the Brit always has been to rock the boat-so I would rrrroocccck it away -it might start a forward movement -hope you can be so belligerent that you really begin to annoy people in the Maritimes!
Journos respond to persistence and persistence -if they think there is a story it will be covered ……..hassling the CBC is a good move perhaps like the BBC here in Manchester they allow the public in – I would get to know who has clout there -worlds within worlds.
Perhaps it is the time that is making me so querying -is it the Mayan thingie!
Yes definately irritate the Canucks……..you can do it its your right as a member of our majesterial British Isles …….hope your/my superiority supplied by the upper lip goes forward – I jest of course!
Best
Rita Ashworth
Mark, did you join and if so go to a dinner or something?
I remember playing pool in the old Men’s Club downtown for a while in ’81, my first visit; plus the Press Club was a lot of fun (via the unfortunate Mariette, the Premier’s Secretary).
As to faux spring: I have the little black-and-white birds (sorry, I’m into no-name brands only with birds) in my yard today. A month earlier than usual…. Methinks the back of winter’s broke…
Dear Ash
Was wondering why I said the jest about the Brits being everso slightly superior -think it stems from Empire ‘remains’ in the language and culture -best of british and the like.
Still the Brits are concerned a lot with governance so thats also where the superiority thing comes from aswell -the playing with power and how to exercise it in a skilful manner that happens throughout our history. How does this relate to Cape Breton and Shambhala? Think in some ways you have to be stubborn Brit in getting your message across to people there.
Remember having an interview with John Roper when he asked me about living in NS and what I thought about it -one brief comment I made was as to ignorance about politics I found in some quarters and strangely he said yes CTR commented in this way about the province aswell. And then again I hear Ken Green’s comment on CP talking about working with ignorance in Canuckland -what indeed are the methods for working with that kind of density? Just a query?
Re your other post about the million bucks thingie -think the most easiest thing to do at present would be to present teachings in big tent to people you could do that on a campground for example -kasung wise -think this would be cheap to do.
Why am I so concerned by the island -well I think for these teachings of shambhala to flourish in the world we will have to have a strong capital in the most widest sense. The stuff about the harbour is intriguing n’est-ce-pas?
Also in a governmental sense and a revolutionary sense the admin has to be somewhere aka Moscow when Lenin supervised the takeover of Russia. Is Cape Breton ideal of capital so far-fetched – well you do have Canberra in Oz which is just government city -so fundamentally it could work.
As to Brit stubborness my brother in Oz paid not to vote! In Oz if you dont vote they charge you for that luxury! Well he sure was not voting for the idiots in the Queensland government.
(PS found a contact on CBC website on Main street for Cape Breton Wendy Bergfelt, journalist -looks interesting and approachable)
Best
Rita Ashworth
Rita, well this makes me suspect the basis of the whole pov I seem to have been developing over the years, but I feel pretty much exactly the same way – structurally speaking – about national/regional/conventional politics as I do about S.I.-related politics, namely some sense of disappointment with the overly rigid, top-down power structures.
I don’t know about UK being superior anymore, though I suspect that far more influence comes out via Threadneedle St. and other old family networks – including the Royal Family – than is leaked into the mainstream. But one thing the UK had – at least when I lived there in 60′s and 70′s – as stepson to the host of BBC’s ‘All Our Yesterday’s – was a vibrant class system.
In North America we like to pretend there isn’t much of a class system but there is, except it is not based on hereditary land-based influence radiating out from the Ultimate Landlord, the Crown, rather some sort of commerce-related, finance-controlled network, which is seemingly ‘run’ from international banking cartels. This is where the rubber meets the road in terms of local political endeavors. Yes, one can ‘kick against the pricks’ and every once in a while succeed, but I suspect only in particular individual initiatives with little general implications or with issues that appeal to a wide number of people, i.e. they have widely general implications.
Something like Cape Breton, which in development terms is called a ‘sub-region’, like most such sub-regions falls between the cracks. Now the EU in Europe balanced things out laudably by dividing the territory into regions and then putting money into the poorest ones, Ireland being an extraordinary tale in this regard, but also I think Manchester-Birmingham area later on. But we have no such equivalent in Canada (or the US).
Sydney is the closest natural major port to both Rotterdam/London and Northwest Africa on the EastCoast Atlantic seabord with rail access to the continent, which is why it was the busiest port in North America during WW II during which period regional politics were relatively unimportant. If I remember correctly, it is about 12 hours closer to Europe than NYC – a large commercial port – and 24 hours closer than Montreal. This is very important for shipping companies since it increases their annual turnaround considerably (5-15% I think). I doubt that NYC is a major concern – though you never know – but certainly Montreal is; and I suspect strongly that also Halifax would prefer for Sydney not to develop even though all she has is about 3-5 navy ships, a small refinery and 1-3 container berths, i.e. it barely qualifies as a minor port. If Sydney were developed, Montreal would essentially get knocked out, meaning there would be no federal funds at all. No federal funds means it isn’t going to happen, can’t happen, and indeed they will ensure that it doesn’t happen. Municipal governments do not have the political or economic power to engender something like that, nor is it the sort of thing that grass roots organisations can effect either except in terms of an awareness campaign which could be undertaken.
Also, the climate in Nova Scotia, especially on the South Shore including Halifax, would improve. I talked to a govt. official in Halifax back in the mid 80′s who told me that when he was a boy you could swim in the waters around there from May to early October. That is because the Gulf stream used to wash closer to the shores. But once they started breaking the ice to build up Montreal as a major port, the current flows further away from the NS South shore and into the huge Bay of St. Lawrence and breaking up the ice encouraged that flow considerably changing the Gulf Stream annual trajectory in significant fashion. This is what he told me; I don’t know if it’s true but it’s hard to argue with the swimming factoid and probably it’s not a co-incidence that this changed shortly after the ice-breaking endeavours which continue to this day. Nova Scotia, the richest province in the 1860′s, is now one of the poorest. Clearly confederation has not done it any favors and indeed has served to ensure that even its Maritime advantages – of which Sydney Port is the most notable – are not developed.
As to working with ignorance: I don’t know. First you have to join them before you can beat them. And few of us are in the (unacknowledged) ruling class or have access to them. Without that, little can be done.
Right now I am not interested in pursuing such things. But I am touched that you regard Sydney as the potential capital. I agree, and confess it’s mainly because of a poem CTR wrote about it which I shall try to post here later even though at this point I think we are having a private conversation that has strayed quite a long way from the ‘differing views and paths’ title of this thread!
“Changing the Gulf Stream annual trajectory in significant fashion. This is what he told me; I don’t know if it’s true but it’s hard to argue”
Dear Ash
This is interesting so we are talking not only of ports but climate change -does not the Gulf Stream affect UK -not sure about this re geography. If
they stopped breaking the ice NS would get warmer? Would anywhere else get warmer? Interesting.
As to the port are we talking hundreds of millions or billions to develop it?
Just a ball park figure would do -people like to know these things!
I dont know who would be interested in Sydney as a port – the Middle East where there is loads cash-dunno-still should talk it up — musings attract money I think.
Re the differing paths thingie -if we are to have differing paths we should have economic base to differ and when I was in Halifax all they differed about was their own backyards -think a colossal viewpoint should be had re differing paths.
Waiting to read the poem with anticipation – I wonder if its an economic poem in terms of shambhala drala. Perhaps could analyse poem in terms of drala -perhaps drala in Sydney is very concrete and in the air and people if only they could clue in to it.
Am doing my bit in uk re dharma ——perhaps people could do their bit in Sydney and Cape re the tent approach -give people the tools of meditation -drala in action to manifest riches both concrete and actual.
best
Rita Ashworth
Well, I suspect that the main artery of the Gulf Stream is not much affected in terms of its overall journey from the Americas to the UK. I saw a satellite map of UK during recent cold snaps wherein Ireland was pretty much all green and Britain was pretty much all white, so clearly the Gulf Stream is the thing making that happen. But maybe it has been diluted somewhat by the Bay of St. Lawrence. Obviously, rather impossible to say.
No idea either on making a port happen. The main thing is not money – which can always be found since a nation has the ability to print it basically! – but political will. The only major port I have seen is Hamburg. What I saw of it seems to be a basin several miles wide with large loading cranes every hundred yards or so for the literally hundreds of container ships docked therein. The natural Sydney harbour would stretch from Sydney perhaps all the way to Glace Bay I believe, not just in the Sydney River section.
History: DesBarres, the first Governor of the new Province of Cape Breton, sailed over to London to get the job, then sailed back to Halifax having got it, spent a week or so there, then sailed to Louisburg – the only white settlement at the time – and spent a few days there before continuing on to found Sydney where at some point soon thereafter about 200 people lived. His job before being Governor of the new Province: he spent 10 years in a ship creating the maps for the entire Maritime region including Newfoundland, if I remember correctly. (I think it was in 1840 that Cape Breton was annexed back into Nova Scotia.) But the port point here is that the man who arguably knew this region – marine-level speaking – was the man who founded Sydney because, as he said at the time, it was the best natural port location he had ever seen.
I am no expert in these things, of course, but I have little doubt that if developed it would be a major world port like Rotterdam, Hamburg, London, Hong Kong etc. The economic benefits would be significant not only for Cape Breton, but also Nova Scotia, PEI, New Brunswick. I suspect that it is the single key administrative regional initiative that would have the most effect on the future development of this region over the next few centuries.
Poem pasted in next post.
MERRIER THAN THE MARITIMES
Nova Scotia as seen at its best –
How the earth and sky can relate with mist and rain and the frustrations of fishermen.
Cape Forchu at Yarmouth brings us eye-opening possibilities of Pembroke Shore.
Kelly Cove introduces us into Darling Lake.
As we reach Port Maitland we discover the possibilities of Cape St. Mary which brings us to Meteghan River.
By way of Bay of Fundy, we find ourselves in Digby.
As we approach further we find ourselves realizing Port George.
As we begin to look forward to Cape Split
Our journey goes further
How should we enter into the country
Whether it should be by way of Cape Blomidon or elsewhere
Evangeline Beach is tempting
But should we ride on a horse to conquer Dartmouth across land
Or should we sail around by way of Cape Sable.
We are inspired to be in Halifax.
Gentlemen from Glen Haven might have something to say about our trip altogether.
Seemingly we enjoyed ourselves.
New Glasgow is a fantastic area
As to relate with the luscious earth
As to bringing general prosperous outlook overcoming industrialism
We are attracted to Cape George
Depth of the earth could be brought out by means of Big Marsh
Local vision can be brought together in the County of Antigonish
By working together with Guysborough County
So we have a chance to bring together the mainland and build a big city.
In the name of Pictou-Guysborough
We could invite any potential prosperous and elegant situation as possible London, Paris, Rome, blah,blah,blah.
The County of Inverness
We will continue to the top point of Cape St. Lawrence.
We will build high point of sane society
With the courtesy of Victoria County, Keltic Lodge and Ingonish are included
Thus we go further.
In County of Cape Breton we raise the morale of Sydney
With the help of Richmond County.
The total vision of Nova Scotia should be based on Capital of Sydney.
When Sydney is raised to its highest level
The rest of the peninsula can be brought up at its best.
Thus we partly conquer the Atlantic Ocean.
Victory to the true command.
Take pride in our peninsula.
29 October 1980
Keltic Lodge
Dir/hg
Re: “In County of Cape Breton we raise the morale of Sydney
With the help of Richmond County.
The total vision of Nova Scotia should be based on Capital of Sydney.
When Sydney is raised to its highest level
The rest of the peninsula can be brought up at its best.”
Based on these lines, when I first moved to Sydney after KV/Ingonish, I tried to purchase the 1000 seat Vogue Theatre to which end I started a city revitalisation initiative with a Cornell-trained Japanese-American architect who lives in Mabou since childhood (summer home). We got to the point of being able to get something going for real (took a year) but then the Fed and Provincial govts, seeing we were about to get traction, came in and offered to provide funding (we did not ask) at which point our own private sector potential donors all stepped back to wait for those checks so our particular initiative was stalled. Then, after delaying and delaying for about six months, they put out a tender for consultants to offer plans to revitalize both Glace Bay and Sydney (two separate, simultaneous projects), did not allow my team to even present for the Sydney contract but only the Glace Bay contract, and essentially killed the whole thing in any case by defining the project in terms which were basically antithetical to our vision, both long-term and strategically.
In short, they deliberately killed it – just as all the old hands with such things on the island had predicted. It was worth a try, but not something I will do again. Old story around here, and in all such ‘sub-regions’ I suspect.
[Sidebar: during the Glace Bay presentation - which I did not want to be present at nor even to work on but which I had to attend because the two lead consultants were absent with family funerals to attend (not an auspicious co-incidence to be sure!), the govt. officials insisted I say something because they knew I was the one who had started the whole thing. So I told the truth about why this tender for Glace Bay existed and why I thought it was a thoroughly stupid idea. Of course we didn't get the contract!]
I never did get the Vogue. I didn’t want it unless the City was beginning to turn around since filling a 1,000 seat facility in a city with declining income and population is not realistic. Cape Breton population has declined by more than 30% since I moved here 10 years ago. All directly attributable to misguided provincial and national policies.
Dear Ash
Its only the real thing tis Shambhala as George Benson did say in the song!
Well firstly as to the following:
‘’No idea either on making a port happen. The main thing is not money – which can always be found since a nation has the ability to print it basically! – but political will.’’
Political will –interesting what is it really? The politician’s actions in a time of crisis, the peoples desire for change, events dear boy (did Macmillan say that) or then again old Harold with his statement a week is a long time in politics.
So perhaps political will comes about when some one sees the situation directly and what requires doable and undoable things to move things forward.
Political will in shambhala sense –where does it come from surely from the heaven, earth and man triad with perhaps the people maybe clamouring for change from the King so that the earth principle can be enacted physically and psychically, one could say. Yes political will. Has anyone got it in NS? I would make allies with the people and the politicians.
Secondly
‘’I tried to purchase the 1000 seat Vogue Theatre to which end I started a city revitalisation initiative with a Cornell-trained Japanese-American architect who lives in Mabou ‘’
Hmmmmm praticalities the political will in action which got souped. Still would be interesting for people to know what got souped and how the political will was thwarted. Had a thought of constructing a site simply on KOS with all the information on it plus a blog. The vision and the practicalities together for people to consider.
Thirdly
‘’The total vision of Nova Scotia should be based on Capital of Sydney.
When Sydney is raised to its highest level
The rest of the peninsula can be brought up at its best.
Thus we partly conquer the Atlantic Ocean.
Victory to the true command.
Take pride in our peninsula.’’
Should the clans gather as Perks hinted at aka the Magna Carta a la Sydney –perhaps we need a grand gesture to raise drala. Could be fun –cosmic man even like Woodstock –where would we go and be. Nifty.
Certainly Trungpa was building an Empire in a poem –so majestic. Had the sensation when tired of flying over Nova Scotia and seeing the green and pleasant lands through poetic flame.
What a master with such imperial political will.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Manchester UK
“Political will –interesting what is it really?”
I don’t know. We don’t live in functioning democracies – if such a thing truly exists. So-called ‘politicians’ are largely bought and paid for, i.e. are middle level managers of broader policies and agendas over which they have no control and little influence. Canada is nowadays regarded as one of the strongest, best economies in the world. Yet a year or so ago they quietly snuck in a $75 billion bailout/funding package to the banking sector, which was supposedly not in trouble by all public accounts. Given our population, that is the equivalent of the $700 billion in the US, although the true figure there is apparently about thirty times greater and in any case that TARP is a rolling funding mechanism, i.e. they can keep spending more but no more than 700 bill at any time, i.e. it’s a meaningless number. But still: they did this in Canada, it was not debated in parliament and not published in the press. That simple fact demonstrates the underlying phoniness of the leadership class level of the ‘political’ situation in Canada generally, and thus also somewhat similarly Nova Scotia.
I believe an enlightened society is one in which class distinctions are both clear, harmonious and permeable. But they will always exist in any society, both horizontally and vertically. Horizontal class is the difference between father and mother, brother and sister, brake assemblyman and transmission assemblyman and so on, i.e. different roles at the same sort of level. Vertical class is how we usually think of the term. Class is similar to order as in ‘class or order’, i.e. it is really discriminating different roles people play in the same overall mandala known as ‘society’, or could be smaller mandala like tribe, village, or family. It is not a bad word. And such divisions/distinctions are inevitable and healthy. In societies some people grow the food, some bake the bread, some build the roads, some treat the sick, some run the bureaucracy and so forth. This is good.
However, when one general class becomes overweighted in terms of influence, which nearly always means at some point that systemic deception has become entrenched, then you have problems. And in that situation – which we all have now in the developed world – what does ‘political will’ mean? Your guess is as good as mine!
“Should the clans gather as Perks hinted at aka the Magna Carta a la Sydney.”
I propose that we have clan gatherings using Ingonish as the venue and Kalapa Valley as the communal shrine space. That is the true ‘high ground’, whereas Sydney is only embryonic capital. Interesting: Kalapa Valley is in the highlands formed by ‘the sacred river Ingonish’ in the words of a local poet. It is low, in other words, it is lu domain on the ground. It is the most Lha Lu place in Shambhala. It is where Lha touches Lu. As such it is thus the key Nyen place in our world. It is where vision meets practicality. It is where Shambhala Rigdens copulate shamelessly with the local human population and from there with the rest of Earth.
Clan gatherings in Ingonish. Ooh Ra!
PS: in relation to VCTR’s poem :
“Local vision can be brought together in the County of Antigonish
By working together with Guysborough County
So we have a chance to bring together the mainland and build a big city.
In the name of Pictou-Guysborough
We could invite any potential prosperous and elegant situation as possible London, Paris, Rome, blah,blah,blah.”
I missed this connection until today but the Roman Catholic hierarchy in NS is based in Antigonish to whose Arch-Diocese the priest in Ingonish (pop. 1200-ish, RC pop 500-ish) reports. When I opened up Kalapa Valley to the public (with considerable support and assistance from two of the then-owners Steve Brooks and Suter duBose) the Roman Catholic Father kindly lent us the use of his printer with which to publish several thousand fliers which went out all over the island, for which he refused any monetary compensation.
Jennifer X who worked as volunteer cook throughout the summer (and also refused financial compensation) and who briefly practiced a little, later became the first woman in the Diocese empowered to give the sacraments at death or some such. There was simply no spiritual conflict or obstacle in the relationship between herself, myself and the Good Father.
Another lovely ritual there: at the beginning of the fishing season the Father goes out to the harbour and blesses all the boats.
In any case, Ingonish is connected. It is the high ground of the Maritimes without any question. When Beverly Webster came to visit and attend one of our fiddling concerts there she stayed in a nearby motel looking across the bay towards the Keltic Lodge. She remarked, in her typically accurate ‘Ladylike Beattyful’ fashion that it reminded her of Cannes.
Apart from the sheer drala-fun quotient, the ripples from such a gathering throughout the province should not be underestimated. Indeed, one of the only sangha-related letters I have written in the past few years – until posting here – was to Steve Baker recommending this Clan Gathering in Ingonish idea as a way to establish the trans-provincial societal awareness base for making a large center in Halifax meaningful, relevant and thus feasible, even though personally I think far more emphasis should be placed on encouraging people to move from Halifax to Sydney, Ingonish and basically anywhere on Cape Breton Island.
Indeed, I would go so far as to say: for all Vajra Dinosaur types who feel themselves unanchored in the current ocean of ordinary and inevitable turbulence-change on all sorts ordinary, Shambhalian, Vajradharic, outer, inner or secret levels:
come settle in Cape Breton!
You will be most heartily welcome and find the Vidyadhara surprising you with unexpected ‘boos’ and other switcheroos every moment of every day. Above all, you will find yourself Truly Home.
PS. If you look hard enough and relax into auspicious co-incidence here, houses can still be had for well under $50,000 (in my case $2,500). External dysfunction and seeming economic poverty provide unusual opportunities.
PPS. Wish me luck in my new bakery venture selling in the Sydney Farmer’s Market on Saturdays. Suggestions for names warmly invited.
PPS. Wish me luck in my new bakery venture selling in the Sydney Farmer’s Market on Saturdays. Suggestions for names warmly invited.
~ Ash on March 5th, 2010 10:55 pm
Suggestions…
Hardtack (or hard tack) is a simple type of cracker or biscuit, made from flour, water, and salt. Inexpensive and long-lasting, it is and was used for sustenance in the absence of perishable foods, commonly during long sea voyages and military campaigns.[1] The name derives from the British sailor slang for food, “tack”. It is known by other names such as pilot bread (as rations for ship’s pilots[2]), ship’s biscuit, shipbiscuit, sea biscuit, sea bread (as rations for sailors) or pejoratively “dog biscuits”, “tooth dullers”, “sheet iron” or “molar breakers”.[3] Australian military personnel know them as ANZAC wafers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack
Results 1 – 10 of about 589,000 for sea biscuit recipe.
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Countless Views and Paths…
Halifax Webcam
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Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
View from 15 km above 44°39′N 63°34′W
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Ash suggested religion gives us a sense of community. I think this is where we go wrong.
It is often said that the West is a Christian culture, that our ethics and values are derived from Christianity. I think this is a false premise probably started by upstarts and charlatans enjoying the benefits of kleptocracies.
Religions are built by people, not the other way around. Being basically good, we build our religions, or they develop through our attentions and actions, to reflect what we value. If we didn’t already have an innate sense of the value of compassion, Buddhism would sound like “blah, blah, blah” and even a mahasiddha would have nothing to work with.
Further, our sense of identity is not exclusively or even primarily derived from one’s religion, and certainly not from one’s individual practice. It is derived from many many things: the way we say hello to strangers and friends, the food and drink we share, events we attend, projects we work on, smells of the city or town we live in, the views of the mountains or sea, the clothes we tend to wear and styles we think odd or attractive, the talks we have, on and on.
The things that give us a sense of social identity are inconceivably complex, and beyond the ability of a central authority to control directly. For attempts at culture by decree, think of China in Tibet, or Russia, or the Middles East, or Nepal. From a distance we can see that doesn’t work, is in a certain way aggressive with predictable and sometimes dire effects.
With samaya this contrast between spiritual practice to attain realization and on the other hand spiritual practice as a tool for social engineering is crystal clear. I think this dynamic is less crassly obvious and perhaps easier to repair at hinayana/mahayana levels of practice, but no less true.
Shortly before Mr. Reoch was appointed president there was an announcement sent out which contained among other things, the wish that the Rigden sadhana would one day be practiced by all Shambhalians, thereby making us a community because we would have one view.
This was unsettling not because of a new practice. If I lived in a large center, I probably would have tried, but from my remove it wasn’t an easy or understandable jump.
What was unsettling was that we should hence derive our sense of identity and belonging to this community by practicing one particular sadhana. And it wasn’t/isn’t the one I am doing. I was never told Vajrayogini sadhana was a way to belong. We were actually warned about that approach. My identifying with Trungpa Rinpoche’s community did not come from whatever practice I was doing. If you think about it, it’s obvious why that would not work; our views change and develop as we meditate, even within one particular practice.
Mixing the development of community identity with practices aimed at overcoming ego is, I believe, a point at which practice becomes social engineering or goal oriented to an extent that undermines the true aim, and thwarts the political process to boot.
In the inspiration that individual aims trump institutional ones
Dear Ash
I have been thinking about your posts re Canuck politics -yes when I was in NS saw a lot of corruption there in the political realm particularly with regards to patronage which has deleterious effects on the prosperity of the province. However can there be no politicians that you can work with in NS at the present time?
I think CTR was willing to work with all the professions when he was in the States, for example he said the Boulder City Council worked quite well when he was discussing politics in one of his books. I still think there are people you could work with in the political realm in NS -its just seeking them out. Perhaps now that you are ensconced in the market as a bread-seller the political issues being discussed in the island may now start reappearing on your table in a most down to earth way.
Yes definately interested in coming to a ‘clan’ gathering in Cape Breton -hope people can get behind this because it would be one way of bringing all kinds of people together both non-Buddhist and Buddhist and of course a boon to the Cape Breton economy. Plus it might spawn similar gatherings in the world aswell of people who are into the shambhala teachings but not into the mechanised way of delivering them at present.
Its interesting was reading about the kagyu lineage in Tibet – CTR said it was an evangelical set-up moreso than other sects perhaps we have to become more evangelical in terms of the shambhala teachings aka the sane society again.
Take your point about the class thingie but we do also yes need bureaucrats and I still think the Civil Service in the Uk is one of the best in the world after living in Canada, Eire and the States. There still is a sense of service in this country though it is under attack by economic greed and lack of foresight in planning. For example when I worked in the Home Office a Ministers Office was 24/7, 10 whilst 10 most days for some staff. So there is dedication there -could it be done a different and better way -yes of course but that is up to shambhalians and others to discover so indeed we do all have to talk politics -yeh even with bread what will you charge the poorest of the poor in Cape Breton for your bread -conundrums everywhere.
Aka the sub-region thingie – think CTR wanted the Maritimes to be a region re Ontario and Quebec -perhaps there should be no seperate governments in the Maritimes and the capital could be indeed Sydney -perhaps as a leap of faith the Council of NS premiers could meet in Sydney for once and just take in the sea air there -tell them CTR wanted to create almost a nation there -read them the poem -would they be stunned! Worth a try.
Still think the above falls in the remit of differing paths Mark as we are setting out the creation of an enlightened society which would have much impact on the world generally.
I am getting very Lord Peter Mandelson like with these grand visions but as a true Machiavellian he does know how to win elections ……………..zzzzz………I must read his biography.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Hi Ashley,
Name for your baking business:
How about Basic Goodness Baked Goods
Love Madeline
From Dunvegan
Madeline from Dunvegan: well, it has to be good as an acronym because they rule here: ECBC, CBRM, HRM etc. Yours is BGBG which has a certain flair as acronyms go!
I am thinking of slipping something symbolic/dharmic/Shambhalian in there for fun, but also considering just basic ‘French Road Bakery’ because French Road is where I live (pop 19 and I’ve only met 9 of them in 5 years since it is just a postal zone not a real community per se).
In terms of acronyms I thought CBBB isn’t bad: Cape Breton Buddha Bread or Buddha Bakery. But anyway, something will come up at some point and it will feel right. Thanks. I’ll let that one ferment. Fermentation is an important part of the baking sadhana.
Rita: I really am not interested in the political sphere any more in terms of personal involvement. I tried, it was over my pay grade but also I don’t like doing things which depend overmuch on the participation of others especially in this case others with whom one never comes into direct contact since one usually only gets to meet with underlings, and that includes provincial ministers. I no longer believe that most politicians, including bureaucrats in the civil service have all that much influence in terms of overall policy strategy, although they do implement it. I know what you mean about the British Civil Service and agree, but a) I was not saying there was anything wrong with bureaucracy/civil service at all and b) I did not mean to imply that I think the political class is the one pulling the strings, because I don’t. I think the popular term ‘bankster’ sums it up as good as any but of course it is so vague as to be almost meaningless. There are long-term legislative initiatives in play now which the civil service per se have little influence over determining. In a strange twist, it has become increasingly clear that the ‘corporate class’, which has no fundamental allegiance to locality, including nations, has succeeded in skewing most commerce-related legislation in its favor with the result that our democracies, as such, are mainly in place to provide the populace with the illusion that they live in one.
Your visions are a tad over the top – at least for me. Maybe you should move out here and give it a go?!
I did present the Clan Gathering idea to the North East Highlands Chamber of Commerce (NEHCC) in Ingonish in the spring of 2000. They asked several pointed questions of a mainly logistical, practical nature, discussed it around the table for about 15 minutes and concluded that it could be a really good idea if the Shambhala Community was serious about it. When I tried to get a response from A-Suite about possible times when SMR would be available in the next 2+ years, I was unable to get a reply. In retrospect I should have gone forward anyway but at the time I felt I couldn’t raise expectations in this small community only to see them dashed by lack of follow-through on our end. (An example of working with situations in which the participation of others over whom one has insufficient access/influence is involved.)
James, very good remarks on religion. I was not clear in mine but was not making the case that religion is necessarily a main binding factor; to my mind it is a people-generated expression of the need for a binding factor in much the same way that government is created in response to such a need.
I think it is accurate that in our case we do need to have some sort of unified sense of ‘we’ even if that includes many varied aspects, styles and locations. I can also see that need being expressed as the idea that we all have one common practice at some point.
My feeling is that the problem with what you mentioned above about the Rigden Sadhana is that it is not the right way to go. I don’t know what the Rigden Sadhana is but it doesn’t matter: I know none of my neighbours would ever be interested in doing it since it takes many years to get to the level to be able to do so.
We already have a common practice which works from the first neophyte stumbling ‘in’ to the most advanced, enlightened practitioners in the mandala: sitting practice. A group of people sitting together in a room doing the same thing together is the universal form and anyone who does that with ‘us’ is part of ‘we’. That’s my simplistic take, anyway. And that’s why I have felt for years that open nyinthuns is the single most effective and simple thing to foster. If I ever start a group where I live (doubtful since there is no real population here), that is really all we would do: sitting, with occasional discussion, perhaps specific courses if it’s appropriate, and social gatherings after. I don’t think fancy sadhanas work as universal forms. Again, it’s the centralising-funneling dynamic at play which is getting everything bass-ackwards.
Dear Ash
Thanks for the feedback.
Interesting that a clan gathering was suggested re Cape Breton –get what you mean re working with others and others in this case politicians aswell, but some times may be just useful to brainstorm things because other ideas come out aswell. So I try not to put a limit on what I am thinking because may be something useful will materialise.
Also think on a fundamental level it is good to have discussions re stuff because I am learning a lot by your posts on how you interacted with the people in Cape Breton and also the history of what has occurred there.
I don’t know if I could live in Cape Breton now re getting older but it is in the back of my mind. Also in the back of my mind is a clan gathering in terms of exploring how the dissenters and SI could manifest the shambhala teachings in the world as you have described re the Dragon Society and your other approaches to disseminating the teachings to many people. So I sort of thought it would be good to explore the conversation.
Know myself from my experience that no man/woman can be an island and that indeed some times you have to make grand gestures in the Arts or other fields to clue in to what is occurring in your mind and present it to the world.
Take for example CTR doing the Installation projects in Discovering Elegance and the mega calligraphies –so yes I think he was thinking on big scale aswell as small scale –artistically and politically – both at the same time. So yes maybe good to go mega, mega big, big, sometimes.
Well best for the weekend
Rita Ashworth
Manchester UK
“A group of people sitting together in a room doing the same thing together is the universal form and anyone who does that with ‘us’ is part of ‘we’.”
I don’t think they need to be the same room, except from a social perspective after the sitting….. as long as they have an understanding and appreciation for working with awareness, and a respect for those who do – there’s your community. And by that definition, some of the rural communities you are talking about are already ‘there’!
I think that the exotic forms are on one hand a ‘strange attractor’ to some and also a turn-off to many.
Does the word “filibuster” resonate? SI must be very pleased.
As for overlaying every social action with the agenda of “bringing Shambhala vision” to others, to me, is missing the point, and having the wrong end of the stick. It is what is so nauseating about the current “vision” of SI for me. And is such a distortion of basic goodness.
By relaxing and being open to the phenomenal world, then “Shambhala vision” would naturally “appear” to oneself in the drala of land and the people one was “relating with.” There is nothing to conquer, no stealth agenda. Imagine having that concept of “bring Shambhala vision” to others, and overlaid on every interaction with others? Why one would never actually experience the phenomenal world freshly, and therefore not be able to notice that basic goodness was already present everywhere. One would be too busy with one’s stealth agendas. .
Everyone of us has had the experience of going into a new place, or situation, with our Shambhala or Buddhist theistic concepts, only to discover, if we relax and let go and become fully present in the situation, that there are others ( who have never heard of Shambhala vision, or Buddhism), who are already naturally manifesting basic goodness, or compassion, without having the conceptual overlay baggage, “pictures in our head” that actually “obscures” this energy from naturally arising.
Shambhala “vision” manifests when we practice and open up to the natural sanity that already exists in ourselves and in the world . There is nothing to do, and trying to “do something” is what obscures us from “seeing clearly” what is all around us, inside and out. The world becomes “enlightened” because it becomes illuminated by allowing our own vision becoming more “transparent,” a view that is unobstructed by concepts such as “bringing enlightened society to the world” or , the latest one from Richard Reoch, “the world is dying for what we have.” Sounds like Bush and the neo-cons. The first thing we should do as “Shambhalians” is drop the concept of “Shambhalians” and get over ourselves.
And James, you explained , so clearly what practice does for a person, i.e. breaks up the possibility of a hegemony of group think because inevitably one’s practice leads one out of the herd mentality. So the idea of “one practice fits all” becomes absurd. “One practice fits all” leads one to insular, goose-stepping.
This proselytizing, agenda-filled , conceptual do-gooding is what finally culminates in aggression from all religions, or pseudo-religious political attempts to “impose” our way of thinking, our conceptual baggage on others. The first to feel this aggression has been the older students of CTR, ironically.
I’ve been reading Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery, by Chögyam Trungpa, which is volume 3 in the series that includes “Shambhala The Sacred Path of the Warrior” and “Great Eastern Sun”.
This is a small, pithy book, written in the simplest language. Every paragraph is a coconut of wakefulness.
Here’s two sentences from Chapter 15, “Unconditional Confidence”:
Good morning Chris,
Well stated (by James & Ashley as well)….
I think I will do another session (outside when the sun hits my south deck in a short while) & then head down the hill & on to the hot spring pool to immerse myself in the liquid warmth of the joint manifestation of mamaki/padmapani….
Enjoy!
mark
Ocean of Dharma
Quotes at random
Bravery Invokes Magic
The best and only way to invoke drala, or magic, is by creating an atmosphere of bravery….The fundamental aspect of bravery is being without deception. Deception in this case is self-deception, doubting yourself….Usually if we say something is brave, we mean that he is not afraid of any enemy or he is willing to die for a cause or he is never intimidated. The Shambhala understanding of bravery is quite different. Here bravery is the courage to be—to live in the world without any deception and with tremendous kindness and caring for others. You might wonder how this can bring magic into your life. The ordinary idea of magic is that you can conquer the elements, so that you can turn earth into fire or fire into water or ignore the law of gravity and fly. But true magic is the magic of reality, as it is: the earth of earth, the water of water—communicating with the elements so that, in some sense, they become one with you. When you develop bravery, you make a connection with the elemental quality of existence. Bravery begins to heighten your existence, that is, to bring out the brilliant and genuine qualities of your environment and of your being. So you begin to contact the magic of reality—which is already there in some sense.
From “How to Invoke Magic,” in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, pages 108 to 109.
Dear All
Yo – I have bought a laptop very good aren’t they.
Chris –a very good post re shambhala made me think
.
I was not trying to play the political card re prosletisation – I was trying to get a handle on why CTR wrote the poem re NS.
Is NS a place for example where rock meets bone and all the neurosis comes out most acutely certainly my time there I felt like I was in depths and the heights many times. In retrospect is that a good or bad thing -to a certain extent learned a lot but the place also drained a lot out of me physically.
Now somewhat cluing into ways I could uncover the breadth of basic goodness in the Arts –think in terms of grand environments and grand concepts like countries and nations. I dont know perhaps it is good to go a tad bit over and be unpredictable – I am not sure if that is being aggressive or creative –its a fine line.
The bigness and smallness of CTRs vision is intriguing on the one hand we have ikebana on the other talk of governance so I was trying to see personally how I could work with both –grand affairs and small affairs –just keep having slight images of light open spaces that could be an expression of drala.
Seems to me drala could be invoked mega wise aka collective Art-know some sculptors are into that in the UK re the large Angel in the North which is mega structure which you can google.
Also I think it is a thing with lamas to think in big terms –know that one lama requested in Canada for a statue of the Buddha to built for the Tibetan refugees there because they were losing their culture and their connection to their religion-so I think the bigness of the vision is also a great factor in CTRs teachings-thats why I was arguing politics with Ash –I dont know I dont think the English can leave well enough alone re politics –its a country fetish which is good and bad at times. Maybe it comes from the rigidity of the class system and the English desire to find, create Utopia which is in all the literature over here.
Ah well…….
Again best
Rita Ashworth
A good string of posts, thanks to all.
Have been pondering two reported remarks from Richard Reoch. The first via James regarding his (RR’s) wish that the Shambhala community would one day all be practicing the same sadhana. I think your comment on this is spot on.
And then Chris quotes RR as saying “the world is dying for what we have”. I don’t know the context of this remark but as it stands it does make me shudder.
I don’t think the world is dying for what Shambhala has. First of all, the members of Shambhala are part of “the world”, and hardly beyond our own blind spots. And to say that Shambhala somehow possesses the wisdom our world needs would seem to contradict the very basis of the Shambhala teachings of VCTR–namely, the omnipresence of basic goodness, inherent in all beings.
Does Shambhala really need such a strong sense of agenda? Isn’t there something inherently dualistic and therefore aggressive about it, as Chris points out? Sometimes I wonder what other spiritual leaders (Buddhist and non-Buddhist) think when they hear some of these kinds of statements. Does any other (non-fundamentalist) spiritual leader say things like “the world is dying for what we have”?
I feel the line between vajra pride and arrogance can often be more easily and obliviously crossed by a Group than by an individual. What we would hesitate to claim for ourselves alone can become something we hesitate even to question when a certain agenda / mission becomes amplified daily throughout one’s entire community.
Damcho: your latest and Jamie’s earlier posts about the religion thing have been fermenting (my word of the month I suspect!). Little bubbles forming:
First, the word ‘religion’ is a little like food: very vague/generic, although clearly food is not the same as a car, for example. Food covers both a fresh pain au chocolat and Chinese fried chicken feet.
Similarly with religion, even within the same tradition, congregation/sangha or family, the definition and more importantly perception/experience of ‘religion’ can vary greatly.
Some might say – and have – that Buddhism is not an ism is Buddhadharma is not a religion. Well, could be true, but in the more general sense, clearly it is a religion in that it’s not food and it’s not a car, it’s religion (if you catch my drift). Certainly in the Western cultural context anyway and probably also in the modern one too.
Similarly one might say that Shambhala is ‘secular’ and ‘belongs to everyone’ and is ‘not a religion but a way of life’ but I wonder if this is not on some level a distinction without a difference. I think I understand the intention behind such a statement and what it means, and yet when I try to think further on it, nothing happens. The meaning remains on the surface. Shambhala is not food, it’s not a car, it’s…. religion. Unless it’s a political/social system perhaps. And if so, what is that system? It’s main expressions involve ‘religious’ teachings and practices.
I personally think of ‘religion’ similarly to how I think of the words ‘art’, ‘politics’ ‘academia’ ‘sports’ ‘rural versus urban living’ and so on, i.e. different types of mandala within an overall society, basically various more or less institutionalized, or at least commonly recognised, aspects of human life in the social context. So how a ‘religion’ defines itself doesn’t really matter on this level, though it might very much to the particular ‘religion’ or an individual therein.
Finally, more specifically in response to Damcho’s:
“And then Chris quotes RR as saying “the world is dying for what we have”. I don’t know the context of this remark but as it stands it does make me shudder.
I don’t think the world is dying for what Shambhala has.”
Well, I do think that Shambhala has something to offer that is unique, but in considering this I realized that actually I was describing Buddhadharma and that also I find it hard to envisage Shambhala as totally independent of Buddhadharma for this reason. Perhaps I am being stupid on this, or overly conceptual, but it seems to me that the sitting practice of meditation is something that can work within any cultural mandala, including so-called ‘religious’ (of any faith generally) or ‘secular’, i.e. in the army, academia, sports, arts. Why is this? Perhaps the profound simplicity of profound simplicity is all it is, but there is something inherently pure and deep about it and it is my impression that nearly every tradition you look at could use it. Maybe not ‘die for it’, but maybe dying because it lacks this essential ‘dharmic’ element.
Perhaps one could say that Shambhala is self-sufficient as a ‘Way’ even though it uses Buddhadharmic technique of meditation practice because the practice itself contains no credo or dogma. So Shambhala provides a very different context for sitting practice, hopefully one that can work in any human culture/mandala, whereas the Buddhadharma, although it too has that potential, nevertheless represents a more specific context, one that utilizes the body of teaching methods and dogma developed by Lord Buddha and his followers the past two and a half millenia. i.e. to be a Buddhist you have to take Refuge, study X, practice Y and so forth.
Whereas Shambhala is just about grocking Great Eastern Sun reality wherever: around the campfire, on Madison Avenue, in the eyes of your lover, running a country, marching in a military parade and so forth. The mandalas in which Shambhalian GES tiger-lion-garuda-dragon confidence and delight can be experienced are not restricted to any particular format and furthermore can be found within any particular human format in any of the realmic manifestations humans can cook up.
Something like that…
Ash, thanks for your thoughts, insightful as always. I feel we’re in agreement here, in that I do think that we and the world need the dharma, but by dharma I mean neither Buddhism nor Shambhala. I simply mean wisdom teachings on the nature of reality, wherever they are to be found, and inspiration and encouragement to practice them.
Of course, I joined the Buddhist tradition because I happen to find its teachings very clear, profoundly complete and thorough, and skillful in a multitude of ways. But everybody has their own path, and what’s helpful for one is not helpful for another.
In any case, just as Buddhism has no monopoly on wisdom, Shambhala certainly doesn’t, of course. I don’t think for a minute that Richard Reoch believes it does either, but that phrase “the world is dying for what we have” still bothers me, and has–as Chris says–a certain “neoconservative” ring to it. What Shambhala does offer, in my view, is one powerfully skillful presentation of wisdom teachings not dependent upon religion in the usual sense, or sectarianism in any sense. This is its genius.
As you put it: “Perhaps one could say that Shambhala is self-sufficient as a ‘Way’ even though it uses Buddhadharmic technique of meditation practice because the practice itself contains no credo or dogma. So Shambhala provides a very different context for sitting practice, hopefully one that can work in any human culture/mandala, whereas the Buddhadharma, although it too has that potential, nevertheless represents a more specific context…”
But looking at Shambhala today, I can’t help but feel it has lost its raison d’être. It has become a new church. That in and of itself doesn’t have to be a bad thing, obviously. If “Shambhalian Buddhism” could stay true to the dharma over the years and generations, it would maintain its Buddhist lineage. But the two concerns I have here relate to: 1) the loss of what I referred to earlier as its genius–a complete Way beyond sectarianism; and 2) its decision to go off on its own, to increasingly cut its ties with the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages. Both of these worry me very much, as one of so many who love and cherish the vision of Trungpa Rinpoche.
Dear Ash
Yo –its a really sunny day in the UK-thank god spring is coming-glad winter is ending.
I was thinking again as you do what was the scheme that you could not materialise re the Clan Gathering –still into it as now not attending many SI progs could attend this
What would be the numbers you would need to make it happen successfully –just mooching about things –if I ever get richo again might buy a small holding in Cape Breton as investment even if
not to live there –dunno its a possibility-could I get rich –interesting. Would love to meet all people posting on rfs and others and am feeling really bolshie about getting into new dharmic ways of doing things……zzzzzzzz…….been od-ing on computer –they are wonderful aren’t they.
Did you go to Eton –you mentioned Harrow……interesting.
Yes shambhala, shambhala buddhism –many discussions coming forth. Thinking back to when I got involved in all this in the seventies –first read loads of stuff by the mighty three, Ginsberg, Kerouac and Burroughs on buddhadharma-their works really zing with buddhist teachers then started musing on koans and actual sitting then clued into spaciousness I think re shambhala –tho I had of course not heard of the term before……….so it was a religious, poetical,secular journey……hence my kind of rootedness now to unproscribed ways of being in what just is.
Could we not all just call what we are into another term……just musing……..willing to see Rigden King as one way of accessing things…..if people are willing to see myriads of ways of getting to reality just as it is……aka experience……the college thingie again re SI.
Yo the sky is just so blue over here –no clouds ……its been a long cold winter.
Best
Rita Ashworth
rita ashworth on March 7th, 2010 8:25 am
Yo –its a really sunny day in the UK-thank god spring is coming-glad winter is ending.
Vairocana
During the initial stages of his mission in Japan, the Catholic missionary Francis Xavier was welcomed by the Shingon monks since he used Dainichi, the Japanese name for Vairocana, to designate the Christian God. As Xavier learned more about the religious nuances of the word, he substituted the term Deusu, which he derived from the Latin and Portuguese Deus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vairocana
Re: “but that phrase “the world is dying for what we have”
Oh, I think that’s fine. We don’t have to parse everything to death. And in any case, it’s quite possibly literally true: if more people don’t simplify and relax into basic goodness we could very soon be poisoning ourselves to death, ruining the ecology to such an extent that we can’t manage 7 billion people without far too many of them living in abject misery or being blown to bits or being born with three heads as many babies these days in Falluja and so forth.
Rita re the Clan Gathering. Well, the town itself could more or less easily host 500-750, possibly more with differing levels of accomodation. The Keltic Lodge is one of only a handful of 5 star hotels with nice bar, rental cottages, rooms, two dining areas. I was at the 81 seminar with CTR when we rented it off-season. Worked fine, although I do regret that we had to convert the bar area in to the shrine room. With the Clan Gathering that would most certainly not happen! Also the Glengorum, a very good hotel a few miles down the road.
CTR had dinner there when looking for ‘it’ (which Cindy Grieve thought was the best pizza joint or something but was in fact the ‘power valley’ of this region and which we now know, as do the local Ingonishers (finally!) as ‘Kalapa Valley’), asked to say hello to the cook afterwards and twenty plus years later when I chatted with the owner Peter (he has since sold it) he recalled the dinner with ‘Prince Mukpo’ vividly and told me the cook still talks about her brief but touching encounter with him to this day.
There are two Church Community Halls, a Fireman’s Community Hall, a large kitchen and dining area for 500 on the Ski Hill (the hill is what flanks the valley, Kalapa Valley being literally only a few hundred yards away as the bird flies on the other side of the Ski Hill which has a stunning ‘Cannes-like’ view of the whole harbour including the Keltic Lodge across the waters about 1-2 miles away). Not to mention private homes which would no doubt accommodate people – for a modest fee or gratis – over time. There are also several smaller motels and B&B’s in the area. It’s a bit of a tourist spot in summer, and until Kalapa Valley closed as a campground (after we bought it) the main weekend vacation spot for Cape Bretoners from Sydney 2 hours away but also all over the island because the two beaches in Ingonish are very nice and warm. So our closing it down hurt the local community considerably in terms of turning it into more of a foreign-tourist zone in the summer instead of a far more healthy mix of local, regional and foreign tourists, which is more fun for all involved.
So rather than do things like this in a city – which is dynamic but in which our particular energy is a minor thing in a larger context meaning the local environment has a very limited role in the energy – or a self-contained hotel or campus in which we are essentially the only population apart from a few necessary maintenance staff, in this case the venue is a living community which has its own entity, culture, agenda and above all, of course, people, some of whom would be quite active in participating, others of whom would simply be working, and quite a few who would rather tune the whole thing out altogether and no doubt will spread lots of salacious gossip 24/7.
As to Kalapa Valley itself, although pure and sacred etc. the Hand of Man has made certain key contributions which make it highly workable for this sort of thing. First, government money shaped the main field on which were 117 trailers with full electrical and sewage hookup. This was not a natural field and required godzillions of tons of gravel to level out, not to mention god knows how much copper wiring and so forth. Furthermore, there is a large skeptic system – same as used by the Keltic – still in place which can handle 1000 person per day sewage. Anyone involved in RMDC’s drainage/sewage issues or KCL’s will appreciate what an extraordinary godsend this is logistically. It means that we could construct a men’s and women’s bathhouse easily and without any legal problems at all. The Shrine Area could be a rented or purchased large tent a la Seminary tent in RMDC (or we could rent that one probably and truck it out). (I suspect Steve Ellenberg would love that job if he’s still alive and under 70!) Also, there is 3-phase power there, basically enough to run a small village on the spot. So on the ground logistically speaking, the whole thing is highly workable both in terms of Kalapa Valley and the local community-as-venue.
Politically the local community of Ingonish has to be in favor and also it will take quite a bit of time and community meetings to set a date. Before having such meetings, whatever Shambhala Organ (preferably the Lodge) is behind it has to be fully behind it and with full and easy access to A-Suite etc. So all those links have to be firmly in place. If they are, and if the scheduling and other issues go well with the operators and community members, then the logistics on the ground could come together relatively easily.
It would take at least 2 years to organise properly because of lining up all the operators at an agreed-upon time (probably mid-late October which is gorgeous there and without any bugs), but if ‘we’ were to do it, there is no question it would be highly enjoyable and a huge step forward on many levels.
Propagating our Kagyu and Nyingma Practice Traditions
From: John Rockwell, Ashe Acharya
[via David Brown at shambhala.dbrown@gmail.com]
March 5, 2010
To the Noble Tantrikas of Shambhala,
From the very beginning of his Shambhala teachings up to the end of his life, the Vidyadhara emphasized the close connection of the Shambhala and Buddhist teachings. Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche has continued this view by opening up the Scorpion Seal terma, which presents in a seamless way the most profound teachings and practices of vajrayana and Shambhala.
Within Shambhala, we also have a rich inheritance of traditional practices of the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages as transmitted by the Vidyadhara and by great masters such as Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, Venerable Tenga Rinpoche, Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche, and others. The Sakyong has been very clear that these traditional lineage practices have their place within our Shambhala mandala.
Beginning in 2004, the Sakyong worked closely with us on how the Shambhala and Buddhist vajrayana practices could be woven together into a unified path. The fruition of that work was presented in 2007 as the “Shambhala Vajrayana Path Document,” which is helpful to read for an understanding of the Sakyong’s thinking expressed at that time. http://www.shambhala.org/members/ps/tantrika.php password ******)
In June of 2008, the Sakyong felt the time was right for opening The Scorpion Seal of the Golden Sun terma. At that point, the Sakyong realized that the Shambhala terma teachings are at the heart of our lineage and provide the central channel for our training. For students at Vajrayana Seminary, the path now starts with Primordial Rigden ngondro, and continues with the Rigden Abhisheka, Werma Sadhana, and the Scorpion Seal Assemblies. Exactly what vajrayana practices are included within the Scorpion Seal path has yet to be fully determined and will be a creative process that will unfold in the coming years.
The Sakyong is very aware that many vajrayana students, both of the Vidyadhara and of himself, are engaged in a wide variety of practices and wish to deepen these practices. Just before leaving on his retreat, the Sakyong asked Dorje Loppon Lodro Dorje and Acharya Larry Mermelstein to help maintain and further strengthen the support for Kagyu and Nyingma vajrayana practices, including ngondro, Vajrayogini, Chakrasamvara, Vajrakilaya, six dharmas of Naropa, mahamudra, the Sopa Choling retreat traditions, and so forth. They have been talking with the director of the Office of Practice and Education Carolyn Mandelker, Kalapa Acharya Adam Lobel, and myself about how best to take this forward and are now ready to begin working more directly with our vajra sangha.
On behalf of the Sakyong, I would like to welcome the Dorje Loppon and Acharya Mermelstein to this role, working with the Shambhala Office of Practice and Education. May we all merge our ordinary mind with the Great Eastern Sun.
Yours in the vajra world of Shambhala,
John Rockwell
Ashe Acharya
A Message from the Dorje Loppon and Acharya Mermelstein
[via David Brown at shambhala.dbrown@gmail.com, March 5, 2010]
The Vidyadhara’s Shambhala vision was always central to his work, and he regarded Shambhala society as a container for the vajrayana buddhadharma as well as other spiritual traditions. Along these lines, in recent years the Sakyong has been placing Shambhala practices center stage. This has furthered our understanding of Shambhala vision as the umbrella for the various traditions we carry.
Now that the sangha has momentum in this direction, the Sakyong has asked the two of us in particular to continue to focus attention on supporting the Kagyu and Nyingma practice cycles that were established through the compassionate activity of the Vidyadhara. These include principally the practices mentioned in Ashe Acharya Rockwell’s communique above, which are mainstream essence practices of the Oral Transmission and Ancient Lineages.
Due to the Vidyadhara’s skill, the dedicated effort of these other masters, and the exertion of our vajra sangha, many of us have taken deep root in these practices through many years of application. And of course there is more to go. In taking up this current mandate, we will be relying on your input, collaboration and practical action on the ground. We need the wisdom and mentoring activity of the seasoned old-timers, as well as the contributions of newer enthusiasts. We also expect to draw on the resources of Kagyu and Nyingma teachers close to our sangha, as well as on the other acharyas. Among other activities, we intend to strengthen group vajrayana practice both locally and regionally. We plan to offer continued support through Shambhala Online. In the immediate term we will be initiating communication with the vajra sangha through the Office of Practice and Education, as well as actively soliciting your ideas directly.
Please write to us with your comments and suggestions at sadhakapath@gmail.com . We are in the process of setting up a blog and web pages on shambhala.org specific to each practice. You can also be in touch with us individually.
We are grateful to the Sakyong for his encouragement in this work, and we look forward to hearing from all of you.
Dorje Loppon Acharya Larry Mermelstein
Here are some thoughts on “true and false community” from a Quaker, in case they are useful here:
In the midst of mass loneliness, people yearn to identify with something larger than themselves, something which will redeem their lives from insignificance. They yearn, that is, for community, for that network of human associations which enlarges the individual’s life. This hunger runs so deep that even the *appearance* of community will feed it, and totalitarianism always presents itself as a communal feast for the masses.
The differences between true community and false could be listed at length…. In false communities the group is always superior to the individual, while in true communities both individual and group have a claim on truth. The group needs to be checked and balanced by the individual’s voice, for majorities do not mean truth….
False communities tend to be homogenous, exclusive, and divisive, while true communities strive to unite persons across socially fixed lines…*
But beyond all these sociological distinctions between true community and false, there is a theological way of expressing the differences which brings us to the heart of the matter. False communities are idolatrous. They take some finite attribute like race, creed, political ideology, or even manners, and elevate it to ultimacy. They seek security by trying to make timeless that which is temporal; by pretending that which is shaky is firm; by worshiping that which should be viewed critically….
These categories are not fixed, for a false community can turn true, and a true community can turn false. Indeed, one danger in any true form of community is pride which turns toward idolatry and falseness. A true community is a self-critical community, always ready to deflate its pretensions before they balloon up to deity-size. A true community must be ready to criticize its current conception of whatever it holds most dear.
- Parker J. Palmer, A Place Called Community, Pendle Hill Publications, Wallingford, Pennsylvania
This pamphlet was recommended by my teacher. I wouldn’t say he agreed with it 100% but he felt it could be useful to read once in a while.
Makes it sound like “true community” is not something easy, doesn’t it?
* This reminds me on the different ways CTR and SMR talk about Shambhala.
Re: A Message from the Dorje Loppon and Acharya Mermelstein,
No mention of “Shambhala Buddhism” here. Shambhala as umbrella for
Buddhism, which was the original intent of the Vidyadhara.
“From the very beginning of his Shambhala teachings up to the end of his life, the Vidyadhara emphasized the close connection of the Shambhala and Buddhist teachings. ” (JR)
Yes. Once again, JR doesn’t use the term “Shambhala Buddhism” in his letter here.
A subtle distinction? What’s really going on here? You smart people can tell me. What I think is that the disaffection expressed at RFS is having an effect….it is being heard. SI has to try to reconcile…which is a positive thing. Keep the intelligence flowing, folks.
Hi Edward,
It’s so nice to hear mention of Pendle Hill and Wallingford PA. This is the heart of Quaker land and I can testify that in 1968 they practiced what they preach in terms of inclusivenness. Our Zen sangha was hosted to sit sesshin with Yasutsni Roshi in Pendle Hill. It was an enlightening experience for some of us to be doing zazen in an atmosphere other than our very strict zendo in NYC. Sitting in the Friends’ meeting hall was life changing for me. Soon after that I moved to Wallingford to help set up a zendo for the sangha there.
I feel that connections with the Quakers have helped the dharma on its journey into the culture of the west. Even now, here in Wolfville, Nova Scotia there are close ties with the Quakers in the Annapolis Valley. I don’t know if this is going on today, but up until 2-3 years ago there were occasional sittings of Quakers and Buddhists together. When one of my closest friends died a couple of years ago she left half her ashes to the care of Quakers, and the other half for me to scatter in Dunvegan, Cape Breton.
Palms together,
Madeline
Gentlefolk,
John Tischer writes, “A subtle distinction? What’s really going on here? You smart people can tell me. What I think is that the disaffection expressed at RFS is having an effect….it is being heard. SI has to try to reconcile…which is a positive thing. Keep the intelligence flowing, folks.”
I believe that your conclusion is fairly accurate.
I happened to be on the phone with Larry Mermelstein when the email hit this week & had discussed this new program with him in January after he (and Lodro) had been asked to do this project.
There is no doubt that to some extent it is a response to the ‘dissatisfaction’ among the Vidyadhara’s students.
I also feel that is a ‘good’ thing—but it is also quite ‘limited’ as it does not address the fact that new students won’t be entered into a path that is likely to ever bring more than a tiny % to these practices as is discussed in my ‘Shambhala Buddhism & Vajradhatu Buddhism’ post.
Enjoy!
mark
Dear Ash
Thanks for the stuff about Cape Breton. I am going to print it out and read it thoroughly because I definately want something to happen in Cape Breton preferably without total SI input but a mixed bag of people doing the whole thing.
Dunno perhaps we could set up a bank account for people to send money to if they wished to start the ball rolling. Being ever still so slightly more bolshie after today I think we can start to put things together in a basic way
Hmmmmm-interesting stuff about Vajrayana with Loppon and Mermelstein but I would say crumbs to that wouldn’t I? Why because we still have the shambhala time-bomb teachings ticking in the background to all this and I want everyone on this planet to have access to them and for the vision of the shambhala to become manifest in a physical sense in the Kingdom of Shambhala that is the Maritime region.
From there I believe they will spread far and wide into the world as the Vidyadhara wanted them to do.
We also have to plan how we are also going to support all the various traditions that I believe will stem from this region and create a truly democratic National Assembly for their propagation in the world.
Ash I wish to be a tad over the top –there is nothing to lose and much to gain for this world.The time of the Kerenskys is over and Revolution is brimming.
Ash best to you.
Yours in the dharma and the Vision of the Great Eastern Sun
Rita Ashworth
Manchester UK
JC: thanks for that inclusion. I got an email with a pw for the ‘Shambhala Vajrayana Path’ and found it interesting to go through. Particularly there are repeated references throughout which qualify Guideline X with statements such as ‘ where individual situations make X difficult, things can be worked out,’ or even with some of the new requirements that old dogs who had already gone through Assemblies, been practicing Werma for years etc. might just be advised to practice intensely for five days or so to tune in before abhishekha. (I am typing from memory so this is not precise). In any case, my impression was that it was very reasonable and also clearly aware of the many and varied situations and perceptions of those involved, both newer and older.
For me the important issues have more to do with clarifying those principles/aspects around which there are ‘unity/binding/common’ principles and those principles/aspects which should be less centralised and more subject to individual or local improvisation, not to mention flair and initiative. Along with that a long-held intuitive sense that the middle-level of our society, or it’s ‘nyen-level’ needs more ‘build’ in such a way that encourages free flow of communication and other energies from the periphery to the centre and vice versa, and that the absence of such a framework might well be the key cause of many of the difficulties expressed on this website. But it’s just a suspicion and rather hard to articulate clearly.
I still keep coming back to numbers, logistically speaking. The scope and depth of our community on so many levels, including spiritually, doctrinally, geographically and so on, given our relatively tiny population, is truly extraordinary. Perhaps it doesn’t need to expand, but my feeling has always been that the seed which we now comprise is for a might oak years down the road, not a small, if exquisite, rare shrub. The many layers and levels expressed even with the small administrative body which we have, which includes many hard-core volunteers of course, is functionally inappropriate for who we are now and this has been the case for decades now.
My sense – and hope – is that SMR, having inherited an extremely damaged situation, had to spend many years rescuing and then attempting to consolidate and strengthen it. This was doubly hard because since he didn’t build it himself and also was younger than most of the existing ‘elders’ he lacked ‘street cred’ even though everyone was looking to him to pull off a miracle. Extremely difficult situation. Even though I doubt I will ever personally be involved again that way, not only do I wish him and all similarly dedicated and active members success, but also get the feeling that despite the problems expressed here, many of which I feel have real merit, that things have been and still are moving steadily forward and that SMR is only just beginning to really come into his own and that he will at some point preside over a population closer to 50,000 or more than the current 5-10,000. Things are in place for it.
It’s not all as bad as it sometimes feels, just as it’s not as good as many a true-believer believes.
That said, I continue to feel strongly that the Nova Scotian initiative is key to creating the proper base for our international modus operandi on all sorts of levels and this has been generally overlooked or under-emphasized, and even if I am wrong here, not well thought out or at least very poorly communicated (at best). It is the maha-Nyen undertaking that will inform and enrich the entire international sangha in terms of how best to join Heaven and Earth, practice and every day life, meditation-related sangha and their co-existing local communities within bedrock Maritime culture. Such lessons and dynamics will be applicable anywhere in the world, but this is the place to develop them.
I don’t think it is up to the Sakyong to do this. It is up to us; but in so doing we will help further define and expand the Sakyong’s (and any Sakyong’s) role and standing in the immediate Maritime, but also larger, world.
Re: John Rockwell’s letter. As Mark points out, after a generation or two of the new curriculum scarcely anyone would be doing Kagyu or Nyingma practices within Shambhala. So the message of the letter would seem to be something of a moot point, as things stand.
And such a letter continues to beg the question: why was a decision made to actually **remove** Kagyu and Nyingma representation from all the shrines, if Shambhala is still so intimately connected to these lineages? For example, the Rigden thangka could’ve been added while the lineage holders remained.
Damchö – To be clear, the wish that the Rigden sadhana should create a unified view was in an email newsletter purportedly from SMR I believe shortly before Mr. Reoch was appointed president, not Mr. Reoch himself, and was not the main message, just something mentioned.
That was the first time I saw stated we all should practice the same thing to belong to the same society. It was odd because in addition to knowing of teachings that warn against such approaches, it mainly doesn’t jibe with my experience regarding how practice seems to work or what it has done for me, nor with what I can see as having led to my feeling part of the Vajradhatu community.
Ask yourself what actually led to your feeling you actually belonged. If you feel marginalized, what actually caused that. I doubt very much it will come down, either way, to a particular practice.
J.E.
[For our enjoyment only; it resonates! From VACT’s unpublished poetry, October 31, 1969: the final seven lines of the following poem appear as the stand-alone poem titled “Stray Dog” in CWCT, volume 7, and in First Thought Best Thought and Timely Rain.]
There is a red sun
There is a red sun,
Morning and evening.
It is the symbol of fire which ignites
For our supper
Or the burning of our dwelling place.
In the long distance you hear
The clanking of metal
Where the soldiers fight in their armour,
Their swords and their shields.
This could be my dream.
Come, come children,
I have an exciting dream to tell you.
Last night I dreamed
I was crowned in the spiritual temple,
The black crown that means
Indefinable.
The day passes.
Chögyam’s life continues like the river stream,
Flowing day and night,
Hoping for something, or rather
Discarding hope
And I don’t care in the midst of carelessness.
The unexpected incident arises like a serpent in the lake.
Today I had a fight.
It was a fight for justice and
A fight between two brothers of the same clan
In the Esk Valley.
I must say this repeats the history of Scotland
Or the Johnston clan,
How funny and how absurd.
The spirit of dead men who fought for the clans must be watching.
Almost I can hear the bagpipes playing as the vanguard approaches.
In this occasion of battle
It doesn’t matter who loses the battle,
The surviving clan will be the victor.
I don’t care as I am merely the employee
In the distillery.
May Glory be to Whiskey
And my employers.
Chögyam is merely a stray dog.
He wanders around the world,
The ocean or snow-peak mountain pass.
Chögyam will tread along as a stray dog.
Even without thinking of his next meal
He will seek friendship with the birds and jackals
And any wild animals.
Hegelian dialectic, usually presented in a three-fold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybaus as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis.
Triads
…Hegel’s dialectic was most often characterized as a three-step process, “thesis, antithesis, synthesis”; namely, that a “thesis” (e.g. the French Revolution) would cause the creation of its “antithesis” (e.g. the Reign of Terror that followed), and would eventually result in a “synthesis” (e.g. the Constitutional state of free citizens).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel
Idiot Compassion
“A slimy way of trying to fulfill your desire secretly.”
~ G. I. Gurdjieff (Circa 1866-1949 C.E.)
“Ash I wish to be a tad over the top..”
If ever you go to Ingonish, you will encounter the pithy local expression referring to where they are as ‘down North’.
I had friendly arguments with many of them about it. ‘We are in the highlands’ I would say.
They say ‘we are going UP to Halifax’; I would say ‘no, you should think of it as going DOWN to Halifax because it’s way down there in the lowlands, fog-bound (and like a drain or unmentional portion of the anatomy as per the (in)famous knapkin map by DDM etc.).
To no avail.
They hold to their own wisdom (echoed in the VY sadhana btw):
Things advance downwards here, not upwards.
Except (hopefully) bread in the oven!
That’s part of the problem I have with the above statements by LM and LD generally: so much emphasis on the more advanced practices. It’s a great thing I am sure. But – speaking very personally of course – I just can’t get behind things that ordinary folks cannot relate to and don’t believe that the only trajectory is for us to create a wide enough funnel somehow that we can scoop up sentient beings en masses and have them all end up being accomplished tantrikas. I regard the tantric stuff as inner and secret, little bands of enlightened maniacs in the fringe areas providing secret yeast which leavens the entire culture but which, like microbes, largely remain invisible. I don’t think they should be out there so much, as in a fully developed country having a large building in the Capital as ‘The Ministry of Tantric Affairs’ – though come to think of it: maybe as a dating service not such a bad idea…..? No: the institution of marriage must be preserved and that is altogether too French an approach to tantra -
Oh well, back to baking my first brick. See if it doesn’t crack. Simple stuff.
(It did)
So, lets see if we “get it now”
After fifteen years of watching SMR dismantle CTR’s mandala and divide his students, in print and in speeches , and never a peep, Larry Mermelstein, the Loppon , Adam Lobel and the other spineless acharyas will teach all of us stubborn, neurotic, older students of CTR , the Vajrayana of the Venerable Trungpa Rinpoche.
This same group, that let SMR water down the dharma of CTR with “new age psychology”. and old-timey Tibetan lunacy, let him turn the kasung into monastic court dancers and palace guards, forgetting their oaths to protect the dharma teachings of CTR and the Mukpo clan, and colluded with him, in every way, at every “twist and turn”, to denigrate and dismiss the lineage students of CTR.
Further, Adam Lobel will be now teaching all the older CTR students that “didn’t get it” :
1. CTR’s teachings on the Vajrayana.
2. CTR’s teachings on Shambhala and the Rigdens.
It’s truly a “red letter” day, when this junior charlatan will be teaching CTR’s Vajrayana and Shambhala teachings, that “we didn’t get” as interpreted by HIS LUSTROUSNESS.
Amen, brothers and sisters, AMEN.
Christine and Robert Chandler
I agree with you, Mark, it’s only a small crack in the one way mirror…not enough to un-Humpty Dumpty the situation.
Ironic, absurd, surreal that the “unified view” approach created all the division. Aside from the suffering and confusion that has come about as
a result, it’s funny to me…..like keystone cops or Monte Python. I just can’t
take these people seriously anymore.
And I don’t need them.
jewels all over the place , garbage all over the place….
what is missing? WHAT?
two.
Kagyu/Nyingma (Sakya, Gelugpa).
Shambhala.
… LOVE.
WHO? Is NOT included?
WHO?????
….they thought they were protected the way the Regent thought he was….
Big Mistake. Good lesson, though, if they’re able to recover….Big If.
thought he was protected? !?!? that’s not what I heard….
“We owe an incredible debt to Trungpa Rinpoche for his fierce kindness and his compassionate humor. He never did a better job, as far as I can tell, than leaving us with such a tremendous mess, leaving me on my own in a way that I knew was unavoidable, but tried to avoid for a long time. But it seems like the most important thing is to recognize that you are on your own, and the guru can only take you so far, can bring you to the abyss, so to speak, the edge of the cliff.
protected??? wouldn’t that be nice?!?!?! you know anyone ?!?!?!?
“Big if”
That sums up the whole situation in just two very little words.
The paraecclesial Magisterium told Trungpa, Rinpoche himself that if he did not cooperate, then they would find themselves another lama.
Hence we pray HOMAGE TO THE MAGISTERIUM! and NAMO MAGISTERIUM!
Sometimes people don’t seem to get that the protectors don’t give a fuck about anyone’s individual agenda. They only protect the dharma.
Ash,
I couldn’t agree more that the common practice should have been simple shamatha; without religious cosmology.
Defining what is meant by religion is not that difficult or as irrelevant as you make it. Religion or genuine spiritual practice as we were taught is very simply about overcoming ego (the point at which all dharmas agree) and developing various qualities like equanimity, discriminating wisdom or compassion and then working with what is. These are universal aspects of any world religion all of which have contemplative branches capable of transcending narrow concepts of religion as belief systems one must adopt.
Shamatha would be ideal not because it is simpler and quicker to learn, but because it is a profound practice that works with universal human qualities here on earth, and so is relevant to any path with substance, and any person disturbed by samsara. (which could be defined in many ways.)
I doubt shamatha is exclusively Buddhist, but would anyway argue it’s not the method itself that creates community identity, and definitely not that we hold the same view. There are teachings in which Trungpa Rinpoche warned us against assuming that to be the aim. Mark posted one, but there are others more pointed, true at all levels of practice.
I don’t mean to imply that generating community identity is in any way false, only that using contemplative practices to create that is wrong tool for wrong job.
In any case what we seem to have witnessed over the last years is a reduction in the importance of shamatha and a focus on higher practices with an upaya I’m not sure our institution thoroughly understands, not if it is introduced as a method for establishing community identity. It is that approach which has created, among other weirdnesses, the centralising-funneling dynamic you refer to.
Not only is vajrayana sooo not about that, but we should also know that upaya requires much more care or relationship on an individual level than any institute will or could ever provide, even if there were a genuine attempt.
We have simply got to start discriminating between politics and spiritual practice. That’s critical as we see Shambhala stumbling into political realms claiming any kind of special wisdom or skill. It’s exponentially critical if members start to think that Shambhala Buddhism is a new form of Buddhism designed to take and control political power.
Encouraging individuals to relate to politics in an enlightened way? Wonderful. Perhaps the closest humans will ever get to the holy grail of enlightened society, in any case the only way we have half a chance.
Holding forth our institutions as more enlightened than the wretched masses? I refer back to the upstarts and charlatans who benefit from kleptocracies.
In the inspiration that “Sometimes, something is hiding behind something, that we ourselves are hiding behind.” (Stanistaw Jerzy Lec)
James Elliott
Koan #84
Tilopa says to Naropa, “ If I had a student, that student would jump off this balcony.”Naropa replies, “Are all your student morons?” They laugh and have a cup of tea
James, re:
“Religion or genuine spiritual practice as we were taught is very simply about overcoming ego (the point at which all dharmas agree) and developing various qualities like equanimity, discriminating wisdom or compassion and then working with what is. These are universal aspects of any world religion all of which have contemplative branches capable of transcending narrow concepts of religion as belief systems one must adopt.
Shamatha would be ideal not because it is simpler and quicker to learn, but because it is a profound practice that works with universal human qualities here on earth, and so is relevant to any path with substance, and any person disturbed by samsara. (which could be defined in many ways.)
I doubt shamatha is exclusively Buddhist, but would anyway argue it’s not the method itself that creates community identity, and definitely not that we hold the same view. There are teachings in which Trungpa Rinpoche warned us against assuming that to be the aim. Mark posted one, but there are others more pointed, true at all levels of practice.
I don’t mean to imply that generating community identity is in any way false, only that using contemplative practices to create that is wrong tool for wrong job.”
Well, you raise some very good points.
First, a little quibble about terms. I referred to ‘sitting practice’ which you refer to as shamatha. I didn’t mean shamatha alone (mindfulness/attention/focus) but in any case you are right: that is not exclusively buddhist, nor even exclusive to meditation techniques. Cats have it on some level as they study mice before they pounce.
A great definition of sitting from The Way of Maha Ati in the last section on meditation (my pdf doc is an image so I can’t easily cut and paste):
‘First let the mind follow the in-and-out rhythm of the breath until it becomes calm and tranquil; then rest the mind more and more on the breath until one’s whole being seems to be identified with it.
Finally, become aware of the breath leaving the body and going out into space and gradually transfer the attention away from the breath and towards the sensation of spaciousness and expansion.
By letting this final sensation merge into complete openness, one moves into the sphere of formless meditation proper.”
So by sitting I meant to imply something that includes both form and formless meditation, i.e. ground, path and fruition.
As to community building etc., this is a deep topic and a worthy one. First, I disagree with you about religion, although I take your point that perhaps I was too dismissive. (I am not clear exactly to what you were referring in your initial response about it, btw. ) But more importantly I am not sure I agree with your definition (egolessness). Moreover, in the Western Christian tradition, for good or ill, rightly or wrongly, their ‘ministry’ has been inextricably bound up with community identity for well over a millenium and thus in the Western context the word ‘religion’ is clearly involved with communal identity.
It seems you are saying it shouldn’t be; and also perhaps one could make the argument that neither Buddhadharma nor Shambhala are religions in the usual Western/theistic-tradition sense of the word in ordinary usage. Moreover you make the point that meditation, including group practice, should not be used in order to build communities. Very good point.
And yet the sangha is the third of the three jewels. Community is there as one of the three legs of the tripod on which the dharma as a tradition stands. So I am not sure I am completely convinced even though I respect the point.
However, I do agree that in terms of individual motivation as regards spiritual practice and development, the institutional agenda is basically irrelevant if not deleterious in general. No growth agenda, no budgetary agenda, no proselytizing agenda, no administrative agenda and so on.
But there is ongoing relationship of self and other and meditation/spiritual development effects such dynamic, often in the sphere of what we call ‘community’ or ‘culture’.
In thinking about all this further the past day or so, the notions of ‘outer, inner and secret’ keep coming up. Although the vajrayana, and similarly the high Shambhala teachings, are very much ‘royal’ in view and practice, and can rightly be seen as informing the highest levels of leadership in any enlightened society (citizenry too of course), still in terms of the training and realization at this level, there is an inner and secret aspect that simply cannot be communicated either en masse or in explicit institutional or mainstream doctrine.
I think the funneling dynamic is highly appropriate in terms of the dissemination/transmission and learning process with these more esoteric spiritual elements, just as becoming a master artist or baker requires years of study and practice, and usually intense training with someone who has previously mastered that tradition/discipline and is willing to pass it on. It’s not for everybody at once even though anybody could undertake such training.
In terms of the Shambhalian ‘enlightened society’ agenda, which is clearly there, i.e. it is not just an inner spiritual tradition whose main function is promote egolessness in individual practitioners, it seems to me that far more emphasis should be placed on its role and expression in the outer mandalas, versus inner and secret, whereas it seems that our emphasis is mainly on the latter. I don’t think this is anyone’s intention or aspiration, but it seems to be the case.
That is the dynamic which I personally have had the hardest time with the past twenty years; sometimes the internal argument involves issues involving our own leadership and institutions etc., but mainly on the internal level I have felt increasingly uninspired by a trajectory that takes me into more profound and esoteric practices, none of which I can share with most people I meet except atmospherically perhaps.
For example, I don’t find it interesting to explain the four dignities to ordinary people, as valuable as they are. The language is too foreign. Tigers, lions, garudas (what are they?), dragons (what, you mean like the one’s St. George fought?) and so forth. In other words, to study basic Shambhala teachings you have to learn a foreign vocabulary.
Now this is true in terms of studying music, cooking, science or anything in detail, so there is nothing wrong with that, one might argue. But at the same time those disciplines have expressions that are accessible within the larger culture, even if the understanding is patchy at best. Everyone knows what science is, even though actually most of us don’t. Everyone knows what a baker is even though most of us don’t know how to bake a loaf of bread from scratch without commercial yeasts.
So I guess I am saying that there has to be far more ‘outer’ level ‘build’ in terms of how we both experience and communicate mindfulness and awareness, plus the sense of confidence and dignity that can be expressed and shared in conventional, and local community, society. And this ‘thrust’ as it were, should also take manifest shape in how our traditions are presented and practiced in that ‘outer mandala’ sphere.
In fact, I would venture to suggest that the outer level of a spiritual tradition is what we call ‘society’ and perhaps the Three Jewels themselves express a certain secret, inner and outer structure viz. Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
Whether that last point is true/helpful or not, it is true that there is the inner journey of the individual spiritual practitioner/person and then the outer journey in terms of relationship with the World, which includes both people and the natural environment, aka ‘society’.
It is said (or at least I read) that the vast majority of Lord Buddha’s teachings were given in person to an uncountable number of individuals whom he stopped to chat with on his continuous walking journey throughout Northern India during his post-enlightenment ‘ministry’, i.e. teaching mindfulness and awareness in action to those drawing water from the well, planting seeds, managing oxen whilst ploughing and so forth, very few of which instructions were recorded as with the lectures he gave in various assemblies or ‘dharma talks’.
Because of these interchanges here at RFS, I had the great pleasure of touching base with an old friend a few days ago. It is quite likely that this person has taught more Level I’s than any other. He told me that according to both older and more recent studies that, contrary to my excoriation of the program on logistical grounds, that both then and recently the retention rate from level 1 to V is around 48%, versus my guess of around 25%. In other words, it is pretty darn successful. The problem then is that we simply haven’t done the right number of Level I’s, which originally was conceived, when we first put the program together in the mid-late 70′s as 12 Level I’s for each Level V. In other words, my objections to the progressively restrictive structure of 1 – V might be mistaken if all that is required is to boost the number of lower Levels offered.
However, let us consider the following situation: a small study group – such as Sydney Cape Breton – with about 5-10 members (last time I checked over 5 years ago). They cannot mount 12 Level 1′s a year. They are lucky if they can do one or two, which is I believe what has been happening. And to do that they ship somebody in, rent a room at the University or something, and get 10-20 participants and then who knows when, if ever there will be a Level II. The program was not designed for such small centers and indeed it was explicitly not recommended that any other than the largest centers mounted Shambhala Training operations which in any case were ideally supposed to be self-supporting.
But if you can’t spread Shambhala via Levels in local communities, how can you? Personally, I come back to basic sitting practice and discussion at that level, including presenting it in the context mainly of ‘mindfulness-awareness in everyday life’, somewhat in the imagined spirit and form of how the Buddha taught mindfulness-awareness to the women thrashing clothes on rocks at the river.
Outer / conventional level ‘build’ I guess is what I am saying.
Another opportunity for fund-raising is posted on Shambhala. Org. This time to fund “a grant” for the N.American tour of the incarnation of Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche.
Embedded in this fund-raiser ,( meaning that SI students will actually pay for the grant and not the Sakyong and company) is another PR opportunity to advertise again SMR’s many years of “study with His Holiness”, and the “extensive teachings and empowerments “ the then Sawang received from him, and their “close and profound connection.”
What SI , the Sakong and Company hopes no one will notice, with this fund-raising for a grant offering for the Yangsi, is that, despite “their close and profound connection”, the Yangsi of DKR is NOT coming to Karme Choling or Karme Dzong, despite being in both Vermont and Boulder, Colorado.
Odd , since Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche made at least three visits to these centers when he came to America.
Could it be that they are as disturbed as we are by dismissal of the Kagyu-Nyingma lineage by SMR? Would they notice that all the Kagyu and Nyingma lineage holders are conspicuously OFF the shrine, including the picture of Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche, and Jamgon Kontrul the Great who held the lineage of Mipham the Great?
I have wondered for many years why, despite SI advertising, at every opportunity, the Sakyong’s “ close and profound connection” with Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, the actual lineage holder of Mipham the Great’s teachings , (and for those of us who met and studied with him were blown-away by his profound and ordinary siddhis), that he did not recognized SMR as Mipham the Great; quite the opposite in fact , for like the 16th Karmapa,DKR did not recognize the Sawang as anyone in the Buddhist lineage stream . I think , if anyone knew about these things , it was Dilgo Khentse Rinpoche, who was able to transcend time and space.
No, in fact ,the Sawang had to travel to Penor’s monastery, another lineage stream to be recognized , along with Steven Segal and the Buddha from Brooklyn.
Steven Segal is now fat and bloated and doing a T.V. series as a cop. The Buddha from Brooklyn I don’t know about. As for the Sawang, history is unfolding.
Ashley,
How did the bread come out?–mark
Chris & Robert, what you said about Adam Lobel & co teaching CTR’s students– and in fact, everything talked about on this website– reminds me of this passage:
Sometimes Jesus would show his temper in fiery moods and speeches– especially after some wine and fraternity with close followers. On such occasions, Jesus would let go a shout of hard sayings, even rudely put– but always right to the point of what must be said, at least among friends. And, so, his “flaming table-speeches” would sound something like this:
“Philosophers without life. Politicians without love or pity. Wisdom-peddlers without a Master or a Way. All who ‘speak with authority’ and plan our progress as if they, themselves, invented our very existence. Everything they say is the product of their own self-consciousness and fear. They think that ponderous language and the punishing powers of state grant the weight of Truth to their arguments. They imagine that fast talking will distract us from their dead and mold-indentured feet– but everything they say, and everything they do, is merely another piece of effort to protect themselves from the anger and the passion of all of humankind, whose Master they only pretend to be.” [Matthew 23:5-6]
Mark: the ‘bread’ was stone and mud dug from an old quarry next to my house. It cracked. But since I don’t know what I am doing yet, it doesn’t mean all that much. It was interesting, though,to put wet mud in the fire and 20 minutes later have something resembling hard rock. Until I dropped it from three feet on the ground at which point it shattered.
First I have to bake an oven together (from hopefully local earth versus purchased firebricks – though the latter is probably what I will end up using).
Then the oven bakes the bread!
Hopefully I am just the facilitator and the elements, including fire, good water, fresh grain, earthen brick, will do the rest. Oh yes, I’ll have to drive it into market to get paid for all the administrative work that goes into getting elements to cooperate so that they produce what I am hoping/begging/working them to produce!
So maybe a background in administration is not so useless. There are disturbing, as well as hopeful, parallels however.
I have told the rocks (there is no-one else to talk to around here, certainly not the in the quarry anyway) that I am a fully credentialed tantrika and student of the renowned Trungpa Sakyong who loved them all dearly and has given them a great write-up internationally. They are very sacred rocks, in other words, the mud too. And me the aforementioned credentialed tantrika-warrior in their midst.
Just like when dealing with Halifax in days of yore, thus far no response.
Except my first brick cracked……
Maybe this article illustrates some important pitfalls & sheds some lite :
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Mass-Market Epiphany
By ROSS DOUTHAT
Published: March 7, 2010
Mysticism is dying, and taking true religion with it. Monasteries have dwindled. Contemplative orders have declined. Our religious leaders no longer preach the renunciation of the world; our culture scoffs at the idea. The closest most Americans come to real asceticism is giving up chocolate, cappuccinos, or (in my own not-quite-Francis-of-Assisi case) meat for lunch for Lent.
•
This, at least, is the stern message of Luke Timothy Johnson, writing in the latest issue of the Catholic journal Commonweal. As society has become steadily more materialistic, Johnson declares, our churches have followed suit, giving up on the ascetic and ecstatic aspects of religion and emphasizing only the more worldly expressions of faith. Conservative believers fixate on the culture wars, religious liberals preach social justice, and neither leaves room for what should be a central focus of religion — the quest for the numinous, the pursuit of the unnamable, the tremor of bliss and the dark night of the soul.
Yet by some measures, mysticism’s place in contemporary religious life looks more secure than ever. Our opinion polls suggest that we’re encountering the divine all over the place. In 1962, after a decade-long boom in church attendance and public religiosity, Gallup found that just 22 percent of Americans reported having what they termed “a religious or mystical experience.” Flash forward to 2009, in a supposedly more secular United States, and that number had climbed to nearly 50 percent.
In a sense, Americans seem to have done with mysticism what we’ve done with every other kind of human experience: We’ve democratized it, diversified it, and taken it mass market. No previous society has offered seekers so many different ways to chase after nirvana, so many different paths to unity with God or Gaia or Whomever. A would-be mystic can attend a Pentecostal healing service one day and a class on Buddhism the next, dabble in Kabbalah in February and experiment with crystals in March, practice yoga every morning and spend weekends at an Eastern Orthodox retreat center. Sufi prayer techniques, Eucharistic adoration, peyote, tantric sex — name your preferred path to spiritual epiphany, and it’s probably on the table.
This democratization has been in many ways a blessing. Our horizons have been broadened, our religious resources have expanded, and we’ve even recovered spiritual practices that seemed to have died out long ago. The unexpected revival of glossolalia (speaking in tongues, that is), the oldest and strangest form of Christian worship, remains one of the more remarkable stories of 20th-century religion.
And yet Johnson may be right that something important is being lost as well. By making mysticism more democratic, we’ve also made it more bourgeois, more comfortable, and more dilettantish. It’s become something we pursue as a complement to an upwardly mobile existence, rather than a radical alternative to the ladder of success. Going to yoga classes isn’t the same thing as becoming a yogi; spending a week in a retreat center doesn’t make me Thomas Merton or Thérèse of Lisieux. Our kind of mysticism is more likely to be a pleasant hobby than a transformative vocation.
What’s more, it’s possible that our horizons have become too broad, and that real spiritual breakthroughs require a kind of narrowing — the decision to pick a path and stick with it, rather than hopscotching around in search of a synthesis that “works for me.” The great mystics of the past were often committed to a particular tradition and community, and bound by the rules (and often the physical confines) of a specific religious institution. Without these kind of strictures and commitments, Johnson argues, mysticism drifts easily into a kind of solipsism: “Kabbalism apart from Torah-observance is playacting; Sufism disconnected from Shariah is vague theosophy; and Christian mysticism that finds no center in the Eucharist or the Passion of Christ drifts into a form of self-grooming.”
Most religious believers will never be great mystics, of course, and the American way of faith is kinder than many earlier eras to those of us who won’t. But maybe it’s become too kind, and too accommodating. Even ordinary belief — the kind that seeks epiphanies between deadlines, and struggles even with the meager self-discipline required to get through Lent — depends on extraordinary examples, whether they’re embedded in our communities or cloistered in the great silence of a monastery. Without them, faith can become just another form of worldliness, therapeutic rather than transcendent, and shorn of any claim to stand in judgment over our everyday choices and concerns.
Without them, too, we give up on what’s supposed to be the deep promise of religious practice: that at any time, in any place, it’s possible to encounter the divine, the revolutionary and the impossible — and have your life completely shattered and remade.
Right now I am trying a 100% rye bread; supposedly very difficult. I am following the beginner’s mind approach this week: no recipes, no kneading, no proofing, just mixing flour water and starter and seeing what happens. Also mixing 50-50 flour and water = 100% hydration in the lingo which means it’s supposedly somewhat guaranteed to be a flat, hard, scrunched up mess. Am cheating a little: gave the starter yeast about 12 hours to work on the bread overnight at around 50 degrees temperature.
Indeed, it might very well not come out as ‘bread’.
But this way I learn from scratch what the materials do.
Later on I go back to following recipes and techniques far more precisely. I have baked decent bread in the past – sometimes very decent – but often mediocre. And never a rye, or at least never a 100% rye.
Since you asked about the bread, in 2 hours I will give a report. (I suspect it will hold up better than the brick when I drop it and in fact, come to think of it, maybe I should just build the oven out of flour and water…..probably cheaper than buying bricks… or maybe adding flour to the mud will make it incredibly strong… not to mention tasty, sweet-smelling and… flammable. No, bad idea!)
After first fifteen minutes in oven, the gloopy mess that I had to spoon into a loaf pan because so liquid has already double in size. Good sign. Not promising as a brick though… to soon to tell if it will be ‘bread’…
I wonder: if I had taken the latest abhishekha and practiced more and better, would the bread just spontaneously arise as perfection made manifest?
(No, that’s culinary materialism. Back to waiting…)
~ Edward on March 8th, 2010 12:43 pm
New American Bible
2002 11 11
The Gospels
Matthew
Chapter 23
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ENG0839/__PVW.HTM
Dear Cato the Younger, ( the inventor of the filibuster):
Thank you for giving all of us a vivid understanding of why CTR didn’t want American Democracy governing our mandala. The filibustering ( I count over 100 long-winded posts , on every thread in just the last 10 days) which keeps anything “controversial” moving on down the list, tells us how desperate Shambhala Incorporated is. Back to SI for further instructions, I suggest.
Here is a contemplation for you regarding “ShambhalaBuddhism” and calling it CTR’s lineage:
“What happens when one teaches something that is wrong, and this spreads from them to other people and could even last for generations. That means that one has been the cause of many people’s misunderstanding, possibly over a long time. One has been the cause of the continuation of other’s suffering. That is heavy karma”.
Namkai Norbu Rinpoche
Chris, if you mean me, then I apologize. If my posts are inappropriate I can stop them. For me personally they have been a way to reconnect after years being ‘away’. I don’t share your views on everything but do pay attention to what you post.
I assure you frequency and volume will go down soon whether or not someone tells me to cool it. Something happened when I stumbled on here Shambhala Day and I have allowed the inspiration to post and write to play itself out. Again, sorry if you feel this is contrary to your agenda here.
“Here is a contemplation for you regarding “ShambhalaBuddhism” and calling it CTR’s lineage:”
You might disagree with what is being developed. But it IS CTR’s lineage, for good or ill, since it is a direct outgrowth of his dharma activity in the West, but also earlier since the Sawang was conceived in India – itself a deliberately ‘conceived’ event.
VCTR kept changing what he was doing all the time so pegging exactly what his lineage is/was is also rather a tricky exercise.
Still, as long as you are achieving realization and thereby benefiting beings, that’s all that matters.
Chris –
While I am familiar with the Chogyal Namkhai Norbu quote – and have heard him say something similar on a number of occasions, I think that it would have been important to add a disclaimer to the effect that ChNN’s quote was NOT referring directly to SI or SMR or Shambhala Buddhism, but rather to conflations or actual misconceptions regarding dzogchen being propagated.
I don’t want to see attacks on him by SI zealots, or for that matter, teachings of his taken out of context to further anti-SI agendas
This problem is of course made even worse by the viral nature of the internet.
Here’s another contemplation:
It seems almost undeniable that the Sakyong looks like Lama Pagel.
Again, another possible “deliberately conceived event in India.” Perhaps we could start another thread.
Love
Robert Chandler
This quote was taken from his book on “Buddhism and Psychology” and conflating Psychotherapy and the Dharma, NOT Dzogchen.
Since SI has been propagating , in its new Shambhala Buddhism mandala, such course as “Psychotherapy as the Path to Liberation”, I think it is very appropriate.
Chris.
mark: loaf was overcooked on outside and still pudding on the inside. But now I know why they say you can’t make a loaf from rye with 50-50 water/dough. Next loaf is 65% water relative to flour. Should be better!
~ Ash on March 8th, 2010 2:28 pm
Real reality vs. virtual reality.
Ash, if you plan to feed a lot of refugees, as intended, then you should make biscuits instead which have a shelf life in the decades, and are more nutritionally dense. Furthermore, biscuits can approximate a source of complete nutrition when the sugar (cookies) and salt (crackers) varieties are properly mixed and combined.
In fact, I think you should retrieve that brick which you dropped and preserve it in a jar as an exhibit for your store.
I say this with some confidence, because I am experimenting with sea biscuits at a monastery while on retreat, and have sucessfully fed these biscuits to some nice ladies also on retreat over the past two days.
Actually, the biscuit batches are coming out like veggie-burgers, but Whole Foods Markets sells the cookie and cracker varieties for a lot of money.
“And I feel myself that it’s a gathering like this, even if much of it is virtual, but in fact, as you know, we specialize in the virtual, that gives us the sense of the vast scope of this network of friendship and kindness possible in a truly international community.”
~ Richard Reoch, President, Shambhala Day Address, February 14, 2010.
2010 President Reoch’s Address
http://www.shambhala … ambhala_Day_2010.mp3
Chris – thanks for clarifying the context of that Namkhai Norbu quote
Stuart, thanks. That’s the second biscuit-type suggestion. They have the virtue of being far easier to make than good old-fashioned bread! I am also leaning towards a Great British favorite (at least of mine): custard tarts. Also very easy.
In Thailand they have something similar only it just custard heated in specially made 50-batch discs, each of which holds a little circle of fresh custard which is cooked over a fire, usually on the street. They have flour on the outside or in the mix so that when done you can pop them in a paper back and then people eat them on the way to work. The Italians are also into custard: bombolinos, ‘little bombs’.
Hard tack and hard biscuits (without weevils hopefully); custard tarts; bread. Maybe some crumpets too. Looking good.
Will go rescue that piece of brick!
Correction:
~ Stuart on March 8th, 2010 4:49 pm
“And I feel myself that it’s a gathering like this, even if much of it is virtual, but in fact, as you know, we specialize in the virtual, that gives us the sense of the vast scope of this network of friendship and kindness possible in a truly international community.”
~ Richard Reoch, President, Shambhala Day Address, February 14, 2010.
2010 President Reoch’s Address
http://www.shambhala.org/media/2009/RR_Shambhala_Day_2010.mp3
~ rita ashworth on July 22nd, 2009 1:49 pm
~ Chris on July 22nd, 2009 7:14 pm
~ Mark Szpakowski on July 27th, 2009 8:39 pm
~ Davee on July 28th, 2009 12:33 pm
~ John Tischer on August 4th, 2009 11:51 am
~ ash on February 19th, 2010 4:30 am
~ Edward on February 28th, 2010 1:37 am
~ James Elliott on March 6th, 2010 6:46 am
RELIGION
The End of Christian America
The percentage of self-identified Christians has fallen 10 points in the past two decades. How that statistic explains who we are now—and what, as a nation, we are about to become.
By Jon Meacham | NEWSWEEK
Published Apr 4, 2009
From the magazine issue dated Apr 13, 2009
http://www.newsweek.com/id/192583?GT1=43002
The Christian Science Monitor
The coming evangelical collapse
An anti-Christian chapter in Western history is about to begin. But out of the ruins, a new vitality and integrity will rise.
By Michael Spencer
from the March 10, 2009 edition
Oneida, Ky. – We are on the verge – within 10 years – of a major collapse of evangelical Christianity. This breakdown will follow the deterioration of the mainline Protestant world and it will fundamentally alter the religious and cultural environment in the West.
Millions of Evangelicals will quit. Thousands of ministries will end. Christian media will be reduced, if not eliminated. Many Christian schools will go into rapid decline. I’m convinced the grace and mission of God will reach to the ends of the earth. But the end of evangelicalism as we know it is close.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0310/p09s01-coop.html
Has this house which bears my name become in your eyes a den of thieves? I too see what is being done, says the LORD.
~ Jeremiah 7:11
“When the iron bird flies, and horses run on wheels, the Tibetan people will be scattered like ants across the world, and the Dharma will come to the land of the red faced people”
~ Padmasambhava
“If there is a lake, the swans would go there.”
~ H. H. Gyalwa Karmapa XVI, 1976
So said His Holiness the Sixteenth Gyalwa Karmapa Rangjung Rigpe Dorje (1924-1981), when asked why he visited America in 1976.
Man Ashley, you’re makin’ me look like a slacker. I’m going to break a response into a couple or maybe three parts.
Sitting practice: Yes you’re being a bit quibbly about definitions.
Alls I was sayin’ was sitting practice was good, just not because it is simpler or quicker to grok than sadhana practice. I bet some sadhakas still work on delving formless meditation, so it’s a long haul either way.
Whatever definition, sitting practice has benefits independent of belief and connects us with, or dissolves obstacles to something universal. That is why it would be a good common practice. Not, I repeat, not because it would give us a common sense of identity. Rather because it is spiritual practice without the need to believe in structure, hierarchy, and so many other things that are not essential for spiritual practice, even if required for our particular setup.
The way we were taught sitting practice back in the day, it included and automatically transformed into vipasyana and formless, so I had no thought of limiting it as beginner level by using the term ‘shamatha’.
The definition of religion:
All dharmas agree at one point.
Trungpa Rinpoche: “Whether teachings are hinayana or mahayana they all agree. The purpose of all of them is simply to overcome ego. Otherwise there is no purpose at all.” Just so.
This is the point at which T. Merton or Suzuki Roshi and a number of others saw eye to eye with Trungpa Rinpoche. Egolessness is the point at which all religions involved in contemplative practice do as well. Other paths may not define it as egolessness or emptiness, may refer to grace or union with divinity, but I think it comes down to the same thing.
If you want to define religion in some other way, I can’t say you are wrong, but I’m betting it will involve some form of conciliatory strategy or a tolerance for spiritual materialism that isn’t much help. And/or you are including all the cultural trappings, overlay of social structures and social engineering going on to shape organizations which are more dependant on human instinct and local culture than on anything specific the religion is teaching or can take credit for.
Using practice to build community identity:
If you mean ‘religion’ to connote all the cultural trappings, then it isn’t actually the religion that’s setting the stage. To the extent the PTB do not respect and include existing culture, even within their own community, there will by definition be a certain amount of aggression against existing culture, and so predictably some level of dissent and fragmentation.
On the other hand, if we can agree on spiritual practice being defined as Trungpa Rinpoche did, then no it should not be applied to create community identity at all. There are other tools and methods appropriate for that.
There is even a line in the Sadhana of Mahamudra about cultures that do that. Within SoM it is fairly clear that using practice to create social situations is a sign the teachings are waning, because they are then being used for something other than what they were intended.
(cont.)
The third jewel:
I completely disagree that the term ‘sangha’ is the same as ‘community’. Defined in that way it’s no surprise there is so little respect for it. Sangha as one of the three jewels is represented by the Bodhisattvas in the lineage tree. Sangha is not just a community of people with various associations with dharma. It means, originally anyway, those people who had actually realized something and were working on it.
Some people have argued that implies an elitist exclusionary thingy, holding out pipsqueaks who don’t know their upayas from their bhumis. But there is actually something we are trying to figure out with all these practices. Some people in our community and others have actually discovered some level of truth and indeed egolessness within their practice. That assembly who have actually accomplished some level of realization and are working furher on it, that is what is to be revered as the third jewel.
It isn’t any more elitist or exclusionary than when bakers who have studied at some culinary college associate with each other and make the distinction that they are bakers, that Betty Crocker does not a baker make, so… most people are not bakers (yet).
If that becomes an elitist trip in some way, then… maybe it’s not actually sangha as 3rd jewel, or those members of the sangha got caught up in using the wisdom they earned for political or social engineering projects.
There is an ongoing relationship with life, meaning everything, not just the community.
I think you’re jumbling things up a bit to equate outer inner and secret with Buddha dharma sangha. It’s helpful to look at one thing like prostrations and talk about outer inner and secret meaning, but the spiritual path is so vast… Outer inner and secret of sangha? No idea. Outer inner and secret of an individual’s spiritual path altogether? No idea. I suspect with that kind of logic and such a vast theme, we could pull whatever rabbit out we wanted to.
Maybe vajrayana and Shambhala vajrayana are the ‘royal’ view, but I have never heard nor do I understand how or why that would be what informs the highest levels of leadership in any enlightened society. This would imply, as seems embedded in the current setup, that a. the only way anyone could be enlightened is via the vajayana path, and b. the only way a leader could be enlightened, is if they had traversed the vajrayana path. So c. if you aren’t Buddhist…
These are the kinds of anomalies that creep in and make themselves at home when a religion is the government.
From Trungpa Rinpoche’s example, It looked to me like all the yanas inform good leadership, and then, if they’re remarkable and compassionate, that is gone beyond and the world is related to as it is.
(cont.)
What I’m hearing in the last third, is that our religion or spiritual practice should influence the external and political process even more so. It seems a lot of people lean in this direction.
But major problems are created when we assume a state sponsored religion and then assume that religion should hold the halls of power. History says that is unlikely to be beneficial for the wretched masses.
There are enough local examples to give pause, the Regent debacle being the highest profile, but in the meantime there have been quite a few other smaller incidents that exhibit the same sort of institutionalized denial system apparently all organized religions seem highly prone to.
Funneling:
The funneling dynamic is appropriate for entrance into higher esoteric practices. That’s not in question. While it is a good way to separate the chaff from the wheat before abisheka is given, or ensure proper training, it is from any point of view an abysmal way to organize a society.
As a method to instill community identity and social cohesion it will, before it even hits the ground, create an elitist exclusionary hierarchy, with dysfunctional systems. Because it would then be a system of religious indoctrination or preparation for esoteric practices being used as a political system which in contrast to a spiritual school and by definition has a plethora of agendas, the individual’s enlightenment pretty low on the list. It would then be something completely other than a school of Buddhism. Again, wrong tool for wrong job.
There is a definite and clear border between one’s spiritual practices influencing and guiding how one engages in politics or any external activity, and on the other hand trying to make the political system and external world reshape itself to mirror one’s own idea of spirituality, practice or enlightenment.
The former is the foundation for enlightened society, if such a thing has half a chance. The latter is a nightmare that has been attempted in various ways over human history.
If we can’t make that distinction, then it is inevitable we will lay our trips onto other people. We will sometimes subtly sometimes overtly, but always somehow aggressively demand that others should be drifting if not marching in the direction we have deemed to be ‘more enlightened’.
I suspect that drift towards being more esoteric has occurred for a number of ‘social engineering’ reasons. The vajrayana setup demands a dictatorial hierarchy in which the central authority has all the cards and then some. Small administration, a community in drift, how to pull them together? Once again: fine in a vajrayana student/teacher relationship; predictably divisive as a way to organize a society or community with various teachers.
Hearing the statistics about retention rates is interesting but kind of creepy. Linear statistics leading to clear solutions is a recipe for a black swan.
In the inspiration of building on the result of practice, not on the methods themselves.
James: well written. Very good points. I sit corrected on sangha although to me it still basically means ‘anyone who has taken refuge’. I understand that is not the universally accepted definition. Furthermore, now that there is a link between Shambhala and Buddhism in S.I. parlance, the meaning might become even more diffuse. And perhaps that is unfortunate because of reasons you cite above.
There are so many and varied points in the recent interchange that to follow each one has already become impossible. I think the nub here that got us going was the issue around using meditation as a community-building upaya, and from there getting into definitions of community or sangha.
My sense of the Third Jewel principle, no matter the precise definition of who qualifies as a member of ‘sangha’, is that group dynamic – even that of one spiritual friend and one other, i.e. only two – is important. This is stripping it down to bare structural essentials. Stripping further I think you could say the Three Jewels represent Self, Path, Other.
Now as to egolessness and religion, I agree with your definition within our world(s); my little point was that I am not sure if that is the goal of all religions, especially those without heavy emphasis on the esoteric (inner yogic, shamanistic etc.). I think some of them are about molding oneself to a view (religion comes from root word meaning ‘to bind together’), which can be quite solid in various different ways, aka theism in our jargon, which when not married to hard core esoteric practice, ends up substituting one form of ego for an original, personal and particular version, some of which versions are personal and internal (relationship with God), and others which are more explicitly societal from the get-go (religions of the book like tribal Judaism and Islam.) But in any case, I basically agree with you in terms of our view of this so perhaps that discussion is simply too tangential/irrelevant.
I also agree that the Outer-Inner-Secret parallel with the 3 Jewels was too much of a stretch. Neat idea, not helpful, it’s now vanished!
My main thrust/contemplation with this is how to both preserve and deepen a hard core ‘arya-sangha’ dynamic whilst at the same time allow for relaxed, natural osmotic merging with existing (local) cultures. This can happen through personal example/influence on the intuitional/atmospheric level. But for this to bear more than haphazardly beneficent fruit, some of those influenced at some point might want to go a little further; and in this case I think sitting practice including both form and formless elements, is the way. And of course that is why it is the core method used in Shambhala Training ab initio.
In terms of using it as a way to foster communities, again I think you make good points. But I think it’s one of those neither, nor, both, and type thingies: Just as the 3 Jewel principle infers that a) you are on your own totally with the first but also b) two and three imply relationship with other in ways that, however defined, involve a ‘community principle’ of sorts.
Furthermore, rightly or wrongly, our community was set up by CTR to expand to far greater numbers – at least this is the impression I have had for years. One can argue about whether or not this is true or worthy, but I do still come from that view, again rightly or wrongly.
So although I would agree that one should not be spreading the dharma in order to boost membership numbers, just as a doctor should not be treating patients in order to increase income, at the same time for the dharma to be successful and flourish in a culture, generally speaking it has to grow in various ways, which usually include numerically (up to a certain point I suspect) and geographically (i.e. spreading through most local communities or other societal networks within the urban contexts).
There’s a bit of a Catch 22 there obviously, or even ‘moral hazard’.
This morning I was reading some of Mannheim’s ‘Lost Victories’ in which he is describing their Polish campaign. His summary of the reasons for their success there – after some very interesting pro and con analysis of the whole affair – was that the Wermacht had done an admirably job of rebuilding itself after defeat in 1918 and had terrific esprit-de-corps which did not derive from the civilian administration per se – except insofar as there were finally sufficient funds to rebuild their numbers and equipment – but from their deliberate policy of fostering a high degree of initiative allt he way down to the platoon NCO’s who could exercise a considerable degree of improvised decision-making on the ground. This allowed them to be far more flexible both tactically and strategically which is why their ‘Blitzkrieg’ approach effectively transcended the sort of ‘ironmongery’ stand-offs which had characterized WW I operations, at huge cost of life and time, although no less huge profits to the banking cartels funding both sides of the conflict.
This dynamic of flexibility/initiative at the squad – or local level – which remains part of the overall esprit and chain of command at the central level is what interests me the most in relation to our ‘sangha’, and I think the focus on various doctrinal issues, though worthy, tends to ignore these more basic, operational, human level and, dare I say, administrative/logistical, concerns.
For example, I understand your queasiness at citing the 48% retention rate. But that operation (ST) is not simply there as a charity/gift to the world, although it is that. It is a crafted operation with a specific structure (five progressive levels), with logistical assumptions built in (V’s are less frequent and larger in nr. of participants than I’s) and they demand use of sangha resources (volunteer time, hall rental or mortgage payments, advertising budgets etc. etc.) which need to be regularly evaluated in terms of effectiveness, consistency, quality and so forth. Just as with bread or any other ‘product’ and ‘service’. One cannot always just argue about the spiritual or culinary benefits of eating bread; other practical aspects are worth examining as well.
Same with our (spiritual) community.
So I guess where I am coming from with this is that my suspicion is that this centre-fringe dynamic (the lynchpin for which I think is the lack of nyen ‘build’ in our own community, akin to the parliamentary quotient politically speaking) is actually closer to being the nub of the problem than various doctrinal issues such as whether or not we have a new lineage, are doctrinally going astray, corrupting the whole marvellous Trungpa legacy and trying to quantify that in terms of ever narrower or broader definitions of his ‘lineage’.
In particular, the stress point in this website seems to be a sharp emotional edge felt by many, especially of CTR’s generation, that the heart connection we/they used to feel, is not there. Each person wrestles with determining the degree to which this is an unwillingness to surrender ego and of course emotional conflict is always symptomatic of ego-centrededness of some sort and therefore it is always rather hard to come to a firm decision. And yet if one chooses the path of ‘blind loyalty’, as it were, surrendering all critical faculties and expression, then we have little more than just another follow-the-leader cult.
Any group – and not just religious – has to work with these things continually: quality of leadership and followership, growth and decline, central versus fringe (mandala) dynamic, diversity and homogeneity, self-evaluation and so forth.
But the seemingly widespread degree of pain and anger or, for many I suspect, indifference having walked away, is an important dynamic, for whether or not one characterizes emotions negatively, they are always also very real, immediate, natural and living expressions of things as they are experientially. They are the spiritual food off which the yeast of a living community is feeding.
Certainly in my case just reading some of the forceful expressions on this site – expressions with which I don’t necessarily agree nor would want to express myself – has proven liberating for reasons which I cannot explain even to myself.
I am just not convinced that the core problem involves doctrinal changes, nor even that SMR and his leadership style is necessarily the main source of such problems nor the main agency for resolving them.
This is perhaps why coming to this site and reading the various articles and comments (though by no means all since I only stumbled on here a couple of weeks ago), has had more effect on me personally than announcements of curriculum changes, new abhishekas and ngondros, occasional dharma talks I have heard over the years from Acharyas or one by SMR at Gampo Abbey, and so forth. It came from us, from what I have been calling the ‘nyen level’.
So again I thank those who had the courage and inspiration to start this site.
Editorial note: Manstein not Mannheim (a city) above!
James, finally re ‘royal – Vajrayana’ stream in discussion:
We had a three yana education so our notion of the yanas is skewed that way. For example, I chatted with several Thai monks 20 yrs ago, all of whom spoke good English and who positively and cheerfully affirmed that if I was a follower of Tibetan Buddhism clearly I was no more than a superstitious devil-worshipper enchanted by the anti-dharma. They meant no insult, just as missionaries disparaging native customs meant no insult: they knew they were right and could not conceive of anyone seriously disagreeing with them because they were clearly right. And so on.
But, roughly speaking, the yanas are not so much entities as methodological frameworks geared to working with various states of mind especially viz. their perception of self and other and their relative solidity. The Hinayana generally deconstructs conventional notions of reality for those seeing reality as solid and ‘real’ in conventional ways. Mahayana is more transcendent and can declare that any limiting view or paradigm is workable, can be flipped; whilst tantra is the same thing but more from the pov of actually doing this moment by moment to the point where with Ati-type level, this is a 24/7 art form, i.e. complete, ongoing fruition wherein any notion of non-fruition is no longer conceivable since there is no fundamental difference between confusion and wisdom, self and other, space and form etc. etc.
In any case, though many of us fall far short of being enlightened, even realised on the Hinayana level, we have had glimpses, at least, of sacred outlook, i.e. of the vajrayana perspective. So we might not quality as members of the sangha acc. to your strict definition, but nevertheless…
Now what makes the vajrayana royal is the sacred outlook business, which perceives all manifestations as part of the ongoing sacred dance of reality. To me that is what makes it ‘royal’, this sacred quality, which ultimately is some sort of combination of societal/group context and sacred perception. For me enlightened society is not one in which anybody therein is necessarily ‘enlightened’ in the esoteric post 10th bhumi sense etc., rather that the experience and view of sacred perception is sufficiently embedded in both leadership and citizenry such that such a society fosters ‘enlightening’ living, day by day. Perhaps ‘enlightening society’ would be a better term. In any case, such perception is a function of egolessness, of view/experience beyond purely self-centered ‘territorialism’, if you will.
For me the Shambhala thrust has to do with working with the group dynamic that is inevitable, but also within in the broader cultural context beyond a narrow buddhist sangha – especially if one is going to define it classically as you do – if for no other reason than this is in reality the context in which such an esoteric buddhist sangha exists. So this dynamic has to be addressed one way or another. Shambhala is our way. And in this way, there is a wider community of ‘we’ and the binding, or common, factor of that ‘we-ness’ is sacred outlook, which happens most directly in group sitting practice, but can happen anywhere anytime by any means. However, it is never random, either. It comes from sacred perception speaking through symbol/speech principle and being intuitively ‘grocked’ by those ‘in the royal presence’. That presence can be a simple hall with a GES banner, a flower arrangement and the minds of those assembled and practicing. So the Shambhala thrust for me is one that involves transmitting/communicating and also managing sacred perception in human society and this is so because the group dynamic only comes alive positively speaking on some level of fruition wherein the conventional boundaries of self and other are at least somewhat dissolved. That is the difference, perhaps, between GES and so-called ‘setting sun’ group activity.
In any case, the point here that there is a management function involved, a project even, something that has to be deliberately engendered, fostered, guided, steered etc. And although at the core are esoterically derived realisations (sacred perception), such perception is accessible by anyone, anywhere, any time as long as they have a human heart and an open, essentially devoted or devotable, mind; in other words, they do not have to themselves be accomplished yogins or yoginis or fully enlightened in the spiritual or buddhist sense. This is why the two paths are different in many ways; but again, it is not so much a question of doctrine, but of societal context/action/manifestation.
Ash:
Given that you have just “stumbled” upon here in the last couple of weeks, you may not realize that there are only maybe a couple of windbags on here that care about what you are talking about.
For many, who actually communicate on this site, we are trying to talk about how a charlatan, has, over the last 15 years, destroyed , his supposed father’s mandala. We are trying to come to grips with being duped by a charlatan and his idiotic minions.
Robert
Correction: my post not Chris’s , forgot to change name.
Furthermore, I am sure you are amazed at how efficient the German Army was , at the platoon (nyin level) , in the murder and burial of 20,000 Polish officers, during this campaign that you find so Glorious.
Cheers
Robert
Robert: your facts are out of date. The Russians did that! Polish officers who surrendered to the Germans were allowed to keep their swords/weapons. Old school stuff.
Must be tricky having two names and not being able to keep track of which one you are using..
“We are trying to come to grips with being duped by a charlatan and his idiotic minions. ”
Yes, I gather that is the view of some; but in any case:
a) in terms of charlatanism, last time I checked CTR did indeed recognise the Sawang as his blood-son and empowered him as future Sakyong
b) am not aware of any constitutional limitations on that role in terms of teaching authority
c) I believe that SMR is telling the truth when he recounts how he gave the Werma Empowerment back to his father after receiving it and therefore is not a charlatan in my eyes at least
d) I feel there are some serious, deep-rooted issues in the Shambhala Community which most of the time I find SMR has been addressing over the years although I don’t think many of them have been fully resolved, nor may ever be;
e) many serious problems were already in evidence by the early 80′s on several levels, many of which remain to this day
f) there was considerable damage in the late 80′s which has changed the fundamental nature of the original sangha, mainly in unfortunate ways that nobody can undo
g) people project far too much on the Sakyong in a way that is essentially theistic and cultish, both those pro and those con. Neither approach is all that helpful
h) the over-emphasis on the Court structure, which does indeed appear massively top-down, patriarchal etc. is a direct result of the underlying weakness of the general sangha structure, aka ‘us’. We presented the Sakyong very fractured, dysfunctional but spiritually potent material to work with, but part of his role is to ensure continuity over many generations, and like it or not, CTR set up a patrilineal model;
i) times change.
j) HHDKR – if I recall correctly – recommended recognising SMR’s spiritual as well as temporal authority but again the Sakyong role viz. those two aspects has never been clearly defined as that of a Sakyong having no spiritual authority (as far as I am aware)
k) etc.
That said I must confess that personally speaking I would have felt more comfortable about all this if he had adopted a more ‘Sakyong-first’ role versus emphasizing the vajra master/teacher role so much; but that said, even if he hadn’t wanted to, even if he hadn’t had the Mipham recognition, would he have had much of a choice? Perhaps. But all discussion on that is necessarily highly speculative and therefore not all that helpful no matter what ‘camp’ one is in.
Cheering up is always helpful, btw. The sun doesn’t really care whether we are enlightened or not but sunshine is marvelous anyway.
Is it your impression Chris/Robert that RFS is mainly and only for those who feel that SMR is a charlatan? I missed that, but like I said, did not read all the earlier entries.
Thank you for correcting me. Yes , I realized that after I posted. Do honestly think it makes any difference to the dead Polish officers , which Axis allies murdered and buried them? And do you really believe that the Germans allowed the Polish officers to keep their swords and weapons after they surrendered? Is this part of the belief system that you and the Sakyong share on the history of repressive , totalitarian governments? Which you all seem to be attempting to model at Shambhala Incorporated.
And no, I do not have any trouble keeping up with two names. What I do have trouble with is the non-stop blathering about tangential things, which is a great distraction to people who are actually suffering, and trying to come to terms with issues that are central to their spiritual journey, and your treating it like just abstract ruminations.
I believe that you are a Sakong and Company plant, whose purpose is to distract and minimize what people on this site are trying to deal with. You need to go back to Adam Lobel for some guidance.
Cheers,
Robert
I can windbag on a little further: the aspect of the current community which I personally can no longer stomach, and which I cannot tell is my own projection or not but definitely trust my own gut on, is the cultish feeling to it, or ‘bubble mentality’.
Now, I am sure that anyone with my current perspective looking at me back in 1984, say, as a full-time kusung type living and breathing the Kalapa Court mandala 24/7, could quite reasonably have pointed out that I was fully immersed in a cult, in a bubble. Frankly, I would not care to argue about that with anyone today.
Let’s assume that it was a cult, but somehow in a good way (the word itself is not necessarily negative although usually it is meant pejoratively.) Let’s go with there being good cults and bad cults, or also that sometimes our mandala is doing very well, and sometimes poorly. I personally think this is reasonable. So sometimes the Sakyong is hitting the right notes all the time, sometimes he is off key; but always those notes are sounding in the echo chamber of the inner and outer ‘sangha’, as well as the larger world, i.e. that world is also part of his expression.
If/when I perceive the Sakyong as ‘off’ in some way, I also regard this as feedback about how we are all off as well. Maybe this is naive or simply stupid, but that’s how I look at it; in other words I do not look at either SMR or his father as simply individuals alone, nor simply in terms of their titles, but also as living reflections of broader dynamics at play. As individuals they have the challenge of manifesting their own view in a way that is as clear and helpful as possible, so clearly personality and individuality is not out of the picture, but there is more than that going on.
And I don’t mean this necessarily in a high-falutin’ way. One could say the same thing about a Judge, a Doctor, a President, although perhaps the latter is a better equivalent. How much of Obama’s Presidency, let us say, is a function of his own individual input into the role and how much is it an expression of the ongoing balance between various streams of influence in the population and culture? Not so easy to say, but my intuition with him is that it is less than 25%. I suspect it’s not all that much different for the Shambhala Sakyong, although maybe because of the explicitly spiritual nature of the role and its link to meditative training, it could go up to 50%. But not much further. Yet most people regard him and the role in a sort of 100% fashion which I think is unfair and unhelpful to all involved. Indeed, this general view could be one of the main, underlying obstacles holding everything back, Sakyong and citizenry. It is the razor blade edge, existing at the point of infinity, wherein lies the difference between an enlightening society and a dysfunctional (and thus anti-social and thus anti-Shambhalian) cult. And here too lurks the issue of confusing how one regards a vajra master versus how one regards a monarch or maybe how they view their own roles as such. It is tricky, and we are all a bit new at this in the West and in modern times to boot.
Things can flip in an instant either way, in other words. Are not so solid. Are not so perfect. Are not so imperfect. Are highly problematic. And basically perfect.
Ash:
So you must think people here are totally stupid, and will accept the rewriting of history, which now blames CTR, “the alcoholic and womanizer” and the cultish behavior of CTR’s students, for what has been happening in the mandala. And the Sakyong has actually been trying to “save the mandala” of CTR! That’s really what you have been saying.
The top heavy court is actually the fault of the underlying structure. In other words us, who are no longer there?
First one chases people away, then one blames them for what has happened. Classic.
No, my friend, whether you know it or not, SMR is a master at never taking any responsibility for anything ever . That’s his m.o. He never will. And you are one who is repeating and enabling that bullshit on here. Whether you know it or not.
People have had twenty years of that bullshit, so to frame it in a “systems” way and totally let SMR off the hook, over and over and over, is , first and foremost, what has caused this situation to happen. So if you really want to take a systems view, and not a cultish one, which you say you are sick of, than stops apologizing for him. He is a master at getting other people to feel sorry for him, and until you see that you are part of the group enabling that to happen then you are just coming on here repeating the major cause of why he has made, yes him, such a mess. You cannot blame the people you have denigrated and chased away, and if you want to do that and be part of that, then please return to Adam Lobel and the underling achrayas, and try and form up one spine, that you can all use, to work with the current situation, anyway you want to. It sounds like you are petitioning for a second chance at leadership. And it sounds like you will fit right in to the current ideology, since the only one’s left are hard-core members of the “cult” of always enabling and letting SMR off the hook, no matter what mess he makes. . You should be able to manage this, so what is the problem for you?
It’s a red letter day. All the people at fault are almost gone, So now you can help fix it.
Robert.
Ah, hell, let the kids make their own mistakes like we did. If their teacher is as good as they think he is, they’ll wake up in their own way and time. The olders are the equivalent of their parents….and whom among us had ones
we could take seriously? They have to find their way like we did. Good luck to them!
Getting kinda harsh in here…. I think that for many, this is not about parsing quotations to justify this or that, and equally not about driving all blames into SMR + minions – but rather how to realize and perpetuate the teachings of CTR, irregardless of whether the container is SI or something else, or no “container” at all.
My personal belief is that the SI container has mutated really weirdly – an early-80′s-meets-medieval time warp hybrid, with corporate marketing agendas wrapped in a veneer of Socially Responsible New Age PR.
But then I’m pretty jaded myself…..
I quit Vajradhatu in 1991, after completing abisheka with Jamgon Kongtrul at KCL. I left mostly because I feel the Regent acted irresponsibly and harmfully. I joined a nonhierarchical meditation group which has become my spiritual home. I deeply appreciate Trungpa. I don’t dislike the Sakyong or Richard Reoch, but I would never rejoin Shambhala. I can understand Robert’s and Chris’s great upset with the Shambhala organization over the changes in Taggie’s care. However I also greatly appreciate many of the others who post here, esp. Rita and Ash. I want to inquire until the end of my days: what does enlightened society really mean, here in my life, on my local level?
“I believe that you are a Sakong and Company plant, whose purpose is to distract and minimize what people on this site are trying to deal with.”
Interesting belief.
Of course, only I know whether or not it bears any relationship to reality.
But you are free to believe in whatever projections you please.
Re: “My personal belief is that the SI container has mutated really weirdly – an early-80’s-meets-medieval time warp hybrid, with corporate marketing agendas wrapped in a veneer of Socially Responsible New Age PR.”
I might not put it that way exactly, but I find the blend of tantric cult – in both good and bad ways – with the corporate marketing, New Age stuff a strange animal as well.
Put it this way: for reasons which still elude me and cause pain, I cannot recommend it to friends and family because somehow I don’t find Shambhala Shambhalian, at least not the way I have understood it. Now I have done an extremely poor job of manifesting it in my life, so it is quite possible – nay probable – that this is a view of rudra.
One never knows!
Just got ‘Never Turn Away” by R. Shikpo. Don’t like the title (grammatically); but have no doubt am going to find the book extremely helpful, not to mention delightful.
Many times over the years I thought Trungpa Rinpoche was a charlatan, many times I thought he was the greatest man who ever lived. No matter what I tried to project on the guy it seemed to go spinning off into fathomless space. Maybe there was a lesson there somewhere.
Dear All
Been away doing a theatre workshop with Julian Boal in Salford. Interesting interacting with others and trying to see how things get screwed up in a concrete sense through drama.
How does theatre relate to the construction of enlightened society –well it definitely does show you the barriers people face in accessing their power to change events. In fact even locating the power focus to situations is troublesome at times.
I was thinking of tools used in this event and about my time spent in NS and how I could have done things differently because of what I have learned –maybe I did not have a total picture about what was occurring.
I also thought of Cape Breton and Ash’s engagement with people there how in some respects you had to listen to them more and just explore was what was going on in situations closely. That is there had to be a bottom up approach to ‘changing’(?) the society there.
I think I agree with Ash also about the nyen level for that you would indeed need a National Assembly to foster inclusiveness as CTR wanted.
But there is also something right on about Roberts and Chris’s posts in that yes there is now two camps an SI and non-SI and this has occurred through the Sakyongs actions whether you think he was right to do this or not, whether we think he is a charlatan or not. The least we can say is that portions of the community have divided off from the main body because of decisions made at the top that we had no show of hands for. So yes people have been disempowered and they are miffed.
I don’t know if the situation is resolvable and at this point in the shambhala world I am not even sure if we should try to resolve it one way or the other. May be we should just leave it to simmer and blow up or get bigger and bigger and chase its own corporate image of itself. Meanwhile we could do our own thing, create our own spaces and just get grounded again. Would that be a stupid, ignorant thing to do….maybe not…it might be like the many churches that are returning to the basic message of Christ to be good to others in a wholesome way –sort of the Mahayana level.
But what about CTR’s handing the whole thing to SMR –well yes he did that but does that mean that he makes no mistakes, makes no boo-boos –no! Remember reading on the Project that CTR advised Mermelstein to reprimand the Regent and his actions at times. So who now is reprimanding the Sakyong because yep he is not above the whole thing but supposedly according to CTR to be embroiled in the whole set-up aka heaven, earth and man correlation.
So if he is a charlatan, charlatan charges could be made in a most concrete way. People could start even asking him people think you are charlatan and see what he says to this whether he laughs it off or not. Maybe this kind of theatrical drama almost would lead to more accommodation in a more fruitful way than the Lop/Mermel sop that has been recently concocted in the backrooms of Halifax, Boulder or Vajradhara know where.
I’ll end with a James Elliot aphorism(?)
In the hope that someone
continued
somewhere will press the buzzer and let the people in
Best
Rita Ashworth
Dear Divine Lake, Ash , et al.
Tagi was the canary in the coal mine.
He was the first deception for us. There are so many others, hard to count.
As for projections, as you know , there are “conditional projections’ i.e . cause and effect or causes and conditions coming together , based on relative reality, and there are imaginary projections, based on thoughts of what could be, endless speculations, digressions etc. etc. The future, the past, etc etc.
The latter is said to be “double delusion.”
We are all living in the world of projections, its just that some of us are in the imaginary world of projections. Much harder to see clearly what is relative reality right in front of your face.
Our “projections” about SMR and SI and company have been not imaginary, they have been based on relative, conditional reality. I wish everyone had been so fortunate to have been shot out of the bubble of imaginary projections as quickly as we were. Or to have seen , up close , the utter insanity, the total inability to work with relative reality , “on the ground” because from about 1991 this sangha , gladly embraced the world of “imaginary double delusion.” You wouldn’t trust these people to run a shoe shine box in central park. But hey, why should you believe me?
This is the time, as the real Mipham said about not coming back ” It would be useless, because people will believe lies as truth and truth as lies”.
I have no doubt what Jim Hartz said in his post, about students saying “Trungpa’s teachings often don’t make sense” the Sakyong’s always makes sense.” That’s where we are now, “a mess, a real heartbreaker.” When people believe lies now and not the lions roar. They can’t even hear it anymore.
So I just don’t have time for blathering, and endless digressions about this and that in the current Shambhala, I could go to a PTA meeting, it would be more productive.
Jim Hartz has just posted the most amazing report on the state of things now, with Naropa faculty and kasung joining in on defaming CTR, in places where there would have been no Rocky Mountain Dharma Center or, Shambhala Center, and Naropa would have been just another Boulder Mall. It makes me sick, and that it doesn’t make other people sick and want to storm into Naropa and remove that picture of Trungpa Ripoche, that they are “defacing”. Did anyone even hear this?That makes me even sicker. How do you rationalize this. How can you keep equivocating? When you hear things like this? This is like Germany in the 30′s, don’t kid yourselves, as you keep accepting the unacceptable, the unacceptable becomes ordinary. To equivocate, and speculate, and romanticize and rationalize endlessly at a time like this , is suicide.
It is choosing to live in “imaginary nature” double delusion.
well, first I misread something and thought that Chris and Robert were two names for the same person depending how he/she logs in. So sorry about that.
Second responding to Chris or Robert telling me I have no business being here. If it’s true, fine. No problem. But I have no idea if Chris/Robert are an official voice here or not. If they are not, then Chris/Robert could use a little help in the basic manners department. Nothing is ever gained by being rude, although it does tend to make others start to discount the veracity/worth of what you have to say. Furthermore, now I have been ‘outed’ as an S.I. plant by the extraordinary psychic power of Christ or Robert, I felt I should/could respond to that. I will watch myself very carefully the next few weeks to see if he/she has picked up on something I am unaware of yet myself. Then again: I might be saying all this to fool everyone and secretly I am an ‘enemy’ from the Sakyong’s camp come to ruin your party by wasting everyone’s time because I can type at 120 wpm and you can’t!!
That said, viz. Robert’s last post: some powerful points. This is what I have in response speaking only for myself: I don’t have any first hand knowledge of the defacement of VCTR and just heard about it for the first time today. Nothing was said on any level of detail as to the who, what, why, so I have no opinion on it. Tagi: I don’t know anything about it. Have never understood why the family didn’t pay a bit more for him, especially the past few years, but also they couldn’t afford to send Gesar to school when he was younger because Vajradhatu was broke even thought CTR spent far less than he brought in, and so there are many things I don’t understand nor have first hand knowledge about. Not my family, not my business.
Stories about people saying that CTR was stupid and SMR is perfect are concerning. But so are stories saying CTR was perfect and SMR is stupid.
The main thing is that it is slowly dawning on me that some people are so alienated and upset BUT STILL INVOLVED somehow that they/you wish to start a separate group or organization. That is interesting. Not sure how it would work or why but although personally not interested – I don’t think (I mean why would one want to get back into that sort of thing again?!) – if the intention is sincere perhaps it will be helpful. But to do so as a protest movement based on the perception that ‘we are upholding the banner of CTR’s true teaching and proclaiming the stupidity and charlatanism of his son’, well I just think that is a very, very, very, very, very, very, very, extremely sad basis for a new group and how it would function above the hungry ghost or animal realm I just cannot imagine, with that sort of ground as a raison d’etre.
But it’s not my project. Although I am personally open to contemplating the why’s and wherefores of such a thing even if not motivated to do anything about it myself in that sort of direction.
“Our “projections” about SMR and SI and company have been not imaginary..” the main, and perhaps only point I have been making about projections is the projection that SMR is the single main individual responsible for the Shambhala International Mandala.
Secondly, I was responding viz. the insight/accusation from Chris or Robert about my being an enemy agent in your midst. Since I know whether or not I have personally discussed this with Chris or Robert, I designated this statement as a ‘projection’.
I’m confused.
FUCKYOU!
anger smanger
chicken beens
and salsa
cholula
etc.
it is
cojenes
not
pelotas
unlike what jamie said.
and pirate family roberts
JUMPED THE SHARK
long ago/
la lucha
SIGUE
ego
nuestro sufrimiento
es algo que elgegimos.
vuestra vida es sagrado
como
todo.
being clever
hows that working out for you?
Ash/ Secret Agent:
To Be Perfectly Clear:
Chris/Robert have never been or are interested in forming a new group, or being in a group.
And we are not touting CTR’s virtues. Those are self-evident to his students.
We are very interested in exposing the Sakyong as the shiny, gollum charlatan that he is, who has destroyed CTR’s mandala.
Cheeers,
Chris/Robert
correction: cojones, not cojenes. GF.
Rita writes:
Remember reading on the Project that CTR advised Mermelstein to reprimand the Regent and his actions at times. So who now is reprimanding the Sakyong
I think the easy thing to do is to praise the current leader (or simply remain silent), and then a couple decades later, talk about how that leader was flawed, when it is popular to do so.
The extremely difficult thing would be to do what CTR asked people to do, which in the case of SMR would be to let SMR know when (or if) he is in error– play an “advisory role”. It’s pretty straightforward and simple– just difficult.
My teacher once said that in the face of community difficulties, we tend to react in one of three ways: 1) withdraw, 2) try to control others, or 3) react angrily to feeling controlled by others.
Many people suggest that withdrawing from CTR’s community is the best solution. But is it? I have tried withdrawing from situations that I was deeply committed to, but everything else I did after that tended to be polluted with my cowardice of withdrawal.
Maybe withdrawal is necessary at times, but as a blanket solution I wonder if it is really best. Life could keep presenting us with difficult situations that we’d like to withdraw from, and then what do we do?
Edward, thank you. That is a very helpful summary of the dilemma. I chose to withdraw and still so choose. By auspicious co-incidence, I am beginning to read a dharma book entitled: ‘Never Turn Away’. Hopefully it will provide guidance in this regard.
One could also argue that CTR’s community is more about devotion to his teachings and keeping that samaya. And in that case, who is turning away?
A community is not necessarily defined by it’s container. Or lack of container. Or by a container with a new label and significantly different contents.
Michael, again thanks. Very clear (and succinct!).
Mark S’s characteristically solid post in the Samaya thread about the CTR influence being still extant and the fact that those who studied with him have a part to play as part of that connection echoed something I was thinking this morning about the separation thrust.
Seems to me that the Dragon Society or Vajradhatu Society notion is not bad in the sense that rather than trying to create a separate, parallel institution per se, rather it is a somewhat loose, if still actual, container/structure for those who studied with CTR and who wish to do so, to get together formally and informally. This does not need to be created or sanctioned by anybody, although permission/sanction from on high is always more harmonious.
Like simply that at a Shambhala Center where there are a bunch of CTR ‘old dogs’ they can ask to have the meditation hall on Thursday nights (or whatever) and then pretty much do whatever they want with that time: have group practice of whatever sort, discussion, open lectures, whatever.
In places where such people are no longer dues-paying members and the SC might object to opening up their space for non-paying members, such things can happen at a private home of course, as most of our Vajradhatu classes did in Boulder in earlier days, for example.
As long as it doesn’t become an organised political movement to overthrow the regime, this might work to give CTR students a more relaxed sense of sangha within the larger sangha and from such ventilation/warmth maybe other things could further relax and improve.
In terms of any hard-core political initiatives, one works to change a system from within the system, not without, so suspect that is something that not only is not going to happen, but all the solidification and conflict that would be involved would do more harm than good. That said, the ‘Dragon Society’ could from time to time publish position papers with precise, well-articulated suggestions that are presented both to the S.I. community and to the current administration.
On the surface, I don’t see any particular outer, inner or secret obstacles to forming such an association, whether officially sanctioned by S.I. or not.
In any case, there does seem to be a need for something like this, where students of CTR can get together to refresh their personal and dharmic connection without feeling like there is something wrong with them, they have missed the new Sakyong’s bus, they are a bad influence on his students, and so forth. If the emphasis is on practice, study and celebration, which is what most people enjoy and benefit from the most, surely this would be a good thing.
So the ground is being a self-existing situational container/mandala rather than one with a specific political or institutional agenda per se (that ‘situation’ being the pre-existing ‘sanghahood’ of those beings who studied and practiced under CTR).
The path is regular communications and group assemblies of its membership, i.e. fellowship.
The fruition is heartfelt, cheerful spreading of the view, practice and action of the BuddhaDharma path and Shambhalian Society as first promulgated by CTR to his students by and through members of that society.
This does not imply that such a society is the only way to effect such fruition in more general terms; just a way for members of that society to get together and turn the wheel for self and others.
Dear Ash
What you are proposing re the Dragon Society –may have passed muster about a year ago but I think things have moved on quite a bit.
At the present time I think many older students of CTR are beginning to realise that they may have to go out on their own and create semi-new containers. For example just read that Ray is building a 68 bed facility for his students at Crestone –so he is flourishing outside of the mandala –why indeed would he coached back to do his bit for a Dragon Society –its a bit small scale for him now.
I don’t know seems SI wants to contain people at a certain level with its initiatives aka Loppon and Mermelstein thingie. Perhaps a better way to see the situation would be to really empower these teachers to manifest CTR’s dharma as big as they can, just to really blow the whole thing open wide.
Yes and we still have the different interpretations of how CTR’s shambhala teachings should be fostered in the world from Mark Szps support of Christians being allowed to do the werma sadhana to all the SI arguements about Shambhala Buddhism –how people can live in an SI container with such divergent views about Shambhala is a conundrum –could the Sakyong really change course and let the whole thing open for everyone –big question for him isn’t it?
To some extent I am sussing that SI is crumbling at the edges because of these contradictions –whether the crumbling will ever stop is now a bit questionable. I think the Sakyong would have to have loads of new students to make his vision work and I don’t think from what I hear on the grapevine and from older students that he is magnetising enough new people in.
Maybe a better way of seeing the whole thing would be to have schools that all have equal status within an enlightened society with the Sakyong being the head of one school. Seems this is what has happened historically with religions anyway. Religions mutate first you have the Jewish Christians, then the gentile Christians,then the Catholics, then the Orthodox etc etc down the ages. Even after the Buddhas death you had various schools and interpretations of his teachings forming. So yes I agree with Mark Szp we are at an early stage in the evolution of the Shambhala teachings on this planet and I think we have to leave them time to grow organically and perhaps away from a Tibetan context at an intermediate stage.
I don’t know perhaps it would take a great Sakyong to see this is what is happening any way and that the breaking up of SI is going to continue –perhaps it will take more articles like Ellen Mains to finally make him and the SI administration aware of what is happening. But now that Ellen has written her article – I am sure there are others waiting in the wings to write other stuff aswell. For SI not to twig this is hiding their heads in the sand like the proverbial ostrich. Better still for the administration to acknowledge what is happening and really start giving people really great levels of power beyond even the acharya level to take all manifestations of CTR’s teachings into the world –just let pe
continued
people do stuff!
Re the charlantism thingie I was thinking about the Christopher Hitchens book on Mother Teresa which was a real put down of her but probably a well written book as well – I suppose you could have a well-argued book on the Sakyong like that with may be a discussion of charlantism in the Indian context that would be putting it into an academic format.
But I think you have to have these discussions about teachers that comes from secular debate and our own western tradition and it must be allowed to go on or we are all up the spout.
May be its the times Ash –may be some of those people who were in contact with CTR closely in some respects may have a limited choice in how they go forward because of their ‘real’ connection to him, certainly thats the feeling I get from reading Ms Mains article….because they are in a real double-bind situation now.
O yeh and I don’t think people who are leaving are alienated from SI in a negative sense – I think they have examined their consciences acutely and are trying to manifest new ways of doing things aswell as the Sakyong. So yes they are open to changing things too. Could something new come from them as equally as ‘good’ as SI –yes it could happen. I know this from my own experience. I think to some degree it depends on the charisma and open-heartedness of the teacher –perhaps some one will just clue into the whole thing from Transylvania! Whose to know about religions, you just might get Buddhist St Paul in the coming dark age just appearing and getting the whole shambhala thing in a vision.
Well best for the weekend
Rita Ashworth
Rita, you may well be right in terms of things having moved forward. But I don’t think Reggie’s situation is a good model in that few individuals are going to be interested in developing something like that. Remember he was the founding Dept. Head of the Naropa Buddhist Studies BA and MA, not to mention Ngedon School, so his experience with teaching Buddhadharma professionally was extensive and then moving from an institutional to a more personally geared ‘gathering student’ modality is quite understandable. I am thinking more in terms of the John and Jane Doe’s who may well find themselves or wish to ‘teach’ but more in a simple, largely local context, and not necessarily delivering ‘official’ material. So really I am suggesting an outer ring which mainly happens on the local level and mainly by individuals who feel so inspired. Many student from that outer ring might well go on into the inner ring which is where S.I. functions. Indeed, were such an outer ring to exist in a healthy way, again many of the ‘ingrown’ aspects of S.I. might be self-liberated rapidly.
S.I. does not need to control this stuff, but it would be much better if they proactively welcomed it versus such things happening in the form of schisms. The whole process could be friendly, expansive and natural.
My own personal experience with this on a very small, local level was that a few years ago after teaching a summer course – which the coordinator of the local study group asked me to do and organized (at the local YMCA) – several students expressed interest in continuing during the fall with a ‘Buddhism 101′ course which would also have prepped those interested in taking Refuge. But because I was not teaching according to the latest ‘new’ curriculum (now also no longer kosher I suppose), the coordinator and the regional Acharya scotched the class. Several of the students and I did discuss continuing on our own, but I felt that this would be like setting myself up as an anti-institutional substitute or rudra and didn’t want to do it. Probably I should have, but then: in our lineage we are not supposed to act as preceptor for Refuge even though, classically speaking, one can take Refuge on one’s own, albeit best to take it with someone else who has also taken the vow. In any case, it’s a vow one makes to oneself, not to anyone else or an institution or lineage. So if S.I. was recommending that I not teach Buddhism 101 leading to Refuge, and the students would then presumably only be able to take Refuge with an approved S.I. Acharya, the whole thing was somewhat bottle-necked right there. In fact, they discouraged people from becoming interested in and ready to take Refuge. To my mind, this was anti-dharma activity on their part, Acharya-sanctioned or not.
Soon thereafter I found myself feeling strong emotions around the whole situation even locally – which heretofore had not been the case – and opted to stay away. I have not attended a local group meeting since ten years ago since I feel I cannot contribute in a genuine fashion, am asked only to attend beginner-level readings and discussion as one of the audience and ideally not say anything in the discussion from a point of view of anything other than a beginner, and that is the only type of thing they do (or used to; perhaps they have now moved on but if so I wouldn’t know).
This is not meant as a personal sob story. It’s just a good example of a very simple situation in which a lack of openness on the part of S.I. officialdom blocked the very simple, unpretentious dharma activity of a student (myself) and basically felt fine about that. They just said ‘no’, did not even want to discuss anything in person or ask my opinion, everything being discussed by others without my participation or knowledge, and that was that.
I don’t blame the Sakyong for this sort of thing. I blame myself and the general S.I. culture which promotes it. It is unhealthy, overly institutional – i.e. ‘deadly boring’ as we say in England.
“O yeh and I don’t think people who are leaving are alienated from SI in a negative sense – I think they have examined their consciences acutely and are trying to manifest new ways of doing things aswell as the Sakyong. ”
That second part wasn’t in my email notification when I responded above.
Well, if that is the case (not something I am aware of because I am out of it generally), then may it work well.
An image came to mind this morning towards the end of the sitting session: the breaking of the mala beads. I can’t remember precisely where I heard of this, but it’s something like when the retreatant/yogi has realised enough, the mala beads break and scatter and it’s time to spread the dharma far and wide. Something like that. If more of CTR’s students begin manifesting in the world according to their own level of realization and inspiration, this would surely be a very good thing for all involved.
I listened to Fabrice Midal’s talks on You Tube. An excellent student of CTR, and he never met him in person! Partly because of his own drive, but also partly because he was never part of the formal organisation in days of yore, he has been able to just function on his own somewhat – or so it seems. I don’t know where those talks were taking place. It is a little harder for those raised in the institutional nest to do this, perhaps, because they might feel they are going against their own family. Fabrice doesn’t have that problem, but certainly more of CTR’s students should feel free to teach and manifest however they please without feeling, or being told, that their actions are ‘illegal’ somehow.
To me this is more important than worrying about whether the new formats help or hinder the transmission and continuity of CTR’s lineage. Energy and process are more important than concept and institutional organization. The mala has broken, the beads of which being CTR’s old students. Let them roll forth into the four corners of the Earth, unobstructed, spontaneously, with delight.
As this happens, it might also serve to break the dependency on the institutional-only framework, which is largely dependent upon the projections on the part of the membership for it being perceived as the only viable model. If that model is transcended, it could well be the way forward for S.I. to begin to realize its full potential.
Perhaps there is no problem other than the obstacles and blockages in our own mind streams?
Finally about charlatanism: I have no doubt personally that were all the students, both ‘old’ and ‘new’ to manifest fully according to their abilities and devotion, that the Sakyong would benefit thereby enormously, his role and vision being allowed to deepen and expand, that he is and would be more than ready for this. I still maintain that what has been holding him back the most is…us. Perhaps the best way forward is to allow for a diffusion, a scattering, a letting go of the whole thing.
Could be fun!
Dear Ash
Yes I could take your point about Ray –he is whatever people say quite an incredible personality. Some one somewhere in SI really has to give more credit to him for what he is doing
Ash yes you would have to define outer and inner ring, functions and responsibilities. If there is a qualitative difference in the access the people in the outer ring had to teachings I dont think people would go for it –they would feel shortchanged by the inner ring.
Also the operation of the outer ring at a local level –what do you mean by that? Surely these teachers on the outer ring would want to spread the teachings as much as in the inner ring?
I could see the inner ring allowing people access to the Vidyadharas teachings say if they followed a certain amount of sitting – and I could see the outer ring exchanging monetary value for that access-so in a way it would be supporting the inner ring in the sense of a King model as in a parliamentary democracy. So yes the inner ring could may be have the outer rings alleigence in regard to ethics and standards of its members that could happen much as you have board for the standards of doctors.
Its strange been considering all this at the theatre workshop with Julian Boal –could some one give him a gig at HSC or the Shambhala Institute –hes really good and approachable. Any way he seems to be talking in his workshops about the flow of power between people in situations and how that power can be used wisely to create better societies. What is it in sociology –personal dynamics is it? Yes its about the individual not being cowed into the status quo because the org. seemingly is providing limited options for getting to grips with situations.
Hes a bit like a secular Ashoka Mukpo! Hope Ashoka can meet him –I think they would really get on.
Anyway yes Ash you would have to flesh out the inner and outer ring definitions a bit more for people to consider them perhaps write an article for rfs in more depth.
I think SI has a ring mandala at present but may be it needs to be a whole lot more looser in the context may be of swirling birds –sudden image that came to mind –which is fluid circling and dynamic but also cohesive.
Plus yes of course political power dynamic between inner and outer ring would have to be fluid aswell and you would need parity re ‘criticising the excesses’ of each ring if things came to a crisis situation
Best
Rita Ashworth
My understanding is that the teaching situation in SI is becoming MORE – not less – “Top Down” in it’s control and structure – even moreso in the past few months – so I wouldn’t necessarily hold my breath for an SI “Age of Aquarius”/ “let a thousand mandalas bloom” to manifest….
~Ash on March 12th, 2010 7:09 pm
“In fact, they discouraged people from becoming interested in and ready to take Refuge.”
Ash, would you please confirm this statement in terms of who, what, when and where?
Suart: I said enough. It’s not about individuals – the story – but a dynamic.
Rita, you bring up good point viz. “Surely these teachers on the outer ring would want to spread the teachings as much as in the inner ring?”
I have not really been thinking about ‘teachers’ so much as just people in general, but I suppose teaching is probably the main thing being discussed in this regard. For me personally, I have always thought somewhat along these lines, although have never sat down and thought it through before: basically that for most of us, any vajrayana-style or level teaching happens purely in the atmospheric realm rather than in formal education/transmission which is covered by lineage authorities however the lineage authorizes such things. My concern and interest is more on the level of vastness/ordinary society. In that sphere, I think there should be far more room for play and extra-institutional expression.
My little story about a particular example highlights how quickly, however, there is blockage in the sense that one cannot start working with students and take them even up to Refuge, which is hardly a major ‘high water mark’, rather a sort of beginning (in terms of the Buddhist path).
But the same problems exist with Shambhala since there are not many materials and the main way to work with people on the conventional/vast/ordinary level is the Levels 1-V model which is a highly structured, organized format. But Shambhala is not really a stream of teachings per se, rather a way of being in the social context, so Shambhala is taught by how someone speaks, moves, dresses, structures a talk, cracks a joke, pours a drink and so forth so perhaps it really doesn’t matter.
In any case, where I have clear, strong feelings (and I am not really all that invested mentally in thinking about the whole S.I. mandala any more) is more on the local level and having greater freedom for CTR students (and others) to share their experience and knowledge, including in formal teaching situations, and personally I think that with Refuge, although having Acharyas only do it in our mandala makes a certain sense given how CTR used to serve as preceptor for us, still I don’t think that there should be rigid educational or membership requirement for that level or type of connection/student. If people wish to take Refuge and a small group wishes to invite a Shambhalian Acharya who is trained to serve as preceptor, surely such an Acharya should be delighted to so serve and not worry about the curricular exposure of those making the request?
Once people have taken Refuge in a local situation, they can begin to develop their own particular sangha; there could even be several such groups in the same town. They can come together if they wish for some things, swap teachers, rotate classes, but also remain relatively autonomous, each with its own character, interests, style etc. This simply isn’t possible the way we view things now. Institution first; human being/student second.
Doesn’t sit with me and I cannot work with such a view.
But also, from those local sanghas, some might go on to study further with other teachers and in other sanghas, including S.I. without feeling that they are obliged to leave that particular sangha which might for them remain – assuming they still live in that local area – as their immediate local sangha. In this way each local sangha will give and receive to many other sanghas, including S.I. And if S.I. organization and teaching remains high quality, then many people from such sanghas will wish to explore it further, go to seminaries, become SMR’s students etc., but at the local level this is not something which has to be pushed or manipulated at all.
So Rita my concern is mainly with local situations, which includes individuals. But there is a mandala-wide principle involved with dealing with local energy and situations so it is germane to larger discussions/contemplation. And yet the thing about local situations is that their primary concern is just that: the local, immediate situation. It doesn’t have to fit like a precision-engineered cog into a centralised, para-local spiritual machine.
It is a fundamental systemic flaw for most of us to keep buying into the paradigm, or to put another way: just trying to set up similarly structured centralised machines albeit led by different individuals won’t really change anything.
It’s a center-fringe thing. The center should not control the fringe, although there can be an energetic – if formless – connection.
What about individualism, which CTR decried, one might ask.
Well, I think that is more a Shambhalian remark in terms of overall society. Denying that individuals journey on a path and have to work very hard as individuals is just playing semantics. As CTR himself said in an early seminary: enlightenment is the most personal experience one can have. An individual is a form of ‘local energy’ as well. There has to be room for individual/particular/local creativity and freedom of expression and manifestation to be considered a full aspect of our mandalic expression without the need for over-arching control from the top.
And we have to see things that way ourselves versus projecting this centralised view onto the leadership.
~ Ash on March 12th, 2010 10:07 pm
“Suart: I said enough. It’s not about individuals – the story – but a dynamic”
It’s about behaviour which is repugnant to the precepts, individuals notwithstanding, to wit:
Question: Is the Sangha assembled? (by the reciter).
Answer: Yes, it is (by the monk in charge).
Question: Is the Sangha united and harmonious?
Answer: Yes, it is united and harmonious.
Question: Why has the Sangha gathered?
Answer: To recite the Bodhisattva precepts.
Question: Have those who have not taken the precepts and those who are not pure left this assembly?
Answer: In this assembly, there is no one who has not taken the precepts, and no one who is not pure. (If there are, they should be asked to leave and the monk in charge should say: “Those who have not received the precepts and those who are not pure have left.”)
18. On Serving as an Inadequate Master
If instead, the disciple of the Buddha fails to understand even a sentence or a verse of the moral code or the causes and conditions related to the precepts, but pretends to understand them, he is deceiving both himself and others. A disciple who understands nothing of the Dharma, yet acts as a teacher transmitting the precepts, commits a secondary offense.
23. On Teaching the Dharma Grudgingly
If a Dharma Master, on account of his extensive knowledge of sutras and Mahayana moral codes as well as his close relationship with kings, princes, and high officials, refuses to give appropriate answers to student-Bodhisattvas seeking the meaning of sutras and moral codes, or does so grudgingly, with resentment and arrogance, he commits a secondary offense.
25. Unskilled Leadership of the Assembly
After my passing, if a disciple should serve as an abbot, elder Dharma Master, Precept Master, Meditation Master, or Guest Prefect, he must develop a compassionate mind and peacefully settle differences within the Assembly — skillfully administering the resources of the Three Jewels, spending frugally and not treating them as his own property. (70) If instead, he were to create disorder, provoke quarrels and disputes or squander the resources of the Assembly, he would commit a secondary offense.
40. Discrimination in Conferring the Precepts
Anyone who understands the explanations of the Precept Master can receive the Bodhisattva precepts. Therefore, if a person were to come from thirty to three hundred miles away seeking the Dharma and the Precept Master, out of meanness and anger, does not promptly confer these precepts, he commits a secondary offense.
45. Failure to Teach Sentient Beings
A disciple of the Buddha should develop a mind of Great Compassion. Whenever he enters people’s homes, villages, cities or towns, and sees sentient beings, he should say aloud, “You sentient beings should all take the Three Refuges and receive the Ten [Major Bodhisattva] Precepts.”
If a disciple of the Buddha does not wholeheartedly teach and rescue sentient beings in such a manner, he commits a secondary offense.
~ The Brahma Net Sutra
HOMAGE TO VAIROCANA!
Stuart, interesting although first it is guidelines for a monastic sangha relating to mahayana precepts – except for the last statement which basically accords with my thrust.
Also, if we are getting slightly ‘legal’ on this, in terms of my story the situation was that I had discussed with students of the summer program if they would like something a little more structured viz. the BuddhaDharma path that also would serve as a more solid introduction and training period for anyone interested in taking refuge thereafter. If I remember correctly there were about 10 interested and several said they already would like to take refuge, which I found a little surprising, actually. In any case, I asked to have a refuge ceremony scheduled for towards the end of the course in early December or thereabouts.
After this request, it was determined by the PTB that my class should not be allowed to proceed, so then I asked for an Acharya to come to Sydney to give Refuge vows anyway since some had already expressed interest. The response was for an Acharya to offer refuge for those who wished to travel up to Kalapa Valley where he was for a couple of days (can’t remember why).
Fwiw, I personally didn’t like that idea because this was a forming Sydney sangha and I wanted the vows to take place in Sydney as a way to formally launch a sangha in Sydney which is not Ingonish. One of the people – who had been seriously interested in the dharma for many years before meeting any of us – went up and took refuge. Nobody else did.
So refuge was not refused. But also many people who had expressed interest in continuing group practice and study and one teacher who had expressed interest in teaching were told to hold off. I can’ t remember; may be there was another class later on.
But soon thereafter I found it too upsetting to be around the group or anything to do with the formal organization because of previous issues spanning many years, this being just the last straw.
I have tried a couple of times -briefly and sincerely – to reconnect, but after the last one doubt I shall ever feel inspired to do so again. I wish them all well, but simply cannot identify with it any more nor recommend others to get involved. Simple as that.
One symptom of the sort of dynamic I find unworkable is that although I would express ideas or make requests, I never got a direct reply to any letter or from any authority making the decision, only second-hand very quick messages, like ‘ the class shouldn’t happen because it is not in accord with the new curriculum; refuge can be offered at Kalapa Valley.’ But no dialogue with anyone. Again, I choose not to work with an organization which regards and treats people that way. The only person who I have found good to work with, albeit briefly, was President Reoch who was polite, concerned, intelligent and followed through. But that was dealing with a hangover from the past and after it was finally settled, I felt both relief and a desire to never get entangled again.
This leaves me in the position of basically not even keeping the Refuge Vows though, except on an inner level, and that is of concern.
The Bodhisattva Precepts held by the Dharmaguptaka schools are equivalent to the Bodhisattva Precepts held by the Mulasarvastivada schools because all precepts are derived from the Three Bodies of Pure Precepts, but primarily because all Precepts are rooted in intent.
The Brahma Net Sutra contains a body of Precepts held within the Dharmaguptaka (Mahayana) schools. One equivalent body of Precepts held within the Mulasarvastivada (Vajrayana with a Mahayana view) schools is found as follows:
Root Bodhisattva Vows
modified, March 2002, from
Berzin, Alexander. Taking the Kalachakra Initiation. Ithaca, Snow Lion, 1997.
URL: http://www.berzinarchives.com/web/x/pdf/?type=pdf&path=/web/x/prn/p.html_1670202483.html&__locale=en
Secondary Bodhisattva Vows
Alexander Berzin
August 1997
URL: http://www.berzinarchives.com/web/x/pdf/?type=pdf&path=/web/x/prn/p.html_1644091757.html&__locale=en
Buddhist monks take pratimoksa vows, of which there are two hundred fifty-three. But ngagpas, with their tantric vows and the samayas [commitments], there are a hundred thousand they have to keep in their mental level. It’s about practice in every single moment to keep all this and not engage in non-virtuous things.
~ The Venerable Khetsun Sangpo Rinpoche (1921-2009 C.E.)
If you keep your refuge vows, then all three vows-pratimoksha, bodhisattva and vajrayana-are subsumed there.
~ The Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche (1924- C.E.)
Ash, your story about Refuge really saddens me. It’s similar to others I have heard, but saddens me just as much as ever. And truly makes no sense.
This too is so familiar to so many: “One symptom of the sort of dynamic I find unworkable is that although I would express ideas or make requests, I never got a direct reply to any letter or from any authority making the decision, only second-hand very quick messages, like ‘ the class shouldn’t happen because it is not in accord with the new curriculum; refuge can be offered at Kalapa Valley.’ But no dialogue with anyone.”
To Ash’s suggestion to loosen control and proactively supporting local initiatives.
That is what was going on for a number of years after Trungpa Rinpoche’s and then the Regent’s death. Announcements told people to take initiative and experiment with how to present dharma and Shambhala teachings, depending on who was there, local situations, whatever worked, etc.
But that rein got decisively yanked in. It’s hard to say exactly when, maybe during all the name changes. Maybe when it was decreed we are (presto-chango!) Shambhala Buddhist. Whenever, for some time the central authority has taken much more active charge of things. ( think this was when Reggie Ray set sail, btw.)
See Bill Karelis’ reports. I was also told there had been a purge of groups and centers. People deemed in some way not up to snuff received letters informing them that they were no longer members of Shambhala International. Some groups lost, according to what I heard, 30% or more of their body. And I know a number of people who received letters during that time, informing them it was assumed they had reneged on their samaya and should herewith return all vajrayana materials and texts. The ones I knew had never taken samaya with SMR. (The active threat was withdrawn after some advocated negotiation, but nothing was done about the damage done.)
In our local situation central authority took an active and aggressive role, causing more problems than we had prior to that involvement. Our choice, as we resisted things we knew were not on the up and up, was made very clear: either we obey a man who had lied manipulated and bullied us, or we could no longer consider ourselves as associated with Shambhala International. We couldn’t bow to such authority. We each received a letter, with implied legal implications, informing us we were no longer allowed to tell anyone we were associated with Shambhala International. The official who lied to and manipulated us is still an active and respected official of the organization.
My point here isn’t to elicit sympathy, or to stir up anger. This is more in the way of a warning. You should know that assumptions you can just shift things a bit with a few casual suggestions is probably naïve, and carries risk. The centralizing of authority within Shambhala International is something that has been concerted and intentional. It is not a slow accidental drift.
My contention has been that this is due to a joining of political and spiritual authority into a single institutional entity. Until there is some ability on the institutional level to discriminate between an individual’s spiritual work and on the other hand individual and community political engagement, it will be very difficult for the wretched masses to have any influence on such a highly centralized authority in any meaningful way, much less get heard.
In the inspiration that separating the chaff from the wheat is something best left to farmers and millers and people who make bread. Politicians have really no idea.
“The Bodhisattva Precepts held by the Dharmaguptaka schools are equivalent to the Bodhisattva Precepts held by the Mulasarvastivada schools because all precepts are derived from the Three Bodies of Pure Precepts, but primarily because all Precepts are rooted in intent.”
…
“If you keep your refuge vows, then all three vows-pratimoksha, bodhisattva and vajrayana-are subsumed there.
~ The Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche (1924- C.E.)”
Thanks, Stuart, I needed that!
Actually, this has been my view on all this. If I look into my heart, I know my intent has not changed, only the context of living, which is now outside any official ‘sangha’ organization. One doesn’t take refuge in organizations, however it would be good to have companionship on the path with other living people. Partly because it is considered illegal to offer classes and foster people becoming refugees in turn at your immediate local level, and because I live in areas where there are no official sanghas (and have largely done so since 1992, so obviously a choice on my part), this is a pity.
However it is not only because of a personal story about this, but also because I feel that this sort of situation is the one where the legacy of CTR, or simply the Buddhadharma altogether, should spread: organically, humanly, from person to person. That is the natural, ordinary front line. Our institutional policy of closely monitoring and guarding that front line, or at least the behavior of any operating there, is deeply unfortunate.
This goes back to my beef about Shambhala Training. Whether one thinks the program should remain the single main delivery system or not, and assuming it is (though I gather maybe it no longer exists as such), without a large number of Level I’s which feature open talks on Friday evenings, it too remains remarkably isolated/buffered from this front line and can in fact serve more as a barrier than a gateway.
In any case, this dynamic of working with situations and people naturally and freely in local/conventional society is very important on many levels.
James, good post, thanks.
I don’t want to discount the strong thrust of what you say/report above viz centralization being deliberate, the conduct of officials etc. I mean that and believe I understand well.
At the same time, I think most of it is due to mistaken views, or an overly rigid mindset, and often manifested by people who have a hard time thinking and feeling for themselves, listening to their own hearts, following their own paths. I have no doubt that when ‘in the administrative saddle’ years ago I did the same thing, although I would not have been able to see it at the time and most certainly would have denied doing it if being challenged (which never happened).
But any mindset – especially one ‘held’ by a follower-type, can change literally in moments. So as solid as the centralised mindset edifice seems, it is essentially no more than a thought, and thus essentially empty of any solidity or permanence. It can flip quickly, is what I am saying.
I am beginning to come to the view from my interchanges here that my interest in local affairs, so to speak, is ‘on the money’ in many respects, and that perhaps the best change that could happen for S.I. is one that neither depends upon or is managed by S.I., namely by individuals on the local level just doing what they do without linking back to any central authority. That is easy to say, and not all that hard to do. But ‘politics’ comes into it once you have people regularly sitting and studying in terms of when and how they and you relate to an officially existing S.I. group, since clearly they are an organ of CTR’s heritage, and presumably you will have been communicating about CTR’s teachings and path. This is why I continue to feel that S.I. itself should just sanction something free-form like this, allowing for a distinction between what they are doing as an institution, and what individual students in local situations are doing on their own initiative, but not making that distinction into a pro or con bone of contention.
In other words, they can encourage and give ‘permission-blessing’ for such dharma activity without attempting to control it in the slightest. It would take a simple statement in the Shambhala Times or whatever, three or four lines long. That is also what I mean about how this whole problem is really just a giant thought, a mara, moreover a mara arising – as all do – on a fault line of awareness. That fault line, I am suggesting, is what happens on the local individual level in terms of manifesting/sharing Buddhadharmic presence and teachings in everyday life, and in such a way that group practice and study therein become a natural and accepted activity on the part of any who feel inspired to foster it.
Just a little flip. A thought.
Suart, in terms of keeping Refuge: something happened to me whilst at Kalapa Valley ten years ago. Simply put, I started seeing Cape Bretoners as part of the wider sangha. There are perhaps elements of delusion and wishful thinking, but with everyone I meet (throughout my life) I always have the sense that there are several levels of being, as it were, and on the innermost level we are all basically good buddha minds, and on that level we are all ‘sangha’.
But that is a very loose definition, I suppose, and certainly not to Jamie’s taste!!!
Still, it helps when in non-sangha communities. And also it is a view held intuitively, not conceptually. But that is an inner dance going on with all encounters, I find. That dance is the sangha principle, at least for me.
They also have their own inner gurus, gods and demons who are paying close attention to every word and gesture, similarly on a rather deep, intuitive level. Perhaps one could go so far as to say that even blades of grass here are paying attention, and communicating, as well. Rocks and trees, animals and birds etc.
Still, nice to read the formal expressions you excerpted. Thanks.
~ Ash on March 13th, 2010 9:52 am
…part of the wider sangha…
Countless spiritual views and paths are contained in the 3 vehicles which are variously enumerated by various schools, but By O-rgyan-jigs-med-chos-kyi-dban-po (Dpal-sprul), Patrul Rinpoche, one could include Non-Buddhist views and paths and Dzogchen, so that the list of 9 would then look like this:
Dzogchen
Atiyoga
Anuyoga
Mahayoga
Yoga
Upayoga
Kriya
Bodhisattva
Pratyeka
Sravaka
Non-Buddhist views and paths
From The Hua-Yen [Avatamsaka] school, the interconnectedness of all things:
Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra (Brahma), there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each “eye” of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number. There hang the jewels, glittering like stars of the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number. Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring.
Thank you, Ash, for your contemplations of the non-Buddhist sangha and for this wonderful quote on the jeweled net of Intra. This is one of the images that Joanna Macy has been using for decades to teach about ‘interbeing’ and the interbeing of Buddhism and the web of life. One of her students/colleagues wrote the following, which I thought you might appreciate:
Taking Refuge In Earth: Summoning The Earth To Witness by Cynthia Jurs – When we recognize all the parts of the whole Earth in community together, all the great diversity of life, all living in relationship to one another, we have Sangha right here in front of our eyes, in all the ten directions: friends, enemies, young, old, rich, poor, 4 legged, 2 legged, winged, finned and growing roots.
http://www.joannamacy.net/engaged-buddhism/107-takingrefugeinearth.html
Yes, the phenomenal world as guru, the phenomenal world as “all the books one needs”.
When we first came to Crestone, an amazingly alive place, very primitive and spacious, it was to follow yet another lama and his teachings, and they were wonderful and important, a whole month of Dzogchen ,Flight of the Garuda…. Or Radical Dzogchen that cut away the last of our dream-like fantasies superimposed on the authentic dharma, and that is always free and always without cultural overlay.. Tibetan or otherwise.
And then something started to happen, the non-essential fell away, the provisional became like an old pair of shoes, that wore out, from the wind, and the sun, not by anything we did.. We stopped chasing the next program, or the next hierarchical sangha, even the next external teacher, that always disappoints. It’s suppose to because it is always the phenomenal world that is the real teacher, trying to cut through our imaginary conditioning and wake us up. How long have we ignored it, to follow yet another fantasy!
So now, it was the trees, and birds, the wind and the sun and the rocks, the tiny ants, and the clouds passing by, that were speaking to us, filled with the drala of basic goodness, and we stopped believing that only buddhists had the answers, there were Avedic practitioners that we could talk to , easier than buddhists, the latter who mostly seemed so involved in the never-ending “improvement program” and chasing lamas. It became comical. Now it was ordinary magic that had always been here always calling us back from our thoughts of the past and the future. No longer believing that we had to be “improved,” or that someone else, or some group outside of us had the answers, was like a dropping a 500 lb weight we had been carrying for decades.
If a teacher or situation isn’t unequivocally pointing one in this direction, it is a total waste of time.
Nicely put, Chris.
I think the prime – if not the only – purpose of a spiritual lineage institution is to provide support in view and practice for those ‘on the path’ and to offer a conduit for those who could benefit from such view and practice to others who find such a path helpful. There are many naturally emergent aspects such as sophistication, efficiency, financial viability and ownership of assets, leadership training and continuity etc. but at the core that must be the main mission, rather than survival for its own sake. I imagine that all institutions, whether in public, private or familial sector, oscillate between the latter two thrusts. Human nature.
Such oscillations, like movements of the mind, can serve to help auto-correct. Sometimes they have to vary far from the mean in order to be perceived. I suspect that is what is happening with the ‘problematic dynamic’ which has inspired the creation of RFS, for example (which could perhaps be characterized as an institution over-attention to the inbreath and not enough relaxing and dissolving on the outbreath!).
In any case, I still believe that over-centralisation depends as much on initiatives from the leadership/centre as it does upon the projections of the followers who yearn for clear leadership, consistent support and so on.
But this perception too is constantly oscillating, both in general and among various pockets of any given population.
Every sort of group or institution has its own specialised language with which to conceive and articulate its mission, be it a business corporation, a family business, a spiritual lineage, a political system. And within each such framework there are always oscillations involving how well or poorly the center-fringe dynamic is attuned to the underlying mission, moreover evaluating whether or not the mission itself needs fine-tuning in order to adjust to changing circumstances, and even more tricky affair demanding deep levels of accumulated wisdom on the part of all involved.
Without any institutional continuity, it is unlikely that any of us would have encountered the dharma via a fully trained and processed guru-human to the point of being able to take the phenomenal world as guru, at which point the external guru becomes unnecessary as guide or support, albeit one might find oneself returning the favor to others, albeit in usually a more simple way in accord with one’s level of compassion, wisdom, discipline etc..
And yet if the lessons learned within an institution do not enrich individual life and how that manifests within society as a whole, but especially one’s own local situation, then it is becoming a one-way street, which is never good for circulation.
And so it goes.
I think in terms of a spiritual institution such as the S.I. community and foundation, that the fringe is an area where the dissolve happens most, in the moments where a yogin cracks a joke whilst buying groceries at the counter, says good morning on the subway and so forth. Such fringe level dynamic cannot and should not be controlled, and just as various levels of sediment in a container tend to produce fairly clear gradations but yet the finer the particles the less clear the delineations, so also the closer we are to the fringe the less clear should be the doctrinal and other form-related ‘containers’ presented. (This is the challenge presented by the Shambhala Training container, for example, which moves quickly from Friday night into a highly structured, spiritually condensed container, a great leap from fringe to inner in a matter of hours.) Generally speaking, we seem to have had too much of an institutional tendency, including our own view of the path, to create far too much boundary between ‘us’ and ‘not-us’ whereas what is needed is a far more vague, ordinary and spontaneous approach.
My teacher said that part of the purpose of spiritual community is to aggravate you, frustrate you, and disappoint you.
I really hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate hate that.
I remember one woman who said she never felt so lonely as she did when she was in spiritual community. When she’s off on her own she doesn’t feel the least bit lonely.
These are issues that I’m chewing on at the moment. Which is both joyful and painful.
Chris, your last post expressed a lot of how I feel lately. I too have little interest in chasing the next carrot. I put it like this.
Old dogs don’t chase much.
I have job so I don’t chase money much.
I have a wife so I don’t chase women much.
I have the 9 yanas and transmission so I don’t chase gurus much.
Ash’s post deals deals more with what we do after we get our little taste of nirvana. Do we pull the ladder up after us? I say hell no. How we can use the skillfull means of the yanas to help others is still a very open question to me.
David, well said. The Dharma is precious. One seeks out, and finds, given the right set of circumstances, the appropriate skillful means. I am glad to know that you have what you need. You certainly got there through seeking out that complete view, until you had such understanding. But those who have yet to develop such a complete view, when looking to attain what you have, aren’t necessarily chasing carrots. What was it like for you when you were twenty?
Dear David:
Thanks, I think we make effort to be genuine, that ‘s the only way we could be helpful.
Cheers,
Chris
~ Suzanne Duarte on March 13th, 2010 1:16 pm
COSMOLOGY
A variation on this pattern can be found in Vasubandhu’s famous
Abhidharmakosa. In this framework, the earth sits atop six cold and
six hot hells. A huge mountain called Sumeru is located in the center of
the earth, circumscribed by four continents. An enormous mountain
range surrounds the entire system, thus maintaining the oceans in
their integrity. Above the world, gods and other heavenly beings dwell
in two categories of heavens: Desire Heavens and Form Heavens.
According to the Theravada treatise Abhidharma-kosabhasya, at the
end of the Kalpa (eon) of Destruction, all beings, except those whose
root of merits is destroyed, are reborn in the Abhasvara heaven, the
second meditation (dhyana) heaven, where they will reside throughout
the duration of the kalpa of emptiness. Those beings whose root
of merit is destroyed are reborn in the hells of other universes. When
the merit of the beings in the Abhasvara heaven is exhausted, they
descend to be reborn as men. They still have all the characteristics of the
radiant gods of the Abhasvara heaven: they are made of mind, feed
on joy, radiate light, traverse the air, and continue in glory. Gradually,
the earth appears as a kind of foam on the surface of the primeval
waters. It is a savory earth (ti-wei; prthivirasa), which tastes as sweet
as honey. One being of greedy disposition smells its fragrance and
eats of it; other beings follow suit. With the eating of the savory
earth, their bodies become grosser and heavy, and their radiance
disappears. Thus are born the sun, moon, and stars. As the savory
earth disappears with beings’ attachment to it, earth cakes (ti-ping;
prthiviparpataka) appear. As beings become attached to their taste,
they too begin to disappear, and forest creepers (lin-t’eng, vanalata)
appear in their stead. These also disappear with beings’ attachment
to them, and rice /wheat spontaneously begins to grow. Being a still
grosser form of food, when beings eat this grain, some of it remains
undigested and their bodies produce wastes. It is at this juncture in
the process of materialization that beings first become differentiated
sexually. One being of a lazy nature begins to store up rice for future
consumption, and others, fearing that there will not be enough to go
around, follow his example, With this, the rice begins to disappear
and cultivation becomes necessary. The people then divide the land
up into fields, but since some steal rice from others’ fields, they elect
a ruler to protect the fields. Thus the process of social differentiation
begins.
THE SEEKER’S GLOSSARY OF BUDDHISM
2nd Edition
Updated and Enlarged
1998
Sutra Translation Committee
of the United States and Canada
New York ~ San Francisco ~ Niagara Falls ~ Toronto
URL: http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/budglossary.pdf
Gentle Flower:
Find a teacher that is always pointing you in the direction of “inner guru” unwaveringly , and who demonstrates genuineness.
When it comes right down to it, CTR’s teachings , all the time, were about being genuine.
Chris.
Hi Gentle Flower, Yes, at 20 I still needed to chase a lot carrots. I don’t regret having done so. I needed those carrots and so do lots of other people. That is why I say we cannot pull up the ladder behind us. Those yanas provide a lot of skills that are usefull even from a fruitional viewpoint because fruiton is not nirvana, it is bodhisattva activity.
Ash, Ash, Ash…
I truly hope you get a life soon. Far, far away from this blog.
Yes, I know, the Cape Breton winters can be tough, bleak, grey, and often seemingly unrelenting. But, there is always the audacity of hope…
Please, go have a wee dram, or three.
Sit back, and relax. Step outside. Breathe in the fresh Cape Breton air. Go for a walk. Have a yarn with a neighbour.
And then have another wee dram.
And then…
Enjoy your life!
Life is short.
David, thank you, i agree wit you completely. I think that it will be a particular challenge for the Sakyong as he begins to bring along a generation that will have been talk this particular Shambhala Dharma without the contrast that I have had. I also think that the Mahamudra teachings and Kagyu sadhana practices can provide tremendous ground for the directness of werma. Personally as I have seen things shift, the people coming along behind me are doing just fine. That being said, I think that while establishing the Shambhala Terma path in its completeness is important, but it is also important to promote the continued practice of the Kagyu and Nyignma lineages. But time takes a while. I actually think it will happen. I do hope that you continue to be inspired to practice the Dharma
Ashley,
For your amusement, my definition of sangha was something I was cornered into by many heated discussions telling me how I must regard this or that person as sangha, regardless what they had done, the implication being always that because they were ‘sangha’ therefore I was somehow wrong to see their actions negatively.
It was either find a definition for sangha as ‘third jewel’ that didn’t demand I go blind, or adopt a dogma that, in light of some of the things encountered, would border on psychosis. I later found some confirmation in readings about the term.
Of course, there are mistaken views, false models of human behavior, and mindsets overly rigid. I’m not referring to garden variety neurosis, something we all encounter and to some extent create ourselves every day. That’s all easily accommodated within the notion of sangha, when we are nevertheless on the up and up, which in my experience is the vast majority I encounter. But there are some very viscous people out there.
I know of, for example, meditation meetings at which no one meditated, organized in order to gather people and inflame hatred against other members. If anyone considers that sort of thing sangha activity, well, maybe we have nothing to discuss. I have to draw the line somewhere; for my own sanity, and in order to be able to maybe warn people caught in that kind of weird dynamic. There is no sane reason to consider whether that sort of thing is sangha activity. Telling people it is, would be cruel or sadistic.
It’s apropo you described the problem of creating groups locally, and then needing an organization or something larger to relate to in order to provide a further path. That is the bind we ran into. There was really no reason to continue any group activity under the shadow of having been decreed ‘non shambhala’. It became tangibly a disheartening dead end, worse than doing nothing.
You have made the point that we work with group dynamic when working with community. Obviously, but there are dynamics of groups which are not at all scalable from individual experience, hence our individual practice is not in any direct sense what’s required.
Centralized control doesn’t flip. It will by nature resist that. All the members of any group or administration won’t gap all at once and take on a new direction, as might be possible with an individual (if he/she were open to it and working towards that). In a society, institution, group or whatever, a mindset or dynamic becomes something which is carried by the culture, so-to-speak, and not the individual alone. As such it becomes somewhat independent of any one individual’s intent.
Change in an institutionalized mindset would require an open and public concerted effort by the PTB, that would be demonstrably not just PR. We would all feel such a change like a fresh breeze blowing in over the ocean. As small as the change might seem externally, everything about how the mandala now works would also change.
In the inspiration that sometimes it is a political will that is required, not a spiritual practice.
[Hello Chris, El Herrero Viejo, gentle flower, James, Ashley, Ashoka, Rob, David, Stuart, Suzanne, Michael, Rita, Robert, Divine Lake, John Tischer, Mark S, Alison, Madeline, Mark Sz, John Perks, Andrew, Jim, Davee et al…
WEEP AS WE SOW
We shall be like apocryphal seagulls
Hundreds of miles from the Pacific
Who arrive as locusts mince the crop
And eat up all the locusts for lunch
So shall we eat samsara for our lunch
Sowing our tears as rain on drought
We shall declare a permanent truce
And the news will all be good news
[from White Clouds, Samurai Press, 2009]
Beyond Bondage and Liberation
“….When performing meditation practice one should think of it as just a natural function of everyday life, like eating or breathing, not as a special, formal event to be undertaken with great seriousness and solemnity. One must realize that to meditate is to pass beyond effort, beyond practice, beyond aims and goals, and beyond the dualism of bondage and liberation. ”
From “The Way of Maha Ati” by Chögyam Trungpa and Rigdzin Shikpo, in The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, Volume One, page 463.
James,
I appreciate what you wrote.
El Herrero: well said! Point taken. Building an oven will involve many hours outside and much heavy lifting, both of rocks, mud and other phenomenal paraphernalia, but also of ‘wee drams’.
James: very well said. Fwiw I don’t consider any of my remarks to have been in disagreement with yours, esp. viz ‘sangha’. There are many different contexts and aspects with all these things and just as this thread is entitled ‘differing views and paths’ so also are their differing views and processes/paths in relation to terms like ‘sangha’. We have not been trying here to have a totally tightly contained discussion about one particular aspect, rather bopping around a general topic.
In any case, as we know in life and from dharma study, there are always two (or more) poles or axes around any worthy topic, often echoing the ‘not too tight nor too loose’ expression.
In working with others there is group energy; with group energy you need a balance of form/structure/leadership/yes-no hierarchy and openness, formlessness, spontaneity etc.
That is why there are two sexes to create new life, perhaps.
For a slightly playful version of the Creation Story above, from my never-really-birthed blog from years ago:
http://samsara-nirvana.blogspot.com/2005/07/birth-of-our-world-fanciful-version.html
As to Ashley’s comment — viewing non-Buddhist Cape Bretoners as sangha — I have coincidently been reading some of Suzuki Roshi’s books lately.
In one passage I particularly liked, Suzuki Roshi says: “Before becoming a Buddhist, there are Buddhists and non-Buddhists. After you become a Buddhist, everyone is a Buddhist, even the bugs.”
Jim: good one. But: except cats, I believe!
Buddhist “Community” vs. “Sangha”
Perhaps everyone is Buddhist but everyone is not Sangha then.
One may properly refer to oneself as a member of the Buddhist “Community” but one may not properly refer to oneself as a member of the Venerable or Noble Buddhist “Sangha” without some form of ordination.
This is a widely spread misunderstanding in the western hemisphere.
The Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism has two ordained Sanghas:
(1) Gendun Marpo – the Red Sangha of monks and nuns.
(2) Gendun Karpo – the White Sangha of ngakpas and ngakmos.
Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s early teachings introduced the concept of “buddhadharma without credentials”. In teaching on refuge vows, CTR emphasized that taking refuge had nothing to do with joining a “club” or “signing on the dotted line”. Instead, it was a vow to give up territory, to “become a refugee”.
He also trusted us with transmissions and practices normally reserved in Tibet for ordained practitioners.
So our community’s sense of sangha as a lay sangha rather than an ordained sangha is not a “misunderstanding”. It is an understanding that comes directly from our teacher.
Jim, I agree. My sense is that in Buddhist terms at least, one is a member of our sangha who has taken Refuge and feels that this community, to which they pay dues ideally, is their particular ‘home’ that way. Shambhala is another thing and not sure what that is either in the old days or today.
Out of the blue someone from Sydney called today to give me the current calendar of events. They are still having weekly meetings and about 15-20 people are attending regularly and there is an acharya weekend soon. So that means the group has continued and even grown. Good for them! That person told me that they had started practicing again around Shambhala Day, which is what happened to me suddenly as well. Maybe something is in the air?!
I was thinking this morning about dis ‘n dat, and the rather uncomfortable contemplation unfolded – not for the first time – of how really one can make a good case that CTR himself f’d up rather royally – how else would he?! – in many ways. If one takes the simple logical line that one can judge the man by the fruits of his actions, and if the sangha he engendered around him is one of the principal human fruits, then clearly by the late eighties only a couple of years after his death, things weren’t looking all that great.
Going a little deeper into that, it seems to me that one can date the stalling of momentum to around the 1980-81 period during which so much happened that I can no longer recall the exact sequence, though usually am good with that sort of dating cognition: ‘the fall down the stairs’ event, Werma retreat with terma, Sakyong Empowerment, death of HHK, first of several serious rounds of illness for CTR, potential attack of Hanneman (?) with armed security for a while (us) with help from Boulder police, visit of HHDL and the mysterious ‘dark protector’ threat, birth of Ashoka, departure of Rome and Perks and finally Lady Diana’s move to Willowstream Park. After this rather brief but intense period, things never really ‘recovered’, whilst through all this the finances of the foundation were in more or less continuously worsening decline, if not outright dysfunction. VROT, a brilliant teacher, was found more on the golf course and other samsaric playgrounds than in the teacher’s chair, whilst the public teaching of CTR diminished to only occasional lectures or initiatives compared to his output in the seventies; growth and institutional momentum had already stalled at this point.
There are many theories as to why Perks made his move to NS. I know the real reasons, but suspect that underneath these was a simple frustration on his part that, being head of Purnachandra and given the lack of financial resources, he realised that in order to have an actual vessel under in the command, he would have to raise the funds himself, hence the establishment of ‘The Great Ship’ Inn in NS. Not even a pocket submarine (as far as I know, but then one never knows…) was forthcoming, however, although good fun was had by all.
CTR’s manifestation was increasingly inner and secret level but his influence throughout the mandala undiminished. More and more titles, roles, ranks, rituals emerged. One can argue that seeds for the karmic long haul were being planted, but on the surface less was going on, the ambassadors were gradually leaving the main Dharmadhatus whose numbers had not changed for many years, with a couple of exceptions (such as NYC, though perhaps that growth was in the late 80′s early 90′s?).
So in terms of perpetuating what was established, what is that exactly? If it’s a no-growth small group clustered around a brilliant vajra master, essentially the sort of rare mahasiddha one finds once a millenium or so, how is that to continue without that particular guru on the throne?
My discomfiting contemplations on this often end with the bemused, and reluctant, conclusion, that it all started compacting shortly after the Shambhala initiatives which ended up splitting the agenda; indeed, they might very well be the instigating reason for VROT’s decreasing activities as a teacher in the US, esp. viz. drawing in new students. He found himself the Prime Minister in a Monty Python version of a tantric Gilbert & Sullivan production starring a Tibetan Mahasiddha. Being an Italian American more comfortable with true opera, it is understandable that his ability to play Lord High Chancellor was somewhat compromised! He was playing a part for which he lacked the requisite Oxonian accent! He didn’t belong on that stage which increasingly had less to do with American culture and the times, and more to do with a self-contained and containing kingdom cult. He played further and further afield, all the way to the Pacific which is as far West as a true-blue American can go.
Anyway, in terms of looking at ‘the current situation’ or decrying various problems perceived, it is perhaps also helpful to remember that things were not always all that great in the ‘good old days’, or far from perfect and unblemished, put it that way, no matter the impeccable luminosity, brilliance and unwavering samaya-realization of the principle character.
Dear Ashley,
Will you send me your email address? Cliff and I want to come visit you.
I don’t know what Cliff is thinking, but for my part *!* I want to lay eyes on that oven.
Yours,
Madeline
Ash, those are interesting ruminations.
I also think that they only really come into perspective when you are far enough away from the organization (and in this case the time period too…) that you can have some panoramic view. To an insider what you just wrote could easily be viewed as heresy.
To add to what you said, my personal interest in CTR’s teaching was about the meditation practice aspects – on both the Buddhist and Shambhala side – and not about the political ones. I guess I felt that if practice was entered into fully, the politics would sort itself out or fall away. So I could certainly be labeled as lacking in devotion…. at least political devotion!
Madeline: ashley.kos@gmail.com.
Michael: well, it might be panoramic, but no doubt tinged with idiosyncratic myopia. The point, I guess, was that whilst there may very well be serious issues to be dealt with now, I am not sure I buy a thrust that seems to imply that there was a picture-perfect legacy that is being driven in an incorrect direction. Perhaps there was never a known or intended direction on any relative level, although surely there was a seed principle at work, a seed which would grow into a particular type of offspring, albeit exactly how that offspring would later learn, grow and manifest is as uncertain as the destiny of any individual after birth; and this sort of mandalic endeavour has far more characteristics and variables than any single individual.
Something like that.
~ Jim Wilton on March 16th, 2010 9:57 am
Again, “our community’s sense of” vs. “sangha”, to wit:
“So as a lay sangha rather than an ordained sangha is not a “misunderstanding”. It is an understanding that comes directly from our teacher.”
Yes, “buddhadharma without credentials”, seminar series, circa 1976, when Rinpoche’s teaching at the time was about “slightly missing the point”.
~ Ash on March 16th, 2010 1:44 pm
Again, “our sangha” vs. “this community”, to wit:
“Jim, I agree. My sense is that in Buddhist terms at least, one is a member of our sangha who has taken Refuge and feels that this community, to which they pay dues ideally, is their particular ‘home’ that way. Shambhala is another thing and not sure what that is either in the old days or today.”
If you keep your refuge vows, then all three vows-pratimoksha, bodhisattva and vajrayana-are subsumed there.
~ The Venerable Gyatrul Rinpoche (1924- C.E.)
MULASARVASTIVADA SCHOOLS
THREE ROOT PRECEPTS
THREE ROOT PRECEPTS – Mahayana
(1) Do not what is evil,
(2) Do what is good and
(3) Be of benefit to all sentient beings.
THREE ROOT PRECEPTS – Hinayana
(1) Do not what is evil,
(2) Do what is good and
(3) Keep the mind pure.
Notes:
(1) All sets of precepts, including the Bodisattva precepts, are derived from the Three Bodies of Pure Precepts, the root precepts in Buddhism. These precepts may in principle be administered to Buddhists in lieu of the full set of Bodhisattva precepts.
(2) The Mahayana Three Root Precepts are similar to a formulation in the Pali Canon, except for the last clause which reads in the latter, “Keep the mind pure.” The difference highlights the altruistic emphasis of Mahayana Buddhism.
Ash wrote: Michael: well, it might be panoramic, but no doubt tinged with idiosyncratic myopia.
I would argue that the recognition of idiosyncratic myopia – both of the past and of the present – IS the panorama!!
~ Michael Sullivan on March 16th, 2010 10:30 pm
Indeed the mundane whirl itself is panoramic.
Have experiences by clicking on red hot spots in the panorama. Press and move your mouse on the panorama to pan it.
Use the controls above to play or pause the panorama’s movement, zoom in/out and control audio.
http://tibetgame.com/
Ash,
Man Ashley, what a depressing view. Thinking of death much lately?
The assumption that anyone criticizing Shambhala’s state is comparing what’s happening with a rosey nostalgia from the past is cartoon like in its characterization of criticism. This has been used in one way or another to discount what any criticism is about. You are not the first student of Trungpa Rinpoche to forget. It’s a red herring, It is also riddled with hidden assumptions, some false.
Too many to get into, but one example: the assumption of the need for exponential growth. We were told at a coordinator’s gathering in 2000 or so, “Shambhala is like a baby; if it doesn’t grow it will die.” and were then asked if we were on board with SMR’s goal of one million members by the year 2010.
This is an economic model of exponential growth required for investment transposed onto our community. (If a publicly held business doesn’t have at least 5% or more growth, investors will pull their investments to place it in higher yield stocks, and the business crashes, even if it’s doing fine by the people who work there and who use their services.)
While choices made have created a burden of debt in which growth may be a financial necessity, nevertheless given the state of the world with exponential population growth in a world of finite resources (end of oil), the model of exponential growth will, if we survive the next collapse, be looked back on as a destructive dinosaur. There is a lot of work going on, at this point only theoretical, exploring steady state economies. It will happen or we will destroy ourselves.
Even if choices made have created a legitimate need to swell membership, there are ways to attract students which are in harmony with dharma, keep it genuine and alive, and ways that are not.
More better faster now, is almost by definition, not what dharma is about.
(cont.)
Maybe it’s just my silly nostalgia, but changing all the cultural landmarks, rituals, and even practices, making the tradition that had been carefully planted by Trungpa Rinpoche old-fashioned by decree, thereby marginalizing the previous generation, these and many more choices which ought to give pause, are not mistakes Trungpa Rinpoche made.
Comparing current problems, which are happening right now and could be worked with, to what are perceived mistakes in the past, is… what exactly? It’s as nostalgic about the past in a negative way as anyone is in a positive way. You are not the first student of Trungpa Rinpoche I have seen turned in this way Ashley.
The problems that exist now in the community are something quite new and not something that is being compared only to our communities’ past. You can compare it to anything that is happening in any organization today, or throughout history. Compare it to the absolute monarchy in Nepal, (our partner in showing the world enlightened society) which ousted over 100,000 people in order to keep their culture pure. Compare it to other situations in which religion was the central government, to absolute monarchies anywhere, to functioning systems for conflict resolution and justice anywhere, to a lineage that respects culture and tradition anywhere. If you want to compare, please look far and wide. There is a world of examples. If you look at only Trungpa Rinpoche’s example then look at what he started with and what he worked with. Get into it in full detail, and don’t just drag out the controversial stuff. Yuck. Double yuck.
There were also a number of dynamics under a vajra master that worked in a situation in which 99% of all members were involved to be his student. That dynamic no longer suffices to hold together a larger community or society.
This may have been part of the drive for the Shambhala Terma, wherever it came from. It’s very clear to me that a society based on direct student teacher relationship within the vajrayana tradition, is an impossibility in modern complex societies. The concentration of populations makes the number of people too vast for any one teacher to reasonably and responsibly fulfill that role. That Shambhala seems to have made that the basis for our sense of community identity is not a mistake Trungpa Rinpoche made.
That perceived pressure of needing exponential growth would predictably morph the use of any religion or spiritual practice into a force or tool for social engineering.
“The assumption that anyone criticizing Shambhala’s state is comparing what’s happening with a rosey nostalgia from the past is cartoon like in its characterization of criticism.”
Cheap rhetorical trick: I never ‘assumed’ that ‘anyone’ etc.
‘need for exponential growth’. ditto. I did not state that. I did – in the contemplation above which was not advertised as an entire view but rather a line of thought worth considering within the context of the conversation here – discuss how there was a lack of growth and income which led to financial dysfunction and which began long before CTR’s death. In previous posts I have ruminated on the apparent overall ‘design’ of our mandala, postulating that it designed for a far larger population. (A million is more like it, but I was thinking more like 100,000 to start!)
In terms of growth, and substituting the more reasonable ‘perpetual’ for the hyperbolic ‘exponential’, making a parallel between more people meditating and becoming more grounded and gentle with Peak Oil/big business exploitation is structurally flawed as a thought. Suggest a re-think there.
Your second post has more worthy points. Re: “Comparing current problems, which are happening right now and could be worked with, to what are perceived mistakes in the past, is… what exactly? It’s as nostalgic about the past in a negative way as anyone is in a positive way.”
I was not comparing so much as pointing out that if people are making the point that a legacy is being ruined, what exactly is that legacy that is being ruined? Cataloging some of the challenges of the time was supposed to illustrate that there were many problems, most of which were never resolved, and which therefore by definition are part of the legacy. Furthermore, the point was made that the legacy itself, being a societal mandala, was bound to keep changing in the future just as it kept changing in the past whilst CTR was in the saddle.
Personally, I agree with you about the chants and suchlike. Those changes affected my sense of continuity and connection. I don’t like them.
Re: “If you look at only Trungpa Rinpoche’s example then look at what he started with and what he worked with. Get into it in full detail, and don’t just drag out the controversial stuff. ” With respect, I don’t think I got into any of the ‘controversial stuff’ at all, rather basic practical things or historical progressions that tend to be glossed over. Your last points about vajra master Shambhala inspire a second reply/post!
Finally, I think it best to keep ad hominems out of these interchanges.
Re: “There were also a number of dynamics under a vajra master that worked in a situation in which 99% of all members were involved to be his student. That dynamic no longer suffices to hold together a larger community or society.
This may have been part of the drive for the Shambhala Terma, wherever it came from. It’s very clear to me that a society based on direct student teacher relationship within the vajrayana tradition, is an impossibility in modern complex societies. The concentration of populations makes the number of people too vast for any one teacher to reasonably and responsibly fulfill that role. That Shambhala seems to have made that the basis for our sense of community identity is not a mistake Trungpa Rinpoche made.
That perceived pressure of needing exponential growth would predictably morph the use of any religion or spiritual practice into a force or tool for social engineering.”
Well, I think this is a very important issue and thanks for raising it again. However, first I find some of the above a little conflicted logically, or perhaps just incomplete. These are, after all, just comments on a blog, not doctoral theses.
Point 1: assuming some sort of growth, the population is bound to become too large for a single vajra master with intimate connection to each student, well summarized with: “That dynamic no longer suffices to hold together a larger community or society.” Agreed.
Point 2: then: “This may have been part of the drive for the Shambhala Terma, wherever it came from ” leading to: “That Shambhala seems to have made that the basis for our sense of community identity is not a mistake Trungpa Rinpoche made.”
It seems to me that first you hint that perhaps the reason for Shambhala was to provide a larger societal container than the single tantric master model. But then you say that was not a mistake he made, a statement which seems to contradict the first, but the stuff in between does not explain this transition, rather repeats Point 1 again, namely:
“It’s very clear to me that a society based on direct student teacher relationship within the vajrayana tradition, is an impossibility in modern complex societies. The concentration of populations makes the number of people too vast for any one teacher to reasonably and responsibly fulfill that role.
Perhaps before I blather on, you could clarify what you meant there, since I have a feeling it didn’t come out on the page quite the way you meant it.
Re the concluding sentence: “That perceived pressure of needing exponential growth would predictably morph the use of any religion or spiritual practice into a force or tool for social engineering.” I find it a bit of a leap to go from the need for ‘exponential growth’ to ‘social engineering’, but structurally I believe you are correct in that a growth agenda can morph into undermining the underlying spiritual agenda which itself has no bias towards growth, income and suchlike.
But that sort of moral hazard is a given in any spiritual organisation, even one that is just trying to survive over time, let alone grow, so sort of a moot point.
The vajra master model versus Shambhala model discussion is one I hope we can pursue a couple of beats longer here.
Dear Ash
Yes I agree we should have growth-afterall its an enlightened society that we are playing with as a concept in our minds and hopefully soon in reality.
But how to do that – SB to me could just become another Buddhist school not a revolutionary force as it was meant to be with the original Shambhala teachings when it appealed to secular and religious people of all persuasions.
Yes the whole thing will morph as time progresses but I think shambhala still has to appeal to the masses out there away from the present SB developing.
There are just so many ways that CTR’s teachings on shambhala can enter into the common culture by way of Art and business for example – I think we are missing the boat on a lot of these most basic edifices of a society.
I dont even think you need SB to get to a taste of what is in a religious experience because that will come from the basic sitting practice I believe and the rituals that develop in each country, nay even locality as you say.
Have you taken a look at Chronicle Project where the discussion is leading to comparing the shambhala teachings to shinto (hope everyone is reading up on shinto) thats a very interesting input to the debate. Could you give any more input on this yourself.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Manchester UK
Rita, don’t know much about Shinto, but my impression is that its relevance here is that it derives from a tradition that ‘worships’ the ‘local deities’, aka ‘kami’ aka ‘local drala principle’. Shinto, which I believe is barely practiced as a religion any more, permeates Japanese culture, or perhaps we could say that the religion known as ‘Shinto’ is a reflection of a deep, cultural lineage in the Japanese ‘soul’ which manifests ubiquitously in so many ways that are associated as ‘Japanese’, such as their visual clarity and precision, a certain aesthetic in pottery, fabric, construction, sword-making and so forth. Even Zen is an obvious blend of Buddhadharma and Shinto-derived perception/culture. As such, it is a national (as well as perhaps natural) type tradition which is inseparable from family and national culture.
As to the various religions business: back in the mid-90′s, if I remember correctly, a Rabbi went to Kalapa Assembly; also in Europe there is a lady whose name I don’t recall (sorry to you/her) who worked for many years in the S.I. office and is a practicing Christian who not only went to Assembly, but if I recall also took Refuge and did not regard the Refuge vow as a conflict with her Christian path. This was a very ‘serious’ Christian too, i.e. involved in a contemplative denomination actively, not just someone born as a Christian who vaguely believes in “God’ and ‘Jesus’ etc.
I must confess that when she told me she had taken Refuge I found this a little strange and wondered how either side, so to speak, could feel comfortable with this. But she clearly was – or seemed to be – in that she was highly loyal to both traditions and practices.
Now all this was just before the Shambhala-Buddhist development which seems to have gone much further in the past couple of years, but my take on this it that it has not so much changed anything as more clearly expressed what was already going on in that ‘we’ are one community and for one community to contain two separate paths that are mutually exclusive sort of doesn’t make sense. SMR put it succinctly many years ago saying that he didn’t see how he could wear two crowns at the same time (or was it have two heads?). It is a fair point, I think.
Fwliw, my sense of ‘Shambhala’ is that it is indeed very close to Shinto in that it is primarily a vehicle of cultural awareness/perception. Based on the clarity/heart/prajna that is developed by sitting practice as the prime common methodology, nevertheless it can be expressed in no end of ways. And yet: there has to be some sort of common core, and not just organizationally speaking, since otherwise any manifestation of basic goodness anywhere could be said to be ‘Shambhalian’. Now perhaps this is somewhat true, but on the other hand, if taken in too broad a context it also becomes meaningless, just as saying that any ‘visually precise and articulate expression’ is Shinto. It’s not.
That’s where the local deity principle come in. And it is connected to place. Which is why the NS initiative is important I trow.
Dear Ash
Thanks for your thoughts on Shinto –thats what I got briefly from my research also
It seems from what Mr Neutral posted on the Chronicle project that CTR thought the shambhala teachings were more like Shinto –yes and I think this would indeed fit in with the Nova Scotian situation as the land there is what shall we say raw and unindustrialised to a degree.
Shinto I have read did in the Japanese context become influenced by Buddhism but it also remained distinct aswell with its own shrines and rituals.
Myself yes I would like the shambhala teachings to come to the fore because they are appropriate for these times but I still dont like the melding of them with Buddhism in a complete sense. HHDKR said they could be separate from Buddhism for example….do you have any notion why he said this or are there people out there who could go into this more.
Also in a sociological sense I dont think western society is really into Buddhism and by inference Shambhala Buddhism as a dynamic of change. People are intrigued by Buddhism but there is not a mass conversion to it as a religion of choice. The Dalai Lama is a revered figure but although he has fostered interest in the meditation process people are not becoming Buddhists en masse. I think this has to do with the guru principle to a large degree-how you will get westerners to tie into that I dont know – to some extent except for a small minority I dont think it is on merely because of our secular upbringing and individualism.
I can see to a certain extent why there is SB but I still think it is the wrong way to go because it still does cut out people at certain points because inevitably of the samaya thingie. I still think it is possible for the shambhala teachings to ‘evolve’ into something like Shinto with their own ‘mystical’ ways to entering into true reality aswell. Yes but where does this leave Buddhism? Well I think you will have to appoint religious lineage holders for that aswell, like the Regent you will have to recognise that that tradition also has to flourish within your society aswell. I dont think its the two crown scenario –could we not see it as CTR saw it as having divergent lineage holders, – anyway I think this is going to happen because a lot of older students are branching out on their own.
Mr Neutral did also say that CTR said there would be shambhala terma –yes myself I think this could be on the cards for anyone to get –who knows what the operation of karma is nowadays! If people practice aka as they did in Asia there might be many sages appearing in all walks of life.
What further can one say? Just that I believe people touch into Shambhala when you talk yourself out of the conversation and are in open space then I believe ‘magical’ things occur.
On another tack I have been thinking of putting the stuff you did on Cape Breton into a standard article and just floating it on the web –as like a gem to see what it would attract. I dunno I think it would float and it would intrigue people –what do you think?
Best from the UK –its slightly warmer here…..
Rita Ashworth
Manchester UK
re: “with the Nova Scotian situation as the land there is what shall we say raw and unindustrialised to a degree..”
There is that aspect (raw etc., aka not over populated, albeit we have lost all the old forests just as have most countries in Europe), but also what I meant is that more than any other region in the world, Nova Scotia is the one where ‘we’ are encouraged to move and settle, and in so doing gradually blend Shambhalian culture with local culture (and vice versa of course). Over time, one would expect to see various particular manifestations of that in terms of different ways of doing things, local situations with particular character and so forth developing gradually over time. Furthermore, it is my suspicion that unless and until we have learned how to incorporate our mandala into existing local cultures that Shambhala will have a hard time getting going in any international context. And that said, in terms of the Shinto theme here, I do think that tuning into local energy, which is a combination of people and physical place and time, is key to building society which attracts drala, i.e. it’s not enough to create para-local intensity-building program mandalas alone, although these are helpful for providing a shift in perception. However, once that mandala is dissolved – when the program ends – there is little connection with the ongoing local situation because the mandala itself somewhat withdrew from that situation in order to muster its own internal energetics. Indeed, I think our reliance on programs to transmit the dharma itself contributes to the ‘funneling-tunneling’ dynamic discussed elsewhere, because that is what is used in order to create strong programs, including excellent ones like the ST 1-V levels.
As to the article, apart from being flattered (and nervous!), please don’t use any of my stuff written hastily here – and mainly for fun – without at least letting me first take a gander!
Dear Ash
Yes that about sums up my connection with the shambhalian teachings which you have just painted.
Its somewhat divorced from the org. view though you would need org. input for it to evolve. In the UK what could you compare it too maybe the Quakers, maybe the Romantic poets, that would be a slight fit. I suppose also in some respects its a return to nature-do you know for example that nature religions are growing in the UK. These are not now on the fringe but are garnering people to them-interesting.
I dont know really re Buddhism in the UK its fringy still and in some respects very middle-class –not a means to transform society perhaps even doing less than Islam in changing the society here. For example I think FWBO has a worthy tag much like perhaps shambhala centres have in the states but they dont seek to push on political issues –even Zen centres are better than shambhala centres in helping people out.
Yes I think how I see it happening is having the shambhala teachings prioritised for everyone first but also with the possibility of having Buddhist lamas of all denominations popping into that if people want to explore that too. There are seven days in the week and 365 days in the year for example to do stuff! If the Japanese can do it aka Buddhism and Shinto why cant we!
Tad over would be building a kind of drala shrine in Point Pleasant Park much like you get oriental art in English gardens that would fit well into the Nova Scotian scene-twee but not twee!
Aka the article – I think you should look back at what you have wrote on this site and paste and cut it with pictures of Cape Breton and then just send it off into the void. People in the world just dont know about the capabilities and promise of the place –people might contact you about it. I think there needs to be more publicity about Cape Breton out there in the world generally for the place to attract drala.
What more – yeh well people I think in the Uk are looking to religion to explain things to them more than they used to but as I said I dont think the guru thing is ever going to float as much as it did in the seventies….people want a teacher on their own terms ….sorry yeh but this is the case…so yeh things have to be mellow to a degree….maybe this is because of secularism etc, etc, -but anyway I think it can be worked with may be the seductive quality of the teachings will have to come out more.
Hope to hear some more differing views re SB and shambhala.
Best
Rita Ashworth
posted a comment on the Mains article page in the Chronicles website related to the above:
http://www.chronicleproject.com/stories_176.html
Dear Ash
Man –great article on C.Project – have two house points from me for it!
Where is Margaret? Margaret come back up, come back up, come back up…..the debate is still happening even Mr Chender has chipped in. More chip ins please –keep posting!
Naaaaaaaa…….shambhala is for everyone…..its self evident aka historical process and just being human.
I think the wondrousness of it is waiting for us if we can be silent and as a child see the dragonflys circling on the dirty old canal.
Ash again great words.
Best to you.
Rita Ashworth
Ash,
I may have misunderstood, but…
“…in terms of looking at ‘the current situation’ or decrying various problems perceived, it is perhaps also helpful to remember that things were not always all that great in the ‘good old days’, or far from perfect and unblemished,…”
…says politely and implicitly that people, who decry what’s happening, are probably harking back to better times. That’s generally not the case, though critique is often fended off as such.
Exponential growth: “…If it’s a no-growth small group clustered around a brilliant vajra master, essentially the sort of rare mahasiddha one finds once a millenium or so, how is that to continue with that particular guru on the throne?”
“no-growth” etc. implied to my ear that growth ought to be happening.
Agree a rethink is due. Equating a need for growth of Shambhala International with a baby that will die if it doesn’t is weird on several levels. I didn’t make that up for effect; that specific analogy was used by the presiding acharaya at a seminar for coordinators, when suggesting one million members by 2010 was a target we should consider whether we could accept… or not. Having heard that, I may overreact to talk about growth.
Legacy: Trungpa Rinpoche even outside of his sangha has been referred to as a mahasiddha. Blaming the flux in the social zeitgeist may explain why Trungpa Rinpoche’s approach has been subsumed, but it is also a way of saying his teachings are not being respected as is usually done rather strictly in Buddhist tradition.
With externals like politics and enlightened society, forms of governing bodies, what methods nurture community identity without corrupting basic principles, and so on – there is a lot to be discussed, but I’m not aware that discussion is going on in Shambhala proper.
It isn’t just taste, whether you like the new chants. The chants and a plethora of other cultural landmarks are the footprints, or maybe better the punctuation and grammar, without which language would have no content. When those are changed without regard for current culture, the glue that gives culture/tradition its continuity loses cohesion essential for social continuity. The changes in this realm are also extensive and have occurred largely by decree. The results are right under our noses.
Agree Shambhala would do well to plug into local culture. But, Ash, this regime hasn’t been able to plug into its own community’s culture. What would happen to a local culture if it opened to that influence? It’s a good idea, but the there are some internal dynamics that have me wondering if it has legs.
Controversial was overstated, but the direction of everything brought up had the weight of collapse dissolution and disappointment, and implied that those events as well as the perceived short comings of his senior students are the fruit of Trungpa Rinpoche’s labors. I think that depends on which of many details one chooses.
That I contradicted myself when saying vajrayana can’t be a way to organize a society and on the other hand Shambhala’s goal is to shape society must be a misunderstanding. Blame my writing.
We are agreed that vajrayana student/teacher (v s/t) dynamic can’t be the glue of any large community. Indeed that relationship is not about creating or holding together a sangha.
I suggested that perhaps an inspiration for Shambhala teachings, was because the limits of the v s/t dynamic for organizing a society may have been clear. But that system for organizing society is limited, because it is in fact not a system for that. So I that said wrongly.
Communities do form around great teachers, but what holds them together happens due to many things, probably in uses of the local culture, events, talks, gatherings, gossip, falling in love, eating the same foods, parties, etc. and so on.
Shambhala, as I understood it when Trungpa Rinpoche taught it, was to be an umbrella which could contain not only Buddhism, but other forms of contemplative traditions as well. If it were following that idea, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Shambhala International seems to be using the v s/t dynamic as a principle organizing infrastructure for the community. So as it stands, whatever Shambhala society could be, it is still very much in the vajrayana student/teacher mode.
As you suggested if the teacher is the only reason people banded together, the energy would dissipate when he died.
Is there a way to hold a community together beyond that initial inspiration? Maybe one idea of the Shambhala vision was a way to hold together, not another school of Buddhism, but a society in which the kinds of energies, involving culture and wisdom and inspiration generated by genuine spiritual practices, wouldn’t dissipate after every generation.
In Tibet this was done with the tulku and monastic system, and the fact that Buddhism held temporal power. Maybe that worked OK in a relatively poor and very agrarian society, but it’s unlikely that’s going to fly very far in the West or modern cultures.
Shambhala Teachings may have been a way to crack that rather closed and elitist system, and open it up further, to develop a society in which not only Buddhism but other contemplative traditions could exist without dissipating the energies and wisdom, the culture and landmarks that get created and gathered in such environments. This is very different than the specific teachings or practices given. And I would argue it is less about shaping society as such rather preserving and nurturing the innate wisdom in existing traditions.
In the inspiration of the Rimé movement cubed.
James Elliott wrote:In the inspiration of the Rimé movement cubed.
Hear Hear!
Robin Kornman and I started the “Ad Hoc Rimé Committee” in Milwaukee as a non-organization dedicated to giving people the opportunity to receive teachings on the Nature of Mind, unfettered by lineage politics and financial considerations…. We brought the Kagyu/Nyingma retreat master of Tso Pema, Wangdor Rinpoche, to town MANY times. We had “members” of our little group who were students of CTR, SMR, Chogyal Namkhai Norbu, Traleg Rinpoche and others. No fee for teachings, anyone who showed up got in
James, great posts. Although it might have looked like it for a while, I don’t feel like we have been disagreeing on all that much (though that would be fine) just talking about related topics from different points of view. Nearly everything you wrote in the two posts above resonated clearly with me, in any case.
I like that ‘Ad Hoc Rime Committee’ notion. Good for you! I started the ‘Ad Hoc City of Sydney Revitalisation Committee’, one of whose members was the Mayor. So I like that ‘Ad Hoc’ approach! Sort of like a ‘form is emptiness, emptiness is form’ approach to committee/administrative work!
~ Michael Sullivan on March 18th, 2010 9:47 pm
Exactly and excellent!
The conflict is not at all about “Differing Views and Paths”, which is just a diversionary pretext.
The conflict is all about a lot of repugnant behaviour by red faced beasts who have ruined the Vajrayana teachings (Ralpachen).
Dear James
I have been thinking about your last post re ‘local’ culture and culture generally.
I think when I was growing up I was kind of rooted in the district where I lived in Manchester which was working-class and surburban. The pace of life was much slower as to transport and access to ideas and conversation – so yes it was down to earth but also somewhat uninspiring. Secure, but limiting. Of course the limitingness was blown in the sixties by the music and the rise of Northern cinema
Myself I suppose I turned on to Buddhism because it was ‘cool’, sort of an individualistic thing to do and my interest in literature. So yes generally in the west I think this contrast of sedateness and modernity has been going on for fifty years. It has meant sometimes a loss of connection with what may we say perhaps a slower pace of life.
How does this view relate to the shambhala teachings? Well re experience when I was in NS in the mid-nineties I felt like I had been transported back into time to the 70’s and for the life of me I could not get a Canuck angry about stuff that was crushing them emotionally and practically. I even tried to get some film-maker from Toronto into a ‘charged’ conversation but no go. So I dont know ‘local’ culture –how do you get it when people dont engage you in talk and when conversations are superficial and unalluring.
Yes all the talk of ‘local’ culture in NS seems to me to be tied to where you live, and who you associated with in your locality and perhaps your attendance at church –very church-going society NS-so Christianity does matter there. So yes it was like the UK pre the social revolutions here. What am I saying re locality? Well I think Trungpa chose NS because it is/was on the brink of coming out of its blank state as to stupid, nutso, patronage politics and indifference to the new and the come from aways view of romantic ‘locality’.
Yes what also gets me sometimes is why people lax so lyrical about the environment of NS –sure its beautiful, but thats not why NS is important-why its important is that people actually do want the shambhala teachings there because everything else emotions,work,ideas are so screwed up –there is a below the surface desire and inquisitiveness for change. And it seems to me that you only get a vibrant culture when there is that inquisitiveness there – otherwise you get mundane culture re northern UK pre-sixties. So yes I think inquisitiveness is one of the dynamics for change there.
So culture wise that is a snapshot-but could culture also be changed within each country re the shambhala teachings….yes in the UK I think it is coming down to the way you present yourself in a cultural context, whether you and the teachings seem reasonable and probably ‘deep’ at the same time (Paul McCartney used to joke that John Lennon was ‘deep’). So yes what is the deepness I suppose you could say lungta – how could you manifest that –well I am beginning to think theatre, writing, -the connection to the present in environments.
And I also feel the creation and the establishment of enlightened society in locality may not totally be in the hands of the present administration. Here’s one scenario of how I see the whole thing developing-other centres created by other religions and other movements will finally bring it into being. The Vidyadhara released the ‘energies of the universe’ did not Neal Greenberg say this on his piece on the project, but with these teachings I dont think those ‘energies’ can be contained by the present set-up much in the same way that any ‘new’ religion/way of life can be constrained by its historical background. No the box has opened and the genies are out there what they will transmute into no-one knows I believe. Could be a totally different set-up to the one now manifesting from SI. Deepness of thought, connection could come from a teacher that we have not even heard of yet –yes things are very open and they should be this open –why does not the Sakyong or the acharyas see this also instead of trying to block what seems to be coming from people in an organic manner?
Myself I was on the look-out for a new teacher –a new Tibetan to ‘show’ me the way to life as it could really be but that I think now is a somewhat foolish quest because as Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche said my students will be interested in the construction of an enlightened society – so I have decided to explore this theme more in my own western context, to go back to my roots, own questioning as to what got me involved in the whole thing in the first place –that indeed would be an interesting journey.
Well best.
Rita Ashworth
“Well I think Trungpa chose NS because it is/was on the brink of coming out of its blank state as to stupid, nutso, patronage politics and indifference to the new and the come from aways view of romantic ‘locality’.”
Interesting. I think he chose it partly because of its barely-post-colonial culture, which also explains the lack of complaint or aggression-competitiveness relative to the US. Along with their share of obstacles, Nova Scotians in general have a worthy bedrock culture of their own. Indeed, I continue to feel that they have more to teach us about building enlightened community/society than we they, and until we ‘get’ this, we will continue with the mentality of being a ‘chosen people’ who convert others to our superior ways, thereby maintaining a manipulative distance versus really blending in and really tuning into local energy fully. That said, many members in Halifax and elsewhere over the years have done just that, and admirably so.
In terms of the arts: I was roasted in a bar Thursday night by a chap who runs an arts movie series – for 8 years now – and who hilariously grilled me in front of many people about the Shambhala-Buddhists; he was turned off by rude behavior in the Abbey, and he finds the notion of a secret army of para-military Nazi Buddha-Soldiers totally reprehensible. (I argued with gusto that his description was reasonable EXCEPT the kasung was not, nor ever had been, secret! At the same time I confess I was miffed an old friend had dragged into the conversation about a movie we had just seen the totally irrelevant fact that I was a Buddhist; certainly not something I wanted to bring to conversation, and I thought the way he dismissively poo-poohed the whole thing was quite appropriate from his pov, esp. since I am not really in the mood to be the spokesperson / defender of a group in which I am no longer an active member!)
Generally, I have found that the business class is more open to us because the story is that we bring in lots of money, meaning they are not interested in meditation, rather projects; whereas the arts people are typically leery of religious cults of any stripe, including ours, and many of them are aware that there have been problems in our community for some time.
Rural communities vary, but there is a reputation from long ago about heavy drinking and orgies and suchlike, so a certain amount of caution there, especially I suspect in those with strong church-going culture, which is quite understandable. Generally, though, it’s a person-to-person dynamic, of course; and in that dynamic, political issues rarely come up.
(And of course, generalisations about such things paint with an overly broad brush.)
Dear Ash
Thanks for the comeback on my post. Yes I agree NS is not as aggressive as America thats for sure!
But I would still venture that there is a lot of secrecy there in regard to some political and social matters moreso than in ‘conventional’ western society. Myself when I was there I associated with a lot of artists who were somewhat viewing their own lives there without rosy-tinted glasses of come from aways. Notwithstanding these views I also agree yes that they were very helpful and kind and also inquisitive about the Buddhist and shambhalian teachings but this natural delight in the teachings was not I believe being fostered as wholesomely as it could be by the sangha there. So even at this time I thought there needed to be more ‘democracy’ happening within the community –that is to really go out and be engaged with people.
That set aside re my views on NS I was thinking in the post to go more into the ideas of what it actually means to engage with others on various projects in a dharmic or shambhalian fashion. I am interested in creating stuff from the ground up without say an overt facilitator or kingmaker within the power dynamic as I think such overtness kills off any kind of creation of magnitude or depth. Perhaps indeed enlightened society comes more from camaderie and collusion than push-pull dynamics of modern capitalism, thats indeed what I have always felt. So I think what is required for such a society is a loosening up of structure, maybe even a direct challenge to structure aswell which could also be supported by an emerging community of meditators. Thats also indeed why I think that teachers from other traditions within the shambhala community are so important to it because they may clue into the directness of basic goodness more acutely than the orgs. foundation people. So I think there will be a progression with these teachings throughout the society may be more so from The Other than the present community. And that is why the whole thing is so interesting because of the idea of progression with the shambhala teachings, so yes the teachings are not static themselves but dynamic, and adaptive to locality, much as is the case with Shinto I believe. But its interesting what would they develop into outside of SI……..I do have thoughts arising in my mind about that but other queries about ceremonies that could evolve are perplexing –how could one evolve new practices from shambhala with Christianity etc, etc –that’s interesting too. Perhaps even more interesting than what is going on in SI re sadhanas at the present time as there is of course more Christians in Nova Scotia than Buddhists!
Yes I am somewhat more intellectually involved with the change aspect of the teachings maybe than others because I think this comes from my background and the injustices I have witnessed. You know the sense of mask, mental twistedness is almost endemic in western society, for example as a writer you do clue into conversations more than you should do so and when I was coming back from work one evening two people on the train were having a talk about playing the game in business and work –playing the game meaning keeping mum. The conversation was quite mad they both agree to play the game, get by, survive and supposedly prosper but the conversation was also monty pythonesque as the playing the game motif ended every sentence. I thought at some point as a listener to this conversation ‘playing the game’ might eventually eat its own tail but unfortunately it did not! I dont know are we all playing the game? Perhaps we should not be playing the game perhaps its time for some risk-tasking and disagreement because playing the game is not now working in the western context and this of course includes conceptions of ‘locality’ and getting ‘it’ from the one true path of unique Shambhala as we know it.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
Rita,
I know what you mean by culture which stifles. I’ve worked in places where I swear the apparent solidity and narrowness of allowable behaviour, which was in some ways a denial system coming primarily from old-timers, cast a visible grey pallor over the psychological environment.
What comes to mind is the idea that practice helps stir things up, not by monkey wrenching them or the culture out there, but rather by what I have heard described as cutting one off from the universal subconscious so one doesn’t unconsciously pander to whatever milieu or zeitgeist, and by de-solidifying one’s own views. The effect that may have on others has, perhaps ideally, nothing to do with individual intent.
‘Local’ culture here seems to speak of two things which you serendipitously mention in your description of life in Manchester. One is geographically local, the other is zeitgeist local (the 60s effect for example.) There’s a lot to explore: what culture actually is , how to nurture community identity that isn’t only geographical, what practice really does, etc..
“Perhaps indeed enlightened society comes more from camaraderie and collusion than push-pull dynamics of modern capitalism,…”
Absolutely! If there is such a thing at all, it will only arise if individuals grok it. A central authority steering the wretched masses, holding onto the reins of power by controlling access and information is so last century it is worth a deep look into why so many seem attracted to that. (Again, for a school of esoteric practices? understandable with risk; for a society? demonstrably divisive.)
However, camaraderie and grass roots versus push-pull capitalism is a misleading contrast. There’s plenty if not too much camaraderie and collusion in trading stocks and bonds and boardrooms.
There are a lot of branches of capitalism, some obviously psychotic, but it’s merely a way to work with money. A system involved in denial or social engineering is not capitalism, it’s the PTB using economics as a tool for some other agenda.
Any society will need an economic system, unlikely to sprout from individualistic grassroots movements or religious institutes. Such systems come out of and depend on networks too complex to invent and vast cooperation or… culture.
Contrast instead an individual’s path towards realization, and an institution’s path. In many ways the comparison is not possible, making it clear at least some notions of enlightened government are far from realistic, and perhaps indicating ways to work with institutions not dictated only by watching the institute’s breath.
I guess the entire gist of this is my pet peeve, the need to discriminate between practices to awaken realization, and on the other hand all the things we need to do to live together in a vast cooperative society, which may actually be thwarted in significant ways by a prerequisite involvement in a particular religion or meditation.
In the inspiration of the ten signs of political quackery: http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/libertarian/101251/2
Dear James
Thanks for your reply. I always value your writing as it makes me think about things.
Yes culture and religion are vast concepts. How am I thinking of them at present? Well culturally I suppose I am not at home with capitalism as it is manifested in the UK both historically and at the present time thats probably why I am looking at ideas and visions that discuss culture in a much wider sense. In a romantic sense I was in love with the beat poets when I was younger so they exemplified some of my aspirations –but of course they do have a background in history too with Whitman and the romantic tradition so I believe people should still study them well. I suppose in general this is why people value ‘rebels’ though they might not say so because they give us other viewpoints on how to live our lives.
I dont know re social engineering –people bring the concept up often but really can you have social engineering without intent –is not that what Buddhist and shambhalian centres are doing because the meditation process you cant get away from it there! Brainwashing in a nice way Trungpa might say – I am only joking!? Just playing with words…..
Yes economics – a tiring subject – the exchange of goods for money and now on a grand scale too re globalisation. Well I do think the creation of superfluous needs has been grokked a bit recently by economic collapse in the world –so generally I think people are re-examining their comprehension of the whole capitalistic system. Perhaps there should be more books coming forth re Schumacher to discuss the whole thing and perhaps SI and other organisations could foster this debate. Myself in the English context I believe things change by debate and growing communal awareness of a better way to conduct your life……slightly a touch more than reformist angle but yes also I am not against revolution if things came to a point as with the 1926 general strike. But yes revolution in the English context I dont think will happen. So change in the UK has a kind of seeping quality aka the development of non-conformist traditions and then those non-conformists going into the political arena and eventually founding socialist parties. Even a gregarious and Machiavellian figure such as Peter Mandelson cant get rid of this non-conformity in the English psyche –indeed he himself said publicly on the BBC that Pinochet had to be tried under the British law whilst here –a throwback to his socialist days.
Yes I think within centres that are based on CTRs teachings there needs to be discussion more happening on economics and politics and how this relates to culture. I dont think like Ash that you can do things totally from the grassroots without some politics entering into the whole equation. But maybe it will be a different sort of politics sort of communal like the politics of Forum theatre that I recently experienced in a workshop with Julian Boal. Latin American ‘rebel’ politics I suppose is greatly influential in the arena of humanistic politics because its middle class elites come into friction with poverty daily
so it would be interesting to hear from people perspectives on this sort of communal politics which might be relevant to the foundation of enlightened society
Best
Rita Ashworth
Rita me darling,Quite a good book about what is happening right now is “Blessed unrest”by Paul Hawken how the largest movement in the World came into being and why no one saw it coming.As me darlin man Chogyam used to say “there will be more than one Sakyong”
Lots of Love
JP P.S.I do remember the order of the good time,
So Drink up me hearties YO HO
I’m partial to pirates. Aside from the goooood things and the baaaaaad things about the “good ol’ days”,
we knew how to party….both elegantly and in full chaos ….even when we were waltzing or doing the “Regent Hustle”, there was a sense (of a sense of something) of real joy. Perhaps that was because our discursive intellects weren’t as sophisticated at the time to come up with Labrangs or derivatives…what not. We were not easily controlled… which some see now as our greatest fault. But if that had not been the case at the time,
it is, perhaps, true that none of the centers would have been built, and seminary would never have taken place at SMC. Orderly chaos, I venture to say.
“We were not easily controlled . . .”
I don’t know. There was a great deal of conformity and very little “free thinking” in what I remember of the “good old days”. I don’t know if that is even a bad thing. We took the lead from our teacher and joined the Dorje Kasung and dressed up in wrinkled army surplus khakis, for god’s sake. And we smoked cigarettes and drank too much — and that was also completely in sync with the conventions of the time.
The biggest difference that I see between then and now is that the students today are generally gentler, less arrogant. I think that is the sign of a maturing meditation tradition. And the maturing is as much to do with the years of practice that CTR’s students have gone through since his death as anything else.
I agree with John — there were moments of real joy when CTR was around. Just as there are moments of real joy in practice these days.
Well I know you two chaps were very wild,but me I went to church every Sunday,so I am very gentle now
Well I’m amazed, you’ve all been talking since mid-2009. I’m so glad this thread is still going, and open. I’ve read perhaps half of it so far, the first half mostly.
But in leaving for the night I saw Mr. Perks mention “Blessed Unrest” – I had to jump in and say yes, absolutely read it, and watch some clips of Paul Hawken, and even go to his collaborative platform, wiserearth.org and look around. I’m sure there’s an eco-buddhist group there, there are certainly many concerned with governance.
I’m a 4-year newcomer to Shambhala with some things to say, over time, here and anywhere in the mandala open for speaking – but it’s late at night and I have to practice now.
I just had to comment to send my great appreciation for this site and the indestructible discussion – I want to hear all of it from you veterans, don’t go away without bearing witness to the past and to these times, accurately and bravely – and thank you all, thank you for the roar
Perhaps conformity is in the eyes of the beholder. If conformity is what was going on for some people, and I can see how some kasung might think that was the idea, but if conformity was all that was going on even there, what pray tell would be the point?
What’s clear is that what was happening in Trungpa Rinpoche’s sangha, in terms of the level and pithiness of dharma being taught, the behavior of Trungpa Rinpoche himself in comparison to any other spiritual teacher of any renown (then and now), the kind of respect he won from people even far beyond the halls of Buddhist teachings, the kinds of people who were attracted, as well as the kind of partying and various encounters and stories around the man, were and remain anything but typical of before times, those times or of now.
And it was not only joyous. The inability to actually conform to our ideas of things in his presence was sometimes difficult and trying.
I wouldn’t have had it any other way.
In the inspiration one can’t conform to space.
Dear Mr Perks
Thanks for the mention of Paul Hawken – I will check his books out –interesting. Myself briefly helped out on an alternative magazine in Bournemouth in the eighties where the emphasis was primarily environmental so I have read some academic works in the past on it. Still though I feel we need to explore politics in regard to the exercise of power as well but what form that power will take in the future I am not sure –hedging my bets on a more communal form of power being exercised. Why suppose may be because of technology and people just knowing more through the educational process about their ‘rights’. I think the rights versus duties is an interesting debate –its a question of engaging people in the democratic process because even your ordinary man or woman on the street in Manchester has twigged into the debates about the environment and political rights. Witness the pure disgust now in the Uk about the issues of MPs expenses and them disabusing the system.
James yes re Trungpa I dont think he wanted us to conform by just wearing the uniforms and following the system prevalent in Vajradhatu at that time rather I think he was always provoking us into using our critical intelligence about how we behaved in the world and how we interacted with him.
To me as an English woman Trungpas ‘conformity’ to standards is just taken as given because I have been wearing uniforms all my life aka at school and going to restaurants and being served a la silver service style….to this day this still goes on in the UK. Indeed by brother who is a catering lecturer used to teach service skills to students in Australia –now that would be hard – I am only joking! No all the standards in UK I think are a kind of theatre –the English and I know this is a generalisation love to play at theatre in all occasions.
So yes space/theatre interesting ideas to play with – do you remember Trungpa’s metaphor of using your mind as playdough –yes sort of stretching it this way and that-think this is how he worked to some extent with space – I think may be this all reflects on the dzogchen and shambhalian teachings in the sense that they are dealing with powerful environments –its funny when you go into a dharma place now sometimes I feel like you can almost chew the environment – its like all your senses are working at the same time. Thats why I am interested in manifesting such spaces for all people to enjoy and feel confident in.
Well I really hope some one can invite Paul Hawken to Nova Scotia and start letting rip his ideas on democracy in the province – I think things need to be stirred up.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Jim Wilton writes:
There was a great deal of conformity and very little “free thinking” in what I remember of the “good old days”. I don’t know if that is even a bad thing. We took the lead from our teacher and joined the Dorje Kasung and dressed up in wrinkled army surplus khakis, for god’s sake. And we smoked cigarettes and drank too much
Did your teacher wear wrinkled clothing, or drop disparaging remarks about his own teachers’ methods?
It’s fun sometimes to look back on periods in our lives when we conformed to the discipline of an enlightened teacher, and to put ourselves down and say how foolish we were. Now that we’re undisciplined (or at least feeling more in control of our life) we can take pride in how hip and sophisicated we are. No more uncomfortable environments, no more challenging situations to test our understanding of the dharma. Whew!
Anyway, it’s one thing to say “I drank too much” but to say that someone else drank too much presumes a kind of authority over that person, doesn’t it? like a parent or babysitter, where it’s your job to judge how much your brother should drink.
Personally, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a person who drank too much, but I’ve met many people who seemed to lack humility, mindfulness, and a patience for irritating situations– whether they were drunks, recovered drunks, or non-drinkers.
The students were almost all hippies. That was conforming to the (then) norm. CTR told them to cut their hair and get jobs, and much to their parent’s surprise, they did! He drank and smoked, so they did. More conforming…
CTR responded to his environment, based on his training and realization. It seems that as a group, the administration and students took all those responses and tried to codify them as “how we should behave always” rather than as responses to a particular set of circumstances.
All those ways of manifesting cut through (as in trekcho) our conceptual notion of how a guru manifests. They were the reflections. We need to manifest his mirror-like wisdom rather than chase after and imitate the reflections….
I’ve heard people on this website say that folks nowadays are not as deluded as people were in the 70s, and that our conceptual defenses are much thinner. Maybe people nowadays are less addicted as well (whether we’re talking substance addiction, workaholism, addiction to narrow views, or any other behavior addiction). And that CTR’s actions were merely ways of working with people in that specific time and place.
I personally am not so sure that people today are more enlightened than people were in the 70s. And I don’t think CTR drank to merely conform to people’s preferences, or to conform to what hippies were doing in the 70s– though in another sense, maybe everything he did was based on accommodation and openness.
But I think he partly drank to offend people’s preferences and their false ideas, as Mr. Sullivan suggested. If we don’t relinquish our false ideas sooner or later, it’s hard to make room for anything genuine to enter our consideration. And then the “dharma” just becomes another ornament to add to our pre-existing belief in an “I”.
“Personally, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a person who drank too much, but I’ve met many people who seemed to lack humility, mindfulness, and a patience for irritating situations…”
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Just saying that you’ve met many people who seem to lack humility isn’t exactly a humble reaction is it? Lighten up. Where’s YOUR patience and humility?
~ Michael on March 26th, 2010 1:50 pm
“What do you mean? I don’t know… I openly express… if someone’s short, I express it as short. If someone’s very tall, I say very tall… Of course, if you create embarrassment, you can’t be saying this. But otherwise, black is black, white is white, yellow is yellow. And that’s it.”
~ H.H. Dalai Lama, September 10, 2009, Prague, Czechoslovakia.
I agree!!! Openly express. Say what you feel. Express your view. Be critical for sure. And accept criticism and opposing views as well, in a mindful way. Grey is grey.
From the Sakyong’s Treatise on Society and the World:
A mandate to Richard Reoch ,which he shared with the community through a recent Shambhala Times article, a”treatise” written to RR in March of 2003:
From the section
On Shambhala in the World at Large :
“We must recognize samsara and not be disheartened by it, but realize that AS EXTREMELY SPECIAL BEINGS, with a gift of wisdom and compassion, we need to offer our gift to others in whatever we do, in each moment of every day”.
Extremely special beings? What? You can read this yourselves , this is actually said in the treatise, go to Shambhala Times under Sakyong and Family section. And scroll down to “The Sakyong has something For you”. I guess Richard thought this was something he wanted to “share” now, something he has carried with him for inspiration daily, since 2003.
I also watched a recent video at the Aspen Institute, moderated by “deep pockets” benefactor/venture capitalist and Sakyong promoter, Jerry Murdoch, entitled “Music Technology and Community, a 50 min video of SMR and company of VIVA PEACE, one of SMR’s projects with Murdoch where SMR could not sit still for even one minute, scratching his head, fiddling, drinking from his water bottle more than 1/2 a dozen times, no eye contact, looking bored out his mind, while others were talking (so much for calm abiding when its not a Buddhist audience). More importantly, he lets Jerry Murdoch introduce him as “Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, the Head of the Nyingma lineage”. What? Did I hear this right? I did. I let myself be tortured by watching this 50 minute video to see if he ever corrects this, he never does.
Just a few interesting tidbits that are out there, in the larger PR world of SMR and Company.
April Fool’s day is coming up. There is plenty of humor in this situation. Send your contributions to courtjester, for publication in the Humor section.
- Court Jester
I read the article about the treatise. You need to give him some credit. If you’ve ever traveled first class, you would know that it takes “an extremely special being” to leave first class to go back to the coach section. And that’s what he did to dictate the treatise. That’s what humility and compassion is all about.
Ridicule, I agree, is the best antidote to insanity. However, this “Treatise” is so interesting, I am glad I read it, because it moves me from inference, i.e. the inference that Shambhala had become a theistic cult, to actually seeing the “view” of “ Basic Goodness” to be promulgated by RR’s leadership , in the organization and society of Shambhala. . which confirms it is a theistic cult. Of course, it was written by someone else for the Sakyong. If you can listen to his talks, this is not “his voice.” But it is probably his view.
Here are some excerpts that are not ambiguous on this:
“The Basis of Shambhala Society is exemplified by the word “sangha” or “gendum”…And this means “those who follow virtue”: (I guess “not lying” is no longer considered a virtue but anyway..) and the “magical element, to engage personally in a social transformation that will lead to a betterment of society.” In this Treatise, what Shambhalians should be “keen on” is the “hidden meaning” in the word enlightenment. And what is that? It is to “cleanse and purify, to generate and increase”. Further “those who are members should be “functional, practical, and energetic” individuals. And those who wish to “generate enlightened society,” should have the “wholehearted motivation to cleanse and purify” their own “outlook and action.”
Who are these older students of CTR that actually went along with this and helped him write up this Treatise on the view of Shambhala? What happened to them ? They couldn’t have written this.
To continue:
In this “view” of Shambhalian society, (i.e. a mishmash of hinayana Buddhism and Basic goodness, i.e. ShambhalaBuddhism, that sounds even more frightening when you see it on paper, as it has been for some of us when we have seen it in action), members of Shambhala are exhorted to have the “constant responsibility to be generating compassion on a daily, weekly and monthly basis”. They must “abandon” aggression (another hinayana remedy) “striving, TOGETHER, to build ( and build-out) a peaceful , harmonious society.
Those who are members should also be “functional, practical, energetic individuals.”.
Get out the Wagnerian music!
It continues on:
“those of us” (presumably the “extremely special people) , “who are inspired by that approach (i.e. to basic goodness) “gather together and try to extend the common bond we feel about conducting our lives based on GOODNESS and VIRTUE” to others.
Lucky world to have this extremely special bunch come and save them.
Anyway, I usually glazed-eyed read the rhetoric that comes out on that Shambhala Times, but I decided I would be more attentive to what was actually written in this “Treatise” in 2003, that Richard Reoch and the other captains and architects are using for their inspiration to steer the “ShambhalaBuddhism ship.”
God help them when they get to the dark retreat part of the Scorpion Seal.
Chris.
What was so powerful about Level I Shambhala was its immediate gate into “primordial purity.” It had the flavor, from the beginning of emptiness , clarity , and unobstructed energy or compassion. The latter, or third word that strikes the vital point is “unobstructed energy,” beyond acceptance and rejection, beyond good and bad. Whatever arises in the phenomenal world can be liberated, but liberation can only happen if you aren’t deciding, at the outset, what to accept and reject.
This was the flavor, this fruitional view, whether Buddhism or Shambhala, all the way through all of Trungpa Rinpoche’s teachings. It is terribly sad to read this “narrow path”, interpretation of “basic goodness,” and to realize this is what is now being promulgated in Trungpa Rinpoche’s name. Everything he taught, everyway he manifested was fruitional ; it permeated all the teachings, because of who he was , and his realization, whether it was hinayana 101, or sadhana practice, or the Blue Pancake.
It’s not o.k. to be indifferent about this, if people know this is not what he was teaching, and this certainly is not an “expansion” on his teachings on Shambhala.
This Treatise, more than anything shows how you cannot mix Shambhala and Buddhism together. Not in the beginning, not in the middle and not at the end. It detracts from both, and narrows and distorts CTR’s teachings on both. It is such horrible disrespect, and a further attempt to “sanitize” him.
It is also not fair to people, and would be a bait and switch if there is really any teachings left of the Vajrayana in this mandala, let alone Trekcho and Tobgyal. We knew , from the beginning , that our path wasn’t going to be all harmony and “nice.” So we were always forewarned.
Dharma means passionlessness. Passion is holding on to yourself, so passionlessness and egolessness are the same thing. When you become a dharmic person, you are fully soaked in the dharma — in the softness, gentleness, and reasonableness of it. Your whole being is completely ripened with dharmic capability. We can actually see the differences between a dharmic person and a nondharmic person. The dharmic person usually speaks with awareness and mindfulness and softness, whereas the nondharmic person usually shouts or jumps up and down and is always nervous. Those are the differences we usually find, quite literally, between our students and the world at large. Our students are not loud. They are less frantic, and we find that their composure is always at its best. We can see this even walking behind them on the street. I always take great pleasure in walking down the street, seeing who is buddhist and who is not buddhist. It is always obvious in the way people walk, in the way they conduct themselves, and in the way they talk to others.
Virtue is the idea that we have been talking about all along. It is the basic goodness that you are able to develop. It is the sense that you are a worthy person, a healthy person; that you have the potential to attain enlightenment; and that eventually, you are buddha in person. Whatever words we use, such as worthy person or good person, those worlds all have some meaning behind them.
“I always take great pleasure in walking down the street, seeing who is buddhist and who is not buddhist. It is always obvious in the way people walk, in the way they conduct themselves, and in the way they talk to others.”
Davee, I can’t agree with this, not at all. I know so many non-buddhists who fit your description here of a buddhist, and I also know buddhist practitioners who are far from your description of them (including–and probably more frequently than I realize–myself).
Yes, Davee. You are part of the “extremely special people” who are better than others, who can take “great pleasure” in discerning , walking down the street, who is one of you and who isn’t. There have been other members of groups like yours, who walked down other streets, discerning who was “one of them and who wasn’t.”
This is not Trungpa Rinpoche’s vision of Shambhala. But thank you for demonstrating the “fruition” of the view that you have been practicing under SMR better than I could ever communicate.
When you mix Hinayana Buddhism with Shambhala view, you are in danger of confusing the individual “narrow path” of “abandonment” and rejection of the passions, with a blueprint for “purifying” society as a whole.
What could eventually be seen through as a tyrannical, individual path of dualistic cultivation of virtue, destined to fail, is instead “projected” onto society as a whole. So there is no chance of cutting through this delusion of believing you can “fix yourself.” For now you are no longer just trying to “fix” yourself, but are now trying to “fix” the whole world with your dualistic view of purity. The split between the “good” you and the “bad” you is now projected “outside” of you and consists of those that are on the path of the “Pure and the Virtuous” and those that are not , that need to be “fixed.”
This mixing of a buddhist path of individual, self-liberation with a view of creating “enlightened society” is “planting the flag of insanity” projected upon the world.
I find this a very frightening distortion of both Buddhism and Shambhala vision.
For Chris by serendipity, speaking of fixing…
from The Three Levels of Perception
Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, Nov 15/16, 2003 – Pt 5, 7:15 – 11:56]
http://www.sakyatenphelling.org/ under recorded teachings:
…
Recently I spent some time with my father [Thinley Norbu Rinpoche], and my father is considered a great mahasandhi master. And for so many years I didn’t really formally receive teachings, but I went there this time to ask for some teachings. Of course, most of his teaching is in the format of scoldings and criticism and all that. But something he said really struck me for days, for months, really put me into another world and really made me think for days.
And after that, I really really appreciate his words that came out of his experience – you know, not just being a scholar, you know in Tibetan we call it [Tibetan] scholar or learned, disciplined, and kind. I think many of us are attracted to a learned scholar – I mean that’s already quite admirable, please go ahead – but we should be more admiring of those who are disciplined AND learned. But these two qualities can still be forgotten, we can still bypass these two if you meet someone who is kind: and kindness comes through experience.
So anyway, one thing that my father said was – pointing at me he said,
“You will never achieve enlightenment in this life because…”
And I was sort of surprised and you know stunned, and he said,
“…do you know why? Because you’re so rational, rational, you are trapped by so-called rationalism”.
And that is so true because all the time every time I do what I do so that people will not be upset, so that people will like me – almost so much so that sometimes I do things so that people will praise me. You know we try to do like somebody points a camera at you and then you do like this because that’s what rinpoches are supposed to do, you know like smile a little bit, you understand, and if you are bare chested you immediately try to cover it…
All this is…basically it’s a vanity, it’s a vanity…it’s a complete show, it’s hypocrisy, nothing inside, all you’re trying to do is behave nice so that people will like you. You are deceiving yourself and you are deceiving others. And do you know where this comes from: thinking that Dharma is a good discipline or a good morality or a fixer of problems in our life. We have to transcend this.
So what should we do? Well, use any teachings such as the great mahasiddha Virupa’s, the great Sakyapa master’s pith instructions… So instead of having such kind of motivation, what kind of motivation should we apply: motivation to change, alter, re-arrange our perception… We have impure perception; we have impure perceptions because all our perceptions are stemming or coming from ego, jealousy, pride…all our perceptions: our friends, our enemies, Rolls Royce, legs – all these are impure perception, because it stems from hope and fear. It comes from you know wanting to fit into the society.
I have a good example. I have used this many times and I will use it again: it’s like wearing a tie… [11:56]
Davee writes:
Dharma means passionlessness
For you. But are you a student, or a guru? Are you a realizer? If one is a student, then hopefully we are open to having our own misunderstandings continually undermined. Rather than holding onto some idea that makes us feel better than everyone else, that makes us a bigger asshole than we were before we’d ever heard the word “dharma”.
Here is another view on passion and dharma:
The man of understanding is not entranced. He is not elsewhere. He is not having an experience. He is not passionless and inoffensive. He is awake. He is present. He knows no obstruction in the form of mind, identity, differentiation and desire. He uses mind, identity, differentiation and desire. He is passionate. His quality is an offense to those who are entranced, elsewhere, contained in the mechanics of experience, asleep, living as various forms of identity, separation, and dependence. He is acceptable only to those who understand.
Unfortunately, I found the person who wrote this to be very offensive. But at least he had some balls, some guts. Chogyam Trungpa was his favorite Buddhist teacher, I believe.
“When you mix Hinayana Buddhism with Shambhala view, you are in danger of confusing the individual “narrow path” of “abandonment” and rejection of the passions, with a blueprint for “purifying” society as a whole.”
Chris, thank you for the utter clarity of your explanation.
From DKR’s teachings posted by John Castlebury:
” You are deceiving yourself and you are deceiving others. And do you know where this comes from: thinking that Dharma is a good discipline or a good morality or a fixer of problems in our life. We have to transcend this.”
Thank you Chris and John and others for your repeated reminders of the way we (I) use the dharma to fortify my solid sense of self. It is so dangerous. I studied and practiced for years with this view until I started studying with Reggie Ray and got a true flavor (read: kick in the ass) of Trungpa Rinpoche’s unique presentation of the dharma: dharma WITHOUT spiritual materialism and WITHOUT theism.
Even if we are studying with a teacher who has recognized and transcended spiritual materialism and theism (as I think is the case with my first teacher, a Tibetan Nyingma lama), those attitudes are still so rife within Tibetan Buddhism and our own western culture, that it is difficult to avoid falling into the trap.
I am taking the Sutrayana course with Reggie right now, even though I previously studied the Hinayana and Mahayana intensively with my first teacher. But studying and practicing in Trungpa’s lineage is so VERY DIFFERENT than the way I studied and practiced before. I listened to a talk by Reggie last night on the practices of the bodhisattva. A brief excerpt:
“These six paramitas are not external practices; these are not things that now you are going to do because you have taken the bodhisattva vow. These are the requirements of your own human heart. And these requirements are going to begin to manifest themselves in your lives. You are not doing something separate from yourself and it is so important to understand that. We live in a theistic culture and people tend to relate to religious practices as if they are separate from themselves and as if, by doing the practice, then you become a good person. That’s theism. And you will find maybe ninety five percent of all the Buddhists you meet practice in that kind of theistic way—that it’s something separate from themselves. But in our lineage what we say is that the six paramitas are the requirements of the heart and they will call to you not from the outside but from inside.”
To Davee I would like to say this. Please be careful about judging others who you view to be loud, frantic, nervous, jumping up and down shouting, and not composed. Not only is your judgment of what constitutes “dharmic” behavior harmful to others, it may be harmful to you. I swallowed a lot of my human emotions for many years, trying to fit my thoughts and behavior into some perverted notion of what it meant to be “dharmic”. (You could easily substitute the word “holy” here, as well.) I paid a steep price for this. I wish you well.
Theresa
Dear Yeshe:
Thanks for sharing Reggie Ray’s teachings on Sutrayana.
Thank goodness that he and a few other Western teachers are continuing Trungpa Rinpoche’s stream.
I was happy to hear that he had over a hundred students at his last dhathun.
Cheers,
Chris.
Sorry did I forget to attribute those? Here let me fix that:
“Dharma means passionlessness. Passion is holding on to yourself, so passionlessness and egolessness are the same thing. When you become a dharmic person, you are fully soaked in the dharma — in the softness, gentleness, and reasonableness of it. Your whole being is completely ripened with dharmic capability. We can actually see the differences between a dharmic person and a nondharmic person. The dharmic person usually speaks with awareness and mindfulness and softness, whereas the nondharmic person usually shouts or jumps up and down and is always nervous. Those are the differences we usually find, quite literally, between our students and the world at large. Our students are not loud. They are less frantic, and we find that their composure is always at its best. We can see this even walking behind them on the street. I always take great pleasure in walking down the street, seeing who is buddhist and who is not buddhist. It is always obvious in the way people walk, in the way they conduct themselves, and in the way they talk to others.”
– Vidhyadhara, 1982 Seminary, Mahayana section
“Virtue is the idea that we have been talking about all along. It is the basic goodness that you are able to develop. It is the sense that you are a worthy person, a healthy person; that you have the potential to attain enlightenment; and that eventually, you are buddha in person. Whatever words we use, such as worthy person or good person, those words all have some meaning behind them.”
– Vidhyadhara, 1981 Seminary, Mahayana section
If you look at other places where he talks about virtue, it’s usually in the mahayana section actually. And he usually connects it with gentleness and nonaggression, and not giving in to paranoia interestingly. He even says that we have a lot of goodness, lots of sanity, lots of healthiness to offer the world when discussing virtue. These are in the talks about paramitas.
And thank you for inspiring my studies, again. Occasionally on this site someone says something, in particular about a term and how its usage may have changed over time, and sometimes that inspires me to dig in deeper and find out what the teacher actually said; precisely said. So this site is sometimes an inspiration for me to study dharma. I appreciate that.
Dear Chris
Thanks for your post on the Treatise.
Interesting the quote about ‘extremely special beings with a gift of wisdom and compassion’ under Shambhala in the World at Large heading –sounds a bit like pr speak to me –think maybe the Sakyong did not write this on his own maybe from this quote but got advice on it. Its too kind of splashy, sentimental and come all the faithful for me-plus like you say its definately not where the ‘concept’ of basic goodness is at re just seeing your world as basically good without accepting or rejecting whats happening in it.
At this point in the proceedings in the ‘growth’ of Shambhala I would be sending in the grandees of CTR to really advise the Sakyong about how hes doing much like the grandees of the Tory party went into see Thatcher.
I dont know we have had the Mains article, the Loppon/Mermelstein initiative re the vajrayana and even Michael Chender stating on the Chronicle project that yes people dont want to see SMR as their guru and thats ok for Mike re the shambhala teachings. I think if things continue in this manner maybe with a few more articles people in ‘the’ world and not the shambhala world at large will be definately staying away from Shambhala Inc. Surely the Acharyas must be clueing into this, any reasonable politician in the UK would certainly be posing lots of questions re future scenarios.
I dont know the whole thing reminds me of the religious bubble and picture games that Ludwig Wittengenstein used to philosophise about – you are in that religious world that you have constructed with simplistic pictures in your head.
I wonder how much more stuff is going to come out before there is a real meltdown. Certainly over this side of the pond I have had emails from people who were formerly very honcho about SI but are now stepping back. Is SI rescueable? I really dont know – could a concerted effort on behalf of the Acharyas stop the rot? Dont know myself I would not want the karma of all those people going into those dark retreats three years down the line.
Well best and thanks again Chris for posting the stuff on the Treatise.
Rita Ashworth
Ah, identifying the source of the statements after people react! Now that wasn’t very nice! But it was very instructive (funny really) to see the pontificating when they thought you were the one making the statements. Sarcasm, judgment, downright nastiness (cute how you can call someone an asshole by implying). Can’t wait to see the responses (i.e., rationalizations). Maybe a few “oops” are in order? I doubt it.
Rita,
Thanks. The Beat generation, as you probably know used to be represented at Naropa Institute. Is it still?
The power of the Beat movement was not the shaking of traditional forms, but rather a deep honesty that was not and really couldn’t be an attempt to change others. Not if it were to remain true. They experimented on the shoulders of many literary forefathers who also experimented from their roots, and as such did not usurp what went before but instead enriched it.
Another compelling art movement was Dadaism, which I suspect was a bodhisattva plot. Literally.
Sprouting during WWI Dadism was by anti-no-non-definition NOT trying to get people to adopt any specific view. They openly, adamantly and repeatedly rejected and discombobulated logical explanation and justification for what they did. It was not about shaping anything. It was fundamentally when not exclusively about breaking out of cultural trance which they saw all around them causing war destruction and poverty.
Whatever problems with current systems, I have to ask if Shambhala teachings have anything concrete to offer in the way of alternatives to capitalism or current forms of government? I’m not at all sure that was the gist of it originally even as some seem to have taken that path. This is one way we tend to meld spiritual practice and political action.
There are people working on steady state economics etc. that could indeed be viable alternatives. If changing capitalism is the aim, their work is probably what should be discussed and placed into the public sphere in as many ways and forms as possible.
And then there’s social engineering…
Of course, Rita, there can be no social engineering without intent. I’m saying that the intent to engineer society, to mold and shape it as if it were a mass that had some kind of collective consciousness one could steer like a lumbering giant with no set will of its own, as if anyone understood it well enough to be so bold, is where our governments and religions get it wrong.
Social engineering is when some form of central authority, political religious or military, assumes it ‘knows’ what would be best for you and the rest of society. That PTB then usually covertly implements policies, rules, regulations, taxes, various incentives and punishments which usually unbeknownst to the masses is an attempt to push, manipulate, coddle, to ultimately steer ‘society’ into becoming that ideal.
It tends to treat those who do not fit the vision, as anomalies that need to be fixed (or tolerated until they get better).
Another problem with it is it doesn’t work logistically. One reason I gave the link to the Libertarian party is that I once read a paper from them showing statistics that legislation enacted in order to cause specific results like tweaking taxes to spur spending, mandated measures to create better schools, laws to prevent certain crimes, incentives for businesses to hire, attempts to control health care costs, cut military spending, on and on. In something over 90% of all cases, legislation enacted has had exactly the opposite effect of the stated intent.
Rather than spinning that well worn wheel, I would argue that if anyone is to have a truly positive effect on others and thereby on society, it will be outside of that dynamic altogether and will grow organically out of the genuineness and honesty of individuals, not due to any specific political intent or high powered upayas, from well meaning individuals or wise institutions, who want to change society into something else.
In the inspiration of my trust that Shamhala teachings are not really about social engineering.
Michael, frankly, my reaction to that comment would be the same even if it had been a Tibetan lama making it in front of me: “I know so many non-buddhists who fit your description here of a buddhist, and I also know buddhist practitioners who are far from your description of them (including–and probably more frequently than I realize–myself).”
But in any event, that paragraph lifted from a seminary talk by Trungpa Rinpoche inhabits a completely different context. Seminary is a closed container of already-committed buddhists. Rinpoche seemed to be trying to inspire his students (of 1982) by telling them that the work they’d been doing on themselves was paying off, was even noticeable.
In this case though we have a website which a very large chunk of the world–the majority of whom are non-buddhists–can access. It was quoted without attribution and out of context, and by direct implication was commenting on the students of today and state of Shambhala today. In this respect Davee was using Trungpa Rinpoche for his purposes, making him speak posthumously about his own sangha friends and companions, and in fact himself. This, I would say, is a disingenuous use of that material.
Also, as for this–”and we find that their composure is always at its best”–I would be happy to point out to SMR (were he accessible to me and genuinely open to my experience), that I have personally witnessed at least two of his most senior teachers and who knows how many kasung and others failing thoroughly in that department. Perhaps the students of 1982 were immaculate in their practice. I wasn’t around. But as for today–far from the case, sorry.
Dear James
Thanks for your post –yes we probably agree about where the Beats were coming from and their basis in literary history.
What is steady state economics – I dont know about that –could you write a paragraph on that –or quote some authors who write on it to me –not heard of that –would it be relevant to the establishment of an enlightened society as you say.
Yes the social engineering thingie –yes thought I would create waves with that remark –being a little provocative! It was based on what I heard with a conversation with a filmmaker in Canada called Ron Mann who I interviewed when I was over there when there was a lot of discussion in the Canuck press about political correctness and I remember Ron making a remark in an offhand manner stating yes I do have a politically correct view on this situation and him smiling wistly about his political correctness.
I think social engineering seems to me like the phrase politically correct –its got a corrosive edge now because its been so disabused in society but I was wondering where the phrase actually came from and whether it could be used shall we say in a more ‘enlightened’ manner in the sense of actually looking at the state of society and seeing what was required to ‘improve’it in a social context. (aside – interesting yes just looked it up on Wiki and Karl Popper seems to make this distinction also.)
What did I mean without intent? I think I meant that if you meditated you would just ‘see and feel’ the world totally and you would know what had to be done in it from that sense……can only truly enlightened beings clue into this or can your ordinary bod do that also. Certainly I think your ordinary bod can do it but they would have to be coming from what shall we say an empathetic stance as when my father was distraught about the bombing of Manchester in WW2 when he acted as a fire warden. So thats why may be after WW2 there was much social engineering going on because of peoples general desire for a ‘better’ world in Europe.
But I do take your point about social engineering re authoritarian regimes – there has been much of that going on in the world aswell which is not so good.
So I dont know social engineering re enlightened society –perhaps it could be more through the economics theory that you mentioned also –that would be interesting to discuss.
Yes I do believe we do have to start having practical discussions about evolving an enlightened society because CTR has based this conception of society somewhat on Fromm who did think you had to cater for the well-being of individuals economically and socially.
Well, looking forward to hearing about your further views on social engineering!
Best
Rita Ashworth
Thanks Davee,
VERY CLEVER of you to pretend to be Trungpa Rinpoche. VERY CLEVER.
Keep up that SMR spirit of disingenuous, which you seem to represent so well.
Cheers,
Robert Chandler
This is not about gurus, or “my guru is better than your guru.” This is about liars and charlatans, and creepy students, trying to be clever.
Cheers,
Robert
News flash. The world is filled with liars and charlatans. If your practice is truly strong and confident, why should their presence matter? They’ve always been there and they always will. Deal with it. Criticism is often productive, but for the life of me I can’t understand why so many people on this site seem to be filled with rage and bitterness. Liars and charlatans can’t steal the truth from you, can they? Nobody can stop you from communicating the truth to others, can they? Are you just trying to convince yourselves? If you think outsiders looking in are going to be inspired by your ranting and raving, I think you’re kidding yourselves. From the outside, it looks like two cults having a food fight, although only one cult appears to be participating. If bashing the other guys is what you have to offer, do you think anyone gives a s–t, other than yourselves? (No disrespect intended for the many thoughtful and positive statements on this site. It’s inspiring to me to see people rise above the silliness and move beyond the sniping and insults, and communicate some real insight as to what practice is all about.)
Dear Michael:
The arrogance of you, and Davee, to come on this site, and tell Trungpa Rinpoche students, what they should talk about on this site, or how they should talk about it , or how they should feel about it, and even to judge what their emotions are about it and your sophomoric, dharma proclamations about how they should behave , are like hubris-filled vomit. Only a truly, dim idiot would state that “charlatans and liars” don’t matter on a person’s spiritual journey. That is of course just my opinion.
Cheers,
Robert.
Hubris-filled vomit? A dim idiot? And I’m judgmental too! Wow, how insightful and inspiring! Sure, that’s how the Buddha himself reacted to criticism. Well, maybe not. But you obviously have a firm grasp of what the dharma is all about. Thanks for sharing. What a great example. Way to go!
Dear Michael:
If one thinks that “charlatans and liars” don’t matter on a spiritual journey, then one is not only a dim idiot , but a dim, f—ked idiot.
Cheers,
Robert
Seriously Robert. I have nothing at all against you. If you disagree, fine. Maybe I disagree with you. So what? But rage and name calling? You up the ante by throwing in the f-bomb? Is that the way it works? Right speech? What next, duke it out in the alley? Relax. I’ll buy you a beer. Okay?
Michael,
Discounting what someone says because of the tone is understandable, but ignores the content.
Without particularly pushing one side or the other, charlatans and liars, why that is problematic and how one should work with that is not only relevant on the path, it is essential. That is a major aspect of Trungpa Rinpoche’s body of teaching on spiritual materialism. There are entire books from more traditional sources on how to choose a teacher and how a teacher determines a good student. It isn’t simply a matter of taste or style; some teachers do not lead their students to an understanding of the nature of mind, and some students need to examine and purify their intentions.
In any case, genuineness and honesty are definitely on the list in both directions.
If one embarks on the path, particularly the vajrayana, with a wrong attitude, it may be correctable at some point, but one will likely encounter greater and more detrimental obstacles to overcome along the way, than if one had taken care about one’s attitude, the teacher one chooses, and the influences one places oneself under. Common sense really.
As we speak of a community with a fairly strict hierarchical structure, the problem would not belong to the individual alone, so putting the onus on the individual isn’t entirely fair. We influence each other, and those with authority even more so. I have witnessed aggressive, manipulative and dishonest meddling from senior officials, both under SMR and Trungpa Rinpoche. As someone without VIP status, my ability to stop them was pretty close to nil.
When an appointed official is doing obviously detrimental things to powerless subjects, that needs to be openly acknowledged and stopped. Or those responsible expose aspiring people to negative, disheartening or at least very confusing influences. That is not the fault of the students.
Some people may be able to sit back and enjoy the wisdom they have, work on that and help others in that direction. I would argue that leadership does not have that luxury. Because some members may not have all the tools yet to protect their minds from authority figures with implicit and explicit spiritual authority who are up to no good.
It is for the latter we should have concern.
In the inspiration that the wisdom we think we already have is probably not the solution they could use.
James,
As I said before, I agree that criticism can be quite justified and that silence isn’t the answer. And, as I also said, I’m in agreement with much of the criticism directed at SMR and SI. In the “us versus them” epic, it just struck me that the same sense of arrogance and self-importance (remember “WE ARE VERY SPECIAL BEINGS”) that whipped a lot of people here into a frenzy is demonstrated by a lot of folks on this site who seem to think they are above it. So I expressed that view. Big deal. The responses only made my point better than I could myself –
“The arrogance of you…to come on this site, and tell Trungpa Rinpoche students what they should talk about on this site, or how they should talk about it , or how they should feel about it, and even to judge what their emotions are about it and your sophomoric, dharma proclamations about how they should behave , are like hubris-filled vomit. Only a truly, dim idiot would state that…”
James, as you say – “When an appointed official is doing obviously detrimental things to powerless subjects, that needs to be openly acknowledged and stopped. Or those responsible expose aspiring people to negative, disheartening or at least very confusing influences. That is not the fault of the students.”
I agree, but who’s talking about fault? What’s silly to me about all of this is that I’m in agreement with the criticism of SI (but I’ve already said that). I never said that what’s happened with SI is the fault of the students. As an outsider to both groups, I merely observed what I think is hypocrisy. The pot calling the kettle black so to speak. No, I’m not saying this side or that side is better or worse, or right or wrong. It’s sort of like the so-called “war on terror.” We’re right and we have the moral high ground, so when we execute our “war on terror” we can behave in a way that mimics, if not exceeds, the “bad” behavior of the folks we are at war with. So much for any moral high ground. I guess senior CTR students (I’m assuming here) on this site can behave in a repugnant manner and display in spades the arrogance, nastiness, and outright meanness that they are so critical of at SI. Instead of calling them out on it, other senior CTR students here (another assumption) will rationalize it or ignore it. To me, that’s pretty sad, but instructive.
So, maybe someone will have another hissy fit and calls me “a dim f____d idiot” again for having the audacity to be critical (for shame if you’re critical of their side!). Maybe someone else who is more articulate will look the other way (quite predictable) and instead teach me how bad the other side is (it’s great to have the moral high ground, isn’t it?). No thanks, not necessary. I know I’m far from enlightened. But if you folks, you so-called senior students, really think that you are demonstrating what practice and enlightenment are about, then you are quite mistaken. Just my opinion. Whatever. Fight the fight. Call the liars out for sure. I’m with you 100% on that!
And James, I’m certainly not ignoring the content. I just think that how you fight the fight says a lot about who you really are.
My faults are as large as a mountain, but I conceal them within me.
Others’ faults are as minute as a sesame seed, but I proclaim and condemn them.
I boast about my virtues, though I don’t even have a few.
I call myself a dharma practitioner and practice only nondharma.
Guru, think of me, look upon me quickly with compassion.
Grant your blessings so that I subdue my selfishness and pride.
“Crying to the Gurus From Afar”, Jamgon Kongtrul Lodro Thaye
I’ll sign off my quoting myself – “I know I’m far from enlightened.”
JimWilton – great words. Sincere thanks. I will try to keep them in mind prospectively.
Yes, goodbye Michael. You don’t care about this “fight” so why were you here?
Who were you to judge anyone on this site? Why were you on here? You stated over and over this was unimportant to you, that you were an “outsider”, so why on earth were you on here?
Who on earth, wouldn’t be pissed at people coming on here wasting time, and discussing what you don’t even care about and on top of it judging and pontificating.
Do you think its dharmic that everyone should talk the same way, look the same way, someday? Do you think you have made me feel bad with your judgements? Yes go away.
I don’t think I could stomach anything but mockery and rage towards people who are following a charlatan and a liar, who don’t understand the depth of people’s despair and rage over what this charlatan has done , destroying CTR’s mandala over years.
There is no moral highground you are coming from , when you don’t give a “sh-t about this. Yet come on here judging and moralizing to people who do care, and who have reached the limit with it.
As I said…
Do not control the monkey mind
or the horse will.
Make effort like a lotus in fire.
Sorry, the edit function seems to have hung up. The quote is from Dogen.
Again, Dogen
That you still do not grasp the certainty of this principle is because your thinking scatters, like wild horses, and your emotions run wild, like monkeys in a forest. If you can make those monkeys and horses, just once, take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward, then naturally you will be completely integrated.
Monkey see monkey do.
Yupp, the Fundamental Point.
Shambhala Household Practice
Key Themes:
A building block of the new vision “social transformation” Apparently Shambhalians are going to all “lift up together” at some point.
The Household is one of the building blocks of the unity of working together as “extremely special beings” that is going to presumably , Lift UP the world together.
Shambhala will now be “a collection of households,” that individual practice , as SMR says can “only do so much” So now “millions of households” in this view would be connected with the Kalapa Court, and would become an “official household” approved of by SMR:
“People could choose to say, “I would like to live as a Shambhala householder,” and they would participate that way. Maybe I would send a letter or some kind acknowledgement that their home is an official Shambhala household and that they wish to live their life on certain principles that correlate with the Court principle, which really has to do with how we run our houses and how we run our lives”.
Now every aspect of your life can be controlled by Shambhala. No longer should you just “flop” i.e. relax when you get home from work, how you speak, how you conduct yourself how you use language should be at all times disciplined:
“It could be very practical: people should have clean stoves, I feel, and they should handle themselves as Shambhalians in terms of how they bathe, how they keep the house clean, how they use language, the whole thing”
Masculine and Feminine Priniciple, apparently will no longer be aspects of energies to be balanced within the person, but are now external principles of behavior between a husband and wife:
“It doesn’t mean oppression, but everything has a particular role. For example, if a husband and wife don’t themselves play their respective roles, the family unit starts breaking down”
Now maybe this appeals to people , as living your life as a Mormon does, where every aspect is externally structured for you, but for me, this is very disturbing. It is really saying basic goodness needs to be controlled, and that we need to be taught to “be good: because we have to keep our natures under control and “behave.”
Now, every aspect of one’s life will be structured “according to Shambhalian principles” that SMR and company decides what they are. Individual practice will be de-emphasized, because in this model of “social transformation” it is the bonding together that matters. As SMR continues:
“With practice alone we can accomplish a certain amount, but it’s not going to ultimately do what’s necessary”
Of course this also keeps the group conformity at its most intense level, and ensures that “wildness” or any “anarchist” tendencies or any discriminating wisdom that might occur outside of “groupthink will be kept in check. We will be made to “feel good” by adopting the positive identity others offer us and adhering to the Shambhalian identity that SMR will decide what that consists of in a “code of conduct” set of rules.
This is the opposite of what the Buddhist path is about, which is about eventual shedding social identities , seeing through conventional reality, and becoming genuine, which ultimately has always relied on a lonely individual path of practice. Sounds like all practice in the new Shambhala world will be always be done together. And then after years of programmatic group practice, you throw someone into a two week dark retreat alone?
I think we are seeing, which is always the case, the acting out of unfinished psychological trauma by SMR that has become the new view of Shambhala. We can only guess the chaos of what his life must have been like growing up. Nevertheless, this is not the lineage of practices of any Buddhist stream that I know of. Maybe we could call it “Collective Shambhala Buddhism”.
A 21st century fascist state would love this model. But this is not a trust in “basic goodness.” This is the absolute opposite. It is infantilizing and teaching people to “be good” and to keep their basic nature “under control and behaved.” Which actually is closer to the Christian model that we are inherently evil.
Dogen, and Dzogchen and the Tao, are all anarchist in nature, so quoting Dogen as an attempt to control others behavior on this site is particularly ironic.
OMG totally. Clean stove = fascist state. That’s how it happens every time. Thank god for whistle blowers…
Sorry, Dogen quoter, if you were actually trying to do the opposite but hard to know.
Chapter 9 of “Great Eastern Sun” discusses the importance of a stove, of developing decency, of working in community, etc.
Then the “Natural Hierarchy” talk in Volume 8 of the Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa, in the selected writings section, which discusses how hierarchy traditionally feels like a lid to control people but in Shambhala it is a working basis more akin to having good earth for growing flowers, with the citizens as flowers. That talk also describes a good house as a kind of local hierarchy.
There are many other examples. Volume 8 also has a lot of material about politics and monarchy.
When everything is driven by money now in SI, another reason for the Household Practice is that all the smaller centers could be closed. Probably they have always been a very small revenue source for Shambhala Corporation. No longer will smaller centers be eating up a portion of the dues, for upkeep, rent etc. NOW ALL THE DUES from members will go to the big centers and SMR’s family. Now members will all be interconnected through their Households, “millions of households” as SMR says, connected to the Kalapa Court, and the Divine Family.
After reading the plans for Kalapa Court it is sounding, more and more, like Shambhala Buddhist version of the PTL. Perhaps next will be a ShambhalaBuddhist Televangelist Show. Watch for the purchase of a television station.
Well thats very interesting,I happened to have lived at The Kalapa Court for a number of years ,and it was not all about keeping the stove clean,that was important,what was more important it was a place where the Sakyong could interact with people in a very direct way ,more directly thanyou might want.That was then that is not the way it is now or will be in the future.Now we have the corporation Buddhist Kalapa court,run by the family,the regent would have understood this type of organization,Buddhist Mafia.
Can this type of organization help people?it could more like Mormon,or Billy Graham,in aspect,quite a number of so called old students have signed on to this program.They are good people.I respect their chioce.
12million people,now thats big selling Dharma.
I cling shamelessly to the past,one student at a time,So on we go ,we never give up.We teach Shambhala and Buddhism as separate streams,We also teach The Kalapa Court tradition,we are quite shameless.Each person must make their own choice,find your own way.
As he him self always said “jolly good luck”
Cheers
John Perks
Hi Chris,
I love most of your posts, but I’m not sure I agree with you about anarchy.
I’ve heard that in Taoism traditionally, it was considered best if a young man or woman put into practice “Confucian” ideas about society and social responsibility first, and then, having that foundation, studied Taoism. At least one Taoist master from a couple hundred years ago said that.
If we try to become some sort of free wandering hermit, renouncing all responsibility for our social relations and our connection to the earth… I think that is a path laden with pitfalls. It’s kind of a hippy path, one that does not recognize the need for any external discipline or structure.
I’ve begun to re-engage my previous community, and while it is difficult and challenging, it’s also interesting how my own blind spots begin to come into focus, in spite of the limitations of other people. Even though other community members are not perfect, they somehow reflect me back to myself.
My teacher used to say that there are countless people who walk around feeling that they have a personal relationship to Jesus in their own minds, but who do not participate in any kind of church or spiritual community. So there is no testing involved in such a situation, perhaps, no way to know if one’s faith (or one’s dzogchen) is all a lot of conceptual consolation and fantasy, or whether it’s something real and alive and genuine.
So I guess for me, an anarchy situation would not serve my own practice, I think.
Probably if I was as realized as Trungpa Rinpoche, I would not need external structure for my own sake, but I might create it to help serve others? But even Trungpa Rinpoche was constantly engaging people, beyond what was comfortable, and in that sense was not trying to achieve an anarchic situation, free of social demands.
P.S. I saw a funny episode of 30 Rock recently. It’s from season 3 and the episode is called “The Bubble”. In the episode, Liz Lemon meets this handsome man who lives in a kind of bubble. Because he’s so handsome, he gets special treatment everywhere he goes, but he himself has no idea that this is in fact taking place. There are some really funny scenes that illustrate this, including one involving a tennis match.
Check it out if you have netflix and 20 minutes to spare sometime.
Thank Edward, I ill check it out.
Taoism & Anarchism
ANARCHISM IS USUALLY CONSIDERED a recent, Western phenomenon, but its roots reach deep in the ancient civilizations of the East. The first clear expression of an anarchist sensibility may be traced back to the Taoists in ancient China from about the sixth century BC. Indeed, the principal Taoist work, the Tao te ching, may be considered one of the greatest anarchist classics.
The Taoists at the time were living in a feudal society in which law was becoming codified and government increasingly centralized and bureaucratic. Confucius was the chief spokesman of the legalistic school supporting these developments, and called for a social hierarchy in which every citizen knew his place. The Taoists for their part rejected government and believed that all could live in natural and spontaneous harmony. The conflict between those who wish to interfere and those who believe that things flourish best when left alone has continued ever since.”
http://www.tao.ca/thinking/texts/taoanarch.html
I guess I might as well come out of the closet here and say that my teacher is Adi Da, formerly known as Bubba Free John.
He was not a Buddhist, at least not in any conventional sense. He did not have a high opinion of most contemporary Buddhist teachers, but he had an extremely high regard for CTR, and also liked the Sixteenth Karmapa, and somebody named Dudjom Rinpoche(?), and possibly a few others.
Probably many people think Adi Da was a charlatan, or drank too much, or was too into women, but that’s the price you pay for certain ways of teaching I guess.
As far as lineage goes, Adi Da always honored his own teachers, to an absolutely exemplary degree in fact, and when one of his teachers gave him formal permission to teach, in writing, it was done with a kind of carte blanche– he was supposed to teach in any way he saw fit, based on his realization.
This is quite different from… other kinds of lineages that you might have heard of…
Dear Chris
Interesting post about shambhala households –think I agree with Mr Perks view on this – the household should be one aspect of the Kalapa Court but not the prime aspect –the prime aspect I believe should be practice whether solitary or group.
Myself think I connected with the teachings through literature both eastern and western and strangely music thinking back. I also was quite into rinzai Buddhism and koans when I think way back aswell which you could say is a ‘cleaning out of the clutter of your mind’ –so the cleaning motif should not just be outward but inwards aswell. Primarily focussing on the outwards aspect I think is not good unless you also don’t emphasise the door to true perception through practice.
Yes Trungpa does talk about the environment you are living in regards to the shambhala teachings being clean and uncluttered but if you don’t practice however clean your environment is it wont affect the status of your karma and your life in this world. For example the pristine, minimalist environments you see in many offices are attractive but still people are full of kleshas within these environments – and indeed also cute attractiveness can drive some people mad because they are so insistent on preserving their status by their environments. I think my nieces are into pristine environments- everything must be just so –its become a very western thing for objects etc etc not to become out of place, so there could be a tinge of neurosis there.
Indeed also I believe some writers have written about the fastidiousness of these clean environments in that they keep us away from stress and people we don’t see as fitting into our world. So all these things can happen too with households/environmental spaces. Myself I am very interested in creating environments that welcome people in but are also homely aswell – I keep sort of thinking about very white, bright environments almost mirror-like –like people would be sort of dazzled by them –I think they would have to be brighter than the present shrine rooms within SI as I find most shrine-rooms quite dull these days. I think I would paint all the walls white almost in the Mexican manner –anyway that’s my take on environments.
On another take just have to mention Matthew Fox who I have been listening to on utube –he is a defrocked priest from the Catholic church who wrote a book called Original Blessing. He repudiated the concept of original sin and is now into something called creation spirituality. He knows a lot about many world religions and engages with other faiths in lectures. I briefly had the idea if rfs was into sponsoring talks in NS they could invite him up there –hes a real livewire and I also think it would be good if rfs could in some way engage in a formal sense in the open with others of different faiths. Just a thought!
Well best
Rita Ashworth
Just throwing it out there: I find it a little easier to maintain some discipline in my practice when I’m keeping my environment healthy and clean. John, I’m sure you’d agree that Rinpoche liked maintaining an uplifted home environment. I certainly do not remember a shoddily-kept Kalapa Court. (Rita- this isn’t just a bubble. The whole point of the householder practice is to create an environment where practice can be strengthened. It would be nice if we were all Tilopa and could sit by the river eating fish-heads and resting in the equanimity of all phenomena, but I think most of us benefit from a little more structure than that.)
I’m starting to get the sense that some of you think that if the Sakyong were to tell people to use toilet paper instead of their hands while wiping their asses that you would think it was the end of days. This is the next freak out? Really? That we’re being advised to keep a clean and stable living environment as a container for our practice and study as lay yogins? What are tent inspections at MPE about, John? Right livelihood? You haven’t even read the householder guidelines and you’re already coming to these kinds of extreme judgments about what they represent and whether or not they could be a sound aspect of a genuine practice path. Are you even aware that you have to specifically request the transmission for householder practice and that it’s not just being imposed on everyone from above? It’s getting harder and harder to see where the common ground here can be when people come to these wild conclusions without even taking enough of a gap to read the practice before passing off these heavy-handed conceptualizations. I’m not entirely free from this myself. When I first heard about the householder practice I was a little suspicious, but when I heard the actual text I went, “Oh. Okay. This is simple stuff that I already intuitively know is helpful for maintaining a basic level of sanity in my life. Yes, cleaning the stove and not spending seven hours a day on the internet is probably a good move, Buddhist or not.”
Also, fyi, Mormons might be weirdos, and do have a long history of racism, but they have also tended to be pretty nice people trying to find some dignity through community and worship.
Although I haven’t read the guidelines, householder practice seems to me to be entirely consistent with Shambhala vision. I recall that CTR used to remark negatively about Zen practitioners who had perfect form in the zendo and then went back to watch TV in their messy apartments. And remember when CTR began making everyone where suits and ties? What would be the reaction today if SMR were the first to make that suggestion?
For myself, I practice as much as anybody — and my office is a complete mess (papers piled two feet thick on the desk) — path of accumulation, I guess. So, I am no example for householder practice. Still, it seems like it might be a good aspiration.
At one retreat I went to with Tsoknyi Rinpoche, he said that he was very suspicious of people who kept ordered , clean environments, it was usually an unhealthy sign of over emphasis on the outer, and a mind that couldn’t deal with chaos.
I remember my friend, Ditti Greenleaf telling me about CTR getting quite perturbed with her when she was trying to “clean up his shrine” and throw out an “old moldy orange, that was green and yucky ” and had probably been rotting there for months. Black Cloud moment, He got quite mad.. The “nastiness” of the orange, was the point . But of course that was a vajrayana buddhist shrine, something that is quickly disappearing in the current scene.
LOOK AT WHAT WE ARE UP AGAINST CHRIS. MELLOW OUT AND CLEAN YOUR STOVE. IT IS REAL. REALLY REALLY REAL OUT THERE:
http://www.highsnobiety.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/kanye-west-entourage-fashion-week-paris.jpg
ps who knew those featured on “Hoarders” were siddhas in disguise.
Dear Ashoka
Nice to hear from you again!
Yes I am not the cleanest of people myself re flats etc-my mother though cleaned the house every day! Dusted and vacuumed all the time –quite a routine! I think it was a hang over from running around for all the nuns in the convent as she was the head girl and also used to organise dinners at twelve years old for thirty people a la silver service. So yes she was quite a woman. My brother seems to have followed her into this kind of service as I cant get in the kitchen when hes in there!
Well householders cleanliness could go well, could go batty depends on how the people work with it –think this was what Mr Perks was getting at. Dont think people were freaking out about it they were just examining the concept from diverse viewpoints which I think you can do on this website as its a free for all unlike most of the websites out there who have moderators. I think it is great that such free-flowing discussion can happen, certainly if you go in any pub in Manchester you will get people gossiping and debating things all the time from all the hornery subjects of politics and religion, particularly Catholicism from its historical roots here.
Yes I also think its great now that people within SI and outside are debating the way the shambhala and Buddhist teachings are to be spread in the west….its such an interesting and mega discussion to have over the web and in person and I dont think we need to be afraid to have these discussions at present-so I hope people keep posting. I also dont think SI has to totally worry about the people somewhat splitting off from it – people are responsible – I dont think they will make rash decisions about stuff –we are all just sitting and that undercuts loads of neurosis anyway.
Yes Ashoka I am somewhat intrigued by what you plan to do in the future re politics – I suppose if I had your youth I would be heading for Washington as that seems to be where the power is in the states. I really do hope you can do some good for the country on a good scale – I do have relatives over there –Catholic cousins innumerable in Illinois and they need good politicos to fight for them in the capital.
Well best to you from this side of the pond.
Rita Ashworth
This is not about whether you have a clean stove or not. This is about constant, ONE SIZE FITS ALL teachings.
Why one can take any quote of CTR and fit it into their own current perception of things, along the way of the path, is because CTR, and other genuine teachers, teach to the student or the situation at a particular time. So he said different things, to different people , and different audiences at different times. He was teaching to the moment.
And yes, yes, “you elect” to be a Shambhala Householder, but would anyone have a fantasy that one would move “upward” or be accepted into this group , in this hierarchical structure , without becoming a member of the Shambhalian Householders Group? When everybody’s doing it? This is about conforming. That’s what it is all about.
Since this is a generation that conforms and doesn’t question critically, I think people attracted to the NEW SHAMBHALA BUDDHISM would be the same people attracted to Mormonism, i.e. external form , structuring their lives, theistic and hierarchical, order and an appreciation of external wealth , “extremely special people” with a message, who are industrious, make a lot of money, and tithe. But Shambhala gives it an overlay of “orientalism” and “mysticism” i.e. the current fascination of it being “Tibetan or Asian” in favor now. Someone in robes has a lot of currency (albeit a fading currency) , i.e. the Dalai Lama syndrome, so it is quite appealing to people who just look at a symbol and assume there is substance behind it. After all the Tibet Lama/Santa Claus image has been programmed in our minds for many years now. So people don’t even question it. That’s why the marketing of the “Tibetaphile” image. When that goes out of vogue it will be different, of course.
This is the confusion that results from mixing socio/ politics , and religion, i.e. Shambhala / Buddhism and mashing it all together. It doesn’t work in terms of a path towards realization, or a path of teacher and student in a real relationship. It will not move with the student, giving the student what he/she needs at a particular time on the journey. Probably one reason why there is so much attrition, or revolving door quality in SI.
Ashoka, I’d like to get a pair of those leopard-skin pants in that pic. Do you know where to get them?
Also: do you know what they are carrying in the square brief-suit-cases?
I don’t like the white guy’s cap… looks like bear droppings on his head!
You can get those leopard-skin pants for a one-time donation of 40K to a secret ladrang that we’re developing at Shambhala International’s moon base. It’ll probably be used for building a giant oil-powered furnace where we’ll burn Trungpa Rinpoche’s unpublished manuscripts. Alternately, you could consider joining the the “sweatshop brigade” arm of the Dorje Kasung, which basically makes photocopies at Republican Party offices and serves mini-bagels at Wall Street meet-and-greets. Totally worth it though, because those pants will make you into a very, very special person. We guarantee it. Join us, sister.
The briefcases? Well. Normally we require that you prove your loyalty to the Empire before we unlock that mystery, but just this once….Vajradhara thankgas, bundles of cleverly laundered cash, and secret files regarding unicorns. Shh.
Chris, that is indeed odd that he never corrected the mistake made in the introduction, re being the head of the Nyingma lineage. Doesn’t ordinary humility, leaving aside truth, require one to do this? I will email the Aspen Institute and Jerry Murdoch when I get the chance.
Hi Rita,
I haven’t studied steady state economics myself, so for a quick overview see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steady_state_economy
or: http://steadystate.org/discover/reading-list/
The alternatives to a system based on exponential growth are extremely important and will happen, either by plan or like a tsunami. I’m just not convinced that Shambhala Buddhism addresses that in any way. Buddhism in any case works on something else.
It can have influence. One of Schumacher’s essays is titled “Buddhist Economics” worth a look see, but I’m not sure ‘society’ as an abstract amalgam separate from the individual can ever be ‘enlightened’ as such. It’s almost an oxymoron.
Social engineering (SE) isn’t quite the same as political correctness (PC). PC is a mindset that makes people a little stupid and irritating on the spot. It’s not really a political movement, mostly limited to language usage, and most of us roll eyes when encountering it, but you can work with it. PC is small potatoes.
SE happens somewhere else, done by people you will probably never meet, with intentions you may never be privy to, and who have authority you cannot challenge. It’s an exercise of power without your input, behest, knowledge or representation. And logistically, forget about ethics and goals, it doesn’t work, more often than not creating the opposite or some other problem no one thought of yet.
I don’t think there is a right way to hack the system, because culture and what we are is so astoundingly complex, assumptions we can are virtually always built on childishly simplistic models of how humans and society work.
I think we agree about how an individual’s influence can spread like wildfire when genuine and good. The catch 22 is, if you do it to spread like wildfire, it isn’t genuine and good anymore, but can still burn. I Ching has some apropos stanzas comparing influence by intent vs. influence due to innate virtue.
When we project this dynamic intentionally onto society as a project, inevitably the value of the individual is in some way usurped, and all kinds of weird and woolly things which to most people are obviously detrimental, become not only justifiable, but can be seen as righteous and divinity personified, because, it is then not really about the smelly stinky neurotic individuals who are always getting in the way of the ‘view’. The view then becomes the point, rather than the path of the individual.
This is where religion goes wild, and politics is seduced into realms where it has no business.
Please, Rita, for discussion try describing a way SE could be done in an enlightened way. I don’t think it’s possible. I think SE is inherently aggressive, but try.
Trungpa Rinpoche didn’t see what would be and then worked hook and crook towards it. I think there was a lot of organic development and communication and practice and dance with students, culture, history, art, dharma, the phenomenal world etc. He didn’t create culture by decree.
In the inspiration that we often travel the road between representation and reality in the wrong direction.
Edward, re Dudjom Rinpoche, Chris Keyser has some good stories about him. He was the head of the Nyingma Lineage (succeeded in that role by Khyentse Rinpoche, with whom he was very close), one of the handful of greatest Tibetan Buddhists of the 20th century, and the grandfather of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. Trungpa Rinpoche invited him to his community in 1976; he gave abhishekas in Boulder and in Berkeley (the latter was the intro to the 1.5 month series of programs by Khyentse Rinpoche and Trungpa Rinpoche there). Diana Mukpo recounts in her book how she had a dream, just before CTR died, of Karmapa XVI and Dudjom Rinpoche and Khyentse Rinpoche, saying they were waiting for Trungpa Rinpoche to join them. Those were the 3 senior figures CTR was closest to, and that he wanted to introduce to his students.
Good on Adi Da for making that connection!
Dear James
Preamble:
Wow James really hard to think about social engineering etc etc –but I have had a stab at it below:
……..Thanks for your post re steady state economics seems primarily from reading about it on wiki that its about sustainability.
Now re social engineering and why I feel it is pertinent to the shambhala teachings.
Firstly myself I am a product of relative social engineering in that my health, education, and work status has been supported by this process re the ideal of the social contract with government and the individual that is prevalent in Europe. Of course these systems are under strain in a more capitalistic and globalised economy but at least some of my ancestors fought for these rights for these common social factors.
Of course these social factors are circumscribed by adherence to a political establishment that I dont think works totally now in the 21st century and of course all these sectors are under immense budget constraints due to the collapse of the worldwide financial markets. So social engineering created a reformed, workable economy for some time but how will it cope with the future?
Well there seems to me to be a desire more now for communality with people. Even your TV couch potatoes are saying social life in our great cities is numbing so on a basic level I think people want to join together moreso in groups. Of course groups in the Shambhala/Buddhist mould mean sangha – so community is somewhat of a big deal in creating enlightened society.
But a socially engineered enlightened society? Well the socially engineered bit would be in providing spaces for people to meditate-that ground level approach. I in fact believe the Buddha himself was into creating space for people to meditate on a most fundamental level –its like you see a whole world consumed in suffering –can you turn your back on it? Well some how I dont think you can if even if you are enlightened because the suffering is like the hair on the eyeball that Karmapa mentioned –you just cant get that hair out of the eye –kind of an irritating quality to the whole concept of getting to nirvana!
So what do you do you go out and do your bit for the people both rich and poor? Now are you socially engineering the situation if you are the Buddha in that context, because well you see individuals in their entirety from back to front and up and down and you ‘help’(sorry about that word) as appropriately as possible. So the appropriatness quality would be the social engineering without intent, hence the subsequent creation of the three yana principle. But I wonder even about the three yana approach sometimes I think the whole thing is a magic show aswell, for example you look back on life as you get older and you just see the confluence of events/karma leading you into certain directions, yes there is free will but then again how can you ignore those transcendent aspects of life which just pop up somewhat like the Buddha meeting his former disciples. A socially engineered situation-auspicious coincidence? Playing with terms here!
I digress well now in the present age how are we to come to that appropriatness level that the Buddha manifested over 2,500 years ago. Well Trungpa said my students will be engaged with the establishing of enlightened society in this world –that seems to me to be the prime command of Trungpa to his students. Yes there is society – we are living with each other – is there a path to enlightenment yes to a certain degree with the practice of meditation. Now meditation where does that lead us to in creating a more rewarding society for all of us? Well the lack of aggression manifested by meditation must obviously make us more aware of the suffering of others so then I think social engineering without intent could begin. What would that require in a political framework, well it would require access for all to basic living requirements somewhat outlined by conventional Human Rights charters. It would also require the diversification of the economy away from military spending and the seeking of peace in the world and here these aims would not have to be mere whimsy political aims but the basis and root and branch of the enlightened society itself. So all the politics connected in removing aggression would have to be socially engineered without intent to some degree in that you and your government would have to start the ball rolling for things to happen in the world. Now where would the ‘without intent’ concept be coming from surely compassion which is profuse and majestic. Engineered –well you made the first move-social –well you are in society and your karma/actions have outcomes.
So yes I think I have stretched the term social engineering as far as it will go dharmically which is a big stretch I agree but I think it somewhat fits. And anyway even if you dont think it fits the actual process of thinking about it has made me clue into things dharmawise a bit more re the play aspect of the guru in the world-so yes again your post has really made me think!
So in conclusion yes appropriateness means doing the act in a ‘socially engineered’ situation without intent. And strangely many people know how to act appropriately in situations which of course is another long essay to go into re socialisation but that is another post! Still I think I have liberated the social engineering without intent concept a little, n’est ce pas? And hopefully outlined some ways that you could clue in to it in the world.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
Hi Rita,
Yes, social engineering (SE) is very important to Shambhala, because if that’s what we think we’re doing, we will probably cause more problems than we solve.
There are many points we agree on, but some things you describe as SE are not. I think you are misunderstanding the term SE to mean anything that has some kind of influence.
Influence is not a bad thing. It is the methods and approach of social engineering that are inherently arrogant – assuming an understanding of human nature I see no where manifest either anectdotal or empirical, unsupported by what little research is available, and aggressive because it is disrespectful of existing culture and norms, assuming that is actually where the problem lies, again with no apparent depth or insight into the nature and development of culture or norms.
A ‘social contract’ is only a theoretical model trying to explain why culture develops at all (which is being significantly superceded by evolutionary biology and other disciplines), but even as a theory, that’s something we all implicitly enter into and mutually agree upon.
That we receive education, for example, is not SE, unless it is an intentional attempt by a central authority to enforce a specific social model (girls do home-ec., boys do wood shop, women should be housekeepers, men businessmen and plumbers, gays are somehow off, drugs are evil, women can’t work in certain professions, etc.).
Education is simply an effort to get humans to use their brains at a level which makes cooperative complex society run much better. It is not ideally trying to change human nature or engender any particular behavior in individuals so we all think the same way. Who could have the authority and abject arrogance to decide what that shape should be?
In the same way providing space for contemplative practice is not SE; it is or ought to be simply providing the opportunity, space and method to wake up from trance, not to instill a preconceived specific model of enlightened society.
Check out Wiki’s page on social engineering (political science). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_%28political_science%29
Especially towards the end. The definition froom social scientists Antonis Gannon and Ellis O’Brien’s of SE ought to give us all pause.
And then in closing Karl Popper makes the critical distinction between a reasonable method of improving the lot of man on one hand (referred to as ‘piecemeal SE’) which he defines as searching for and fighting against the greatest most urgent evil of society, or on the other hand a method which, if really tried, may easily lead to an intolerable increase in human suffering (referred to as ‘Utopian SE’) which searches for and fights for societies ultimate good.
It is this latter approach which Shambhala Buddhism seems to engender even as it is oblivious to the inherent dangers of that approach that we need to be concerned about.
In the inspiration that “A good community does not spring from the glory of the State, but from unfettered development of individuals…” (B. Russel)
~ James Elliott on April 5th, 2010 4:30 pm
Idiot Compassion
“A slimy way of trying to fulfill your desire secretly.”
Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, Illusions Game, p. 29.
cf. G. I. Gurdjieff…
George Ivanovich Gurdjieff (January 13, 1866? – October 29, 1949)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G._I._Gurdjieff
Dear James
Thank you for your reply re social engineering which provides a lot of room for thought particularly in the context of creating culture in society.
I would probably be like to be on your side of the argument because myself I am somewhat torn with the concept of social engineering myself!
For example we are living in a society and things have to be done in a concrete manner for the populace by governments so data, research has to be undertaken to do this as Popper does indeed suggest with his concept of piecemeal social engineering where he has rescued the ‘concept’ somewhat. But inevitably yes social engineering depends on what you do with research you get. For example in the UK we have cameras everywhere now watching people for their security and protection but of course these cameras can now be used for alternate means in keeping tabs on people – so social engineering does lead to authoritarianism in some instances.
How could it not lead to such authoritarianism? Well the people in the government or the people who involved in the governance process would have to be virtuous as you would say in a Buddhist/Shambhalian context so there would have to be some emphasis on morality for the society to function. As Trungpa stated to run a society you dont just need monastics you need conventional leaders in all the different spheres so in some respects they would have to go through some form of training to uphold their practice of public affairs which would also require the practice of meditation from the tradition they are allied to.
But its weird also they must go beyond that training – did not Trungpa state also that the law could be superseded if the situation required it aswell. So yes we are really looking for the development of the individual to the most highest level –in my case and perhaps yours people who say no to things developing in SI in certain ways because of ones conscience on certain matters.
But nevertheless the development of society – enlightened or unenlightened still keeps moving forward –so it is dynamic and culture to a certain extent is dynamic aswell but then again you have also got social engineering in the mix because societies have to function –so what do you do?
Well another stab in the direction of creating enlightened society – say everyone was totally awake-we were all enlightened what would that society be like –well to me it would be conventional and unconventional at the same time witness the room for mahasiddhis in the Indian context –you would have to in some way allow for that in the coming enlightened society you would have to allow for shall we say the bohemian quality of westerners! So yes a society could not totally be socially engineered but it would have to allow for social engineering re concrete things like hospitals and meditation centres.
How the social engineering concept reflects on SB is that social engineering is at present being defined too narrowly –social engineering in a greater sense would also have to allow for diversity, in fact welcome diversity as a friend, as a partner in manifesting enlightened society.
To some extent this happened after the Russian Revolution when there was an outpouring of interest in the arts before the poets were reined in by the state. I well remember doing a course on documentary film and just being so marvelled at the dexterity,skill and inquisitiveness of film-makers after the Revolution in Russia. Eisensteins films were so modern and emotional for example.
So in some respects all the committees now developing in SI also have to be open to things happening that might transgress certain mores at the present time. So yes here I would agree that the social engineering concept would have to be superseded but to have a society for the many that needs social engineering to a degree so yes the whole concept is one to play with as Popper has done also.
Myself I try to combine my conventional knowledge aka social engineering in the world as I have lived under it and my interest also in going beyond such definitive concepts as well –so yes in the western context we are torn to a certain degree in manifesting our passions in society at large…..hence here also here my ‘conception’ of meditation in allowing us space to work with these tensions.
So I think its very useful to unpack the notion of social engineering because the west is so much based upon it and to see how the process could possibly be modified by the practice of meditation.
I would welcome your further thoughts on how you would construct a functioning society but also allow room for diversity in all its myriad forms as this to me would be basis to some extent of an enlightened society.
Lastly re your quote from Betrand Russell I believe Russell thought himself above conventional morality in his day and I think he had quite a few affairs but that was the UK in 1920s when people were also experimenting as in the 60s with manners in society, perhaps I should read a biography on Russell to see how he indeed lived his life.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
Interesting Stuart. Maybe SE is idiot compassion, but on an institutionalized level, which gives it more influence and makes it even more intractable.
Hi Rita,
You mention that some social engineering (s.e.) is needed in order to have for example hospitals. But caring about people and doing what is needed to care for others is not s.e..
I’m afraid you’re still not quite getting what the term means. It is not politics or the machines of government. It is not the open attempt to persuade people to understand problems or different possibilities. Nor is it the information we have to make those decisions.
Politics can and all too often is seen and used as s.e., but that is a dishonest and counterproductive manifestation of politics. It is by nature divisive, arrogant, and aggressive towards individuals, existing culture and norms.
S.e. or those who carry it out assume they have some sort of special knowledge that most people do not have about the human condition and how people work, how society is formed and how it all influences itself, etc..
From that (unproven) premise the SE approach then attempts to manipulate society into becoming better in ways (is the belief) it never would have unless ‘a wiser than the masses’ authority stepped in to create rules regulations rewards and punishments in order to induce the proper views and behavior. It is as such a purely materialistic or externalized top down approach to controlling human beings, based on another often false assumption that our leaders have better education, insight and wisdom than the wretched masses.
SE is not in any way necessary for the construction of hospitals or schools, or for infrastructure like roads and distribution systems, for conflict resolution or for a viable and healthy social structure. Unless you believe that people are basically bad. It is at core a mistrust of individuals and the social structure as it is, and an attempt to change them in very specific ways, mostly covert, as dictated by whoever has the power and authority to do that.
I don’t really care about B. Russel’s personal morals, something I think one can’t really judge from afar. One would have to actually speak with all the women who knew him to even begin. (As we heard on one thread, students at Naropa are enjoying staff support in denouncing Trungpa Rinpoche as a really really bad person for his lifestyle. Judgements of that kind would seem to be compass with no true North.)
I don’t agree with many things he wrote in “Proposed Roads to Freedom”. Communism and anarchy, which he leaned towards, have major flaws in how they view human nature, with an almost exclusively materialistic approach, a flaw he does acknowledge.
Nevertheless he and many of his contemporaries gave much thought into why certain systems of government were so inherently prone to corruption, and in that they may have something to say.
In the inspiration that “The attempt to thrust liberty by force upon those who do not desire what we consider liberty must always prove a failure.” (B. Russel)
Dear James,
Thank you for further post re social engineering.
I am still interested in the concept though!
I suppose I am arguing for the piecemeal social engineering that Popper advocates which I both think we agree on from points made in the post. I agree also that as a discipline it can be used to undermine people who are in vulnerable positions I take your point about that aswell. However the social engineering I am perhaps focussing on when I really think about it in a governance fashion to a prime degree is the redistribution of wealth in society.
In the UK the redistribution of wealth has been tentatively started with the process of working tax credits which allows low-paid workers to bump up their wages to a higher amount. Of course this is reformist politics I agree but I believe it has had a good effect on lives of people on low incomes in the UK and until the revolution and when perhaps people engage more in groups to establish inroads into a more enlightened society it is a good start and it has started because of social engineering in the most positive sense.
I am not sure about libertarian politics I will have to study that in greater detail to see how the whole thing gells together.
As to Trungpa’s sometimes pragmatic instructions about an enlightened society he did mention that we all had to be good citizens and pay our taxes –so there is a general pull your socks up approach in this manner of political discourse. He also said I believe that you had to infiltrate the political system with your ideas – my thinking is that you could infilitrate the system more with Popper type social engineering concepts at the present time than libertarian ones because politicians are always looking for ideas practically on how to do things. But I agree the whole thing would have to be done in conjunction with consulting, engaging the widest mass of people aswell – so this was the ‘without intent’ aspect that I was mentioning. Personally where I saw the consultation happening most deeply and most pervasively was at the Greater London Council in the 1980s when there were Womens Committees, Gay Committees etc etc and people could work with them easily and have ‘some’ effect on the governance of the city most directly. Not completely libertarian but also a good start aswell –was the process social engineering –well the Right wing press the Evening Standard said it was in a derogatory manner but what do you do – you have to start somewhere.
I was not making a value judgement on Russell’s behaviour just merely noting what I read about him in the broadsheet press but he is an interesting character and from your posts more interesting than I had realised. I put him down as a London liberal of the chattering classes but obviously he was a deeper thinker than that. So yes I will may be check his bio up more.
Re the evaluation of Trungpa that seems to be happening at Naropa – if it is happening I think people will most definitely have to speak up about it directly and in print. Myself I think it could be happening because of
continued:
my own feelings that people are not questioning things as much as they did in the sixties and seventies. I think this is because of peoples lack of power economically and socially –people just don’t want to make waves as much as they used too. In the sixties movements did threaten the power of established governments we only have to look at Paris in 1968 with the students and the workers to see what happened there for example.
Yes governance is a complex subject it requires I believe a mixture of all disciplines both academic research, true engagement with people at the level they desire, and of course the redistribution of wealth to where it is needed in society. And of course in an enlightened society I think you would have to have a redistribution of wealth this could come from a more balanced amount being spent on military matters as the threat of war if ever this enlightened society came into being would be diminished.
Indeed in some respects I think the Kasung was created to magnify the apprehension for peace in a most literal sense not merely to protect him as the teacher. Yes Victory over War –what a great slogan!
(Looking forward to yours and others posts –still think I am talking about enlightened society on this thread and differing paths so I think the points I have made are relevant to this discussion.)
Well best
Rita Ashworth
I heard long ago that CTR said that an ideal societal structure would have Monarchy at the top, Democracy in the Middle (administration with, presumably, good back-and-forth between top and bottom) and Communism at the bottom (i.e. no private property). This sort of structure seems to give rather short shrift to the Merchant Class which now rules over everything.
Lord Russell is an arch-Fabianist. I think all their thinking was extremely dangerous, not to mention elitist. Many of his family were in thick with top level Masonic Lodges, banking cartels and all the rest of it.
The best system of wealth redistribution involves having a very strong Monarch/Dictator principal with good education and some sort of anti-corruption protection mechanism, whose role is then to ensure that cabals of the ‘nobles’, i.e. leading citizens of whatever ilk in whatever culture, do not end up exploiting the situation to the point that they suffocate the organism upon which they parasitically feed, i.e. from whose numbers they derive their superior position, relatively, and wealth.
So the role of the Crown is to protect the Realm (which is perhaps a better translation of ‘Sa’ as in Sa-kyong or ‘Earth Protector’. Sa is also used in the word bhumi and translated as level. So perhaps it is also sphere, or ‘realm’ as well, or zone too, come to think of it. So in this context it is more like ‘Protector of the Realm’ which is the traditional view of the role of a ruling Monarch.
Nowadays we tend to think of them as neurotic, inbred aristocrats drunk on power and intrigue. Some of this is no doubt based on many actual failures in real time; some no doubt also due to propaganda written after the fact (as with the 19C Russian Tsars, for example, who at the time were much beloved by their people and widely respected internationally).
But social engineering is not just a concept that stands on its own: it must be discussed in the context of the process by which it is executed. If it devolves to some sort of rule from an ‘expert class’, which is another form of rule by committee, that is just another way of the ‘Baron Class’ ruling the roost, which nearly always turns out badly. Can’t think of an historical example where it was successful, put it that way.
Or in other words: ‘rule by committee’, but in this case, an entire class. This means that the real leadership will remain hidden and thus not accountable, i.e. far less vulnerable to being overthrown than the Monarch or Dictator, a far less unassailable – and thus more flexible – structure.
quote in next post from quick Google search.
Quote from Russell viz. ‘social engineering’ from Google search (so no idea if accurate quote):
“I think the subject which will be of most importance politically is mass psychology…. Its importance has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda.
“Of these the most influential is what is called ‘education.’ Religion plays a part, though a diminishing one; the press, the cinema, and the radio play an increasing part….
“It may be hoped that in time anybody will be able to persuade anybody of anything if he can catch the patient young and is provided by the State with money and equipment.”
“Although this science will be diligently studied, it will be rigidly confined to the governing class.
“The populace will not be allowed to know how its convictions were generated.
“Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible.”
– Bertrand Russell, “The Impact of Science on Society”, 1953, pg 49-50
Finally on his (Russell’s) morality: leaving aside possible ties to various questionable cults of all sorts, how the wealthy and powerful behave in the boudoir has little relation to the sort of morality expected of the middle and lower classes who must, almost by necessity, live in far more restricted, and thus less flexible, fashion. Indeed, it would be almost unnatural for a very powerful alpha male type to not be continuously bombarded – not to mention personally welcoming – no end of female attentions. It’s human nature. For example the recent flap about Tiger Woods: granted how he behaved isn’t great viz. his wife and family (because it was hidden) but apart from this important element, is it really so surprising that someone who is in the top 1% of the world performance/fame and wealth wise likes to ‘get a little on the side’?
One has to be very hidebound to believe that the wealthy and powerful by nature will remain in the same sort of moral, or behavioral, confines as those in little 3-bedroom houses all over the place struggling desperately just to pay the basic monthly bills. Different worlds; different standards and customs. Simple as that.
In principle, this is the same as how there are different customs/rules for Hinayanists, monastics, Mahayanists, tantrics and so forth.
Again, I highly recommend Jane Jacob’s rather rare ‘Systems of Survival’ in which she explains how government/military/non-profit hierarchies have essentially different systems of morality from private sector mandalas, for example. Some important insights there.
PS re the wealth distribution point:
If a Monarch/Dictator runs a good ship, government is minimal, taxes are low, the Barons are not allowed to extract too much cream from the overall wealth and productivity of the Realm, and thus wealth is naturally distributed properly, in accordance with both aspiration, talent, location and so forth and does not need to be centrally managed.
Dear Ash
What an interesting post especially the bits about wealth distribution and the opening paragraph about Trungpa’s views on governance.
Yes the problem with the UK perhaps only till quite recently has been the dominance of an elite over the laws of the country –things only turned a little way from that since the 1960s.
I think you support the idea of social engineering in regard to how it’s executed –yes that is the proviso.
Now as to Monarchs –yes I am not against the Monarch principle as a mode of governance in an enlightened society I dont think I have ever said that on this site, rather I am not in favour of seeing the Monarch principle as the guru primarily for if we are talking of a society as a revolutionary concept it must of course encompass the world or at least a large part of it because we are of course talking about economics aswell and you need to operate on a large scale in this regard. So then also we are talking of other religions, secular viewpoints and how they view the shambhala teachings or partake of them.
So for the life of me I can not see these groups entering the KOS principle under the SB umbrella so some possible different ways have to be discovered to allow these groups to tie into the KOS-thats why I am so insistent on diversity and inclusivity because I think a true ruler would allow this to be. So then we are again back at the concept of seeing the Sakyong principle in terms of the Shinto Emperor in Japan.
Furthermore in fact if you do not have this diversity I think you will have a truncated KOS-thats why I believe CTR opened the teachings to everyone because of course we are talking of a world view in relation to the shambhala teachings. Also could there be subsidiary Sakyongs –I am thinking of Gerald Red Elk in this context –could you at all widen the Sakyong principle into people having power over different sections of the globe –interesting.
Wow so Trungpa was into wealth redistribution i.e. no private property at the bottom –thats very interesting – I thought this would have to be the case though in some respect because otherwise elites would always be fighting over each others piles of cash and diamonds as is happening now in the world and that cant go on forever because it causes wars where everyone suffers. Yes an enlightened society could never come to pass in this way –aggression in this respect would never be conquered but would go on and on.
Therefore yes I am open to the monarch principle but I still think there should not be a total monarch/guru principle as in SI at present -you have to allow room for peoples subtle, individual and sometimes group connection to culture whether its religious or secularly based.
Betrand Russell –yeh read stuff about him having affairs in the Times and I think I recall that he believed himself that it was ok to do this. Checked him out on utube –very, very English almost a tad arrogant one may say but then he was immensely clever. I remember seeing him briefly as a child in the sixties on TV marching with the Aldermaston marchers to ban the nuclear bomb –he must have stood out in the interview for some reason. I think it was his voice, much as I remember Mick Jaggers voice also because until then I had only heard Northern accents and the polished accents of the South were something very different and strange indeed. Hope you can catch the two of them on utube both icons of GB. You know even rebels in the UK are well –educated!
Best
Rita Ashworth
So, do you notice that we are having a very limited conversation here, amongst a very small handful of people, while no “players” are participating? Do you see HE Pres Reoch participating? Or any of the brocade-bearing/sitting Atsarsas, I mean… Acharyas? Or other claimants to the path of “Buddha Dharma WITH Credentials”? Well, no…
Just the occasional sycophant, with some name that they feel is a HUGE credential.
Which, of course, it’s obviously not, given the evidence.
So, really, what’s the point, at this point?
Perhaps Rita and Ash want to carry on at length. But, to what end?
There’s very little new ground to plow, at this point.
The die is cast.
The deed is done.
Onward and upwards we go.
We are all genuine refugees now.
Let us get on with it.
“You can do it, sweetheart!” he said. And we can. Definitely.
So, let’s do it, and get on with it!
Enough of this!
In the name of heaven and earth! And enlightened man/woman!
Let’s go!
“I think you support the idea of social engineering in regard to how it’s executed –yes that is the proviso.”
No I don’t. Am TOTALLY against it! But defining what ‘it’ is seems to be something you and James have been batting back and forth. To me, though, just stylistically speaking (and style is an important aspect, symbolically speaking, of meaning, albeit always as filtered through a cultural context/lens), it smacks of rule by middle class thinking, i.e. parvenu rule, or even if not, then rule by elite committees whose ultimate authority remains opaque, murky, inevitably corrupt. The advantage of the Monarch principle is that it has to operate largely in the open in order to continuously muster loyalty and support.
Now in terms of the wealth sub-theme: in theory the Monarch had authority over all property, including that held by the Nobles. I think in both Eastern and Western systems throughout most of known history, if the Monarch wished to de-throne, as it were, any particular Noble, in theory they could, taking away their lands and titles. Of course, they had to be powerful enough to do so without being overthrown; that’s part of the balance of power business.
All societies throw up Nobles/Elites. It is inevitable, and not necessarily a bad thing. But unchecked, like federal/national taxes, they gradually end up taking too much of the communal pie until they become like a parasite who destroys its own host. There have to be checks and balances somehow in any structure.
Having a structure has nothing to do with social engineering, though I get the sense that is how you are using the term, i.e. in the sense of structuring society somehow. My take on the term is that it is about shaping how the population thinks and feels in order to create an envisioned type of society. Maybe this is a distinction without a difference.
But back to the property thing: the classic Monarchical model in which the King/Queen had power over all property also implies, underneath, that no single individual owns property, rather all property is an indivisible part of the overall Realm. It’s just that the Monarch is the one with ultimate authority, the ultimate ‘Yes-No’ buck stops here principle. I think any system that doesn’t have that very clearly in place is ultimately doomed to fail as greedy Baron class take far too much.
I’ll follow yr suggestion and take a gander at Russell. I used to like listening to Shaw, who is of a slightly earlier generation and not such a Lord type. Went to the House of Lords once for a dinner about Wordsworth. Terribly stuffy. But good food!
“Yes the problem with the UK perhaps only till quite recently has been the dominance of an elite over the laws of the country –things only turned a little way from that since the 1960s.”
Oh, I don’t know. I think Magna Carta in 1215 was a pretty extraordinary thing in terms of helping to establish Common Law which is perhaps one of the bedrock genius developments of Western, or at least British, society. That Common Law has been systematically eroded, largely forgotten by most members of modern societies who in theory still operate with it (like UK, US, Canada etc.), and now rapidly vanishing. Be interesting to see if the States can overturn the new US health care Bill, but I doubt it even though they are legally correct, Constitutionally speaking. A governor in Utah this week signed a State Bill authorizing him/them to start taking back land from the US Federal Govt. Interesting to see how that plays out too.
This all does relate to what you are writing about in terms of Sakyongs, the world, Shambhala etc. Balance of Central to Local, but also how-where the Individual fits in. CTR was very down on individuality and often lambasted it with oodles of Royal Scorn. I think I understood, and understand, but also I personally find that vision overly tribal in nature, something which I like emotionally, but don’t think is practical in today’s world with tens, often hundreds, of millions of people in so-called nation states. Now maybe that is all going to break down somehow and we will devolve back to much smaller conglomerates wherein a tribal approach will again be the best. If so, then the notion of all individuals being more like ants in a communal hive will make more sense. But as it is now, if everyone just surrenders and goes along with the status quo, the result will be ever-increasing mass slavery, and I doubt that is what CTR would be recommending either as a general model.
Dear Ash
Oh –ok social engineering a bugbear in the conversation –still I think we have all unpacked the phrase so that at least we have some notion of what it really means. Ok yes Ash may be I take your point of it being the structuring of society thats an ok distinction with me so then we can drop the words social engineering which raise so many hackles! Obviously many people round the world miffed by the middle classes and others developing certain means to work with structure – I wonder about that.
So now we have gone on to the structuring of a possible enlightened society which may never come to pass but we are all aiming for in some respects. Yes interesting the King/Sakyong principle in removing the power of elites I like that but then that principle is also bounded by democracy and communism as Trungpa stated aswell so that is a very interesting dynamic.
Well to me at the present time both these further political concepts are not really being considered by SI a great deal. Of course the communism aspect may take time to come to fruition but the democracy concept as embodied in the Congress at the present time just wont do. I think the method of consultation is brief, the voting process absent (they even vote on motions in the Anglican church, I have checked their website), and may be also one could say too that the King principle may be by statute should be more involved in the governmental affairs – that is dicey witness British history with Kings but yes I think it could be feasible.
Interesting your comment about CTR scorning individuality could you unpack what happened in this sense a bit more. Myself I think I can get what he was talking about in the sense that the teachings even though you may not intellectually want them to do get you involved in the sufferings of others more than yourself and here we are talking almost in a sense of you being more sensitised to your environment and people in it by the practice of meditation.
Nation states including the UK of course –well comparatively they are a recent phenomen –just look at Europe in this regard in the nineteenth century for example and witness the many kingdoms and principalities existing then. The tendency now though is to become mega structures like America, China, a united Europe etc etc –kind of Orwellian, so yes re globalisation re also do have problems brewing! Of course here the true communism aspect of what you have described would remove this somewhat –the essential point here being that people could access what is necessary to live a reasonable life. So yes back to the study of Marx at Naropa may be!? Maybe even a conference on Marx and Fromm and Trungpa’s political viewpoint of the world.
As to the Sakyong principle if it is to become a world viewpoint as I think it must if true democracy and communism are being talked about then we are again back to seeing the Sakyong principle in terms of Emperor not guru though perhaps we should have a different title for that as Emperor does not sound good to western ears maybe not even Sakyong perhaps some title could be discovered that would be amenable –some UN type term. Look the world simply is not Buddhist but it is of course yearning for individual/and individuals people who are somewhat tamed we can see that with Obama who is of course highly religious aswell. So yes I am still into the many paths approach to the shambhala teachings –what can I say-what do people want from Shambhala –community, mystical experience, etc, etc all these facets of society can be found in multifarious ways but of course too we have to work with some overarching concepts as well so Shambhala could be an umbrella for many ‘forms of good societies’. To me fundamentally that is the perhaps the only way the true conception of KOS will come about.
I still think it s good to go on with this discussion –one because I am learning stuff, two I hope more people join in, and three its quite fun!
(As an aside its quite interesting to listen to Russell on utube –quite quaint the image of 60s UK-my parents born in the Edwardian era so I am familiar with the historical sense of his viewpoints on the world plus he also is quite funny aswell)
Well best
Rita Ashworth
A little spontaneous composition about views and paths:
PhilosoMe 101
Inspired by the Section entitled ‘Natural Perfection’ in ‘The Way of Maha Ati’ by Chogyam Trungpa and Rigdzin Shikpo.
Everything
All
Revolves
Around
From and
Back
To
Me.
I am the Subject
And Object
Of the stories
Unendingly woven
In ups and downs
Twists and folds
Highways and byways
Hills and valleys
Curves and bends
Of ever-unfolding
Terrains, territories
That all lead home to
Me.
Journeys comprised of
Stories comprised of
Territories comprised of
Rhythms and hints and thrusts and parries
Distractions, diversions, ambitions, determinations,
Avoidance, retreats, surrenders, humiliations,
Victories, defeats, denouements and heart breaks
- And pay cheques –
All fashioning from tireless fascination
Place and time
The terrain of narrative unfolding
And stretching
Fermenting
And baking
Into the loaf
Of
Me
Chewed and savoured
Continually.
When mind and belly are one in the body
The dog of fixation is caught gnawing on the bone of obsession;
The cat of ambition is felt pouncing on the object of attention;
The vulture of spiritual materialism tastes the rotten corpse of enlightenment
And all is good,
All is alive,
Each bend and turn,
Each twist and release,
Each hill and valley
Each road, each journey
Lead home
Lead back
Lead forward
Bob like a cork in the ocean,
Flow like a leaf in the river
Surrender like raindrop falling from sweet cloud,
Bloom like sunrise
Weep naturally like sunset
Flourish and perish
Rejoice and renounce
Solid as rock
Empty as sky
Rich as Red
Buoyant as Blue
Glorious as Green
Yummy as Yellow
Breathing as Belly
The vast undermind
Of ever-perfect
Now.
April 7 2010
“Yes interesting the King/Sakyong principle in removing the power of elites..” Well, more like managing. A strong Monarch inspires the elites towards enlightenment/goodness/discipline/honour etc. Royalty in Western terms is enlightened Authentic Presence which is perceived by the Heart and immediately transmits Wisdom, Sanity, Dignity and all other Virtues.
The true Kingdom of Shambhala exists in the Realm of Nowness, of course. That is what makes it different from any other Kingdom, and although there can be many enlightened kingdoms in theory, there is only one Now, so they would all be related somehow, naturally and spontaneously, and thus all part of the Shambhala Kingdom in some fashion.
I didn’t listen to Russell yet – but will later today – and am leary of Marx. Anyone backed by the ThreadNeedle Boys is quintessential Samsara Ambassador in my book, which of course is a very questionable volume itself!
Social engineering is just Machiavelli vs. Alinsky ad infinitum when the same people control both sides of every issue thereby guaranteeing the outcome.
Saul Alinsky (January 30, 1909, Chicago, Illinois – June 12, 1972, Carmel, California)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saul_Alinsky
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli
Rita, the redistribution of wealth is an interesting dynamic to look at, because it is not social engineering (SE).
The need for redistribution of wealth has been understood since people started creating chiefdoms many thousands of years ago. The chief would gather tribute often claiming divine authority, and would redistribute that just enough to appease the people and maintain their position. The modern nation state developed out of that dynamic, it isn’t a new thing of capitalism at all.
The recognition that wealth must be redistributed, regardless what system, has evolved out of millennium of experience. If that is ignored as is often done, wealth accumulates at the top and drains society of wealth and resources, eventually and inevitably leading to collapse and/or revolt. It is not from inception based on creating fairness or any other ideology. It is purely pragmatic.
The arguments against it are more likely based on SE, like: “people shouldn’t get what they haven’t earned” or “If the rich can’t earn larger oodles, they won’t invest in business.” And so on.
Ash, if SE is so bad, why is it OK to use dharma practices as a SE tool? My thinking, if social engineering is innately aggressive, using dharma practices that way doesn’t ameliorate SE, it corrupts what has been absorbed into that process.
I also have to ask where your certainty of monarchy comes from. It would seem democracy has apparently no ability to break out of status quo unless some catastrophe happens, in which case the status quo is broken not transformed. I’ve often thought monarchy would be better able to change directions when necessary, but I don’t know of any examples of that ever actually happening.
Monarchies stick to their patterns of power and control and wealth every bit as stubbornly as any baron class, until incest or corruption or popular revolt tear them apart. (Uuum… without a king, would there be barons?)
There are no doubt short lived noble exceptions, but for amassing wealth and sucking the lower classes dry, it would be hard to find better illustrations than the behavior of monarchies, particularly hereditary ones, throughout history.
A monarch at the top, democracy in the middle and communism at the bottom sounds to me like the worst aspects of each. I would want Trungpa Rinpoche to unpack that one before I gave it any credence.
You can’t seriously mean the Bastille option is a reliable form of checks and balances. It is horrific when things go that far, nor do the ruling classes take it seriously… until its way too late.
Check out Jared Diamond’s tome “Guns, Germs and Steel” for a remarkable overview of the development of societies from bands to tribes to chiefdoms to nation states which have the most part been kleptocracies, by transmuting tributes earned by the chief’s closer proximity to divinity, into taxes and fees. No, not all modern nation states are purely kleptocracies, but… we aren’t shod of that either.
In the inspiration that monarchs don’t mitigate the power of the elite, they create, nurture and protect it.
.
.
.
.
[excerpt from] A WORD WITH YOU
How can we have so much to say,
Have to say so much: trillions of words –
Can’t we get it right?
Just throw a few more million words at it!
Always more where those came from!
Were there something to say we would say it:
That would be that.
Since there’s nothing to say we can go on saying it forever:
Is this what you call altruism?
This technique for filling up all the claustrophobic space?
Samadhi gets no word in edgewise!
Your cheeks are blue and who’s the wiser?
Hasn’t every permutation and combination, every juxtaposition
And every justification been wrought yet: all folderol!
We archetypal chimpanzees type random keys for eternity,
Produce no words transcending time, fashion, enchantment, craze:
For all our contortions never do we manage to say one new thing…
[from 2 Legs in the Afternoon, Lancelot Press, 1993]
Thanks to John for his poem -
Personally speaking, I have found all the words, including my own words FOR SURE! to be a little bit tiresome. So I am going to try a new approach and increase my shamatha practice. I am going to do my best in sitting practice…Of course, the impulse is to share the results of this effort with all of you…but….no promises! It might just result in too many words.
All the Best, Charles
John, yes there are many words on this site. They were typed in by many people, over a period of many months. Maybe a few paragraphs a week on average, for some. Part of the value is in the self-expression, the other part in allowing others to read different points of view, that this may help clarify confusion. It has certainly been helpful for me in both these regards.
If your every conversational word had been put into a blog and kept online it too would no doubt go on for many, many pages. This is all the site is, an ongoing record of conversations.
In my experience and that of many, the alternative represented by those in power within Shambhala is silence and shunning. Given that kind of context, words can be exceptionally necessary. And indeed “altruistic”.
Dear James
An interesting post –very thought provoking.
Yes I have been thinking of Ash’s post about the monarchy, democracy, communism triad re Trungpa’s comment mainly personally into the way I have seen SI operating at present. For example how do all those people in SI see the whole thing playing out politically or do they even consider politics. I dont know sometimes I feel this sense is developing if that people do certain practices somehow magically an enlightened society will manifest. So yes there is that strange fascination with doing things in the ‘correct and loyal’ manner according to what is the standard viewpoint.
To me there can be no standard viewpoint even Ash’s reply about the realm of Nowness and KOS manifesting from that was a tad suspect – as in the sense well the magic thing is entering into the conversation again, of course I know what he means and how he is employing the term but then teachers tell you to do that dont they –just sit –the whole thing will all work out ok – and I wonder about that way of doing things.
So sort of crunching along as my philosopher lecturer Mr Holly used to do I ask questions re politics and hierarchy. For example when Ash mentioned the communism angle my eyes opened up a bit wider –wow at last I thought reality is entering the situation but then again as you and Ash have unpacked the situation I thought no we are still going to have to deal with the monarch motif even to establish the glimmerings of an enlightened society and then I really thought no way again. It is something to have the guru as King or the Christian concept of the Christ within you in a religious sense but to transpose that to the running of society in samsara is a big leap forward.
Any way lets take it forward a bit with some queries as to an imagined structure re enlightened society –well if Trungpa was the King in our pragamatic workaday world and if he was still alive how would he relate to politics. Well re politics if he had founded a National Assembly what would have been his role in it. Perhaps his role would have been somewhat limited as in the sense that only if the people were having some really mega-crisis would he step in –that CCL attitude – at the end of his life for example when he seemed very reluctant to step in and sort things out –even to make any comment at all. So may be that could be a role of King somewhat….. the just watching aspect.
Could we transpose this ‘non-involvement’ to the present SI set-up – no I dont think so –now its certain path ways to get to Shambhala –the whole org is going mad in conducting interviews here and there to go forward with the correct way of entering into the whole thing, you must go this particular way to get the real hit on the Shambhala teachings etc, etc.
What happened to the CCL attitude and just letting the whole thing develop organically-what happened to the teacher leaving people the freedom to make mistakes but still some how work the whole thing out. So yes I suppose I am asking about the role of the King ok Queen aswell to do just absolutely nothing but to leave it up to the students as in the sense when Trungpa said my students will be concerned with setting up of enlightened society –where the emphasis is on the students and not the King role (but of course Trungpa has instituted that method with his statement!) So yes I think the whole King/Sakyong interaction with the sangha will have to be more unpacked before we can even get some glimpse of the democracy and communism coming from it or should we say intertwined with it.
As to the conversation proceeding –yes I would like to go on with it a little more because we are sussing out ‘practical’ connections re the setting up of a society. To say that this discussion is not fruitful and that we should all just sit and just be is also not a totally good thing to do aswell –because within the dharma too there is that whole thing of the study discipline as well. So yeh lets go on until we get ‘called’ on it……..ssssshhhhhhh –someones listening in………
O yeh Ash looking for stuff on utube on Marx –got this great video on Mark Steel – a socialist worker comedian –hes hilarious –you might want to check him out-a definite bolshie nutcase but very clever!
Well best
Rita Ashworth
The Practice Lineage or Remembering Who We Are:
Or: “Not letting the moralists get you down”:
“Everyone in the lineage of the practicing tradition has been extremely sarcastic and critical of the current scenes taking place around them. They were extremely critical of the subtle corruption taking place in the name of the dharma. We could say that the Practice Lineage is the guardian of the buddhadharma not only in Tibet alone, but in the rest of the world. Someone should at least have a critical view of how things should happen, how things shouldn’t happen. That particular sharp-vision, traditionally known as “prajna-vision” is very important, and that is a very lively situation, a living situation, in fact, that is why we are here.
The Practice Lineage is the most pure and is unhampered by any kind of spiritual materialism”.
From “The Mishap Lineage: Transforming Confusion into Wisdom” by Chogyam Trungpa
Thanks Chris. I was indeed letting moralists get me down.
I know I get too wordy, but these are not simple issues to unpack, especially in a milieu in which we haven’t given them much thought, something many people before us have in fact done.
In any case, it would seem structures being established are not automatically in favor of members, and not best left to ruling elite out of touch with their subjects and in some cases I’ve witnessed reality.
Distinguishing between spiritual practice and politics has become somehow problematic within Shambhala, and as long as that’s the case, as long as ‘our’ politics is treated as something sacred, then whatever corruption occurs is unassailable, undermining one of the most fundamental needs any society must have for continuity and well being.
Here’s a poem that’s somewhat apropos, a little more on the lighter side, and I hope a bit of fun…
Somewhere Under the Rainbow
A Tornado’s surely comin’,
Though the punters disagree,
While delinquent Ninja dropouts hide
Behind a golden tree.
Gumball’s in ascendant
And Leo’s on the fly.
From acrimony sandwiches
The Presidents get high.
The alphabet’s all jumbled up.
And Toto’s in the zoo.
It’s getting hard to mumble
In this gumbo made of glue.
I ran. I fled. I jumped ahead,
And still I couldn’t buy,
A discount entertainment system
That soothed me with its lie.
A coffee Tempranillo seltzer;
Someone’s gotta pay.
The hangover is just the tax.
I swear my feet are clay
So sleeping on my bicycle,
I veered a steady path,
‘Tween calamity and ecstasy,
Beneath a glaring wrath.
The stars aligned eccentrically.
The moon collapsed anew.
A twinkle in the barkeep’s eye,
As he tapped another brew.
A dancing bear came lurching by
And said he couldn’t talk.
A lemur with an attitude,
Handed him some chalk.
A hippo hinted heavily:
“There is a secret thought.
But when you grasp it carelessly
It’s easy to get caught.”
A one-eyed deaf orangutan
Wheezed “Keep ‘em in the dark!”
A leopard picking at his teeth
Remarked “It’s just a lark.”
An ostrich shrieked “Preposterous!”
And then he saw no more.
A wild pig with no appetite
Grumbled “What a boar.”
An iguana staring at the mirror
Saw nothing there to say.
A Mantis chewing on her mate,
Said “This is how we pray.”
I asked them all as clear I could:
“Please tell me what this means.”
They laughed until they pissed themselves,
And chortled “In your dreams”.
I took that out. I put it down.
I let it run around.
It yelped and snarled, it barked and growled
But didn’t make a sound.
The merchants wearing Venice Beach,
Well, they took an extra snort,
And onward Christian soldiers sang:
“How could we ‘ere abort.”
Lawyers, bankers, acrobats
Invoked the Sixth Degree;
“We’re all in this together mates
And nothin’ is fer free.”
How much and when and why and where
And shouldn’t they agree?
The mystics of the ages,
Aren’t all drinking the same tea.
The printing press is running late.
And walruses are fat.
If it rains you will get wet.
All I really want’s a hat.
Thanks Chris,
With all due respect, the passage you quote from The Mishap Lineage [pub. 2009] is not an authoritative quotation, simply because Rinpoche didn’t personally authorize the final wording.
Who knows for sure that you are quoting Rinpoche and not his editor? So therefore how can we honestly quote Rinpoche from texts published since his death?
It’s safer if we rely on texts Rinpoche authorized while he was alive; then we can safely quote “chapter and verse”. Not to split hairs, but this is a distinction WITH a difference.
John:
Re: your comment about the quote from The Mishap Lineage, I’m going to be honest here. I found it quite offensive. Ms. Gimian worked very closely with the Vidyadhara for many years. She is extremely well trained to edit the talks he gave and to present his teachings to the public. There is no question in my mind about that.
Having said that, no one is perfect .Even highly trained editors have to make judgment calls when committing words that were presented orally to the “permanence” of print in a published book. “Perfection” is an impossiblity in this regard.
I am aware that you are in possession of a considerable amount of the Vidyadhara’s poetry (unedited), and appreciate the custodial role you have assumed in this regard. However, I’m sad to see that being in possession of such treasures has caused you to cast aspersions on the Vidyadhara’s highly trained and qualified editors.
By making a statement like this, you are suggesting that Ms. Gimian’s editing is not to be trusted. By implication, you are suggesting that all of the Vidyadhara’s teachings that have been published in book form since 1987 are substandard. I think you are doing the public a disservice by expressing this view, and don’t think it does much for your credibility. I’m also wondering if this is a subltle game of one-upsmanship we are witnessing here.
Dear Andrew,
Well sorry you got so angry because you feel John cast aspersions on the noble editors, which isn’t even true. Edited text is not literally Rinpoche’s voice, is it? Or do you see an equivalency? But if a text is edited by editors, it’s no longer the text of Rinpoche’s exact words. That’s all I said, not that that’s a good thing or that’s a bad thing; it just is so.
In the case of a book designed for wider readership it makes perfect sense to edit for the sake of clarity, of course. But for purposes of quotation, a quote from material that has been changed by editors is not equivalent to an original quote of Rinpoche, even though the editors are highly trained and qualified; this is obvious.
So you found this pointing out the obvious to be offensive and cast the very aspersions at John that you accuse John of casting. I really don’t see the controversy, it’s only controversial if you twist what I said [“not to be trusted” and “substandard” are your words, not mine] to make your case.
Well, I guess we are all fucked then. There were no tape recorders or even paper and pencils in the time of Shakyamuni Buddha.
Nothing to do but rely on the fact that someone heard the teachings and put them into practice and passed the teachings on by discovering compassion and living their life. We’re fucked!
I didn’t like John’s comment much either, not in a big way, please don’t take it personal John, but the timing made it seem to imply Chris’ quote was completely meaningless. I can’t see anything else it may have added to the discussion at hand.
Quotes from Trungpa Rinpoche can of course be used similarly to the way a Jehovah’s Witness uses them.
I met a guy once had a photographic memory and he used to invite door to door bible thumpers in to debate. He could, without looking in the book quote chapter and verse, ‘proving’ the opposite of whatever the proselytizers were preaching.
They would assume he was making stuff up, so he would tell them which chapter, verse, or psalm, they’d look it up and see it was true, glance at him with a tinge of fear and search in their dog-eared stickum marked tomes for another quote to refute him further, like a bouncing ball hall of conflicting mirrors. It was great fun. (I think some of his victims may have thought him some kind of demon.)
The point is quotes can be used to support whatever one wants. I don’t see the sense in demanding pure and unadulterated direct quotes from Trungpa Rinpoche. The way he spoke was very often dependent on how the person(s) he was talking to grasped what he was saying. (How much he had to explain and how much he could abbreviate.) Very often there were gaps in grammar and diction, all more than made up for in the pith teachings contained, but for written language, there are very few direct quotations from him in the purest sense of the word.
Many of the things I know he said, often because I was there when he said them or had impeccable sources, can only ever be considered paraphrasing. I don’t believe that teachings necessarily lose their pith meaning or truth as a result of being handled by … us.
Even when there is a direct quote, my thinking is we have to put something of ourselves in them in discussions or they begin to sound flat. Like bible thumpers.
In this particular case, if we don’t pick a specific target for the quote, (which would probably be an aggressive use of his words but I thought this one encouraged people disheartened by moralists and authoritarians -maybe just my take,) it is more likely than not Trungpa Rinpoche probably did say something along those lines.
Certainly the spirit of that quote is evident in the body of teachings about spiritual materialism and any number of officially sanctioned things he ‘definitely’ did say regarding credentials, the Tibetan church, courage, one’s principles, and about having a sense of humor and mistrust towards the rules laid down around us being a way of ensuring success.
In the inspiration of not reinterpreting the dharma, and not holding it at arms length either.
Dear Chris,
Thanks for that post re practice.
Yes there is the moralists getting us down re the one and only way etc etc –suppose thats why to a certain extent exploring other ways of seeing the whole thing or unpacking different scenarios re what we have studied in the past.
But yes I agree you can not get a definitive way that the shambhala teachings and of course the Buddhadharma teachings will manifest despite what SI states because of course with Shambhala we are discussing and experiencing a manifold awaking to basic goodness and who really knows how this will pan out. Mover-onners in all their little groups at the moment but even that may change as time passes so that we could meet in a more convivial, mad way than SI. And perhaps as you suggest if the little groups now evolving could be more loosely structured and freer that would be great aswell.
Wow to Julie Greene doing the maîtri teachings in Crestone –what a gift for people –hope other teachers outside of SI will follow suit with this –this is a really interesting development.
So yes what is the tone of all the new stuff happening perhaps a wish to be less structured, less hierarchical-seems to fit the times especially if you look at the way young people organise themselves nowadays in relation to politics aka environmental demos etc etc. Even conventionally too staid politicians seem to know the game is up on authoritarian modes of governance for example Uk in election mode at moment and we could have a hung parliament because nobody trusts anyone now after the expenses scandal. So yes anything that evolves from Shambhala in different ways in the future will have to be very fluid and open-ended and leave gigantic room for peoples continual input-dont think that will be biased anarchy but may be true anarchy because of course the teachings on basic goodness undercut ego.
Re Cape Breton and its position in all this – yes maybe Trungpa was seeing far into the future when he designated it as the main place but still I think more moves need to be made by everyone in supporting the shambhala teachings there as it is a somewhat important place in the growing mandala.
Yes also re the debate about quoting CTR –yes its difficult area. I did do a report for the Buddhist Society magazine on one of his talks in London and when I listened to the tape several times it was like listening to something very deep and almost mesmerising. May be from doing all those debates on Buddhism in Tibet he was dealing in a method of discussion that was almost ‘translucent’ certainly when I read his stuff I have the sensation of things going deeper and in a sense being more open aswell so even his standard works have the sensation of poetry. But isn’t this feeling the nature of all religious/artistic language because we are dealing with imponderables which transcend the mundane, a big branch of religious studies for example is the use of religious language to exemplify connections with our ultimate nature which is of course ‘extraordinarily’ ordinary aswell!. But of course also you can use the whole conception of language to mystify people so its a fine line interpreting what is going on within the religious context. Indeed at college I spent whole terms just debating certain chapters of Descartes on religion and also what people are doing when they use religious language and debate – yes a very interesting topic to discuss the use of language in all the different formats.
Well yes John hope you can get CTR’s poetry out in book form soon would love to read it that would be great.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
James,
Thanks for your poem, by the way.
As for the quote, it was one of those auspicious “open the book and the pages fall to that particular passage.” It cheered me up , was apropos and I thought I would share it for that reason.
There has been a tendency here for some to use the Mahayana as a big stick to silence people and was how it was inappropriately used for centuries by the monastic ruling elite to keep the peasants from revolting. Gross inequalities of wealth and labor were justified by using the Mahayana teachings on “merit” and karma to keep people quiet and satisfied with their lot and to keep the ladrangs (labrangs) “full.” So , not surprising that, once again, we see people, who are supportive of this return to a feudal monastic system in SI in order, to “keep harmony” rationalizing and justifying the current SI scene by bringing out the mahayana teachings to try and silence people.
Anyway, thank goodness this is NOT 14th c Tibet and that we , as Westerners, can and should keep speaking out against the same old corruption, wherever we find it ,such as this monastic, archaic system coming to shear the infantilized Western Buddhist sheep, the latter who stubbornly refuse to look at relative realty or the real History of Old Tibet in order to sustain their fantasies into old age. Some of us, however, feel that corruption of the dharma is not worth that price to keep ourselves infantalized. Particularly when it’s done in the name of Chogyam Trungpa.
That quotation from The Mishap Lineage is incorrect. It is found on page 23 with the browse function at shambhala.com.
The passage as quoted by Chris says:
That particular sharp-vision, traditionally known as “prajna-vision” is very important, and that is a very lively situation, a living situation, in fact, that is why we are here.
But the actual text says:
That particular sharp vision, traditionally known as “prajna vision,” is very important. And that is a very lively situation, a living situation, which still is up-to-date. In fact, that is why we are here.
Thanks John. Adding that phrase further emphasizes how much he was stressing that the Practice Lineage’s role, as guardian of the dharma against spiritual materialism, is for NOW. So thanks for the correction . He wouldn’t have said it in three different ways, i.e. “that is a very lively situation, a living situation, which still is up-to-date” if he didn’t mean us to really hear it.
Sorry to interrupt this thread, I didn’t know where to put this piece. It is an update on the earthquake situation, from Khenpo Tsering, just received late last night. Surmang was less affected, and the Shedra still stands! Trungpa Rinpoche the 12th is safe. However, so much else has been destroyed, if you have been following the news, including Thrangu Monastery, and also monks dead, people buried, dead children, etc. Catastrophic. Here is the letter I just sent to the Sangha. (Konchok Foundation has started an earthquake relief fund)
Dear Sangha,
I want to thank you all so much from beyond the bottom of my heart for all the donations that are pouring in for the earthquake relief situation. I won’t know the final Tally yet, as there are so many and more still coming in…and we are still scrambling to get news, and communicagte with eachother about what to do, etc.
Khenpo Tsering arrived safely to Jeykundo last evening (our time), managed to obtain a cell phone, and called us. Here is a first hand report, slightly edited. some good news and some really sad news:
The cell phone service is Jyekundo is intermittent, it cuts in and out. He doesn’t have a car battery charger and doesn’t know how he’s going to recharge the phone. The power is out in Jyekundo.
I was able to reach Khenpo Tsering tonight in Jyekundo by cell phone. It’s been a very long 24 hours for him since he called me from Xining last night just after the earthquake had happened. He was leaving immediately for Jyekundo at that time to help with the rescue efforts.
The road from Xining to Jyekundo is open. There are some cracks in the road and rocks on the road but it is passable. On the way down to Jyekundo, Khenpo passed at least a thousand cars or vehicles that were taking injured people up to hospitals in Xining. There is not nearly enough hospital capacity in Jyekundo for all of the injured people.
Khenpo said that Jyekundo is “completely destroyed.” He said that probably 95% of the buildings in the city have been destroyed. He said that, if anyone has seen the movie “2012,” it looks like that. Even some of the more recent larger buildings collapsed. He said that one six or seven story building collapsed “like the World Trade Center.” He went first to his own family’s house in Jyekundo to look for his family and dig them out if necessary. Unlike most houses, his family’s house did not collapse. It has a large crack in it, the back wall is tilting at an angle, and it will have to be rebuilt, but it did not fall down. His father, sister, and brother are ok and were not injured. Khenpo said that he has a number of other relatives in Jyekundo and he thinks that six or seven of them were killed.
He said that he and his family members have been spending all of their time helping other people dig in collapsed buildings, trying to find people who are still alive, but they haven’t found anyone alive. He said that he has pulled out several people who were already dead.
There are now a large number of Chinese soldiers in Jyekundo who are helping to dig but not enough compared to how many collapsed buildings that there are, and the soldiers don’t have enough heavy equipment.
Khenpo said that about eight hundred bodies that have been pulled out of the rubble so far but “there are thousands more bodies still buried in the collapsed buildings.” I said that the reports here are of ten thousand people injured and he said that it was at least that many and repeated that there isn’t enough space in the hospitals for all of them.
No one is staying inside any of the buildings that are still standing and everyone is living outside in tents or in whatever way that they can. He’s sleeping in his car.
Surmang Dutsi Til was not seriously affected by the earthquake. He has not been there in this first day since the earthquake but he was told that the earthquake was not so large there (Surmang is much further from the epicenter than Jyekundo is). He was told that no one was injured at Surmang Dutsi Til, and that several buildings have cracks in them from the earthquake, but none collapsed. He was told that there was no damage at all to the new shedra building complex at Surmang, which he described as very strongly built compared to how other buildings are constructed in the region. Khenpo has not heard yet of any damage at Surmang Namgyaltse. He has been told that the damage in the Nangchen heartland, centered around the town of Sharda, was not nearly as bad as around Jyekundo.
Trungpa XII Rinpoche is at Derge right now, which was not affected by the earthquake. Damcho Tenphel Rinpoche was at Kyere and most of the family members of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche are in that area, which was not affected by the earthquake. However, several of the Vidyadhara’s nieces or nephews have been living in Jyekundo and Khenpo has no news yet of what has happened to them. Aten Rinpoche is alright, I believe he was at Surmang at the time of the earthquake but he has now come up to Jyekundo to help out. One of Aten Rinpoche’s relatives is a khenpo at Thrangu monastery and was killed.
Thrangu monastery was the monastery most severely damaged by the earthquake from the reports that Khenpo has received. He was told that it is “95% destroyed” and that many monks there are dead, but no one yet knows how many. Benchen monastery wasn’t damaged as badly even though it is very close to Thrangu monastery. Domkhar monastery in Jyekundo was already in the process of being moved from its precarious hillside perch to a safer location in the valley and he think there wasn’t so much of a problem for them as a result. The Sakya monastery on a hilltop in Jyekundo has major damage but the buildings did not collapse.
Thirty or forty families from the Surmang area now have winter houses in Jyekundo, which they were living in when the earthquake happened. He knows all of these families and is trying to check up on them. He thinks that all of them have lost their houses and probably ten to twenty people were killed from the Surmang families.
He asked me to tell the Shambhala sangha that, if we are able to send money, that would be very helpful, because everyone who was involved in this earthquake needs help. He is going to find the Surmang families first to see how he can help them but there are many people who need help. Everyone who was living in Jyekundo has lost their house and has had people close to them who was killed or injured.
James, I love your poem, thanks. Dylanesque, somehow, but better.
Also, I liked your thought way back on the Dadaists etc.
Rita, did not answer one of yr. queries a while back about ‘unpacking’ individuality issue. Nor James’ about ‘certainty of Monarchy’. Was away from home quite a bit of late, and also internet connection often slower than dialup and this page takes forever to open up.
Individuality: born in the 50′s (and now in them again!) and raised in England which perhaps had more of a sense of this than America but only to a degree, we were exposed to a more socialised culture. So-called ‘Confucian’ societies had this, and still have this, even more so, as do most traditional European cultures, and, I suspect, nearly all traditional cultures. In other words, one is part of a group, or rather one’s personal behavior is mainly a function and expression of a group, or societal, dynamic. Hence the great emphasis on speech, manners, dress, cultural expression of all sorts, all of which involve how an ‘individual’ manifests within a larger societal context. That larger context is the ‘Realm’.
During a little window of connectivity last night, I was watching some video clips of Tsar Nicholas, his coronation and marriage, probably some of the earliest news reels ever made. People all arranged according to class, traditional dress, soldiers marching, bells ringing, ceremony, ritual and so on, but what struck me forcefully was the clear bond (samaya) of the assembled population. Nobody was barking orders all over the place telling them what to do and say, and yet everyone was finely attuned to behaving appropriately. Much in England when I was a boy there was very similar.
Now in the post war years, there has been a veritable orgy of ‘individualism’ even though, interestingly enough, people seem to have less and less individual character, both in terms of vigor and virtue. When a person devotes much of their developmental and expressive energies towards individual view and manifestation, they are by definition distancing themselves from the group and thereby heightening the sense of self and other, creating more aggression and neurosis of all sorts. And then, in order to function, they need psychoanalysis and happy pills. Strange world.
In any case, I think that is what he was referring to in terms of individualism. But that sort of negative individualism only makes sense to point out within the context of a more or less sane, vibrant culture. If you have general breakdown of social norms and virtues, then just blindly following along, i.e. failing to have one’s own individual integrity, becomes a similar problem on the flip side of the dynamic. I think that is what I was referring to. And also perhaps in the context of RFS, where there is a strong sense of the group having one astray, it is not necessarily ‘individualistic’ in the negative sense, to buck the trend.
James, I don’t have historical references handy, I am sorry to say. So speaking idealistically, perhaps I could say that when you have a strong society, then a natural Monarch principle inevitably is created one way or another and embodied by one particular, living, human Monarch.
But that principle transcends any ‘individual’. It is more like a particular moment, a particular perception.
When a group is assembled and they tune into something together versus milling about aimlessly, when they focus on the same thing, group shamatha occurs immediately, and especially so in a well ordered, well socialised mandala. And when such groups assemble, they naturally wish to tune into something together. Frequently this takes the form of listening to a speaker, or witnessing a ritual. In any case, there is a single object of group focus.
In this example of a communal event, the Monarch principle is that single object of group/societal focus. For the group to have a shared moment there must be that shared object of focus, at which point the object itself becomes less important than the mutual experience, or rather the group mind that is sharing the same state at the same place and time. This is similar to the shift of shamatha to vipashana perhaps, in that once the mind is still on an object, then a wider world opens up automatically and the mind itself, which is formless, becomes the object. So society shares the same state generally, altogether, by first focusing on the same particular.
Now in the context of social hierarchy, or structure, if an individual Monarch starts taking the role as some sort of license to achieve all sorts of individualistic (often hedonistic or narcissistic) goodies, and forgets that his or her rank and role is in fact a function of the entire Realm including each and every inhabitant therein, that Monarch has gone astray, just like a meditator excited by the efflorescence of a particularly luminous state, and who, in trying to maintain that state, capture that state, separate that state from the streaming of unfolding ever-changing nowness, or being, turns it into a nyam, which is another way of saying that ego is trying to possess a sense of egolessness, which is akin to trying to imprison liberation.
So the role of Monarch, ideally, is to act as a conduit for focus (or example) within an overall societal context which is attuned to group awareness. And since we are all basically good and sane, with fundamentally lovely hearts, such Monarch and such Subjects, by so attuning their minds together, will naturally tend to create more and more luminous, enriching, pacifying and powerful atmospheres together, and thus there will be further socialisation, sophistication and sanity of expression of goodness, skill, expression, intelligence, compassion and so forth. When a society lacks a Monarch principle, it does not have a way to have shared focus, and thus shared Heart-Mind, and thus promote mutual goodness.
Everyone watching television on their sofa is a particularly glaring samsaric perversion of the Monarch principle. It is neither individualistic nor properly socialised behavior, rather some dim ghost realm imitation delivered via a machine throwing up projections of living people, but without living people being actually there in reality.
Speaking of television, I think the funniest thing I ever saw CTR do was a private moment at the Court. It must have been a Sunday morning. I can’t remember what I was doing there, probably getting a notebook or something for Gesar who I was tutoring at the time, but I had to pop into his private sitting room. He was there on his own watching television, which had been specially brought in I suppose (or maybe it was there because I had been watching football with the Sawang the night before!?). Anyway, there he was watching TV. I found this sort of astonishing. I had never heard about his watching or not watching TV but just naturally found it incomprehensible. He was so Alive and TV being so dead sort of thing.
He was watching one of those TV evangelists, one that alternated being shouting about Hell and crying about his sins and the sacrifices on the Cross and suchlike. And there was Rinpoche, sitting on his chair, staring fixedly at the screen with a black scowl on his face, which was clearly genuine but at the same time exaggerated, sort of Kabuki-like, or like Captain Haddock in a Tintin drawing.
I paused to look first at the Preacher going through his conniptions and then at the Vidyadhara, both amused and amazed at the unlikeliness of this scenario. And then Rinpoche started shouting at the screen, things like ‘You charlatan! You Liar!” and so forth.
I found this hilarious, but not just because it was obviously funny, but also because I had the totally irreverent thought that maybe because he was a Tibetan from the Realm of Maha Ati and Primordial Now, he thought he was actually talking to the Preacher. It certainly felt like he felt that way, his expression was so earnest! So the combination of him seemingly being so stupid and so wise at the same time for some reason gave me a great case of the giggles, which of course he ignored completely because he was totally into shouting down the Preacher in the TV box, which is where I left, quietly closing the door behind me, as I went about my business.
Later, I learned that he hated TV and never watched it. So to test this out, I rented Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. I figured any true Englishman just had to like that, also I found it very TGS-y and thought he would like it, on a TV screen or no.
He did.
Which for some reason I found gratifying.
Just a story for the fun of it…
Dear Ash,
Thanks for your feedback on ‘individuality and the Monarch principle’.
Yes I agree with you about the UK and its traditions because of course I was brought up with them too. There were certain standards of behaviour that were prevalent in the 1950’s and 1960’s that have somewhat disappeared in regarding primarily to trust in authority.
Of course the rebels in British society also talk of this lack of trust in a most unique way aswell. Recently for example I saw an interview with Johnnie Rotten, interestingly he was brought up a Catholic and was an excellent scholar i.e. a swot, he was quoting Shakespeare a lot in the interview and talking of the role of authority and the individual in society. So yes England has always thrown up these kind of characters which want us to consider the real ziji or essence of an individual acting within society, that is also part of the English tradition to mock authority when it swerves from its interaction with the people in a cohesive and compassionate manner.
So yes I am not against the monarch principle but I think from my example that it has to be intimately intertwined with the concerns of the individuals within the society aswell. Monarchs to me have to allow diversity to happen in their realms, indeed the present Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who is at the head of the established church in the UK and is close to the monarchy, has argued that some aspects of shariah law could be incorporated into British law –how this would be done I dont know for sure but its interesting to contemplate this happening in a diverse society.
So yes I agree the monarch principle is very deep within peoples psychology but of course too there is one’s own personal integrity as exemplified by the rebels and other traditions in the UK who often point to the societal inadequacies of a strict conception of the monarchy down the ages. In this respect also Princes Charles has argued that he would like to be the Defender of the Faiths and not the C of E Faith as the monarch is now.
So what is one to do with the individuality concept in this regard when monarchy goes astray from its subjects, divides opinion, is not seen to ameliorate, is not seen visibly for example also? Well to me it means that the monarch has to start having a new relationship with their subjects as indeed the present monarchy has done in the UK from its previous fussiness with protocol and precedence.
In addition the monarch principle should have a firm footing in tradition in regards to the study of history particularly western history where mega wars have engulfed the planet. Political awareness of the causes of aggression leads to more stability in society.
So there you have it – I still think under a monarchy you can allow for different takes on the Shambhala teachings indeed the study of English society and history has pointed out that when you dont allow for this diversity you get problems, which Johnnie Rotten to the Archbishop of Canterbury have pointed out.
So yes the greatness of monarchy has to be seen as a unifying principle primarily for all its citizens in times of national importance and calamity.
Perhaps also as continual rebel myself in the tradition of the UK from its history and literature I cant ignore the English conception of conscience in relating to the monarch principle – I would be indeed be going against my very English genes if I did – so yes individuality within the conception of enlightened Kingdom for all that I think I could live with.
Of course your ordinary man or women in the street may not consider these matters so deeply as I do –it might be well just give me the teachings on meditation and a community and yes what is the big deal about a monarchy any way –it wakes us up all this Tibetan stuff! Well all I can say to this is thats your choice but I also think a true King would defend the right of all his subjects to choose their way too as indeed the workaday monarchy in the UK has done. Its certainly weird that the Land of Oz has for example decided to hang out with the British monarchy and that Canada itself has not elected a President though it does have a constitution.
So yes monarchy/individuality and conscience as to connection to one’s own experiences both secular and religious – big and colossal subjects for discussion.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
I’ve been appreciating all the eloquence on this subject of monarchy. My thoughts are not so deep and perhaps even somewhat naive, but for what they are worth:
I came to VCTR’s first shambhala book well after I’d read nearly all of his published buddhist books. The first main part–”How To Be a Warrior”–blew my mind. Most of the second part did too, as well as aspects of the third. But also somewhere I think in the second half of the book–it’s been awhile since I’ve read it so I can’t pinpoint exactly where–I began to find certain ideas less compelling. Mostly these have to do with the concept of monarchy.
For years and years I held those difficulties in my mind in “negative capability”. I kept challenging myself, kept playing devil’s advocate with my views, tried to see a different way. But I just was never able to understand that part of shambhala vision. And this created much cognitive dissonance in my mind. After all, I would say to myself over and over, this guy is clearly pretty realized… And yet, the Confucianist stuff just wouldn’t stick no matter how hard I tried. It still doesn’t.
The main reason for this is simply that I’ve never come across that kind of power structure which, well, has really worked for any length of time, let alone ushered in anything close to enlightened society. Yes, I know the chants mention Ashoka, Emperors of China and Japan and so forth, but when I actually read history–not propaganda or speculation or hagiography, but careful, sober, sound history–I just don’t see “enlightened” kingship anywhere. Maybe I’m missing something–this is highly possible.
Certain reigns have been much better than others, quite obviously, but what always leaps out at me first and foremost when I study these things tend to be just the grubby, “human all-too-human” realities of power and the will to power. (Sorry for two references to Nietzsche in one sentence!–I’m not especially Nietzschean in perspective.) I see all the manifold pathways power opens up to corruption, ie simple human grasping and aversion–from subtle through flagrant all the way up to genocidal. And I see the stoking of spiritual materialism and theism.
Of course, VCTR’s teachings on the monarch principle go well beyond merely a philosophy of the state. I realize this. Still, since I never had the chance to meet him and therefore of course have never taken samaya with him, I am free to think that, as extraordinary and powerful a teacher as he was, I simply have no reason or basis for seeing him as perfect, free from all mistakes. And so I must say that nothing I’ve seen in human behaviour, either in historical study nor in my own long experience with power and its abuse, could lead me to feel that the kind of more-or-less absolute monarchy which now holds sway within shambhala is at all desirable. But of course, maybe this is not what he meant to have happen anyway–who knows? (cont.)
(cont. from above)
Would I feel differently if I had had some up close and personal experience with a great lama? Possibly, but I doubt it. I find I just can’t argue with the old axiom: there’s something in the very nature of power that is corrupting, and the more centralized the power, the fewer the checks and balances, the greater the danger. This is what I keep coming back to.
My last experiences at shambhala centres heightened all of this considerably. There, I saw the current head of shambhala treated as little (frighteningly little) short of a god. And I saw all the ancient shop-worn effects of this kind of culture on higher-ups and newcomers alike. Personally, I think it is a backward step. I think there are more empowering directions to take. More immediately, it simply scares me.
~ Ash on April 16th, 2010 1:09 am
Just a story for the fun of it…
Joe Hill wrote a song for the free speech fight of 1910 and it was introduced on the streets of Spokane by HAYWIRE MAC MCCLINTOCK … he was Grant’s secretary then… he wrote BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN and HALLELUJAH, I’M A BUM! They got together a little band… T-Bone Slim… a tuba… a garbage can lid… they stood in a doorway waitin’ to leap out at the unemployed throngs and regale them with song.
They used a shill to build the crowd… you know a carny shill… someone who uses tricks to build a crowd…his name was Prescott… he wore a black suit an’ a black bowler hat an’ a string tie with an umbrella and a briefcase… looked like a banker. He’d walk down while they were hidin’ in the doorway and suddenly he’d start to yell “Help! Help! Help! I’ve been robbed. Help! I’ve been robbed.” Everybody would run across the street “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” Soon as he’d got the crowd together he’d yell “I’ve been robbed by the capitalist system fellow workers.”
He’d talk to ‘em for ten minutes and then the boys would leap out and start singin’ and this is what they were singin’ …
THE PREACHER AND THE SLAVE
(TUNE: IN THE SWEET BYE AND BYE) (BY JOE HILL) (1911 EDITION)
Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what’s wrong and what’s right;
But when asked how `bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:
(Main Chorus)
You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.
And the Starvation Army they play,
And they sing and they clap and they pray
Till they get all your coin on the drum,
Then they tell you when you’re on the bum:
(chorus)
If you fight hard for children and wife –
Try to get something good in this life –
You’re a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.
(chorus)
Workingmen of all countries unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight;
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we’ll sing this refrain:
(Last Chorus)
You will eat, bye and bye,
When you’ve learned how to cook and to fry:
Chop some wood, `twill do you good,
And you’ll eat in the sweet bye and bye.
Utah Phillips
“We Have Fed You All A Thousand Years”
http://www.californiahistoricalsociety.org/exhibits/atwork/music_utah.html
- “The golden voice of the great American Southwest”, Bruce “U. Utah” Phillips, 1983.
Damchö, you have posed a very well articulated and open question.
I suggest the following: how about we turn your comment into an article, so it could have its own comment stream? This is an entire discussion (and a half). What you’ve written its fine: no need for much editing.
Just posing the question well, and then holding that, is great. And I wouldn’t rush in with answers: being and sharing and deepening the question is probably way more powerful.
- Mark
Hi Mark–sure, happy to do that. I’d want to add a few little things if this were the case and unfortunately am crazily busy for a few days, so I might not be able to do it immediately. But maybe later in the weekend if that would work.
Personally, I don’t believe power is corrupting.
When people have almost no power at all–say, they are about to starve to death– this often brings out very “corrupt” behavior, such as theft, violence, madness, warfare, all sorts of things.
I don’t believe power corrupts. I do believe that a lack of feedback tends to be corrupting. Trungpa Rinpoche had a lot of power, I presume, within the sphere of his community. But he also paid attention to what was going on around him, I think. He seemed to be extremely sensitive to feedback.
A schizophrenic person who lives down the street from you might have almost no power at all, and yet shut himself up in a bubble with no feedback, and become completely corrupted by that behavior.
I think the notion that “power corrupts” is almost true, but not quite. What’s really corrupting is when people have the ability to ignore feedback. “Power” or money can help give us that ability, the ability to close ourselves off in a little cocoon. Maybe any kind of addiction functions the same way.
But saying “power corrupts” can be misunderstood and misused to make people feel guilty and afraid to have any kind of power or functional ability.
In some sense, the “power corrupts” idea is an anti-guru idea. It’s a way of claiming that no one is more realized than me. It’s a very American mindset. When the Karmapa comes to town, you hold out your hand to shake his hand, as equals. That kind of thing.
I don’t know whether that mindset is good or bad or right or wrong– it just seems to be one that doesn’t allow you to learn from anyone else.
This is because anyone in a position of power is automatically inferior to you, because you rationalize that they are corrupted. It’s a very competitive attitude.
When I used to take martial arts, as soon as the class began, there would be two levels of status in the room– the teacher, and the students. The teacher told people what to do, and the students obeyed. Without this dynamic, it would have been completely chaos, and nobody would have learned anything.
Even when some totally junior person taught the class, just giving that person a special status of “power” made the class go SO much better.
Edward, these are important points. The word “power” can certainly be used in distinctively different ways.
I would firstly make a distinction between “power” and “empowerment”. The latter conveys a sense of genuine inner strength, which has no need to feed off of others.
The former–at least in the sense I am using it–also needs to be distinguished from your martial arts example, where I would be inclined to use a word like “authority” or “teacher”. By “power” in my post I really meant political power: generalized power over others, power which has the capacity to compel desired behaviour through either force, sanctions, ostracization, or what have you.
But–a big subject. Maybe we should wait for the new thread? Which will be specifically about the question of power within Shambhala and perhaps Western Buddhism in general.
[This thread has become so epic my phone can barely load it anymore!...]
Damcho, I find your following paragraph most provocative : “The main reason for this is simply that I’ve never come across that kind of power structure which, well, has really worked for any length of time, let alone ushered in anything close to enlightened society. Yes, I know the chants mention Ashoka, Emperors of China and Japan and so forth, but when I actually read history–not propaganda or speculation or hagiography, but careful, sober, sound history–I just don’t see “enlightened” kingship anywhere. Maybe I’m missing something–this is highly possible. ”
Two aspects immediately spring forth: ” I’ve never come across that kind of power structure which, well, has really worked for any length of time, let alone ushered in anything close to enlightened society.” If I try to come up with examples from Western history, which I have some sort of familiarity with, albeit not in any great depth, I draw a blank, which makes me uncomfortable to contemplate. Indeed, my main conception of royalty comes from a combination of reading Shakespeare plays at school nearly every term from the age of seven until seventeen in the classroom, and vague notions of King Arthur. Roman Emperors seemed mired in problematic politics of all sorts, ancient Greece I never studied, although some of the old stories, like Jason and the Argonauts etc. probably made a deeper impression. Egyptian Pharaohs are more dreamlike to me than real, albeit Joan Grant’s ‘Winged Pharaoh’ made a deep impression on me when I read it as a teenager. And yet some sort of pure Arthurian type model remains deeply embedded, personally speaking, though I cannot say why. As to Asian examples, I have little knowledge, although I did have the treat once of riding in a Rolls to watch My Fair Lady in London in the Royal Box with Prince Chula of Thailand who was an Oxford chum of my stepfather’s. I enjoyed the whole thing immensely, apart from the chili-pickled mangos served up as refreshments!
But then the second aspect kicks in, re: “but when I actually read history–not propaganda or speculation or hagiography, but careful, sober, sound history…”
In regards to the blank drawn above, I have the sneaking suspicion that European history has by and large redacted the role of royal lineages, and feudal culture in general, and this was effected partly by the hegemony of the Roman Republic, but then later by the catholic/universal/transnational initiatives of the Church. I remember years ago reading a Holy Grail book and being surprised to learn that literally hundreds of small kingdoms were wiped out in the 8-10th(?) centuries as part of homogenizing culture and political power, and most recorded history after that point was mainly written by religious clerics and thus largely propaganda. In Britain, most of our history begins with the Norman Conquest. Few have read Bede or earlier historians and indeed only a couple of volumes exist I believe. And yet at that point the royal lineages were largely already extinct in terms of being autonomous, tribe-based lineages and societies. And therefore I wonder just how much of our history has been all that well written, especially the early history, large swathes of which have been systematically eradicated by confiscation and destruction (library at Alexandria for example). It is all very murky that way.
I suspect those who can plummet the depths of Chinese scholarship could find much more. Chinese Imperial/Royal systems have arguably lasted a very long time until only a century or so ago, often producing very stable, prosperous eras. (Gunter Frank’s ReOrient is an interesting read in this regard.)
But my main sense of it as a subject is that it is not only a political system, per se, but a fundamentally natural expression of things as they are societally speaking, in that any group has to have some sort of leadership and followership dynamic in order to function as more than a random collection of independent individuals. This is true for a family, a village, a tribe, a business, a sports team, a country and so forth. And at some point there has to be a single, living human being who embodies that principle in that ultimately the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ or ‘forward’ or ‘stop’ decisions which have to be made and communicated need to come from one mouth out of one particular body in place and time within the heart of that community.
And then for me royalty also implies that there is a sacred aspect to life in general, and thus also to society in particular, because that is a living, actual truth, or dharma, of human experience when there is any level of awareness and sanity bubbling forth, something which all people aspire to experience and pass on, just as parents naturally love and cherish their children. So royalty has to do with a clear, unrestrained acknowledgment of this sacredness as being a quintessential sine qua non of decent society and decent life. Indeed, it is ultimately unavoidable, which is why even non-religious, non-royal systems, such as the US Republic, end up treating their elected Presidents as equivalents to Royals, with very similar, albeit rather clunky, rituals and observances. You just can’t get away from it even if you try.
So if you can’t get away from it, then it should be done fully, completely, thoroughly, with awareness and passion.
Footnote on Shakespeare as source: one rather credible theory is that Shakespeare was actually Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford. ( http://www.shakespeare-oxford.com/ ) I have not read the book – which I plan to purchase at some point, but I remember reading a while back that the de Vere family is one of the oldest Royal Families in Europe with roots going back to Julius Caesar and quite possibly to the Egyptian Royals as well; certainly they were a very old, noble lineage by the time parvenus like William the Conqueror were setting up their new dynasties, put it that way.
It was a de Vere, for example, who conducted a separate coronation ceremony in the woods for Elizabeth Ist, a very old tradition which for some reason the de Vere’s were entitled to preside over, and also a de Vere who was the individual later changed into the ‘Robin Hood’ of legend.
If this is true, then quite possibly the sense of Royalty transmitted in many of Shakespeare’s plays, is itself a form of transmission of the view of royalty handed down to us in the sixteenth century from a lineage heir whose family roots stretched deep back into the bedrock feudal past whose culture was probably in many ways far closer to the sort of ‘medieval’ or ‘tribal’ society that is invoked by the expression ‘Mukpo Clan’. So maybe reading Shakespeare to get some sense of royalty is not such a bad thing after all, and interestingly enough he communicated this not so much in the characters, but by the setup of Court mandalas which pervade the hierarchical structure of the plays.
Also if this is true – that the history of the man Shakespeare is essentially a fabricated one – it is a further example of how quite possibly the history we have read, and perhaps especially the sober, solid stuff, is mainly well-crafted lies (which is why I was looking for footage of Tsar Nicholas, having read a few 1920′s accounts of people meeting with him in Europe, as well as a couple of Russian authors, who painted a dramatically different picture from the ones we have mainly received (much as I respect Tolstoy, who was one of his detractors). Also, very few people growing up in England know that we successfully blockaded Germany after WW I forcing hundreds of thousands, if not more, to starve to death, completely dishonoring the terms of surrender, nor that we did the same thing after WW II during which many millions of Germans were starved, countless hundreds of thousands of women raped and so on. Sober historians do not present such material, and those who do are often hounded out of their jobs and polite society. So quite possibly there have been many good kings and queens in the past whose reputations have been posthumously tarnished, and in many cases during their lives, as with Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, and so on and so forth.
In other words, since there has been a concerted effort for a while to change the previous models and leadership networks it is quite possible that we have a very distorted view of what was going on even only 200 years ago, let alone 1200, which might also explain that even though the institution lasted for millenia in most developed cultures throughout the known world, we have so little knowledge of it in terms of good examples.
Dear Ash, Damcho,Edward and Mark
You know in some ways I cant believe that I am discussing monarchy because in the past I found it too much of an anachronism for a ‘modern’ society but there we go Trungpa Rinpoche has brought the whole thing up again so we must discuss it and not just go along with the present conception on monarchy arising within SI.
The point of me discussing British monarchy was to point out how much such a very conservative institution has changed in the UK itself. Just think with a million Muslims in the UK the monarchy must now in some way accommodate its loyal citizens more so than it has done in the past even to the point of bringing in shariah law to British law. Of course the Archbishop was roundly condemned by the media and politicians for even raising the subject but there you go he sees what is happening around him and as responsible holder of power he must put this on the public agenda. So from the Archbishops comments I would like to suggest that monarchy itself is a dynamic thing and that when we try to fixate it in established forms in some respect we are undercutting the monarchy principle itself.
Monarchy also means to me relationship –relationship in the Cosmic Mirror if we are talking Shambhala fashion so student/master power is fluid/ not fixed. We can see this relationship taking place in a most concrete fashion in Shakespeare particularly Richard II which is a very great play and seems to me to revolve around the exercise of power in a cosmic mirror way-a play worth looking at I believe on utube if you can catch it. In fact there is the end of the play which is quite marvellous when Richard II gives his crown to the new King – I dont know mirrors/power its all there.
To Edward yes I suppose you could say superficially there is a master/student relationship happening within samsara but in a Cosmic Mirror sense I think there is just pure unadulterated magnificent power. But say I take your point conventionally I dont think a teacher can be a teacher unless there is relationship and in some instances the student surpasses the master as I believe Trungpa has stated also in that here too a dynamic is going on. You can see this also in the Q and As with Trungpa when the student hits it sometimes closer than Trungpa does himself but of course he has provide the space for the student to do that.
So what I have been considering seems to me very deep because I have been thinking of it quite a bit and also very deep psychologically from what I have read about relationship and power. So for me fixating any ‘form’ particularly now the form developing in SI as the epitome of relationship seems to me a bit cock-eyed because we are talking of something that is fluid in all fields in a practical and religious sense .
But Ok take for example that I surrender to the Sakyongs way of doing things – I see the light which many people may want me to do for the betterment of my mind, ho-hum, ho-hum, ho-hum does that mean that the Rigden King as he is now depicted will appear before me –no I dont think so I think what will come out/surface is what needs to come out which could be anything due to culture, psychological disposition, karma –now we are talking about imponderables! So all the present systems within SI and without are just systems – what we meet in ‘actuality’ and here I am talking of religious/secular experience as defined in the west because that is what I know about, maybe could be Jesus, Angels that Blake depicted – or God/Vajradhara knows what!
So this is why I believe the Shambhala teachings are still wide open and why HHDKR said anyone could practice them because we talking about relationship and our deep connection to the King/Queen principle within us which is also basic goodness, power, call it what you will (open to more suggestions also!)
So yes I think the discussion should go on both within and outside of SI for the whole monarchy principle to be unpacked perhaps you could even have a conference on it –so yes its commendable that this discussion has not stopped simply because SI thinks it has found its way to Shambhala.
Yes as Johnnie Rotten sang ‘God Save the Queen!’ but for me and others not the Queen for the select but the Queen for the many. Yes Never Mind the b#ll##ks here comes the Sex Pistols! Or since I watched Stoned last night about Brian Jones –yes happiness is boring! (you have to see the movie to get that!)
Best
Rita Ashworth
“simply because SI thinks it has found its way to Shambhala..”
Well, we could say that Shambhala is one way of doing it, not necessarily the only way. But at least it is trying and that is a rare thing nowadays as a deliberate project, so to speak.
“does that mean that the Rigden King as he is now depicted will appear before me…”
Well, our sense of Royalty – as for example how we perceive the majesty of a Richard II when reading or witnessing the play – is a form of Rigden right there.
Re: “So for me fixating any ‘form’ particularly now the form developing in SI as the epitome of relationship seems to me a bit cock-eyed because we are talking of something that is fluid in all fields in a practical and religious sense .” Also your comments on relationship and power.
Perhaps this is voodoo etymology, but ponder the seeming similarities in sound and meaning of : royal, role, real, realm. Very similar words. In terms of power, the power is a mutual creation. In other words, the Royaly of a Monarch is not just individually generated and projected out; it is also projected from the subjects of the realm onto the Monarch because it comes from underlying sacred perception in the first place. So the Monarch plays the role of Monarch so that the subjects can see the embodiment of sacred outlook and natural hierarchy manifest on the spot in their society. Both Monarch and Subjects make the Realm real though the medium of the role played by the Monarch.
It is also interesting that the Tib. word ‘Sa’ is in there because it seems also to mean realm/sphere/level/bhumi.
The power of the Monarch – in any truly Royal/Real/Sacred tradition – is that of Drala which is based on absence of aggression and deception, cowardice and laziness etc. at which point the Majesty/WangTang of the Monarch blazes forth as an expression of the goodness of the society as a whole, such blazing and such goodness not happening in a vacuum. DDM’s seminal 1981(?) Sakyong speech talks of having built a throne out of his own blood, sweat and tears working with each subject personally. In other words, it was societal relationship which allowed for a manifestation of a Sakyong to come forth.
It is ironic that you criticize SMR and SI for ‘fixating on the form’ when at the same time many are attacking because he has, seemingly, changed to form so much that it is perceived as unworkable. If the society is fracturing to the point that fewer and fewer identify with being part of tha ‘we’, and thus no longer identify with the Sakyong as their Realm Protector, that he no longer plays that vivid role in their lives/mandala, then this is indeed a very serious affair.
But that said, it is quite possible that as the Buddha remarked, certain obstacles only arise after progress, or greatness. So again (for me) this implies that all this problematic dynamic might not be the sole product of the individual person whose role is that of Sakyong.
Finally, I think the tendency to think in terms of ‘systems’ is essentially a cop out, or insidious dynamic of the Professionals Enemy in the mix. To me theism is often evidenced wherever concept is trusted (worshipped) over direct experience. We see this all over: in political ‘systems’, medical, scientific, academic and so forth. One of the many functions of a Royal ‘system’ is to cut through that conceptual overlay or sludge so that reality can keep shining through in the realm. You don’t get rid of the power problem by diluting it in a mud of concept – you just end up with some form of totalitarian concrete at some point on way or another.
So again it is sort of choiceless: the only viable orientation in society is towards the Great Eastern Sun. Ultimately there is no other way if we wish to remain in an enlightening Human Realm.
Re: “But that said, it is quite possible that as the Buddha remarked, certain obstacles only arise after progress, or greatness. So again (for me) this implies that all this problematic dynamic might not be the sole product of the individual person whose role is that of Sakyong.”
During the Mill Village retreat, it was reported that a new text did not come through and that DDM said it was because of obstacles from the students, that we were not coming through enough. He gave a moving speech to the Vajradhatu Standing Committee about how people have to step beyond their personal comfort and survival zones if we were to go forward.
CTR blazed a mahasiddha trail into Western culture opening up a broad horizon on which could be seen, clearly rising, the Great Eastern Sun, which naturally evolves into some sort of larger, societal unfolding rather than being a personal development scheme alone, even in the dharmic sense. Most of his students bathed in the rays of this Rising Sun principle and took it to heart, because it was in their hearts from birth in any case of course. That is what I meant by ‘greatness’. But then there are the obstacles which come up in the light of that greatness and many of those obstacles are ones that we individually and collectively have to work through and I believe that much of this work has to be done on the Subjects level, which sometimes I have been calling the ‘Nyen’ level.
Also in terms of the role of Sakyong: CTR trail blazed its creation in the midst of North American culture. Amazing. But also just first dot both numerically and historically. Still amazing. But think of the difference of being the trail blazer where none has trod before, and the one who has to then assume that role, inherit that role, not trail blaze that role but simply continue it. I think CTR was not only being prophetic but definitional when he ‘predicted’ that the Sawang would surpass him. For to maintain a Sakyongship, which means also to maintain a Great Eastern Sun sangha, is perhaps far greater a task than to trail blaze it. No matter who one is or what one does, one is compared to the founder, some of whose original principles must be held as seed syllables, but many of whose forms must naturally evolve into new, and often seemingly quite different ones, just as happened within CTR’s tenure. Similarly, the sangha must evolve, both in terms of maintaining depth and continuity, but ongoing flexibility and development.
This is a very great undertaking, very great. That there are obstacles, serious ones, is par for the course. But although I respect the views expressed here, and am grateful they are being expressed forthrightly, I am still very reluctant to personalise the whole thing in terms of SMR being the alpha and omega of any perceived obstacle. To me this is a crude form of demonization. It looks like there are systemic problems right now, but I still doubt this is due to gross corruption, rather a large don or obstacle which all involved have to own as such.
Dear Ash,
Wow an interesting post a lot to consider.
Yes the monarchy /subject principle is an intertwined ‘concept’ both philosophically and practically I dont think it can be seen in any other way there is always that mirror concept there so like you say there is that ‘Rigden’ there.
Re form and the present depiction of the Rigden King I think the decision has been made to go too early with this form particularly for primarily a western membership and here we are talking about imponderables, intuitions about what kind of forms could be discovered. Yes society is somewhat fracturing but to solidfy a form too early to me excludes more than it includes. So yes this is the serious situation developing which I also think James has referred to in his discussion of culture and manners.
So to a certain degree it is a matter of timing, appropriateness, knowledge of how to proceed to take people along with you and perhaps the acknowledgement too that other terma could surface which Mr Neutral has alluded to on his post on the Chronicle Project and of course if here we are talking about other terma I think we may be possibly be talking about different forms too. So thats why I think there is room for diversity within this realm because I dont think any one knows how it is going to pan out.
Re the systems point I think I agree with you –yes if you are going to have the vision of a Great Eastern Sun you have to have some one like Mark Szp said to make the first move but first moves from where? First moves just from the monarch principle –cant be totally that-first moves could come from many sources particularly other people who are practicing much over the years. Also first moves sprang up all over the place when the teachings were introduced into Tibet –again another ‘reason’ to consider diversity within the Kingdom and in your opening sentence you have stated that there could be other ways to Shambhala aswell so this resonates too with multiplicity of practices that might come about. There is also Mark Szps. Statement from Trungpa in an other post which is “I will make you terma” –yes very dynamic, very fluid here.
Yes I agree I am somewhat placing my feelers into the future re the Shambhala teachings and their establishment on this earth in a practical sense but I am trying to work from own direct experience of the teachings aswell in this regard too so I am not totally working intellectually from a black hole.
Yes I know its difficult when do you go forth, when do you hold back, who do you accommodate who do dont accommodate, – all the decisions a King/Queen must make to make his realm come about. But truly great Kings and Queens have done this. The one I am thinking of in this regard is Queen Elizabeth II who faced such turmoil in her realm. (Its interesting there have been loads of documentaries on her recently on British TV primarily may be because she was so deft at ruling- I just cant believe how much I am discussing the monarch principle as do you know my Queen is costing me a canuck dollar a year –jeez I think I should get it back with interest!)
Of course too there is the whole dynamic of the psychological aspect of the teachings which Damcho might consider regarding our own connection to power so I am looking forward to some more posts on that.
But primarily myself yes I am still interested in the actual setting up of KOS from a political sense and how that can be forwarded in the world as I think I have somewhat glimpsed the psychological thingie so I am interested in taking that connection outside in to the practical workaday world.
I hope more people can post on the monarchy motif – as I would like to hear differing viewpoints.
Well best from this side of the pond –for once its very hot in the UK – and no planes eerie!
Best
Rita Ashworth,
Ash,
Individualism or any ideology is flawed, but “The Four Foundations of Mindfulness” talk by VCTR as well as the notion in dharma that enjoins us to ‘cut the universal unconsciousness’ seems to me a call to develop the ability to be fully an individual, rather than a feather in the winds of any local zeitgeist or government.
Individualism may be problematic, though I would argue with your description of its development, causes and effects. In any case, a wiser man than I once said “Any system that ignores the individual will fail.”
I would agree that hierarchy arises automatically in any group, corporate or social. I don’t see that as proof that monarchy is therefore necessary or the only way to the highest expression of a healthy society. Nor that the individual is subsumed.
I’m surprised with Nicholos II as example of commendable monarchy. (albeit no less so than with Shambhala’s partnership with Bhutan, a country involved in ethnic cleansing.)
Of course the coronation looked grand on film. If you believe luxury is something to aspire to, who can argue, but if that was the pinnacle of a healthy society, I beg to differ. What was not filmed was that when food and drink were handed out, the crowd rushed to get their share and people were trampled. Of c.100,000 visitors, 1,389 died and c.1,300 were injured. I don’t think that happened because of exuberance. I think they were really hungry. (And the film is silent so whether orders were being given or not… )
Consider his proclamation: “I want everyone to know that I will devote all my strength to maintain, for the good of the whole nation, the principle of absolute autocracy, as firmly and as strongly as did my late lamented father.” which lead into ‘Bloody Sunday’ and fueled the Bolshevik revolution (the Bolsheviks being the main reason Hitler was tolerated as long as he was).
Or the anti-Semitic programs Nicholos II supported and funded. He had the full support of the orthodox church and was canonized when murdered, perhaps one of the reasons it was so vilified during the following revolution?
They may look spiffy in their whites, Ash, but… something’s not right there.
In general what you are describing as ‘the monarch principle’ as necessary for a peak experience of basic goodness in society, if it isn’t just romantic whitewashing, if it can be taken positively as something to emulate, is a religious view, a description of the vajra-master/student relationship.
Even here I would take some exception. The vajrayana relationship is unequivocally not a form of self hypnosis. The overcoming of ego is not simply a matter of identification or what one believes or a matter of how one decides to approach something. There is real individual work involved in that, and the vajra-master’s job, if not just theater, is more than maintaining a cool facade we can project upon as a group.
(cont.)
I think this is a classic example of how Shambhala Buddhism encourages people to project the dynamic of a very personal and intimate formalized relationship with a realized master, onto a larger political system that in theory would affect many, some of whom will not believe the same things or even be on the same path.
As a student/teacher relationship? Fine. As a structure for political power, it is not just prone to corruption, it has in virtually every instance I know of been responsible for it, maintaining power at the cost of a majority, very simply because there are no checks and balances, or any representation to speak of. (Again the Bastille option is not a form of checks and balances.)
I agree that thinking only in terms of systems is a cop out. I could care less about the ideology, honestly. If a dictator treated me and those around me properly, I would see the benefits of dictatorship.
My interest in these things began and remains because of witnessing abuse at the hands of appointed officials, and the abject failure of any official party involved to relate to those problems productively and tangibly with concern for those affected. Any manifest concern has been for appointed officials, or the image of Shambhala, not those affected.
In such a highly hierarchical structure one cannot, Ash, hold those who have been poorly served accountable for the behavior of appointed officials. That is the role responsibility and duty of those who appoint them. Holding those adversely affected responsible would mean leadership is not accountable for its decisions, the actions of officials, or any ensuing results. That would be the antithesis of genuine leadership, and would if continued lead predictably to a collapse of social cohesion.
Blaming the victim also exacerbates the frustration of people adversely affected, and activates people to do more than just grumble. Because when that happens, it becomes clearer we are not talking about simple misunderstandings or minor mistakes of people with responsibility, but rather an institutionalized denial system actively avoiding responsibility for the very things the institution and its leaders must at the very least be held responsible for.
I begin to think a highly centralized absolute monarchy will ultimately only serve the kinds of films you saw of Nicholos II’s coronation, and perhaps the noblemen and soldiers tiptoeing in order to get a glimpse of the great man. The rest of us can eat cake.
In the inspiration of what a Russian/German friend said when we visited Versailles, the luxurious Palace and gardens commissioned by Louis XIV just outside Paris: “When I look at the concentration of luxury and wealth here, I think a lot of people must have died in poverty to make it possible.”
Well, that business about 1,300 dying to get food is clearly pretty bad. If true. The Bloody Sunday incident: there are two sides to that one, with some credible witnesses at the time saying it was a classic false flag type event engineered to get the soldiers to respond the way they did. Hard to say.
As usual, I agree with most of your points. My main thrust earlier was more about how only a few generations ago, or in more ‘traditional’ societies there was far more socialisation, for lack of a better term, i.e. individuals experience as such being far more wedded to being part of a collective. Like any dynamic this has both positive and negative aspects.
My impression of European monarchy is that it has been largely corrupted since the Dark Ages and perhaps never really established itself properly in any case. But I still do feel that Monarchy/Royalty is the clearest, most sophisticated and practical expression of an underlying societal dynamic which is inevitable in any group, aka the need for hierarchy. Embodying the Monarch principle – which could manifest in many ways such as democratically elected individuals or committees, or unseen oligarchies, or war chiefs or whatever, in the person of a trained and empowered public figure, is the best way, but that does not mean it is a sure thing. Indeed, it most certainly is not, which is also one of its virtues.
There is a fallacy in thinking that human affairs can be made perfect by some sort of perfect system, which ultimately is no more than a conceptual overlay, an idea versus a true “res”, which relates to the terms denoting reality and the State, interestingly enough, our ‘Sa/Bhumi/Realm’ notion again; or moreover that a system can trump the living people who ultimately comprise its component parts.
The ideal sense of Royalty, embodied however imperfectly in such events as the Tsar’s coronation (or the mass outpouring of grief at Princess Diana’s death which itself evidences the vitality of the Monarch principle even in modern society, also the shared distress at JFK’s sudden death etc.), to my mind has aspects of luminosity, sacredness, glory and goodness, some sort of pure expression of basic goodness. So what makes a leader Royal is that somehow society has mutually conspired to make itself capable of generating sacred perception which manifests in the mutual sacredness of both ruler and ruled.
I think the key fault line, though, might be in terms of the old checks and balances business. Like IF you have a ruler who is totally corrupt, how do you depose him if necessary, or protect the nobles or ordinary subjects from abuse, either from their peers or their leaders. Again, no system alone can ensure sanity and decency since ultimately it comes down to the psychic threads knitting a collective together into one society, or realm. This is similar in principle to the difference between experience-based ‘spirituality’ and book-based religion. The rule of law, an excellent thing, is not impervious to being corrupted (witness the 10+ year imprisonment of Martin Armstrong in the US without trial or evidence of criminal activity).
Underlying several of your stories and objections is the theme of dealing with civil servants who have been less than civil, or actually harmful. Personally, I think there needs to be a more formal mechanism for public complaint and arbitration put into place ASAP. Any organisation larger than a ‘mom & pop’ has this. Would help prevent festering wounds when mistakes are made.
Dear James, and Ash
Wow another interesting post from James re the debate between individuality and monarchy emphasising here more the role of the individual in society.
Re concrete monarchy in the UK and its literature its a mixed historical bag I believe-certainly in war time a constitutional monarchy provides some notion of strength that is not purely jingoism. For example I have seen film of George VI who was a very nervous man and stuttered a lot on film but he did try to engage with all aspects of society and that would have been hard for him coming from such a nutty class-ridden society as the UK in the 1940s-so thats why I am not totally against the monarch principle.
However in the UK there has been much talk about containing all the hangers-on around the monarchy and modernising the monarchy so that in some way it would resemble more modern monarchies in Europe where here monarchs are more in contact with their people. So then again in society the monarch maybe would resemble the European model but with the spiritual qualities of a Shinto Emperor/King/Queen so it would be somewhat of a constitutional /natural vision of a monarch not the guru principle persay.
Of course in Shakespeare we have the discussion in a lot of the plays between the monarch/individual principles and of course dissent and non-dissent so thats why the bard is still so important because of course he is talking about when we act and dont act in situations according to whether we have got the ‘chutzpah’ of a monarch to do so –so yes its all very psychological as is the student/master relationship and the dynamic flowing between the two. And here I brought up Richard II because here we have an individual/monarch who did not heed what was going on around him or the advice of older wiser heads in the kingdom and although he was capable of being a monarch and also loved by some of his people he just lost the plot because of his narcissism. So thats why I was talking about the appropriateness of how you rule and how you work with people that requires a certain level of skill both concretely and metaphysically aka meditation practice. You can not exclude others if you want the whole thing to gel together so you have to be open to people with their arguments about stuff and indeed be amenable to changing the course of your thought and actions in the world.
Re the monarch/individuality principle the practice of theatre is also very interesting to take part in to sort of recognise how group dynamics evolve. I have mentioned the Boal workshop I attended where Forum theatre was practiced before but I would like to mention the way here a kind of leadership style evolved in much more of a democratic way. Here we all sat in a circle and people would bring up stuff that they found was bothering them in society and then we would do plays on those issues. After some time if people coalesced around certain subjects the play would coalesce around that subject also. So it was up to the individual to speak up, go forward, with his/her take on the situation and then for that to be worked out practically in the workshop. I suppose by this process you got natural leaders emerging and that even if you did not say anything and you just had the hotheads coming forward at least you had people in the group observing the process so that was ‘good’ in itself. Yes, even the seeing of ‘leadership’ whether good/bad/indifferent was of some benefit to others in developing the qualities of a leader/facilitator.
Of course the description of this process does not entirely match the leader/individual dynamic within SI and other dharma groups also because here of course we have to be more mindful of including everyone in the process even the quieter students but I think the Forum theatre method could be modified to take account of this. It also seems to me that this dynamic of the individual versus his/her role in greater society is being played out more fruitfully in Latin America where one can concretely see the divisions in society more so than in the liberal democracies of the west. So yes might be good to engage with Latin American thinkers more so at Naropa.
So yes you can see from this post I am somewhat of in a mixed bag myself about the monarch/individual principle in that I probably favour the Boal/Latin American approach more favourably than the traditional concept of a monarchy. But being rooted in my culture I can not entirely dismiss the monarch principle both psychically and concretely but I think it has to be greatly modified but the least I can say on this re SI is that in order for KOS to evolve you have to include and not exclude different ways of the shambhala teachings coming to fruition so I think whats the problem let people go their own way with these teachings dont try to maintain the control so much.
Just a typo also in my last post it should have read Queen Elizabeth I not II – also if people want to check out some excellent documentaries on religious stuff and monarchies they can download programmes from Channel 4 to watch –there is one on ElizabethI to download.
Best
Rita Ashworth
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Ash,
However we frame theTzars, when so much wealth is concentrated next to so much poverty it can never be healthy or stable. The galas wealth can throw to celebrate itself, will not mitigate the social collapse that results. That’s a universal dynamic – a concentration of wealth or resources leading to collapse –we can see it in micro-biology, nature and physics as well as history, and a potential failing of all forms of government. Clearly America’s form of democracy has not overcome this weakness.
Your assumption about monarchies sounds a bit like New Age nostalgia that primitive societies were more spiritual and in harmony with their environment than we. But I think that as humans evolved from one success to the next, populations grew, and new difficulties arose, so new systems evolved. We are probably in such a cusp now.
Before the dark ages, kingdoms were more like glorified chiefdoms, occasionally unified by force, bribery or necessity, and fought with their neighbors for resources, manpower, and land. The first thing they explain on any castle tour is how the architecture is a battle strategy. Some great halls it would be mind-blowing to have a Shambhala Ball in… but a system of governing through serfdom and indentured slavery, we are all well shod of.
(A passing thought: it may well be that monarchy faded because banking systems became sophisticated enough that the concentration of wealth was too easy, too tempting, and therefore inherently unstable.)
‘Monarchy principle’ which can manifest in any form of government evokes less resistance. (not anti-monarchy btw, though absolute monarchy looks pretty toxic.)
But I still feel uncomfortable with your descriptions of a group’s perceptual experience of a coronation, or events around famous people as examples of luminosity, sacredness, etc, in arge part because it is highly questionable that people outside of the privileged circle see it in the same way.
If we experience those sorts of peak tribal experiences without knowledge or concern about origins substance or cost, are we experiencing a form of realization, a glimpse at the nature of mind, or a form of group-think, a shared ‘National Enquirer’ illusion?
I know what you mean about how inspiring that feels. We had the good fortune to know VCTR and a few other dharma kings. That experience, tangible for even non-Buddhists, was nevertheless grounded in a field of individual discipline practice and study, and compassion. In short it is a description of hanging out with a realized teacher and his sangha.
I’m not at all sure one can create a government that is dependant on, or meant to create, such feelings, for a number of significant reasons.
This is akin to problems with Gross National Happiness. When we make the government responsible for our happiness, I don’t think we enter a mutual conspiracy of sacred outlook. I think we become mutually dependant in a symbionic way that tends to discourage genuine introspection and insight.
In the inspiration of the magic inherent in being able to stop the world.
Well, the social collapse in Russia, whose working class citizenry had the highest standard of living in Europe at the time according to some reports I have read (but cannot now cite or vouch for) was certainly helped by the simple fact that within months of the ‘revolution’ all of Russia’s gold was shipped back to the bankers in Germany, London and New York who had financed the revolutionaries. Halifax NS had a minor part in this sordid tale: after arresting Lenin as a German agent (with whom we were at war at the time, and which he was) they were persuaded (presumably by the Americans) to let him go. From Germany he went over to Russia (trip paid for by German govt) and the rest, as they say, is history.
As idealistic as my depiction of Royalty no doubt is in terms of projecting such outlook onto actual history (which shall forever remain unknowable), I think there is a certain blackwashing of the feudal past that is the product of a narrative largely pushed by those with contemporary axes to grind, and therefore not necessarily more accurate.
My main thrust has been, admittedly, more intellectual or abstract, however, and not tied to historical evidence necessarily. That said, I would be very surprised if there were not many good examples of uplifted Royal Courts in many small kingdoms, principalities or chiefdoms, not only in Western culture but also Eastern.
Peak tribal experiences/sacred perception: of course not all peak experiences are sacred. But there were two parts to the thought:
1. group experience does heighten perception/state of mind. This sort of thing is very obvious at something like a football game. Very strong energy, almost tangible it is so obvious. Of course this can flip into the power of an angry mob, but the energy is there.
2. Societies are comprised of individuals, families, communities, regions etc., but ultimately of people. And I think most people everywhere throughout history are…. basically good (surprise surprise!). This goodness, when combined with strong group energy can indeed engender a form of sacred perception. Ordinary examples are times of birth, of marriage, death ceremonies, national reaction to sudden calamity like assassinations or earthquakes. Also war, I suppose. But I think birth, marriage and death are ordinary societal events at which such perceptions most often naturally arise. This being the case, I think it somewhat jaded to insist that any social system should not have any concern for engendering more of this sort of thing, that it has to be a dry, pseudo-scientific, or objective, or emotionless, systematic approach that most closely resembles the dry, if intellectually turgid, prose which university textbooks and intellectuals of all stripes (ab)use when describing such things. I think this is yet another manifestation of a contemporary sort of superstition -the mechanical, dead, objective world fallacy, one of the principal setting sun banes of these our ‘modern’ times.
Lastly, the wealth of the monarch evidenced at a coronation is in fact the wealth of the entire society made manifest. As is the wealth of the monarch moment to moment.
“This is akin to problems with Gross National Happiness. When we make the government responsible for our happiness, I don’t think we enter a mutual conspiracy of sacred outlook. I think we become mutually dependent in a symbiotic way that tends to discourage genuine introspection and insight.”
Two little points in response to that:
a) people must be made responsible for their government. That is the great challenge of any society, how to make that both true, and at the same time have well ordered, flexible, dynamic leadership along with class systems.
b) conspiracy is, by definition, something secret; such a national outlook, is not. Key difference.
If a) is not the case and ‘da people’ are essentially serfs to the dominant order, then I agree, it’s hopeless. But this doesn’t mean that trying to put up something purely mechanical is in any way better. At best, it means you have a well functioning animal realm, little more. That’s not a very great achievement in the larger scheme of things, although it still could be better than what we have now on several levels. Perhaps.
At the same time, to return to a provocative element in CTR’s teachings, ultimately a good citizen is one who knows how to surrender ego completely, learns how to serve others. This is the ideally ‘socialised’ individual. It is sort of the enlightened side of serfdom although in legal or class terms the two might be almost identical.
In any case, there is a reason, I think, why traditional monarchies of all sorts evolve far beyond the chief model which you often cite as the root form for monarchy. Although a chief/tribal leader/elder is manifesting certain aspects of what we have been calling the ‘monarchy principle’ in abstract terms, a full-blown Royal Lineage, established in a society over generations, is something a little more than that. More to the point, in most of these Royal models, the Monarch refrains from meddling over much in governmental affairs or, when they do, have empowered various Ministers, Mandarins and Generals to take up much of that burden and letting them carry it, only retaining the ultimate authority to empower and dismiss such individuals. The point being again that people have to run their own affairs, ultimately, and even a Monarch cannot do that for them. Not a good one, anyway. That being the case, what is the role of a Monarch?
I would argue that it has far more power on the gut and heart, than the head, level. It is an example, an inspiration, an ultimate authority, but above all a role that embodies the heart of a people, and also a person embodying that role whom the people find a communal object of focus, a psychic axis around which societal basic goodness and lungta is engendered and aroused. Something like that. Which is why dry systems language alone, though fashionable nowadays when discussing societal themes, falls so far short.
Dear Ash, James
Ash I believe it was Leon Trotsky that was detained in Nova Scotia not Lenin – I have just checked this up on wiki. I remember hearing about this in Nova Scotia when I was there and I thought wow the British let him go and thinking Trotsky in Nova Scotia that would make an interesting play. Seems from Wiki that he stayed in Amherst, NS.
And of course it was Trotsky who as an army commander kept the White armies at bay –also checking this period up on utube it seems many governments in the west supported the monarchies White Army so thats may be why the Tsar was executed.
Myself from my brief reading of the Russian revolution and its causes from school and now on utube for me the Tsar did not reform his government to a constitutional monarchy as many had done in Europe of course I dont know the pressures on him from those surrounding him at the time perhaps he was hidebound by the hangers-on that surround monarchies. One does have to be a astute monarch to devise a good pathway through difficulties, perhaps he was ill-advised.
Trotsky I find more interesting than Lenin in that he was into a world wide revolution the overhaul of the complete economic system so yes he had a very inquisitive mind about politics nearly bought a book on him here recently, but the bookshop closed down. Anyway re the communism angle of the shambhala kingdom I think Trotsky is more interesting to look into than Lenin –so yes will definitely read more about him.
Re the monarchy thing again I think I am in the middle between you and James in the discussion in that I can see that a constitutional monarchy does foster a sense of for a better word pride –in the Uk you can not avoid the impact of the monarchical system of all aspects of our life from the law to our chequered history. And of course we have the C of E with the Monarch at the head of it but may be disestablishment will come soon due to the multiculturalism in the UK. So yes the monarchy now in the Uk at the present time – I think it is looked upon fondly but it can not seem to be aggrandising wealth to it –the press is always on its heels re extravagances.
So from this brief swish at the monarchical system I would say that a monarchy in Shambhala has to follow somewhat of the same course but with the added system of maintaining ceremonies that manifested drala. Do the cherry-blossom ceremonies do that in Japan –not sure about that. So yes thats how I see a Shambhala monarch in the most widest sense for all religious and secular people. So yes this would still preserve the notion of seeing the Shambhala king as a master warrior aswell as given in the Sacred path of the Warrior book.
Re James perhaps more emphasis on the individual –yes you gotta have it otherwise the monarchy is in competition with the notion of underdog which as you probably know too Ash is a British favourite aswell. Uk renowned down the ages for throwing up poets, scholars, revolutionaries that have pointed out the inadequacies of the monarchical system – so there is always that tension going on between the two spheres of government so thats why in the end we have a constitutional monarchy I think.
Myself in the sphere of the revolutionaries was attracted to the Levellers in the UK from Cromwells time (read a magazine in the 70’s called the Levellers) certainly with the Levellers more so than Cromwell we are getting ordinary people really thinking about political affairs to the nth degree even to the point of being imprisoned and having their lives threatened. So may be with the Levellers metaphor we have a image of the democracy level in the monarchy, democracy, communism triad acting more acutely – it also ties in with Trotsky’s viewpoint a tot one may say. So yes we don’t have a docile democracy but a very active one in relation to the monarchy –perhaps this is my main point about the triad.
Thought the discussion had stopped……..maybe you could swop positions Ash talking more about individual in society and James talking more about where he has observed ‘enlightened hierarchy’ that would be interesting – I would be interested in this way at looking at the discussion.
Best from an again flying nation!
Rita Ashworth
I don’t believe that the issue is Shambhala-Buddhism versus Vajrayana Buddhism and Shambhala as a separate path.
I think the issue needs to be seen in a bigger context of New Age Spiritual Materialism rampantly consuming and subsuming the Buddhadharma . New Age Spiritualism is easily commodified and marketed, and so the Dharma is commodified and marketed along with New Age Buddhism. SI should change the name to “New Age Buddhism” since Shambhala Buddhism has much more in common with New Ageism now , than Buddhism, not only in term of its content offerings, but in its emphasis on marketing and seeing the dharma as a product and commodity.
Just take a look the defining characteristics, as laid out by New Age Buddhist marketers at Shambhala Mountain Center ” Learn how to meditate, delve into the wisdom teachings of Tibetan Buddhism, stretch beyond your limits in a yoga retreat, or practice mindfulness in one of our contemplative arts programs. And if R&R is what you are seeking, consider one of our relaxing, rejuvenating Retreat & Renewal weekends. Discover this and more at our pristine six hundred-acre mountain valley meditation retreat center, a sanctuary and training ground for body, mind, and spirit”.
Spirit? Buddhism doesn’t believe in a spirit.
Or look at the any of the current seminar offerings at Shambhala Mountain Center:
“Sourcing your Soul; ” “Awakening Artistry;”, “Evolve Your Brain;” “Conscious Relationships;” “Seat of the Soul;” “Intuitive Fitness for Women Yoga;” “The Way of the Happy Woman;” ” Psychotherapy as the Path to Liberation;” “Yoga to Manage Your Mood:” etc. etc.
New Ageism and Buddhadharma have had a rather long relationship, since Madame Blavatsky and earlier, and New Ageism has often mistakenly believed that it has had something in common with the genuine buddhadharma. In actuality , they couldn’t be more different, and that is why the mixing of these two has been so confusing for so many people. Most of the people now attracted to New Age Buddhism, in such forms as the current Shambhala Buddhism of SI , would never have been attracted to the genuine dharmic path, which required a commitment that took one away from mainstream, popular culture, was shocking to ego and all its subterfuges, and demanded a ” critical questioning of consensual reality”not only of the larger reality, but also of the consensual reality of dharma institutions and teachers, throughout the path. New Age Buddhism , on the contrary, allows people to believe they are “Buddhist,” without taken many risks, or questioning consensual reality, or confronting the “truth of suffering.” In fact, New Age Buddhism is always denying the truth of suffering, and presenting a package that will distract one from the truth of suffering, and being a New Age Buddhist is now an ornament to ego, a credential, another reference point for ego.
cont….
New Age Buddhism now has so much currency in our contemporary society, that recent scam artists in Boudler, Colorado bilked millions out of clients, simply by having the name “Dharma” in the company name, thereby convincing the New Age Buddhists that this was a legitimate investment group. The “Dharma Investment Group” is now being indicted for many counts of fraud, being simply a scam group involved in another ponzi scheme.
New Age Buddhists are into health, yoga, denial of old age and suffering. New Age Buddhists, after a few courses , begin teaching about buddhism on their blogs, having practiced just enough to “calm down” and make themselves feel good, and then going about their” business as usual.” Just enough “dharma” but not so much that it interferes with their comfy professional lives and consumerism. In fact, New Age Buddhism is all about being confortable, and seeking the latest program, seminar, that will lead to an ever more upward, but comfortable quest for “enlightenment” which is just about to happen , at the next weekend program.
Buddhadharma is not about utopian futures where a positive new apocalyptic future is envisioned. New Age Spiritualism and Shambhala Buddhism are about envisioning a future where people exponentially lift the whole society upward into a grand utopian “enlightened” society. Both New Ageism and Shambhala Buddhism have this futuristic view that our society, and the human race, is on an inevitable thrust forward into the age of Aquarius. This is why Shambhala Buddhism appeals to people who are really New Ageists at heart and who believe, like Madame Blavatsy and the Theosophists that the human race and its next “phase of development” is inevitable.
New Age Buddhism is always about “improving the individual” and it is always eclectic in its approach. Like Shambhala Buddhism, It tries to be all-inclusive, and confuses this with being open. New Age Buddhism has a bias against rational thought and examining things. It doesn’t want to look too closely at history, or critically examine current, contemporary issues within its own institutions It has much in common with arm-chair liberalism, but its real thrust is being competitive in consumer society, gaining a market hold, and offering perpetual novelty to the masses who are easily bored. New Age Buddhism, like its founders, Theosophy, and other mystical New Age movements are Orientalists, fascinated with Tibetology and its myths. Shambhala Buddhists, like New Age Buddhists of the present and past, are not really interested in the history of Tibet, a culture whose superficial aspects it has embraced wholesale, because this would mean confronting the unpleasant aspects of another culture, which might turn out to be not so idealistic . The utopianism fantasies, and projection of Shangri-Lai , which New Ageism has always projected onto Tibet, would be sadly disabused, if even a cursory study of Tibetan history was undertaken. It would read not much differently than our own Western medieval history of monastics and peasants and surfs, and unequal distribution of wealth, and exploitation of others.
New Age Spiritual materialism is supporting the spread of this pseudo Buddhadharma. B The Buddhadharma, on the other hand , is about the truth. It is not about mysticism, or eternalism, or entertainment. The real Buddhadharma is not about a path of intensified self-improvement, spiritual programming as an adornment to ego.
And the particularly sad thing about this mishmash of Buddhadharma with New Ageism is how the Lamas, who know better, have gone along with this distorted view of the dharma to appease westerners and to keep the donations flowing. . They, after all know better. They know this westernized new age , consumerism Buddhism is NOT the authentic dharma. They go along with it, and they don’t really tell us the truth about the dharma. Because if they did, very few people would be attracted to the real buddhadharma, and what would that do to their fund-raising in the West?
Chris, your description of new age Buddhism, though long and passionate, isn’t an accurate description of what is actually happening. If that was all Shambhala Mountain was offering it would be one thing. But you failed to mention the GES, Windhorse, and Drala(three Shambhala Training levels over about a week) that just happened, the Half Dhathun, the winter Dhatun, Sutrayana, Chakrasamvara intensive, VY Fire Puja and intnesive(separate programs), Werma and Ngondro intensives, Maitri, Sutryana and Vajrayana seminaries, Warrior Assembly, Scorpion Seal Assemblies, Or any of the programs that are actually attended by the Sangha, not to mention the visit from Khandro Rinpoche, or the Sufis who are just renting the space.
You don’t really seem to have any sense of magic. The land and the Stupa absolutely radiate the mind of the Vidyadhara. Everyone there for a few hours, or a few years experiences that, from the day visitor, to the volunteers, the core staff, to the the ones who come and sit in chairs, listening to someone talk. . . all decent people. Their presence doesn’t make the Sangha less genuine, it actually gives them an opportunity to experience a container created by Shambhalians, to experience the land, and visit the Stupa.
Retreat and Renewal consists of a room or a dorm, meditation instruction if you want, access to a shrine room and staff sitting, and of course, food.
After that you get to wander around in the barren beautiful darkness of SMC winter. That’s what they experience when they get there. Just their minds. Of course Sangha can also participate in the various feasts
You make it sound so ugly, but since your previous posts make it clear that you really have know idea what is actually going on, that you have grown tremendously opaque, obsessing over the fourteenth century, and drawing wild conclusions based on little information, I believe you have become quite irrelevant.
In March of 2010, 170,000 people, worldwide, investigated the Scientology. org site. That same month, 32,000 people, worldwide logged onto the Shambhala.org site, despite a 10 year marketing blitz. Now that, Mr. Esq. is “irrelevancy.”
You are quite completely insane.
Thank you Mr. Esq. Very nice. Of course, cult-members always resort to radical marginalization and name-calling of anyone, particularly calling someone “insane,” that dares to question what is happening. It’s so predictable now, it is boring. Fortunately, the statistics show that you are much less relevant than Scientology to the world. The world just doesn’t agree that “you have something they are dying for.” That is just the facts , despite millions spent on marketing by SI over the last 10 years, while bankrupting the community , literally and spiritually, and mixing the buddhadharma with every new age fad to come along.
Chris, I said that you are insane, not anyone else, just you. Incedently, scientology had more hits in the eighties than Trungpa Rinpoche too, as if that was the point
Rita, yes, sorry, Trotsky not Lenin. Should have googled first to check! Recommend before studying T in depth that you do a little background research into who was funding him in both US and Germany before the revolution and during WWI. Although the public narrative always emphasizes the individual as the driving force behind things like ‘revolutions’, my suspicion is that this is all mainly propaganda.
A last little thought about the monarchy/individual theme: the monarchy – or one could say ‘perceived royalty’ is not the product of the individual person in the role alone, rather also the mutual creation of an entire society over time, and thus an expression of its net rising & setting sun qualities. I think it is partly because of the emphasis on individualism in the past century that we have a hard time viewing situations like ‘Tsars’ or ‘Queens’ with anything other than an ego-based view, whereas in fact these forms are expressions of more traditional cultures wherein there was a much greater degree of socialisation and ‘collectivism’.
There is an interesting article in the Independent (viz. UK Election) about the long-term shift from individualism in the 19th century to collectivism in the early 20th century, albeit I am not sure I buy the author’s main historical premises viz. the 19th century being the individualist era. In any case, there has certainly been a swing from collective to individual view the past few decades and of course such widely-held views affect how Buddhist teachings and sanghas, including S.I., perceive themselves and function within the overall societal context.
In other words, when discussing things like monarchy, communism, the path etc., there are deeply held a priori assumptions which are often not just taken for granted, but overlooked completely. But it is quite possible that what many of us mean today when discussing ‘monarchy’ is far divorced from what it meant in actual dynamics during periods when it was an established form.
In any case, European history the past two or more millenia is largely one of both reducing the influence of royal lineages (Greek and Roman Republics) and then reviving them mainly as a tactical means of managing affairs albeit under the authority of the Church as higher power, and then finally relegating them to largely ceremonial functions, albeit still able to remain in the heart zone of a culture providing a common reference point for national identity, something which is intellectually unfashionable but nevertheless seems to happen spontaneously as long as such figures exist (such as QE II in UK today, despite the Windsors rather questionable background as Royals in general, or British Royals in particular).
( http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/threes-a-crowd-how-the-unexpected-rise-of-a-third-contender-broke-the-cosy-twoparty-system-1951707.html )
What is insane is to keep believing that 10 million are coming, (the Sakyong’s stated goal) someday, when 32,000 globally in one month (and that was the highest month ever) checked out the site. It is insane to keep “building out” on the basis of this fantasy 10 million coming, while the whole mandala is in financial crisis. That is not magic, that is magical thinking. It is insane to keep believing that this is still CTR’s mandala when he would have raged against this new age spiritual materialism bullshit mixed up with the dharma, to attract new students. All the insults in the world won’t change how this has devolved over the years. Si can’t even pay the salaries of the people who have worked for decades for them, yet is advertising for a new director for the San Francisco Dzong at 60,000 a year to what? Market Shambhala Buddhism of course in the new “hot spot”. When things don’t work out there, there is always Malaysia and Tawain.
I think Chris’ points would have been more glaring if SMC did not continue
offering Buddhist and Shambhala programs. And I think some would reason that SMC is just trying to survive by offering a variety of programs to bring in revenue….regardless of their compatibility to the Buddhist path. That SMC is in such a shape is due to Harvard MBAs and a business model that forced it in that direction. The paramount concern was the growth of SMC, not the continuation and propagation of the teachings. Also, the end of volunteerism
as a main sustaining force has led to more compromise in what needs to be offered in order to bring people in. Instead of offering something unique and unadulterated, the “product” becomes enslaved by market forces. This was a choice, and no alternate strategy seems ever to have been considered. The culture changed at SMC. The murky, undefined
and superficial qualities of “New Age” approaches couldn’t help but affect
that culture. Many of the staff at SMC, myself included, were outraged
when Osho students were allowed to hold programs there. Now, I imagine, no one would blink. It’s the old “end justifies means” logic that
has never produced the desired outcome.
Dear All
I dont think Chris’s posts are irrelevant in fact though her views are strongly argued I like reading her posts to see what she is going to say next.
Re SMC people might want to listen to Jeff Waltcher on the Chronicle project website –from this interview I would say that there has been a change of focus at SMC to having more groups use the SMC facilities, I think Mr Waltcher argues that this is good use of SMC in that it allows others to come in contact with the dharma and shambhala teachings. Yes we will have to see about that as things progress but certainly SMC is in competition with other large centres for such groups as Omega Institute and why would people not go there as I believe it is easier to get to.
I think this debate is going on in all religions and also in the secular traditions aswell how far do you step out of the traditional approach without losing the essential core of practitioners. Certainly in my area we have a large old monastery that is now a world heritage site and a conference centre because the Catholic church had to leave it in the 1960s due to lack of funds. But certainly as a child I remember those monks scooting around the slums of Manchester helping out people in dire social need – so yes back then the church were the social services to a great degree. And that tradition of social service came out of 2,ooo year old church. So modernisation, new practices depends which way you are coming at them – myself I think they come out of a great deal of tradition. (Of course too very rarely you just get a few people who just get it like the great saints and the divine mad men and women but yes that is rare)
Re new stuff -it seems to me from what I have read of CTR that he was very much into exploring the New Age movement in that he visited EST centres, and he even experienced rolfing(!) – but he was also critical of stuff too in declaring people charlatans as Ash has mentioned in regards to the fundamentalist teacher on the TV. But he did encourage connections to traditional ‘disciplines’ re writing, tai chi, aikido, Christianity(Thomas Merton), Zen within the Naropa environment so I think he was fostering connections to mindfulness of the highest standards for wont of a better word in the western world. So I believe you would have to have those same standards applied to courses at SMC and here I think Chris is voicing her opinion on the status of some of the courses there which is her right to do so in a free society. (Just read John Tischers comments about Osho’s students using SMC – wow very dubious use of the facilities –who okayed that?! People really need to ask questions about that if that indeed did occur)
Re the CTR’s now termed traditional approach to Shambhala/Buddhism yes in the next ten years I think it will be under threat merely because of the numbers following SB. So here we have an interesting conundrum how will the perhaps 1,000 people (a rough estimate) who are now iffy about SI go forward –certainly myself I think I am going somewhat the Naropa way of the 70s that would be on
continued
one way to do things that does attract people to the teachings –that all inclusive approach (Chris –query here was not the SMC land bought after Naropa sessions in the 1970s?)-so yes there would have to be that emphasis on ‘discipline’ in its most widest sense.
Of course this whole body of people could be kept within SI if we had different conceptions of the King motif as Ash, James and I have been having discussions about on this long, long thread –I wonder what they are both going to say next (!)–they are both really perceptive about stuff aka philosophy and psychology(hope more people throw their thoughts into the debate about the monarchy/warrior aspect of the whole thing), but that ‘new’ conception of Shambhala king as the main guru – could that still be up for debate within SI? Me – I think whilst the upper echelons and quietists are muffling their thoughts about this the pages of this great book of SI are turning up at the edges and going yellow.
You know listening to the Regent yesterday speaking on primordial confidence (and yes I know he did not practice as much as others and yes I really, really hated what happened with TCS) there was still that sensation there that there was all to play for in the world with the original exposition of the shambhala teachings –now there is the one way approach, and I still just believe that view will not take- will not get through to people in the west. So yes in some respects one party is over but will the party ever begin in SI properly for every one – myself I just think its dancing itself into a very tight corner.
Best
Rita Ashworth
….as far as VCTR exploring the New Age Movement and est, there is the anecdotal story about what he said after he met Werner Erhardt. When a student asked VCTR what he thought of W.E., the response was said to have been: I think he should be killed with a knife.
John interesting come back on the est thing – I just remember reading about when he met Erhad and stating we could do better than this in establishing teaching practices in the west –re the ITS format – so yes may be even the anecdotes have been edited….?!
I wont raise the spectres of any more new agers from the 70s or perhaps the Mahakalas will be appearing!? And maybe can do without those at present!? ——Wow though, re Osho if its true though- cant believe they did that –very worrisome……
Best
Rita
http://www.newsbiscuit.com/2010/04/20/new-age-terrorists-develop-homeopathic-bomb/
Rita, it wasn’t edited because I heard it at the time. VCTR was interested in the New Age Movement inasmuch as he was interested in all aspects of culture. The idea of Spiritual Materialism that he railed against was his
reaction to it.
Dear Ash
Just a brief reply to that article that you posted –yes I follow its reasoning but back then I think we did need the collective because of the mega-power of the capitalists in society who also funded armies/political parties around the world. What is the relevance of this to the shambhala teachings re the democracy aspect well you cant leave the whole thing up to the big funders, the people with money you have to allow the little guy/guyess in with their take on things –so in the triad we would have to have a very,very vigorous democracy. Would the little guy/guyesses form into some kinds of joyous collective or would there still be then different takes on the whole thing-interesting to think about – the establishment of some kind of National Assembly as CTR wanted-would you have conventional oppositions/schools of thought for example there re rfsers and the SIers . In some respects in a greater mandala I think you would have to have that because no collective can be a permanent thing, you would need always the individuality thingie to shine through for the thing to function in its most pristine state –hence I think the dynamic of the triad which if you look at it at first seems slightly mad and nutty –re monarchy,democracy and communism together.
Well hope you can catch the debates over the web. The whole election is swinging on them –very bananas for UK context. Clegg the boy is doing well-Cameron think he will be out in nine months –hes lost it-Brown well hes a canny Scot –maybe he will scrape through – yes the great game on conventional politics in the UK – suspect Mandelson is having kittens!
Best Rita.
Re: “back then I think we did need the collective because of the mega-power of the capitalists in society”
I am using the term – perhaps incorrectly – in a different way viz. ‘collective versus individualized’ eras. What I think of when the term ‘collective’ is used – and again perhaps this is wrong in terms of current usage – is the sort of cultural/social homogeneity you encounter in a typical rural village, pretty much anywhere in the world, albeit one which is functioning pretty well, which is becoming rare in the West to put it mildly. But still, many of us in our fifties used to visit such communities on weekends and suchlike if we didn’t happen to grow up in one.
In any case, there is a sense of mutual connection, of belonging to a group. This is not necessarily a conscious thing. The way children are brought up to behave, to speak with certain accents, to wear certain clothes, to respect certain norms and suchlike. Such ‘socialisation’ is taken for granted. Furthermore, it is generally frowned upon to put one’s own methods of behavior, speech, dress, manners, decorum and suchlike beyond the established pale. Most importantly, the way I child evolves through infancy into becoming a conscious, speaking individual is largely done within the context of learning how to function in society.
Now this happens in all systems irregardless of the terms used, so maybe the difference between collectivism and individualism is a distinction on a different level. But my sense is that generally in the developed West in the past fifty years or so we have emphasized an individual, or ego-based, view of what the role and function of an individual is in a way that is far removed from that of people only a few generations ago. I suspect that many of them from those days (such as my grandparents were they still alive) would find the modern way far weaker on many levels for strangely enough, it seems that individualism as promoted breeds weaker characters than the older, seemingly more rigid and restrictive ways.
In any case, a monarchical system – to use that dirty word – only makes sense in the context of a well-socialised, collective-style society. Or put another way: DDM’s original coronation could only occur after there was a society in place to perceive someone as fulfilling that role. Without their existence and perception, such a role could not make sense on any level, so it is not something that is purely the product of one individual’s effort and character alone. I don’t think that many people these days are capable of even contemplating monarchy without immediately assuming that the main thing to consider is the personality, the virtues and vices, of the particular individual who has the role of monarch. My view is that the monarch, at least in an overtly Royal system, is mainly the product of a society/culture. If this is somewhat accurate, then DDM trail blazed probably a little ahead of the curve in order to plant the seed, but that seed now needs quite a bit of time to take root and grow.
Indeed, although I have had quite a few problems with things in the mandala of late and am no longer a gung-ho ‘fan’, I think that no matter who the current Sakyong is/was or what the current Sakyong had done/will do, setting up a quasi autonomous but yet essentially porous/interpenetrated society in the current modern, para-local and really para-national context, was always bound to be a rather hard slog with many difficulties along the way. Did anyone ever say it was going to be either easy or straightforward? I don’t think so. So why are so many bemused, even angered, that there seem to be obstacles, disagreements, little obvious progress numerically or financially etc. etc.?
Yes, one can take the spark of basic goodness and use it to light candles of creativity and mutual resonance through no end of varying forms and situations – such as arts workshops. But that is not creating a particular society with its own institutions, transmissions, mores, continuity and so forth; that is more spontaneous activity/expression on the fringes. Not saying this is not important or worthy, just that it is not the same as establishing a long term social mandala, indeed place-grounded ‘kingdom’ or ‘realm’.
Anyway…
The reason for some of these seeming digressions about monarchy etc. is part of a wider discussion in this and other threads about the Sakyong-Vajra Master business, namely is everyone in Shambhala basically a Buddhist whose tantric master is the Sakyong, or should Shambhala be something else?
In this context I must say I have found the mentions of various local groups getting together and offering some of the ‘old’ basic buddhadharma teachings from CTR’s founding years most heartening. This thread is called ‘Different Views and Paths’ and I think that is exactly what we have to be able to accommodate more under the same Shambhala Society tent. And perhaps if there is some loosening of view, we could indeed see a few differing streams within the same current sangha/mandala and if that indeed work in a healthy way, then it might organically lead to a renewal, a flourishment of more diversity along those lines, whilst at the same time the central authorities learn better how to accommodate these various streams and yet still maintain the over-arching Shambhala Society context in which they find themselves all inter-connected.
Also, I still feel strongly that we have never taken the NS initiative seriously, organisationally speaking. Mainly it has been an individual endeavour to make it over to NS, after which there is a somewhat typical Center/Karma Dzong established due to sufficient numbers of students living in Halifax, but apart from that, little else. Somehow we have dropped the ball, and somehow we have to find our way with this and I continue to feel that this is not something that is the job of the Sakyong to effect. I feel this would be the case even were CTR still alive today. There is something on the nyen level, the peer-to-peer senior sangha level that has to happen, which includes providing venues for discussion, articulation of policies, continuity of process and hierarchy and all the rest of it. That has to come from us, and moreover the pioneer work in that regard has to be done in the context of establishing long-term bedrock Shambhalian community here in Nova Scotia which endeavor will in turn inform the entire international mandala in many as yet unknown ways.
In other words, I don’t think the whole Shambhala-Buddhist issue, important as it is, is key one way or another in terms of the more truly important things which need to be furthered.
But allowing CTR students to teach more of the material which they were trained in – or them simply finding ways to do it more ‘allowed’ or not – and more clearly developing the NS agenda, these two things, both of which are mainly up to ‘us’, would go a very long way to resolving most of the bones of contention, and also fulfilling the aspirations of ourselves, our teacher and his heirs.
Rita: I pity the Brits right now: a fresh new globalist (Clegg), a tired old globalist (Brown), and an old Etonian globalist (Cameron). That said, I think getting to more proportional representation would be a good thing – much harder for small cliques to dominate the parliament than with the current duopoly. Of course, how much parliament has to do with actually running anything, I have no idea, but suspect it is far less than generally acknowledged.
John, all of what you say is correct. Except that people would most certainly more than blink an eye at Osho, or quite a few others. The situation you described, as far as keeping the doors open is accurate. You are also accurate about the ethos of those who made that happen. However, when that program happened it was the universally agreed that they would not be back. But now, there is a strong conviction about being much more selective of the programming. It turns out that weekend yoga programs really don’t help. People have realized that. I have watched the changes for many years now, and it is actually becoming a Vajrayana center again. It has been a long time, but it is changing back. You left at the worst, darkest time I have ever seen there, so I understand your hesitance, but it is actaully getting better again.
Be well.
I’m going to risk an angry response from someone and make a plea to break this discussion into several threads.
I’ve been following this thread for about a month now by email, and I spent time reading about the first two-thirds of it before I jumped to the end, dropped a line and subscribed to follow-up comments. All this hoping to find a place in the discussion to converse with you.
I love the monarchy discussion, but is this where Richard Reoch’s interview started?
I suspect the reason you’re not getting more fresh input from others is that this thread is too long. Really it is. I know it’s a magnificent achievement in some ways but I for one find it quite inaccessible now. One hates to speak without addressing the key points, and in this thread I don’t know how to find them.
Could the principal discussants and the moderators think about summarizing key themes out of this entire discussion, and starting new posts around each one? This way your knowledge and perspective can be shared more broadly.
This has been a gentle request implying no criticism. Please don’t get mad – please do consider this request. I’d love to talk with you
In other words, Ash and Ashworth , please either communicate directly to each other or get a new thread! Thx.
well, those other words not mine
my request would be Ash and Ashworth DON”T go offline to communicate, don’t deprive us of that discussion. But DO break this into smaller parties more people can come to.
Well, maybe this thread is more or less finished anyway and enough is enough?
I would hate to see you just end the thread – I would love to see an attempt to summarize the principal themes that have been addressed here.
I guess I mean I’d like all this to count for something.
I know you guys talk about the samaya anguish you have, and I don’t have that since I didn’t know CTR and I haven’t ascended the curve to SMR yet.
I know you talk about the marginalization of the old students.
I know you worry about the current shape of the mandala purely as an organization.
and the future of the Shambhala path as directed by the Sakyong, especially as compared with perceived direction from CTR
and what about that kingdom, and enlightened society
And more.
But when you put all these things together into one discussion, it becomes very hard for me and I presume others to find the unified field theory you’re all trying to get consensus on.
Much better to take that little list I started and make it more accurate and try to establish your consensus with each piece, I do believe.
Maybe it’s needless work to repackage this thread, maybe just move on and keep talking – maybe you could subdivide the site’s purview into main topics of discussion. Smaller threads, more posts, tags on posts maybe. You decide.
But break the entire field of discussion of this website into all its component parts as identifiable themes and you will have done great work.
I’m a fan. Your work here to educate and inspire the lame communications culture of Shambhala into an open discussion is I think an incredible gift to its well being. Keep going. Thanks
Dear All
Hmmmmmm-so people are following the thread – I wonder how many(?!) –seems to be a difference of opinion in whether we should carry on or not?! I agree the thread is getting unworkable to a degree as some conversations do – the main thing that made me carry on was the triad concept re monarchy, democracy, communism –big subjects –not something that I am academically trained to go into in great detail but that I am working with from my college days, my own experience and research on the internet. But within this triad concept I think there are areas that could be gone into in greater detail and more fruitfully in fact I was going to post on the democracy aspect this morning because I thought we had exhausted the monarchy principle somewhat. So I dont know the theme of the triad is an intriguing one it needs to be explored in more depth.
Re democracy persay and the monarch principle I think it is a dynamic relationship thats why ultimately I think it undermines the one way in SI, one only has to look at western religious history to see this with the multiplicity of takes in Catholicism of all the diverse colleges there re Franciscans, Dominicans, etc and also within the state of Israel aswell –are they all following one rabbi-certainly not. No I think Trungpa wanted there to be many ways into the Shambhala Kingdom.
What are we going to do for example when the Margarets that Ash wrote about on the Chronicle Project who almost stepped into the Kingdom come back to us and say well I have found ‘the way’ to Kingdom and you do it this way –are we going to say she is barmy, a fruitcake like Ray-can we keep saying this to people as time passes? We would be come very intransigent conceptions of the human species if we did. So also from a moral view point I think one has to a degree to stand outside of the present state of SI.
So heres a suggestion start a thread on the triad concept and go into each factor as much as you can perhaps having 2 months on each and then may be a thread on the whole thing together –in this way you would be approaching it much in the way of philosophical debate. My own feeling is that when I read stuff on rfs is that people dont like being corralled into the one way approach –thats why there is interest in this thread so people do really want to explore democratic principles in a shambhalian Kingdom.
Finally re one of Ash’s posts on Art –I dont think it is a little thing on the edges of the Shambhalian Kingdom. I think this because of Trungpas interactions with thinkers in the Arts in the 1970s particularly Peter Brook who sees theatre as a universal way of relating to society. A good book to read about this is the Conference of the Birds about Brooks travels in Africa where in the 1970s African society was much more communal and artistically based away from the fripperies of theatre in the west. So yes I think Brook was trying to get back to seeing Art as being within all our interactions both politically and religiously -did not Grotowski think the same way in the end with his conception of theatre as a ‘religious act’ in the most widest sense (even hints of secularism here too!)
Well will leave it up to Mark Szp on how to proceed re the triad concept but then perhaps he can also suggest some other way to tackle it as well with another heading as he is a very clever boy as they might say in Monty Python!(was it the Parrot sketch!)
Best
Rita Ashworth
Ash,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_Revolution_%281917%29 re Nicholos II: “… out of touch with the needs and aspirations…a vast majority…were victims of the wretched socio-economic conditions…Tsarist Russia stood well behind the rest of Europe in its industry and farming…widespread inflation and food shortages in Russia contributed to the revolution.” and so on.
It may have been the wealth of the nation, Ash, but when I read he was the wealthiest man on the planet, his personal wealth over 10 billion, and the state of the nation was as described… then it wasn’t anymore. I’ll bet the wedding didn’t come out of pocket.
Sans evidence to the contrary, I will trust what I glean from various sources, rather than a nostalgia for something that probably never was as imagined. I hope projection of our inspiration onto situations that were actually disastrous, is not a basis from which to formulate what is possible.
Of course there were small kingdoms we would agree manifested Shambhala principles. Not at issue. We could also find Communist enclaves in China, companies in the US or tribes in New Guinea that do as well. We probably need to define that, because pomp and circumstance mixed with high decorum and luxury are surely not the defining factors.
Anyway the question is how that comes about, and what role government has in creating it, if any. My argument is that, as far as my state of mind and how I may choose to work with it, government has no jurisdiction. I don’t think faceless administrators should ever have authority to judge who has broken samaya, as has happened.
And I think the issue of proper socialization is a red herring. People are socialized with common educational systems and credentials are recognized internationally as never before. It may in fact be this overwhelming commonality that has younger people, when intelligent and inquisitive, instinctively seeking other ways of expressing themselves or being. Does not Buddhism provide just such an alternative?
You point out we touch on sacred outlook during events like birth, marriages, funerals and death. Agreed. The list could be longer, but those experiences are profound epiphanies because of what they are, not because of any attempt by anyone to make them so.
I would suggest the same is true of any government or monarch. They are what they are. If capable of manifesting some form of enlightened government, any impression of sacredness would grow out of how well they deal day to day with the things any ruling class is undeniably responsible for, not from ceremonies and aloof examples we can project onto.
Clearly all group experiences are not sacred. I would argue most don’t come close or even try to experience the nature of mind. Most are organized events meant to tweak primitive instincts – a need to belong, a sense of power, mutual recognition – with little or no intelligence involved. (Student/teacher relationship, devotion, sangha, satsang etc., a tooootally different thing.)
(cont.)
What I have been referring to is not an attempt to deny emotion. (Abhidharma has the same rap, btw.)
It is more a wish that whatever the form, government or administration is not in the first order, a way to handle control or engender specific emotional reactions to an image that is also manicured for that effect. I feel fairly sure, and I think history bears it out, that when a government is trying to control the emotional content of its citizens with pomp and circumstance and religious authority, rather than by doing the right thing (which would actually engender a more enduring and wide reaching inspiration) then you can be fairly sure they are up to something which is either incompetent or based on fallacious models of human beings and society, self serving or detrimental. Whichever, I don’t see how that could engender enlightened society.
Gross National Happiness (GNH) illustrates perfectly why our emotions, happiness or our spiritual paths ought not be handles for governing. GNH is classic double-speak propaganda, its only purpose, its only purpose, polishing the image of the ruling class.
If we do not put our emotions aside when examining these things, the ‘happiness trap’ will feel good even when it is a blatant lie. Our ‘feelings’ cannot be how we examine things of this nature. Can they for anything?
The only alternative to a god realm like monarchy that calls our emotions from on high is not animal realm. To discriminate dharma from administration or government is not animal realm, it is human realm. Go back to basics. Dharma has its upayas and a long lineage of experience and wisdom. We don’t need to meddle with that. But in terms of governing or administration, look at what are basic essentials for any cohesive healthy society without which harmony is just another sour note. And examine openly whatever system is adopted, including and especially problems that arise. It can be boring and dull, uncomfortable and difficult with little thanks, lacking in grandeur and glory, but it is the small steps made properly that make any grand gesture meaningful.
Ash, with ‘mutual conspiracy’ I was referring to your calling it that. I don’t follow the logic entirely, think humans and society work differently, but you said: “So what makes a leader Royal is that somehow society has mutually conspired to make itself capable of generating sacred perception which manifests in the mutual sacredness of both ruler and ruled.”
Somehow?… That is where aaall the work is.
In the inspiration that we do not change or create the world anew by imagining it to be other than what it is.
James, Rita, and Ash, please follow the waiter to the Sunshine Café, and to the table specially prepared for you.
Any other bystanders are of course also welcome to join in the conversation there.
I would suggest that we refrain from further comments on this thread, unless they are exactly on topic, and remain on topic.
To discuss this idea in general, use the Sunshine Café table.
- Mark
Mark: apologies for having contributed to making this thread unwieldy. In defense, it did seem for quite some time that immediate reaction to the topic was long over, so this sort of tangential discussion felt okay. Still: clearly all this extra stuff makes it much harder for someone first coming to the thread to wade through so again, apologies.
By my recollection, the Vajradhatu sangha was not perfectly loving, perfectly open, perfectly governed by its administrators, perfectly in harmony among its students, and perfectly supportive of everything Trungpa Rinpoche wanted to do. But for myself, I liked it anyway.
Trungpa Rinpoche changed it and tinkered with it constantly (often to the consternation of the students). Hard to say how it would look now had he survived another 23 years. It’s reasonable to imagine that a number of things would have changed–perhaps even chants and thangkas and curriculum? Would old students be alienated if he’d done that? I wonder.
There were administrators and people in power back then who weren’t interested in hearing the current dispensation get criticized and no doubt squashed dissent through the means at their disposal, or just people who didn’t like to hear Trungpa Rinpoche attacked anymore than people loyal to the Sakyong like to hear him attacked.
Nevertheless, they form one lineage, these two teachers, and sorry to say, but if you’ve got samaya with one, you have it with the other (see particularly the third root downfall).
Gary:
Thanks for reviving this thread.
You wrote:
“Trungpa Rinpoche changed it and tinkered with it constantly (often to the consternation of the students). Hard to say how it would look now had he survived another 23 years. ”
Well, we’re speculating now…I have had the great fortune to be able to study with Trungpa Rinpoche for 14 years before he died, and have continued since then, to the best of my ability. I suppose you could say he did “change and tinker with” things–but not the teachings. He presented them and boom, there they were. The teachings spoke/speak for themselves and certainly didn’t/don’t need any tinkering.
He put a great deal of thought and effort into how to present the Vajrayana teachings in the West. It had never been done before. He did his homework, learning English, studying Western psychology, and understanding how our minds operate, and evolved a brilliant exposition of these teachings. He was praised for this by His Holiness Karmapa and His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, among other great teachers of his day. He articulated a specific path of practice and nurtured the sangha along on that path.
There is no question that the practices of Vajrayogini and Chakrasamvara, which he presented in the traditional way, were meant to be key practices for us. He never “tinkered” with this!
After he introduced the Shambhala teachings, I think that was in 1979, he didn’t ask us to shift our emphasis. The burden, if you will, became greater, as we now had two streams of teachings to train in and uphold, as best we could.
His emphasis on Vajrayogini did not wane, and, in fact, increased, in parallel with the Shambhala path. I was very fortunate to receive the Chakrasamvara abhisheka from him in 1986. Even though it was seven years after he had introduced the Shambhala teachings, there was no question of the centrality of that practice for his students.
Again, since we’re speculating here, no, if Trungpa Rinpoche were alive today, I believe that Vajrayogini and Chakrasamvara would be as central to the practice path of his students as it was then. That’s not the sort of thing that changed when he was alive, nor has it changed (to my knowledge) through the centuries.
You might respond by saying that these practices are alive and well in our community today, but, in fact, they have been placed on the “back burner”. Sadly, these precious practices are in the dim and distant future for students of the Sakyong.
Had he been alive all this time, who knows what other practices and forms Trungpa Rinpoche would have introduced in the intervening years. But I never witnessed him going back and changing key elements of the practice path, so have no reason to believe he would have done so over the last 23 years.
Gary Allen wrote:
“There were administrators and people in power back then who weren’t interested in hearing the current dispensation get criticized and no doubt squashed dissent through the means at their disposal, or just people who didn’t like to hear Trungpa Rinpoche attacked anymore than people loyal to the Sakyong like to hear him attacked.
Nevertheless, they form one lineage, these two teachers, and sorry to say, but if you’ve got samaya with one, you have it with the other (see particularly the third root downfall).”
Were we in the same sangha? This sounds like revisionist history, or worse, hearsay.
I became a student of the Vidyadhara in winter 1971 just a few months after he came to Boulder. I was 20 years old and knew nothing about the “spiritual path” apart from books I had read on Buddhism. I attended the talks that were edited into “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism.” I also received personal meditation interview from the Vidyadhara at that time and continued to have meditation interviews with him for many years afterwards.
I never heard anyone in our sangha ever criticize the Vidyadhara when he was alive and teaching. Nor did I ever experience any Vajradhatu administrators “squashing dissent through the means at their disposal.” Every student of the Vidyadhara that I knew was utterly devoted to him. Those who weren’t left and found other teachers. If they criticized him to others we couldn’t have cared less.
Re. your dicta “sorry to say, but if you’ve got samaya with one, you have it with the other,” I find that comment absurd and highly pretentious. How would you know who other people have samaya with? Frankly, it’s none of your business. You should worry about your own practice and samaya vows and not issue a blanket criticism of other practitioners who you don’t even know.
Gary:
“… if you’ve got samaya with one, you have it with the other (see particularly the third root downfall).”
I don’t see the connection between:
a) seeing samaya as transferable, and
b) The third root downfall: “displaying cruelty to vajra relatives out of anger”…”If motivated by hatred, you give voice to cruelty and the relative hears what you say and understands what you mean, the five factors are complete and it is the third root downfall.”
Source: Tantra Ethics: An Explanation of the Precepts for Buddhist Vajrayana Practice by Tsonkhapa
Please explain.
MULASARVASTIVADA SCHOOLS
EIGHTEEN ROOT BODHISATTVA VOWS
The Eighteen Bodhisattva Root Downfalls
(3) Not listening to others’ apologies or striking others
MULASARVASTIVADA SCHOOLS
FOURTEEN KALACHAKRA ROOT TANTRIC VOWS
The Fourteen Kalachakra Tantra Root Downfalls
(3) Because of anger, faulting vajra brothers or sisters
MULASARVASTIVADA SCHOOLS
FOURTEEN ROOT COMMITMENTS OF A NGAKPA OR NGAKMO
The Fourteen Root Downfalls are:
(3) To be hostile to vajra brothers and sisters
“The third root downfall is, out of anger and aggression, to disrobe, expel, strike, punish, or imprison a monk, whether he is a pure upholder of morality or not.”
Perfect Conduct
Ascertaining the Three Vows
Ngari Panchen, Author
Dudjom Rinpoche, Author
Wisdom Publications, Somerville, MA USA
1996
p. 78
they form one lineage… if you’ve got samaya with one, you have it with the other
Is it safe to say that Gary Allen presumes a samaya relationship with Patrick Sweeney?
Can someone help me understand the logic here?
they form one lineage… if you’ve got samaya with one, you have it with the other
I don’t buy that logic at all.
You have samaya with a teacher and with your fellow students of that teacher. It isn’t something that is inherited automatically by an heir of a teacher.
Gary or whomever:
Re: the comment you posted about samaya, I’ve heard various sangha members say this before. What is the source for this? It’s always said with the presumption of authority, so I’m wondering where it comes from.
In a similar vein, there was a post on the Kalapa Centre web site indicating that the only way to receive blessings from the Vidyadhara is through the Sakyong. Where does this come from?
Buddhism is non-theistic, so this thinking doesn’t ring true to me.
It doesn’t ring true to me either. VCTR never said anything to this effect.
It seems like a cultish affect.
One thing seems clear to me….what’s being put forth by students of SMR seems
further and further from what the Vidyadhara taught. How can it be true?
Dear Edward et al,
Yes very good point Edward about Patrick Sweeny.
Yes the rapprochement stalled on that one I think although SI did say they were going to have further talks with him because even they recognise that the lineage was passed to him according to CTR’s will. So yes thats another conundrum for SI – I think myself maybe they will bring him in the ‘fold’ at a later date. But if I was Patrick I think I would continue on my own –why well look how people are turning to former established teachers in SI that have somewhat left the organisation.
Re samaya –yes I think at this point in my life Trungpa has somewhat infected my braincells so thats that. I dont believe you can kind of transfer that kind of connection to another person so I might take teachings from other lamas but since 1980 I have been following Trungpa Rinpoche. Connected to him because initially he left more room for questioning process about the teachings than other lamas I had been involved with. Plus of course he was really connected to the western lifestyle and his teachings were and are very precise.
I think Allen Lyon described the connection of samaya somewhat in a humourous way when she stated that it was like catching a cold! So in some respects its a very physical thing, but also yes I think you can gradually clue into samaya much more when you are doing the various practices, – so yes gradual and sudden approach to it all.
In addition if you look way back on the original article on this thread Richard Reoch states “its not helpful to comment on the legitimacy of another persons practice of samaya”. So yes re Andrew as well I wonder where Mr Allen is getting his take on the samaya principle if Richard thinks this way about the whole thing. Perhaps there needs to be some more investigation on where these views are arising from.
So yes there will always be samaya but then you do need more knowledge about teachings and people are turning to other Lamas and I dont see a problem with that and Khandro Rinpoche I think does seem to follow that approach too. And historically this was always the case within Tibet aswell –we need only look at the connection that CTR had with Dilgo Khentyse who was not his root guru but his connection to the Ati teachings for an example.
As for receiving the blessings of the lineage I believe that if you do the practices you were given with an open heart you will receive these blessings. And I think this viewpoint concurs with many other religious viewpoints about receiving connection to the essence of the teacher/teachings. Yes I hope people can check out Matthew Fox, the former Catholic priest excommunicated by the present pope, on blessings on utube he is so learned on these questions. (Incidentally he founded his own university from scratch and is now a much sought after speaker)
Well best from this side of the pond.
Rita Ashworth
The scuttlebutt is that Sweeny was offered an acharyaship if he agreed to give up lineage holder claims, but that Diana put the kebosh on that.
Perhaps SMR doesn’t want his students to all continue having a samaya relationship to Sweeny? awkward logic.
Perhaps SMR should consider financial incentives to sweeten the deal.
Just kidding. This stuff makes me sick.
Thought this was an interesting quote by Slojav Zizek in the LRB on China, but substitute SI, particularly as it becomes more Chinese:
“No wonder official propaganda insists obsessively on the notion of the harmonious society: this very excess bears witness to the opposite, to the threat of chaos and disorder. One should bear in mind the basic rule of Stalinist hermeneutics: since the official media do not openly report trouble, the most reliable way to detect it is to look out for compensatory excesses in state propaganda: the more ‘harmony’ is celebrated, the more chaos and antagonism there is in reality”.
Zazek is very interesting as a political thinker. Much of what he says is mirrored in a microcosmic way in SI and its relationship with RFS here. In other words, similar to the U.S. democratic party and third way liberal politics, RFS is actually serving SI by now being it’s ethical voice, its supplemental agent to actually strengthen SI’s ability to “carry on as usual.”
Here is Zazek in LRB entitled “Resistance is Surrender” again on the strange relationship between resistance and the state in the U.S and their symbiotic relationship. I am struck by how RFS is mirroring this dynamic vis a vis Shambhala International and all it stands for:
“The big demonstrations in London and Washington against the US attack on Iraq a few years ago offer an exemplary case of this strange symbiotic relationship between power and resistance. Their paradoxical outcome was that both sides were satisfied. The protesters saved their beautiful souls: they made it clear that they don’t agree with the government’s policy on Iraq. Those in power calmly accepted it, even profited from it: not only did the protests in no way prevent the already-made decision to attack Iraq; they also served to legitimise it. Thus George Bush’s reaction to mass demonstrations protesting his visit to London, in effect: ‘You see, this is what we are fighting for, so that what people are doing here – protesting against their government policy – will be possible also in Iraq!’
So, ironically, people on RFS who have been protesting things for what, 2 years now, surrendered long ago to SI” by being SI’s “moralizing supplement.” Instead of withdrawing totally from the SI terrain, into the “interstices” taking the energy and starting localized, decentralized pockets of local dharma organization, has become their handmaiden, their conscience, so they can carry on as usual.
Sorry couldn’t correct to Zizek.
here is link:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n22/slavoj-zizek/resistance-is-surrender
In her recent post Chris used the word – interstices – which reminded me of the poem from a few years ago.
Twin Girls
Twin girls are decked out in veils of transparency
Light enough to tiptoe on air
Delicately sipping their bubbly green drinks
And dancing like crazy in pointy shoes
In perfect sisterly harmony singing
Wearing the haut coutour of magic
Unborn twin shadows, they do one dance
Swaying for the sheer pleasure of truth
We asked our mother “what shall we name them”
Truth and Trust is her advice
Dakini Trust, so unswervingly convinced
That everything at all can happen
And protected by her sharp blade sister
Dakini Truth supports this sweetness
And with her tools she makes it so
Dancing on rooftops and twirling through corridors
Slipping through cracks and wriggling through keyholes
These wild girls are popping up everywhere
They know it all belongs to them
Truth is here with all her weapons
Stilettos, switchblades and swords
But just for us, on this occasion ~
She has chosen her manicure set of prajna
“Ask me questions” she hums and sings, so I can hear your tones
That is the way that I can learn what it is you really need
Trust tiptoes on the interstices of every word and thought
Ancient obstacles tremble; they panic and they flee in fright
Yet this sweetheart is so simple
She can spend lifetimes tucked into your pocket
Or complex enough, if that’s what we need
To supply us with a lifetime samadhi
The sublime mythologies of birth and death
Are stones in the river for our light stepping girls
Doing their trustworthy tap dance of truth
Our death defying leap of faith
Is the fitting consort for these beautiful lovers
Beyond what is obvious and the search for meaning
All is distilled into deathless amrita
Let’s raise a toast to our twin girls
In truth and trust their banner unfurls
——
Dear All
Interesting areas that the conversation is going into with discussion of Zizek who I have watched on utube. There is a documentary on him there if people want to watch it.
Yes I agree in politics particularly in GB there is always the reformist/conservative position going on. Some things can be achieved by reform namely after the war with a National Health Service and other nationalisations. But it does take a war or crises of these sorts to put these matters on the agenda.
So yes in the present globalised world we have those with and those without economic power, and a kind of liberal democracy with its emphasis of philanthropy aka the US model. Just for example watched an interview with Melinda Gates who states they the Gates are giving 95% of their wealth away. Obviously they must be doing some good but in the context of the world events and the economy it is small feed indeed. And of course its the Gates doing it and it has no concrete input from the populace of the world to effect the sharing of the funds. Yes I do wonder about US philanthropists perhaps they should go on politics courses to really understand the history dynamic of the planet.
So I think you could posit the social activities that might come about with the present Ladrang somewhat like US philanthropy where the Sakyong sees fit to dispense money in that or this direction without the input of an elected assembly on the economy. So this is indeed the ‘liberal’ take to a small degree acting within SI. Liberal in the sense that allows people to do what they wish with their money in their own economy but not consider the wider historical processes of the world in respect to what people need to live a basically good life with access to voting, education and social needs. Yes to effect real change you would have to begin to start to understand some of the ideas that were floated in the Sane Society written by Erich Fromm and which Trungpa was so intrigued by. Yes Fromm at a stab tried to marry economic theory with sense of community based on psychological basises of where people were at in their relationship/place in the world.
As to Zizeks comments on Chavez –yes interesting I have watched some documentaries on Chavez and the people surrounding him look like they are very intelligent and right on. And in the documentary I watched of him they did stand by him and did defeat the coup against him at great cost to themselves.
Of course too in the Latin American context could Chavez turn into a benevolent dictator or would his constituency be able to keep him real. One awaits developments in this area about his governance.
As to rfs mimicking the demonstrators against the war in Iraq –there could be an element of that there. But to me the debate has somewhat moved on with revelations about the Tibetan tradition coming from Elephant Journal and Dzongsar Rinpoche. So I think questioning of these teachers and posing questions in these forums also will raise the level of debate that is happening.
As to what is happening in the Buddhist/Shambhalian field –it is difficult to know what is occurring –certainly I am doing stuff but I dont know who else is. Would welcome maybe a brief twitter time column of people checking in saying we are here and we are doing this. Maybe that would spark further debate. Could you have a rfs twitter account re referenced on rfs itself.
………Yes have people taken a look at Dzongsars site –its got very professional. Mr Chender’s influence? But yes I dont know really where Dzongsar ‘s coming from. Hes still got one foot here in the west and one in India. But yes an interesting person.
Well best from the UK.
Rita Ashworth
Hmmm. A new “Dharma Business,” SI relieves themselves of another “financial burden” of relatives by putting them “out to work” in their 70’s.
All major credit cards accepted soon.
http://shambhalatimes.org/2010/10/15/grand-opening-breeze-of-delight/#more-21302
I personally don’t think a lot of Zizek. Everytime I’ve seen a clip of him he looks and sounds semi-crazed, and lost in abstraction. It’s usually impossible to summarize his views because the minute someone tries to do that he is saying the opposite. It feels to me like he wishes continuously to be provocative. Perhaps all of this is unfair. I do occasionally come across something he says that I like, but the only complete book of his I’ve finished (“Welcome to the Desert of the Real”) I found a mess. I also think he’s a dangerous thinker, in that his love of provocation takes him into distinctly dodgy territory at times–for example, praising “violence” a little too often for my tastes… In a soundbyte, sensationalistic, and intellectually debased age, one needs to be even more careful than usual *how* one speaks.
Also, even in the quotation you posted Chris, I just can’t agree with this: “[The] paradoxical outcome was that both sides were satisfied. The protesters saved their beautiful souls:..” I don’t think the protesters of the Iraq War in general were “satisfied”. I think most of them are devastated whenever they think of what they failed to prevent. And the cynicism of a phrase like “saved their beautiful souls” doesn’t interest me. What more could anyone do, going up against the US government?! Personally, I’m impressed that so many millions around the entire world mobilized for that event. Maybe it accomplished nothing short-term. That doesn’t mean it was worthless, that it wasn’t a positive event, or that it isn’t going to have any repercussions at all for the future. We don’t know what might be made possible in the future as a result of what was an unprecedented protest, both in terms of numbers and speed of response.
Again, perhaps I’m being unfair on Zizek. I do try to stay open. I just really don’t enjoy listening to the guy. Whenever I do, I feel jangled and nervous and depressed, like I’ve had way too much coffee.
Tyranny suppressing truth in America
17.10.2010
Xavier Lerma
PRAVDA.Ru
Things are so out of hand with propaganda creating chaos that Americans are taking to the streets in protest.
http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/17-10-2010/115395-tyranny_suppressing_truth_america-0/
I appreciate Zizek’s suggestions that far better would be a “finite demand” and focus on it. Such was the opportunities missed for a “ finite demand” instead of the infinite demands of the “moralizing supplement” of the liberal democratic blah blah blah. Which , to me is exactly what goes on here ad infinitum on RFS.
For example, the Vajradhatu Thanka was an opportunity missed for a “finite demand” that might have rallied a lot of support and could have been quite public. Another would have been posting the grievances of CTR students on the door of Karme Dzong. Instead there was no focus on a finite demand which , if successful, one could have moved forward. All this is probably too late now, so the best thing would be to withdraw all the energy, instead of it being used to actually keep the status quo at SI.
In systems theory, CTR students have been “disempowered bystanders” the most frustrating position to be in , in a dysfunctional system. The bystander’s often astute perceptions from the fringe are ignored by the closed system, which is the closed system’s death-knell in the long run, although the short-run cheerleaders keep on fundraising, with a new fundraiser theme every day.
. I think we can say assuredly that SI is in much worse financial shape than ever, as people send their objects for a garage sale-type auction online for the “Our Future Fund” , and now the extended family is putting up a website for divinations for sale. This is surely as low as one can sink. It’s embarrassing, but since SI is actually being economically run by rich benefactors now, and not practitioners, they don’t even know how low this is in terms of Dharma activity.
How does it go in the Sadhana of Mahamudra? “ The yogis of tantra are losing the insight of meditation. They spend their whole time going through villages and performing little ceremonies for material gain.”
The devolving dialectic of liberalist banter, , , surely must be eventually and undeniably seen as enabling SI ‘s shenanigans in reality, as sites like RFS, and sometimes Chronicles, serve really to cipher off all the passion, energy and emotions, channeling these as run- off so that SI can continue as usual with their Goldman Sachs approach to the dharma. Charity endeavors, politically correct, campaigns, “save the environment”, “handicapped accessibility” “queer dharma” , “prison dharma initiatives” “feminine principle” in other words, all the PC liberal hooks, while keeping the ordinary individual distracted from the actual parasitic fleecing that is going on from the inside, managed by the wealthy few, in faithful devotion to keeping His Nibs and Family solvent.
I think the analogy Zizek uses for liberal democracies, is quite appropriate to what is going on in a microcosmic way in our own tiny world of SI and Company.
Madeline,
great poem, by the way….I’m not sure what else here matters….a lot of nattering….
Chris, yes….and it’s easy to write stuff like this because
the subject is really vulnerable…if anyone cares…
so the strength is in telling the truth…whether it becomes popular…or even if anybody cares because that’s all that means anything.
Chris, thanks for your further thoughts. I do see your point about focusing on finite issues, and also your point about not letting energy be drained away.
I don’t think the word “demands” here could work under the circumstances, though. The leadership of SI has made it abundantly clear they have no doubts whatsoever regarding their own correctness of approach in everything important. It would seem to be a “point of honour” that anything in the way of a demand would increase their determination to ignore the person or people making it. Many of us have experienced that total shutting-out (ignore-ance) as a non-response to very polite and even deeply heartfelt communications. How much more so would they justify such a policy to themselves where “demands” are concerned?
Secondly, I personally am not ensnared by any “PC liberal hooks” emanating from SI, and have given no money to them for a number of years now. However, I must say that I do support each of the examples you give. Do you *not* support handicapped accessibility or prison dharma initiatives? As for the others on your list, it’s my feeling that if SI *really* started getting into the “feminine principle” and actually knew the relevance of queer theory to dharma, it would be a gentler, kinder, more balanced sangha.
Of course most of us support these things, that is exactly why they are used as “hooks” to make the ordinary practioner/student believe that this liberal agenda is SI’s agenda, when in reality it is being run by Goldman Sachs executive types whose priorities are not with the handicapped, prisoners or CTR pensioners.
“…like Glasnost and Perestroika in Shambhala.”
http://wikileaks.org/
hi all,
I hope this is an appropriate thread for this post…
Thankyou Damcho, John C., Lee, and others for your kind words and friendliness.
I had always assumed that everyone was welcome here regardless of background, identity, religious affiliation, or lack thereof.
I hope that includes people associated with SI.
I am sorry if I have been cavalier and flippant about who I am and why I’m participating.
I have no idea who most of you are, and I have never participated in a chat group that questioned or cared about who anyone was, or why they were participating – the assumption being that anyone who posts shares some degree of mutual interest in the topic the chat group is dedicated to – in this case I think it is VCTR’s vision of enlightened society.
My association with SI has been intermittent and ambivalent.
I am passionately drawn to the teachings of VCTR and Shambhala vision, I deeply appreciate a number of things about SI, but I am also very uncomfortable with a number of things.
That is why, when I heard about a non-SI group of VCTR’s students, and RFS, I was very interested.
I think I have underestimated the depth of heartbreak and bitterness that has resulted from the split, and I am sorry if I have been insensitive to that.
As a newbie, I can’t help feeling that all of VCTR’s students past, present and future, are family.
Discussing anything with folks in SI yields very different perspectives from discussing things with non-SI folks. I find both to be very rich.
My only interest in participating in any of this, is to hone, challenge, and deepen my understanding of the journey. As well as to help my heart and mind to open wider.
I’ve been assuming that’s what this website is dedicated to.
I do find it scarey and intimidating to participate here. But I have been heartened by the recent ‘songs of welcome’.
Mark – thankyou for your explanation of your remark about the Vajrayogini hag – that did scare me. (!)
Not knowing much of anything about Vajrayana, I was very interested in your remarks, Damcho, about having thoughts on the importance of both the “mahayanic” and “vajrayanic” aspects of enightened society. I wonder if you’ve had any further thoughts on that..?
Hi Judy, I think your question is very important. And one I feel not properly resolved within Shambhala, helping to bring about some of the problems many of us see. So–just a few thoughts, with advance apologies for what is lacking in wisdom or understanding herein…
To me, Trungpa Rinpoche’s published teachings make it clear that Shambhala is not just another sort of Buddhism. It is deeply inspired by Buddhism–as well as Bön, and Chinese and Japanese philosophies–and certainly borrows from it. But this is not of course the same thing as saying they are one and the same path, with identical purposes and domains. Explicitly, over and over, he contrasted Buddhism with the vision of a truly “secular path,”–ie, Shambhala.
So then it’s also–inevitably–true that the first students who began to implement the Shambhala program were practitioners of Tibetan, Vajrayana Buddhism. And we’re only just over a generation further along so that it’s still almost if not entirely the case that the senior teachers in Shambhala have Vajrayana Buddhist backgrounds. (On top of this, Shambhala itself has a fruitional, vajrayanic “flavor” throughout.) So the main thought I have in response to your question concerns a certain tension between the kind of “universalist” aspirations of Shambhala vision and its institutional, governmental, and interpersonal setups. Because–as James has eloquently written about here in the past–the tantric guru-student relationship simply cannot be the template for a large scale socio-political system. Maybe in a Pure Land it could… But, as Rita and others have directly experienced, we are relating to masses of people who mostly want nothing whatsoever to do with religion. Who certainly don’t want to end up taking vows of more-or-less absolute obedience to a Guru-King–which is where the path leads.
The core inspiration of Shambhala lies precisely in its universality. We might even see it as an especially profound form of “humanism.” In any event, while we can have, and have had, great discussions about what constitutes the “religious,” and the need to avoid confusing the religious and the sacred in order to foster the latter, and so on, I don’t know how you end up turning a path explicitly designed to be secular into a brand-new school of Buddhism. Let alone one set up on the very model of old theocratic Tibet. (cont.)
But at this point the entire organization of SI is structured around a system that was always meant to be esoteric. I grew up–Buddhism-wise–on the warnings of Trungpa Rinpoche regarding the seriousness and dangers of vajrayana. On the crucial importance of thorough preparation for this path, and on the truth that it was not for everybody. But we now have a socio-political system based upon principles derived from vajrayana and its radical disjunctions of power between those taking vows and (ultimately) the One to whom vows are made. AND the invitation the organization gives out to the world still is: hey folks, here is a fundamentally secular path, the path for people like you who have become disillusioned with religion. And I cannot help but see that in the end as a form of deception.
This is one aspect of the mahayana / vajrayana question. The other relates directly to your phrase “culture of kindness,” which interested me because it is something I haven’t seen but very much *wanted* to see, *came* to see, within Shambhala. While appreciating and seeing the truth in what was said so well in response to this phrase, I also must say that I too would like to see just a basic, ordinary, thoroughly embedded “culture of kindness” in Shambhala upon which everything else is built. It doesn’t have that. And I think the reason why it doesn’t relates to what was written above. The system of obedience characteristic of the personal/private (and freely chosen) relationship between student and guru has been extended throughout all aspects of Shambhala. Acharyas are treated as gurus in their own domain (and are happy to act like them); kasung practice their version of the same. In terms of the dynamics of power, Shambhala is one large disaster.
So, to slightly adapt a famous seminary moment, I often feel like saying, “Let us never forget … mahayana.” Because we do, often. And understandably, by the way. I mean, long-time vajrayana students have been given these depths of teaching to practice, and transmit… But also–what is the *common ground* within Shambhala? What kinds of language and interpersonal relationship are appropriate for a universalizing, secular vision? So this is why I was interested in your phrase “culture of kindness” and feel it is worth taking seriously as at least some kind of ground for a community.
Have I gone into an altered state, or has my computer . . .??? or have we somehow transmigrated onto ‘On Differing Views and Paths’ thread, whereas we were supposed to be doing a thread about the Third Jewel?
Scrolling up, I find:
• Stuart on October 17th, 2010 9:19 pm “…like Glasnost and Perestroika in Shambhala.” http://wikileaks.org/
• judy on August 30th, 2011 9:54 am hi all, I hope this is an appropriate thread for this post…
Duhh?
And if we are talking to ourselves in Siberia, how do we get back?
Susie
xx
Susanne Vincent on August 31st, 2011 7:31 pm
“Have I gone into an altered state…”
Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986)
“Operation Snow White”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Ron_Hubbard
Most of you might know the famous “Finches of Galapogas Islands” which triggered Darwin to come out with his theory. His theory talks about the beaks of finches differing between the one’s on the shore and one on the mountain because the type of flower whose nectar they feed are available at different depths in the flowers.
hi all,
Damcho, I completely agree with what you’ve said about the SI theocracy, etc.
But, I am inspired by the phrase ‘culture of kindness’, and share your interest in it as a ground or guiding principle for community. (no sense in throwing out the baby with the bathwater..)
Somehow Pema Chodron and other vajrayana practitioners have concluded that this is the point of of VCTR’s teachings also, ie. that the warrior path is about training in cultivating awareness, openness, non-aggression, and gentleness.
How would you reconcile this with the posts on the other thread..? ie. that being kind is not the point, but rather, being sane, aware, open, and “kindness will naturally follow’ ie. no need to train in cultivating non-aggression. (though from Suzy T.’s description of the community, it didn’t “naturally follow”…)
How could this be different from “the cant of the love-and-lighters”..?
careless wishes on August 31st, 2011 11:23 pm
“Ron claimed Parsons girlfriend, Betty. With admirable restraint Parsons wrote to Crowley, “She has transferred her sexual affection to Ron.”
The Apostate
Paul Haggis vs. the Church of Scientology.
by Lawrence Wright February 14, 2011
“For ten months now I have been writing to ask you to make a public statement denouncing the actions of the Church of Scientology of San Diego,”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/14/110214fa_fact_wright
Hi Judy,
Well, I think all these kinds of descriptions are very much context-sensitive. Yes, on the one hand kindness as such isn’t the ultimate point, because the ultimate point is freedom from delusion / becoming fully awake, as was said. But then, concepts being as slippery as they are, we could equally well say that anything that is done to help others towards this is kindness, which in the form of the bodhisattva vow could then become the ultimate point again…
But the idea I was getting at more (let me know how well this matches your own view) is that the creation of an environment conducive to awakeness requires a ground of trust, warmth, gentleness, sympathy–and “kindness” is perhaps as good a word as any to describe this kind of culture. (This point was made by others on the other thread also.) If someone has not adequately demonstrated to you their concern for your well-being, or we might just say their love, and then suddenly they are cutting the ground out from under you / attacking you / refusing to communicate / playing power games / rejecting you (all of which I have witnessed), then trust has just been shattered.
Here is one issue, as I see it, in the dynamics of this sangha. It has been a vajrayana culture from the beginning, and of a particular kind–ie one emanating from a “crazy wisdom” teacher. And this is bound to create a different environment in certain respects to a community of all mahayana practitioners (and indeed I have heard various people in the community over the years refer to Thich Nhat Hanh’s sangha for example as being too “love-and-light” for their tastes). So then the question becomes: what kind of community is Shambhala, in terms of the yanas? That doesn’t have a simple answer I think. As I was saying before, Shambhala has a fruitional view all the way through, but at the same time it is reaching out to a very broad potential audience. And these two aspects do contain a certain tension which I haven’t really seen acknowledged.
(cont.)
(cont.)
I remember a senior teacher saying, somewhere around 1999 or so if I remember correctly, that the Sakyong felt the community needed to take a step back and reconnect to basic kindness, after all the upheavals and craziness. The full teachings had been planted, and at this point there was the need for a kind of consolidation and tempering as they began to really blossom. I found that message appealing and it gave me a connection to him I had lacked. I felt that a greater emphasis on mahayana as the common ground of all practitioners–from, say, the self-identified Christian trying out a Level 1 to the person who continues all the way through the program–seemed important. I had seen too much harshness, and worse, from those simply lacking the skill to help others beyond straightforward kindness.
Unfortunately, I soon came to realize that there was something fundamentally out-of-joint with that program. The kindness he spoke of needs to be practiced top down, but something was wrong there. And to avoid repeating too much what I have written at various points on this site, I’ll just say that I came to see a quality of Agenda becoming stronger within SI. And however we are talking of kindness in the moment, whether it be ordinary, sympathetic, decent, loving-kindness or vast bodhisattvic kindness, Agenda will compromise this.
That’s my experience. You have said you are relatively new to the organization, and it can’t be for me to say what is right for you. I myself have tried to stay open to signs that my view of SI is flawed in some way, or that problems are being corrected. I just haven’t seen any of those signs. On the contrary, I feel that this magnificent lineage is being slowly lost within SI. But you may have a different view, and should follow the “principal witness.”…
Damcho, much appreciation for what you have written. What I say can only reflect that, and probably not so well.
Judy, you can’t ‘cultivate’ sanity. Copying the attributes that enlightened people seem to manifest certainly can help stop the carnage. Manners are good. Decorum is good! But it becomes a spiritual path only when we meet those parts of ourselves that don’t seem to want to be cultivated and decorous, and the best place to do that is the cushion. Hence ‘practice lineage’.
You can’t paint a construct of ‘enlightened society’ on top of setting sun world and expect it to work. This is why political solutions are inadequate. Great Eastern Sun can only arise when the clouds part, when we see that the whole setting sun world is insubstantial, unreliable, pointless, hopeless. Basic goodness is there all the time. The whole ‘dharmic’ point is that it is not created or cultivated, it is self existing, unborn, doesn’t respond to effort, is our birthright. Our journey is to unmask it.
It’s the story of the monkey in VCTR’s brilliant and very relevant Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. The monkey ego is so clever, devious, he grabs anything he can to use, including practice, and decorates his ego with it. He says, “I’m ‘doing kindness’ ‘doing gentleness’, really well! I’ve kept it up since last Thursday! Now I know I am on the path to enlightenment. How wonderful we all are in the love and light community.”
But the realms the monkey creates all turn out to be empty of satisfaction, of reality, they are simply not ‘It’. And he still hasn’t dealt with the fundamental issue of the second Noble Truth, i.e. that the whole problem is about the ego needing to establish itself as ‘something in particular’, i.e. creating ground. The characteristics of the castles he builds on sand are really not important, even if they have golden turrets and unicorns. Eventually he has to start over from scratch. There is nothing else. (Which is the whole point of ‘taking refuge in the dharma’ of course. No other houses have floors.)
Continued . .
/Continued
This is Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, another teacher worth reading:
‘If you are interested in ‘meeting the Buddha’ and following his example, then you should realize that the path the Buddha taught is primarily a study of your own mind and a system for training your mind. This path is spiritual, not religious. Its goal is self knowledge, not salvation; freedom, not heaven. And it is deeply personal. Without your curiosity and your questions and your open mind, there is no spiritual path, no journey to be taken, even if you adopt all the forms of the tradition’.
Those levels of meditation conferred in Shambhala Training, if properly taught, give it all. This is where we learn to open, see where and how we close down, how and where we obscure Basic Goodness. And only then can we really have a choice on whether we hurt someone or not – or even see them at all, rather than just the overlaid projection and reflection of our posturing. Fundamentally, to be sane – a prerequisite for any kind of genuine relationship with others – we really have to deal with our own insanity at ground level. And here, it doesn’t really matter whether the other inmates in the psychiatric institution are smiling at us or peeing on our shoes.
Judy, have you done the Levels? How thoroughly? How soon can you do a dathun? I hear Reggie Ray does it very well . . . got time for an adventure?
Susie
Damcho,
I appreciate your thoughts.
You have articulated my precise experience with S.I.
Susanne,
I have done up to Level IV, (I don’t know how ‘thoroughly’), have done 3 weekthuns, several zen sesshins through the years, have considered doing something with Reggie Ray, would love to do a dathun one of these years. I certainly agree with everything you’ve said and quoted. I think we may be understanding the word ‘cultivate’ in different ways – to me, your quotes are advocating the importance of ‘cultivating’, ‘working with’, both on and off the cushion. I’m not sure if you are suggesting that the fact that I haven’t done much practice explains why I believe that sanity, non-aggression, gentleness, etc., can be ‘cultivated’ , but Pema Chodron and countless others who have practiced light years more than most of us ever will, also believe that these things can (and in fact must) be cultivated.
But I’m starting to think that this is just a matter of semantics. No need to torture the issue any further!
Hi Damcho,
I’ve been thinking that it is not really accurate to say that I’ve had ‘precisely’ the same experience as you with SI.
I have actually met amazing people there, who have introduced me to the Shambhala teachings, and who dedicate their lives to practice, and to living and embodying the teachings. And I’m deeply grateful for them, and to SMR and Pema Chodron, etc. So I don’t feel that the teachings ‘are being lost’. But then, for me, the important teachings of VCTR’s lineage are the same important teachings of any religious or non-religious system ie. kindness, bravery, gentleness, openness, etc.
The problem for me is with the whole theocracy structure, loyalty oaths, etc. I just can’t relate to it.
Judy, there is a final line missing from the email above, which appears on the direct email I received. It is ‘That’s what the ‘Agenda’ is for me. And I think much of that was inherited from VCTR.’
I feel it would be good to confess here that you are conjecturing wildly.
Now, it sounds to me like you’re now leaving this forum empty handed – although I am unsure what you sought. However, before you go, I would like to clarify one or two things.
Pema is far too wise to set the direct cultivation of attributes as the goal of the spiritual path. If they become this, then it would be far better to drop the whole idea of being good, trying to be kind, and trying to be enlightened. Practice is NOT ‘trying to be’ something. That is a contradiction in the deepest terms. Even to attempt to do so will inevitably result in a split mind. This is the very very important difference between VCTR’s path and personal development programmes.
Pema is quite specific: ~ in Comfortable with Uncertainty, she gives instructions on ‘cultivating’, but it’s not about focusing on the attribute. Instead she describes key elements of the actual practice, and these are excellent teachings:
‘. . . .if we can contact the vulnerability and rawness of resentment or rage or whatever it is, a bigger perspective can emerge.’
‘In the moment that we choose to abide with the energy instead of acting it out or repressing it, we are training in equanimity, in thinking bigger than right and wrong.’
‘This is how all the four limitless qualities — love, compassion, joy, and equanimity — evolve from limited to limitless: we practice catching our mind hardening into fixed views and do our best to soften. Through softening, the barriers come down.’
If you are serious about wanting to pursue a spiritual path, do not confuse this with the idea of becoming a nicer person and gaining positive attributes. I promise you that if you do, your agendas will lame you. But if you are in fact genuine, you could do worse than do just one thing. Set as your single mission, to find the true meaning of the word ‘dharma’.
Very good luck.
Susie
Hi Susie,
You’re right, I am leaving this forum, as well as S.I.
The ‘missing line’ that you refer to was about another series of things that I decided not to get into – I accidentally hit the ‘submit comment’ tab before I was finished writing.
But, I do appreciate what you’ve said in your latest post. Thankyou for your comments, quotes, and advice. Finding the true meaning of the word ‘dharma’ is my koan.
And very good luck to you too.
Judy, may you thrive and prosper in your quest.
In the event that you’d like to maintain a connection at any stage, just respond with the word, Yes, and I will ask Suzanne to release your email address to me confidentially, and I’ll send you mine.
And if not – as they say in New Zealand – no worries.
Susie
Speaking of differing paths…
I’m curious to hear from students of VCTR about the matter of guru-devotion, and fidelity to one’s guru and to his teachings. I just posted a quote from Ashvagosha that touches on this subject.
Do you feel that there are consequences for being true to your root guru, or not? For that matter, do you feel that sometimes there are organizational heads who perhaps ask you to forget your commitments to your root guru, and to his specific teachings? How does that feel?
Here’s the blog post: http://botstudent.org/2011/09/03/guru-devotion-ashvaghosha/
best wishes,
edward
A couple of comments on what Judy reawakened here.
To refer to a ‘split’ in Shambhala is way too simple and too easily confused with ‘ideological differences’.
Without claiming anyone caused that chasm by intention, it is nevertheless a predictable result of recreating a medieval theocracy based on the vajrayana student/teacher relationship.
The ideologies are not the cause, but rather come about after the fact, and are mostly projections we use to explain how we came to this impasse.
Those explanations are sought and so come about after so many first second and third hand encounters and stories, but altogether after hearing so much dissatisfaction or disappointment – some of it relevant and well articulated, dismissed out of hand as the complaints of people ‘missing their daddy’ (or whatever). I’m not trying to stir up moral outrage; the main point is…
The split is not primarily the product of a difference in ideology. It is a product of politics and policy and how those policies have been carried out, and more importantly to the dearth of checks and balances, the blind spots if you will, one finds in any theocracy, and so therefore also due to how the problems and damages and loss of blessings (or disruption of culture) incurred have been blithefully ignored as only the distant goal of a singular but undefined vision of enlightened society is held in focus.
In short, it has nothing to do with any genuine dharma that has been taught or transmitted by Trungpa Rinpoche or SMR. It is something else altogether. It is the result of how people treat each other, how administrative, organizational or political power is approached and used by humans everywhere, even in Shambhala where we seem to have the additional systemic obstacles inherent in theocracy making those problems even more difficult to relate to appropriately. It is the result of theocratic government and how humans exploit such things, and not something uniquely wrong with Shambhala or its core ideology (if it even has one).
In the inspiration that if someone’s talkin’ looney tunes, and is nevertheless a compassionate caring genuinely helpful and wise person who engages the world directly and appropriately, we’d be stupid to judge them by what they say. And… vise versa.
James Elliott on September 6th, 2011 2:15 am
“I’m not trying to stir up moral outrage; the main point is…”
Yet once again in this outcome-based contextual world “…the end justifies the means…”
~ Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527)
So enigmatic, Stuart, it’s as good as meaningless.
Do you mean I am trying to stir up moral outrage, even though I say I’m not?
Do you mean one should only talk about ‘positive’ things?
Is it my means or my ends you call to question?
What do you think they are, and why are they so problematic?
Under what conditions can one talk about injustices and abuse of power?
What would you suggest when the normal channels prove not only to to be useless, but actually stir up further abuse?
Are you comparing me or yourself to Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli?
I have no idea what you’re actually digging at.
The stories referred to are in some cases years old. I am so past thinking anyone is going to do anything about them or the people affected, and marvel that there is still an impulse to bury them, but here the new buzz word, kindness, was brought up in a community that has experienced an undeniable split.
Why is it that within a community that prides itself on creating enlightened society, we should have those kinds of problems? Everybody should be asking that question. Blaming individual neurosis is not a viable explanation; too many stories, too well articulated, it is clearly a systemic problem.
The cause is often referred to from both camps, as a difference in ideology or dharma. While there may be some differences in how each present(ed) dharma, I doubt that is the main reason the split within this community occurred. It looks to me it developed due to how people, on a direct face to face level, were treated by the new PTB.
In the inspiration that I’m not at all sure there was a ‘reason’ as such that mankind has moved away from religious governments. That movement, rather than a reasoned response, was more likely due to pragmatic necessity.
Dear James
I tend to agree with some of the points you are making about theocracy and Shambhala.
But also…I think the die has been somewhat cast much in the manner of all great religious splits in the past from my own reading too-they turn upon apprehensions about practice and relationships in ones own life with teachers/teachings. And yes culture plays a big part in all of this-I well remember my mother telling me she actually preferred the Latin Mass to the English Mass-perhaps because it had that element of Mystery that a lot of Catholicism once had.
But there we have it-connections to apprehensions of the ‘divine’ –for want of a better word can not so easily be understood in the conventional sense and tend not to be seen in terms of right and wrong paths. It tends to fall I think in the mean to where your own reflection and heart takes you-the religious life/’way of life’ path can not be struck into the matter-of-fact –it always seems to require the heaven aspect.
So some of us just go re our connections and ‘experiences’ take us- seems to be the western way and quite inevitable in some respects. So I have gone and am out there in the world trying to play with the ‘Mystery’ of Shambhala and the Vidyadharas many teachings…yes quite an adventure.
Yes I wonder how many more teachers will come out of the Split-interesting times.
Best
Rita Ashworth
James Elliott on September 7th, 2011 2:24 am
“So enigmatic, Stuart, it’s as good as meaningless.”
Then it is time for you to pay great homage and to see your Precept Master heart-to-heart.
Hi Rita,
Yes, I understand the die, and no comment I’ve made was cast to instigate a change I don’t think will or perhaps even can come from any established seat of power.
The only point I was trying to make, is that the split and dissatisfaction implicit in the plethora of stories of people who have been marginalized in one way or another, sometimes cruelly, sometimes wandering off due to other interests, is
1. That it’s not a natural and unavoidable product of succession.
2. How it happened, and how we are categorized, marginalized or for that matter included, is not a function of one’s spiritual path. It is about politics and how power is used to create social cohesion and group identity.
3. Therefore what we are witnessing is something systemic within a religiously ruled community which engenders in some specific and predictable ways, a divisiveness that tends to engender the opposite of what it professes to be propagating, i.e. kindness, compassion, enlightened society.
We need to understand that kindness is not a singular cause and event having to do with your attitude alone. On a social level it is unavoidably also about the political system citizens are forced to adhere to in order to belong. It is therefore critical we understand not only the ways it works well, but also the shortcomings, blind-spots, and tendencies for corruption.
If instead we are encouraged to believe that dedicated devotion to the guru will solve these and all other problems, if that’s the approach encouraged, then I’d suggest we are creating a community dangerously ignorant of politics.
If that’s the solution, then the problem is people who don’t hold the preceptor’s view, however vague and undefined that may be, or who criticize because they’ve experienced abuse or corruption. Then those people don’t need to be regarded as full human beings. Don’t even need to answer their questions or talk to them. As we see within just the last few exchanges of this tiny discussion.
Check out the “The Current” podcast on iTunes from 05.09.2011 “Lunch Box Politics” for a taste of how even the best intentions when applied to political systems become a playground for the kind of people who want to control what other people do and think regardless.
In the inspiration that anybody whose expert at anything, tends to be resistant to new ideas.
So now Judy Leif has been de-Achariafied because she wouldn’t do the Scorpion Seal Assembly….I heard from a friend in Halifax. So what does the term “Acharya” mean, if anything at all?
In Buddhism the term “Acharya” means “knowledge holder”, presumably “knowledge” of the primordial state.
In Shambhala “buddhism” the term “Acharya” means “Propaganda Minister” to the Board of Directors and its attaché.
Please note well that a Shambhala “Acharya” or any other Shambhala office-holder acting the role of “Preceptor” (sic) is not a genuine Precept Master as is known in Buddhism.
Value Creation $ociety
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C5%8Dka_Gakkai
Samaya 卍 卍 卍 !
Stuart,
Agreed….something like that….certainly if the title had any meaning besides
the political, it wouldn’t be taken away so easily.
I’m disgusted.
So is Judy less wise and compassionate than she was a week ago? Such a loss that magic title. I tend to think she is wiser or at least wised up.
Dear James
Agree with everything that you are writing about and more.
Truthfully could not step back in SI because I see enlightened society for the many and not for the few…..
-this is based on some life ‘experiences’ and may be all those philosophy of religion lectures I attended in the 80s doing my undergraduate degree –going through text after text, word by word almost with the ‘mad’ and hilarious Mr Raymond Holly who wrote a book called ‘Religious Education and Religious Understanding.’
I dont know do you think its a North American thingie re Kingdoms – I thought this morning about all this ‘Manifest destiny’ stuff that did pop into my mind. I also thought the Kingdom thingie was maybe because everyone was panicking about The Age We Are In…….zzzzzzzzz…people are attracted into The Alternative sometimes, I think.
Succession….yes biggie thingie too…..dunno tending to disregard it aka my own sort of connection to humanity and growing angsty northerness.
Any way now stuck with a sangha of the Many in my locality …so we go forward tentatively with many differing views. Enlightened society from scratch.
Dont know what the answer to SI will be in the end….can it now reform itself-how would it do that? I always thought the National Assembly was the answer that Rinpoche referred to as a gathering of the many.
Interesting re news of Judith Lief (if its true). Could rfs get an interview with her…….zzzzzz……
Well best from the UK
Rita Ashworth
No More Questions
I don’t have any more questions.
A few more answers would be nice.
I mean, I joined you on this Mystery
Tour…without question, and then, yes,
we all had a few….some exploded…
some had a strange taste left in their head…
OH YES, MR. SPACE MAN VCTR….
Any questions?
John Tischer on September 14th, 2011 9:20 pm
“Any questions?”
Which of the following is a dangerous destructive fund-raising cult?
a) $hambhala International (Vajradhatu)
b) The Church of $cientology
c) The Value Creation $ociety
d) All of the above
e) None of the above
I just listened to Zimmer-Brown’s talk on the new vows. I recommend it to anyone who wants to experience the new spirit and continuing direction of Shambhala.org.. Rather than comment about it, I think it better if people make up their own minds. Perhaps it gives an answer to the above question.
New vows? I’m a little nervous to find out about this, but… Is there a link John?
the link is posted on Shambhala News Service email about the Shambhala Lineage Festival, vows talk by Acharya Simmer-Brown now online
http://shambhalainternational.adobeconnect.com/p2bc7i37m2e/
Shambhala Lineage Festival, vows talk by Acharya Simmer-Brown now online for all
Sep 15, 2011
http://shambhala.org/community/sns/index.php?id=619
A re-brand of an old deprecated agenda pray tell?
“It takes a village!”
~ Mrs. Brööm Hilley, c. 1992
Simplify! Focus! Engage! Indeed!
Thanks Jean and Stuart.
Dear John et al
I think there are a whole lot more questions –especially in regard to enlightened society and the governance of it from we who have left are still not connecting to.
Its true that it can be seen in an ‘esoteric’ sense but I also think it can be seen in a pragmatic sense because Rinpoche was so involved in the discussion of vajra politics
We have to have more discussion about deleks I think and the National Assembly that CTR posited on the Chronicle project if wider communities are going to work on projects. We could work together in an ecumenical fashion sharing resources/ insight.
We have to make this connection to the universality of the Shambhala teachings, or whatever we deem to call them, again in some manner I believe
Well what did CTR envisage as the NA –no-one as far as I can see has gone into this because people think a ‘final’ product has been created!
I think the outcomes of Trungpas teachings are going to be a lot more complex than that –there will I think be many more questions of re-connecting to the teachings in our own very streets and buildings.
Well best from the UK.
Rita Ashworth
Listening to Judith Simmer-Brown’s long-winded New Vows talk yesterday, it made me think “acharya” means something like “bishop” in the Catholic Church, carrying out some institutional “potboiling” mission the Pope has assigned. And if you don’t do it, like Judy Lief, yet get “de-frocked,” or “de-acharied”—though that’s somewhat mixing apples and oranges: the Shambhala Teachings were/are the Vidyadhara’s heart, and KOS is a magnificently illuminated and “colored in” version of “Kingdom of No Dharma” from the Vidyadhara’s SADHANA OF MAHAMUDRA, it seems to me.
I was disappointed in Judy, though, at the time of 9/11 (the one in New York City, not the one in Chile in 1973 or Attica in 1972) when she allowed a poem or prose statement she had written to be changed at the request of an editor for a quickie book by spiritual folk on 9/11 because her writing suggested something like the so-called “terrorists” had “basic goodness,” too—something like that.
But Judy allowed that most important point to be changed in order to get her work in the book. You can imagine the rationalizations. I think she shouldn’t have allowed the changes, though. Jill Grundberg was of the same opinion at the time, as I recall. Even Judith Simmer-Brown got that right at the start of her New Vows talk: even “the terrorists” have “basic goodness.” Though she didn’t make clear which “terrorists” she meant, “us” or “them”—which, of course, would never have occurred to her being a typical myopic head-packed-with-ideology American, something her practice and study has yet to make a dent in.
Imagine, however, how flabbergasted and annoyed Judith Simmer-Brown would have been if some impertinent neophyte Shambhala Buddhist, who had managed to slip through the tightening SI conformity net (and isn’t that, at least in part, what the New Vows are all about, an effort to enforce conformity—under the loudly flapping banners of “kindness,” “peace,” “happiness,” and “harmony,” of course—to the Sakyong’s Fool’s Gold “candyassified” so-called “Shambhala Vision”?) and pointed out to the “Zipper” that “the terrorists” killed 3,000 of us, for which we took revenge on the Iraqis and killed 1.4 million them—and they had NOTHING to do with 9/11!
Can anyone make a transcript of the 2 vows?
Sarva Mangalam!
Yes, Jim, good points….the same ones we seem to be hearing over and over….
I’m reminded of that Gary Larson cartoon, where a woman is chastising her dog and you see in the first panel what the woman is saying to Sparky, and in the second panel you see what the dog hears: “Blah blah blah, Sparky…ect.
Only I’m Sparky and all I hear is “Blah blah blah, I vow to serve the Sakyong…blah blah blah.”
The vow to serve the Sakyong is only in the first vow….as far as I heard.
SHAMBHALA VOW (1)
In this dark age, it is important to have a moment where we acknowledge our basic goodness. It is planting the black Ashe in our heart. From this, good life can occur, and good society can occur.
In taking this vow, we are becoming citizens of the world, or citizens of goodness, which is essentially what Shambhala is. By doing this, we acknowledge the degradation and suffering of both spirit and environment. However, instead of responding with aggression and selfishness, we are responding with goodness and courage.
By taking the Shambhala vow and formally acknowledging our basic goodness, we make a connection with the vision of Shambhala. Thus we feel a sense of belonging to a culture made up of individuals who have also acknowledged their basic goodness, and from this ground intend to improve their lives—to not give up on the world, but to benefit the world.
If one feels inspired by the Shambhala teachings, the Shambhala vow is the first step in engaging in those teachings. If one is already engaged in goodness or wisdom, and wishes to take the Shambhala vow as an acknowledgement of that, one can do so.
The Shambhala vow acknowledges that humanity is coming to a crossroads, and that if we are to succeed in creating a better world, we must first acknowledge the inherent goodness in all beings. Doing this initiates and fosters healthy and positive qualities in all beings. Giving up on beings, and on human potential, will no doubt foster aggression and self-centeredness. Thus the Shambhala warrior is not a warrior of aggression, but of goodness.
PROCLAMATION OF GOODNESS
May basic goodness dawn.
May the confidence of goodness be eternal.
May goodness be all-victorious.
May that goodness bring profound, brilliant glory.
All read this three times, followed by a short lhasang. The future warriors rise and perform two deep warrior bows. Then they sit down and recite the homage.
HOMAGE
I pay homage to the great lineage of Shambhala warriors, who in their profound, brilliant wisdom, recognized that all beings have basic goodness. Whether I am sitting, walking, or sleeping, this wondrous gift of all humanity remains perpetually awake. This primordial goodness, I acknowledge today.
From a seated warrior posture, the future warriors then make one bow.
SHAMBHALA VOW (2)
VOW
On this new morning for humanity, with delight I acknowledge and proclaim the basic goodness in my heart.
I celebrate the meek, perky, outrageous, and inscrutable vision of Shambhala.
I will now manifest with joyful, powerful confidence.
The future warriors repeat the vow after the warrior preceptor, line-by-line. The warrior preceptor and the future warriors continue in this way until they have completed reading the entire vow three times—first for heaven, next for earth, and then for humanity. After the final recitation, the warrior preceptor should initiate the warrior’s cry three times.The warriors rest in this space for a few moments, then perform a deep Shambhala bow. As they arise, they recite the commitment.
COMMITMENT
From now on, I will honor my vow of basic goodness by being gentle with myself, kind to others, and courageous in my life. I will maintain good head and shoulders, have an expansive and open mind, and delight in the details of life, with the bravery to stop and appreciate a flower, a cloud, or another being. Having compassion for others and kindness toward the world, I will regard my entire life as a journey of deepening and training. I will engage in the wholesome practice of meditation, which allows me to take responsibility for my thoughts and emotions. I will fully appreciate and engage in my life, which purifies my habitual tendencies. I will share humor, sadness, and delight with my fellow warriors. I will reflect on the profound wisdom of humanity daily, never losing enthusiasm for human potential.
Acknowledging basic goodness today is the basis for enlightened society. Thus, from this day onward, I commit myself to creating a good human society of enlightenment. I will work enthusiastically with my fellow warriors to develop a greater society of goodness. Whether day or night, new moon or full moon, sunshine or snow, I will be a warrior of goodness in this world. I joyfully commit myself to serving the Sakyong and the vision of Shambhala, and creating a good human society.
SHAMBHALA VOW (3)
CELEBRATION
Today a miraculous and amazing event has occurred. This wonderment is celebrated in heaven and on earth, and now it is a celebration of humanity. May the goodness I have acknowledged today continue to grow and consume the world. May the awakenment I have recognized be a brilliant light, illuminating this dark age. May the bravery I have demonstrated today be an inspiration to all beings. May this joyous moment be proclaimed in the four directions. May all the elements—earth, water, fire, and wind—be invigorated. By firmly planting basic goodness in my heart today, may the four seasons be balanced. May human degradation be cleansed. May the earth be healed. May respect return to the family. May society awaken to its true potential. By this proclamation of warriorship, may magic and auspiciousness abound. Thus I celebrate becoming a Shambhalian.
CELEBRATING ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY
Inspired by basic goodness and the vision of the Great Eastern Sun, I delightfully and confidently commit myself to creating an enlightened society of human goodness. This I celebrate.
AUSPICIOUS VERSES
(To be read by preceptor)
KI KI SO SO
New warriors of Shambhala, delight in the basic goodness you have discovered on this day. The dralas of the ten directions celebrate this courageous moment. The lineage of Shambhala welcomes you into the manifold clouds of blessings. The Sakyong emanates the brilliant white light of fearlessness. The Sakyong Wangmo gracefully radiates pristine gentleness. The awake warriors utter the warrior cry. The citizens of Shambhala sing cheerful and uplifting songs. Proclaiming goodness brings joy.
May your body be strong and healthy. May your speech be melodious and truthful. May your mind be vast and brilliant. May all beings awaken to a state of perfect goodness. May the earth be balanced, may the elements be in harmony, and may the universal mandala of heaven, earth, and humanity be victorious.
SHAMBHALA VOW (4)
COLOPHON
Having been requested to compose a vow ceremony that would acknowledge the basic goodness of all beings—a simple and open entrance into the world and wisdom of Shambhala—I, Jampal Trinley Dradül, wrote this while contemplating the suffering of this dark age. Having previously felt that such a vow ceremony was not timely, I had held it in my heart. At the conclusion of my one-year retreat, I contemplated the need for a greater culture of goodness, and how Shambhala could be a positive force in the world to allow that goodness to happen. Thus, it felt time to write these words and compose the warrior vow ceremony. May this vow of goodness initiate fresh human inspiration. May goodness become the new spirit and culture of humanity. With this vow ceremony, may the sunrays of the Shambhala dharma pervade the world. This vow ceremony is dedicated to the glorious and good future of humanity. May all be good.
Composed in the sacred valley of Yang Le Shö, deep in the Himalayas, not far from Shambhala.
Pharping, Nepal
3 January 2011
ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY VOW (1)
STATEMENT
In the presence of the profound, brilliant lineage of Shambhala, I celebrate
the Ashe in my heart. This is the primordial awakenment of all humanity. It
arose from the cosmic mirror and came to rest in the center of my very being.
From this, confidence arises. From this, fearlessness arises. From this, great
compassion arises. It is a true miracle, the basic goodness of all beings. It is wise;
therefore it knows the three times. It is loving; therefore it possesses tremendous
sadness. It is brave; therefore it is glorious. This inconceivable manifestation is
the foundation of a good human society. It is what I acknowledge today.
The warrior preceptor reads these words aloud once. Then the future warriors and the
warrior preceptor read it aloud together.
CELEBRATION
Inspired by the profound, brilliant Rigden and the all-victorious Sakyong,
the Dorje Dradül of Mukpo, and in the presence of the awake warriors of
Shambhala, surrounded by the citizens of Kalapa—who from the depths of their
minds fearlessly proclaim the Ashe in their hearts, thus acknowledging the
existence of basic goodness; who, seeing multitudes of beings in the depths of
unbearable pain and suffering, raise their confidence and proclaim the warrior’s
cry; who dedicate their lives to creating enlightened society on this very earth in
order to bring an end to this dark age—I celebrate the inconceivable decision I
am making today.
The warrior preceptor reads these words aloud once. Then the future warriors and the
warrior preceptor read it aloud together.
ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY VOW (2)
ASPIRATION
The warrior preceptor strikes the gong.
Inspired by this brilliance and courage, I, too—on this very day—vow to
dedicate my life to creating enlightened society. I intend to uphold the victory
banner of Shambhala. I promise to keep the Ashe in my heart, and acknowledge
the presence of basic goodness in this world.
KI KI SO SO
All repeat these words three times: once for heaven, once for earth, and once for humanity,
followed by the Shambhala warrior’s bow.
VOW
Inspired by the profound, brilliant Rigden, the all-victorious Sakyong, the
great ancestral warriors, and all awakened beings who have courageously
dedicated their lives for the benefit of others, I rejoice in taking this vow today.
Inspired by the vision of Shambhala—that all beings possess basic
goodness, and that this magical truth is the basis of all society—in order to free
all beings from dark suffering, on this day I fearlessly commit to benefiting all
beings by creating enlightened society. By doing this, I become a true warrior of
Shambhala.
This brave and fearless mind will constantly strive, day and night, to
create enlightened society on this earth. This is the warrior I will be. May creating
enlightened society be my first thought in the morning, my last thought in the
evening, and even accompany me in my dreams.
Knowing that such courage intimidates others, through enlightened
reflection and deep contemplation, I have come to this conclusion: if humanity
and all beings who suffer at the hands of their own doubt are to be truly happy,
they must discover their own basic goodness.
A society of such great and courageous beings can change the tide of
humanity from a force of environmental and self-destruction to one of personal
confidence, self-liberation, and environmental harmony.
To this great vision, I, [given name, Shambhala name], now dedicate my
life.
ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY VOW (3)
Knowing that true warriorship begins at home, I will maintain a discipline
of humbleness and dignity.
In my personal affairs and domestic life, I will strive to manifest
sacredness and respect.
In society, dealing with others, I will aspire to be generous and kind.
In relating to the environment, I will be considerate and appreciative.
In relating to the future of humanity, I will be optimistic and courageous.
Because at a personal level, I take responsibility for my own mind and
emotions, I will engage in daily meditation.
In relating to conduct, I will balance view and action, thus appreciating the
fine points of life.
In relating to society, I will be skillful, creating strength and beauty.
In all my endeavors, I will always maintain basic goodness and the vision
of the Great Eastern Sun.
Thus cheerfully I become a warrior of Shambhala.
The future warriors repeat these words after the warrior preceptor, phrase-by-phrase. The
warrior preceptor and the future warriors continue in this way until they have completed
reading the entire vow three times. The new warriors perform two deep bows.
VERSES OF REJOICING
Now that I have taken the warrior’s vow, may the Rigdens rejoice.
Now that I have taken the warrior’s vow, may the dralas rejoice.
Now that I have taken the warrior’s vow, may the lineage of Shambhala rejoice.
May all the great warriors rejoice.
KI KI SO SO
ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY VOW (4)
New warriors repeat these stanzas three times.
Next, as a sign of commitment to enlightened society, and as a symbol of how they wish to
enrich the world, the warriors make an offering of any amount to the preceptor, who represents the lineage of Shambhala.
AUSPICIOUS VERSES
We, the warriors of Shambhala, rejoice.
Today, on this auspicious day, the Rigdens rejoice.
Today, on this magical day, the dralas rejoice.
Today, on this victorious day, the Sakyong rejoices.
Today, on this day of goodness, the warriors rejoice.
All beings rejoice.
To be read by warrior preceptor:
Great warriors of Shambhala, you have taken the warrior’s vow. This
most supreme and fearless thought is the crown jewel of the world. Day and
night, keep this flame of goodness burning. Always maintain the glow of
goodness. Always manifest the confidence of basic goodness. Always radiate the
glory of the Great Eastern Sun.
May the world be free from poverty. May the world be free from famine.
May the world be free from sickness. May the world be free from war. May
humanity enjoy abundant glory and wealth.
KI KI SO SO
ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY VOW (5)
COLOPHON
At this time when the world is in a tenuous state, where any number of even small
good or bad occurrences could affect the outcome of humanity, I, Jampal Trinley Dradül,
having contemplated the very theme of enlightened society, gave birth to this possibility.
With this conviction, and freshly recollecting the requests of many beings, I wrote down these
words with the aspiration that it might swing the tide of humanity toward goodness and
glory, never forgetting the brilliant Rigden and the courageous Dorje Dradül, who in both
sublime and common language uttered the sacred mantra “enlightened society.” Thus, one
should not think of these words as simply words, but as the seed syllable of social awakenment.
May countless numbers of future warriors participate in the glory of this commitment. I
dedicate all these words, thoughts, and intentions to dispelling this great age of fear, doubt,
and darkness. May this bring about the rising of the Golden Sun of the Great East in the heart
of all humanity. Courage, courage, courage. Brave, brave, brave. Good, good, good.
Written on the new moon day of the twelfth month, in the sacred enlightened society
valley of Yang Le Shö, where the mountains form a perfect mandala, where every hill
resembles the eight auspicious ones.
Pharping, Nepal
3 February 2011
Thank you Noble Richard!
Indeed.
I want to hear from James Elliot.
Idiot Compassion vs. Hegelian dialectic
Idiot Compassion
“A slimy way of trying to fulfill your desire secretly.”
~ (Trungpa, 1994, p. 29).
Hegelian dialectic
…a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis, which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic#Hegelian_dialectic
CON-TEXT (cf. PRE-TEXT)
“I wanted to give a con-text [sic] to my conversation about vows and I hope all of you can hear me in all of the centers around the world…”
~ Shambhala Lineage Festival, vows talk by Acharya Simmer-Brown, Sep 15, 2011, at 0:08:40.
For example, both the deprecated “global village”, and “global warming” con-texts were slimy ways of trying to fulfill the desires secretly of Mrs. Brööm Hilley and Mr. $529 M Love Poodle, respectively.
Trungpa, C. (1994). Illusion’s Game: The Life and Teaching of Naropa. Boston: Shambhala Publications.
I have often wondered why it is that in this sangha the ratio of references to “idiot compassion” as opposed to just plain ordinary “compassion-compassion” seems to be about 10 to 1! Whereas–shoudn’t it really be closer to the other way around?
Not directed to you Stuart, or to anyone in particular. I just find myself thinking this often, pondering whether there is any connection between it as an observation and the nature of communication within this sangha.
It’s totally central of course, don’t get me wrong. Just sometimes I feel that we find it juicier to talk about than simple, everyday compassion. Which is touchy-feely, soft. And being soft seems to be a big challenge for us.
damchö,
I’m sure the communication medium impacts the conversation. Here’s one essay on the topic from 2003 which I think is as relevant today as it was then, and I’m sure you can apply it to all groups: SI, RFS, centers, generational groups, ie various subgroups:
http://www.shirky.com/writings/group_enemy.html
re: fundraising
I’m sometimes curious how Shambhala compares to other faith traditions in terms of fundraising, but this year I discovered the Barna Group does surveys on American church fundraising and publishes some results freely. e.g. a recent report on religious tradition fundraising here:
http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/5-barna-update/180-americans-donate-billions-to-charity-but-giving-to-churches-has-declined
They have more detailed statistics for sale at modest prices (like $29 US) but also specific updates like for 2007 on their blog:
http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/18-congregations/41-new-study-shows-trends-in-tithing-and-donating?q=tithe
They report there that “Christians tend to be the most generous group of donors. An examination of the three dominant subgroups within the Christian community showed that evangelicals, the 7% of the population who are most committed to the Christian faith, donated a mean of $4260 to all non-profit entities in 2007. Non-evangelical born again Christians, who represent another 37% of the public, donated a mean of $1581. The other 42% of the Christian population, who are aligned with a Christian church but are not born again, donated a mean of $865.”
I believe at the upcoming fall fundraising weekend SI members are being asked to contribute a suggestion donation of $125. I’m not bringing that up to guilt trip anyone – it’s not like many SI members actually read these comments – but just to put what SI is asking for in perspective with real data and citations if anyone is curious for that kind of information.
I understand that Christians give to their churches because they believe in what they’re doing.
damchö on September 18th, 2011 2:35 pm
“I have often wondered why it is that in this sangha the ratio of references to “idiot compassion” as opposed to just plain ordinary “compassion-compassion” seems to be about 10 to 1! Whereas–shoudn’t it really be closer to the other way around?”
Then the ratio of references to “con-text” would seem to be about 10 to 1, would it not?
On Differing Views and Paths
July 16, 2009 by Andrew Safer
http://radiofreeshambhala.org/2009/07/differing-views/
Occurrances of the word “context” by Author
Andrew Safer – 1
Christine Baranay – 1
Susanne Vincent – 1
John Tischer – 1
James Elliott – 1
Chris – 1
Davee – 2
Carlos A. Inada – 4
Michael Sullivan – 4
damchö – 6
rita ashworth – 19
ash – 41
TOTAL – 82
Res ipsa loquitur!
re: vows If someone is interested, there’s a public page with manual and instructions about the vows: http://shambhala.org/community/aogs_admin.php
Dear Stuart et al
Wow I did not know I had used the word context so much –maybe comes from years back doing philosophy and having academic tracts still swirling in my head.
Re idiot compassion –yes was prevalent and is prevalent in the teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche –seems to stem from spiritual materialism days when people were shopping for practices and The Answer. To some extent I think that has lessened with peoples knowledge of the meditation process but you do still get questions about ‘how you do’ compassion in the world arising spontaneously so I think the teachings on idiot compassion are still relevant.
The shambhala vows bit flowery for me and anyway I am all vowed out –ho-hum! Judiths talk of Universal vows at some point in the future –bit wary about that –seems to me still meshing the angle of Church and state confluencing together. And anyway I think the whole thing is very naff –not pertinent to the in depth questioning about society happening out there from where I am connecting with people.
Fundraising –interesting discussion also read in the British press that poorer people give more than the rich, middle-class comparatively –so this desire emerging in SI for patrons seems to be heading the wrong way in my opinion. Historically in the UK great modern religious movements have come from the working class –like the Methodists, Quakers and the Unitarians which stemmed from the Industrial revolution. I also think funding may come again in these ways when people actually on the ground in our communities create their own connections to the various teachings.
Well best from the UK
Rita Ashworth
rita ashworth on September 19th, 2011 2:58 am
“Wow I did not know I had used the word context so much –maybe comes from years back doing philosophy and having academic tracts still swirling in my head.”
The word “con-text” was made popular by the now deprecated “politically correct” crowd as a codeword to “pre-text” and thereby justify an ordinarily repugnant agenda.
This “Problem-Solution” process is essentially outcome-based. It is the “Solution” which comes first, and then a “Problem” is invented to match the “Solution”.
Regardless, the entire thing involves a hoax just like Idiot Compassion.
Two Western philosophers who wrote handbooks on the process were Machiavelli (“the end justifies the means”) and Hegel (“the Hegelian dialectic”).
Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niccol%C3%B2_Machiavelli
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel
“The thing speaks for itself!”
I don’t connect Judy Lief’s demotion to the vows. I have an active imagination and don’t suppose it was a friendly gesture, but I know good people that have been demoted with reason. Until she or someone reliable has the chutzpah to let us know what really happened, I just don’t know and won’t assume too much.
Impressions of the vow talk:
Judith’s talk about the vows felt stultifying, thought it was her style and then was surprised how much she perked up during questions, when she could talk from her own understanding and convictions.
By the end I’d heard terms like good, goodness, basic goodness, good human society, good life, good good so often I felt like a kid the day after Halloween.
The vows have the structure of sadhana practices: Statement, Homage, Vow, Commitment, Celebration, Auspicious Verses, and Colophon, that and the language are quite complex, containing concepts of advanced practice.
If it’s about opening access, vows should be simple. The pledge of allegiance is one sentence. Some of us were hoping for a loyalty oath like that, as contrasted with religious vows, involving commitment to specific paths and teachers.
Judith said she observed how the vow worked on other people and herself. I don’t see a vow as a method. It’s a ritualized way to assert something that already exists. At a Naropa talk in 1974 about Bodhisattva vows, one student raised his hand and enthusiastically asked “How can I take Bodhisattva vows?” Trungpa Rinpoche answered: “You already have.” Like that. The rest is just ritual. The ritual if it is not already your intent is just weird. The intent is not created by the vow.
I was very put off by the intentional scheduling of this talk to coincide with the 9/11 anniversary. If we need an international disaster to get in touch with BG and our vulnerability, maybe that’s why smaller concerns are denigrated as neurotic.
Pointing at a scary evil event invoking predictable reactions, and then saying we have the solution, is what every religion since before history has been practicing, and what governments do to rally troops. We should really be above that. It feels to me almost immoral to use that event to get any other point across. Tonglen, and then leave it alone. Anyone who uses it to further their agenda should… I don’t know I just think it’s low.
(cont.)
The 9/11 tragedy is NOT symbolic of the ‘state of the world’ (SOTW), as Judith suggested. The vast majority of people in the world are NOT terrorists. That’s been inflated for all kinds of political reasons, and Shambhala should avoid that kind of mojo at all costs. I think the Jasmine revolution would be better for reflecting global trends, involving millions more engaged people.
I dislike how the term basic goodness (BG) has come to be used. It’s basic because it’s there always. It’s how we are built. Concepts, intents, why we do what we do are miles down the road from basic goodness. Labeling intents or thoughts as expressing BG (or not) objectifies it into some thing we can work on, shape, get, have, wrap up, give away, measure, heal with, lose, find, judge and save the world with, as if it were not already there!
Another pet peeve is the attempt to elevate society as object of practice, as in “Heaven Earth and Humanity”, or as society being what attains enlightened, what expresses basic goodness (or not). This is complex, but there are new sciences discovering things about us and what society is, that should at least give pause to accepted notions of an external society independent of people.
If we accept that society is what gets enlightened, then that is how we will measure practice. Then practice becomes political. We will come to depend on other people’s attitudes, behavior, judgments and various events, on a society we have no control over, to judge whether our practice is successful or not. I think that’s a road to madness.
In the inspiration that “Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them” (Paul Valéry)
Thanks, James!
James: “Pointing at a scary evil event invoking predictable reactions, and then saying we have the solution, is what every religion since before history has been practicing, and what governments do to rally troops. We should really be above that. It feels to me almost immoral to use that event to get any other point across. Tonglen, and then leave it alone.”
Yes, well said.
Dear Stuart, James et Al
Thanks for the comeback on the context thingie. Think I have become more aware it because of living in so many countries – I think the culture/history of countries makes people think about subjects in different ways. Peter Berger the sociologist of religion has done some research for example on the religiosity of America as compared to the secularism of Europe. He states that the secularism in Europe was strongly founded on the French Revolution with its opposition to the Catholic church whilst America embellished the ideal of religious freedom due to its revolution with the Brits. Interesting -so I think I was using context more in the sense of how societies ‘evolved’.
James what an ‘enlightening’ post on the vows. Yes they are not simple are they? I also thought they were attempt to bring people into an internal fold which I not sure you can do in terms of enlightened society because the ‘concept’ itself is very diverse in applying to many cultures and religions. And of course too re the Sakyong element people from many faiths and none would in no way want to relate to him as the main preceptor because indeed the earth-protector principle in some form could be in these groups aswell. So as to ‘vows’ may be it comes down re our discussion on the Shambhala Declaration to people agreeing on some form of rights/duties and the element of basic goodness being formed similar to Declaration of Human Rights created by the UN that we mentioned. Yes I do think there needs to be a further re-evaluation about a Declaration being constructed as I am getting the feeling for the need for this through interaction with others here. Of course such a document may take some years to evolve and should not be rushed.
So ‘vows’, ‘general agreement’ on principles I think are evolved in a dynamic, inter-relationship context (theres that word again), and I dont think can be formulated by one person, even though we do have religious founders, situations in history mutate as time passes so we have to have something that is really basic to stand the test of time.
Well a few first thoughts –would welcome more discussion on a Declaration.
Best
Rita Ashworth
PART ONE
James Elliott, I think, misunderstood what I said about Judy Lief’s being “demoted” as an acharya having something to do with the “new vows.” That’s not what I said, and there were several distinctions embedded in what I did say that he side-stepped. So, let me unpack what was undoubtedly a too densely packed series of statements that even the indubitable James couldn’t decipher.
1. According to a highly “reliable source,” Judy’s demotion had something to do with Scorpion Seal—what exactly, I’m not sure: maybe reluctance to teach a Scorpion Seal class over the internet? We can only speculate. Maybe, as a close student of Trungpa Rinpoche, she’s not overly enthusiastic about Vajrayogini and Chakrasamvara being cattle-prodded to the back of the SI practice bus by the Sakyong? Whatever happened—and we’ll no doubt find out from a “reliable source” (not me, of course) what DID happen—it was probably a very painful decision on her part not to “obey” what appears to have been her “orders.”
2. The main point I was trying to make, though, in that densely packed couple paragraphs, had to do with 9/11, “then” (2001) and “now” (2011). In 2001, Judy had written a poem or short prose piece suggesting that not only “us” (American citizens or Shambhala subjects) had “basic goodness” (or some equivalent thereof), but so did “they”: “the terrorists.” To me, that was at the heart of what she had written and believed at the time: both “us” and “them,” American citizens (or Shambhala subjects) AND “the terrorists,” had “basic goodness.”
3. Also, at that time, the Sakyong’s sidekick and friend of the Nalanda Translation Committee, Lama Chonam, had publically stated “the terrorists” were “evil”—seeming to suggest “the terrorists” DIDN’T have “basic goodness”—or anything else remotely resembling something “primordially pure” in their hearts or minds—a view shared by most red-blooded Americans and Fundamentalist Christians at the time: “the terrorists” were 100% EVIL.
4. Maybe Lama Chonam’s view was colored by the fact he had lived in Steven Seagal’s house in Bel Air for an extended period of time while he learned English around then, and so his view was colored by having downed large (Gerbery) spoonfuls of CIA rhetoric at the hands of Seagal, who regularly brags about being a “CIA asset,” and, as we know, was “recognized” as a tulku by Penor Rinpoche, the same lama who “recognized” the Sakyong.
5. Thus, what Judy had written at the time was extremely important, a lone voice of “basic sanity” in the American wilderness. And, what she had written was going to be published in some quickly done anthology of writing by “spiritual folk” on the subject of 9/11. But the editor (obviously, a more standard issue “spiritual folk” than Judy) DIDN’T like that she had said “the terrorists” had “basic goodness,” too, or whatever, and wanted Judy to edit that out of her piece—the most important point, I think, as Jill Grundberg agreed with me at the time. And, sadly, Judy took that out of her piece, and it appeared in the anthology without it’s “heart.”
(PART TWO to follow)
PART TWO
6. So, here’s where the reference to the “new vows” came in: Judith Simmer-Brown had included in her 2011 video contextualizing of the “new vows” the view that “the terrorists,” too, like Judy Lief had originally said, had “basic goodness,” too, just like “us”—but using the occasion of the 10th anniversary of 9/11 to make that statement (most likely so as to promote the “fear factor,” a crucial element in the Sakyong’s goal of hoovering in 12,000,000 new students in the next 10 years, and ignoring the tremendous OVERCOMING OF FEAR—a virtual group “raising of windhorse”—by those brave men and women in Tahrir Square in Cairo). As a critic of “protestors” of all sorts, we won’t be hearing the Sakyong bring THAT up, or anything like it, any time soon.
7. And, last but not least, the finer point I was making (the main one) was that to even say “the terrorists” have “basic goodness,” too, subtly reinforces an “us” and “them” logic, suggesting that, while “they” may have “basic goodness,” too, “they” are “terrorists” and “we,” of course, aren’t. So, that requires willfully ignoring the work Chomsky has done unmasking U.S. foreign policy—particularly since WWII—and FACING THE FACT that, as he said, during the U.S.-trained and inspired death squad activity in Central America in the 80’s, “The U.S. is a leading terrorist state.” So, that becomes another instance where the boundary line between Sakyong devotees and Vidyadhara devotees is erased, and “they”/”we” find “themselves”/”ourselves” sitting on different sides of the same leaky Red, White, and Blue tub.
END
What a great discussion! You RFS’ers are such an interesting group.
John T., so glad you raised the topic of Judith’s talk and the new vows, etc.
Jim H., I’m deeply grateful for your most profound point about ‘erasing boundary lines’, and ‘us and them thinking’. That seems to me to indeed be the crux of everything.
James, it’s interesting what you said about basic goodness – ie that its not possible to work with it, shape it, ‘lose it’ or ‘find it’, etc.
Isn’t the whole point of all practice to ‘uncover’, or get more deeply in touch with, or get out of the way of, our inherent basic goodness..? I do experience degrees of being in and out of ‘touch’ with my BG’.
Also interesting what you said about the idea of society as ‘object of practice’, and how we ‘measure practice’. As well as what you said that “concepts, intents, why we do what we do, are miles down the road from basic goodness”, and that we cannot “label intents or thoughts as expressing basic goodness or not”.
Do you have any thoughts on how one *could* go about “measuring”, or “judging” whether one’s practice is successful or not” ..?
I’m reminded of what Pema Chodron says, ie. that if we are not becoming softer and kinder over time as a result of our practice, then we are ‘doing something wrong’ and need to re-evaluate.
I think that how we are in the world demonstrates exactly how ‘successful’ or ‘evolved’ our practice is in each moment. Some moments maybe we’re open, kind, wise, generous, some moments maybe not so much. I think of the point of practice as being to increase the number and degree of the open-kind-wise-generous moments. And not just in isolation, but ‘in society’.
As per Aristotle, a person viewed as living and acting with others ie. ‘in society’, is a participant in politics.
Tony Bennett on 9/11 Attacks: ‘They Flew the Plane in, But We Caused It’
By Brian Canova
Sep 19, 2011 10:17pm
“But who are the terrorists? Are we the terrorists or are they the terrorists? Two wrongs don’t make a right,” Bennett said.
“They flew the plane in, but we caused it,” Bennett responded. “Because we were bombing them and they told us to stop.”
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2011/09/tony-bennett-on-911-attacks-they-flew-the-plane-in-but-we-caused-it/?rss=rss-wabc-snippet-7091254
What I hear now is that Judy will send a letter of resignation, after which she will be removed from the rolls. From what I hear, it’s because she wouldn’t do the Scorpion Seal retreat.
BALD-HEADED THIEF
A monk or nun who does not cultivate while receiving offerings from the laity has betrayed the latter’s trust and, in effect, stolen the offerings. He has, therefore, incurred immense suffering for the future. The Buddha referred to such monks or nuns as “bald-headed thieves.”
~ The Seeker’s Glossary of Buddhism, p. 64
The Seeker’s Glossary of Buddhism (2nd ed.). (1998). Sutra Translation Committee of the United States and Canada.
http://www.buddhistelibrary.org/en/?file=pic_download_link/picture&pid=82
How to catch a monkey!
Jim H,
It wasn’t only your statement, but the way it bounced around a bit as the vows were mentioned. In any case how you unpacked it made my misunderstanding worthwhile. Thanks.
I second point number 7. about; we got it, our friends got, they got it too, but, we got it more… or whatever. Not because we’re as bad as they are which my be true (I’m a Chomsky fan, and b.t.w. he gave one of my favorite proofs of basic goodness), but because it’s a truly universal principle that’s being used as if some people got it and some don’t, some have lots of it, some only a little. If that’s the case, then it ain’t basic.
At some point saying someone has basic goodness is kind of like the tried and true grade school joke when someone says “Your epidermis is showing!”
Well. Yeah. Duh.
At some point you get that everyone’s got skin, pointing it out gets a rolling eyes reaction and… somehow… we go forward with that understanding.
James, can you elaborate on Chomsky? I’d be really interested.
And Mark: I was wondering if there is any possibility of creating a second page for really long threads? This one now has 771 responses (!) and takes long enough to load on my computer, forever on my phone…
Yes, James Elliott,
My original statement bounced around too much, became unclear. But it’s a subtler issue than we may imagine, though–I’ve detected another layer.
In any event, Judy’s kind words above–to both yourself, myself, and John Tischer–brought out another aspect of what I said that calls out for clarification, which I’m about to drop in to the RFS site.
It looks like Tischer has the inside scoop on Judy Lief. I met her summer of 1972 at Tail of the Tiger. On a later visit, in fall or winter, I recall tugging limbs out a frozen creek with her and a couple others, and something that I always remember when I think of her: her bright shining eyes. And I recall very clearly her Refuge name as if it was yesterday: Luminous Garuda. Another bow to our jeweler’s-eyed friend from Tibet.
And delighted to know you’re a Chomsky appreciator, too. There aren’t many of us in the sangha(s). I connected with him via Robert Bly, 1968-69, and became the Cincinnati representative for RESIST in 1969, doing draft counseling in my “alternative” bookstore connected to the Epic Book Shop in Yellow Springs–Antioch College.
I can still see his first Foreign Policy book on the shelf in the store: AMERICAN POWER AND THE NEW MANDARINS. Connected to that, I did talks at churches at the time, and ended up being asked to debate the Head of Selective Service for the State of Ohio in 1969.
Before I go off or another “rant,” Cheers!
Dear John T et al
John you are very veritable mine of information –whose next?
The terrorist thing re Judith Simmer-Browns talk yes I thought that was strange listening to it myself and also did she say there were only about 50 people in the Shambhala centre in Boulder for the talk–I thought there were hundreds of Buddhists in that town –so how come they did not attend such an ‘important’ occasion as this? Yes if the hundreds are not interested now in what is happening why would the millions be?
My advice to SI would be give up the millionth thingie –its beginning to sound quite farcical, and nuts. I would be thinking barge poles even if I was newbie re this ‘new drive’. Such things never work in the religious sphere in the UK as I have often witnessed in the Christian sector.
Any way great if Judy Lief has left we have another teacher out there that the greater sangha can relate to –so thats basically good if I must say so myself! What a great asset she will be to the many Buddhist and Shambhalians out there –perhaps like Rita Gross she can construct her own website and say to the multitudes come and get me which will be magnificent and brilliant.
Yes I do begin to wonder if anyone is going to end up in the dark in the fourth year as the SS path seems to be developing an oozing quality to it in turning out non-followers. Maybe if any one makes it so far I am sure someone on rfs will interview the bleary-eyed meditator.
Yes this whole story parade is beginning to be so, so interesting.
Well best from the UK
Rita Ashworth
PART ONE (of four)
Dear Judy (I presume NOT Lief),
Thank you for your kind words directed to both myself and my old, and getting older (like myself), old friend, John Tischer, as well as James Elliott. (Aside from our different ways of appreciating the Vidyadhara, John and I also have a fondness for the obscure—but brilliant—American poet, Bill Knott [who early-on wrote under the pseudonym Saint Geraud, a lecherous monk in a French pornographic novel. The only extant book I found on the internet still under that name—there are many under “Bill Knott”—is called CORPSE AND BEANS, a pun on a great book by the French surrealist poet, Robert Desnos, called CORPS ET BIENS.])
So anyway (sorry for the sidetrack), I feel I need to make another clarification. Again, it seems, the difficulty is trying to embody in language something (a NON-thing, a NON-thing view–: something approaching a Maha Ati VIEW, whatever) that transcends language. We don’t need to follow Davee down the rabbit hole of how internet discourse is different from other forms of discourse—which has become a new academic discipline—because whatever the distinction being made, however useful it might be in limited “localized” contexts (con-texts, a bow to Stuart and his Machiavellian/Hegelian dialectical mind, “texts” that “con,” and, as the Vidyadhara said, “Don’t buy anyone’s reference point”), it is a subset of the problem of language, generally speaking.
The Vidyadhara was an absolute genius at that, bringing that Maha Ati VIEW—by the actions of his body, speech, and mind—into language, into the Everyday Life-World (hmm, that sounds like phenomenology…) of REALITY, the one we pick up with our senses, not the fabricated “other (“higher” and “deeper”) world” of Western (and maybe Eastern) idealism (hmm, now that sounds downright Marxist to me…what do YOU think?). Anyway, that some of the NAROPA artso-fartso, psychotherapy contingent has reduced his peerless legacy into “he was an alcoholic who harmed people” is the most preposterously reductive gnat-eyed dim-witted mound of yak-pucky in the history of space!
Now the Sakyong isn’t a genius in that way, his use of language—maybe proficient in a Gelugpa monk sort of way—but NOT a virtuoso like his father. When you get some of the Sakyong’s seemingly “golden” poetic riffs under your microscope, and take a close look, a lot of it dissolves—at least for old, and getting older, Trungpa Rinpoche students, like me and John—into a sort of Fool’s Gold glitter-dust, that blows away on the “golden wings” of the slightest breeze. (I could cite examples—I’m not just tooting ad hominem snarls out of my butt, here—but I’ll save those, maybe, for later.)
(PART TWO to follow)
PART TWO
I think the real dividing line for people who at least GOT some aspect of the Vidyadhara’s magnificent teachings—genuinely CONNECTED in some way—and that was, and IS, still possible, because any and every aspect of his teachings could take you—like a spawning salmon—to that Ultimate Maha Ati VIEW—: that VIEW was not so much “embedded” in, but ON THE SURFACE of, everything he did—right in your face, the Ultimate VIEW: there was none of this “gradualist” baloney the Sakyong and his devotees are prone to peddle to cover the sad (and actually inevitable fact): he is not his father, and the Sakyong did, at one time, seem to know that, quite clearly, early on, in his “reign”—but I mean, how much ass-kissing can one person take before it eventually gets to their head, and it starts to balloon—in the Sakyong’s case, becoming a blimp-like “golden” hot-air balloon!
As I’ve said before, what is going on wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t advertised as “new” and “improved”—: “PROGRESS.” Like, due to these “changed times,” a more “mature” skillful means was needed, and so forth—those party-line rhetorical devices promulgated by the Sakyong’s cadre of PR Specialists and Indoctrinators (which IDEOLOGY, by the way, is now to be policed by the “Shambhala” version of Canon Lawyers and Censors in the Catholic Church, the Shastri System, which is to be presided over by Archbishop [or is she a Cardinal?] Judith Simmer-Brown—: you can already see the little puffs of rainbow-colored smoke rising from the Kalapa Center as the Little “Jetsun” Princess is “recognized” as a tulku!)—and all of it, obviously, Imprimatur-ed and Nihil Obstat-ed by the “enlightened ruler” himself, who is “beyond time and space”—the NEW, PROGESS, as if boundless centerless space and the actions of Body, Speech, and Mind radiating off of it suddenly needed improvement! (I think of Nietzsche’s little essay in TWILIIGHT OF THE IDOLS: “The Improvers of Mankind.” Check it out. It’s about what is happening today. As Nietzsche knew. He was way ahead of his time.)
So, sorry Judy, I seem to have gone off on a tangent again. But your comment brought up a still further refinement of what I was trying to get at, and it seems to have energized me: it’s about two things, two parts to what I said, which I think are inseparable. So let me repeat the part of your comment that struck me most: “I’m deeply grateful for your most profound point about ‘erasing boundary lines’, and ‘us and them thinking’.”
(PART THREE to follow)
PART THREE
So, what ARE the “two things,” the two parts of what I said: 1) First, the “us and them thinking” part. There, what I’m saying is: even when we say “the terrorists” have “basic goodness,” too, we still see THEM as “terrorists,” and US as “NOT-terrorists,” so that, on a subtler level, reproduces the “us” and “them” logic, another more subtly “dualistically fixated” layer that needs to be CUT THROUGH. Now what I was getting at is: both SMR devotees (most of them) and CTR devotees (most of them) would find the suggestion that “we,” too, are “terrorists” I-N-C-O-M-P-R-E-H-E-N-S-I-B-L-E.
2) So, that’s where the “boundary line is erased” between the SMR devotees and CTR devotees: they share the same IGNORANCE of the reality behind the mask of U.S. Foreign Policy, placing them—like on different sides of the aisle in Congress—in the same “leaky Red, White, and Blue tub.” That is, most American citizens, and including Shambhala subjects, would balk at Noam Chomsky’s flat statement from decades ago (and our MUDEROUSNESS has only increased since then), that “The U.S. is a leading terrorist state”—the IDEOLOGY packed into their/our heads since birth by the doctrinal system (family, church, school, state, media) renders them/us incapable of HEARING that. As the Vidyadhara said in one his “Four Foundations of Mindfulness” talks, “Concept [i.e. ideology—JH] actually affects our ability to hear.”
So, the antidote for that ignorance—that “deafness”—concerning what is going on behind the mask of U.S. Foreign Policy in the REAL WORLD (and what disables a “non-dual view, maybe Maha Ati VIEW, ultimately, once we cross the “spiritual” and ”temporal” divide—which is what the Sakyong’s “Enlightened Society Vows” are about) is N-O-T having to achieve “Maha Ati VIEW” first, or anything like that, in order to see and hear that: it is a matter, simply, of MUNDANE PRAJNA ELBOW GREASE—studying the subject, an UNMASKED version of U.S. Foreign Policy.
Anyone who finds what I am saying outlandish, should go to the DemocracyNow! website, and see the Tuesday, September 13, 2011 show with Chomsky—I dare all you disbelievers! Feel free to report back and lambaste me with what you think is untrue or inaccurate about Chomsky’s account. Also, check out a reprint of his famous 9/11 book with an analysis of the bin Ladin assassination, 9/11: Was There An Alternative?
(PART FOUR to follow)
PART FOUR
One last point: in terms of the Sakyong using the “fear factor” to hurry up and suck in those vulnerable 12,000,000 in the next 10 years, I don’t think it’s fear of “terrorism” most Americans and some Shambhala subjects are afraid of—it’s the economy, and that’s what those brave men and women in Egypt and Tunisia are discovering. Look at this quote by Jeffrey Sommers and Michael Hudson, CounterPunch.org, September 19, 2011, “The Pillage of Latvia”:
“This past month’s economic data show that the global economic crisis continues to worsen, and by its duration and severity threatens to become known as the Great Depression II. Yet, even though it is evident to most that our problems arose from finance run wild, commentators in several press outlets claim the fault lies with its victim, the public. Instead of curbing finance they advise governments to impose radical austerity measures. In this economy such a course is tantamount to throwing the drowning victims an anchor, while tossing the perpetrators a life preserver in the form of cash.”
Just plugging a new head into the center of that national samsaric mandala in Egypt, for example, and calling it “democracy,” calling it a day—will never do the trick. As James Carville coined the term, “It’s the economy, stupid(s).” Without a radical change in the ECONOMY, and that spreading globally (including so-called “Shambhala”), what has been heretofore only an “uprising” (in the process of being countered—a “counter-revolution”) will never be a true revolution, and what I mean by “true revolution” has something to do with the heart of the Shambhala teachings. But THAT’s another story virtually no one—including the Sakyong—wants to hear.
Thank you for your indulgence—if you indulge this “rant,” this “diatribe.”
OVER AND OUT
I saw a video of Chomsky once, maybe it’s on U-Tube but I’m not gonna search, in which he was giving an informal talk to a small group, 30 or 40 college students, maybe senior high school students but anyway young, everyone sitting on folding chairs over on one side of an auditorium/gym, more like a meet and greet than a lecture, and he was being asked about his views on current political agendas, Middle East, US policies, what can be done about it, etc. I’m paraphrasing here, because it was a while ago, but…
One young woman, after the standard political uglinesses, asked Mr. Chomsky whether he thought religion was maybe necessary for human beings in order to teach people how to be nice to each other. I sensed that she herself was religious, was probably trying to make a helpful suggestion, and was perhaps hoping for Chomsky to confirm the value of faith.
He said in that inimitable quiet distracted way “No.”
She asked,”But, what makes people nice to each other then?”
He said “It’s just how we are built. Look, there are animals who do things we recognize as kind and good, taking care of their offspring or herds, but no one had to teach them that. They certainly haven’t read the bible or anything. We do good things for each other because… it’s just how we’re put together.”
Chomsky’s proof of basic goodness is similar to one one of Trungpa Rinpoche’s, he also used the example of how even animals are kind to their young without indoctrination or training, but given the context in which it happened, a Chomsky meet and greet with the main agenda being politics, its inevitable corruption and what we could do about that, it brought home to me how universal and pre-concept basic goodness is.
In the inspiration that if we divvy out bg like cards in a game of go fish, with winners and loser, some shine might rub off, but the pond will go dry.
Good one, James,
Chomsky has written a lot on “human nature,” but it’s gathered in some
obscure Series of Critical Editions of famous contemporary philosophers and linguists that cost about $150 per volume, so I haven’t been able to get that under my microscope. But there are little snippets on that subject you can garner here and there. Here’s an important one:
“Chomsky argues that socialist principles, or indeed any political beliefs, must be based, fundamentally, on a clear picture of human nature. It is a curious fact that Marxists have tended to adopt the empiricist position that the mind is empty of structure at birth and that ‘human nature’ is a product of historical circumstances alone.” (Milan Ray, Chomsky’s Politics, pp. 99-100.)
You can see the problem of “materialism” (in the Marxian sense) right there. The view—VIEW—I’m advocating for is beyond both “materialism” and “idealism,” which are co-emergent, simultaneously arising out of space, the Siamese Twin developments of “inner” and “outer.” So, cut along the dotted line, and “space” appears, sans those conceptual clouds. That, you could say, is Buddhist or Shambhalian “dialectics” in a nutshell.
Western dialectics has no notion of “zero,” of “space” (even Lacan’s notion of “gap”—and Alain Badiou sees him as providing the ultimate refinement of Hegelian dialectics—is maddeningly complex), which the Sword of Manjushri cuts back to, always. The synthesis of the “two” that the conventional notion of Hegelian dialectics suggests provides the motion—in fact, the speed—of history, the Three Times running rampant. And 4th Moment, of course, connected to that “zero,” to “space.” (Walter Benjamin, the “Marxist Rabbi,” has some wonderful writings on this subject.)
I think you’ll agree, if there’s a “clear picture” on planet earth of “human nature,” the clearest is in the Vidyadhara’s Vajrayana Buddhist and Shambhala teachings: those teachings are the “missing link,” I feel, for life on planet earth to continue (so, oddly, I do share the Sakyong’s “apocalypticness,” to a certain extent)—unless, maybe, for some handful of fascistic New World Order Elitist Illuminati down in their underground gold-lined “El Dorado” (thinking of Herzog’s great AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD), munching on hot-housed organic vegetables, counting and re-counting their “cash.”
Anyway, the bible on “human nature” for me is “The Development of Ego” chapter of CUTTING THROUGH. That, in my view, is the “golden key” to unlock the overarching problem of the economy: we have two choices, either the so-called “global political economic system” evolved, disconnected from the functioning of the human mind (sems)—in terms of structure and function—or that “system” essentially replicates—in terms of structure and function—the Five Skandhas.
I’ve said this before. No one seems listens, except a few friends, particularly Robert Magliola, the person who made the connection between Nagarjuna’s and Derrida’s “deconstruction” in 1967 in his book DERRIDA ON THE MEND, who has been a great friend to me. Not that anyone has to agree with me, but you can’t even rouse a discussion on this subject, generally, in the “noble sangha.” This has been going on for me for nearly 40 years, so as the lids have continued to clank down, I’ve get ornerier and ornerier—sort of—but my view has gotten sharper and sharper—in the process: that relentless pressure hopefully producing a pearl—maybe a black pearl! I do have at least a tad of humor about it, from time to time.
But again, James, good work!
@Jim Hartz: There are a few of us out there who are very interested in the connection between Derrida and Nagarjuna; in fact, I recently wrote a research proposal for a PhD on that very topic. Magliola’s work, as you point out, is an excellent starting point, and David Loy has written a bit on the subject, but I think there’s still a need to dig deeper into this very ripe topic.
Jim Hartz on September 21st, 2011 3:41 am
“…the bible on “human nature” for me is “The Development of Ego” chapter…”
Countless spiritual views are contained in the three vehicles and countless worldly views are contained in the five skandhas.
Some views are better than others but all views are illusions.
Thus the monkey!
Michael Dorfman,
Yes, good idea, and very glad to hear that. Robert would be delighted to know someone’s paying attention to his work, and I’ll pass that along to him.
There’s an extremely interesting anthology on his work, BUDDHISM(S) AND DECONSTRUCTION, though you’re probably aware of that book. In fact, one of the key members of VANDERBILT’S Philosophy Department, David Wood (a close associate of Derrida–though he regards himself as “Beyond Analytical and Continental”), once bemoaned to me he couldn’t understand why Robert’s work wasn’t cited more often in people’s books.
And, yes, I know Loy from the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies–very “down home” approachable person, very smart, and has written some terrific books. (I prefer LACK AND TRANSCENDENCE.) He seems to not want to relate to Continental Philosophy at this point, preferring to focus on environmental issues.
Anyway, a year or so ago, I connected him to Gaylon Ferguson at NAROPA (well, Gaylon had read his books, he just didn’t know how to reach him–Loy was teaching in Israel at the time). There may be no connection, but Loy (having left XAVIER in Cincinnati) will be the Lenz Fellow at NAROPA this Fall. So, if you’re in the area…
And Stuart: Thanks for your marvelous contribution to the discussion–scintillating!
I Got A Line On A Whiter Shade Of Pale
Death is the new life…
greed the new standard of morality….
survival has replaced retirement…
the future does not look far away…
the build-out is almost complete…
the train is running out of track…
a world frenzy is beginning to build…
this time was predicted a thousand years ago….
karma is inevitable.
Hey, Jim, enjoyed your posts…
Bill Knott actually visited my blog and left a comment…I posted something
by Salvador Quasimodo, and he said that he was one of his favorite poets.
That made me happy.
rita ashworth on September 21st, 2011 1:41 am
“…perhaps like Rita Gross…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=I4K9fFptTkI
Homage to the Holy Father!
Pope-a-dope
The Catholic Church has been responsible for much of the slaughter of the last 2 K years. Looking for morality in the Catholic Church is like looking for it in the Pentagon
John Tischer on September 21st, 2011 4:42 pm
“The Catholic Church has been responsible for much of the slaughter of the last 2 K years.”
“…perverte…”
~ Benedict XVI, December 20, 2010, at 0:52
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=I4K9fFptTkI
This is one of the most preposterous myths ever perpetrated by the now deprecated “politically correct” crowd. The truth of the matter is that the “army” of the Vatican State consists of only about 130 Swiss Guards.
whatever…
Judy,
Feeling good from meditation or that I’m being compassionate, being open or doing things right isn’t basic goodness (bg). I suspect given the right circumstances bg can also rip your heart out and kick it around the block a few times just to make sure, but the problem is if we define bg as the things we think of as good like altruistic behavior, dharmic environments, invulnerable self esteem, etc. where does that leave the vast everything else? If that’s how we define bg, then we can’t help but fall into an intensely subjective and dualistic perspective of haves and have-nots. Inevitable.
BG is the unconditional preexisting ground – for everybody – not a result. Finding developing etc., There are so many rituals and teachings from Trungpa Rinpoche about what is planted or found, created, but also about how that’s a bit of a trick to lure us into the required effort. When you make the best of your day, is the day itself what got better?
Pema draws from a Buddhist list of marks of practice (and I agree with her about reevaluation), but according to many teachers, including Trungpa Rinpoche, measuring the success of practice is fool’s gold. Aspiration is required, but there’s a point one’s allegiance changes from ego to the path, and thoughts of measuring or comparison of dharmic accomplishments become chatter one can play with or not, doesn’t really matter.
If success of practice is how we are in the world, (which I think can be an unreliable hall of mirrors – has our practice born fruit when I know I’m being compassionate, or when others let me know in some way it’s working, or does a majority have to acknowledge it?) if that’s how it’s measured what would be success in retreat, where some great teachers spent years? Were they only successful when they came out and showed others? Aristotle wasn’t wrong about society being a political field, but retreat, a powerful practice, is not politics.
We seem to be coming up on the problem of goal oriented practice. Stepping over that and putting the onus of enlightenment or realization onto changing society itself and into our social and political activity, is putting the cart before the horse and then loading it with bricks and other detritus.
In the inspiration of J.D.Salinger’s: “Know your true measurements and dress your mind accordingly.”
(from Catcher in the Rye)
Dear Stuart et al
Not sure I am getting the Pope reference – but intriguing comment all the same.
I do see the drip, drip of people from SI quite thought-provoking in terms of where the teachings somewhat let loose in the world will end up. Its a kind of grounding of the teachings in localities that I am interested in, much in the same way that Ash talked about. So the drala aspect of the teachings I find quite alluring.
Another matter that I am also interested in is the changing focus of Christianity exemplified by Brian McLaren and Phyllis Tickle’s writings –yes much of the western tradition is indeed opening itself up to the practices of other faiths so that is something to consider that was not the case before. I dont know what this all bodes for establishment of an enlightened society but it may have some connection to it in a tentative sense. One could conjecture that this ‘new’ feeling about where we are all going could have some affiliation to how Trungpa pictured the world in terms of constructing non-denominational Centres. Trungpa re my reading of him was interested in the relationship of faith practices between traditions –he mentions for example George Fox, and John Robinson who wrote ‘Honest to God’ so he was aware of change in this area. Also at an event online in Boulder where the Sadhana of Mahamudra was led by Dr Simmer-Brown she mentioned that Trungpa gave Thomas Merton a copy of this sadhana –think I have got that right –so thats an interesting fact. So yes I do see the beginnings of a new discourse happening about the ‘religious/secular’ frame of reference (see I can avoid the word context!)
Yes Rita Gross –marvellous writer –just dipped into her works in bookshops because as academic texts they were too dear to buy. Did read about her conversations with Khandro Rinpoche about Buddhist art which KR said could change as westerners got more grounded in the dharma –so that was also interesting to me. I will try and get some of her books to read –for an academic her writings are not so totally obtuse. Re Judy Lief yes it would be great to hear her speak outside of the SI sphere-maybe she will feel freer about expressing her thoughts about the age we are in. Yes not being in the org. does allow you to consider your options in more depth –its sort of like entering a non-confirming vacuum after being in one org. for so many years.
Well best from the UK
Rita
rita ashworth on September 22nd, 2011 2:37 am
“Yes Rita Gross… marvellous… Khandro Rinpoche…”
Oh pray tell, Rita Gross, Khandro Rinpoche and Alyce Louise Zeoli, marvellous deprecated trifecta à la Mrs. Brööm Hilley, c. 1968?
Tut-Tut!
John Tischer on September 21st, 2011 11:22 pm
“whatever…”
It’s not personal!
That’s what Vajradhatu office-holders routinely said when they were caught prosecuting their own private agendas as though the agendas were genuine Vajradhatu business.
After the Board of Directors and its attaché told Rinpoche that he had better cooperate or they would find themselves another lama, the “It’s not personal!” excuse changed to “Directed by Rinpoche!”
Tsk-Tsk!
Stuart,
I know it’s not personal. I just don’t see getting into a debate with you about the merits of this Pope or the Papacy. I just want to make one point: that
large organizations that are powerful and secretive tend not to admit wrongdoing unless they are exposed. Contrition at that point becomes
damage control…look at Clinton. I think the same thing applies here.
But I couldn’t help looking at that video, seeing those old men in chairs and thinking: :”what’s so spiritual about these guys?” They looked like a bunch of old men in chairs. personal opinion.
James, it sounds like you want to make sure that ‘absolute basic goodness’ is not omitted from discussions of ‘relative basic goodness’ or in other words from a progressive path based on decency, lungta, fearlessness, gentleness, compassion, etc. (That sounds similar to not teaching relative bodhicitta without also discussing absolute bodhicitta.) In my experience presentations of basic goodness have generally included both absolute and relative aspects, though some presentations merely emphasize one over the other based on the audience or topic or forum; but that never negates the inseparable absolute.
John Tischer on September 22nd, 2011 12:53 pm
“They looked like a bunch of old men in chairs…”
They are supposed to look like a bunch of old men in chairs because thats what they are.
The Myth of Freedom…
“…all pleasure become insfficient and excess under the delusion of intoxication turns into violence that rends entire regions and all this in the name of a fatal minunderstanding of freedom in which precisely mans freedom is undermined and in the end completely cancelled…”
~ Benedict XVI, December 20, 2010, at 0:58
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=I4K9fFptTkI
Homage to the old men in chairs!
Well, sure, let’s hear it for old men in chairs…but when you get them all together and put little red caps on them it begins to smell like an “old men in chairs” cult…or…Heavens, a religion.
yes, I’m ranting a bit…
but CTR and 16 Karmapa COME THROUGH THE FILM….
you’ve heard the term “larger than life”….well….these old men around the Pope are not “larger than life”…and if that is their great gift, swell….
But even if there was a God, it would have nothing special to do with these old men.
James, my appreciation for the wisdom and clarity of your response to Judy. It’s lovely to read your writing.
Davee, I’m interested in ‘relative basic goodness’; I confess I’ve never heard of it before, and wonder how it can exist. You speak of, ‘The progressive path based on decency, lungta, fearlessness, gentleness, compassion, etc’ – presumably as a means to cultivate basic goodness. Is there a confusion here between aspects of path and elements of fruition?
“When we speak of basic goodness, we are not talking about having allegiance to good and rejecting bad. Basic goodness is good because it is unconditional, or fundamental. It is there already, in the same way that heaven and earth are there already . . . Basic goodness is what we have, what we are provided with. It is the natural situation that we have inherited from birth onwards”. (Sacred Path of the Warrior pp42-44)
Basic goodness is primordial, by definition. Which is why the Sakyong vow phrases such as, ‘By firmly planting basic goodness in my heart today . . .’ are a contradiction in terms. Like ‘by firmly planting light in the sky’.
The idea of trying to directly cultivate particular characteristics in ourselves as ‘path’ seems to have arisen strongly within the Shambhala teachings. The discovery of fearlessness involves examining fear itself, closely observing our continual fear and how we flee from the simplicity and brilliance of the direct experience of basic being; our fear of fear itself; of open space, nakedness and so on.
We have only got the cocoon to work with: this elaborate setup of interconnecting, habitual patterns that we regard as our particular style (of avoiding basic goodness) and which we cling to. Honestly examining the cocoon itself is the only way to fearlessness. We have to work with the obscurations. We can’t just adopt fearlessness, compassion or lungta. This is not the road to rediscovering basic goodness, I fear it’s more a path to a road accident, and I think it diminishes what basic goodness really is.
‘The sitting practice of meditation . . . is the means to rediscover basic goodness, and beyond that, it is the means to awaken this genuine heart within yourself’ (ibid p45).
To me this is unequivocal, and it is why cultivating ‘goodness’ is a lovely idea, but won’t reveal basic goodness. The New Age is full of this unfortunately, and people talk a lot about filling themselves with love and light. Sadly, in practical terms I fear this is only to try to move deckchairs on the Titanic, then find they are stuck down with superglue.
With warm wishes
Susie
Hi Susie,
It’s my coinage I confess, but just my experience of how the term is used not only to talk about the primordial ground but also about the qualities of warriorship in human beings. The Vidhyadhara also uses the term in that latter way in the 84 seminary talk on relative bodhicitta. I don’t think that’s dilutive, in the same way that bodhicitta is similarly talked about in different ways and it’s not a problem.
Thank you for the quotes. In terms of path though, I’m finding I agree and disagree. The core path of the terma I agree is fruitional – e.g. lungta, invoking drala, the result of ashe practice – but what more of us start with seems progressive (working with cocoon; the gentleness, mercy and mindfulness of meek; etc.). From dressing up to the rituals and chanting, there’s lots to do if that helps. Personally I would be lost without that practical instruction and of ‘meek’ in particular. I bet much of what is being talked about in the upcoming vows would fit within meek. Be decent, generous, etc. And that doesn’t negate the absolute view in any way to me.
Best,
Davee
“we are simply training ourselves to be decent human beings”
- CTR, 84 Seminary page 62
I think I’m with you, John: Pope Ratzinger ought to be in the dock in the Hague, flanked by Bush and Cheney, for crimes against humanity—his being Infallible King of Pedophilia Enablers, not to mention the role he played as “bad cop” to Pope John Paul II’s “good cop” in the destruction of Liberation Theology in Latin American—talk about “terrorism”! And that whole terrorist war instigated by Reagan, as soon as he got in office, the first major “operation” on his agenda. It was like: how dare anyone practice what Jesus preached, the “preferential option for the poor.” Truly insane, fascistic.
As Nietzsche said, “Christianity is Platonism for the masses,” that anti-senses “other worldly” fabrication, a black “cosmic” manhole cover (painted white) clanking down on the unfabricated “nature of mind”—not to mention, unfabricated “nature” itself! I can’t tell you how many times, when I lived at Merton’s monastery, I heard the phrase “merely natural.” But Merton was different, way different. That’s why, some time after he and the Vidyadhara had met, the Vidyadhara said that he and Merton “agreed on everything.” That means, of course, the heart of the matter, not mere doctrinal issues—that heart being, as Merton put it, the “original purity” beyond any “this and that.”
That’s virtual heresy to some diminutive minds, a real threat to the Church’s sense of itself as THE most “exceptional” tradition of ANYTHING on earth. That’s why the Vidyadhara’s Shambhala teachings are so important—and Merton was very much in sync with that view. I know. I worked in the Merton Room with Brother Tarcissus, now Father James Connor, the resident Dzogchen expert there today, a terrific and exceptionally warm person, knew Merton’s mind best. The last time I visited the monastery before moving to Boulder, they had just had a visit by Tsoknyi Rinpoche. But those Canon Lawyers and Censors can be a bit scary, like you can still see the flames of the stake glimmering faintly, deep in their eyes.
Having been at Oxford all those years, the Vidyadhara had a very clear picture of the relationship between Platonism and Christianity, that “don’t trust your senses, trust the logic in your head”—that contrasting of the Sensible and Intelligible. Then look at that gigantic ediface of logic called “theology,” the whole thing designed (“it’s a well thought out pattern designed to hypnotize itself”–CTR) to maintain “dualistic fixation” at all costs. That’s why, in the West, the meaning of that “two-edged sword wrapped in flames” has been lost, if not systematically repressed. And think of Petrul Rinpoche’s “Letter to Abushri: “Logic seems sharp, but it’s really the seed of confusion.” (I once composed a little joke while attending St. John’s College in Sante Fe, their Great [Western] Books Program, trying to follow in the Vidyadhara’s [Oxford] footsteps as best I could, and put it on the blackboard in the student lounge: “Don’t let the senses pull you down to their level!” Here’s the Vidyadhara:
“The wisdom of dealing with situations as they are, and that is what wisdom is, contains tremendous precision that could not come from anywhere else but the physical situations of sight, smell, feelings, touchable objects, and sounds. The earthy situations of actual things as they are is the source of wisdom. You can become completely one with smell, with sight, with sound, and your knowledge about them ceases to exist; your knowledge becomes wisdom. There is nothing to know about things as an external educational process. You become completely one with them; complete absorption takes place with sounds, smells, sights and so on. This approach is at the core of the mandala principle of the vajrayana teachings.” (Chögyam Trungpa, Glimpses of Abhidharma, p. 12-13.)
You could look at that quote as a Preamble to the “limitless ayatanas” teaching in the Vidyadhara’s great Kalapa Assembly transcripts.
Jim Hartz on September 23rd, 2011 7:31 am
“But those Canon Lawyers and Censors can be a bit scary, like you can still see the flames of the stake glimmering faintly, deep in their eyes. ”
It is the Samaya of the Founders to clarify and to correct.
Sarva Mangalam! Bhavatu! Bhavatu! Bhavatu!
Religion supports the empire, spirituality is the empire’s biggest threat
The King rules by divine right. The priests say so. The priests know the one true god. The King says so. Respect authority or face the sword, the inquisition, the witch hunt. Religion is about power and privilege for the few, not for the liberation of the many. Spirituality liberates from hope and fear.. That is the last thing the empire wants.
“The empire never ended” Phillip K. Dick
http://firemagick.blogspot.com/
Hi All,
James,
Re: your Chomsky quotes ie. “what makes people nice to each other?” – “It’s just how we are built”. And “We do good things for each other because.. it’s just how we’re put together.”
A momentary glance at the news, around the globe, and down through history, would seem to indicate that we are also “just built” and “put together” to *not* be nice to each other. N’est-ce pas?
In his writings, VCTR constantly uses “basic goodness” and “goodness” interchangeably.
I share Davee’s understanding of this.
In Sacred Path, VCTR writes about the people of Shambhala following the buddhist path of loving-kindness and concern for all beings by “working with ourselves”, and “directly cultivating who and what we are as human beings”.
Susie, here we are again! You are advocating *against* cultivating ‘goodness’, gentleness, kindness.
Pema Chodron advocates the opposite.
Please see her most recent detailed talks on this subject – ie. SMC Sangha Retreat 2009 – “Cultivating Gentleness and Strength” : Talk 2 “Intentional Gentleness”, and Talk 4 “Strength and Gentleness Lead to Nonaggression”. Also, her talks from this year’s Halifax sangha retreat, when they come out on DVD: “The Bravery of Loving-Kindness and Compassion”, and “Doubt, Self-Aggression, Fear”. I’d be interested in your response to these talks.
judy s. – ( not Lief)
PART ONE (of several)
Dear David Carey,
Very interesting alignment of comments, they certainly resonate powerfully for me (unlike those cutsie-isms of “you know who”), and bring up a subject, “political economy” and “psychology,” very dear and close to my heart, one inspired by Merton’s dying-breath Bangkok Talk, December 10, 1968 (where I first heard of the Vidyadhara, incidentally—or tendrely) where he makes a rough equivalence between the Christian notion of The Fall or Original Sin, the Buddhist notion of Avidya or Ignorance, and the Early Marxian notion of Alienation.
Before I go off on what is likely to be several tangents—inspired by your highly provocative juxtaposition of sentences (unlike the flaccid juxtaposition of arcana “whatshisname” produces) I should post here an Abstract for a seminar I taught at DePaul in Chicago in 1996, as part of an International Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies conference. Even the Dalai lama and Richard Gere were there. What a thrill (not.)
Some years back I e-mailed a copy of it to Mark Szpakowski (he and I, along with Mermelstein and Merwin, were in the same “Vajra Politics” class at the 1975 Vajradhatu Seminary in Snowmass) and he expressed the view it ought to be on a website somewhere. So, here it is—HERE (sorry about that Mark, please indulge me, once again, for one more moment: it could be lost, otherwise)—just in case I die (which is a distinct possibility) before I finish the website I started several months ago, called PRAJNA CENTER. Here it is:
“Old Paradigms, New Insight: Merton’s Bangkok Talk in Light of Shambhala Vision.”
That’s the tile.
None of that “new paradigm” shit for me. I’m Old School, and getting Older School, rapidly—sort of.
Here’s the description:
“Thomas Merton’s Bangkok Talk links the Christian notion of The Fall or Original Sin, the Buddhist notion of Avidya or Ignorance, and the Early Marxian notion of Alienation. Chogyam Trungpa distinguished his Shambhala teachings from his Buddhist teachings by suggesting Great Eastern Sun Vision is “enlightenment [TGS] gone politics, whereas ordinary enlightenment is religious.” This presentation will re-view Merton’s Bangkok Talk in light of Shambhala Vision, and underscore its importance not only for Christian-Buddhist dialogue, Liberation Theology and Engaged Buddhism, but for Marxism, Environmentalism, and the End of History debate.”
So, there it is.
(PART TWO to follow, hopefully)
PART TWO
Engaging in this study, this extended contemplation—whatever it is—is at the heart of my effort to carry on a conversation—a friendship, really—between my two mentors, Merton and the Vidyadhara, that they didn’t get a chance to have in “real life.” In fact, that study virtually motivates everything I do, say, or write, to tell you the truth—to be open and honest about it. (I am not “tap-dancing to static, a compelling fragment of orthodoxy,” as the dread “Language Poet,” Barrett Watten, once succinctly put it—unlike “you know who.”)
And I should say, right away, I highly recommend this particular study, getting all three discourses going at once, in the specific way Merton suggested it—that is, if you care about the Vidyadhara’s Shambhala teachings, the essence of his life’s blood, as he said.
And for me, what makes this study and practice work, and without which it CANNOT possibly work (at least for me)—to the extent that it DOES work—is beaming, as best I can, the Vidyadhara’s SHAMBHALA VISION through Merton’s three-way schema: that’s how I’ve turned their friendship, I would like to believe—I do believe it, in my heart of hearts, actually—into a kind of marriage: a marriage made in the Kingdom of Shambhala, you could say.
That vision IS a kind of “synthesis,” but one “grounded,” so to speak, in Vajradhatu “immobility,” NOT “progress”—which is the Western teleological approach—but in what the Vidyadhara once referred to as a primordial “zero-pure”-ity, with some qualifications. I think that’s definitely relatable to Meister Eckhart’s notion of Godhead as being a “SILENT desert, beyond all distinction.”
(You’ll notice the Vidyadhara plays off that particular notion of Eckhart’s—and he was an “expert” on Eckhart—at the start of “The Development of Ego” chapter of CUTTING THROUGH, where he refines what Eckhart said by referring to a “SIMPLE desert” beyond all distinction—that is, pre-“dualistic fixation.” So, due to the fact Eckhart’s “silent” is COMPLICATED, CONDITIONED, by its relation to “sound,” the other side of that coin, the word “SIMPLE” [though it is relative to “complexity”] he is referring to is boundless centerless space, which is beyond “simple” and “complex”—in fact, it is beyond any notion—the SOPHISTRIES—of “relative” and “absolute” truth altogether. Remember—or, never forget—this sentence from the SADHANA OF MAHAMUDRA:
“The great graveyard in which lie buried the COMPLEXITIES of samsara and nirvana.”
It’s that UNCONDITIONED SEEING beyond philosophy, beyond logic (the Petrul Rinpoche quote), coupled with his ingenious facility to bring into language what is beyond language—and in the ENGLISH language, to boot!—that we get such a sharply focused and magnificent portrait the Vidyadhara is painting for us (his COMPASSION, also in spades) of the primeval ground—truly, ingenious—and, again, a PERFECT example of his facility for bringing into language what is beyond language. But, as I said earlier, this vision of a “decent and good human society” is not “going anywhere”—: it is self-existing, not a fabrication, like “heaven.” As I suggested, above somewhere, it seems to me Shambhala Vision is a “coloring in,” an elaboration and incredible amplification, of the “KINGDOM OF NO DHARMA,” also from the SADHANA OF MAHAMUDRA, representing Maha Ati “non-existence.” [And I should add, embedded in what I just said is the title of the last seminar the Vidyadhara taught at Karme-Choling, which I attended, in 1986: “REALIZING Enlightened Society,” NOT “creating” it.])
(PART THREE to follow, hopefully)
RE “Some years back I e-mailed a copy of it to Mark Szpakowski (he and I, along with Mermelstein and Merwin, were in the same “Vajra Politics” class at the 1975 Vajradhatu Seminary.)”
At that class I gave a talk (invited by CTR) on Mao’s essay “On Contradiction”. I think the approach was (and is in an “enlightened” society): You’re practicing? You talk roots? Let’s talk.
Judy,
I hadn’t thought of buying all these DVDs, but I think what I’m saying in general is what Pema is saying. Rolling back the clock, the mere title ‘Wisdom of No Escape’ is probably sufficient. These titles suggest she is talking about noticing and working gently with our aggression and unkindness toward ourselves and others, not trying to plaster virtuous qualites on top – and explaining why this is important. Much of the unique value of Pema’s teachings has always been her focus on working with obscurations and I’m sure these are no exception.
While I wouldn’t for a moment suggest we can’t improve our manners or habits, to attempt to change ourselves into something ‘better’ as a ‘spiritual practice’ is a hopeless act, and arguably an aggressive one. Even if we could do it, we risk throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
We are not even at choice regarding what to accept and what to reject until we see how our minds create suffering. Fearlessness arises when we no longer fear anything in our minds (Smile at Fear). Kindness and gentleness arise when we stop attacking the manifestations of our minds and see the futility of countering aggression with aggression. Compassion is possible when we drop our denial and one-upmanship, it develops from shunyata, because we realise we have nothing to hold onto; generosity is possible when we see our grasping is hopeless and realise we have nothing to lose. And so on. We can try to cultivate the manifest virtue directly till we’re blue in the face, but we’ll find the snake has its tail in its mouth. The perennial experience of the Bodhisattva path is not about results, but uncovering our resistances and deception. The main practice is not about promising to manifest noble qualities (Davee), or about ‘dressing up, rituals and chanting’. It is to relate to passion, aggression and ignorance.
If you can find a genuine meditation master whose practice involves repeating, ‘Every day in every way I am going to be a better and better person’, then I’m a frog and we should all toss in this Buddhist nonsense now and kneel at the feet of the mahasiddhas Deepak Chopra, Shakti Gawain or whoever is current.
The Vidyadhara did not use the terms ‘basic goodness’ and ‘goodness’ interchangeably. The word ‘goodness’ can apply to basic goodness, but not the other way round. My favourite black chocolate is not basic goodness, or certainly not in the way we’re discussing here. But the most important point I tried to make above is that we cannot ‘cultivate’ basic goodness. If you can find a sentence in which Pema claims that we can, I will write to her and ask her what she’s talking about.
BTW, regarding measuring progress on the path, the only possible yardstick is how much we’ve shed, not how much virtue we’ve decked ourselves with. It’s not about how much ground we’ve gained, it’s about how much we’ve lost.
Good wishes
Susie
PART THREE
CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA: Words of Wisdom
“Rather than blind faith, students need to develop an extraordinarily critical and cynical attitude to spirituality.” (Chogyam Trungpa, First Talk, “Buddhadharma Without Credentials,” NYC, 1973.)
•
GARY SNYDER: More chameleons than lions
“Institutional Buddhism has been conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities and tyrannies of whatever political system it found itself under. This can be death to Buddhism, because it is death to any meaningful function of compassion. Wisdom without compassion feels no pain.” (Gary Snyder, Earth House Hold, New Directions, 1969, p. 90.)
•
ACHARYA JUDITH SIMMER-BROWN: Ja wohl
“As Vajrayana students, we need to go where the power is.” (SMC, Summer, 2009.)
•
THE KONGMA SAKYONG, JAMPAL TRINLEY DRADÜL
(for Peter Volz & and Greg Smith)
WOW talks to the Chamber of Commerce
WOW talks to the Rotary Club
WOW talks to the Board of Goldman Sachs
WOW gives a talk at the Aspen Institute
WOW avoids Sulak Sivaraksa like the plague
—Jim Hartz
•
CHÖGYAM TRUNGPA: Suit of Armor
“The setting-sun world is afraid of space, afraid of the truth of non-reference point. In that world, people are afraid to be vulnerable. They are afraid to expose their flesh, bone, and marrow to the world outside. They are afraid to transcend the conditions or reference points they have set up for themselves. In the setting-sun world, people believe, absolutely, in their reference points. They think that, if they open themselves, they will be exposing an open wound to germs and disease. A hungry vampire will come to eat them up. The setting-sun world teaches that you should guard your flesh and blood, that you should wear a suit of armor to protect yourself. But what are you protecting yourself from? Space.” (Chogyam Trungpa, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, p. 156.)
•
DORJE SHEDONG: Fuzzy Suit of Armor
“Vajrayana students ‘being where the power is’—that is, in the marsupial pocket of Empire.” (SMC, Summer, 2009.)
•
T.G. MASAMUNE: Stripping it for parts
“Time to close for now—many more chattering thoughts, maybe more e-mails—but what saddens me most is how few of us seem to care about what’s happening to Shambhala Training specifically. It has been methodically disempowered and plundered in the progressive roll-out of ‘Shambhala Buddhism.’ Its like a beautiful and powerful classic car that’s had it’s gasoline siphoned out for use in another car—then they say, ‘Hmm, this car won’t start…must not work…’ and they put it up on blocks and strip it for parts.”
(PART FOUR to follow)
Dear Davee, James, Susanne, et al
Davee I can not see anything in James post about decrying the practices that you have mentioned which emphasise relative bodhicitta.
Rather I think as Lee Weingrad did on the other thread he is laying out how the two aspects relate to each other no more no less.
I was thinking about why this argument was continuing between the ‘two camps’ on rfs perhaps it is because now we have entered a stage where because of our different historical relations to teachings our language games are going on in different worlds. To me I am not sure how you can resolve this situation so its another reason why I left SI. I can have more fruitful discussions about the nature of reality with people in other religions than those happening at present in SI where there is more room for discussion and less of a structured path in the meditational process.
So for me being out of the org. is quite a fresh, non-confirming experience and much more of an open field. In some respects I feel my connections to the Shambhala teachings are becoming more centred on Drala and community in the wider non-Buddhist world. I feel that intuitionally that this is the way Trungpa Rinpoche wanted them to go.
I would really like to know from the older students out there when he just said he wanted Shambhala Centres on their own what he was in essence pointing to.
I am also really enjoying Jim Hartzs post and would welcome more discussion on what went on in those politics classes way back in 1975.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
Thanks, James, Jim Hartz, and Susie, for your lively and insightful (not to mention entertaining) posts. Here’s a blog by a longtime Kagyu practitioner that might interest some here: http://www.dharmasanctuary.org/my-blog/ It seems to be focused on questioning traditional Buddhist ways of doing things, and/or how Buddhadharma can most effectively be integrated into Western ways of life (or something like that!). This is the first of two posts specifically on the young Kalu Rinpoche, who is shaking things up: http://www.dharmasanctuary.org/2011/08/24/young-rebel/ He seems refreshing to me, but is raising the ire of traditionalist Western students. In any case, as an old VCTR sangha friend (who sent me the link to that blog) remarked, the Dharma Sanctuary blog makes RFS seem almost stuffy.
Hi rita,
I heard cautioning that appreciating that you’re more open yesterday, or more compassionate today, or similar would lead you inevitably to a dualitic view. I just disagree. I think most if not all people start the path with a fairly progressive path or yardsticks and that’s ok. As long as the higher view is there and is pointed out to students over time things can and will shift. James said that too with “there’s a point one’s allegiance changes from ego to the path” but I just think that point is a generally a lot further down the road then we’d all like to admit. But I think it’s ok, we could even trust in the process.
I think it goes beyond just language though. I’m hearing a lack of trust that one’s view shifts or if that is part of the process. I’m hearing that it’s not ok to start where you are. And I’m hearing it’s not ok for the Sakyong to say anything that doesn’t sound like a talk about Maha Ati viewpoint. What happened to the other eight yanas? Are all other Buddhist groups heretics now – along with SI – for teaching these things still? I find that a strange criticism of SI given how much time the Vidhyadhara dedicated to all of the yanas. The 1986 seminary is even remembered as the “Never forget the hinayana” seminary now. Well? Have we forgotten?
Best,
Davee
my favorite “vow”
“i take refuge, recognizing my own true nature in mind itself, free of elaboration.
i will place my mothers, deluded by nonrecognition, on the level of primordial being.”
Khenpo Gangshar
First thought best thought still true after all these years……….
T.G. MASAMUNE: Stripping it for parts
“Time to close for now—many more chattering thoughts, maybe more e-mails—but what saddens me most is how few of us seem to care about what’s happening to Shambhala Training specifically. It has been methodically disempowered and plundered in the progressive roll-out of ‘Shambhala Buddhism.’ Its like a beautiful and powerful classic car that’s had it’s gasoline siphoned out for use in another car—then they say, ‘Hmm, this car won’t start…must not work…’ and they put it up on blocks and strip it for parts.”
Sadly true.
Ditto to John Tischer quoting Jim Hartz re: “T.G. Masamune: Stripping it for parts.” Excellent analogy for what’s happening to Shambhala Training: a beautiful and powerful classic car that’s had its gasoline siphoned out for use in another vehicle and then been put up on blocks and stripped for parts.
Dear Davee et al
Interesting post.
Well I think a lot of us who have left are going back to square one in re-examining Trungpas teachings on mindfulness and awareness. Just been listening to some of his talks on these subjects on the Chronicle Project and it seems to me the emphasis of ‘just being’ in meditation is one of the prominent motifs of these talks. So yes it does seem to be that sense of basic groundedness or call it what you will, Ati or whatever, was emphasised in his early teachings in America.
Yes I do remember the seminary in 86 because I went to that one and no I have not forgotten the Hinayana (although I dont have the T-shirt!)–in fact that is what is pre-occupying me now in relating to the greater sangha/community out there. Being with people of other faiths and none is quite enlightening for me in that I can see we are all connecting to a sense of meditational process in our different ways. Some may call the ‘experience’ of connecting to ‘what is’ as having a notion of God that is not totally pre-occupied with theism.
So re the ‘open’ thingie I am listening more to others in how they relate to their spiritual practice and I was not positing the openness in terms of a goal in actual practice itself.
I also intend to keep such wide-ranging discussions on meditation with others ongoing as I relate to people in my own locality. In addition I am volunteering to help out in some conventions to discuss meditation, and possibly a kind of ‘enlightened’ Theatre. I am hoping too to raise the ‘spectre’(!) of enlightened politics with others-so Jim Hartz’s posts are highly intriguing to me on Trungpas teachings in this area.
Yes really enjoying Rinpoches early teachings – man its all there!
Best from the UK.
Rita Ashworth
Judy,
With: “A momentary glance at the news, around the globe, and down through history, would seem to indicate that we are also “just built” and “put together” to *not* be nice to each other. N’est-ce pas?”
you seem to be saying basic goodness (bg) is not basic, it needs to be instilled, taught and trained into people. This is standard religion. Again, I think that approach divisive and aggressive, separating the chaff from the wheat, on a level at which it is simply not true.
Someone can be more skilled, listen, emanate sympathy, explain or share insight better, even be wiser; fine. Those are all relative abilities, and clearly we are not all the same. But basic goodness is not a skill or an acquired quality. It is the basic ground we all – even non-shambhaloids and the people we love to hate – work from. Basic really means basic.
You must not have read Chomsky. His descriptions of how people are drawn into bad politics are virtually synonymous with Buddhist descriptions of how we are trapped in samsara. No one’s really saying “Après moi le déluge”, they believe they are making the right choices within a closed system. It’s a systemic problem… the three Lords of Materialism.
If you believe that being trapped in samsara means you have no basic goodness, or less of it anyway than the saved, then we have a fundamental disagreement, and I would argue that is not what Trungpa Rinpoche or any Buddhist teacher has tried to get across.
In the inspiration that deciding who has more basic goodness is like deciding who breathes more air.
No, Davee, I’m not worried about losing absolute bg. But am surprised bg is officially presented as relative and absolute.
‘Relative and absolute’ are NOT synonymous with ‘fledgling and accomplished’. We don’t progress to absolute leaving relative behind as if it were lower. They coexist.
Assuming a detailed seminary talk on bodhicitta applies to bg is a mistake. Bodhicitta has similarities but isn’t synonymous. I’ve heard bodhicitta used as ‘the seed of enlightenment’ like bg is sometimes used, but bodhicitta also literally means full blown awake mind. Bg doesn’t.
If we use rel./ab., bg is an absolute term, not dependant on anything, hence fruitional. Any training we do changes us, not bg. That is what I am concerned about; how an absolute term is being reduced down to something we can measure and judge; who has it, who doesn’t, how much?, how to get more, and so on. It is a distortion to use bg to describe relative terms and qualities.
What you heard, Davee, was not what I wrote. More simply, I said feeling good is not bg as such, feeling bad also has bg. What creates dualism is not patting ourselves on the back, as questionable as that may be, but rather the use of an absolute term to judge and define relative actions and events; if someone or event makes us feel good, proud, healthy, is not ‘bad’ they have lots of bg, if they make us feel bad, uncomfortable, wrong then… not so much. That is intensely dualistic even in the hinayana.
When you state that the point one’s allegiance changes from ego to the path is way down the road, you show a lack of trust. In point of fact that change of allegiance is ideally what taking refuge in the hinayana is all about. While I might agree that change can come later and deepen over time, I am just as certain for some it comes before.
None of this is a repudiation of process or hinayana in favor of vajrayana; quite the opposite. Using absolute terms in relative ways to judge things is simply a mistake… ESPECIALLY in the hinayana.
I haven’t referred here to what Sakyong Mipham has said, only to what has been said here, and to what I thought Judith Simmer Brown said. Please don’t try to categorize me or others as disloyal to win a point in a discussion. It’s another issue altogether, with no bearing on this theme.
In the inspiration that sometimes basic really means basic.
Dear Jim/Mark
Keep going on the vajra politics…..I am going to be helping out on a Buddhist convention for 2012 and I am thinking of raising some aspects of social issues at this event so would welcome your ideas. Perhaps even talk of a body that parallels the Assembly that Trungpa talked about for our region. Also plan to make it a more wider inter-faith gathering aswell re meditation process –so that would be doubly interesting.
Why can you not do some utube videos on vajra politics/shambhala politics or whatever you deem to call it appropriately–or perhaps rfs could even ustream the discussion for a wider community?
Also re society generally –been surfing the web and of course discovered the Wall Street occupation –so definitely a post-capitalist society is being talked about widely. What do you think Trungpa would have made of this event? They are talking of similar issues to our various communities in devolving power to the people in local areas.
Well Best from the UK.
Rita Ashworth
PART TWO (slightly, but importantly, revised: Merton’s death)
Engaging in this study, this extended contemplation—whatever it is—is at the heart of my effort to carry on a conversation—a friendship, really—between my two mentors, Merton and the Vidyadhara, that they didn’t get a chance to have in “real life.” In fact, that study virtually motivates everything I do, say, or write, to tell you the truth—to be open and honest about it. (I am not “tap-dancing to static, a compelling fragment of orthodoxy,” as the dread “Language Poet,” Barrett Watten, once succinctly put it—unlike “you know who.”)
And I should say, right away, I highly recommend this particular study, getting all three discourses going at once, in the specific way Merton suggested it—that is, if you care about the Vidyadhara’s Shambhala teachings, the essence of his life’s blood, as he said.
And for me, what makes this study and practice work, and without which it CANNOT possibly work (at least for me)—to the extent that it DOES work—is beaming, as best I can, the Vidyadhara’s SHAMBHALA VISION through Merton’s three-way schema: that’s how I’ve turned their friendship, I would like to believe—I do believe it, in my heart of hearts, actually—into a kind of marriage: a marriage made in the Kingdom of Shambhala, you could say—or even Kingdom of God, if you think of it (like some Liberation Theologians do, and maybe Merton, too) as on earth, in space, self-existing. You COULD say that, though it might get you burnt at the stake—or maybe, burnt at the “copper wire on a fan” in Bangkok, Thailand, December 10, 1968.
That vision IS a kind of “synthesis,” but one “grounded,” so to speak, in Vajradhatu “immobility,” NOT “progress”—which is the Western teleological approach—but in what the Vidyadhara once referred to as a primordial “zero-pure”-ity, with some qualifications. I think that’s definitely relatable to Meister Eckhart’s notion of Godhead as being a “SILENT desert, beyond all distinction.”
(You’ll notice the Vidyadhara plays off that particular notion of Eckhart’s—and he was an “expert” on Eckhart—at the start of “The Development of Ego” chapter of CUTTING THROUGH, where he refines what Eckhart said by referring to a “SIMPLE desert” beyond all distinction—that is, pre-“dualistic fixation.” So, due to the fact Eckhart’s “silent” is COMPLICATED, CONDITIONED, by its relation to “sound,” the other side of that coin, the word “SIMPLE” [though it is relative to “complexity,” or so it SEEMS, at first blush] he is referring to is BOUNDLESS CENTERLESS SPACE, which is beyond “simple” and “complex”—in fact, it is beyond any notion—the SOPHISTRIES—of “relative” and “absolute” truth altogether. Remember—or, never forget—this sentence from the SADHANA OF MAHAMUDRA:
“The great graveyard in which lie buried the COMPLEXITIES of samsara and nirvana.”
It’s that UNCONDITIONED SEEING beyond philosophy, beyond logic (Petrul Rinpoche’s, “Logic seems sharp, but it’s really the seed of confusion”), coupled with his ingenious facility to bring into language what is beyond language—and in the ENGLISH language, to boot!—that we get such a sharply focused and magnificent portrait the Vidyadhara is painting for us (his COMPASSION, also in spades) of the primeval ground—truly, ingenious—and, again, a PERFECT example of his facility for bringing into language what is beyond language.
But, as I said earlier, this vision of a “decent and good human society” is not “going anywhere”—: it is self-existing, not a fabrication, like “heaven.”
As I also suggested, above somewhere, it seems to me Shambhala Vision is a “coloring in,” an elaboration and incredible amplification, of the “KINGDOM OF NO DHARMA,” also from the SADHANA OF MAHAMUDRA, representing Maha Ati “non-existence.” [And I should add, embedded in what I just said is the title of the last seminar the Vidyadhara taught at Karme-Choling, which I attended, in 1986: “REALIZING Enlightened Society,” NOT “creating” it.])
(PARTS FOUR AND FIVE to follow, hopefully, to conclude)
PART FOUR (crucial to Merton/Trungpa friendship)
Here’s Merton on the subject of “Kingdom of God,” and the distinction between “paradise” and “heaven,” proper to ORTHODOX Christian Theology, embedded in that distinction. Here’s Merton from ZEN AND THE BIRDS OF APPETITE (p. 116):
“One of Dostoevski’s ‘saints,’ the Staretz Zosima who speaks as a typical witness to the tradition of the Greek and Russian Church, makes an astonishing declaration. He says: ‘We do not understand that life is paradise, for it suffices only to wish to understand it, and at once paradise will appear in front of us in its beauty.’…Whatever the modern reader may think of this claim, it was certainly something basic to primitive Christianity…Now this concept must be properly and accurately understood. Paradise is not ‘heaven.’ Paradise is a state, or indeed a place, on earth. Paradise belongs more properly to the present than to the future. In some sense, it belongs to both. It is the state in which man was originally created to live on earth.”
At this point, I think it is possible for us to virtually “eavesdrop” on Merton and Trungpa Rinpoche as they discussed the similarities and differences (and would there have been/be any “similarities” and “differences,” ULTIMATELY, in the minds of these two great masters?) between Kingdom of God and Kingdom of Shambhala.
Here’s the Vidyadhara on his meeting with Merton: “We met in Calcutta in a hotel over a few gin-and-tonics, and he was in complete agreement with me. Not necessarily influenced by the gin-and-tonics, I can’t imagine that. He was very good and we understood. But his last words were, even at that point, that he was concerned about whether he would be quoted in what he had to say. And there was a little panic there.” So, simply, Merton could feel that long “Tales from the Crypt” arm reaching his way, even then—in fact, most emphatically THEN…
(Part Five to follow, and conclude, hopefully)
James, I still think the Vidhyadhara used the term basic goodness in more ways then the absolute or kunshi-ngangluk-kyi-gewa. If it’s any influence here are some quotes I found with some digging. Perhaps I won’t convince you but I thought I should research at least and offer something more. Cheers.
1980 Seminary:
“You don’t just have goodness; you need the mentality of goodness. You have to feel goodness, you have to exercise goodness. Goodness has to be worked outward because you are not keeping goodness for your own sake, but you have it for others’ sake. That’s where bodhicitta and the bodhisattva ideal come in: how to share goodness with others. Then, all the rest of the questions come along. Why do you have goodness at all? When you realize a spark of goodness yourself, real basic goodness, then you see a slash of attack, which serves as a reference point for you to see that basic goodness is it. Because you see the reference point, the attack is no longer an attack, no longer destruction. You see things as they are, so all of it is fine. But the actual application of this for others’ sake is much more demanding. Working for others, manifesting for others’ sake, is more demanding.” pg 85
“Basic goodness is a broad term, which applies to personal wholesomeness as well as personal dedication to others, at the same time. It is quite a broad term. It is like saying you are a good gentleman, which means you take care of your wife and your children, as well as the friends around you. So it is quite a broad word, actually.” pg 89
“Virtue is the idea that we have been talking about all along. It is the basic goodness that you are able to develop.” pg 110
1984 seminary:
“You realize that you could be in a state without aggression and a state without passion. In short, you could be a person without problems. Basically speaking, you could be thoroughly, utterly, completely good. It is possible. So you are good. You can be a person with basic sanity, basic goodness.” pg 46
“Yesterday we talked about relative bodhicitta in terms of basic goodness and recognizing the power of basic goodness, but we didn’t exactly discuss the notion of utterly fundamental or absolute bodhicitta… Relative bodhicitta is regarded as our starting point; absolute bodhicitta is regarded as our further achievement.” pgs 53-54
Dear Jim et al
Yes –the Kingdom God re Kingdom of Shambhala –quite an area for investigation.
Early Christian churches from what I am hearing from people over here were more communal and I believe people shared their possessions much more freely than is the case now.
I also think there is quite a movement to get back to the early times of Christianity and to understand the essential teachings of Christ which were I think less picturing of him as a guru type figure but more of an individual who was sort of a gateway to teachings on liberation –so I am being to think he was more emblematic of a ‘warrior’ type of person –though of course they would not use that term then in the past.
Yes I also do believe too that there is quite an open atmosphere out there from the Christian church to re-consider the meditative experience which is really exciting to me. I am beginning to think we may be in an age when the boundaries between religions will be come less distinct. This also ties in with Mr Perks comments about founding a ‘new religion’ that Trungpa Rinpoche made.
Re these new appreciations of Trungpas teachings that I am discerning somewhat I am thinking that in some strange way the churches out there may be instrumental in forging a renewed connection to the principle of ‘Kingdom’ in all its forms.
However the above does not exclude the huge dimension that the secular age in Europe through the Enlightenment will also have to play in re-awakening a fundamental connection to elemental life-forces.
Particularly in the last few years whilst engaging with others in other religions and none I have been impressed by the radical thought of thinkers in the north-west area of the UK in the 19th century. It is full of ‘churches’ based on secular enlightenment –namely near the University and of course the smaller denominations of strange 19 century sects like the Christadelphinians which I also think were prevalent in the States. So yes such a ripe history to explore.
Best from the UK and yes please more on Merton –perhaps even from his own writings on the Kingdom of God. Can you also reference the books from which you are quoting as to Merton and Meister Eckhart-they could prove useful in peoples reading about the interchange between Christianity and Buddhism.
Best
Rita Ashworth
James and Davee,
To change the tenor a little bit, but stick to the same subject of “basic goodness” and “relative” and “absolute” views, I’d like to switch back to the “terrorism” question and see where your discussion is applicable in that case. It appears Davee has been doing his homework, and has brought in some very interesting and germane quotations by the Vidyadhara. Here’s another one I’d like to introduce into this particular discussion that keeps popping to mind:
“The fifth category of semde is chogdzin-truptha-le-depa. Chog means ‘direction,’ dzin means “fixation” or ‘holding;’ truptha means ‘philosophical beliefs;’ le means ‘from;’ and depa means ‘transcending’ or ‘gone beyond’ or also ‘death,’ in honorific terms. So, chogdzin-truptha-le-depa is transcending directions or philosophical beliefs.
At this point we are completely enjoying ourselves in this particular yana. A sense of boundlessness and expansiveness begins to take place so therefore the concepts and sophistries of truth and falsehood somehow become a big joke. At the same time you begin to realize that your mind which is primevally nonexistent but energetic is very powerful. Therefore there is a nondwelling quality to our mind. We can’t focus our mind on one thing at a time or absorb ourselves into the higher mystical experiences anymore. So it’s open and free from both falsehood and truth and at the same time enjoyable. That seems to be the point. (1974 Seminary Transcripts, p. 131.)”
It seems Judith Simmer-Brown’s view as expressed in the “New Vows” contextualization video was in sync with the widely held view (on virtually every editorial page in the country) that what the “terrorists” did on 9/11 was 100% UNPROVOKED, a sign of irrationality, sheer human cussedness. Moreover, that the attack was motivated by the “terrorist’s” so-called “hatred of our freedom,” and like Judith parroted, “that they were poor, uneducated, and resentful of our prosperity,” that old threadbare class-oriented song and dance number.
Here’s Jean Baudrillard in THE SPIRIT OF TERRORISM (p. 4-5) that adds a bit more nuance to these cornball canards:
“All that has been said and written is evidence of a gigantic abreaction to the event itself, and the fascination it exerts. The moral condemnation and the holy alliance [“Coalition of the Willing”—JH] against terrorism are on the same scale as the prodigious jubilation at seeing this global superpower destroyed—better, at seeing it, in a sense, destroying itself, committing suicide in a blaze of glory. For it is that superpower which, by its unbearable power, has fomented all this violence which is endemic throughout the world, and hence that (unwittingly) terroristic imagination which dwells in all of us.
The fact that we have dreamt of this event, that everyone without exception has dreamt of it—because no one can avoid dreaming of the destruction of any power that has become hegemonic to this degree—is unacceptable to the Western moral conscience. Yet it is a fact, and one which can indeed be measured by the emotive violence of all that has been said and written in the effort to dispel it.”
A bit wild, a kind of Lacanian psychoanalysis of the “event,” and the Western reaction to it, but provocative, insightful. I don’t think Baudrillard is suggesting “basic badness” is at the heart of humanity, but our morbid fantasies are triggered by that event that CUT THROUGH our IGNORING what is going on behind the mask of U.S. foreign policy–or should have–that Chomsky has been so great at exposing in incredible and irreproachable detail. But, it seems, we are determined to continue to ignore REALITY.
So, James and Davee, where is the “basic goodness” in this situation?
Davee,
Quotes from Trungpa Rinpoche must be couched in his teachings on spiritual materialism. Those include explanations that although it is sometimes said something is planted, or you receive it from a teacher, nevertheless it is self existing and already there.
The quotes describe how we approach bg or bodhicitta not how it is turned into something else bigger better, grown like fruit, nurtured like a farm animal, or something, until it’s finally enough that we can really change the bastards. Dharma practice is about how YOU relate to and align with bg, It is NOT about how other people relate to it, or don’t.
This is a maxim of Buddhism. Hotwiring reality to make it-that-them work accordingly is an inherently aggressive approach to problems we see out there, which many seem to have assumed with very little research or insight, arise because ‘they’ don’t see bg as we do, so don’t behave how they should. As far as I’m concerned this is one of the stupidest and most damaging manifestations of religion, and is dissonant within a community whose keystone teachings made the dangers of spiritual materialism so clear.
With “Yesterday… basic goodness.” I can see where the idea relative is fledgling and absolute accomplished could come from. My opinion is he said it that way to create logical structure, due to limits of language. He doesn’t say ‘is’ he says ‘regarded as’. Again, other teachings make clear that absolute and relative coexist. When one understands absolute, relative is influenced. It doesn’t disappear or become lower or irrelevant.
In any case this isn’t only abstract ideology or philosophy. Problems arise in countless day to day interactions between people who believe ’I’ or ‘we’ have it and ‘they’ don’t. That’s ugly enough, but when brought into the political sphere, we see things like ethnic cleansing in Bhutan in the name of purity and religious dogma. Really we need only look as far as the split in the Shambhala community to get a sense of what happens when ‘we got it and they don’t’ is a widely held belief.
I’ve always understood the idea of basic, as being the ground for everyone. If that’s not the starting point, if bg is something only the initiated have access to, than we have a fundamental disagreement. If you believe basic goodness is about how to make others behave, then we have another.
Dear Rita,
Yes, I’d say—the Kingdom of God re Enlightened Society re Classless Society. It could be said, easily, that Marxism is actually a “genuine contemplative tradition,” but of the “temporal” sphere, especially in its post-Stalinist variant represented, today, by Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou, among others—for all it’s flaws, from the pointless point of view of Shambhala Vision. What are we going to do, shun them because their “commies”? Maybe we ought to grow up.
Also, class society—i.e. the two main classes being “capital” and “labor”—are quite simply the elaboration, over millennia, of “dualistic fixation” or “center-periphery polarization.” Why do you think the rich are getting RADICALLY richer, and the poor are getting RADICALLY poorer, right this second? It’s the functioning of “dualistc fixation” or “center-periphery polarization” embedded in—in fact CONSTITUTING—the ROOTS of the global political economic system.
Anyway, taking up that challenge of studying Marxism would be one way, certainly, to overcome our being “hopelessly religious,” as the Vidyadhara suggested we were toward the end of his life. He DID, in fact, suggest we study Lenin in the first Ngeton School talk. Ask Clarke Warren. Apparently, I’m the only one who took him up on that. Certainly Reggie Ray didn’t. I remember him asking: “Why on earth would we want to do that for, thirrr?” Well, duh. He prefers conjuring “nature spirits.”
Knowing Merton somewhat, I think he saw—right at the end of his life—how three huge blocs of people (Christians, Buddhists, and Marxists) could be “brought together,” and in a genuine way, not in a frivolous way. He was no all-over-the-place eclecticist. So, his three-way schema linking the Christian notion of The fall or Original Sin, the Buddhist notion of Avidya or Ignorance, and the Early Marxian notion of Alienation goes to the heart of these three traditions, and posits a rough equivalence. So, THAT approach—not some grandiose Fruitional approach—has a Path quality to it (you could say), moving from False Concepts to Dependent Truth to Perfection—if you’ve looked at the first stanza of “Lightning of Blessings” lately. Of course, we’re there and on the way at the same time. But it seems (SI, for instance) has lost sight of the Path quality of that particular sequence, mesemerized/hypnotized by a kind of Fool’s Gold sheen.
Certainly any “Shambhala Vision” informed by the Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, Goldman Sachs Board, and Aspen Institute, to name four, has a major hole in it that no amount of NEW VOWS can fill, seal, camouflage.
Back to Marxism for a second: even the Sakyong, at the August 2008 Rigden Abhisheka at SMC brought up “Classless Society.” But he meant it as a kind of “head trip” or “heart trip,” not having a reciprocal “spiritual” and “material” component, forming a seamless psycho-social whole—closer to an actually “Enlightened Society.” He, of course, meant it in a purely “spiritual” sense, not “spiritual” and “temporal” sense together: generic “equanimity.” And, as usual, no chance to ask any questions, just open wide and swallow.
Anyway, here’s a potential, more focused Research Program for you. I think these would embody some of the discussions Merton and the Vidyadhara would have had had their relationship had a chance to flourish, and I apologize in advance for the presumption: 1) The Merton/D.T. Suzuki dialog in Merton’s ZEN AND THE BIRDS OF APPETITE where that “heaven” and “paradise” stuff appears, 2) Merton’s “Bangkok Talk” (I’ll send you a copy of the original if you want), 3) the Vidyadhara’s “The Development of Ego” chapter of CUTTING THROUGH. Then, practicing what Jesus preached—their “warriorship”—check out these two introductions to Liberation Theology: Phillip Berryman, LIBERATION THEOLOGY and 2) Leonardo and Clodovis Boff, INTRODUCTION TO LIBERATION THEOLOGY. For Marxism (while he’s not a Marxist, but an “anarcho-socialist,” but to help in the UNMASKING of U.S. foreign policy), see Chomsky’s aforementioned 9/11: WAS THERE AN ALTERNATIVE? Then, two books by prominent World-System Theorists/Neo-Marxists (they’re BASICALLY good because they both—especially Amin—use a “center-periphery polarization” model to discuss the macro global economy: Immanuel Wallerstein’s HISTORICAL CAPITALISM with CAPITALIST CIVILIZATION and Samir Amin’s EMPIRE OF CHAOS.
Then, grow your own. But these are pretty good building blocks if you want to carry on that conversation between Merton and the Vidyadhara that they didn’t get a chance to have “in real life.” Things would definitely be different today—in terms of Shambhala Vision, its potential expansiveness—had their friendship gone on for a few years. And, in fact, it still can.
Jim H., my point exactly. Even if one of the seven categories of mind in the “great final” or ati yana is “beyond holding philosophic beliefs” we still find that madhyamaka is taught extensively in Nyingma shedras. Monks spend six hours a day for a year roughly (similarly too in Kagyu shedras) debating the views and paths with each other. So the very school and holders of the ati approach seem to think that lots of preliminary work – some directly counter to the final yana – and hinayana discipline as well is the most expeditious approach for students. The Vidhyadhara didn’t ask us to debate particularly but he did also teach a progressive path I believe and SI is continuing that. Plus in my homework I was surprised to find that CTR attributes in 1980 the term “basic goodness” to a term from the Kaygu stream, not the Nyingma, relating to the Cittamatra view to boot. So even calling it absolute might get you laughed at in those Nyingma or Kaygu debates though the natural qualities of the alaya is absolute enough for me in my practice at the moment.
In terms of terrorism and similarly of a nation ignoring the impact it collectively has, the shortest answer might be to drive all blames into one. People in America were amazed when the second Iraq war wasn’t greeted as “liberation”, yet how soon everyone forgets only ten years earlier America had invaded and killed thousands of Iraqi soldiers. I bet most extended families in Iraq had lost a cousin or child in that first war. Can we imagine what that was like for them? And yet so many American’s were surprised that they were not greeted warmly… or that anyone would dislike America particularly.
James E., I really agree us versus them is a daily problem. And also that materialism is something that we’re working with perhaps all the way. But I haven’t heard anyone present the view in SI that you start with an embryonic basic goodness and cultivate that until it grows into full blown basic goodness. More that wholesomeness sets the stage and is supportive of practice and society, in the same way Hinayana sets the stage for Mahayana. At the same time the Vidhyadhara seemed to be saying that working with discipline and wholesomeness creates contrast in our experience and then we start to get glimpses of the absolute because of that awareness of the contrast. I found that logic interesting: we start expanding out from the self oriented hinayana to the other oriented mahayana and all that causes glimpses of the ground indirectly.
I guess a different way I could present my view would be to say that I bet many students get good traction initially with a first-turning style even when we present the third-turning view from the very first talk. Or holding a third-turning view doesn’t preclude presenting first-turning approaches. Sure it may be materialistic – the first turning is basically – but you’re not only presenting the first-turning approach. It’s just part of a longer path and bigger picture.
Note: I have heard however that kind of “embryonic” presentation in regard to Bodhicitta in other Mahayana schools. More of a second-turning school approach maybe. I don’t want to discount that approach at all.
Dear Jim et al
Quite a thought-provoking post.
Any chance of posting the Ngedon school talk on rfs where the reference to Lenin was made would make compelling reading. Re the Bangkok talk with Merton also, yes I’d like a copy-Mark has my email, can it not be put in the reference section also of rfs too.
Re the further references to socialist writers will also try to get them too to read. Ever since read the report on when Rinpoche ‘received’ the Sadhana of Mahamudra and also the reference to him reading Fromm –have become more engaged in studying CTR’s attitudes to politics.
Yes the Sane Society by Fromm is a monumental work in combining the secular and sacred strands and I think should be required reading for any one studying the Shambhala teachings.
(Re to the socialist writers- wow to Samir Amin and Wallerstein what incredible thinkers –people should check them out on Utube, (I did) – what amazing wholesome, basic goodness viewing! As is the occupywallstreet live stream which is politics in the raw.)
Yes too the Christian/Buddhist interchange – I am beginning to look at the staid Anglican churches out there as quite ‘revolutionary’(!?) in some respects-ho-hum-but no there is questioning going on in these aged institutions about how an enlightened society should be constructed in mundane reality. I do hope the Christian and Buddhist dialogues start up again in a credible form in both Europe and the States. The Kingdom of God re KOS would make a good debate for a start-perhaps in Halifax?
That book also between Merton and D T Suzuki sounds incredibly interesting – hope its still in print –will get a copy.
So hope all these titles can be posted in the reference section of rfs.
Best from the UK
Rita Ashworth
Jim,
I’m not comfortable turning this into the relative merits or flaws of American or terrorist activities. That’s a political issue about which books are being written. Being a Chomsky fan I’m sure our political ideas are similar, however, the band that plays for the dance of samsara has a melody of “they started it”, the guitars play “I had no choice”, the flute’s tweet “it’s their fault” and the rhythm section is banging out “a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye”.
The point is bg is NOT a political label. It will NOT help anyone decide who is right and wrong, or more so one way or the other about political issues. Bg is there as a ground… for everyone. How we make decisions after that is dependent on many many other things, not simplistically on whether or not bg is expressed or understood properly.
I reject the notion that bg is the foundation of a better negotiation tactic; that we use the common ground of bg from which to negotiate a more equitable settlement. That would be spiritual materialism pure. (Whoever understood bg better would get the best deal?)
Finding ‘common ground’ from which to negotiate in order to come to a more equitable solution for all parties, is good practice in some kinds of negotiations, but that common ground will not be bg, it will be something like equitable sharing of a resource, fair treatment or prices, or some other relative aspect. Bg can’t be the common ground, because it does NOT and cannot address any of the relative problems being worked out in any conflict. It could in a real sense be a distraction at that point.
Instead one needs to sink into the details and very real problems that have caused whatever conflict. 9/11, one could discuss the root causes. I doubt there’s a bottom to it, history can be a hall of mirrors too, but I think that’s a sane way to come closer to a healthy resolution.
In any case, using bg as a basis for such negotiations or decisions would be crazy making. It would inevitably turn the issue into who has more bg or less, leading to an irreconcilable conflict based on abstract and absolute terms which cannot, and very likely should not, be resolved in relative terms. Like a religion.
In the inspiration that would be using bg in a projected and political way, for an agenda that invariably and virtually by definition has sides, winners, losers, wisemen and fools.
Dear Jim
Where did you go?
Re politics both ‘esoteric’, ‘practical’ and from Vajradhara/God knows what angle-why do you not have an FB page or a website to expound your views/feelings in this sphere? People do need to converse much more rapidly about these things now-hope you can set something up. I am looking to explore politics re religion, secular movements et al in coming meetings here-so do keep going mucho some where on the web.
Dont think –just post on the web-dont care what your viewpoint is –just want more conversation happening in free-flowing manner. Must run-got to catch the train…
Best from the UK
Rita Ashworth
The way Shambhala Training was first presented….and the way it continued for 15 years or so…was as a fruitional path, meaning, from the beginning one could experience basic goodness as absolute bg. ; fruition, nature of mind, whatever words you want to use for it. It was a problem for the graduate levels, because the first five levels were very experiential, and the graduate levels introduced more relative material, and it was harder for students to connect. I assume the ground of the first five levels was set up so people would be inspired enough to get into further teachings.
From this process, enlightened society was supposed to grow.Now it seems to be all carrot ’til Scorpion Seal….not that the meditation up to
that point wouldn’t be of benefit, but the magic of the early levels seems to have been removed.
(Dear Rita,
Thanks. I’ll be back, not like “Johnny,” I trust, thinking of Kubrick’s great film
(more surrealism than horror), THE SHINING–which I’d like to see again, soon. I’ve got a 2-parter for you in a notebook, and one each for Davee and James in the same notebook.
So, may the good lords (Mark, Barabara, and Andrew) be willing, I’ll have those items on RFS soon. (Christ, I wonder how many of us would have blown our brains out already if it weren’t for RFS?)
I’m involved in this intense situation of “elder abuse” where I live in Boulder, which has been going on for decades. My part in it is about over, but it’s been a major siphoner of my energy–and I do have somewhat of a pitbull streak–or is it some other animal? But with a pretty severe heart condition, I’ve spread myself a bit to thin, so have to watch it.
Yes, I was working on a PRAJA CENTER website with a VULTURE GULCH GAZETTE blog: “All the carrion that’s fit to eat.” But I did a spill in my laptop several months ago, and destroyed it accept for salvaging the hard drive, luckily. I would have been reaching for my cyanide pellet ring otherwise.
So, I’m back at it again, with a new laptop and external hard drive and Dragon Dictate. (My dear friend, Cynthia Kneen [who’s becoming a CLOWN, by the way, moving to Florence, Italy, to study with this Super-Clown teacher for 9 months: that’s the best news I’ve heard in decades!!! She has said for years: “Jim, you need to talk this stuff into a tape recorder.” I can’t control the writing–it’s all over the place, as you can imagine–paper everywhere. But Dragon Dictate might be the answer. We’ll see.)
But I’m starting with a new blog called THE ANGRY BUDDHIST and that should be ready shortly. I don’t even know how to type, but I can envision things, and the One-To-One deal at The Apple Store helps me to actualize what I can see. (I see THE ANGRY BUDDHIST now as the “secret” part, with VGG as “inner,” and PC as “outer.” I want to load the Merton material–for the time capsule–in the “inner” or “outer” section, probably the “inner.”
Best, and thanks,
Jim
P.S. I don’t do the social media stuff–bleeter, zeeter, and tweeter. I’m too addicted to media already. Like DemocracyNow! and CounterPunch every morning to start the day off left, though I’m an out-through-the-bottom-of-the-middle-via-prajnaist.)
Dear Jim
Looking forward to the stuff you are going to post on rfs that will be useful in doing things here re the conference, especially the Lenin thingie (-was Rinpoche reading something by Lenin? Interesting). Yes I plan to invite as many people as possible who could at all be interested in the meditative process from all faiths and none.
I am still perplexed about a lot of the ideas that CTR had around Vajra politics so anything you can remember about those early classes with Rinpoche would be great.
I am of the opinion that the National Assembly that Rinpoche talked about via David Rome on the Chronicle Project would be a lot more of a diverse body than the Shambhala Congress –it would have to be because it would be including many who were not Buddhist. If we also talk into the equation the Erich Fromm book , the Sane Society, that Rinpoche read -the governing body in this group was also made of up many different collections of people both politically and socially. In the book Fromm describes as an example of this the co-operative in France.
Yes at the very moment with the leaderless Occupy movements springing up around the world and a global consciousness emerging distinct from a national consciousness – SI streamlines itself in to a very hierarchical and structured one-faith organisation – I find this not right in that such conceptions of governance/faith are slowly disappearing. So yes any one nowadays can create a General Assembly as the events in New York have shown-check it out on livestream.
The above was also why I was interested in a Shambhala Declaration, or whatever people wanted to call it, I expect the new political movements worldwide might be working on something that empowers people on the ground. Wonder what they are devising in NY. Interesting.
So great looking forward to your website the ‘Angry Buddhist’ when you get it going –it could also be referenced via rfs. I hope too soon that rfs can eventually employ all the technological devices that occupywallstreet are using –amazing stuff that they are doing there.
Best from the UK.
Rita Ashworth
nuanced rich conversations Attention Memory Mind – meditation as Multitasking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WG_zmVuWv4&feature=relmfu
Great JOY
Jim Hartz on October 18th, 2011 2:22 pm
Dear Rita,
(Hope this isn’t too out-of-sync with Suzanne’s topic: there IS an ” ordinary” highly visible “magic” involved when you surrender to Merton’s three-way schema and beam, as best you can, the Vidyadhara’s Shambhala Vision through it. This I planted on Stanford’s ARCADE website in late June, the day after my birthday. It stopped the conversation, of course.)
ARCADE post:
“Yes, Merton on Buddhism–not only in MYSTICS & ZEN MASTERS but, better yet, in ZEN & THE BIRDS OF APPETITE–would be a step in the right direction: and those books came out in the 60′s. It is sad to see the same old bilge pumped out about “life denying Buddhism,” etc.
Of more interest–sticking to Merton–in the context of Zizek and Buddhism would be Merton’s dying-breath talk in Bangkok, December 10, 1968, the original title being “Marxist Theory & Monastic Theoria,” which nearly caused a riot amongst the gathered monks and nuns. In it, characteristic of his 360% openness, Merton lays out a three-way schema (old paradigms, not new ones) that would enable Christians, Buddhists AND Marxists to see–at the seed and root level–their similarities (NOT differences). The title of his talk was changed to “Marxist Theory & Monastic Perspectives” after his death, and can be found in the Appendix to his ASIAN JOURNAL.
One particularly cogent account of Zizek on Buddhism (I forget where) brought up Chogyam Trungpa–whom Merton had “met by chance” in New Delhi or Calcutta, I forget which. They spent half the night drinking gin & tonics, talking a blue streak like long lost friends, and planning to do a book together. Then, Merton was dead. Around 1972 I gave Trungpa Rinpoche a copy of Merton’s original Bangkok Talk, and he replied with the Buddhist component (Avidya, or “dualistic fixation”) in that three-way schema Merton had proposed, in one of his talks at that time.
You can find that talk in Trungpa’s CUTTING THROUGH SPIRITUAL MATERIALISM, the “Development of Ego” chapter. In my view, it constitutes the linchpin between Christianity and Marxism in Merton’s three-way schema, which–again, in my not so humble opinion–constitutes a prophecy for the 21st century. Moreover, for “ego” substitute “subject ” and THERE’S something for Zizek (and Badiou, etal) to sink their teeth in.
In fact, I would go so far as to say: Merton’s “Bangkok Talk” (for all its weaknesses) and Trungpa’s “Development of Ego” chapter of CUTTING THROUGH should be the two foundational texts for any further discussion of the relationship between Christianity, Buddhism, and Marxism. It would greatly reduce the amount of hot air being expelled on the subject, and I hope Zizek (and Badiou, and others) would join in.
Again, in my not so humble opinion, there’s a little known secret–not so much “carefully guarded,” but unperceived by the Tibetans–that there’s a deadlier critique of so-called “capitalism” (“egoism” WRIT BIG) embedded in Buddhism than in Marxism, at least as it is currently constituted–though with Zizek, Badiou (and Bruno Bosteels, among others) pushing that boundary, reconstituting/redefining communism in the post-Stalinist era, and seemingly open to the “new” (though “gap,” all important in the Vajrayana and Shambhala teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche, defining it as beyond “old” and “new,” actually Unborn, like boundless centerless space: no beginning, middle, or end; no past tense, present tense, or future tense; the Tibetan “eschaton,” you could say, linkable–if not exactly identifiable–with the Christian and Communist “eschatons”), maybe there is a little hope.
But otherwise, as Badiou has said: “We know that communism is the right hypothesis. All those who abandon this hypothesis immediately resign themselves to the market economy, to parliamentary democracy–the form of state suited to capitalism [i.e. egoism--JH]–and to the inevitable and ‘natural’ character of the most monstrous inequalities.”
Dear Jim
Thanks for the reference to Merton –I have just ordered a copy of his Asian Journal from the basement of a very copious library in my region –so will let you know my thoughts after reading it.
Was sparked into reading Merton by Judith Simmer Browns comment on the utube post on the Sadhana of Mahamudra that he had given a copy of this sadhana to Merton – in the hope of what-sharing ideas about the materialism of the age? Intriguing.
Yes the debate between Christianity and Buddhism has somewhat stopped now that Shambhala Buddhism has arrived on the scene. I think in terms of the shambhala teachings that debate needs to be re-ignited. The same also goes for the debate with socialist thinkers.
So thank you very much for your thoughts and I will get back to you after I have read the book.
Best from the UK.
Rita Ashworth
PART ONE
Dear Rita,
Concerning Merton, there’s a little trajectory you ought to follow get the heart of his view, and why that heart connected so seamlessly with the Vidyadhara’s:
1. The Christian/Buddhist dialog with D.T. Suzuki on the Genesis Story at the end of Merton’s ZEN & THE BIRDS OF APPETITE.
2. Merton’s dying-breath Bangkok Talk reprinted in the Appendix to his ASIAN JOURNAL under the tile, “Marxist Theory and Monastic Perspectives.” New title, and slightly edited from the original.
3. Then, the clincher: the Vidyadhara’s “The Development of Ego” chapter of CUTTING THROUGH. He gave that particular version of the 5 Skandhas as a direct result of my having given him a copy of Merton’s Bangkok Talk, providing the central pivot that the Bangkok Talk provided–between “The Fall or Original Sin” of Christianity, and the Early Marxian notion of “Alienation.”
Our weakest link in Merton’s schema is, of course, the Marxist aspect. Without that component of Merton’s Bangkok Talk, we remain holed up in “psychology and epistemology”–comparative religion–as Gary Snyder pointed out 45 years ago! That’s why Gary encouraged Western converts to Buddhism to study Marx, not for how to “create an enlightened society,” but for a critique of “capitalism.”
I did that, combining all three. What I came up with is: so-called “egoism” is “capitalism” w-r-i-t s-m-a-l-l; or, “capitalism” is so-called “egoism” WRIT BIG. “”Egoism” and “capitalism” are two words for ONE AND THE SAME s-e-a-m-l-e-s-s psycho-social totality! Same structure, same functioning. Among other things, that renders BLAME of the larger system dumb, like the “anti”-globalization movement–or, “ant”-capitalism in general, for that matter. It’s like punching yourself in the nose.
Not that “egoism” and “capitalism” don’t need to be thoroughly 100% transmuted (as opposed to “revolutionized” in the conventional sense)–mere “reforms” won’t do, in either case. Can you imagine the Vidyadhara settling for a “kinder and gentler” egoism? Well, we seem eager–especially SI, though certainly CTR devotees, too–to settle for a “kinder and gentler” capitalism, whereas as with egoism, it’s “off with its head”! (Think of the Mahakala as a kind of Robbespiere!)
Jim
PARTY TWO
Anyway, if you knew Merton, you’d know–he was 360% OPEN. That three-way schema in his Bangkok Talk (where I first heard of the Vidyadhara) was a way three huge historic blocs of people could be brought together, and not in some cheesey eclectic way, but at the heart-level of all three traditions.
Now, if we reflect for a moment, that’s a supremely Shambhalian way of looking at the world, one model on how to proceed. And the only way it could work is with a view–View–beyond “duality,” a “primordially pure” View beyond any “this” and “that” we could possibly think of. Why? Because, wherever we find a “dualistically fixated” (or “center-periphery polarized”) view, that “primordial purity” which has been eclipsed–causing all the “darkness”–can’t be far off!
So, the key (the meaning of which has been lost in the West, that “two-edged sword wrapped in flames” in the hand of the angel guarding the Gate of Eden, and constituting Jesus’ tongue in that striking image in the Book of Revelation) to “letting the sun shine in” (or out, in and out) is the Sword of Manjushri–or the Razor Knife, among other weapons.
It seems, since the Vidyadhara’s death, we have become too soft and squishy, too “psychotherapized,” too polite. ZERO on the “cutting through” and “non-theism” meters. So, the burgeoning Piety Industry, all the nicey-talk, the “kindness” jabber, the constant reference to “center” and “core” and “deep,” as if all of those weren’t conditional words. Those words, consequently, A-R-E the WORMS consuming the “lion’s corpse” from within. What is it–or, who is it–that is breeding them?
Anyway, the Vidyadhara said he and Merton “agreed on everything.” That doesn’t mean doctrine, it means the heart of the matter. That would be that “primordial purity” most particularly. In terms of the first two components of Merton’s three-way schema, for a Contemplative Christian like Merton, “Edenic Innocence” (i.e. “regaining paradise”) would equate with “Basic Goodness” (or Rigpa, “nature of mind”), and “eating the apple” equate with “dualistic fixation” (or “shift of attention”). The Buddhist teaching just provides some scientificity (“Buddhist science of mind”) to the somewhat more mythical Christian teaching. But they–the Contemplative Christians–get it!
Jim
PART THREE
From there, it’s not too far to Kingdom of God (on earth, as many Liberation Theologians propound it) equating with Kingdom of Shambhala. I think the heart of that possibility–what we might call the “social” or “temporal” aspect–is embedded in an engagement with Marxism.
What makes that engagement work, if it does, is the 5 Skandha teaching that “The Development of Ego” provides, a structure and how it functions. As I’ve said before: we have two choices. Either so-called “capitalism” developed disconnected from the structure and function of the human mind (“sems”), or it essentially replicates that structure and functioning. Simple as that, all “capitalist” ideology and apologetics notwithstanding.
I think responding to the challenge of Marxism (and it is returning in the form of Slavoj Zizek and Alain Badiou, among others–they just had their second major conference in NYC at Cooper Union, with Zizek giving a talk to the “Occupy Wall Street” participants, October 10th–you can easily find it, and transcripts of the talk, on the internet) is what we most profoundly lack. The Christians are way ahead of us on that score. Merton surely was, as was Gary Snyder. And Chomsky’s always tremendously informative. (The people who hate Chomsky, like our Vajra Zionist contingent, never pinpoint what is incorrect about what he is saying, so you have to conclude they hate him simply for what he is saying–the truth!)
Take Judith: she wouldn’t (or at least it’s highly unlikely) touch Marxism with a 10 foot Toys’R'Us dorje! Like I’ve said previously, to encourage a Buddhist or Shambhalian or Shambbhala Buddhist to study Marxism is like encouraging a pious Catholic monastic to spend more time touching their pee-pee! It’s silly, but true. (Pathetic, really.)
So, as Zizek prognosticates in his “Occupy Wall Street” talk, we might see some “environmental” talk emanating from SI–in fact, we already are. There will be talk of “recycling,” critiques of “genetically modified food,” and so forth, but no talk of a thorough transmutation of (so-called) “capitalism.” A “kinder and gentler” capitalism is the outer limit of the presently reigning “Shambhala Vision.”
Picture a Napolean-like general, short in stature, in full military regalia, astride his mount, atop some vast promentory, gazing out at the battlefiled below–through the wrong end of minature binoculars!
Jim
END
Dear Jim,
Just a brief reply to what you have written.
It might be good to develop your thoughts into an actual article for publication in either the Buddhist or Christian press.
I think that Trungpas engagement with the west both socially and ‘politically’ is only now beginning to be understood. Midals book and the Chronicle Project is a start but much further research needs to be done on who he was actually talking to in the UK, India and America in the sixties and seventies. I think he may have been greatly influenced by many western thinkers, moreso than we thought in the past, in terms of psychology/politics as his books are redolent with such ideas and debates of those times.
So I definitely would look forward to reading such an article that you could produce.
Also thanks for the reference to Zizek on utube I checked it out – he made some important concepts about our present society prevalent in a very public forum in NY.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Jim (or anyone else who has the time to answer this question), this might not be the appropriate place so please feel free to merely direct me to a good post or article elsewhere, but: I’ve been interested for some time in why people who appreciate Zizek do so. I have very little experience of him–just one short book all the way through (Welcome to the Desert of the Real), a few essays, and then a number of video clips.
I wish to keep an open mind about him, but so far my experience over the years has felt a little like that of the boy in The Emperor’s New Clothes. I have studied critical theory, have some familiarity with the figures he discusses most often–Freud, Lacan, Hegel and so on–so it’s not that (although I do loathe needless jargon and find most “theory” unnecessarily and often impenetrably abstract). I just listen to the guy and see … a ton of confusion. All I’ve personally ever seen him doing is coming up with what feel like deliberate provocations, one after the other, one often contradicting the last even, in order never to be able to be pinned down so someone else can do to him what he does to everyone else–ie constantly “one-up” them by manipulating terms slightly differently. On top of this some of his ideas have been very dangerously expressed, (Simon Critchley and others took him to task for this a few years ago).
But since clearly many smart, progressive people do admire him, I assume there is something I am missing. So if anyone could point me to a clear statement about what’s great about him, what insights he has made which are concretely helpful to us, I’d greatly appreciate it. Many thanks.
Dear Rita,
Yes, I am working on an article. In fact, I’ve been working on it, with varying degrees of intensity, for nearly 40 years–literally thousands of pages of notes. I just wanted to lay out a little “straight and narrow” for you on Merton’s and the Vidyadhara’s friendship, those 3 brief items. Otherwise, it all becomes too unwieldy. Then, grow your own.
As far as CTR’s influences in the West: I’d point to Hobbes and Machiavelli, two important political philosophers. (He probably got more from his conservative students, which may–or may not–be so useful today. I know he directed some people away from Gary Snyder. That should tell you something. Or, suggesting people vote for Reagan instead of Carter because Reagan wore a suit and Carter a cardigan sweater. People smooth that over, but that should tell you something, too. Maybe only Merton, whom he regarded as the “first genuine Westerner he had ever met,” might have altered his “cultural conservatism.” Merton could give an inch, and would have had to; the question is, could/would the Vidyadhara have given an inch in exchange–not in a “business deal” sense, but have considered a more liberal-to-radical view of what was going on in the world at that time, especially in Latin America, for example, which he would have gotten from Merton. He got other advice, however, which it seems he took.)
As far as his suggestion to study Lenin: I doubt he studied Lenin, really. He DID like Lenin’s suggestion “religious people were like sheep,” and that was probably enough for him to–off the cuff–suggest studying him at the first Ngeton School talk. It relates to his criticism: “You people are hopelessly RELIGIOUS!” And our shaman, Reggie Ray, couldn’t imagine why he would suggest that, being, it seems, more inclined to valorize the Unseen (i.e. “religion”) as opposed to the Seen. Maybe that’s another thing CTR and Lenin had in common: a focus on the Seen.
And then there was Lenin’s privileging of the political, which he carried forward from Rousseau. I think the Vidyadhara would have appreciated that, too, especially his statement in the GES Vajra Assembly (which I cite regularly): “The GES approach is thamal gyi shepa gone politics, whereas ordinary thamal gyi shepa is religious.” He couldn’t make it any plainer than that!
But study Lenin closely? I don’t think so. One clue there would be: the Vidyadhara once referred to 20th century socialism or communism as a latter day “Robin Hood” phenomena: stealing from the rich to give to the poor. But that leaves out one of Lenin’s most important points: what 20th century socialism or communism was doing was “appropriating the appropriators,” that is, taking back the “commons” from those who took over and privatized the “commons” for personal gain in the first place, turning once self-sufficient farmers, and so forth, into wage laborers. That’s an oversimplification of that history, of course, but essentially true.
Interesting there is: in “The Development of Ego,” CTR mentions “space, not belonging to anyone.” That’s the REAL all-pervasive “commons,” of which “private property,” essential to capitalist social relations, is an epiphenomenon, a subset. I think THAT has to be considered when we think about realizing any genuine “enlightened society.” The Sakyong, at least, made a baby step in that direction by referring to a “classless society” as related to “equanimity,” but his reference seemed purely “spiritual” (i.e. “religious”), a sort of “head” (or “heart”) trip—as we used to say in the 60’s. And, per usual, there was no space to follow up with any questions.
Jim
Dear Jim,
Thanks for your further post.
I hope you get the article together it would be great to read and would have some import on the construction of an enlightened society in a practical sense. Yes I do believe Trungpa was very practical when he was discussing politics.
I now have the book Asian Journal and I am in the midst of reading it. Some initial reflections perhaps you could get together with Richard Arthure and talk to him about what he remembers about Merton and Trungpa because he is mentioned in the book by Merton quite a lot. Perhaps he could also fill you in on other people that Trungpa had conversations with in India in the sixties.
I have also read the eighth chapter about ‘Marxism and Monastic Perspectives’ that you mentioned. Here Merton does make a parallel between the life of a monk and the life of a Marxist in that they both stand against the status quo –so of course this does make a connection between the secular and the sacred-doesn’ t it. Merton is also taken with Herbert Marcuses book ‘One-Dimensional Man’ which equates both eastern and western societies of the time ie Russia and America as being equally totalitarian even though the US was richer. I wonder if Merton discussed this book with Trungpa as he seems to be highly impressed by its point of view. Yes intriguing the conversation that might have been going on between them about politics and religion in general.
Thanks also for your added reflections on how Trungpa ‘did’ politics. Will post if I find more added gems in Asian Journal which I now think should be a set textbook for people studying the shambhalian teachings.
Best from the UK
Rita Ashworth.
PART ONE (of two)
Dear Damchö,
Yes, it’s probably true: Zizek isn’t universally appreciated, much less loved, and we could also say he’s (to put it mildly) a bit “over the top”—that patented speediness, constantly tugging at his array of t-shirts so they don’t stick to the perspiration we can imagine streaming down his body in his frenetic display of philosophical reference, forms of logic, pop cultural tidbits, a kind of verbal “street sweeper.” (Google “Street Sweeper Social Club” for that reference.)
At the same time, I don’t find him mean-spirited, arbitrary, inhuman, or elitist (viewing that word as having a negative connotation whereas, in some cases, in o-u-r language, we view that word as having a positive denotation, our sometimes grandiose and seemingly class-specific notions of “leadership”)—maybe a sort of “Fancy Dan,” a “fast gun,” quick-draw artist, spinning his six-guns, blowing smoke off the tips of the barrels, suddenly bending over, shooting dimes off the noses of a zig-zagging line of clowns (was one Cynthia?), that sort of thing.
I could point to several particular items in his voluminous and often complex writings that I find useful (not that I’ve read it all, or understand it all, but some of it: as with Marxism-Leninism, I like the challenge, an opportunity to consider something I never considered before—you know, inquisitiveness), that I feel simpatico with (as opposed to many clear and simple and tidy and jargon-free hunks of Shambhala Buddhist blarney, for example).
But I think it would be more useful right now if you could be more specific about what it is you find most problematic in his writings (aside from his public persona). Like a couple specific examples where he displays that “ton of confusion”—that is, a few OUNCES of it, suggesting what it is you think—in each instance—he was confused about? Or an example (or two) of his “deliberate provocations,” and whether or not you think being “provocative” is essentially “bad”? How about a specific case of his “one-upping” someone, or a group of someones?
PART TWO
Most helpful, though, might be his “dangerous usages of language”? (I know Simon Critchely has become a sort of ethical watchdog on that score within Continental Philosophy in the wake of Heidegger’s Nazism—the influence of Emmanuel Levinas there—with the spotlight on “deconstruction.” Keep in mind Buddhism is a 2500 year old tradition of “deconstruction,” not a “build up” of anything, and which ultimately, as a consequence, poses a direct critique of Marxist-Leninist “constructivism,” rooted in the fetishization of “the subject”—no sense of “zero,” of “groundlessness,” of “anatman.” But in the context of Critchley’s ethical challenge, you should not fail to place under your microscope alongside the critiques of Heidegger and Zizek the Vidyadhara’s statement that, from the “aerial” point of view of “space,” so what if a “town in Kansas” blows up [1975 Vajrayana Seminary transcripts].)
And then there’s Zizek’s “contradictoriness”—that would be a good one, too, and perhaps you could interrogate what could very well be his overly dialectical mind (in the Western Hegelian and Lacanian senses, of course, not in the sense of what I regard as the superior “dialectical logic” of Prajnaparamita). As Zizek has floated some critiques of Vajrayana Buddhism in the past (see his critique of Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche in the last few pages of THE PARRALLAX VIEW, and of Zen in WELCOME TO THE DESERT OF THE REAL, which you must have seen already) without demonstrating much knowledge about either—though correctly, I feel, sniffing out (like SI) that it wants to become the “golden” hood ornament on the Neo-Liberal [imperialist] juggernaut. That’s something I’m hoping to “provoke” a response from Zizek (or Alain Badiou, his partner in “Neo-Commie” crime) about—the superiority of the Prajnaparamita dialectical system not just for investigating psychology and epistemology, but political economy as well.
So, anyway, Damchö, great question!
Jim
END
Hi Jim,
When you say “I could point to several particular items in his … writings that I find useful,” that’s really what I was hoping you would do.
As far as my negative impressions of him: I went over to YouTube and literally clicked something at random, finding this:
“I was always disgusted with this notion of ‘I love the world,’ ‘universal love.’ I don’t like the world. Basically I’m somewhat in-between ‘I hate the world” or ‘I’m indifferent towards it.’ But the whole of reality, it’s just it. It’s stupid. It is out there. I don’t care about it. Love for me is an extremely violent act. Love is not ‘I love you all,’ love means I pick out something and, you know, it’s again this structure of imbalance. Even if this something is just a small detail, a fragile individual person, I say ‘I love you more than anything else.’ In this quite formal sense, love is evil.”
I have turned that paragraph this way and that and can’t come up with anything coherent in it. Reality itself, “the whole of reality,” is … “stupid”? “[Reality] is out there. I don’t care about it.” ? Love is an “extremely violent” act? Okay, so then I think maybe I’m sort of getting something when he speaks of love involving discrimination etc. Maybe he’s trying to say that elevating another person at the expense of everything else is “in this quite formal sense” “evil.” Maybe he’s just speaking of “love” in a very narrow sense of all-consuming obsession or whatever. But then … he’s just said he’s “disgusted” with the idea of loving the world, universal love. So … universal love is disgusting, but particular love is “extremely violent” and “evil?!” And reality itself is stupid, something he doesn’t care about!
This is what I mean by his confusion. If it were an exceptional example, okay. But in my experience it’s not.
Again, simply clicking on adjacent YouTube clips–someone mentions vegetarians and he instantly replies: “degenerates, degenerates, they’ll all turn into monkeys.” Okay, one might say he’s having fun, that this is his sense of humor. The trouble is he never really *sounds* like he’s making a joke. On the contrary, he always sounds so invested in everything he says. And given all I have seen, I feel sure that if someone challenged him on that comment he would simply respond with something even *more* extreme. This is what he does. (continued)
(continued)
Once more, an adjacent clip: “I am not human, I am a monster, I claim. It’s not that I have a mask of a theoretician and beneath I am a more human person–I like chocolate cake, I like this, I like that, and so on, which makes me human. I rather prefer myself as somebody who, not to offend others, pretends, plays that he is human.” So okay, again, is he just having fun? But I’ve never seen him really break from this persona. This rhetorical grandstanding and hype. And I’ve never actually seen him express his heart.
As for the question of irresponsibility, a number of critiques along these lines have appeared. Eg, anyone who is interested can read the lengthy exchange between him and Critchley that is online. There were a total of 6 or 7 exchanges I think–essays and long letters–between them. There’s a bibliography and timeline of these on Critchley’s Wikipedia page. Critchley was in part taking him to task on a glorification of the notion of “divine violence.”
Then there was the interview with the India Times in which he seems to praise Gandhi’s “violence,” claiming that he was in one sense “more violent than Hitler,” because Hitler’s killings were merely “reactive.” Well … okay … so, in his usual way, he’s dialectically redefining “violence” here as something good. But then he immediately goes on to say that Gandhi’s actions “helped the British imperialists to stay in India longer … [He] didn’t do anything to stop the functioning of the British empire or the way it functioned here. That for me is a problem. Let us locate violence properly.” So now … it’s unclear, because he seems to be being quite critical of Gandhi… This is what I mean by the muddle I find in his thought, combined with a strong liking for provocative, dangerous language.
As far as whether or not being provocative in and of itself is “bad,” of course not. But Zizek–again, based on what I’ve seen–seems to pursue it, again in the form of dialectical reversal, for its own sake. That’s his shtick, from what I’ve observed.
Again, I’m really just interested in hearing what people *do* like about his thought. I’ve shared the problems I have with him, but if there is something in his work which people attempting to follow dharma can be helped by, I’d truly like to hear it.
(continued)
Oh, one more thing, and then I’ll shut up!
One thing I disagree with you about. I don’t get the relevance of the seminary quote. For two reasons: 1) it comes from vajrayana seminary, ie was not intended to be for the general public. By contrast Zizek’s talks and writings are of course entirely public. And 2) it was thus addressed to committed buddhists who knew that the indispensable foundations of vajrayana are hinayana and mahayana–without which it becomes dangerous indeed (“a spiritual atomic bomb”). But I never hear Zizek talking about or even implying emptiness, or the inseparability of emptiness and compassion. So *even* if we were to view his motivation in the highest possible light, unfortunately his use of language is all the more liable to misappropriation without the heart underneath it.
I agree that this is a public forum and that Jim should be more careful about quoting restricted material.
Damcho and John,
A couple things: first, Damcho, you’ve misunderstood that “atomic bomb” reference completely. It wasn’t about the “danger” of Vajrayana without Hinayana and Mahayana discipline, as you suggest—getting “blowed up, real good,” if you were a naughty (or ignorant, like Zizek, of it) in that regard. It was about “blowing up” the boundary between “inside” and “outside,” something I refer to regularly, if obliquely, a teaching I took to heart at the time, as I was there, and could relate to it—pressure from “inside” and pressure from “outside” your practice, your life, secreting a kind of nitroglycerine, that can explode the usual “me in here,” all that “out there” boundary: also relatable to his great “working with negativity” teaching, and the transmutation of anger, extreme anger: “Vajra Anger, the flame of death burns fiercely and consumes the fabric of dualistic thoughts.” That kind of explosive combustion. Today, following the Dalai Lama and Sakyong (not the Vidyadhara), and in the neo-psychotherapeutic “non-violent communication” environment, there would be pressure on the student to turn that kind of explosive energy into “patience.” The other option—the tantric option—has been lost.
I focus on that particular trangression, John, because a half-baked version of that “spiritual atomic bomb” teaching was relayed by Ginsberg to Ferlinghetti around the time it was taught, and ended up in the City Lights “Journal of All Beings.” Lawrence (not being the sharpest tool in the Beatnik shed–Snyder is, in my view), had it all garbled up, so at least, now, there’s a public statement to serve as an antedote to it. Many years ago, Alan Watts wrote a short article that became a popular pamphlet, “Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen.” I think there’s such a thing as “Beat Tantra.” Allen might be an exponent of that, for all his being a “sacred cow” in the larger Shambhala Buddhist community. (Ever notice his statements about “Crazy Wisdom”? Just what you’d expect, more Beatnik than Vajrayana. As far as the poetry world goes—and you might agree–Bill Knott’s more a “Crazy Wisdom” person than Allen ever could be.)
The relevance of the quote I cited by the Vidyadhara had nothing to do with where it was uttered, but what it meant: in the context of BOUNDLESS CENTERLESS SPACE, with that vast view, a town blowing up in Kansas being a “localized” event (see public EVAM Seminar, Talk 2), not such a big deal—from that “pointless point of view” of space. It’s no big Vajrayana practice secret, anymore than his comments on Merton that happened to have been uttered in the context of a Vajrayana section of one of the Vajradhatu Seminaries (and repeated, among others, by Judith Simmer-Brown and myself in various Christian-Buddhist conferences, like the International Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies gatherings, for example, or in the 6 Merton Kansas Conferences I participated in while looking after my mother in Tennessee.)
The point was: Heidegger said very much the same thing in h-i-s all-important context of BEING (and Derrida was pilloried by various humanistic moralists and many Marxists for at least engaging with what Heidegger was saying, not pooh-poohing it outright, though ultimately, he ended up with a similar critical view, but found Heidegger highly useful for an interrogation of what actually constitutes the most essential components of fascism: for that, see Derrida’s difficult OF SPIRIT), statements by Heidegger like (to quote Jeff Collins in his excellent short book, HEIDEGGER AND THE NAZIS): “Mechanized agriculture is in essence the same kind of thing as the manufacturing of corpses in gas chambers; the Holocaust was equitable as a phenomena to the expulsion of Germans from the Baltic states; mass death from starvation (in China) is ‘inauthentic’ death [see Adorno’s blistering critique of Heidegger, THE JARGON OF AUTHENTICITY, and other statements on the Holocaust related to Heidegger in NEGATIVE DIALECTICS--JH]; and if the post-war housing shortage was causing immiseration, people need first to note their real misery is FORGETTING TO THINK ON BEING.”
See the parallel? Not the “same,” but parallel, something overarching that doesn’t meet the eye of the average bear, but should. You could almost hear the Vidyadhara saying: “People first need to note their real misery is FORGETTING TO MEDITATE ON SPACE,” of course, he’d more likely say BE SPACE, i-d-e-n-t-i-f-y with it, particularly in formless practice, not “meditate ON it.” That’s another thing that’s been lost in the new and improved “mind on an object” sitting practice, and who knows what other “improvements” are being cooked up as we blather. But Heidegger’s valorizing of “thinking” a real problem, especially when you consider (as he didn’t) that “the essence of thinking is non-thought”!
Jim
Today I’m packing up books that no-one will ever read again. They are just completely useless dust collectors. Almost all once belonged to dead strangers. This is like boxing up the books of a dead stranger whose house has to be emptied. At least it spares my son the eventual duty of having to deal with it when that fateful day comes. The question is what to do now that they’re all clean and neatly packed in boxes like baby coffins. Twelve boxes of poetry are a white elephant no library or charity wants …I mourn the death of poetry a little but how can I mourn the death of what was never born,… but really what I am so sad about is how precarious my master is and how inevitable…and even though he might make a sarcastic remark. Thank you.
Thanks for the reply Jim. I’ve remembered very little Heidegger so can’t add anything to your thoughts there.
Very powerful context you’ve provided for the phrase I used. The only thing I would add is to wonder whether Rinpoche used it more than once? I was thinking of this passage in “Journey Without Goal”: “The institution of tantra … has been presented very generously to American students by many competent and great teachers. Still, many students get into trouble. They can’t take it. They simply can’t take it. They end up destroying themselves . They end up playing with the energy until it becomes a spiritual atomic bomb.… [D]ealing with our state of mind from the subtle tantra point of view is extremely dangerous–highly dangerous and equally highly productive. Therefore we should be very careful and open when we talk about vajrayana. Nonexistence is the only preparation for tantra, and we should realize that there is no substitute.”
My main point there was just that VCTR’s provocative language exists only and always within the context of buddhist practice, presuming extensive engagement with hinayana and mahayana. Zizek’s doesn’t, at all.
I appreciate that Zizek is trying to shock / trick us into looking at language from unaccustomed perspectives. I just haven’t (yet) seen the wisdom there that makes all the difference in such a practice.
[Excerpt from VCTR's "Art and Society," Windhorse Broadside, Samurai Press, 1997, speaking of atomic bombs...]
…
THE BASIC VISION is that we would like to organise and create a decent society. We could be slightly, positively arrogant by even saying “enlightened society.”
At the same time, we do not want to offend any of you. You might think that enlightened society means something very haughty and unreasonable and aggressive.
The only thing we want to do is to invite human beings to take part in something very real and gentle and beautiful, all at the same time. We have to be so genuine and gentle.
Otherwise there is no way to work with the universe at all. You have a tremendous responsibility: the first is to yourself, to become gentle and genuine; the second is to work for others in that same way.
It is very important to realise how powerful all of us are. What we are doing may seem insignificant, but this notion of dharma art will be like an atomic bomb you carry in your mind. You could play a tremendous role in developing peace throughout the world.
[Adapted from the Dharma Art seminar "Heaven, Earth and Man" given by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in Boulder, Colorado, July 1979, which text appears in The Art of Calligraphy: Joining Heaven and Earth, Shambhala Pubs, 1994.]
Dear Damchö and John Castlebury,
Well, those other two usages that you cite of ”spiritual atomic bomb” slipped by me. The one from JOURNEY WITHOUT GOAL I read; the other that John Castlebury cites, maybe not. The one I referred to was from the Maha Ati section of the 1975 Vajradhatau Seminary in Snowmass. I was there and, having an explosive temper (though it takes many months of incessant poking to set it off—the last time it REALLY went off, one of the two “pokers” literally fainted from the force of my anger–: anger was always my “working basis” with the Vidyadhara from Day One, and, as that explosion took place not too long before that Seminary, I took that particular rendition of that “spiritual atomic bomb” teaching personally–took it to heart.) His teaching was ALWAYS related to experiences of his students (to push them toward practice), NOT to texts he was reading on “deep” retreat—like “you know who.” That’s why his teachings are so raw, rugged, close-to-the-heart; feel so personal, so insightful.
But the build up of pressure and explosion he referred in the 1975 Seminary context hardly seemed “gentle,” nor did it have anything to do with “genuineness,” in particular. (In the passage John Castlebury cites, “atomic bomb” seems related to an “innate power” we all have, which, in turn, could very well relate to the “non-existence” [Maha Ati] Damcho cites: I suspect it does. And that’s related to “Kingdom of No Dharma” from “Sadhana of Mahamudra” which, in turn, is related to KOS. It DID have everything to do with Vajrayana practice, though. And in that 1975 Seminary context, the Vidyadhara was talking about a practice-oriented p-r-o-c-e-s-s, not a “state of mind,” though, the post-explosion result might be “non-existence,” a SUDDEN and profoundly penetrating View beyond “absolute” and “relative,” “inside” and “outside”—beyond the whole roster of binary oppositions. Maybe that is what he meant by “peace,” beyond “this” vs. “that” warfare—“thoroughly, completely, fully” as he always used to say?
Here’s a rendition of that teaching by Sogyal Rinpoche (THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING, p. 48) that the Vidyadhara provided an incredible elaboration of in that 1975 Seminary teaching, it seems to me. I imagined that “explosion” was a traditional image taken from Padmasambhava, or somebody like that, but it’s uncertain. But Sogyal does refer to that “vase” image, usually related to the moment of (“literal”) death, and that image can be found at the end of Jigme Lingpa’s “The Innermost Essence.” (See CTR’s MUDRA, p. 26.) Maybe the Vidyadhara had “re-worked” that vase image in the 1975 teaching without mentioning it? Here’s Sogyal:
“For even though we have the same inner nature as Buddha, we have not recognized it because it is so enclosed and wrapped up in our individual ordinary minds [sic]. Imagine an empty vase. The space inside is exactly the same as the space outside. Only the fragile walls of the vase separate one from the other. Our Buddha mind is enclosed within the walls of our ordinary mind [sic, again]. But when we become enlightened, it is as if that vase SHATTERS [not “gentle”—JH] into pieces. The space ‘inside” merges instantly with the space ‘outside.’ They become one. There and then we realize they were never separated or different, they were always the same.”
So, I have melded and extended those teachings—the Vidyadhara’s and Sogyal’s and Jigme Lingpa’s—to represent the vase as a “Garuda Egg,” and that “exploding” of the boundary between “inside” and “outside” (the apparent “two”) being the moment when the “Garuda hatches from the egg fully grown.” Simple as pie.
Jim
Damchö,
You bring up an interesting point when you mention the Vidyadhara stating that—in terms of the tantric approach, the “short path” approach, the “cutting through” approach (contrary to SMR’s “gradualism,” and regular references to “past” and “future” lives, which the Vidyadhara n-e-v-e-r mentioned)—that without a sense of “non-existence,” the tantric approach to “working with energy” (perhaps especially to the energy of “negativity”)–though potentially extremely “productive,” could become very dangerous, self-destructive. So that’s a third usage of the “atomic bomb” image.
That is PRECISELY what is so terrible about the erosion, the about-to-be-phased-out original sitting practice the Vidyadhara taught. It’s with that teaching of the sitting practice concerned with the “outbreath” and “gap” that we get our first glimpse of “non-existence”—which is BEYOND “deep” and “shallow,” by the way. The new and improved (actually older and moldier) sitting practice, with “mind on an object,” actually performs an ABORTION on that possible first glimpse of “non-existence.” For all the horns & whistles of the SI “fund raising” and “PR” machines blaring–the New Vows, the New Curriculum, all of it, clogging the airways–this is how the Sakyong repays new students: short-changing them with the sitting practice, the CRACKED foundation of everything to follow.
Jim
There will be no posterity, and no literature either. Up against Armageddon, it’s all the more apparent. And all the more ludicrous to posit future readers. It’s an absurdity to bother, absurd as talking to a cat. And it’s even more absurd to be talking to a deaf cat, but nevertheless I still do talk to our geriatric deaf calico, but with symbols and gestures.
From THE MYTH OF FREEDOM, based on U.S. lectures 1971-1973, from the chapter “Styles of Imprisonment: Self-Absorption,” page 34:
…At that moment everything we see appears to be beautiful, loving, even the most grotesque situations of life seem heavenly. Anything that is unpleasant or aggressive seems beautiful because we have achieved oneness with ego. In other words, ego lost track of its intelligence. This is the absolute, ultimate achievement of bewilderment, the depths of ignorance – extremely powerful. It is a kind of spiritual atomic bomb, self-destructive in terms of compassion, in terms of communicating, in terms of stepping out of the bondage of ego. The whole approach in the realm of the gods is stepping in and in and in, churning out more and more chains with which to bind oneself. The more we develop our practice, the more bondage we create. The scriptures cite the analogy of the silkworm which binds itself with its own silk thread until it finally suffocates itself.
From THE LION’S ROAR, based on Nine Yanas Seminar, Boulder, CO, 1973, page 139:
[Q]: I have one more question. Before his enlightenment, Buddha was practicing asceticism, and he almost destroyed himself fasting. In its reverse asceticism, its extremism, does tantra have the danger of being self-destructive?
[A]: Yes. Unless you proceed according to the whole three-yana principle and have gone through hinayana and mahayana beforehand. I have been saying that constantly, again and again. You cannot practice tantra unless you start from hinayana and mahayana. Unless you have gone through hinayana and mahayana, you cannot get into tantra at all. Without that, tantra becomes like a spiritual atomic bomb.
From CRAZY WISDOM, based on Jackson Hole and KCL Seminars, 1972, page 57:
Padmasambhava [who brought Buddhism to Tibet] developed an approach for communicating with future generations. In relation to a lot of his writings, he thought, “These words may not be important at this point, but I am going to write them down and bury them in the mountains of Tibet.” And he did so. He thought, “Someone will discover them later and find them extraordinarily mind-blowing. Let them have a good time then.”
This was a unique approach. Gurus nowadays think purely in terms of the effect they might have now. They do not consider trying to have a powerful effect on the future. But Padmasambhava thought, “If I leave an example of my teaching behind, even if people of future generations do not experience my example, just hearing my words alone could cause a spiritual atomic bomb to explode in a future time.” Such an idea was unheard-of. It is a very powerful thing.
Ah, I had the impression I’d come across the phrase in several different places. Thanks John. The context I was most thinking of when I used it was the one in The Lion’s Roar.
I had completely forgotten the dharma art passage, which is very inspiring.
PART ONE (of two)
Well, Damcho,
Back to Zizek: maybe your problem with Zizek is wanting to find in him—in his work– something to help you “follow the dharma”? Why not “follow” the Vidyadhara’s approach, instead, study the subject—that alien “other”—then see where you can infiltrate the dharma into it—into Zizek, Badiou, or various other Frankfort School/Critical Theorists like Herbert Marcuse, Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, etal? Not to mention Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida, that Western philosophical (deconstructive) lineage? You might, in the process, learn something from them and, thusly, be able to have an intelligent conversation with them (or their present day followers) should the occasion arise. You know, a reciprocal relationship of some sort? It seems you were doing that, to a certain extent, already. Am I right?
I could cite other examples (say, as with Nietzsche, that the Chakravartin/Rigden King is a superior Ubermensch, and illustrate with concrete examples why I see it that way), but let’s take Marx: if you were to establish that the superior dialectical system for studying ANYTHING was Prajnaparamita, imagine if Marx had developed his method of analysis (of what boiled down to an examination of “political economy,” the major force in modern society) based on Nagarjuna’s Madhyamika system, not Hegel’s extraordinarily complicated dialectical system, where you also have to be an expert on Spinoza to begin to make heads or tails of it—and then, try to get a handle on what Marx did with THAT?
As Marxism is alive and well today, that approach (introducing Nagarjuna’s system into the Marxist mind, not easy, but it could be done [though, in some cases, they seem to be as closed-minded to us as we tend to be toward them, a mutual butt-headedness operative in the situation]—if you relate to them on their own terms, not impose yours/ours view on them, and cease pooh-poohing them because they don’t help you “follow the dharma”—a novel idea, eh?) is still an option.
On that subject of Marxism’s aliveness and wellness today (though it needs some help from us, as we desperately need help from them—our Magoo-ish view of contemporary society [exemplified by Karmapa XVII on The Chronicles the other day, then, he showered by pious mush for his facile remarks on “environmental protection” by the gathered throng—was he coached by Peter Volz. I wonder?] would be much more sharply focused, especially when it comes to environmental destruction, where we want to skip over what’s actually destroying the environment—“capitalism”—and what it has to do with the teachings we have received, and move on to some cornball notion of “protection”), here is Hegelian Marxist, Fredrick Jameson, a major force in Cultural Studies:
“Marxism is the science of capitalism, or better still, in order to give depth at once to both terms, it is the science of the inherent contradictions of capitalism [read the most fundamental one, “dualistic fixation”—JH]. This means it is incoherent to celebrate the ‘death of Marxism’ in the same breath with which one announces the definitive triumph of capitalism and the market [the Sakyong bought this “triumph” years ago, that’s why he talks to Chamber of Commerce, Rotary Club, Gioldman Sachs Board, Aspen Institute, etal—JH]. The latter would seem to augur a secure future for the former, leaving aside the matter of how ‘definitive’ its triumph could possibly be.” (Monthly Review, April 1996, p. 1.)
So, one thing I like about Zizek and with which I agree wholeheartedly is that Stalinism collapsed in 1990; Capitalism collapsed in 2008. Rather than grapple with the dregs of Zizek at his most obtuse and contrarian that you randomly dredged off the internet, I’ll conclude (in PART TWO ) with Zizek on Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche from one of his major books, THE PARALLAX VIEW. (You can already feel the tsunami of energy it’ll take to ignore what he has to say.)
Jim
PART TWO (end)
Damchö,
Here’s Zizek at the end of THE PARALLAX VIEW (pp. 383-84), some emphases added:
“A wonderfully ambiguous indicator of our present ideological predicament is SANDCASTLES: BUDDHISM AND GLOBAL FINANCE, a documentary by Alexander Oey (2005) with commentaries from the economist Arnoud Boot, the sociologist Saskia Sassen, and the Tibetan Buddhist teacher Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. Sassen and Boot discuss the gigantic scope, power, and social and economic effects of global finance: capital markets, now valued at an estimated $83 trillion, e-x-i-s-t w-i-t-h-i-n a s-y-s-t-e-m b-a-s-e-d p-u-r-e-l-y o-n SELF-INTEREST, in which herd behavior, often based on rumor, can inflate or destroy the value of companies—or whole economies—in a matter of hours. Khyentse Rinpoche counters them with ruminations about the nature of human perception, illusion, and enlightenment; his philosophico-ethical statement ‘Release your attachment to something that is not there in reality, but is a perception,’ is supposed to throw a new light on the mad dance of billion-dollar speculations. Echoing the Buddhist notion that there is no Self, only a stream of continuous perceptions, Sassen comments about global capital: ‘It’s not that there are $83 trillion. It is essentially a continuous set of movements. It disappears and it reappears.’…
“The problem here, of course, is: how are we to read this parallel between Buddhist ontology and the structure of virtual capitalism’s universe? The film tends toward the humanist reading: seen through a Buddhist lens, the exuberance of global financial wealth is illusory, divorced from objective reality—the v-e-r-y r-e-a-l h-u-m-a-n SUFFERING [for the 99%--JH] c-r-e-a-t-e-d b-y d-e-a-l-s m-a-d-e o-n t-r-a-d-i-n-g f-l-o-o-r-s a-n-d i-n b-o-a-r-d r-o-o-m-s [by the 1%--JH] invisible to most of us. If, however, we accept the premise that the value of material wealth, and one’s experience of reality, is subjective, and that desire plays a decisive role in both daily life and neo-liberal economics, is it not possible to draw precisely the opposite conclusion? Is it not that our traditional life-world was based on naïve-realist substantialist notions of external reality composed of fixed objects, while the unprecedented dynamic of ‘virtual capitalism’ confronts us with the illusory nature of reality? What better proof of the nonsubstantial character of reality could there be than a gigantic fortune which can dissolve into nothing in a couple of hours, just because of a sudden false rumor? Consequently, why complain that financial futures speculations are ‘divorced from objective reality,’ when the basic premise of Buddhist ontology is that there is no ‘objective reality’?
“Thus the only ‘critical’ lesson to be drawn from the Buddhist perspective about today’s virtual capitalism is that we should be aware that we are dealing with a mere theater of shadows, with insubstantial virtual entities, and, as a result, that we should not fully engage ourselves in the capitalist game, that we should play the game with an inner distance. Virtual capitalism could thus act as a first step toward liberation: it confronts us with the fact that the cause of our suffering and enslavement is not objective reality itself (there is no such thing) but our Desire, our craving for material things, our excessive attachment to them; all we have to do, after we rid ourselves of the false notion of substantialist reality, is thus to renounce our desire itself, to adopt an attitude of inner peace and distance…no wonder such Buddhism can function as the perfect ideological supplement of today’s virtual capitalism: it allows us to participate in it with an inner distance—with our fingers crossed, as it were.”
For a peek through the keyhole into what Zizek is getting at, here’s Zen Buddhist Deep Ecologist Gary Snyder—this, from about 45 years ago:
“Historically, Buddhist philosophers have failed to analyze out the degree to which ignorance and suffering are caused or encouraged by social factors, considering fear-and-desire to be given facts of the human condition. Consequently the major concern of Buddhist philosophy is epistemology and ‘psychology’ with no attention paid to historical or sociological problems…Institutional Buddhism has been conspicuously ready to accept or ignore the inequalities and tyrannies of whatever political system it found itself under. This can be death to Buddhism, because it is death to any meaningful function of compassion. Wisdom without compassion feels no pain.” (Gary Snyder, Earth House Hold, New Directions, 1969, p. 90.)
Jim
Hi Jim, thanks for your responses. Certainly the passage you quote from The Parallax View is worth pondering more, and I have no doubt his books contain a number of other such passages. I’ve seen the documentary he refers to also, so reading that was all the more interesting.
You ask, “maybe your problem with Zizek is wanting to find in him–in his work–something to help you ‘follow the dharma’?” That’s a very interesting question. After thinking about it for awhile I would say: for the most part, no. It’s simply that I’ve come across too many wild moments from him in videos, interviews, and essays. (Another one: his segment in that recent documentary about contemporary philosophers–Examined Life. His contribution there was hard for me to follow and didn’t strike me as worth putting further effort in in order to do so. Perhaps I need to watch it again; that was just my first thought.) In any event one can’t read everything that has some merit of course. So we make our choices, based on personal energies, styles.
The area of uniquely western thought I’ve personally found the most enriching and helpful has been the deconstruction of Gender. I think for me maybe that has served a similar function as Marxism has for you–creating fruitful connections between dharma practice and engagement with the world.
In any event I will reread your SZ quotation and continue to think about it. Thanks again.
[excerpts from Chogyam Trungpa’s translation of Patrul Rinpoche’s poem of advice to “Abushri”, which is found in Mudra, Shambhala Pubs., 1982]
…
Lectures sound interesting
But they don’t help your mind.
The logical mind seems sharp
But it’s really the seed of confusion.
Oral instruction sounds very profound
But it doesn’t help if it isn’t practised.
Forget about browsing through books
Which causes distraction and eyestrain.
…
Preaching without first-hand experience
Of the subject is like dancing on books.
The audience may seem willing to listen
But they’re not really interested at all.
If you do not practise what you preach
You’ll be ashamed of it sooner or later,
So forget about hollow rhetoric!
…
You’re as low as the lowest
So you ought to be humble.
There’s a whole hierarchy above you
So stop being proud.
You shouldn’t have too many close associates
Because differences would surely arise.
Since you’re not involved
In religious and political activities
Don’t make demands on yourself.
Give up everything, that’s the point!
This Teaching is given by Yogi Trime Lodro from his own experience to his dear friend Abushri. Do practise it, although there is nothing to practise. Give up everything – that’s the whole point. Don’t get angry with yourself even if you can’t practise the Dharma.
Damchö & John Castlebury,
Yes, it would be hard for me to retrace my steps exactly–maybe it was seeing or listening to all those talks and panels on “compassion” over the years and I experienced them like watching those body-building contests, all that grotesque flexing, but now with a pious twist: all that flexing of what I would call “compassion pecs,” the individualistic approach, now prevalent in SI.
So, I’ve always had a tremendous fondness for Sulak Sivaraksa, the Thai Buddhist and winner of the Right Livelihood Award twice, the real Nobel Peace Prize, his stress on the systemic or structural aspects of violence (and no stress on nicey-nicey non-violent talk, particularly, especially when those pecs-flexers tended to identify with the capitalism, violence incarnate….I recall Merton’s sarcasm about those “Good Cattlicks” who identify wholeheartedly with “capitalist culture”)–which he got, via Hans Galtung, from the great Liberation Theologians of Latin America. The Sakyong giving that Peace Prize to the Dalai Lama (and at the Stupa dedication no less) more a publicity stunt than anything, particularly knowing of the strained relationship (over the years) between the Vidyadhara and the Dalai Lama. And my friend, Chris Chandler, pointing out lately: the Dalai Lama does not CALL OFF the suicides by immolation of the Tibetan and monks and nuns in China/Tibet, knowing of their blind faith in him, plunking those liberal heartstrings back in the West. Now that China is capitalist, they see their ticket to getting Tibet back being it also going “:democratic,” the fake kind we’ve got. A sick situation.
So, anyway, encouraged, first, by Merton, secondarily by Gary Snyder, and thirdly by the Vidyadhara (his suggestion to study Lenin), I’ve taken up the study of Marx: I like the challenge. I think his time has come again, but re-tolled by Prajnaparamita “method.” (The Vidyadhara called it that once: a “method.”) That’s why I like Zizek and Badiou, in particular. But I re-write them according to the Vidyadhara’s teachings. What he’d think about that today, I don’t know. But it seems to be a major weakness of his son and other prominent Tibetan lamas, like Dzongsar—that LACK. And Ginsberg’s anti-Marxism set that back decades among some people, the way the Vidyadhara said Beatnikism set back Buddhism 25 years in the West. Prior to that, I had (and still have) a strong connection and appreciation for Chomsky, an anarcho-socialist. But, as anyone who knows me knows, I never mention–or hardly ever—“socialism.” I see “dualistic fixation” across the board, A-Z, Z-A, and the antidote: the Sword of Manjushri. That’s pretty much it. But my study of Marxism is ALWAYS in the context of Merton’s Christian/Buddhist/Marxist schema. Always. It’s just that the stress right now, after 40 years, is comparative dialectics—culminating in a rough equivalence between Cosmic Mirror and Godhead, the “zero-pure” point conventional dialectical synthesis (and its forward motion) is always in flight from.
But feminism–gender studies–is a whole other matter. I recall my old friend, Cynthia Kneen, referring to THE FOURTEEN (the 14 male Board of Directors when the Vidyadhara was around). I also recall, circa 1976 in Boulder, a woman in a Tantra Group, hoping she’d be born a man in her next life, more suitable to “enlightenment.” This was in the heyday of “making friends” with yourself. More recently I heard a woman, a close student of Tsoknyi Rinpoche, saying the same thing. Apparently no Tibetan lama I know of has gone far to dispel this kind of thinking on the part of Western women students, except maybe Khandro Rinpoche? I wondered: how could you make friends with yourself if you desired to be another gender? Likewise, for me, how “make friends” with myself when there’s tremendous pressure to become a British aristocrat? As Mr. John Perks put it, “We must create our own Shambhala etiquette and protocol, which ultimately should bring together the traditions of Great Britain [a dominant racist and imperialist culture at one time—JH] and Tibet [in the global picture, a Pratyekabuddha culture as the Vidyadhara pointed out, a sort of “ingrown toenail” relative to the world—JH], along with some Japanese highlights.” I remember thinking, and wrote: “The British are coming. This time, instead of Redcoats, it’s Red Hats!”
A final detail: the publication where Ferlinghetti’s re-hash of Ginsberg’s half-baked comments on the 1975 Seminary/Maha Ati “spiritual atomic bomb” talk (I suppose Allen interpreted it as a criticism of Merwin….) was in “The Journal For Protection of All Beings,” so maybe John Castlebury has that—or access to it—for a look see. (By the way, I quote that Petrul Rinpoche poem all the time, most especially–in the context of the convolutedness of Western dialectics: “Logic seems sharp, but it’s really the seed of confusion.” Zero-pure, heavy on the zero, is simple, ultra-simple.)
Enough.
Jim
Q&A on Pure Vision,
Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche
Taiwan, 2/18/2011
Translator: Rinpoche has taught somewhere that pure vision is to look at things without any dualistic mind, but at this moment when we already have the dualistic mind, how do we go back to pure vision?
Rinpoche: That’s a good question. You can begin by educating yourself that no matter what your perception is, your perception is only YOUR perception – if you can manage to do that, 90% of the pure vision is done…because many times we think that our perception is NOT JUST our perception but that our perception is how it is FOR REAL.
That’s already a big humility. Buddha’s own cousin Ananda without him most of the sutras we don’t have. And he begins the sutras saying, “Thus have I heard.” Such a humility – which means “this is how I heard, [but] I could be wrong, somebody may have heard it differently. This is how I have heard.”
It would be very arrogant for him to say, “This is what Buddha said.” But he didn’t say that. He said, “Thus have I heard.” Not only that – he said [he heard this way] “at one time, at one place,” indicating Buddha may have said something else to a different place and different time.
But his humility is balanced with his confidence also. He said immediately after that, “There was So-and-so Arhats and So-and-so Maha Bodhisattvas and Mahasattvas” and all of that, so he’s bringing the witness…
Thank you, John Castlebury. I love this discussion about ‘pure vision’ and the humility of acknowledging that how we see things, what we perceive and understand, could be wrong. Admitting that it is just MY perception and it could be inaccurate is actually a practice. To make the shift from certainty about the correctness of one’s own perceptions to allowing for the relativity of one’s opinions, perspectives, feelings or perceptions can make a huge difference in our relationships. It’s actually very close to the main practice of ‘nonviolent communication,’ or the practice of nonaggression.
And I really appreciate DKR’s observation about the value of including when and where one heard or saw something that forms the evidence for one’s perception or opinion. That kind of specificity is not only good for one’s confidence and credibility, it also helps one to stay grounded in reality and therefore sane. I heard such-and-such from so-and-so in this place at that time, and these so-and-so’s were all present. This is what I heard but it might not be exactly what was said.
Such a good reminder.
“…the Dalai Lama does not CALL OFF the suicides blah blah blah…”
To Jim, his perspective is absolute, but actually his perspective is distorted by his evident hysteria…
http://www.phayul.com/news/article.aspx?id=30331
SENDAI, November 4: “Speaking as an ordinary Tibetan and a Buddhist monk, these incidents of self-immolation are very very sad,” said His Holiness the Dalai Lama today at a press conference in the northern Japanese city of Sendai.
“The leadership in Beijing should look into the ultimate cause of these tragic incidents. These Tibetans have faced tremendous desperate situation, otherwise nobody will commit such drastic acts”.
Responding to questions on the spate of self-immolations in Tibet that has already seen eleven Tibetans set their bodies on fire since March this year, the Dalai Lama clarified that Dr Lobsang Sangay, the de facto prime minister of Tibet, was the right person to be asked these questions…
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/world/asia/tibetan-nun-dies-in-self-immolation.html
The ruling Communist Party has sought to portray the self-immolations as a form of terrorism inspired by the Dalai Lama [et tu, Jim?], who has lived in India since fleeing Tibet during a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. Beijing consistently accuses the Dalai Lama of agitating for an independent state despite his insistence on greater autonomy for the region’s five million ethnic Tibetans.
Speaking to reporters during a visit to Japan last week, the Dalai Lama DEPLORED the rash of self-immolations and suggested that the Chinese government make an honest assessment of what was driving so many Tibetans to such desperation. “It’s their own sort of wrong policy, ruthless policy, illogical policy,” he said.
“The leadership in Beijing should look into the ultimate cause of these tragic incidents. These Tibetans have faced tremendous desperate situation, otherwise nobody will commit such drastic acts”.
Very political statement….(Not saying WRONG or RIGHT)….
S.D. :
What would you call it if my “personal” perceptions were different than those around me (parents , friends) and that by following those perceptions, I did what was right….I mean after analysis? (right: skillful, in accord with the dharma, appropriate).
Are we talking about a lower level here, before confidence?
John, I think I get what you mean. Speaking strictly for what I think, not as an interpretation of what DKR said, I would say that there is no inherent contradiction between questioning the validity of one’s own perceptions and opinions, and also choosing to depart from what others think in order to follow one’s own conscience and maintain a sense of integrity – after, as you say, analysis, or contemplation. I don’t see why questioning one’s take – is that a rope or a snake? – necessarily has to challenge one’s confidence. As long as we have habitual patterns of perception, reaction, judgment, belief, etc. (that is, until we are enlightened), questioning ourselves – as in double checking – can be an expression of confidence. When we have basic confidence and trust in ourselves, we can afford to question whether we are seeing things as they are, rather than what our conditioning would have us believe. The questioning could be just a process of replacing knee-jerk reactions with grounded certainty.
In fact, in a time such as ours when the paradigms of our civilization are dissolving (or being shattered), we really need to have the humility to consider that our perceptions or opinions could be mistaken. We’ll never transcend patriarchal authoritarianism if we don’t do this. But at the same time we need to maintain our own moral compass and sense of grounding while acknowledging that all is in flux. I hope that makes some sense.
[I see “dualistic fixation” across the board, A-Z, Z-A, and the antidote: the Sword of Manjushri. That’s pretty much it---JH]
His Holiness Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, Primordial Purity, page 77:
Up to atiyoga, that which is to be rejected is regarded as the enemy, and the antidote to it is regarded as a friend. When two things are in battle and fighting, this can only produce more fighting. In that way, when what is to be rejected and the antidote to it are opposed to one another, the root of the obscurations constituting what is to be rejected cannot be overcome. On the other hand, if one realises the nature of dharmata, the natural state that is devoid of anything to be rejected, one sees that the nature of what is to be rejected is also emptiness…
John Castlebury,
It’s not “two things battling” when you apply Prajna, the Sword of Manjushri, to “dualistic fixation,” to the “warfare of ‘this’ vs. ‘that.” That’s elementary. Apparently (as many) you see the application of Prajna to “this” vs. “that,” that cuts through both poles simultaneously, as a replication of “this” vs. “that” warfare! Though it’s hard to tell what you are saying, since you don’t speak for yourself. (And, as with Damcho–as expected–you both dodge the question implied by the juxtaposition of the Dzongsar and Snyder quotes, the one Beat writer from which I, personally, ever learned anything–and a lot. If you ever read his “Four Changes,” it’s clear: he’s an earthbound prophet with tremdendous vision. (And if Merwin and Ginsberg were animals, Merwin would be a lone wolf; Ginsberg a slobbery Saint Bernard!)
Besides, I prefer the Vidyadhara’s teachings (someone who knew the West better than we Westerners did) to those of Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche (I was in a Tantra Group with him on his first visit to New York in a house we fixed up for him in Brooklyn. Unlike Karmapa XVI, he wouldn’t have been caught dead in the Penthouse of the Plaza Hotel) or Tulku Urgyen, both great Maha Ati teachers, but both mainly teaching within the portable “Old Tibet” context. Trungpa Rinpoche was unique that way, his penetrating vison of the West, re-defining the whole canon in light of his Vajrayana Buddhist and Shambhala teachings. None of these other teachers (including Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche) have caught up with what he did, for which he burnt himself at all ten ends at once to TRY and get that across to us.
Here, again, is an early back & forth with the Vidyadhara basically talking about my experience at the Abbey of Gethsemani, Merton’s monastery, BEFORE I ever met the Vidyadhara–though I had very carefully read MEDITATION IN ACTION six or seven times while at Gethsemani, and then clued in by Robert Bly (who visited me there on the way to some poetry hoedown in Tennessee) that he was no longer in Scotland, where I’d written to him, but in Vermont. This was 1970-71. I had a clue what Prajna meant; no clue what Jnana meant. For what it’s worth, I have a Prajna Refuge name (1972) and a Dharmata Bodhisattva name (1975). Here’s the back & forth:
“Student (J.H.): Rinpoche, would it be possible to view the totality of the situation as a field with a football game on it? There’s this and that–like a game between God and the Devil, nirvana and samsara–and the panoramic view is sort of a pointless point of view from the ground position. It sort of shoots God and the Devil out of the saddle at the same time. Is that possible?
Rinpoche: That’s right; that’s a good one.
Student: Is that prajna?
Rinpoche: No, that’s jnana. Prajna is still a watcher; prajna would be like a panoramic television camera approaching from the point of view of space, whereas jnana is from the point of view of the ground itself. (Chogyam Trungpa, Mandala Sourcebook, p. 61. From 1972 Mandala Seminar, TOTT.)”
That’s also one of the better examples of the Vidyadhara making a distinction between Prajna and Jnana to be found in the entire body of his work. In any case, my view hasn’t gone backward from that point (nearly 40 years ago), but forward.
Jim
Hi Jim,
With regard to gender, just wanted to clarify something. Issues of opportunity should never be downplayed of course, but I’m more interested in the emptiness of gender.
For me the question most pertinent to ask in this regard is: *before*, say, Slavoj Zizek even sits down to write or gets up to speak (or for that matter even thinks a thought), before any of us do, before a buddhist teacher does, what might be constraining us at that level of conditioning? Often quite deep down.
After self / other itself, male / female is the duality we believe in most profoundly and unquestioningly. Which means blind spots. To the extent possible ways of seeing and working with oneself, forms of skillful means and so on, are filtered out before they can be accessed, or even considered, due to assumptions about how I as a female or I as a male am expected to manifest–to this extent I feel here is one of the contributions distinctively western thought can make that does indeed relate to our practice.
So this is the only qualification I’d make regarding “wanting to find [in Zizek] something to help me follow the dharma.” The answer is: not really, but also … why not? That is, why shouldn’t we gravitate towards aspects of western thought which can supplement / enrich our understanding of the bodhisattva path? Marxism seems to be serving such a function for you to some extent, ecology for Gary Snyder and others. (I can find no fault with the Snyder quotation by the way.)
“It’s not ‘two things battling’ when you apply Prajna…”
Thanks Jim, but your theory still posits a you who does the applying, and posits dualism [defilement], and posits a sword of prajna [antidote]: and that sounds like an awful lot of positioning, see? Simple as pie.
“That’s also one of the better examples of the Vidyadhara making a distinction between Prajna and Jnana to be found in the entire body of his work.”
Really, wow! You’ve read every word of “the entire body of his work”? But earlier you said,
“Well, those other two usages that you cite of “spiritual atomic bomb” slipped by me. The one from JOURNEY WITHOUT GOAL I read; the other that John Castlebury cites, maybe not.”
But if you have read the entire body of his work, why hedge by saying “maybe not”, maybe you hadn’t read the quote from “Heaven, Earth, and Man”? And wouldn’t you have also been aware of the other three usages from The Myth of Freedom, Crazy Wisdom, and The Lion’s Roar? Is “the entire body of his work” a rhetorical flourish of yours that we should understand to mean that you’ve read a lot but not every word?
But if you have not read every word of the entire body of his work, on what basis can you say what is or is not one of the better examples, in your estimation, “to be found in the entire body of his work,” when there may be many other examples in the complete works that you have yet to read and which you might possibly find are even better examples, in your estimation?
“In any case, my view hasn’t gone backward from that point (nearly 40 years ago), but forward.”
What kind of a “view” is it that can go backward and forward? [Curious minds want to know…]
And now for something completely different, check out this breath-taking video…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/02/murmuration-starlets_n_1072687.html?ref=canada&ir=Canada
and as a caption…
[excerpt from Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche’s commentary on Sachen Kunga Nyingpo’s Parting from the Four Attachments, Nepal 2009, Talk 6…]
“By defilement, we mean our perception is defiled or stained or blinded by emotion. Because of emotions, phenomena that are in a continuous process of falling apart are wrongly perceived as truly-existing phenomena.
Let me illustrate: a great flock of birds in the distant sky appears to be a black spot, which is a distortion, because that spot is actually fragmented into as many parts as there are birds in the flock; it is not one indivisible stain. And, from the Buddhist point of view, everything is like that: everything is composite, and in constant motion, and dependent on conditions.
Likewise, our flock of deceptive thought patterns, which are composite and ever-changing and conditional, we deludedly perceive to be solid and partless and real: and it is this deluded pattern of perception with no basis in reality that is the definitive definition of defilement.”
[And Bob’s your uncle!]
Thanks, Suzanne…I agree with your pov. Tricky, isn’t it? Doubt is an important part of the path…sort of the touchstone flavor by which we view things till confidence arises. Yet, even while we doubt, we are encouraged to rely only on our own understanding. No wonder so many drop out from the path!
I was working for a woman in Boulder once…I told her I was a Buddhist and she said: “Why don’t you just believe in God? It’s so much easier!” Depends on what the word “it” means…doesn’t it?
Hi John, I was thinking you might bring up doubt, but that isn’t really what I was talking about. I think there is a difference between doubt and inquiry. If I question my perceptions and/or reactions, I consider it to be inquiry, which often leads to insight, or a shift in perception. I don’t feel I am abandoning faith in myself or my ability to see clearly and understand. Rather, it’s more like sharpening the sword and not settling for staleness. To me, doubt implies belief, and belief implies fear of the space beyond belief. Inquiry, on the other hand, is opening up to space and seeing what arises. What arises is more delightful than my stale ideas. Meekness turns into perkiness. Am I making any sense? (It’s 4:00 am and I should be in bed.)
But…why would you question your perceptions if there wasn’t doubt? Isn’t doubt the thing that makes us seek the path in the first place? Isn’t doubt the seed of bodhicitta? Of course one can have inquisitiveness with out doubt…like, how do you fly an airplane? But I think when one begins to examine one’s experience and compare it to what the Buddhist teachings say, that doubt is a natural part of that process.
To me, doubt does not imply believe, rather, it is a state of uncertainty. In fact, belief implies no doubt.
Dear Jim
Come back up…
Yes just about read Asian Journal …very good. Story about Trungpa found on page 338 when he was wondering what to do about the Chinese invasion – it states that he got some advice from his abbot (Khenpo Gangshar?-not sure) – that he should stand on his own feet. Merton takes this as meaning not relying on structures because as with Tibet these can all fall away with political threat.
Been wondering about this story myself as economies and jobs disappear down the proverbial plughole along with political philosophies and endless thoughts about politics. It seems to me that Trungpa was not an ‘ism’ man as you point out indeed he even undercut feminism in his introduction to Tsultrim Alliones book on women practitioners –describing it I believe as ‘mere feminism’- I also think he would look at environmentalism in the same way. No rather I believe he was into a change of consciousness that in western terms I can only get close to in terms of existentialism in that care for the Other was paramount. This care for the Other is also described in Marcuses work I believe in that he is writing about the alienation found in western society. So yes to some extent I think Marcuse has modified Marx and made his work more relevant to the construction of an ‘enlightened society’. Trungpa has also decried Marx and Engels in one poem that I have read but he has also called for a ‘true communism’ aswell. To me this ‘true communism’ can only be found in encountering the Other on open ground without structure maybe –thats why the occupy movement is so fascinating in that it is as close as you can get in western terms to almost no foundations-shantie towns in the midst of large metropolises –amazing!
Re Ginsberg I think he might have met Marcuse….there was a conference in London at the Roundhouse which many 60s luminaries attended –its on utube –its called the ‘Dialectics of Liberation Preview’ if people wish to view it. I think it was trying too to ‘understand’ that notion of ‘no structure’ and ‘standing on ones own feet.’ Worth a listening too. Its also interesting to conjecture from this conference the many influences that were entering Mr Ginsbergs brain and to wonder about the conversations he was having with Trungpa Rinpoche in the 70s and 80s around politics and writing.
So yes I think like you that those elements found with
western economic and political philosophy which enable us to stand on our own feet and to think beyond relying on structures are quite something to engage with.
Re also Trungpas meditation instruction briefly…. I think myself too that it does enable that open space to ‘happen’ –so its not essentially Buddhist ….so is the meditation instruction itself beyond questioning as to its form…perhaps it is the case and it is beyond dialectical analysis but we would still have to use it as a defined method….interesting-worth discussing.
Well best from the UK.
Rita Ashworth
(PART ONE of two)
Dear Damchö,
With regard to Zizek, you requested that I cite something of his that I found useful, interesting, provocative—whatever—and I did just that, something not only concerning Vajrayana Buddhism and what it has to do with so-called “capitalism,” but which also included—incidentally—a critique of a prominent Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. I even provided a “key” by Gary Snyder, from nearly 50 years ago, to aid in that inquiry—for those too weak-in-the-knees to engage with Zizek’s critique of a prominent Tibetan Buddhist teacher on their own. (I wonder: would the Vidyadhara think we have been turned into virtual Tibetan peasants since his death, unable to trust in our own “basic intelligence”?)
But, as expected, no one who frequents this site, thus far, has been willing to engage with that all-important subject matter IN THAT CONTEXT which I provided (crucial to life on the planet), even decades-long practitioners, as they’d be loathe to say anything critical of any of our infallible Tibetan popes, apparently, particularly the current heart-throb of many: Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche. Is there any group on earth that trumpets louder about “courage,” “bravery”—not to mention “daring”—and practices them less?
So, anyway, as you seem somewhat genuine in your approach (unlike Dinglebury the Devout and his beside-the-point gnat-nuts-sized nitpicking), even though changing the subject from Zizek to gender (or, “emptiness of gender”), you do seem to be talking about “duality,” primarily, our “habitual tendency” to “dualistically fixate,” and how that “conditions” our minds, produces “blindspots.”
If I’m de-coding you correctly, you seem to be saying that, second only to our belief in “self” and “other” (does this rise to the level of “belief,” actually—well, maybe over tens of thousands of years—or is it more “ape instinct,” or even a “chemical reaction” as the Vidyadhara suggests in “The Development of Ego” chapter of CUTTING THROUGH, rather than a “belief”? But that’s a kind of “nit-pick”…) there is our belief in “male” and “female.” And you’re right, Gender Studies (plus a whole array of other important Western studies like it, including the “capital” [1%] and “labor” [99%) DUALITY that is the primary subject matter of Political Economy Studies) can be very useful in that regard—helping to undo THAT KIND of conditioning.
But it’s OUR Vajrayana Buddhist and Shambhala study and practice that provides the antidote to the lynchpin of ALL those other conditionings (which I’ll get to in a second): “dualistic fixation.” And, from individual heads, to the global political economic system (see World-System Theorist, Samir Amin), to all academic disciplines in between (see Deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida), the primary mark of ALL OF THEM is “dualistic fixation” (or, saying the same thing, “center-periphery polarization”). And, according to the Vidyadhara, what cuts through that kind of “this” vs. “that” warfare that’s ubiquitous is PRAJNA. That’s what people like Amin, or Derrida, or Zizek, or Badiou (or Judith Butler—have you encountered her?) might be able to hear. A lot of nicey-nicey “non-violent” psychotherapy talk in the face of the VIOLENCE they are WITNESSING TO across the globe is not going to do the trick for them, though it might “work” for a lot of fearful others “skillfully” being hoovered into SI.
(END Part One)
(PART TWO of two)
So, I’d turn around what you are saying: what the West needs to hear (including Zizek, for example) from Western converts to Buddhism is (especially in academia): there is always an “unconditioned,” “non-dual,” “un-mediated” moment (SOMETHING THE W-E-S-T HAS LONG DENIED IS POSSIBLE) in every situation, a stateless state of non-existence prior to any notion of “inside” and “outside,” “samsara” and “nirvana,” “absolute” and “relative,” “psychology” and “political economy”—any “two” you can think of—when we are a king or queen seated on a diamond throne, and then we “beggar” ourselves, boycott our richness, divide the space into “this” in here, and “that” out there—and we’re off and running in the history-as-catastrophe sweepstakes, culminating in “capitalism” eating the planet and heading for outer space to eat the rest of the universe, as the Vidyadhara suggested over three decades ago WOULD HAPPEN—if we don’t stop it.
Except for a few liberalish gestures in that regard, it seems we’re content to be spectators—or, keen to ride the “catastrophe” wave and hope we “come out on top”—being the Rigden’s anointed: First World White People with our “slanty-eyed gook” leaders (that apparent “slur”—before anyone freaks out—is quoting the Vidyadhara at the time of the Vajra Regent’s empowerment suggesting us Westerners had the goods, and didn’t need to wait around for some Tibetans to spoon feed us on that or any other subject).
To put what I’m getting at another way in regard to your question: sexism, racism, classism, militarism, homoprobia—not to mention “egoism” and “capitalism” (which are born at the same instant, incidentally—I wonder if Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche would get that? He would—if he ever applied some mundane Prajna elbow grease to the subject of Marxism! Fat chance!!)—are all born post “dualistic fixation.” “Dualistic fixation,” then, is their “condition of possibility”—for ALL OF THEM, A-Z, Z-A, with Prajna as the antidote, as the Vidyadhara said—and which I heard. So, as you seem to suggest, yes, sure, West and East need to work together. Why not?
And one last thing: why shy away from engaging with something that doesn’t seem to feed into your dharma practice, per se? As Suzanne Duarte suggests, why not test your “basic intelligence” on something that doesn’t necessarily feed into your pre-established plan, and “sharpen your sword” in the process of that engagement? Especially when it comes to a crucial subject like: what does Vajrayana Buddhism have to do with “capitalism”? (I always put it in scare quotes—anymore—because, as I keep repeating, I see it as the Five Skandhas WRIT BIG, which changes everything, especially the notion of “anti-capitalism,” which that view renders foolish, missing the boat, again.) It is “capitalism” that is destroying the earth, not bad art, or androcentric bad breath, or (even) not enough “esoteric” Vajrayanan Buddhist practice—whatever. Personally, I’ve been on the same path ever since that back and forth with the Vidyadhara on Prajna-Jnana concerning my experience at Merton’s monastery, and am not easily deterred—especially after being encouraged by him.
So, anyway, I like it that Zizek is unflinchingly critical of “capitalism”—as millions and millions of people on the planet are becoming increasingly aware of its destructiveness. We won’t be seeing any of the Tibetans or any of the Acharyas we know addressing any of those crowds anywhere in the world any time soon, will we? I just don’t want to see a true revolution (that is, the thorough transmutation of “capitalism,” not just the airbrushed Made-in-the-USA version ruthlessly descending on the brave men and women of Tahrir Square) co-opted, if something like a “revolution” were, somehow, to come to pass, globally.
While Zizek is largely ignorant about Buddhism, he HAS sniffed out that the Tibetans would like to be the hood ornament on the (formerly) “Great Triumph of Capitalism” vehicle—sort of “spiritual advisor” to whomever the Rudraic king might turn out to be in the event the uprising is crushed. And I wonder, was the Sakyong pooh-poohing those “protestors” in Tahrir Square? Was he able to see that spontaneous expression of bravery as a COLLECTIVE “raising of windhorse”? Fat chance!! More likely he was he wondering how he could co-opt that energy, turn it into part of his wished-for 12,000,000.
Jim
END
You misled us your readers to believe that you have absorbed and have a command and mastery of every word Trungpa Rinpoche wrote in his lifetime. You pretended to be fluent in “the entire body of his work”, but that is a deception.
If you exaggerate about the breadth and depth of your knowledge of the Vidyadhara’s teachings, what wouldn’t you exaggerate your knowledge of? You have no credibility now, especially in light of your denial that you deceived us.
You call the pointing out of your deception “nit-picking”. Who could believe a word you say now? By comparison, in 24 years I have never caught Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche in a lie. Your zizeksteria is pathetic to behold…
DJKR on emotions
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[excerpt from DJKR’s commentary on Sachen Kunga Nyingpo’s Lojong Shenpa Shidrel, Mind-training of the Parting from the Four Attachments, Nepal 2009, Talk 10:]
…
For so many lifetimes, the moment insecurity has struck, we have had the habit of responding by taking refuge in distraction and unmindfulness. For better or for worse, we automatically react that way. But in shamatha meditation, we do the opposite: the moment when insecurity strikes, we do not react; we just watch. What does this do?
It actually sends a message to our mind that our habit of reacting to and masking our insecurity with escapism is so much unnecessary effort. It tells us that we can just sit and watch and not get swept up in distracting emotions. And it lets us see that this practise of just watching has the effect not of masking but actually melting away the insecurity of the moment.
Let’s say that our emotions are like a self-charging battery, meaning a battery that is re-charged each time we push its button. Whether we push gently or harshly doesn’t matter; either way, any contact at all with the button re-charges our emotional battery.
If our wish is to abandon samsaric insecurity, then we have to abandon our habit of pushing the button of our emotions. If we refrain from pushing our emotional button, that battery will have to use up its energy reserves and eventually run out of power.
But our habit is to touch emotions when they arise: we touch them in the sense that we probe and edit and react to feelings such as anger, jealousy, and pride and so on when they arise. And this contact constantly restores power to the battery of our emotional insecurity.
As Buddhists we might try to correct our anger, jealousy and pride by thinking that we should abstain from negative emotions. This is, of course, a gentle way of touching, but nevertheless it does touch our emotional button, and that touch prolongs the life of our samsaric battery.
Again, when insecurity strikes, we do not react; we let it be and we just watch. When we just let be and just watch and do not touch, our insecurity very soon runs out of energy. This means that we don’t have to make a great effort to mask our insecurity. We don’t have to keep our mind distracted away from our insecurity. We escape from painful emotion by simply leaving it alone…[continued]
…By not getting entangled, the emotion of the moment soon melts away all by itself.
This observation sends a very strong message to ego’s insecurity. It forces ego to face the truth that our efforts to escape insecurity actually have a paradoxical effect. Our efforts to escape are actually the trap that keeps us in a constant state of emotional insecurity. And it demonstrates that our insecurity is not a force of nature like a volcano or a glacier: when we let go of ego by not touching our emotional battery, we let go of insecurity. This is the truth that we have to face.
Mindfulness meditation brings us face-to-face with reality. Many people tell me that they find meditation very, very boring, which is a deterrent to their practise. You know, when you are beginning to get bored, that means your meditation is working. Because your meditation is not lost in entertaining distractions and samsaric emotions, you are bored, which is a good sign. We have to make friends with this boredom. This boredom is our good friend. It is a much better friend than the chaos of insecurity that erupts whenever we try to escape from this boredom.
It’s so important for us to get used to this idea that insecurity and confusion are not innate features of human life; they are a function of ego’s conflicts; and ego or self is like a dream from which it is possible to awaken. We can do so with ease, and when we awaken, the samsara of confused insecurity recedes to the vanishing point. Take this point to heart…
Responding to John Tischer, Nov. 8th: “Doubt is an important part of the path…sort of the touchstone flavor by which we view things till confidence arises. Yet, even while we doubt, we are encouraged to rely only on our own understanding. No wonder so many drop out from the path!”
And Nov. 9th: “But…why would you question your perceptions if there wasn’t doubt? Isn’t doubt the thing that makes us seek the path in the first place? Isn’t doubt the seed of bodhicitta? Of course one can have inquisitiveness with out doubt…like, how do you fly an airplane? But I think when one begins to examine one’s experience and compare it to what the Buddhist teachings say, that doubt is a natural part of that process.”
OK, John, I do agree that doubt is natural and essential to the path of dharma. We are led into dharma by doubt. What I was talking about was my experience of questioning myself after confidence arises, after many years on the path. At a certain point I realized that I habitually check myself, look for the other point of view, and especially question the arising of “shenpa” – the word for knee-jerk emotional reactions, which I think DKR is talking about in the quotes above. “Shenpa” is a term and a subject on which Pema Chödron has taught some seminars. It’s a teaching she received from Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche. This is a lightly edited version of an article by Ani Pema on Shenpa: http://deoxy.org/wiki/Shenpa.
I’ve found the shenpa teachings to be very helpful for understanding myself and others. But even before I came across the shenpa teachings, I developed the habit of questioning my cultural conditioning at a deep level through the study of Deep Ecology. In deep ecology our practice is to “ask deeper and deeper questions” about all our assumptions and beliefs in order to bring ourselves into alignment with Nature, the ecological order, the cosmic order, the Tao, the Dharma, or whatever you want to call it. Deep ecology has been the semi-secular partner of my Buddhist path. I say ‘semi-secular’ because deep ecology can accommodate any metaphysical or spiritual perspective, or it can be strictly secular in practice as an environmental activist path.
Anyway, I’m trying to explain to my dear friend John Tischer where I was coming from in my remarks on questioning oneself. I wasn’t coming strictly from the pov of Buddhist doctrine.
Zizek interviewed in Harper”s: http://www.Harpers.org
PART ONE (of four)
Dear Rita,
I appreciate your stick-to-it-tive-ness with the Merton/Vidyadhara material and feel confident it will bear a lot of fruit for you down the road—or, ALONG the road—if you stick with it—and apologies to you (and to Mark, also) for once again getting “sidetracked”—sort of. I think what Zizek is bringing up is something most Tibetan Vajrayana Buddhist teachers and most Western Vajrayana Buddhist students would prefer he DIDN’T bring up, because (apparently) they’re unequipped or too cowardly to be able to engage with it. (For the Tibetan teachers, maybe it points to something in Old Tibet they’d prefer to continue to ignore, falling back on the easy/theistic—and highly marketable in the West—“Good Tibetans vs. Evil Chinese” gambit?) Anyway, Gary Snyder saw this coming 50 years ago, and pointed it out, with his vast historical vision, very clearly.
But certainly Merton would have engaged with Zizek (not to mention Snyder, Noam Chomsky, Sulak Sivaraksa to name a few others)—not necessarily agreed with this or that detail Zizek has brought up, but engaged with his main point, the destructiveness of so-called “capitalism” and what it might have to do not only with Buddhism, but with Christianity—and Zizek seems very open to aspects of the Christian tradition, interestingly enough. (And his sidekick in Neo-Communist crime, Alain Badiou, has written an extremely interesting book on Saint Paul, who is often regarded as the arch bogeyman of the Christian tradition. It’s an eye-opener. Surprisingly, Badiou even shows that Paul was very sensitive to gender issues, going out of his way in one instance to balance the often lopsided view of man/woman relations embedded in the Old Testament! See Badiou’s SAINT PAUL: THE FOUNDATION OF UNIVERSALISM, pp. 103-106.)
This is where the 1975 Vajradhatu Seminary version of the Vidyadhara’s “spiritual atomic bomb” (it’s very elaborate, not just a slight—though pertinent—offhand reference, and might very well be a description of HIS so-called “enlightenment experience”—that is, the “Garuda hatching from the egg fully grown”). Of course, it’s risky to speculate about such matters, but that could very well be the case. But, again, it’s relatable not only to Merton’s Bangkok Talk (which you cite from the back pages of THE ASIAN JOURNAL)—it’s based on THAT that I made the connection—but to Badiou’s notion of some powerful “eruptive event” embedded in, and exploding, in some very particular everyday life situation, that’s profoundly transformative. (There’s a lot of details around THAT that point to our sense of “nowness” and “non-existence”—you could say, perhaps, even point to the closeness of “Cosmic Mirror” and ”Godhead,” both beyond “all distinctions” of “this” and “that”—but I’ll save those for another time—another opportunity for “infiltration,” in the most positive sense of the word, not BOYCOTTING or DISMISSAL.)
END Part One
PART TWO (of four)
Here’s a little quote chain which was part of a so-called “Shambhala Workshop” I used to lead as part of SMC’s Chapman Program for college Honors students (I’m now pushed out of that program, needless to say) that’s germane to Merton’s Bangkok Talk and a way to link—or, see the linkage—between Christianity, Buddhism, and Marxism at the heart level, not just some cornball 60’s-ish eclecticism. Here’s the quote chain (from 15-17 years ago):
1. THE GARUDA
“This teaching brings precise experiences of the awakened state. In fact, it surpasses concepts including the ‘idea’ of Buddha nature, which has an element of the not yet mature. The difference between them seems to be that the achievement of Buddha nature is seen as a development, but with Maha Ati it is an experience all at once. The image of Maha Ati is the Garuda which emerges from the egg fully grown.” (Chögyam Trungoa, MUDRA, p. 15.)
2. HOLLOW BAMBOO
“The body, like a hollow bamboo, has no substance.” (Sri Tilopa from “Mahamudra Upadesa,” in Chögyam Trungpa, THE MYTH OF FREEDOM, p. 160.)
3. THE VASE (GARUDA EGG?)
“For even though we have the same inner nature as Buddha, we have not recognized it because it is so enclosed and wrapped up in our individual ordinary minds. Imagine an empty vase. The space inside is exactly the same as the space outside. Only the fragile walls of the vase separate one from the other. Our Buddha mind is enclosed within the walls of our ordinary mind. But when we become enlightened, it is as if that vase shatters into pieces. The space ‘inside’ merges instantly with the space ‘outside.’ They become one: There and then we realize they were never separated or different; they were always the same.” (Sogyal Rinpoche, THE TIBETAN BOOK OF LIVING AND DYING, p. 48.)
4. THE GARUDA IS THE TIBETAN E-S-C-H-A-T-O-N: THE ULTIMATE, BUT NOT FINAL, BEFORE THE BEGINNING, AFTER THE END, AND MARINATING THE MIDDLE N-O-N–THING
“In its literal sense, ‘eschatology” means a set of doctrines about the last or final things. The e-s-c-h-a-t-o-n, as the last and ultimate reality, creates a crisis for people and history. It reveals what is of ultimate and definitive relevance.” (Jon Sobrino, CHRISTOLOGY AT THE CROSSROADS, p. 62.)
So, you can see how the heart of Vajrayana Buddhism and Contemplative Christianity could be “joined”—or, could come to be seen as ALWAYS ALREADY one, perhaps? (As the Vidyadhara said, he and Merton “agreed on everything.” This is, quite possibly, one of the many things they agreed upon—or, would have agreed upon: but it does bring up the thorny theological issue of the distinction at the time of “literal” death, between “paradise” and “heaven”—for the Christian. But if we look at Jigme Lingpa’s comment at the end of his “The Innermost Essence” [Chögyam Trungpa, MUDRA, p. 26], we find: “When he leaves the physical body his consciousness becomes one with the Dharmakaya, just as the air in a vase merges with the surrounding space when the vase is broken.” For Trungpa Rinpoche, certainly—and it seems Sogyal Rinpoche, also—that exploding vase image happens in so-called “life,” rendering the distinction between “literal” death and “figurative” death completely IRRELEVANT!)
END Part Two
PART THREE (of four)
But what about Neo-Communism? What about Badiou’s apparent (non-theistic) “eschatology,” that Eruptive Event he describes that explodes in a given situation, revealing a potent “void” immanent in it that changes everything?
I hope to get that “Garuda hatching from the egg fully grown” in conjunction with Merton’s notion of “original purity beyond any ‘this’ and ‘that’” from his Bangkok Talk into Badiou’s head in the context of a review of Badiou’s Saint Paul book, and soon. (And you’ll note, in that Bangkok Talk in the Appendix to Merton’s ASIAN JOURNAL that you cited, there’s this comment by Merton that “radicalizes” Saint Paul’s notion of “no longer Jew or Greek” into: “no longer Asian or European” for the Christian! You can see why the Vidyadhara appreciated Merton so much [Merton maybe the second “Shambhalian”?], and referred to him as “the first GENUINE Westerner he had ever met”—after being in England and Scotland for many years!).
Interestingly, in a collection of essays on Badiou (ALAIN BADIOU: KEY CONCEPTS edited by A.J. Bartlett and Justin Clemens), there’s reference to a “communist eschaton” which I cannot find now, but is there. So, following Merton—but IMPOSSIBLE without the Vidyahara’s teachings—we find a “linkage” between the hearts of Buddhism, Christianity, and Marxism in the form of a new species of “eschatology.” And those grow out of—are a transmutation of—the rough equivalence Merton makes between Original Sin, Avidya, and Alienation, a stroke of prophetic genius on Merton’s part.
(Note: be sure to go back, maybe after ASIAN JOURNAL, and look at Merton’s best published book [according the young, and sharp as a tack abbot who allowed Merton to visit Asia at the time, Fall of 1968—he’s now a hermit at Gethsemani—Father Flavian Burns], ZEN AND THE BIRDS OFAPPETITE, especially the dialogue on the Genesis Story between Merton and D.T. Suzuki at the end—though, chronologically, it is the oldest piece in the book. It’s there the seed was planted in Merton’s head that ended up in the Bangkok Talk where he makes that rough equivalence between a Jungianish notion of “Original Sin” and the Buddhist notion of “Avidya,” or “Ignorance.” From there, the Vidyadhara read the copy of the Bangkok Talk I had given him, and he filled in the “Avidya” part with “The Development of Ego” chapter of CUTTING THROUGH. Between those two texts, you can SEE another thing Merton and the Vidyadhara would have agreed upon wholeheartedly: an equivalence between the Christian Contemplative notion of “Edenic Innocence” and the Shambhalaian notion of “Basic Goodness.” [Recall in the CRAZY WISDOM book, the Vidyadhara refers to “primordial innocence,” “innocence” being an uncharacteristic Vajrayana Buddhist word.] Also, that Original Sin/Avidya connection makes the transition to Marxism much smoother, because the Five Skandhas form a STRUCTURE, and Marxists are always talking about structure—one to be deconstructed [from our “pointless point of view”!] back to the space it developed out of, of course. It also makes feasible relating to Liberation Theology’s notion of “STRUCTURAL violence” that Sulak Sivaraksa, the great Thai Buddhist and two-time winner of the REAL “Nobel Peace Prize,” the Right Livelihood Award [the Sakyong wouldn’t even talk to him at the 1992 Seminary at RMSC—I’m sorry, but that’s being a jerk!], picked up on from those brave Latin Americans via Johan Galtung, the Norwegian Peace Studies inventor and Buddhist convert, and incorporated into his Engaged Buddhism. So, virtually endless possibilities to “grow your own,” as you are doing!)
END Part Three
PART FOUR (of four)
So, anyway, having worked in The Merton Room at the Abbey of Gethsemani, one thing becomes very clear about Merton: his 360% openness. He had a book on every religious tradition on earth, plus a whole section of New Left books, including, most prominently at the time, Herbert Marcuse and Erich Fromm—Fromm being (technically) a “socialist humanist.”
You get the sense that nothing would delight Merton more than being parachuted blindfolded into virtually ANYWHERE on earth and being able to have a genuine heart-to-heart talk with whomever he encountered—even a Maoist! Merton, in fact, mentions Fromm in his dying-breath Bangkok Talk, and Fromm became a topic of KEEN INTEREST for the Vidyadhara at the time of his “Sadhana of Mahamudra” retreat at Taktsang in Bhutan when a young woman “fortuitously” showed up with a copy of one of Fromm’s books in her knapsack! Sherab Kohn has written about that. There’s a good lead for you—Fromm, maybe more important—at least for the Vidyadhara—than Marcuse, or anything Ginsberg might have provided. (Allen’s Marx-a-phobia gets in the way, here, the opposite of Snyder’s appreciation and encouragement to study that subject—not for how to “create an enlightened society,” certainly, as Gary said, but for a “critique of capitalism”—and he said this in a program I set up with him in San Francisco in 1984, the kick off event for the S.F. branch of the Buddhist Peace fellowship, entitled “Buddhism, Anarchism, and Political Economy” which focused on Karl Polanyi’s THE GREAT TRANSFORMATION, the development of the Market Economy. That’s a great book for those squeamish about Marxism.
Keep up the good work! This sleuthing can be fun, especially in the sense of Shambhala Vision—or, the one(s) that would have developed out of Merton’s and the Vidyadhara’s friendship, not the current “official” one.
P.S. By the way, Jon Sobrino was the Liberation Theology priest the U.S. trained and equipped Salvadoran death squad (the Atlacatl Battalion)—that killed six other Jesuit priests, their cook and her daughter, in 1989—most wanted to kill. But, fortunately, he was away teaching in Thailand, so was spared. There’s a very interesting discussion between Sobrino and Chomsky, which took place (if memory serves) at Boston University in 2009, on the anniversary of that demonstration of capitalist democratic beastliness, that you can easily find on the internet.
Thanks, Rita, for the encouragement, and sorry if I’ve tried anyone’s patience,
Jim
THE END
Yes, Suzanne….we were kind of talking apples and oranges.
Question (for anyone): Isn’t it true, (in lore), that the last thing the Buddha
gave up before attaining enlightenment was curiosity?
deaf cat:
108 syllables
for jim hartz
since i em i that means i em
uh phony already, since any i
is uh faux me,
en i em uh phony
until i enlightens, since
even though i be sincere, since
phony i does the sincereness,
the sincerity is phony too ~~
i aspire to go to seamless
naturalness ~~ o but thought
of irreversible dawn
is like yak horn phony i cannot
fit inside of or fathom, yet…
maybe not this life. i cd weep.
Dawa,
Thanks for the poem….nice.
PART ONE (of two)
Dear John Tischer,
I don’t know what the official “lore” is, but it is plausible, isn’t it–in the sense that, wearing out “ego” is like “wearing out a pair of shoes” (if we want to stick to the traditional notion of “ego” as purely “psychological,” and not a “psycho-social” system as it has developed in the West over millennia, on the other side of those Snow Mountains, which system now blankets the earth and is destroying it: at least Zizek gets that; he just doesn’t YET get that the “flaw” in that system–a notion he got from Greenspan’s mea culpa—is, ultimately, “dualistic fixation,” an “habitual tendency” which eclipses, and re-eclipses “nature of mind” [beyond “inner” and “outer”] and which eclipsing process over time has resulted in the “conceptual elaboration”—the SYSTEM–now institutionalized—in glass, steel, cement , and microchips [or whatever the latest technological innovation]—on a global scale, and is now poised to spread to “outer space”: for us, that should [or could] give some specificity to the word “samsara” at the present historical conjuncture)?
Anyway, back your question, John [sorry for the digression, but I guess I see no point in re-creating Old Tibet here, in the West, in the Good Ole U.S. of A.—or, in Mexico, or anywhere else, for that matter]: wearing out our inquisitiveness ABOUT what we are picking up with our senses would be like “wearing out” that “pair of shoes,” and realizing (like you said recently) that there’s just THAT out there that we pick up with our senses, that’s IT: all questions “about” THAT “out there” have “already been answered,” as it says somewhere in the Sadhana of Mahamudra. (That points to a view “beyond ignorance and understanding,” as you also said recently, citing the Sadhana of Mahamudra, too. I wonder how many new people pay close attention to that text anymore? At least Reggie Ray put his focus on that recently, introducing it to a considerable number of young people at NAROPA.)
In connection to that, here’s my second favorite quote by the Vidyadhara that I’ve found (I have a collection of his Prajna Quotes that I relay to people regularly, that I hope to place on my PRAJNA CENTER website if I ever get it done, at some point, down the shrinking and narrowing road) that pertains to the distinction he makes between Prajna (knowledge) and Jnana (wisdom) that I think is germane here:
“The wisdom of dealing with situations as they are, and that is what wisdom is, contains tremendous precision that could not come from anywhere else but the physical situations of sight, smell, feelings, touchable objects, and sounds. The earthy situation of actual things as they are is the source of wisdom. You can become completely one with smell, with sight, with sound, and your knowledge ABOUT them ceases to exist; your knowledge becomes wisdom. There is nothing to know about things as an external educational process. You become completely one with them; complete absorption takes place with sounds, smells, sights and so on. This approach is at the core of the mandala principle of the vajrayana teaching.” (Chögyam Trungpa, GLIMPSES OF ABHIDHARMA, pp. 12-13.)
Does anyone read that great book anymore? They ought to be encouraged to. There’s some gems in there that I don’t think he ever repeated elsewhere—which was usually the case with him. Like the one in the Glossary in GARUDA 2 (1972) under the subject heading of “Reincarnation”: “…the accumulations of feelings, perceptions, impulses and consciousness which are the constituents of so-called SPIRIT”—that’s a devastating critique of not only a primarily Western “spiritualistic” platitude, but of Hegel’s notion that his valorized “Spirit” is leading us to “freedom.” Obviously—in the sense that the Vidyadhara critiqued it—it is leading us to “imprisonment,” some sort of totalized panoptic surveillance society as anyone should be able to see today, who is not in an ideology-induced “neoliberal” coma.
PART TWO (of three)
So, in the context of perpetual references these days to “center” and “deep” and “core,” the Vidyadhara goes on a little further into that same great book and says this:
“It is quite dangerous actually when we talk about identifying. You could identify outwardly with things as they are, so there is no center, but just fringe everywhere, expansion everywhere. Or you could identify inwardly, that is, you could identify with things that are happening with yourself as a solid entity.
“Identification should be open identification, centerless identification, in other words, without a watcher. That is the whole point. If there is no watcher, then identification becomes real identification, really making a connection with things as they are. Whereas if you identify inwardly then you are identifying in accordance with some concept, in accordance with your own categories.” (GLIMPSES OF ABHIDHARMA, p. 39.)
So, in a way, your question, John, points to those three nyams of Garab Dorje—“non-thought,” “bliss,” and “clarity”—which all have to go to awaken to the view you are pointing to, embedded in your great question. Why do they “have to go,” be “cut through,” whatever? Because they are all “subjective criteria”: “inner”-oriented, “me”-oriented—just like that centralized questioner, the one who is “curious” and “inquisitive”—not “out there”-oriented, “world”-oriented, desiring to mirror that world directly, without mediation, but “inner”-oriented, “deep”-oriented, “center”-oriented, “core”-oriented, the alleged site of “spirituality” (or maybe “religion,” pejoratively speaking).
(END Part Two)
PART THREE (of three)
As we know, the Vidyadhara encouraged inquisitiveness, getting everything in our world under our Prajna Microscopes—there weren’t “clean” and “unclean” subjects to study, or not. But he did, once, also make reference to a point when the practitioner has achieved “the most understanding of the most confusion,” the result of a kind of Prajna-oriented “spawning instinct,” really getting into our inquisitiveness—maybe a sort of “lust for non-existence,” meant in the honorific Maha Ati sense of “all thoughts of possessiveness and self swept away like a pile of dust,” to cite the Sadhana of Mahamudra again.
(Maybe Saint Paul’s “It is now NOT I that live, but Christ lives in me” can be related to that? The quibble would be: how much difference is there—if any—between “nature of mind” the way the Vidyadhara taught it and how a Contemplative Christian like Merton taught Christ’s “purity of heart”?)
Anyway, it’s there, isn’t it, at that point, when the abrupt transition from knowledge (Prajna) to wisdom (Jnana) could take place—a view beyond “ignorance and understanding,” a view beyond “samsara and nirvana”—circumstances in our everyday life situation having been created by our actions in that “inquisitive” spawning instinct process that will have delivered us to the REAL LIFE circumstances for that possibility (explosive, perhaps?) to maybe take place, happen? It might be that that Prajna-oriented spawning instinct functions as a kind of “fuse” leading to that potentially “explosive moment” when the “Garuda hatches from the egg fully grown”? Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s mere speculation. Who knows?
The Vidyadhara goes on from there to provide an incredible augmentation and enhancement of that teaching on the senses mentioned above in GLIMPSES OF ABHIDHARMA in the Shambhala teaching concerning “limitless ayatanas,” as you know—an incredible teaching. But, THAT’S “another story.”
Sorry to go on, as usual. You never know if your last utterance—will be your last. Some might hope that it is! So, I wanted to plumb some of the implications that came to mind in engaging with your provocative question—while I had the chance.
Love, as always,
Jim
END
[Q]: Would you say a little more about doubt? You have just spoken of doubt as one of the negative factors. Previously you spoke about it in a positive sense.
Trungpa Rinpoche: We have been speaking about two quite different kinds of doubt. One kind is one of the six types of egocentric thoughts. This is ego’s tendency to have doubt in terms of the motivation of passion and anger and ignorance. It is a fear of losing ground, bewilderment rather than doubt in the intelligent sense. We fear we may not be able to survive to implement our ambition properly in the perspective of our egohood. It is more a fear of losing ground than doubt.
The intelligent doubt we were talking of earlier on is a general sense that there is something wrong all the way through; a sort of seed of doubt which runs right through the whole five-skandha process. It is the quality of inquisitiveness, questioning mind, which is the seed of the awakened state of mind. This is doubt or intelligence which is not protecting anything. It is purely questioning rather than trying to serve either the ego or non-ego state. It is purely a process of critical view which goes on all the time.
[excerpt from Glimpses of Abhidharma, From a Seminar on Buddhist Psychology, Prajna Press, 1978, from the chapter on intellect, page 47]
Dear Jim
Thanks for the comeback…. you have provided me with some interesting avenues to explore re ‘political’ shape of the shambhala teachings.
I just ordered the Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man from the basement –I am interested in exploring the dialectics in that book re the state of western civilisation and for further understanding of the concepts of alienation and surplus production…also yes Merton was of course much taken by this book too. Angela Davis at Owsny aroused my past knowledge of Marcuse…so thats quite apt re our discussion.
Re Christianity and St Paul the Badiou book looks great too –so will get that aswell. St Paul does interest me because he came to religion through revelation which is I think tied into much with the shambhala teachings….just surmising about this…..I expect the notion of shambhala/revelation will be a more prominent motive in the whole thing as we go forward because of the Cosmic Mirror principle….I too of course did read a little about the notion of eschatology for my degree so will hunker down on that too. Thats quite a parallel re the teachings.
Zizek I have not read before but will look out for his books too-his utube videos are very explanatory re his viewpoints…his speech at Owsny was great.
In the UK am helping with a Buddhist convention for next year –there has been talk that we should do something on Buddhism and politics so these books will give me very much food for thought in relation to inviting people to it. I am feeling that at the moment we will have to invite a lot of non-Buddhists to it –in terms of interfaith and philosophy/psychology aspects of the teachings…so it will have a broad stroke to the various workshops in my estimation.
Such a shame re Owsny…difference not applicable to US of A –it seems –yesterday was a very sad day for everyone in America. Hope the lessons of Occupy as the Paris Commune reverberate in American society.
Well best from the UK and look forward to further discussions when I have read the books.
Best
Rita Ashworth
For the coming Don season. (always hits me early for some reason), oh
is this off topic?
The Purge Of Evil
For everything there is a season.
This is the time of hell on earth.
This is the time of the flowering of evil.
The Lords of Materialism have seized power…
It is their time.
The karma they accumulate from their evil deeds
Will rid the world of them for a long time….
They will not be reborn as human.
It is the time of the purge of evil.
Remain human!
Don’t get sucked into their trip!
This has to happen now!
Remain human! Remain human!
Don’t give into their bloody game!
What goes around comes around!
Cultivate compassion!
The leaders are lost in lust!
Their self-destruction is inevitable!
Yup….Judy Lief’s photo has been removed from those of the acharyas on
the Shambhala website.
oh….she’s “emeritus” now….
…but, if she’s “Emeritus”, why don’t they have that category and a picture
on the website? It’s supposed to be an honor, isn’t it?
They sure were quick to get her picture OFF.
Dear Jim and John
Yo Jim ordered the Badiou book on St Paul –yes this book really interests me how Christianity was founded in the Middle East and Pauls revelation re Jesus –is there a comparison with that and ‘receiving’ terma – I dont know ….wondering what Badiou will make of St Paul.
John ‘emeritius’ –supercalifragelicious…..etc, etc…… –dont know how you spell it –this playing with titles is so twentieth century. I think we are entering an era when hierarchy as we have known it will somewhat dissolve….witness the occupy movement and a very lean hierarchy and also the Quaker movement which is also the most leanest hierarchy that I can see from history.
I also just saw a video on Michael Stone from Toronto where he talks that people are coming to his organisation because they are interested in non-hierarchical set-ups-that is an interesting ‘new’ thing that is happening I believe. Now how this ‘new’ conception would fit into the way that shambhala/dharma is taught and transmitted that is something to think about in my opinion. Any one got any further ideas on that…yes to some extent I think what keeps many people from connecting to teachings might be the many hierarchical set-ups that are developing – I think we all know that there are many people out there in established organisations and society in general that can not stand the way that business is done so for ‘religious’ organisations to be replicating that could be wrong-footed.
Yes the question of in and out revolves around this a lot doesn’t it –but in the end I dont think anybody can be out as we were all students of CTR are we not –so its how we see organisation developing in the future that will be interesting…I believe. Yes something else to explore in the conference in 2012 in Manchester, for sure.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
Oh yeah, guess what? Judy Lief is now on Shambhala.Org blog as an “Emeritus”………
well…..
I win.
Strange… I clicked the link above your post, John–to the “Upaya Council,” and found the following (at http://upayacouncil.netne.net/flatpress/?x=entry:entry111101-181654#readmore-entry111101-181654): “Radio Free Shambhala is a coalition of purported Shambhala International (Vajradhatu) insider dissidents founded by Mark Szpakowski, Edward (Ed) Michalik, and Andrew Safer in 2008, with contributors…” followed by an enormous list of, it would seem, every name that has ever posted on RFS.
And underneath all of that is the phrase: “Some pigs are better than others!”
Um … wow.
Dear John
Now that Judith Lief has been emriti-ed –does that mean she is a freelance agent like Rita Gross or is she only emriti-ed in SI-think that is an interesting question…..it does leave the field of teaching a bit more wide open if it is the first and not the latter, doesn’t it?
I begin to wonder if being emriti-ed is like going to the House of Lords in the UK and that one is older and wiser and looks with some disdain on the House of Commons squabbling. Of course too though the House of Lords has no actual power itself as an organisation.
I am still of the ilk that I find all these titles somewhat nuff…..because most of the great religious founders, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed were all inconoclasts and stepped out of the workings of their own societies to found new revolutionary movements. It seems to me also at this time through some forays into other religious spheres and talking with people here that the grassroots of religious adherence to the Authorities above them are also somewhat crumbling-so thats a general trend that I am observing.
So I think we need a new paradigm for how we construct spheres for dharma practice in the future – I think this is also borne out by the fact that many philosophers in Europe are conjecturing that we are at the beginning of a possible revolutionary period as in the 19th century –so thats quite interesting to me that they are thinking like that. I dont know exactly what people will devise re ‘governance’ at present now but I have an inkling that it will have to be more democratic from what is happening in the political/social sphere. Yes people through technology and other means are becoming the main thrust for change in society from the bottom-up.
I also expect because we are now somewhat in a revolutionary period as well that we are also in a revelatory period too –these things as in the 6th century do tend to come in twos. So I await ‘developments’(?) on that front aswell.
Damcho also quite honoured to be on that list –people it seems are reading rfs with some element of thought at least!
Well best
Rita Ashworth
Perhaps she just wanted to retire? I realize a more dramatic interpretation is titillating but I don’t see why it is the presumption.
Davee…we’ll never know unless her letter of “retirement” is made public.
Fat chance of that. But at least this way she can still teach in Shambhala,
which I think is a good thing.
yeah, Damcho, that link is pretty wierd….and who wrote it anyway?
“Enlightened Society”…..yeah, right….
Rita and John, I must admit to finding that post from the Upaya Council very creepy. I was hoping someone had an explanation that would help me see it in a different light–ie that maybe the quote about pigs was a play on a famous phrase of VCTR’s that for some reason I hadn’t come across, or whatever.
If indeed there is no such explanation, and coming from such an official source as it does, I must say it smells really, really bad. What it can only remind one of, of course, is Communist Eastern Europe, and the way disagreement was handled there… Truly chilling.
Damcho
Yes….and printing out all the names on the Upaya Council website smacks of intimidation. Unbelievable, really. But in a way it’s good that it’s so transparent.
John, I agree. And if honest contributions to RFS get one labelled a “pig” by the folks on the Upaya Council, then I can only say: what a disturbing organization indeed.
That approach smacks far more of totalitarianism than it would ring true of enlightened society.
can we use the “C” word yet?
Why do you think that is an SI website in any way shape or form? Didn’t the upaya council dissolve way back in 1995 or something?
well,if you examine the website, there’s published an action by the council against someone at Dechen Choling, November, 2011…so it must be operating and it must be Shambhala.
I’ve been puzzling over the Upaya Council website and content for a few hours. I wrote the following to “Head Writer of this Stream” under ‘contact’:
“It looks like this site has gone up very recently. Since the Upaya Council was formed very formally in the 1980′s, the question arises, who is it composed of now? Who is on it? Who decides the content of this site and postings? What is the purpose of putting this site up now? Where can this site go? What direction? I’m curious.
“That said, I do appreciate the “Noble Assembly vs. Osel Tendzin” posting as it clarifies some of our history.”
“The Noble Assembly vs. Osel Tendzin: FORMAL MISCONDUCT COMPLAINT” was dated the 29th day of December, 1988, and posted on this site on Nov. 15, 2011: http://upayacouncil.netne.net/flatpress/?x=entry:entry111115-104637
Since the “Head Writer of this Stream” does not reveal his or her identity, nor provide any information on the site as to its purpose, there seems to be little point in speculating about what it says so cryptically about RFS and the people who have posted articles and comments on RFS. I find it hard to tell where the ‘Head Writer’ stands.
For me, perhaps the most interesting thing on the site (so far) are these lines on the About page http://upayacouncil.netne.net/flatpress/?page=About:
“There shall be no internal hierarchy within the Upaya Council and each member shall have an equal voice; the findings of the Council shall be arrived at by unanimous consent.”
This was decreed by the Vidyadhara. Did the Upaya Council fail? Apparently. I am intrigued to learn more about the intentions of ‘Head Writer.”
we don’t know who sent it here, do we? could it be a hoax?
There’s a ton more stuff on there now, having nothing to do with the Upaya Council. I think, now, we were pranked.
John, if it’s a hoax, it’s rather an elaborate, painstaking one. Re: “The Noble Assembly vs. Lodro Sertso,” it does not appear to have been carried out, but to be a plea based upon the “Formal Misconduct Complaint” against Osel Tendzin. The latter has a date and names at the end, whereas the former does not.
It could be that ‘Head Writer’ is trying to stir something up, but is either too inexperienced and clumsy or too scared to be explicit, open and clear about what his or her intentions are. If he/she is too scared, it’s unlikely that the fear is of us.
This site has been around for quite a while, and keeps re-manifesting. It’s obviously not an “official” Shambhala International site, but also authored by someone(s) with deep knowledge of Vajradhatu, Shambhala Int, et al. It’s a mixture of right on and deranged – the usual thing we get in our world these days. A bit of a sideshow, in my opinion.
What is it that’s important to focus on?
Suzanne
That makes sense. Hey, I bought into it…,mea culpa, but so what?
It is rather elaborate, isn’t it? And it’s purpose, (aside from fooling me)
isn’t clear. A prank, I think, that’s all.
If it was an official website, that would be different…it’s not so there’s nothing important to focus on. I got fooled, that’s all.
You know, I don’t trust Shambhala, what they say, and since there’s little way of knowing what’s really going on behind the scenes, I think any rumor
or bit of information is as valid as any other, until it’s proved one way or the other…which in this case, it was….
Heck, there’s not much doubt about the direction Shambhala is heading now
anyway, is there?
Mark, thanks for your observations and your question. Yes, there is deep knowledge of Vajradhatu, but also something deranged about it. One thing seems utterly clear, it is not an official Upaya Council website. I think whoever is behind it has been hurt and is trying unsuccessfully to make a point. Yes, a sideshow.
“What is it that’s important to focus on?” is a good question. My short answer: maintaining our own sanity as much as possible in these turbulent times.
Suzanne,
I agree…and especially to your answer to Mark’s question, which
would be my answer too.
Yeah, I guess I’m still hooked on the melodrama a bit…it’s not terminal….
or, maybe it’s like your kid brother: sometimes you just have to give him a nuggie to establish position.
Sadly, it is of a piece with previous personal experiences of SI. But if some kind of hoax than I don’t really get it.
Dear Mark,
Hmmmmm- to focus ‘on’ –well I think if we are in a revolutionary period we will have to ride the choppy waves of turbulence as they come at us-so I think we are definitely in interesting times.
I am beginning to think like some philosophers, especially John Holloway, that I have recently discovered on the web that we will begin to have to say no more directly to the overtness of materialism and capitalism.
Now how I and others are going to do that is perplexing at the moment –so I think we are struggling on themes to focus ‘on’.
It could be that we will all have to start questioning life as much as the occupy movement has done but at least with the meditative experience that will allow us to let the turbulence flow in and out of us like our breath–so that creativity may flourish.
On a practical level therefore I am helping out as the contacts person for a convention on Buddhism in my locality to discuss the above hopefully in the context of a workshop on politics in the widest sense. I also plan to invite as many people as possible in academic terms of philosophers and psychologists to the event. I am beginning to feel that because of the times that we are in that is why Rinpoche only wanted Shambhala Centres because he realised the enormity in economic terms of what was going to occur. Of course too many western philosophers saw also the crises that we are experiencing coming to pass.
So yes I am somewhat done with the fripperies of Kings and Queens and fairy-tale courts – we need to have a bigger vision as you often write about about bringing people together to focus on change both politically and psychologically.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
(PART ONE of two)
Dear Rita,
I had ONE LAST NOTE for you on the Thomas Merton/Chögyam Trungpa friendship and my sense of where that relationship might have gone/could have gone (or where it might have ended, because, for example, Merton would NEVER have endorsed the 1973 CIA-orchestrated neo-Nazi/neo-liberal Chilean Coup–in public, or in private) in response to your November 16th and November 23rd posts. So, here it is, altered (due to changed circumstances) from the original draft.
To begin with, you’re right: the Merton/Trungpa friendship points in the direction of Shambhala—that’s CRUCIAL. That is, not just to “enlightenment” but to “enlightened society.” Not just to an equivalence between “Basic Goodness” and “Edenic Innocence,” but to an equivalence between “Kingdom of Shambhala” and “Kingdom of God” (on earth). So, a “spiritual/psychological” component and a “temporal/political economic” component, forming a PSYCH-SOCIAL totality. And I have come to agree with people like Sartre and Derrida (and now people like Zizek and Badiou and Fredrick Jameson–CONTRA virtually every CTR and SMR—and Dzongsar and Tsoknyi and Khandro, etal—devotee that I know of) that there’s “no way forward” without an engagement with MARX—or at least CHOMSKY, another person Merton (at least) would have become friends with, had he lived just a few more years. (And, of course, Chomsky another person [along with Zizek] that some Vajrayanana Buddhists, Shambhalians, and Shambhala Buddhists love to hate.)
So, the way I have envisioned that friendship between Trungpa and Merton evolving (ASSUMING IT WOULD HAVE EVOLVED, Trungpa having blown out what was left of Merton’s mind, and Merton tempering Trungpa’s decidedly conservative social views–say on U.S. Foreign Policy relative to Latin America, for instance, a subject the Vidyadhara DIDN’T study [the way he DID study Meister Eckhart, Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes, for example], unless it was by “intuiting” it off the covers of TIME, NEWSWEEK, and U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, or by listening to his moneyed more-conservative-than-Merton financial backers like you know who(s)) is via engaging, as best I can, the Vidyadhara’s Shambhala (Non-Dual Cosmic Mirror) Vision with Merton’s dying-breath Bangkok Talk (embedded in the Appendix to his ASIAN JOURNAL under the title “Marxist Theory and Monastic Perspectives,” as you know)–where I first heard of the Vidyadhara, by the way—where Merton makes a rough equivalence between the Christian notion of The Fall or Original Sin, the Buddhist notion of Avidya or Ignorance, and the Early Marxian notion of Alienation, as I’ve said.
What this effort over the years has made clear to me is this IRONIC fact: except within the little two-sided sphere—like two rows, divided by a central aisle, in the same church–comprised of CTR and SMR devotees, where a sort of American Buddhist version of the Hatfields & McCoys feud is being played out–I think the most effective way to E-X-T-E-N-D the Vidyadhara’s obviously superior Vajrayana Buddhist and Shambhala teachings/visions has been THROUGH Merton’s Bangkok Talk—ALL THREE COMPONENTS, not just the Buddhist and Christian ones. So, including—most importantly, in terms of EXTENSION, once the Christian/Buddhist foundation has been laid–that creepy-crawly body of teachings known as—you guessed it: MARXISM.
Rita, your openness in that regard seems to be the lone exception to the reigning dismissiveness/repressiveness rule.
(END part one)
(PART TWO)
I mean, look at what happened recently when, at the request of a regular poster on RFS to provide a Slavoj Zizek quote that at least makes a little sense, and I provide one that’s SIMULTANEOUSLY critical—in a very precise way–of a prominent Tibetan Buddhist teacher, Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche AND capitalism (“capitalism” being the subject matter of Marxism: that’s why it’s STUPID, as Hegelian Marxist Cultural Studies critic Fredrick Jameson pointed out, to proclaim the “Great Triumph of Capitalism” in the SAME BREATH as one proclaims the “Great Death of Marxism”!), none of these ever-so-brave-and-courageous Shambhala Warriors—in either the CTR or SMR camps, on either side of the Hatfields and McCoys tub—will touch it with a 10-foot dorje: not even with a “coda” by Zen Buddhist/Deep Ecologist/Indigenist Gary Snyder, who said basically the same thing Zizek said about Dzongsar and capitalism, but said it 50 years ago!
Some weeks ago, Mark asked me to put together all my Merton/Trungpa material into one cohesive article, and he’d be interested in it for RFS—which I appreciated and intended to do. I also saw it as opportunity to “thank” Mark (& Co.) for accommodating some of my regularly “over the top/off topic” comments—that is, were my Merton/Trungpa article to be completed and a notice put out through the Merton grapevine, RFS would have hundreds (if not thousands) of new readers: that in the context of Suzanne Duarte stating to me recently that I was driving away RFS readers. (As one friend told me recently, she functions as the sort of Canon Lawyer/Censor of the RFS site.) As I said above, there was to be one more note to you, Rita, then no more, till the article was done.
Now I see that Mark (& Co.), instead of waiting for that finished piece, has shunted off what has boiled down to our discussion to a café table, without a finished product for anyone but you and I to continue to relate to. Suzanne also recently stated, if it were up to her, I’d be banned from the site. Among other things, my response to her was: I, personally, can’t imagine wanting to ban anyone from anything, as much as I might disagree with him or her—I don’t like repression, and my social views have long made me a target of repression WITHIN THIS COMMUNITY, not outside it, going back at least 35 years, to the time of the 1975 Vajradhatu Seminary in Snowmass, when I stated in the Vajra Politics class, “Ego is a rudimentary political economic system.” Then, it was a gentle contribution to a discussion. It got laughed at. In the same class, I suggested that Mao’s notion of a “classless society” was the “social” version of the dharmic term “cessation,” with “center-periphery polarization” or ”dualistic fixation” being the seed—the “mole working beneath the surface,” in Hegelian language—of what inevitably has developed over time into our present Class Society, with the 1% feeding vampire-like of the 99%. That comment of mine at the 1975 Seminary got hissed at. The Sakyong said virtually the same thing as I did in 2008 at the Rigden Abhisheka, 33 years later. No hissing. In terms of the “social,” maybe CTR students are more retrograde than CTR students?
So, gradually, I’ve become angrier and more pointy in my statements. Having Vajra Anger as one of my dharma names and spoken to the Vidyadhara face-to-face about anger (and Prajna) on numerous occasions, I’m not overly inspired to adopt nicey-nicey psychotherapy talk which is now the reigning ideology on both sides of the “church.” Only the Vajra Regent among Trungpa Rinpoche’s students had the authority to stand up to that (and did, but got shouted down at NAROPA) and the ongoing Tibetification of the Vidyadhara’s sangha. Still, people love to get their panties in a bunch over the Vajra Regent’s other problematic behavior, essentially a reproduction of what Tibet as a country did under the leadership of the lamas: imagine they were “magically protected,” and “ignoring” the overall environment they were acting in. The former resulted in the deaths of 1-2 million Tibetans. The latter resulted in the deaths—maybe—of one to two Americans. Which is worse? Now, here we go again—nothing REAL to say about the global crisis. Just more “magical protection” and “ignoring,” the Sakyong’s solution being to suck the world into his “spiritual” sphere–with him, the Beacon on the Hill, at its center, and calling it “enlightened society,” with everyone riveted to the inner walls of that sphere with MORE VOWS.
With Suzanne Duarte (plus a number of complainers, amongst whom I would expect those Vajra Zionists, as usual—it fits their M.O.–plus some others, I assume) working on Mark behind the RFS scenes, I read this shunting off of our accidental Merton discussion to a “café table” WITHOUT the finished product of my Merton/Trungpa material as a guidepost for possible new people to Comment on, as a variation on the Judy-Lief-made-an-“Acharya-Emeritus” stratagem–clever, a kind of PR coup, maybe–but no cigar—unless a novelty store exploding one…
So, Rita, send me your e-address, and I’ll send my last note on your earlier posts.
Warmly,
Jim
(END in general)
PART THREE (Major TYPO CORRECTION, Part Two, paragraph 3)
“In the same class, I suggested that Mao’s notion of a “classless society” was the “social” version of the dharmic term “cessation,” with “center-periphery polarization” or ”dualistic fixation” being the seed—the “mole working beneath the surface,” in Hegelian language—of what inevitably has developed over time into our present Class Society, with the 1% feeding vampire-like off the 99%. That comment of mine at the 1975 Seminary got hissed at. The Sakyong said virtually the same thing as I did in 2008 at the Rigden Abhisheka, 33 years later. No hissing. In terms of the “social,” maybe CTR students are more retrograde than SMR students?”
Dear Rita,
Good luck with your local convention on Buddhism, politics, etc. However, I wonder about this statement: “I am beginning to feel that because of the times that we are in that is why Rinpoche only wanted Shambhala Centres because he realised the enormity in economic terms of what was going to occur.”
I have no doubt that Rinpoche foresaw the turbulence and enormity in economic terms of what was to come. But where did you get that he “only wanted Shambhala Centers”? I never heard that, and I doubt that it’s true. This is my recollection of the history: He established Vajradhatu as the government, and the Dharmadhatus as the administrative satellites. He also foresaw and encouraged the establishment of Shambhala Training centers outside of and separate from the Dharmadhatus. He did not decree that Vajradhatu and the Dharmadhatus would be superceded by and morphed into Shambhala International and Shambhala Centers, nor that the Buddhist path and the Shambhala path would be morphed together as Shambhala Buddhism, as has happened under Sakyong Mipham. If I am wrong, I would like to know where VCTR said such a thing.
Somehow it seems important for students of the Vidyadhara to be memory keepers, and to try to keep our facts straight.
Best,
Suzanne
Jim Hartz, re: your remarks on ‘classless society’ in part 3 November 28th, 2011 2:57 am, are you implying that SMR students actually are less hierarchically organized and class conscious than CTR students were? It is my impression that SI is far more socially stratified and rigidified than Vajradhatu ever was.
VCTR’s idea of enlightened society was based on the mandala principle, not on any political theory..although there would no doubt be parallels to some of the ideas in any theory, capitalism and socialism among them….
But the overriding principle that creates enlightened society is having enlightened leadership. As you know, Jim, VCTR’s discussing of the transition from Carter to Regan, points out the fundamental change that occurs with leadership/regime change…that the whole character of the society changes
with it. We have, in glaring fact, seen exactly that happen with Shambhala.
No matter how much the teachings sound the same as before, what is being taught is not…not in the social structures (Harmony meetings) and not in the political structure. In fact, it is retrograde beyond what you criticize DKR and
others for. There is no political solution to it, since it depends on the judgement of one person.
It’s the same principle as how one finds one’s teacher: a thorough examination is necessary to determine for one’s self if that teacher has the qualities of a teacher….only here, SMR has said that he is not the guru, merely the head of State. Well, if he’s not the guru, he’s just like any political leader, and what authority do any of his insights have beyond common sense? People didn’t move to Nova Scotia because of the politics of Shambhala, but because of the spiritual authority of their teacher. You can’t talk ordinary politics when talking about enlightened society without the spiritual context.
Enlightened Society= Enlightened Dictatorship
VCTR was an enlightened dictator…why do I say this? Well, overcoming your prejudice against the word, if you examine VCTR’s relationship to the mandala he created and his students, he was like a dictator in that he was the sole authority. But…he was enlightened…meaning that the students sought him out to tell them what to do! People around at the time know what I’m saying…it was almost absurd in that people would ask him what to do about any little thing….he got very tired of it….but he was the only one who could say “yes or “no”.
He created enlightened society by working with his students….shaping
them. He didn’t completely succeed, but he was heading in the right direction.
Dear Suzanne, Jim, and John
Yes Suzanne what I meant to state was Rinpoche just wanted Shambhala centres on their own as free-standing entities, thats what I have gathered from reading the exchanges on rfs over the last few years –so sorry if I misphrased that. There was in Halifax for a time in the early nineties a separate centre that did focus more on the shambhala teachings and was not at Tower Road –people liked going there it was very informal from what I remember of it. Also did they have one in the States? I think I remember reading about another one in the US on rfs.
Jim I still think it would be good if you could write an article for rfs on Merton and Trungpa –we seem to have picked up two added contributors to this debate who seem to be interested in this general discussion. I am sort of crunching my way through left-wing thinkers at the moment and your mention of Badiou is highly interesting to me, especially the book about St Paul. Yes too from what I glean on the web and through many books coming out there is a renewed interest in Marx so I am checking out some peoples new interpretations of him on the web through Negri and now especially John Holloway who seems to me with his book ‘Cracked Capitalism’ to be focussing on ways to create a more just, dare one say ‘enlightened’ society through his reflections on sharing and politics in Latin America.
Thanks also for added references to what Rinpoche was indeed reading in the canons of western literature thats really interesting for me to know about. I think people should generally get to know more about what he thought about western politics, literature etc. I know he read Fromm from the Chronicle project and Fromm of course does discuss Marx, psychology and the structure of society from a mildly left-wing analysis –now whether Merton would have influenced Rinpoche to take a more leftist view in the fullness of time is something interesting to conjecture about—-but I also dont know what further political books he was reading…. perhaps people need to come out of the woodwork and inform us a bit more about that especially at this time of a changing political scene in the world. (I dont mind if we are discussing this stuff on a cafe table –perhaps we could think of rfs as a newspaper with separate things going on within it –then maybe we could get away from that sense of front-page discussions where people focus on one item…..maybe the site could be redesigned to accommodate this notion).
John spirituality/politics –politics/spirituality – I not even sure you can separate them now and from what I have read and studied about religious founders I dont think they ever did any how.
To me the great debate about our present age is how we are again going to marry the two in a way that is amenable to a society based on democratic values-I expect further discussions re the constructions of new societies in the future to be more undertaken now that our own western society is crumbling at the edges.
Well best from the UK. (We are all going on strike on Wednesday -2 million people out…..amazing –now theres politics……..zzzzzzz.)
Rita Ashworth
Dear Rita,
we’re not all equal (egalitarianism not the same as equanimity) (x Democracy)
and people tend to form classes naturally (natural hierarchy). (x Classlessness)
“democratic values” is almost an anachronism already.
spiritual power…or, in this case (Occupy World) whether positive or negative
now
is what will change things
societal realities are moving more into their elementary particles
so even the phrase “social change” falls…”clunk”.
there’s no time and it’s getting to be a bit too much.
“Rita, your openness in that regard seems to be the lone exception to the reigning dismissiveness/repressiveness rule.”–JH
Hi Jim, I sense much frustration with both RFS and the larger western Buddhist sangha in your posts. In case there is any help in it at all, I thought I might express some ideas about this, specifically: how it has felt interacting with you.
This is what you say about me: “So, anyway, as you seem somewhat genuine in your approach … even though changing the subject from Zizek to gender (or, ‘emptiness of gender’)…”
Well, the phrase “changing the subject” in this context definitely carries the implication of being evasive, failing to engage etc. So it’s a negative judgment–this interpretation confirmed by your words “even though”. More on this in a bit. But here, then, is what you are saying: I am “somewhat” genuine, and really ought to be considered even *less* so due to my supposed evasiveness or whatever, but nevertheless manage still to seem “somewhat” genuine.
Hopefully I don’t need to say anymore about that, right? You would like people to engage with you but how likely do you think this is going to be when you declare that you consider them–at best–”somewhat genuine”? Do you see? One is simply going to think: well, what’s the point? (And I got off lightly in your judgments compared to some others.)
Beyond that, I’m truly puzzled by your reaction. I expressed a view of Zizek which was, yes, not favorable. I did so after reading more or less two books of his, a number of articles, and several interviews. And also watching probably half-a-dozen talks. In other words, more than enough to have formed a provisional view of his thought. You asked me to give examples of what I was talking about and I gave a number of them in my replies. If I read you correctly, you place me in this “reigning dismissiveness / repressiveness rule” because … the one quotation you yourself provided of his is not something I can instantly endorse to your satisfaction. ?
(cont)
(cont)
But seriously Jim, think about this for a moment. How did I respond to that post of yours? Here is what I said. Firstly: ” thanks for your responses. Certainly the passage you quote from The Parallax View is worth pondering more, and I have no doubt his books contain a number of other such passages.” And then: “In any event I will reread your SZ quotation and continue to think about it. Thanks again.” And then: “I can find no fault with the Snyder quotation…”
So where on earth is my supposed dismissiveness–let alone repressiveness?!
And I *have* reread the SZ quotation, probably 3 or 4 times more. And personally I don’t find it more-or-less interchangeable with what Gary Snyder is saying. GS’s quotation is general; SZ’s is making a specific analysis of a documentary. It’s hard to see how anyone could disagree with GS (or at least, I find it that way), whereas quite honestly I’m still not sure I fully understand the SZ quote, and even less sure it’s a fair critique of Dzongsar Khyentse. I’m sorry if you find that offensive, or an indication of stupidity on my part, but it’s my honest view. Can you acknowledge that someone might hold such a view in full “genuineness”?
There’s much I agree with you on, especially with regard to Thomas Merton, the first spiritual thinker I ever read. He impressed my very unformed mind a lot, and all the more when I reread him some years later. And in fact just before you brought him up on this thread I had seen a documentary on his life which made me think: wow, this guy was truly the real thing. No doubt in my mind he was a highly practiced man with an exceptionally open head. I agree with you about Gary Snyder too. But I can’t agree with you on everything. You say this (October 21st): “so-called “egoism” is “capitalism” w-r-i-t s-m-a-l-l; or, “capitalism” is so-called “egoism” WRIT BIG. “”Egoism” and “capitalism” are two words for ONE AND THE SAME s-e-a-m-l-e-s-s psycho-social totality! Same structure, same functioning.” I disagree. Egoism has existed since that first grain of sand stuck its neck out, or however VCTR phrased it that time. Right?
(cont)
(cont)
Finally–returning to the first thought above–my bringing in gender was not “changing the subject” in a negative sense. My point there was simply to say: several different strands of distinctively Western thought have proved illuminating for Western Buddhists. Some people, when they look at, oh I don’t know, let’s say a photo of Bush on board that aircraft carrier with the “Mission Accomplished” banner behind him, reach for a Marxist-inflected analysis. I instinctively see a guy in military drag, one whose gendered conditioning is so thick and so culturally embedded it’s unlikely he will ever notice it’s there. I see a representative of an entire culture which makes the path for all of us to full humanity difficult by virtue of its so prominently requiring all of us to be, instead, “real” men and “natural” women. Which analysis is deeper? You would say one, I would say the other. I would say gendered binary thinking predates capitalism by a long, long way and underpins it, rather than the other way round. But we can disagree about this, that’s fine.
What isn’t fine is telling me I have “dismissed” or even “repressed” you. That’s ridiculous.
One more example, and then I will close my (virtual) mouth! In the recent Harper’s interview that John T. linked to–there it is again, within the first couple of paragraphs. Zizek advises his interviewer to tell panhandlers: “Yes I have some change. Fuck off!” Wow. If that’s the revolution, if that is supposed to be an improved attitude over heartless capitalism, I fail to see the improvement. And then just below this: “There is a certain cliché about communists or radicals. They usually say, you like humanity in abstract, but you don’t like concrete people. You are even ready to kill them for humanity. Okay, fuck it. If this is it, then I am definitely a totalitarian.”
Again, it’s very hard for me to relate to this guy, sorry.
John,
this: “Enlightened Society= Enlightened Dictatorship” in a nutshell is the problem Shambhala, old and new students alike, are flopping around with. I think there is something fundamentally awry with equating a realized teacher and his community with any overarching definition of what enlightened society might be. By glomming onto that questionable definition, i.e. “‘our’ (or my) sangha is what enlightened society will look like” or other similar views, we tend to create more problems and divisiveness. Not least of which is equating religious views and practice with systems of government.
What happened around Trungpa Rinpoche was a realized teacher and the students who groked or harmonized with his teachings and style gathering around him; the forming of a sangha, which is ideally a body of students who have genuinely gotten some level of what it’s about and are working on that.
However, even within the canons of Buddhism it is widely acknowledged that not all people will be attracted or benefit from the teaching style of any one master or school of teachings, hence various acknowledged branches of Buddhism, and the personal and intimate relationship with a realized teacher. And there are enough examples of lineage holders who had numerous teachers.
The point here is that with our modern complex society, the idea that enlightened society will ipso facto entail all citizens pledging allegiance, or even devotion to one leader is a glaring fallacy. Not only within the Buddhist teachings, but also in looking at the scope of history and the disasters that sort of absolute political power has always created, has always created.
The renaissance or age of reason was also called the enlightenment. Indeed compared to what had gone before, it was. If there is to be an enlightened society, it will have to relate to these times much more aptly than trying to re-instigate a medieval absolute monarchy, if its aim is to fulfill the needs of a complex society and instill sanity and wisdom into a system of government capable of handling that complexity we now are.
In the inspiration of some new form of government capable of handling modern complex society, a form we really can’t have seen yet.
Dear John,
Briefly I take your points about democracy-but there are many forms of democracy out there and yes I believe the occupy movement has raised more discussion of this process with their actions.
But I will have consider a fuller reply to you because my reading is backing up on this. I now will have to get an even further book(!) by John Holloway that I mentioned above – I think he will be providing even more clues how a fuller form of democracy can work in our western society –maybe his thinking will connect with the shambhala teachings –have to get the book to see for sure.
Damcho there are some interchanges between Holloway and Zizek which are highly enlightening re politics –hope you can check them out on the web –they are at the Marxism Conference of 2010 in London-interesting.
I do believe our discussions re politics are connected to how spirituality and particularly Rinpoches teachings work in our western society –so I hope the discussion continues in many further posts.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
Dear Friends (and welcome back, James),
I feel sad when I see people exercising themselves in intense discussions about political and social matters, and basically spending time on issues that could easily become completely irrelevant in the very near future. When people discuss these things based on the assumption that structures of reality will continue as they have been into the future, I fear they are just wasting their time and not preparing for what reality is predictably going to dish up for us.
Based upon warnings and evidence presented by many reliable and certifiably sane human beings, I’ve come to expect that reality is soon going to become unrecognizable due to several inexorable factors that are converging right now: depletion of oil, fresh water, fertile soil, arable land, and other resources needed for continued economic growth; human overpopulation of this planet, the related mass extinction of a large proportion of other species and consequent degradation of ecosystems, most notably the ocean, which is in danger of becoming a gigantic dead zone; and run-away climate change, including extreme and unpredictable weather events and temperatures above the range that supports human habitation. All of these human-caused crises are interdependent, like everything on this planet.
And all of these crises are already in full swing, friends. There is absolutely no sign that current trends can be reversed unless there is a catastrophic break down of global economic, transportation and food systems, and a catastrophic die-off of our species. If those happen, some humans may be able to survive.
In other words, it is too late to reverse or even mitigate the direction of these crises through political means. It has been too late for, probably, at least a decade. I think that some of you know this.
Or do you think I’m exaggerating? Then you have not been paying attention. Here’s a movie that might sober you up: What A Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire by Tim Bennett and Sally Erickson (2 hrs) on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2em1x2j9-o. This is the description: A middle class white guy comes to grips with Peak Oil, Climate Change, Mass Extinction, Population Overshoot and the demise of the
American Lifestyle. For an interview with the filmmakers, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFyI5ZYG_pE
(cont,)
(cont.) If you sober up and take these warnings seriously, then Mark’s question becomes more relevant: what is important for us to focus on? If Jim H. is frustrated that he can’t get people on this forum to engage with him the way he wants, I get frustrated and sad and lonely because so very few people are willing to acknowledge how fast we are running out of time to make ‘other arrangements for survival.’ Some people in the world ARE making other arrangements for survival, but not our sangha – except for perhaps a mere handful. And I think that VCTR bought those pieces of land in Vermont, Colorado and France to provide places where his sangha could survive and maintain sanity during the now-emerging turbulence and breakdown that he predicted. But does anybody talk about that and all the issues involved now that SMR owns all of it? Nooooo! So what is important to focus on and talk about???
James,
There also have been autocrats whose societies flourished under their reign… Asoka, Yung Lo, (Elizabeth I?) and others…so you can’t say
that monarchy isn’t the way to go…it’s had more success establishing
long existing, stable societies than any other form of Govt. in history.
And what’s going to happen if there’s tremendous chaos? You’ll have gangs, then tribes and clans …all govt. will be local.
…and the aforementioned rulers weren’t even enlIghtened…(as far as we know)
…and who came up with the idea of enlightened society anyway? VCTR! You don’t think he walked the walk?
“Born a monk, died a king.”
What do you think he meant?
John,
I was there and understand very well the draw. But are you suggesting in an enlightened society all citizens must see the king as their guru? That’s really a no go in these times for a number of reasons some already mentioned, and I challenge whether that was Trungpa Rinpoche’s view (he leaned towards parliamentary monarchy similar to G.B.), or that of any realized being, if it was ever the intent or direction in any sane society.
Where are the enlightened kingdoms now? What happened to them? Why specifically are they no longer in existence? Each one had its own story, I’m not trying to imply they are evil, but there is a reason they don’t work anymore. What held the more stable of them, over generations, in power? What was the cost to society at large? Ancient Egypt has the longest record so far, lasted over 2,000 years with very little change, even motifs in architecture. Even if one buys into the mystical powers of the Egyptian pharaohs, what was the cost? What didn’t work?
If you look at the scope of history, we see small groups replaced by tribes when complexity warranted better governance, tribes were eventually replaced with chiefdoms, chiefdoms by monarchies, and as has happened in the last centuries we have seen monarchies replaced with nation states. This didn’t happen in the form of any ideological measure of options, weighing Monarchy or Nation State pros and con. It probably didn’t happen due to perceived corruption of absolute power though examples abound.
It happened because the complexity of a modern industrialized society was and is no longer manageable via a highly centralized government with absolute powers. One aspect of that is surely an economic systems with free flowing funds joined with an absolute power that could control that flow, is so prone to corruption no one should have to say anything about it. Perhaps that, an economic system capable of trading rapidly all over the globe, was a key complexity monarchies could no longer manage to the benefit of society at large.
I’ll say again, the problem within Shambhala, whether old or new, is equating enlightened governance with the vajrayana student/teacher relationship. That relationship doesn’t work like that. Sane government doesn’t either
“Born a monk died a king.” What part don’t you understand?
Your p.o.v. was certainly not the Vidyadhara’s. Best
question: when he said he was “born a monk”, do you think was he referring to his first incarnation in the 15th century? or the eleventh incarnation where he was already the spiritual head of an entire region of Tibet?
It’s a simple sentence, Davee, why would you look beyond it for meaning?
No, both statements simply about this life, his life……
it’s not even metaphor….just a simple declarative sentence.
you said “what part don’t you understand” so I asked my question. Seems to me he was born a king too in a sense. not metaphorically either.
“Born a monk died a king.” What part don’t you understand?”
Well, the part where that is used to imply that enlightened society is and can only be governed by a realized person, further that such a level of realization could be discerned, in fact would need to be discerned, by all people, or if not that those who did not align themselves accordingly would be denigrated to some second rate level of ‘not getting it’ (like what one might suspect you are implying about me) or to a lower or more marginalized level of social involvement.
What part of Trungpa Rinpoche’s leaning towards a parliamentary system of monarchy don’t you understand, John? How was Trungpa Rinpoche NOT leaning towards that?
And please, answer at least one of my questions. Are you suggesting that within an enlightened society, all members must have a vajrayana student/teacher devotional style relationship with the ruler? How would that work for people not drawn to whatever particular path that ruler was teaching? They should go South maybe, or North or East… just go?
It’s really very simple to understand why that can’t be a model for enlightened society, unless we in fact want to create a highly divisive religiously based governing structure.
What specifically was Trungpa Rinpoche the king of? Did his reign created the kind of continuity and compassionate society he surely wished for? If so, how? If not, why not?
Jesus also was born a carpenter’s son but died a king. King of what!? Aram? I d o n ‘ t think so.
“And please, answer at least one of my questions. Are you suggesting that within an enlightened society, all members must have a vajrayana student/teacher devotional style relationship with the ruler? ………..”
No. Just as a person in Elizabeth’s society in 1500 didn’t have to belong to the church of England.
“How would that work for people not drawn to whatever particular path that ruler was teaching?”
They would just be a member of society, practicing whatever “real” tradition they saw fit, as the Vidyadhara envisioned.
His (VCTR) reign did not create the continuity….true….that’s why we’ve experienced the problems we have since 1987..
We were not up to it at this time…..doesn’t mean it won’t happen in the future…of course you might not believe in “myths”…the prophesies of people like Jigme Phuntsok (and the Vidyadhara)….that are at the Chronicles and elsewhere…but I can’t answer to that.
“It’s really very simple to understand why that can’t be a model for enlightened society, unless we in fact want to create a highly divisive religiously based governing structure.”
That’s an assumption…and it denys what VCTR actually accomplished…
either you weren’t there in the thick of things,,,or…what?
Yes, Davee, It may seem to you that way, but that doesn’t mean that that is a valid interpretation of the words. I mean, if some statement that simple
“needs” to be complexified, I question the ( ) of that questioner.
and your question is an opinion. not trying for a clarification….it has little to do with the meaning of the quote.
John, my apologies but I experienced your question as arrogant, as if you had the true meaning of “Born a monk, died a king” and you were goading us to prove our prajna to you. That you were a person in the know. Sorry, I’m not buying it.
I understand…point taken….
but if you leave me out of it, what is your understanding of VCTR’s final words?
Which ‘final words’ John?
Final words tends to means like… on his death bed…?
Please give a reference or link or quote.
(And maybe a hint as to whom you are responding.)
Do you mean his Testament of a sort on the Chronicles pages?
“Born a Monk, died a King” as far as I know was one line in a poem, maybe a haiku three liner or something, written years before his death, if I’m not mistaken.
As such it wasn’t a declaration or objective statement or instruction for forms of government or anything like that. It was a poem. Just a bit of his blowing his own horn (not meant with cynicism at all, the guy could conduct an orchestra as far as I’m concerned, but… is what it is.)
In the inspiration that “It ain’t no thing..” from the street version of the Heart Sutra.
No. If you look at his “will”…whatever, in it was his final words to the sangha
“Born a monk,
died a king,
such thunderstorm does not stop.
We will be haunting you, along with the dralas…
Jolly good luck!”
as I remember….
Dear Suzanne, James, John
Thanks for the film I will check it out.
However I still feel we need to discuss politics in its widest sense, there are many allies out there particularly on the left who are also forecasting the collapse of society in the near future and I think we can work with them to go forward into constructing new awarenesses about how to envisage a better society.
Re constructing new societies too will also have to be envisaged where we are at in the cities – we can not all head for regions to survive the coming collapse because we do not have the resources to do that. So the consciousness of people will have to change in the cities and I still think that is feasible and one way of doing that would be by following the shambhala teachings and other meditational disciplines as we go along –so I am all for making allies with others in following such a course.
‘Born a monk died a King’……yes I believe its the will as John says. But we do have to consider the consciousness of what it is to be a King and I think all of us are capable of being that ‘royal’ in the conduct of our lives. Never have seen it as a prescription for the actual ruling of a governmental institution. And I think if you also propose it to people as a given most would laugh you out the door –we are living in the 21st century we are done with Kings and Queens and absolute monarchies.
I also find it highly unbelievable that many intelligent people are considering such a conception of a King –maybe this whole discussion stems from peoples total end of century attitude and disbelief in the political process –this need for The Man and our Saviour.
Well best from the UK
Rita Ashworth
Interesting posts,
For Chogyams students-subjects it was a matter of heart connection called Devotion and Love which still exists,the vision of the warrior on the white horse Drula is the Monarch that joins Heaven Earth ,and man,Devotion is the key to enter the Kingdom. might be old fashion,but only works with devotion as the lubricant,
thanks.
JP
P.S. thats” Drala” seems we could all ride that.
John Perks and lubricant…. there’s a joke in there somewhere but it’s just not coming through. Oh well.
Re Elliot’s: “But are you suggesting in an enlightened society all citizens must see the king as their guru?” & (Elliot again:) “It’s really very simple to understand why that can’t be a model for enlightened society, unless we in fact want to create a highly divisive religiously based governing structure.”
(Tischer) That’s an assumption…and it denys what VCTR actually accomplished…either you weren’t there in the thick of things,,,or…what?”
& finally Ashworth’s: “Never have seen it as a prescription for the actual ruling of a governmental institution. And I think if you also propose it to people as a given most would laugh you out the door –we are living in the 21st century we are done with Kings and Queens and absolute monarchies…I also find it highly unbelievable that many intelligent people are considering such a conception of a King.”
The axis of Shambhala Buddhadharma in a way includes a full range of different views and paths, both spiritual and secular. So the simple phrase: ‘born a monk, died a king’ is enormously elegant in terms of how large a scope is encompassed so economically. (He beat the Beats with that one!)
And whilst I type, Judith Simmer’s talk in the backround leaps out (having ignored just about everything the past hour whilst reading through this thread) with : ‘how there certainly is plenty of room for differing political views in our enlightened society, we always see differing views with politics’ (paraphrase).
Of course this is a seminal topic which comes up in so many threads on this site. I’ll take a crack at being helpful…
First, in some sense contemplating the difference between the Buddhadharma and Shambhala, or the so-called ‘religious’ or ‘sacred’ and the so-called ‘secular’ or ‘worldly’ is our ultimate Shambhalian living koan practice. They are neither the same nor different nor both nor neither. That is why they work so well together.
Rita, I am convinced we were talking about an actual, living political system headed by an actual, living Monarch.
I also am convinced that ultimately we can have BOTH devotion and non-tantric relationship. (continues)
My understanding of the Monarch role in Shambhala is that it does indeed depend upon basically good Love, as Perks declared above. Rightly. But that Love and Devotion is not the same as the guru-disciple samaya although that too is based on Love and Devotion.
But the dominant process in the Buddhadharmic mandala formed by the relationship of teachers and students involves developing buddha nature, or enlightenment.
The dominant process in Society, although it does not need to be in any way against the latter, encompasses far more because it includes the entire societal context in which all of us progress from birth through until death both as individuals and within the inevitable community context. It takes two humans joining together in both physical and spiritual intimacy to give birth to a third, so the birth of even one is a societal, and therefore also political, event. It is not, however, a religious event.
So even if one ‘born a monk’ takes his first breath as a Buddhist already, he or she does so with Shambhalian lungs. (Or is it rather that he or she takes a first Shambhalian breath with Buddhist lungs?) (Of course trying to argue one or the other is a red herring.)
And if one ‘dies a king’ that king can still be a Buddhist and a Vajra Master but at the same time he might not. He might be a Christian or Atheist and not a religious teacher at all.
Clearly it’s not the same.
In sum: I believe still that we could set up a society which is bound together in deep Love and Devotion to basic goodness, to our siblings, parents, friends, fellow community members and indeed all sentient beings, and that society would not have to comprise only Buddhadharma practitioners and that this is the mission of the Shambhala thrust.
I also believe that a big mistake most of us keep making is to think of Shambhala as a different or parallel set of ‘teachings’, like a wisdom lineage stream or school of yoga techniques. No, it’s a tribe or sports team, something you join, you support, you cheer, even die for (well, not the sports team hopefully!). But it’s not just a set of teachings delivered through programs. It’s a very political dynamic.
It’s more…a way of living with other people. It’s Japan…Britain… Nova Scotia… Cape Breton… Brooklyn…HMS Pinafore… our son, our daughter, our father, our mother, our grandparents and so on.
Something like that. And this is where the love comes in and also how it connects with basic goodness, or rather manifests it naturally. A child naturally loves his parents just as a father or mother naturally loves his or her child. All of us want to live productive lives in which we contribute, learn, grow, deepen, celebrate and so forth. A society which fosters each person therein to lead such lives generates powerful ‘dzong chi’ or group drala and this drala is the essence of what is known as Royal.
Royalty is the product, not of the wisdom-stream of an enlightened guru, not as adisthana, but of an entire society. Royalty is a short hand word describing the group energy of an enlightened society. An unenlightened society can ape Royal Space ( group drala ), can pay lip service to it, but cannot generate it authentically.
So Shambhala is about creating sacred society, not merely individuated sacred perception in the woods when two or more tantrikas gather together to create a self-contained, highly potent mandala during a ‘feast’ in which sacred perception is fruitionally engendered but meanwhile the rest of the world outside that mandala (aka ‘them’) is profane.
And the ground of such sacredness is the ordinary basically good love and devotion we feel for our loved ones, our lives, for trees and greenery and all the rest of it. Shambhala is about taking that, knowing it, feeling it, doing it, and from there creating a society which similarly knows it, feels it, does it, thereby knowing what to accept and reject (yes and no, aka rules) in order to protect and nourish such basically good world.
And in such a sacred world, Royal Space is ubiquitous; and because therein everyone sees Reality as such, all are Rita’s Kings and Queens.
Including the official King and the official Queen.
It simply cannot be any other way.
BOY one puts a little lubricant out there and Ash takes the words right out of my mouth.
Thank you sweetheart,
JP
Ash, question:
“Royalty is the product, not of the wisdom-stream of an enlightened guru, not as adisthana, but of an entire society. Royalty is a short hand word describing the group energy of an enlightened society. An unenlightened society can ape Royal Space ( group drala ), can pay lip service to it, but cannot generate it authentically.”
Can you have this phenomena, this societal Royalty, if the center, the actual King or Queen, is not enlightened? If yes, where does it come from?.
The mahayana and truly tantric fruition of practicing the Ati path transmitted into the blood and bones of his heart disciples results in their leaving all outer, inner or secret allegiances, rather resting in the self-existing Dharma of What is, of Suchness (which is Dharma!), free from container or contained.
A society in which this is fostered naturally is called Shambhala.
Which means that if you are doing well, you will find yourself outside the bubble. Be joyful! You are fulfilling his wishes.
Now keep going further.
(And move to Nova Scotia and/or Cape Breton for this approach to actually bear fruit!)
Shambhala will ALWAYS be both something not-yet-extant and aspired to, and something real and actual, more real and actual than any so-called reality or so-called extant society or nation such as Great Britain, India, Canada, United States, China, Japan, Nigeria, Portugal, Israel, Jordan, Isle Madame, Germany and so forth, all of which are completely and utterly conceptual, and thus fictive, in nature.
But also real. Being a native of Japan or China or United States etc. is real. And fictive.
Shambhala, similarly, is both real and fictive.
Unlike most real and fictive realities, it Knows this.
Enlightenment is no more than seeing clearly the nature of confusion.
That is where Shambhala and Buddhadharma meet.
In that non-existent point of clear perception.
Excuse Me. I made the mistake of attempting to read through this thread.
Whilst enjoying a few slugs of grappa.
Surprisingly good grappa given it is the ONLY one available in this alcoholically and governmentally be-nighted and suppressed ex-Colonial backwater of a so-called Province. (!)
Following a memorable night in which we used my brick oven to bake (2 minute, 800F) pizza and (later) pastries after which only so much grappa could be consumed comfortably, leaving me with the delightful duty of finishing it off whilst enjoying various Dharma and Shambhala rantings and ravings in this thread……
Holy X*&^%!. There are other people out there reading this…. I’m sorry, I thought I was imagining the whole thread….
Hey Sir John. Your True Heart and the Golden Sun of Everyday Glory are inseparable. Thanks for your (cheeky and toothy) ordinary, old world, timeless, Crazy Hart smile. It will remain, long after the Cheshire cat is long forgotten.
Tisch re: “Can you have this phenomena, this societal Royalty, if the center, the actual King or Queen, is not enlightened? If yes, where does it come from?”
No. But that enlightenment is also a function/product of general society, it is not a product of individual manifestation alone. Which means any obstacles the Monarch is going through, including deficiencies and so forth, are as much our fault as his, or rather a reflection of our deficiencies as well as his/hers. This is true because of what I said about Royalty above, which is simply the sacred space/perception/drala engendered by people attuned to basic goodness. This is unavoidable, as unavoidable as that raindrops fall to earth once released by clouds, as sun beams warm us, as bird song delights us. Royalty is just a word that encapsulates a phenomenon which we all experienced with VCTR, albeit in a somewhat ‘churchy/culty’ context, but ultimately he had the ability, as a leader, to individually inhabit the timeless space of nowness/awareness which we also were inhabiting by sitting together and waiting for the teacher and dharma to manifest at that time and place.
As he said: ‘it is a mutual conspiracy’, with emphasis on the ‘con’. Now some here think that words like ‘con’ and ‘context’ are wicked somehow. (Wicked people always come up with such silly theories!) But con means ‘with’; it is inclusive, it dissolves barriers, it is egolessness principle.
In political parlance, using ordinary speak, it is also expressed this way (outer mandala lingo): dictatorship/monarchy wherein the pinnacle of leadership in a society (mandala) is held by one individual versus a committee (aka ‘soviet’) or extended (elected) committee (aka ‘parliament’) is both the strongest and most vulnerable form of government. Strongest because decision-making is streamlined, clarified, honed, powerful, fast; weakest because it is relatively easy to kill one man, if ending that regime is what is called for, or put it this way: much easier to end a regime dependent on an individual than one dependent upon endless committees.
We don’t have to wade through all that crap. (Maybe… think about it…)
OK, I’ll turn it around and see what you think of this because this is what came to mind after my first post to which you responded:
Ideally speaking, Shambhala provides the national/societal container in which the elixir of fruitional tantric Dzogchen awareness can be transmitted from generation to generation (including the Monarch). But we are in pioneer days. Now, we need a hard core tantric sangha to be the sacred soil in which the seeds of Shambhala Culture can be sown, the seeds from which plants then spread far and wide on their own through the breezes and winds of self-existing human societal infrastructures of all sorts. It’s a yin-yang symbol thing, the seeds of yang being within yin and so forth. It’s a pioneer stage dynamic we are still in basically…
In order to have such sacred soil you need a tight container, a tantric container. In order to disperse you have to let go into Shambhala Blue Sky free from form, from container.
We are not ready for the latter yet.
OR, also possibly, and the reason for this site, we are making mistakes.
Myself, I do not know.
Meanwhile, I live in Cape Breton.
Let’s talk enlightened society. Let’s talk Ravel’s Bolero in a train station:
http://www.classicalarchives.com/feature/dont_miss_this.html
enlightened society only happens now.
p.s. (I love you too, Ash)
“No. But that enlightenment is also a function/product of general society, it is not a product of individual manifestation alone.”
Wow….I got it…my question was exactly about this very point.
You know, I totally agree with you….at the same time, I don’t have any idea how that’s possible…how it manifests or works….other than in as much as VCTR’s students are manifesting his/ our dharmic minds. That’s a, or maybe the, real puzzle to me.
Eloquent post by the way…
Ha! Well, in terms of that video, try this: they are all Danes. They are all basically Vikings. So deconstruct the video showing a whole load of laid back hip modern young people playing instruments with various types of sort of cool sunglasses and other modern paraphernalia and rather, in your imagination, superimpose old Beowulf-era viking garb and then you see why the audience is ‘flash-mobbing’ – to watch real WARRIORS in action!
Additionally, contemplate how the Chinese get it right again. Five major organs each of which as outer, inner, sister, brother etc. etc. of which one element is preferred activity of which that of the Heart is, stripping away the ancient lingo, ‘people watching’. Are people enamored of Ravel, or basically people watching? Or does Ravel do a great job as composer by making music that facilitates people watching, is harmonious with that activity or even evokes it?
Well, one cannot say, can one? It’s chicken and egg, Sakyong and subjects. Trying to define which one causes the other is, as the Buddha would say, a question which leads not towards edification.
Just as trying to define whether it’s a Buddhist first breath in a Shambhalian lung or vice versa tends not towards edification.
Just as trying to contain all sacred experience within a tantric mandala versus profane/mundane reality and from there define the difference tends not towards edification/realisation.
We go from confusion to wisdom, from conception / birth to formlessness/death. We think there is a path, then there isn’t. Poetry is treading the ever-present arising middle ground of here-and-nowhere. You are a genius at understanding this. Your problem is being too religious.
Throw it out and be the Poet (Creator) you truly are!
About the other stuff. It shouldn’t be a puzzle but it is because we are all too religious.
Religio = I bind. Samaya principle. Or following a particular path, taking oath, being committed etc. Straight and narrow. Discipline. We attach to (heightened) experiences of sacredness particular doctrines and time frames but forget that such experiences, stripped of conceptual and contextual overlay, happen during moments of birth, death, battle etc. (Good old ordinary mind stuff.) Monty Python’s Meaning of Life film gets this ‘how we miss it because of thinking’ better than any other articulation in the 20th century, possibly including VCTR. Seriously, they have some incredible moments in that film sandwiched between excruciating samsaric irrelevancies – which is the point.
My point? About your puzzlement: ‘when the student is ready the teacher will appear.’ Very old. Possibly Asvaghosa = 200 BC. In any case, its true. Teacher and student are mutual creations but poverty mind of student tends to create a God out of the teacher which God the teacher has to break down. Like husband putting wife on pedestal as Primordial Goddess. It’s fun, but wife ultimately can’t handle being Primordial Goddess and Mother and Wife and Worker and bla bla bla and resents being put on Pedestal and runs away. So also we resent Reality not conforming to our Ideal Shambhala Utopia, or even more painful, a Sakyong not being a full-blown super sexy Mahasiddha like Sakyong 1.
Life’s not fair.
But then again: maybe Sakyong 1 put US on a pedestal and we believed him, like any devoted and flattered wife (continuing from above), but now that he is no longer there to praise us and thus keep us on that pedestal, our view of things has mouldered, dustified, and so we blame the current Seat Holder for our own inevitable (and most valuable and precious and enlightening) disillusionment. Isn’t disillusionment what we signed up for, after all?
!
Ash
Whoah, Dude,
I gotta sort that one out….
not that I don’t get the first fresh
blast in the face of it, but, c’mon,
Dude…
I love ya…
Holy crap….
I mean, you leave me in the dust,
I can’t even keep up to agree with you,
So cheers!
And, only the best.
Dear All
Yes born a monk-that seems to be in this world…the King aspect seems to me to be reflecting the experience of when he received the shambhala teachings notice its not King ‘of’ as in actual country – just King – one hardly needs to mention the parallels with Christ and his experience of the motif of King, but it is similar I think.
I also think it connects to the Cosmic Mirror and if that is the case –everyone can partake of this experience of royalty – so yes who is the King really –quite complex to discern? The phrase also seems to be reflective of a journey –O so once I was in this world as a humble monk but now I am the King of the Universe – of All that is.
I dont see how you can look at the phrase in a pragmatic sense –it is too religious for that in our western sense also – it has to be a supra-universal and instanteous statement. So too to even to start to limit it to this world seems rather mundane to me. It is a statement of what he reached through his realisation and I dont think it can be defined until we ourselves touch that same ‘level’ –whenever we clue in to it with basic goodness that is and thus is ‘his/our’ Mind. It is only then that I believe enlightened society fully is but of course through practice and taking care of others we do connect with it more so that seems to be the societal aspect of it in ‘our’ world.
Myself re government in a more formal sense I am exploring some ways of where the notion of parallel non-structure methods might work which would by a tad fit into the shambhala way of being, the ‘true communism’ that he wrote about in the poem -so at the moment thats why I am interested in the Merton/Marxist debate and now Holloway because they are emphasising a kind bottom-up, free-flowing, unobstructed network of connections….yes I am beginning to feel that we could experiment with what they are exemplifying with their apprehensions. So the non-structural aspect could flower the notion of Kingship in its universal aspect in this world. So yes it is in this sense that ‘politics’ is very important because of its non-structure and mirror-like quality.
I may be sounding a bit obtuse but these things are quite hard to be so defined about, as many I believe have also experienced in other religions too especially in terms of ones relationship with Christ.
Well best from the UK
Rita Ashworth
Ash,
Going in so many directions making statements so packed with hidden assumptions, there’s no way to respond directly. It sounds very religious and belief based. That is to say without a specific set of beliefs one can’t be a part of that. That is not how I have understood Buddhist teachings, nor Shambhala teachings as I first encountered them. If ‘enlightened society’ is as belief based as I’m reading it here, then it can only produce a theocratic form of government, with all the hierarchy and divisiveness people are willing to stomach to ensure some kind of ultimate happiness.
Having received and heard many very inspirational teachings, have nevertheless reluctantly and through a series of undeniable encounters, now think how that manifests in our community, a community lauding itself as one of the best if not only way to enlightened society, extremely weak and in some cases quite corrupt. Now, when I notice talk that seems to want to inspire me, I get suspicious. Especially when there’s little or nothing that relates to how things are.
There’s enough inspirational talk already. I think we can safely say at this point, if that’s what it takes to create enlightened society, we should have arrived there long long ago.
My tolerance for ‘riding the imagination train to higher and higher glimpses of what could be if only we believed [your version here], is perhaps burnt out. I could follow you essay and answer it blow by blow, but the gist altogether is that if the basics are not taken care of properly, the logistics of how power is handled and people treated, much more extensively than in the context of maintaining good image and garnering more members, if we lack the requisite checks and balances and transparency that simply must exist in anything pretending towards enlightened society, then all the talk, all the flag waving, all the confidence of view, begins to look more like a system of denial than it does the basis for compassionate society.
I come back again to the seemingly obvious loop that a path of realization is not a system of government, and a path of realization will not be an apt model for any form of government for a society larger than students of any given teacher. And yet…
In the inspiration that Buddhadharma is a path of realization, not a mood generator.
Well, the point was not to be inspirational. But (part of) the subject matter is comparing two different – and they are different – systems which share a core interest in the Sacred. The mandalas are different, one being secular/societal, the other being radical, starting with Hinayana renunciation and ending up with tiger-riding, blood-drinking and all the rest of it (!). But sacred material should have some sense of luminosity to it otherwise……
Rita, I don’t think the word King is necessarily a code for a whole load of spiritual metaphoria; that diffuses its bedrock meaning, which is that of a king, an actual king. The Sakyong ceremony is the same as the one done for actual kings in times of yore; I am not sure but I think the Bhutanese ceremonies originally were almost the same text. Point is: we are talking actual Kings and Queens not metaphorical/inner/secret ones only, though such levels also co-exist of course. Holography is ubiquitous in our holographic universe, with yang of spirit intertwined with yin of physical manifestation ad infinitum.
More importantly, James, such structures DO exist, just not solely within our tiny little church group. The basic structures are already there in contemporary society outside of which none of us can take one single breath, let alone build a new world; any fantasies to the contrary are just that, which is perhaps what you are (quite rightly) tired of. Maybe all we have to do is combine certain of the sacred architecture in our formats to existing societal formats. But in any case, the bubble mandala model is not only deadly boring, but also deadly. I think we all know that.
Look: we have governance and societal structures grounded in bedrock common sense all over the place, including your checks and balances. If we choose to tune into them. How to run Boards, the county, state/province, federal/national systems, military systems, commercial law including the UCC which is a multi-millenia work of collective human genius (amongst many such). Most ethnic or regional cultures have established, deeply informative social and family systems in place. All these things are part of the tartan of what we might call Shambhala or Enlightened Society. We just join those systems with shamatha-vipashana and a mindfully aware and dralafied society. So we take existing French, British, American, Canadian, Chinese, Native, local people and when they sit together in their local community halls within their existing cultural frameworks, the Great Eastern Sun will blaze on their already existing, already cleaned and polished altars of whatever, which doesn’t have to have anything to do with religion.
It’s all right here already. Our problem is that we keep treating the whole thing like a spiritual teaching, we think like church members and imagine Shambhala as a huge church that lots of other people have joined. So many people think that way they don’t even realise they are thinking that way. THAT is religious thinking right there, or church thinking. Shambhala is not about forming another church OR another secret society Lodge for that matter. It’s about interpenetrating with existing society which, by the way, has more to teach us in terms of sane models and good conduct etc, than we have to teach them. But we do have a lot to offer as well.
Perhaps we could say that a true warrior manifests the kingdom here and now wherever that here and now happens to be.
Or to put it another way: if Shambhala cannot operate on a local community level (which the deleg system and the new Sh. household initiative relates with somewhat) then it is entirely irrelevant in any meaningful, actual way. It has to work on a local, particular level otherwise it’s like a body with legs and feet which never touches the ground, or lungs which never encounter air. The local community level is the basis of all human society. This has nothing to do with belief. It is just fact.
I’d heard the quote in a story told by one of his Kusung. Rinpoche had asked his driver to stop as they drove by a cemetery. Looking at the tomb stones he contemplated what his tomb stone epitaph might read and said “Born a monk died a king.” Perhaps that was the origin of the line in his will? Don’t know.
So from that story I find the quote ironic. Not because he was born Tibetan royalty, more from the attempt at such a short epitaph.
In terms of enlightened society, I think enlightened society occurs whenever two people sit down together with openness and presence and compassion. Or in Shambhala jargon they meet with gentleness and daring to step out of cocoon. Then enlightened society arises on the spot. So we have glimpses of it already perhaps now and then. In terms of a larger, societal enlightened society, that feels somewhat like the star of bethlehem to me.
Dear Ash,
Thanks for your comeback on my post.
I was trying to underlay the universality of the notion of King or perhaps master warrior would be a better phrase with my post. So here the actual King motif could apply to the many as the shambhala teachings tell us.
But to construct on top of these teachings having a King leading an actual theocratic government is I believe taking these teachings too far for the west. I tend to agree with James post in that we live in a very diverse world with many points of view and various allegiances and no-one absolute monarch could deem the exact path that people should take even if he had the most direct path to enlightenment possible.
In addition if we look at Rinpoches conversation with Gerald Red Elk on the Project we can see that the essence of the shambhala teachings can be found in many cultures so having one singular authority about governance in regard to this fact also seems curious to me.
One can also see from this interview too that Rinpoche was very much into sharing his teachings with other traditions –would he for example have given the whole of the shambhala teaching stream to him if he had lived longer –its something to think about. Likewise I think we have to begin to be much more engaged with other traditions and see what they make of the teachings.
Also too I want to explore my own culture in terms of connecting to the shambhala teachings and I dont see the present Art that SI is focussing on or its connection to their lineage stream as only exemplifying ‘the’ way to Shambhala – I feel we can explore this notion of Kingdom in many ways.
I am also beginning to think for myself it is more fruitful to see how power actually flows in an enlightened society –to see possibly how the ‘true communism’ works rather than focussing on the Sakyong principle…thats why Jim H’s writings on his interaction with Mertons teachings is of interest to me. Merton too for example was also willing to undertake Buddhist teachings from his connection to Rinpoches in India you can see this described in the Asian Journal –so we are talking of the cross-cultural exploration of what religion gives to people in society.
So yes I am thinking a lot now about how power or governance works in this sense and how it enables people to bring to fruition their own connection to their innate dignity. I am much more interested in the bottom-up approach to power/governance than seeing it emanating from a central space/hierarchy so I am more concerned with that flow of energy which is empowering for people.
Of course through their practice some do attain that epithet King such as Karmapa 16 but even he never claimed the idea that he could be a universal monarch as in the times of ancient India. I think he was much more concerned in just getting the basic teachings of Buddhism to people in the west, in establishing that ground for people, and from what I have read he seemed quite anxious to do that. Likewise I think that that should be the focus with the shambhala teachings and I also believe there should be no limits or barriers upheld in getting the teachings out there.
Well think that is all.
Best from the UK ….Rita Ashworth
Well, one thing is, James, I hope you don’t think that I’m trying to disparage you. Frankly, I think the whole solution is beyond rational mind….which,
to my mind, Ash was making a rather valient stab to try to explain..
I mean, James, when we were in it, it was hard to explain…or even describe.
So, it all becomes a myth somehow.
A living myth because we’re all still involved…drawn along with it.
And we talk about it because, in some sense, right now, that’s all we can do
Yes,that hits nail on the head John,it seems what we are left with is love unrequited that yearning,has left ,and just remains love.discriminating awareness has burnt out,love is a flame fueled by the suffering of beings,
just love……and humor must be grappa speak..ha ha ha…then love burns that up,thats the way it seems.
love,
John