Shambhala from 21st Century

140 Responses to “Shambhala from 21st Century”

1. Edward on September 9th, 2009 2:49 pm
   

   I appreciate the intention behind this article. Beautiful idea. Perhaps it could be reworked a bit and published in various magazines or newspapers.

   I have a few questions:

   – “the sacred [needs to be] fully acknowledged in all the institutions of government and society”
   Why?
   Was this part of CTR’s vision, specifically?

   – What’s wrong with just having lots of religions that fight each other? I wonder if this couldn’t be explored more. A lot of religions have good ideas, but when they exist in opposition to each other, each secured inside their dirty little nest of insiders and outsiders… it seems like something goes wrong and wires get crossed, and the religious ideals sometimes get expressed in a warped manner.

   – You almost need to briefly mention or at least hint at what has happened to CTR’s Shambhala vision since his death. It’s not clear what you’re inviting us to. If I’ve never heard of “Shambhala” before and google it, will I be brought to the same thing you’re describing in your article? This doesn’t need a huge big deal made out of it, but half a sentence or so might be useful.

   – It could be just me, but I sometimes dislike certain writing styles. For instance: “I think there is great accuracy in this latter aspiration, and it finds echoes in the lifestyles…” This sentence structure is okay in moderation, but after a while I start to crave strong active verbs and nouns with some juice in them, you know? Maybe a few Anglo-Saxon words thrown in for us low-brows in your audience.

   – Can you summarize Shambhala vision in a couple sentences? Again, I’m envisioning this article being published somewhere with readers who’ve never heard of these things. I’m not sure you ever defined the main subject of your article.

   – Maybe you could tell a story of meeting people in the no-man’s land that you refer to. Stories can be surprisingly powerful, and a delight to read.

   The whole article feels a bit too abstract for my tastes, but otherwise I can think of few topics more important to write about.

   Thanks Mark.
2. Mark Szpakowski on September 9th, 2009 5:41 pm
   

   Thanks for your comments, Edward, including about writing style/passive voice.

   But I’ll start with:
   

   – “the sacred [needs to be] fully acknowledged in all the institutions of government and society”
   Why?
   Was this part of CTR’s vision, specifically?

   Of course this was! And going way way back. In a way that’s the essence of his outlook – seeing the sacred in every detail of the world. In the sixties in England he talked with his students about these things. For example, in 1968 he gave a talk in London where he said that Maitreya, the buddha of the future, would not be an individual, but a society. While at Tagtsang, Bhutan (where he wrote “The Sadhana of the Embodiment of all the Siddhas” (aka Sadhana of Mahamudra) he was discussing Erich Fromm’s book “The Sane Society”. All the early seminaries had _required_ vajra politics courses. The “Political Consciousness” treatise talks about the frame of mind for approaching politics. And of course with the Shambhala teachings starting to be drawn from 20th century western soil in the mid 1970′s onward, this became its own vehicle, because it was meant to include not just buddhists. Likewise, his “Dharma Art” teachings are considered by some (such as Jack Niland) to be a third vehicle (buddhadharma being the first).

   “Completely entering into all worldly activities”: this is a line from a buddhist tantra, but it describes CTR and how he embodied “sacred outlook”.

   Re “just having lots of religions that fight each other” – well, besides that being a somewhat degraded way to be, we do need to go further along the lines of the universal declaration of human rights, to go deeper and manifest more widely common principles of the sacred. There is some movement in this direction: the Catholic Pope recently convened an assembly of scholars of diverse traditions on this topic. CTR’s emphasis in this kind of thing was on practitioners of whatever tradition, and that only thru those could a “no-man’s land” understanding arise.
3. damchö on September 9th, 2009 10:14 pm
   

   Mark, this article is just great, one of the best concise explanations of what it’s all about I have seen. Thanks.
4. Edward on September 9th, 2009 10:27 pm
   

   Sorry if I got too into nit-picking there. Just would love to see what this article could become with a bit of refinement.

   Regarding “sacred” and “secular”… I seem to recall CTR using the term “secular” to refer to Shambhala principles. An enlightened society could have many religions (i.e. the “sacred”?), but it would also have basic secular wisdom that it would be guided by. Something like that. So I find the use of these terms slightly confusing here. Or at least, someone as dull as me might be confused if the meaning of these words shifts around too frequently.

   I also think it’s good to be careful about delving into governmental / political ideas. I never met CTR, but it seems like he very skillfully avoided too much talk about what the government needs to do.

   To some people, it’s completely obvious that what we need is a more Liberal government, socialized medicine, and more socialist policy in general. We should have a Department of Peace, and perhaps we should pass laws to reward doing good, and to honor the sacred. This is obviously in keeping with the principles of the Buddha, not to mention Jesus and everyone else.

   To other people, it’s completely obvious that the government that governs best, governs least (did Thomas Jefferson say that?), that what we need is less government, less socialism, and that this is obviously in keeping with the principles of the Buddha, Jesus, etc. Jesus didn’t create a vast corporate bureaucracy to watch over his teachings, or march in the street to change government policy, he just kept things simple and walked around teaching people, encouraging people to help their neighbors. Probably the government of Bhutan is smaller than that of the U.S., even on a per capita basis.

   Anyway, stepping into a debate over what the government should do could be like accidentally stepping into sticky dog poo. I personally would try to avoid stepping into it. But then I’m not as knowledgeable as many people. It certainly could easily overwhelm a discussion about basic Shambhala vision and why we need it.

   I don’t know anything about CTR’s vajra politics courses, but to me a good politician is someone who has sacred outlook, but does not necessarily try to impose his own beliefs onto others, or even to necessarily force other people to also have a sacred outlook. He just does a really good job when he’s at work– meditation in action.
5. Suzanne Duarte on September 10th, 2009 7:22 am
   

   Thank you, Mark! This is excellent and I appreciate it very much.

   Edward, we could think beyond “the government(s)” that we have known, that we conceptualize, and imagine what kind of governing structures would be appropriate for a society that observed the sacred nature – the dharma – of the world – the natural world. We may well have the opportunity to build from the ground up in the coming century, or the next. The juggernaut of Western Civilization/globalization will not last forever. Many say it will not last through this century. It cannot because it is unsustainable. We will have to go back to basics without fossil fuels because they are nonrenewable and we are quickly burning through that endowment, and we can now see the end of it (google Peak Oil).

   So let’s take the opportunity to imagine what kind of governing structures will be appropriate for a sane society that observes and honors the sacredness of living systems, the delicate fabric of the web of life, wherein drala dwells. Let’s be fearless enough to see beyond the ruins of the wasteful, corrupt, delusional civilization we have inherited, and envision the opportunity and possibility offered by its collapse to establish a sustainable Shambhala society. There are already many people engaged in THAT conversation, who are reaching into the open space of the future to seek new visions and stories of what could be AFTER the delirium of the petroleum party. There is fertile ground there for Shambhalians.

   For an example of someone thinking ahead, see:
   Inverting the Economic Order by Wendell Berry
   http://www.progressive.org/mag/berry0909.html
6. Cliff Esler on September 10th, 2009 3:49 pm
   

   Thank you so much for this piece! It evokes thoughts of a good-hearted “collective Maitreya” receiving its own mass terma out of the sheer dire necessity of the times, with an aside to Suzuki Roshi’s image of getting imperceptibly drenched in a fog of enlightenment, or to the inevitable growth of Teilhard’s noosphere. Yes we will get our hands and noses dirty in the process, and not as “managers”, I fear. But at least with a bit more hope than James Lovelock’s outlook.

   But to return from such ricochets, the calibre of Mark’s insight is almost like an oasis — welcome sustenance found in the desert of abstractions. I hope he’ll conjure more such stuff over time, with more and more specifics thrown in.
7. meg on September 11th, 2009 2:00 am
   

   http://www.davidkorten.org is worth exploring as well.
8. Edward on September 11th, 2009 9:56 am
   

   Personally, I don’t see what envisioning new styles of government or new economic principles has to do with Shambhala Vision or Training, per se. (Then again, I only ever got to Level Four.)

   It’s been a few years now since I took Level One, but I seem to recall it being first of all, about letting go of *all* reference points, and realizing that basic goodness is the ground of *all*.

   In other words, every situation we find ourselves in, every government setup, every economic problem, every ecological disaster, might already be a workable situation, just as it is.

   But before we rush into the “solution” part, or the new “improvement” part, we first feel the terror of experiencing things as they are. Maybe the current situation *isn’t* workable, we think. We panic and freak out. Can our fear be a stepping stone?

   I personally wonder if big corporations’ emphasis on “the bottom line” (as mentioned in the above article) is simply a reflection of our own personal emphasis on getting “results”, getting the “improvements” we want. Sometimes all the problems in the world seem so big and global and removed from our own daily participation in life, but I wonder if all that “big” stuff isn’t just an exact reflection of us as human beings, and our own psychology?

   Yes, working creatively to deal with problems is important, but for me I have to pause momentarily before I jump in.
9. Nick Wright on September 11th, 2009 10:29 am
   

   Edward wrote: “Regarding “sacred” and “secular”… I seem to recall CTR using the term “secular” to refer to Shambhala principles. An enlightened society could have many religions (i.e. the “sacred”?), but it would also have basic secular wisdom that it would be guided by. Something like that. So I find the use of these terms slightly confusing here. Or at least, someone as dull as me might be confused if the meaning of these words shifts around too frequently.”

   I think it’s wise to be cautious about attaching definitive meanings to some things that the Dorje Dradul said: he occasionally “coined” terms or used common terms to approximate what he meant, without intending them to be taken literally or be used dogmatically.

   At the first Kalapa Assembly, he introduced the term “secular”–as he put it, “for want of a better word”–to differentiate the classical Buddhist approach to spirituality (rejecting the world to focus on intensive spiritual practice) from the approach of Shambhala as “the completion of Buddhism.” I understood “secular’ to refer to the world of the senses–including all aspects of ordinary life, including other religious traditions. In this sense, he brought “family lineage” together with “spiritual lineage” to create a complete path in which “there is nothing outside Buddhism at all.”
10. Nick Wright on September 11th, 2009 4:30 pm
    

    Further to the above: The ground of enlightened society is individual/personal freedom, as distinct from freedom based on any political system. From the first talk of the first Kalapa Assembly (1978), the first question:

    Question: Sir, when you were talking about personal freedom, you were talking about it as personal experience, as opposed to freedom in terms of a certain political system. Is it possible to have that freedom inside of any political system?

    Dorje Dradul: The basic point is that political systems are beyond individualism, beyond paying attention to any personal existence. That is why a lot of people fight, and a lot of people have riots and demonstrations. But the idea of freedom, in this case, is self-liberation, to begin with. So we could cut down political demonstrations. Individual demonstrations will be okay.

    Q: So to begin with, it’s not a political question at all.

    DD: It’s a spiritual practice—buddhadharma—absolutely.

    Q: Sir, what would cause the arising of Shambhala vision? Why wouldn’t it just continue as skilful buddhadharma in the world?

    DD: I think that Shambhala vision is a product of buddhadharma. Buddhadharma is regarded as the existence of the sky. Out of that we produce the Shambhala vision as the rising of the sun. It’s a question of feeling alive, right? You are alive. You have your breakfast, lunch, (etc.). How about opening your eyes every day in the process of having breakfast, lunch, (etc.)? That’s the idea of how we can actually humanize the whole thing fully, beyond just a practice-level situation alone. We just do it ourselves. You might change your glasses, buy a suit, (etc.). Those are Shambhala vision. You might have shamatha-vipashyana awareness happening all the time, but on top of that you have to keep up with your actual day-to-day life, so that you make sure that you don’t have a broken shoestring or missing buttons on your shirt. Shambhala takes care of that—with a delightful smile.
11. Edward on September 12th, 2009 6:12 pm
    

    Since this article has received a lot of praise and gratitude, perhaps I could play devil’s advocate a bit here?

    Imagine – a civilization, a culture, a country or countries, where the sacred is acknowledged in every aspect of personal, family, and community life, as well as in the details of business, finance, and government.

    This does sound good. And certainly marketable (and I mean that in a good sense). But how does this have anything to do with Shambhala Training, or with creating enlightened society?

    The vision described in the opening paragraph of the article, and echoed a bit throughout, sounds like offering up a “carrot” of utopian culture. If we sign up for such and such an organization, or subscribe to such and such a philosophy, or submit ourselves to certain practices, we can feel that we’re helping bring about a brave new world that will be better, more comfortable, more spiritual, with more sacred space, more “no-man’s land” and more goodness.

    If we are very successful, we may achieve a society where our spiritual beliefs and practices could be culturally accepted or even honored by large numbers of people. We might even become heroes. Why not?

    So part of this article seems concerned with envisioning group goals. There’s nothing wrong with that– envisioning group goals can be extremely important.

    But for me, an enlightened society is not a place with some particular look to it, or some particular set of problems having been solved, or some philosophy about honoring the sacred that everyone upholds. For me, enlightened society might suddenly arise in a place where people work on their ability to experience the goodness of things just as they are, and learn to work with the world just as it is.

    Personally I would like to learn to enjoy the basic goodness of dirt, of greed, of globalized corruption. Not to indulge in those things or encourage them, but to see if there is any goodness in my world just as it is, and to see if I can work with it as it is. I would like to learn how to build a nice home in the charnal ground I wake up in each day, by becoming a native, rather than living as a foreigner.

    At the end of the day, how much do I need my government or my society to honor sacred principles? This is a real question for each of us, perhaps, or at least for me.

    If I encounter some sort of wrathful deity, do I need him or her to pat me on my head and tell me I’m doing a good job? If my world becomes the form of the guru, do I need that world to be friendly and rational and “sustainable”, and to reassure me that I’m doing well?

    Speaking of wrath, where did those nasty young people go who used to post here? Please, come back.
12. damchö on September 12th, 2009 9:27 pm
    

    Hi Edward,

    Just a first thought to your ideas. 1) Alan Watts once said: why burn down your house everytime you want roast pork? In other words, we don’t need to make the spiritual path any harder than it already is. The more our environment and world can support our path the less needlessly arduous and confused it will all be for everyone. I think that’s a very basic part of it. We’d all like to live in a world which nurtures wisdom and compassion far, far more than it currently does. And to move towards that world, especially in an age of intensified bewilderment and aggression, we need to engage, powerfully, with every aspect of it. 2) In any case, the path is still the goal. Building enlightened society happens to be an inherent byproduct of spiritual practice. But the Shambhala teachings do make that more explicit by shining realized view out into absolutely everything. No level of our personal and collective experience is rejected. This relates to your paragraph:

    “Personally I would like to learn to enjoy the basic goodness of dirt, of greed, of globalized corruption. Not to indulge in those things or encourage them, but to see if there is any goodness in my world just as it is, and to see if I can work with it as it is. I would like to learn how to build a nice home in the charnal ground I wake up in each day, by becoming a native, rather than living as a foreigner.”

    I see no conflict here–in fact I’m sure we’d agree that learning to work with things as they are is our only choice anyway. The view of Shambhala doesn’t involve ignoring “dirt, greed, globalized corruption,” pretending that they’re not part of our world. Trungpa Rinpoche speaks often about cultivating appreciation for our precise situation, how even if we are dirt-poor we might still turn our one small room into a drala-rich palace. He doesn’t mean that we engage in daydream and make-believe, but rather that we cultivate the vision which can see the brilliant goodness that is actually there, and apply that vision to our environment to make the brilliance all the more manifest. That’s my limited understanding anyway.
13. brad on September 13th, 2009 4:11 am
    

    I’m not young.
14. Nick Wright on September 13th, 2009 9:15 am
    

    Edward wrote: “This does sound good. And certainly marketable…. But how does this have anything to do with Shambhala Training, or with creating enlightened society?”

    and

    “Personally I would like to learn to enjoy the basic goodness of dirt, of greed, of globalized corruption. Not to indulge in those things or encourage them, but to see if there is any goodness in my world just as it is”

    The response to both those points is contained in the above quotation of the Dorje Dradul. The ground or foundation of enlightened society is a collection of individuals who use the disciplines of shamatha-vipashyana meditation to work with their projections of anger, indifference and passion in regard to everything, including the existing political setup in all its sanity and neurosis.

    It’s necessary to first become free of being a nuisance to ourselves and the world. One doesn’t have to become a card-carrying Buddhist to participate—that’s where Shambhala Training plays a vital role, as a meditation vehicle for adherents of other religions (and non-religions, I suppose). The result described by the Dorje Dradul is a “natural” politics, based on and arising out of the sanity of relating to things as they are—beyond our projections about ourselves and the world around us. It’s not an ideological approach; it rises out of the resulting openness Mark described as being “not of my making, or my belonging, but through mutual letting go the space feels held, and common language, understandings, and forms emerge. It’s possible for people to meet in no-man’s land.”

    It is necessary to have forms of government and some kind of hierarchy (there is nothing really new under the sun in that respect, so we have to borrow), but the key is that the setup is occupied by people who have a common mindfulness/awareness discipline as taught by the Buddha.

    I’m off to the Scorpion Seal Retreat at Denma Ling. Best wishes to all.

    Nick W.
15. Edward on September 13th, 2009 11:26 am
    

    Mark Szpakowski writes:
    mutual letting go the space

    This concept seems fishy to me.

    If I’m at a business meeting with my enemy, or on a website sharing comments with my enemy, how do I mutually let go of the space? Does it involve waiting for the other party to do it first?

    Do I let go with the expectation that the other party will reciprocate?

    Mutual letting go is a wonderful thing, don’t get me wrong. It’s magical. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced. But some would say that such an experience is a gift from God, not something to be banking on.

    It’s kind of a linguistic trick, perhaps. I don’t believe something called “mutual letting go” actually exists. I think in retrospect we can look back at an experience and label it “mutual letting go”, but I don’t think it’s something that can actually happen in the “now”.
16. Andrew Speraw on September 13th, 2009 11:26 am
    

    Hello, um I’m looking for a protest movement to join. I don’t agree with what’s been going on within my church and I’d like to vent for a while…
17. Suzanne Duarte on September 13th, 2009 8:52 pm
    

    Mark, could you clarify why you chose to use ‘from’ in the title of this essay, rather than, say, ‘for – as in Shambhala for the 21st Century. I’m sure you have a good reason. I’m just curious to hear what it is.

    I’m also curious to know what you mean by ‘The Source is in Front.’ The source (of emergent properties, understandings, lungta, drala?) is in front (of us)? Sometimes you are so subtle that I feel dense.
18. Mark Szpakowski on September 13th, 2009 9:52 pm
    

    Suzanne, why I used “from the 21st century”, and, related to that (although I only discovered/thought of it while writing the article) “the source is in front”: The latter is kind of a (overly) subtle reference to the Great Eastern Sun always being in front of you, in the forward direction, and that is the source (“radiating confidence, peaceful, illuminating the way of discipline”). The from is that the source of inspiration, and also where the “terma” is pulled out from, is not so much the past as the present and the future. This is my own sense, and also my experience of how CTR operated, and also how the root texts express (“For the benefit of future beings… People in the future who have doubt / Will be caught in the sickness of the dark age…”) “Primordial” does not mean that it’s in the deep past, but that it connects with the deepest and simplest nature. So this kind of Shambhala vision is not of nostalgic relevance, but its relevance comes from our situation now, and for the sake of future generations, and its inspiration is the forward vision of the Great Eastern Sun, dawning ahead of us.

    Edward, re mutual letting go, this refers to people, warrior-practitioners, who have their individual practices of letting go (buddhism: letting go of ego; shambhala: genuine mind of sadness, suddenly free from fixed mind), whatever those may be, and who are willing to meet together and, as a result of the discipline of their individual practices, are willing to go further and explore a space that belongs to none of them, but is yet “held” by them. Ie, practicing individual enlightenment is not enough, but, given that individual practice, you can go for enlightened society. That’s the one-sentence elevator pitch. It is rad. But it is the kind of thing that Alia Institute, for example, is exploring.

    Also, I think you hit it on the head with “For me, enlightened society might suddenly arise in a place where people work on their ability to experience the goodness of things just as they are, and learn to work with the world just as it is.” Working with such an outlook is not separate from how things arise as they are. Experiencing the goodness of things brings out the goodness of things and us, and so naturally their forms will transform. Why should forms of government, of commerce, of art, of kitchens, be excluded from that?

    Andrew (Speraw), why don’t you paint us a picture, or create a sign, or write an article?

    Cheers,
    Mark
19. Edward on September 14th, 2009 1:37 am
    

    Hi Mark,

    Thanks for your comments.

    I hope my own comments were received as attempts to generate discussion– to explore ideas and themes and particular details– rather than as an attack on your article. I sometimes appreciate it when people respectfully challenge my own ideas or communications, so I hope a bit of that with your article is ok.

    I think the main question I had was how is it possible to be in no-man’s land and not be holding on to things on the one hand, and to still be working toward a specific version of reality that we would like to achieve on the other? If we anticipate other people bringing us comfort and company in no-man’s land, is it really no-man’s land?

    In my own life, the more I truly let go, the more unexpected opportunities or solutions arise, that are much better than what I had in mind while I was tightly holding on to my ideas.

    But in order to truly let go I have to let go of all expectations, which is really hard for me. Terrifying, actually.

    Am I doing it wrong?
20. rita ashworth on September 14th, 2009 7:21 am
    

    Thank you for your article Mark – it has outlined some interesting questions about shambhala vision.

    Myself thinking about the shambhala teachings I do not find them alien. For example the forms of puting your clothes in certain places according to shambhala placement I can relate to because my mother did that – everything had its proper place to be. My parents would be in their 100s if they were alive so consequently I have a picture in my mind of Edwardian morality and ethos before the modern age. Trungpa Rinpoche mentions this briefly with talk about selling your heirlooms, your family silver which all my family had – so yes in Europe we are still connected to these old traditions.

    How does such form and the discussion of it relate to the formation of
    a shambhala politics for the present world – well one it means that you dont sell your familys inheritance to the highest bidder, to the market – it means you have some sense of honour in dealing with countries and people and yes of course that honour comes out of the meditation practice itself as a basis. However Trungpa Rinpoche also wanted a society to be built on these shambhala principles and to do that you need to open the full body of the teachings to everyone, and every religion – and to use a socialist ideal to exemplify this you need a world revolution based on these principles not a single country solution to spreading these teachings.

    It would not be ‘shambhala fundamentalism’ because the meditation practice undercuts such ‘theories’ itself – at the moment I have visions in my mind about how this society could be but they are more in terms of Art – I think you need to provide elegant spaces for people to become at home in -hence my interest in the video ‘Discovering Elegance’ and I think the more people could attend these places they would become more at ease so that is one way of doing it but of course not the only way.

    It is interesting also that you briefly mentioned John Lennon’s Imagine in your essay – my mother was a Liverpudlian so I know the place to be a very religious and socialist place – it has two cathedrals for example -one took fifty years to build. So I definately do know that in this country there have always been places that have risen above the market and cared for other people as the prime aim of their society. John Lennon’s vision I believe was somewhat borne out of his roots and in opposition to the status quo in the UK – he was questioning things like many in the sixties. I think he wanted to raise above the partisan ship of religions and be part of that old phrase ‘a brotherhood/sisterhood of man/woman’ which yes has to have as its basis the meditation process.

    Best

    Rita Ashworth
    Stockport UK
21. rita ashworth on September 14th, 2009 7:50 am
    

    carrying on the Liverpool theme see Liverpool cathedral plays Imagine on utube -its a classic and very inspiring

    best

    rita
22. Suzanne Duarte on September 14th, 2009 9:26 am
    

    Mark, thanks so much for clarifying. That’s helpful and also makes perfect sense to me. I like your ‘observation’ that the “terma” is pulled out from . . . the present and the future. That reminds me of Claus Otto Scharmer’s “presencing” – which to me means ‘pre-sensing the future and bringing it into the present. “The presencing process is a journey that connects us more deeply both to what wants to emerge in the world and to our highest future possibility—our emerging authentic self – by shifting the social field from ego-system to eco-system awareness.” http://www.presencing.com/ I’m sure you must be familiar with Scharmer from the Shambhala Institute, but maybe other people reading this thread are not.

    Btw, the Alia Institute link doesn’t work (there is a corrupting extra few letters in there).

    Edward, you ask, “how is it possible to be in no-man’s land and not be holding on to things on the one hand, and to still be working toward a specific version of reality that we would like to achieve on the other? If we anticipate other people bringing us comfort and company in no-man’s land, is it really no-man’s land?”

    The hitch is the word ‘us’ in “other people bringing us comfort and company.” Who said anything about anticipating that? That is a gaining attitude, looking for what the world can do for oneself. That kind of predatory what’s-in-it-for-me attitude, although fully encouraged in conventional society, is not experiencing the goodness of things as they are, or connecting with the basic goodness of who we meet and what we see.

    You say, “But in order to truly let go I have to let go of all expectations, which is really hard for me. Terrifying, actually. Am I doing it wrong?”

    I think that the ‘no-man’s land’ is actually space. The space of egolessness, the space of nowness. Shamatha practice is resting in that space, relaxing into that space. Learning to ‘trust the space’ where there is no personal territory – but out of which magical, luminous possibilities arise – is the basic practice that enables us to be in no-man’s land without holding onto things OR working toward a specific version of reality that we would like to achieve. That is the space in which the Great Eastern Sun arises.

    I don’t think creating enlightened society in the vision of Shambhala is a matter of imposing “a specific version of reality” on the world. The process, it seems to me, is more creative than than, in that creativity arises out of spaciousness. The goodness is the inherent order and sanity and beauty that exist in the natural world and in ourselves, which we can perceive when our minds are spacious and unfixated. That open, spacious mind and its perception of inherent goodness and sacredness is the working basis for creating enlightened society.

    As Mark said at the end of his last post, “Experiencing the goodness of things brings out the goodness of things and us, and so naturally their forms will transform. Why should forms of government, of commerce, of art, of kitchens, be excluded from that?”

    Does that help?
23. Mark Szpakowski on September 14th, 2009 11:06 pm
    

    Edward, your comments are fine and welcome! When you say

    I think the main question I had was how is it possible to be in no-man’s land and not be holding on to things on the one hand, and to still be working toward a specific version of reality that we would like to achieve on the other?

    I think that puts the finger right on the question, and it is the great question: how to be open, truly open, while at the same time respecting your own practice, finite point of view, specific karma and history, intentions, etc? The question is how to work with the fact that inevitably we do have intention and expectation, as well as reaction and pre-judge-ice? That’s the tension to explore, and the “warrior” quality as I see it is to recognize both the (personal) (group) solidities/boundaries and the open space potential. My wife uses the image of the “open dojo”, in which people of different practices meet, and which is also “held” by the different people. I think there can be such a holding of open space in which there is some quality assurance of the integrity of that space thru each of our different bullshit detectors. As usual no guarantees in such a process – it’s manual labour, created fresh each time.

    Sharing humor is a good start, rising up in the space of things not being able to hold anyway .

    I think this is an important issue in situations where there is no recognized “enlightened person” to hold it together (or not) for us – how do we do that?
24. John Castlebury on September 15th, 2009 10:28 am
    

    [At the request of my dear wife Metok Tokme for a poem as my gift for her 60th birthday today, Dawa Chöga threw together these 108 syllables:]
    .
    .
    (NO SUBJECT)

    Mist on the windshield disappears the true vividness!
    Wiper blades of awareness can disappear the mist!

    Time catches up with us and goes by in easy silence!
    We all catch our breath in fresh air of no strings!

    How we wish everyone such cleanliness of no strings!
    So little to keep track of with no winning or losing!

    This is how we confound doubt and cure myopia!
    Let our meteors shower and our aurora borealis roar!
25. rita ashworth on September 15th, 2009 1:59 pm
    

    yes I think Suzanne is right when you get open space you get creativity and to my mind too you get terma aswell. Sometimes I think in literature you can subvert your ego and enter open space – William Burroughs made some interesting experiments in this regard doing cut-ups in literature – its that old ‘conception’ of epiphany in literature when you go aahhh – I think this is why Trungpa Rinpoche liked Kerouacs poems so much as do I,

    Also indeed there are more and more attempts to mix the sciences with the Arts hence the Alia Institute and I think more and more should we say conservative offices in government are open to this but yes too we have to be aware that such practices even here can be co-opted -hence I suppose the emphasis on meditation.

    A truly, truly open space physically in the sense of building is hard to imagine but some Islamic architecture with their gardens and water does approximate this.

    The open open space in the charnel ground can be flooring – I remember doing a story on homelessness in Halifax and the environs I entered doing that story sort of blew my mind particularly the mental institution in Dartmouth where I was shown the rooms where mentally ill people were institutionalised – they were just mind-shattering environments.

    So yeh the open space can happen anywhere and I think at the present time westerners have to share their experiences of ‘it’ -for people just to get some inkling of open space-like the question when did you really, really experience basic goodness……..

    Well best

    Rita Ashworth
26. Divine Lake on September 15th, 2009 3:09 pm
    

    Frisson in Alice Munro stories; Epiphany in the Dubliners; ending of “The Dead”; being thrown out of oneself, into ‘ah’
27. Alison on September 18th, 2009 5:14 pm
    

    Hello. I’ve been reading here for a few months and have appreciated the opportunity to listen in. Wondering now if anyone posting here could either provide answers or point me toward good research sources regarding the following random questions:

    1) In “The Essential Chogyam Trungpa” it says that VCTR had 5 sons. Who are these?

    2) Who created the logo for Tail of the Tiger? I’m assuming VCTR originally named KC that, but, by chance, anyone know who made the art ?

    3) On one of the threads here, a VCTR teaching on “The Karmapa Principle” is mentioned. Where could I read about what that is?

    4) Can anyone say briefly what the full “official” (?) ST study/practice path was 15 years ago, say, vs. now? Especially from Warrior Assembly on? In the years that I’ve been around, I know the particulars have shifted, but for clarity I would like to contrast the nuts and bolts of that section of the path for myself now, if at all possible. (Maybe the info is already on this site somewhere……? )

    5) On the SI website there is an edict from the Sakyong Wangmo which refers to the Sakyong as: “…… the Tridzin, the throne holder of the mandala, the Kongma Sakyong, Jampal Trinley Dradul.” It’s new to my eyes and I cannot find research on what this title/these names mean, or how they were conferred, or by whom or when.

    By way of introduction – I read/studied VCTR’s texts on and off throughout the 1990′s and started Shambhala Training programs/meditation instruction around the turn of the millennium ( to completion of Warrior Assembly in 2007). There is no Shambhala center in my immediate geographical area (lots of road-tripping in the northeastern U.S.), same MI since Level I, and have been with the Sakyong in person for programs 3 times, including 2 brief personal audiences. Taking some time this past year to educate myself more broadly about the SI organization and the changes afoot.

    (hope it’s okay to plunk this into this thread. Not sure where else …..)

    many thanks -
28. James Elliott on September 18th, 2009 5:51 pm
    

    A few points for discussion.

    Indivisibility of sacred and secular is a worthy aim; I just don’t see how it can be approached in terms of institutions or governments. That’s too anthropomorphic. And in a way what the founders avoided in the U.S. Constitution when separating church and state, an expression coming out of a millennium of evolution, not just from a few brilliant or hard working people. That evolution probably began before Jesus’ tantrum in the temple.

    The Caliphate or anything like it is a real and dreadful possibility. I was surprised to hear it alluded to as a healthy alternative to McGlobalization.

    Those who would reestablish the Caliphate are not all mild mannered practitioners characterized in Mark’s essay, they are interested in a centralized global government for the entire Islamic world. Sort of like a parliamentary papacy. Significantly, however, Islam has never acknowledged any need for separation of church and state, so the Caliphate would be, and proponents have said as much, an attempt to gain power in order to control not just a people, region or country, but all Muslims globally, and then through that vast constituency control laws, economics, politics and religion, in order to mandate the Islam-ification of all people. I doubt its reestablishment would spread peace.

    Part of Mark’s presentation is also based on the questionable dichotomy that sacred and secular are now split, and that is the cause of a lot of our current woes. I disagree. The problems of society in the U.S. and globally have been caused primarily by the exponential successes of humans in harnessing energy and resources, and then populating the planet far beyond sustainable levels. The ideas alluded to like ‘trickle down’ and ‘greed is good’ are not what have created our problems; tendencies described that way have existed since… forever. Such explanations are fairly superficial if modern justifications after the fact for what seems to be an inexorable momentum of a culture/society that is becoming more and more complex as we speak. (see Jared Diamond’s “Collapse”)

    It is not individuals that are getting more complex, it is all of us altogether. It’s not clear religion has much to offer on the institutional level anyway, to help solve those kinds of problems, but am open to suggestions.

    No matter what the level of realization, the oil’s going to run out. Water is going to become a problem. The agricultural system is already struggling to keep up with an exponentially growing population. Soon we may have fished out the ocean. The economic system almost melted down, and may yet. The system of finances laws checks and balances are all so complex now, no one can understand all the ramifications, on and on.

    I’d really like to hear more concretely what religion or Shambhala has to offer to these times, as is often said. The problems Mark suggests the vision could help solve are not the problems I see out there. It isn’t the vision that’s a problem, as much as the way from here to there.

    (continued)
29. James Elliott on September 18th, 2009 5:52 pm
    

    The dichotomy Mark presents of sacred versus secular is questionable (as are all dichotomies by definition). That sacred is now the preserve of official religions and the secular has been abandoned to market Darwinism etc., is a position official religions have staked out to be sure, but I don’t believe it’s true for individuals, even if institutions stake claims.

    That’s based on a number of shaky assumptions, for example:

    1. the separation (or unity) of sacred and secular we each experience is there due to external institutions.
    2. That if sacred and secular were united in institutions it would help individuals to integrate them.
    3. That there is something non-sacred about the secular economic stuff as contrasted to spiritual stuff.
    4. That religion understands sacred, and therefore is the authority or holds more sway over that territory.

    To 1. the separation or unity is in us, not out there. Another human may be able to show us a glimpse, but can an institution ever?

    2. as the apparent split is in us, how can it be ‘reunited’ in institutions?

    3rd, finances and stuff that aren’t under the umbrella of official religions are not any more or less sacred than what happens within that umbrella. That’s may be true because of the nature of mainstream these days, but is certainly true in terms of ultimate truths.

    4th, genuine sense of sacredness is as available and real on Wall Street as it is in the Vatican. Or it is just as lacking in mainstream religions as it is everywhere else. If an individual has a sense of sacred, it will not be limited in those ways.

    I want to add that I don’t mean to tear Mark’s presentation down. I agree with much of Mark’s presentation. But if the aim is to create a language to explain and share the Shambhala Vision, disagreement will be part of the process.

    In the inspiration that we “Take note, at every point the creation of the world begins anew.”
    (S. J. Lec)
30. Mark Szpakowski on September 20th, 2009 10:02 pm
    

    Alison, to respond to some of your questions:

    1) Re the 5 sons, there’s actually 6 Mukpo children, including 2 by Lady Diana and CTR (Tagtrug (Taggie) and Gesar Arthur); the Sakyong (Osel Rangtrol) (who in the late sixties was brought to England from North India; his mother is known as Lady Kunchok, and lives in Boulder); David and Ashoka (sons of Diana Mukpo and Mitchell Levy, who was CTR’s personal physician); and Chandali (adopted).

    2) Logo for Tail of the Tiger: do you mean the (relatively new) hexagramy logo for Tail of the Tiger, or for Karme-Choling (and what logo would that be)? The best information on early art around Karme-Choling is by Jack Niland, who worked directly with CTR – check out the podcasts and articles on the Chronicles site.

    3) don’t know;

    4) Essential diff between now and before 2000 is that buddhism is now considered essential to understanding and practicing the way of Shambhala, whereas before it could stand on its own.

    5) Kongma means “Imperial” – the first use of “Kongma Sakyong” is in the Sakyong’s 2008 Shambhala Day address.

    Re titles and such, my favorite line on this is from John Perks’ The Mahasiddha and his Idiot Servant, p 218, where he asks CTR:

    “Are these awards and appointments fact or fiction”, I asked.
    “Both,” he answered.

    Would you get such an answer these days?
31. Mark Szpakowski on September 20th, 2009 10:37 pm
    

    James, I referred to Islam and the Caliphate partly because I have a friend who is a practicing Muslim, and with whom I can talk just as I can with you (I hope). Your concern that a modern Caliphate would seek to institutionalize Islam as the one and only religion is exactly why I think something like Shambhala Vision is relevant: because it seeks to join with aspirations for a more sacred life in a disestablishmentarian way. The one-religion-only state idea doesn’t scale, regardless of whether it’s Islamic or Buddhist.

    I think I’m using the terms secular and sacred the way they are used in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. Are you really saying that there’s no experience/expression of the sacred outside organized religion?

    Further, because of the huge way we can amplify our own actions, we have to get beyond “it’s only human” re greed and primitive beliefs (such as that we can borrow against an infinitely expanding future) – we as a species, and maybe more importantly our planetary matrix, cannot afford that any more. “It’s only human, this has been going on for centuries”, is not good enough. Actually, we’re better than that, and we can re-connect with that better-ness, and express it in all our forms and institutions, especially those that are ruling our world.
32. Alison on September 21st, 2009 2:03 pm
    

    Many thanks for your responses Mark.

    With regard to separation of church and state and the U.S. Constitution as mentioned by James: IMHO, this principle is very active and continuously unfolding here still. The “founding fathers”/framers of the constitution were in a day-to-day sense seeking escape from the restrictions of the British monarchy/Church of England, but were, in most formal aspects, “Christian” . The public buildings/monuments erected for local, State and Federal governments were/are infused with Christian iconography, biblical quotes etched into the walls, etc. Prayers/rituals offered in everywhere from school rooms to the Senate floor were shaped by Christian theology and continue to be challenged by the populace on an ongoing basis (i.e. recent ado over the renovation of a giant stone representation of the 10 commandments outside the Capitol building in D.C. or over the fact that some school children are still required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance which includes the phrase “one Nation under God”, which some find offensive).

    Another point of interest here is that many, if not most, of the “founding fathers” , including George Washington, were Freemasons – a secret society originating in 16/17th c. U.K. which refers to a “Supreme Being”, but not necessarily a Christian one. A “… system of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols” whose influence on our national roots is profound, if as yet somewhat unclear to the uninitiated observer. Freemason iconography can also be found all over govt buildings, on our money (i.e. the pyramid with eye on top on a U.S. dollar bill, and inclusion of the latin phrase “e pluribus unum” – “out of many one”, a quote originating from the poet Virgil), etc. The article in Wikipedia on Freemasonry is a good one, if anyone is interested.

    In short, the “secularization” of the U.S. Government is a work very much in progress and in my view continues to clear the way for further emergence of whatever “best practices” support the giant intercultural stew we are brewing here (and by extension, on the planet) with dignity, mutual respect and the “warrior ethos” which we know is not specific to any one race, religion or nationality. The “American experiment” is very much alive. Racial segregation of schools, public bathrooms and water fountains existed in my lifetime. Universal Suffrage was not a genuine legal reality here until 1965. During the days of the drafting of the constitution, only male (white and Christian) landholders could vote. The fact that I live in a peacefully integrated community where atheists, agnostics, members of a wide variety of churches, temples, mosques, etc. live, work, socialize and vote together seems like good progress toward the ideal of religious freedom and (intelligent) freedom in general. The formerly entrenched biases that have led to corruption (i.e. selective treatment by the police based on race or nationality), are just not allowed to fly here the way they did even just a few years ago.
33. John Tischer on September 21st, 2009 5:22 pm
    

    “The “American experiment” is very much alive.” Allison

    In the past nine years, America has gone from a budget surplus to a crushing deficit, two wars in progress and with no end in sight, an economic
    crisis which, just as the crash of ’29, puts money in the hands of the wealthy
    and bankrupts the common man, the repeal of habius corpus and posse comatus, increasing regimentation of all industries, and on and on.

    Not everyone has awoken from the American Dream…but if they don’t….
    soon….the USA will suffer the same fate as the Weimar Democracy of Germany in the mid twenties to mid thirties. And the USA hasn’t been a democracy…for…help me here people, what? Forty years?

    All the progress you cited, Allison, happened before 1980….ripple effect from the sixties perhaps. Since then, power has gotten smarter and tougher.

    Enlightened Society, for me, is beyond time and space…(not that those
    things aren’t important for our lives). Eventually, if enough people have the aspiration and intention, it’s gonna happen. But to superimpose
    any desired model on the actual situation on the ground, seems wishful
    thinking.

    With respect,

    J.T.
34. James Elliott on September 22nd, 2009 1:51 am
    

    Mark,

    It isn’t clear in your essay the Caliphate is an example of what doesn’t work. Btw, I don’t think Islam equals Caliphate. Rumi can save your life, but the Caliphate is a political force having nothing to do with one’s knees touching the ground to pray, just as the name changes and policy acrobatics in Shambhala Int. have nothing to do with prostrations or following your breath.

    I never implied there is no expression of sacred outside religion, quite the opposite… (?). I only paraphrased your own description of Western culture: “The sacred has become the preserve of official religions and of fundamentalisms” and “the secular has been left to be terrorized by market Darwinism and peculiar beliefs, (etc.)” and pointed out how it doesn’t ring true.

    That premise is based on the notion of a cultural drive, in which religion has been compartmentalized, cut off from the political process, and so the secular has been allowed to develop ideological mindsets like “greed is good” and “trickle down” etc., and those ideologies, as you described it, are what create problems.

    It sounds like you are suggesting the Shambhala vision is a solution to that split. While I think the Shambhala vision has something very valuable to offer, I don’t think that can be it, because the basis of that assumption isn’t true.

    Religion, ask any politician, is still a large and unavoidable aspect of modern politics, something which simply has to be part of any platform or a politician will not get elected to any high office. This demand has in many instances usurped science and common sense, much more so in America than Europe, so it doesn’t follow that America’s system is in some way more split off from religion. The Europeans, by the way, are quite proud of not having to kowtow to religion as they see being done in America.

    If that split isn’t actually there, it can’t be the cause of such ideology, so solving that split won’t dissolve the ideology.

    I was not in any way mitigating greed and primitive beliefs as normal human behavior. That’s a misunderstanding. My intention was to say only that egoistic behavior cannot be attributed to a cultural or institutional mindset or an ideology particular to our zeitgeist with labels like “greed is good” or “trickle down”, terms that have been created in modern society and seem to insinuate that ‘out there’ is where the problem lies, but which describe nothing about the humans involved.

    Or… the source of our egoistic tendencies and of those who control policy is not the external institutes, the culture, or ideologies we come across. The source is our own ego which has been doing its thing for a very very long time regardless the current zeitgeist and modern labels.

    It would seem we can’t really even describe the problem accurately on an institutional level.

    (cont.)
35. James Elliott on September 22nd, 2009 1:51 am
    

    On that level we can create checks and balances and accountability based on more and more enlightened principles, but overcoming ego is not something institutes are in any meaningful way capable of. They are not people. And those who hide behind an organization whether the CIA, An office in Government, a business, Church or religion, and claim their actions are thereby sanctioned, are scoundrels. Isn’t that a version of the nakedness you referred to?

    It would surely be possible to express goodness through institutions, no question, but the institutions (religion, school, whatever) are demonstrably not the source of those things. It’s the people, the individuals, and if there’s a power structure, be sure ego’s gonna want to play too.

    At the risk of being labeled a retro junkie that is one of the aspects of Trungpa Rinpoche’s teaching style I found the most attractive, one of the deeper inspirations of his approach was how his teachings were always about how you (the individual person who was listening to him) needed to and could realize a genuine understanding about what dharma is all about. It wasn’t just a trick of language, it was how he did everything.

    It was never in my recollection about how institutions or governments needed to be changed, he didn’t seem to have a systemic approach to improving society, but focused rather how the individuals involved could work on themselves and thereby improve our collective lot. That would, I had always assumed, develop in the same way the visualization can develop if one concentrates on the central figure.

    Clearly it’s not that easy. Again, the question is how to get from here to there. The vision is one thing but if we rely only on inspiration without the footwork of understanding how culture works, how people and society work, what the path does, what it cannot do, and so on, then it would seem we’re still quite capable of making a mess of things as well.
36. Mark Szpakowski on September 22nd, 2009 10:03 pm
    

    We can punctuate space with these three words:

    secular sacred religious

    There can be a lot, and a lot of discussions, parked in there.

    For example, atheistic, non-theistic, theistic. That’s just an analogy.

    Religious practice is one way to approach, realize, and embody the sacred.

    It’s not the only way.

    The secular without the sacred loses touch with wisdom, and goes crazy.

    The overcoming of ego, and any practice, starts with the individual, but it is insufficient to restrict it to individuals – it also needs to enter group practice, that of communities, and into society in all its forms. I am encountering a lot of such practice in forms and people acting outside the context of religion, and also outside the context of the purely secular (temporal, instrumental). These range from astrophysicists to corporate consultants to community organizers.

    We can get very concrete and practical about this. We will not be saved by institutions, but without _our_ saving institutions we will allow the institutions to kill us and our world. Corporations need sentient beings leading them. “We’re only human” human beings are no longer affordable by this world – through the incredible amplification of technology and bureaucracy, not to mention sheer numbers, the effects of their actions are now qualitatively different than in the past.

    It’s always seemed the essence of Shambhala, to me, that it’s about every detail of this very world.

    Which is our retreat hut.
37. Edward on September 22nd, 2009 11:00 pm
    

    Mark Szpakowski writes:
    without _our_ saving institutions we will allow the institutions to kill us and our world.

    whoa. careful. this gets into tricky territory.

    our world *is* going to kill us someday. being okay with this, rather than being pissed off about it, or avoiding it, is part of the difference between ___ __ vision and __ ___ __ vision, as I understand it. I forget this every day, but it’s good when I remember it.

    Mark, didn’t one of your young friends ask you a while back “what is there to be saved?” Or “what is there to protect?” Something like that?

    It’s an interesting question.

    I’m not recommending passivity or blissful ignorance, particularly. But feeling it’s our job to “save” something could get tricky.

    People who are the most serious about saving the planet are often the most insufferable people I’ve met, who pollute every situation they come across.
38. Mark Szpakowski on September 23rd, 2009 12:32 am
    

    Edward, re People who are the most serious about saving the planet are often the most insufferable people I’ve met, who pollute every situation they come across. Indeed. That’s why we practice, so we can be not afraid to stay in and meet things as they are, and to do so without aggression and projection. And to have a sense of playfulness and humor.

    I’m not afraid of death. (Hmm, that’s probably not 100% true.) It’s actually quite liberating to meet the inevitability of (my) dying. Which does not at all diminish care. As one text says, “from non-duality I arouse bodhicitta”. What a paradox – from non-duality! arouse! Or, as CTR said in his Level V, Creating Enlightened Society talk in Boston (1982): “Please, please, please – please help. If you don’t no one will.”

    Yes, the kid did say “there is nothing to protect”. But that’s why you can care about the 10,000 things. It’s all out there. That’s why the Ati master in suspenders was able to teach the most exquisite details of the whole 9 yanas, and to play with forks and with forms of government, with space arrangement and with military. Mundane stuff, scary stuff. But is there another game in town? And it’s not his or my game – it’s already happening anyway.
39. rita ashworth on September 23rd, 2009 5:06 am
    

    Could we be more practicable about envisaging an enlightened society.
    For example I was thinking recently about the co-operative movement which was founded in Rochdale, near Manchester. Here we had individuals who because they were being abused by the industrial revolution decided to come together and share their expertise to found a
    new economy – some of them were motivated by the new religious take evolving in the Uk such as Methodism which does indeed have a socialist base -others did not have what we now call a sacred outlook but because of their conditions were willing to work with the co-operative movement. This movement did indeed ‘help’ people with their social conditions so they could explore their spirituality aswell.

    So yes averse conditions do result in people coming together to knock out a plan about how they are to go forward. In this regard I was contemplating SI’s work in Halifax for example I read just recently that there are only 500 members of Shambhala in the town -it
    is still a small collection of individuals in this city who are following the
    Vidyadharas/SMR’s teachings – however, I have read that there is more outreach now happening but still why do not the older students just go out there and teach meditation on their own in churches and community centres – this is where the ideal of the grassroots starts and the Shambhala vision comes about.

    In the context of religions also I was thinking about the major religions -they seem to all start off from the grassroots are taken over by an elite and then that elite becomes corrupt as in the case of the Catholic church and we have reformation – so really what I am saying is that religion for me always comes from and returns to your common man or woman -thats why I believe even if you have massive donors contributing loads of cash to SI it will still never work because ‘religion/sacred outlook’ call it what you will is founded in the Mahayana and to be a mahayanists you can not insulate yourself from the poor – its an impossible thing to do. So the rich persay in SI will not manifest shambhala that too is an impossibility – so there must be more ways found of engaging people at every level without money factoring into some of the organisations evolving in the greater CTR mandala in the world. I am not saying we should close ourself off from the money circle merely that we should not let pieces of paper use us – we are greater than that -as indeed the founders of the co-operative movement found out in the nineteenth century.

    Best

    Rita Ashworth
    Stockport UK
40. Suzanne Duarte on September 23rd, 2009 8:05 am
    

    What an interesting discussion!

    Mark says, “The secular without the sacred loses touch with wisdom, and goes crazy.” The spectacle now unfolding in the world would seem to attest to that.

    Rita says, ” So the rich per se in SI will not manifest shambhala that too is an impossibility – so there must be more ways found of engaging people at every level without money factoring into some of the organisations evolving in the greater CTR mandala in the world.”

    The problem seems to be that the rich tend to become obsessed with POWER, particularly the power to control others through various forms of manipulation – physical and economic coercion, violence and control of resources, mind manipulation through media, which all comes down to false promises and threats that play on fear. It’s a funny thing about the wealthy and powerful: the wealthier and more powerful they become, the more they seek. They never seem to get enough. They always want to be at the top of the pyramid, and to build a taller pyramid. (Skyscrapers – the tallest skyscrapers in the world are being built in Dubai, the current sanctuary/playground of the global elite, where the main entertainment is shopping.) The taller the pyramid, the less connected they become from the Earth and the ground of being. There are exceptions, of course, among the wealthy. But the never-enough syndrome or addiction betrays a fundamental poverty mentality that having more money and power and stuff does not allay. They can manipulate the scarcity fears of others so well because they are driven by those same fears.

    So in CTR’s vision of Shambhala, warriorship (fearlessness, courage, confidence, lack of poverty mentality) plays a central role in enlightened society. In my own admittedly limited view, warriors are not creatures of the herd that submits to manipulation. Warriors stand on their own ground of critical intelligence and clear vision – their own allegiance and connection with the sacred, with drala – which does allay poverty mentality and bestows ‘enriching presence.’ The enriching presence of warriorship does not depend on money. I think CTR tried to make that point in teaching us about ‘elegance.’ The silks and brocades and other status symbols are merely adornments of an inner state of richness, they are not necessary to that inner state of richness. In the materialistic West, this point seems to have been hard to get across.

    Perhaps seeing the whole materialistic edifice collapsing will be necessary in order to restore a sense of the sacred. I know it isn’t polite to say such a thing, but I have grave doubts about whether the institutions of our civilization can be saved or reformed by Shambhala vision or anything else. Humans might have to experience ‘ground zero’ and that might be where the teachings of Shambhala will be most appreciated and most useful. I do think the Shambhala teachings can save humanity, but that is not the same as Western Civilization.

    Anyway, the movie Scared Sacred explored sacredness in catastrophe.

    next post . . .
41. Suzanne Duarte on September 23rd, 2009 8:28 am
    

    Scared Sacred – a film by “Velcrow Ripper”

    UNWRAP THE DARKNESS. REVEAL THE LIGHT.

    In a world teetering on the edge of self-destruction, award-winning filmmaker Velcrow Ripper sets out on a unique pilgrimage. Visiting the ‘Ground Zeros’ of the planet, he asks if it’s possible to find hope in the darkest moments of human history.

    Ripper travels to the minefields of Cambodia; war-torn Afghanistan; the toxic wasteland of Bhopal; post-9/11 New York; Bosnia; Hiroshima; Israel and Palestine. This powerful documentary captures his five- year odyssey to discover if humanity can transform the “scared” into the “sacred”. In each place, he unearths unforgettable stories of survival, ritual, resilience and recovery.

    Scared Sacred deftly weaves together stunning footage with haunting memories, inspirational stories, and an evocative soundscape. Featuring an engaging, first-person narrative, this film is an exquisite portrait of a search for meaning in times of turmoil, a luminous gift to a world in shadows.

    http://www.scaredsacred.org/
    http://www.amazon.ca/Scaredsacred/dp/B000F4PDCQ

    It’s an award-winning Canadian film! I haven’t seen it, but it sounds potentially Shambhalian to me. Let’s not forget that the Kalachakra Tantra is supposedly the source of Shambhala vision, and that the prophesies of a Dark Age come from that source and are part of that vision. Saving humanity and the world does not necessarily mean saving Western Civilization. CTR’s vision was a 500-yr. vision. I never heard him say anything about saving Western Civilization.
42. Alison on September 23rd, 2009 10:28 am
    

    Hi John Tischer: No arguments here. That’s why I referred to an “American experiment” rather than “American Dream”. It is as much nightmarish as anything else. To take one of your examples further: the Bush II administration not only waged war in Iraq based on false pretenses, but it did so : 1) at a time when we, as a nation, were reeling from the trauma of 9/11, 2) with unprecedented massive privatization of military operational support (i.e. Dick Cheney’s cronies at Haliburton profiting in enormous numbers from the “war business” and 3) with an official ban on the media showing coffins with dead service men and women returning home. I also do not recall any coverage of President Bush visiting vets in military hospitals, etc. Much more could be said on all that. It was/is a “sanitized” initiative riddled with quasi- religious, quasi-democratic language that is not difficult to see through, even if the exact relationship to things like the global oil market (strictly controlled by a handful of international power brokers) is not exactly clear.

    Bush II was a disaster. And yet, it has in some ways brought us closer to waking up from Reaganomics : the waxing poetic in misty-eyed religious metaphors about “the City on the hill” on the one hand, while on the other deregulating financial markets etc. in such a way to maximize capitalist corporate greed, which, yes, makes a very small group of stakeholders hugely wealthy at the expense of “the common man” (and which set us up for the recent financial collapse). And – it seems that whatever “us vs. them” paradigm drove certain social movements in the 60’s is no longer valid. There isn’t really an “us” and “them” anymore. The flower children of the 60’s have been raising families, working at Citibank, paying into 401(k)’s and mortgages from that same financial marketplace, etc. Whether you’re talking about global warming, international banking systems and financial markets, etc. the reality of interdependence is making it more and more difficult to hunker down, point fingers and “market” one’s way out of truth- telling, no matter where you live. The satellites and other technologies that seem to be compromising our privacy, might also be turned on said power brokers in the days ahead to good effect. For example – when a U.S. multinational corp. is outsourcing labor to a third-world country where men, women and children work for pennies in insufferable conditions, and where the local ecosystems are systematically stripped and destroyed, it’s not so easy to hide it anymore. If someone nearby has a working cell phone camera, the whole world can see what’s going on instantly. It’s a matter of logistics – communication, organization and what body, if any, can be established to uphold accountability, and based on what principles/ qualitative parameters.

    (continued)
43. Alison on September 23rd, 2009 10:29 am
    

    (continued)

    And – to take it back a step further – I believe James Elliot used the phrase “cultural drive”. The drive here has been “progress” and “growth” since the beginning. The aggressive individualism/elitism of the wild wild west. We (and other developed nations) have, up until now, measured (economic) strength strictly by “growth” – i.e. of annual GDP – rather than quality of life, health of the environment, etc. It has been blind growth simply for the sake of growth (which almost always comes at the expense of someone/something else). It is based on a win/lose paradigm that, again, comes out of, and perpetuates the “us or them” mentality. Visionary economists here and around the world have been and are working on that. I am suggesting that, whether by force (big changes seem to come when we teeter on the edge of a crisis or other tipping point), we have also illuminated the dark underbelly of models like “democracy”, “free market capitalism”, “freedom”. You might say we’ve made the biggest mistakes, and made them first. Go us, right ?

    I mentioned changes “on the ground” with regard to racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination, to say that – while we continue to challenge our leaders past and present based on current circumstances, as I believe we should, some enlightened aspects of an ‘American democracy’ are indeed being realized. It seems that the drive toward “progress” has us always looking at the next thing. The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. might take a moment or two to celebrate or simply contemplate the presence of a black family in the White House. (Or openly gay public officials. Or women being appointed to the Supreme court – most recently a Latina). And yes – right here in the shops and streets of my neighborhood – the energetic shift since the Obama election has been palpable. And a delight.

    And lastly (!) – not sure where you live, but what we see, hear, read in the international media about the U.S. is….. abstract of course, and this huge unwieldy country is hard to capture. Vastly differing landscapes, cultural conditioning (even within “white Christian America”), immigrant populations, etc. . I think the country of France fits into Texas, which is almost a country of its own here anyway. Bush country. Everything is even BIGGER there – vehicles, guns, ranchers, oilmen, evangelical “mega churches” – an outpost of the remaining John Waynes. It’s the “lone star” state complete with a secessionist mentality. The Texas State Capitol building in Austin faces South – purposely designed that way, with it’s back squarely to Washington D.C. , as a big “f.u.” to the union. That’s one state out of 50. Sometimes I think it’s a miracle we function as a nation at all……..

    All the best to you -
44. Edward on September 23rd, 2009 10:48 am
    

    Suzanne Duarte writes:
    The problem seems to be that the rich tend to become obsessed with POWER, particularly the power to control others through various forms of manipulation . . . .which all comes down to false promises and threats that play on fear.

    In a way, perhaps we should be grateful that people are kind enough to manipulate our sense of fear and hope…?

    Do others manipulate us, or do we manipulate ourselves?

    If there was no penalty for building our daily lives around hope and fear, if we lived in a beautiful world where all our mistakes were forgiven and all our needs taken care of… if we could just sit around and take opium all the time… I’m not sure such a world would generate much wakefulness.

    But a world where shrewd people are constantly trying to con us– wow! What a fantastic place to live. What a beautiful earth we have, with sustainability always in question, and all kinds of manipulation constantly going on. We are so lucky to take birth here!

    As Buddhists and Shambhalians, is our job to try to conquer the powerful people who manipulate our feelings of fear and hope, to destroy (or at least “overcome”) these sources of feedback and irritation in our world? Or should we say “thank you, come again.”?

    I’m just trying to play the devil’s advocate here (both literally and figuratively) for the sake of amusement…

    My old teacher once said that sustainability has always been in question on this earth. He said that if we had been alive hundreds of years ago in an African jungle, our world might consist of our small tribe or village, and there would always be the threat that our world could come to an end or be overrun at any time, through outside invaders or who knows what– the unknown. How is that radically different from what we experience today (aside from the sense of scale and being able to watch it on tv)?

    If modern civilization does “come to an end” as you say Suzanne, perhaps it would just be replaced by another civilization based on hope and fear? Going through trauma does not necessarily make people harder to manipulate.
45. Edward on September 23rd, 2009 10:52 am
    

    I don’t have to tell you things
    are bad. Everybody knows things
    are bad. It’s a depression.

    Everybody’s out of work or scared
    of losing their job, the dollar
    buys a nickel’s worth, banks are
    going bust, shopkeepers keep a
    gun under the counter, punks
    are running wild in the streets,
    and there’s nobody anywhere who
    seems to know what to do, and
    there’s no end to it. We know
    the air’s unfit to breathe and
    our food is unfit to eat, and
    we sit and watch our tee-vees
    while some local newscaster
    tells us today we had fifteen
    homicides and sixty-three
    violent crimes, as if that’s
    the way it’s supposed to be.

    We all know things are bad.
    Worse than bad. They’re crazy.
    It’s like everything’s going
    crazy. So we don’t go out any
    more. We sit in the house, and
    slowly the world we live in
    gets smaller, and all we ask is
    please, at least leave us alone
    in our own living rooms. Let me
    have my toaster and my tee-vee
    and my hair-dryer and my steel-
    belted radials, and I won’t say
    anything, just leave us alone.
    Well, I’m not going to leave you
    alone. I want you to get mad.

    I don’t want you to riot. I
    don’t want you to protest. I
    don’t want you to write your
    congressmen. Because I wouldn’t
    know what to tell you to write.
    I don’t know what to do about the
    depression and the inflation and
    the defense budget and the Russians
    and crime in the street. All
    I know is first you got to get
    mad. You’ve got to say: “I’m
    mad as hell and I’m not going
    to take this any more. I’m a
    human being, goddammit. My life
    has value!”

    This is a great movie. Network (1976).
46. rita ashworth on September 23rd, 2009 11:20 am
    

    Suzanne thanks for the mention to the Scared Sacred movie and I also checked out Velcrow on utube – an interesting man and he has a religious foundation to his lifestyle as he is a Bahai.

    Edward I think its right that you play devils advocate re the question of the rich and their influence in the world. Myself I really dont know how the really rich live their lives but I do have intimations of their behaviour from friends who work for them -they seem to have residences all over the globe, take loads of holidays and buy animals at £2,000 a shot!
    Me I get stressed having a one-bed roomed flat and all the work that requires!

    I dont know if I was really really rich like Branson I would probably give a lot of the money away as Gates as indeed done. But this is not really the question a society needs all classes to work for it to sustain it. For example lots of public sector workers can not live in London because they can not afford to pay mortgages there so consequently there is a breakdown in the social arena.

    And then of course there are the mega rich and political oligarchs in the east who control everyones lives. Recently on the BBC there was a film on the downfall of Saddam which evoked this sense of surburban celebrity richness – it was quite banal.

    Edward – I have heard of your previous teacher in fact I nearly bought one of his books – I think he knew his stuff but why did he head for Fiji (was that the place -what was that all about?) – why did he not engage people more in the world like some Tibetan teachers are doing.

    So what am I saying -probably that to have an enlightened society we have to include everyone in it – did not Trungpa indeed say that the garbage collector would have to be enlightened too – how is he/she going to do that if they cant access the shambhala teachings and they are prohibitively expensive and now only available to Buddhists who follow SMR’s conception of Shambhala.

    Hope to hear more on this debate.

    best

    Rita Ashworth
    Stockport UK
47. John Tischer on September 23rd, 2009 11:42 am
    

    “What no one is allowed to consider is the distressing possibility that no amount of tinkering and changing and greening and teaching the kindergartners to plant trees and recycle Dad’s beer cans will ever really matter if our assumptions about what it means to be prosperous, what it means to be “developed,” what it means to live in “progress,” and what it means to be “free” remain what they have been for the last four hundred years under the evergrowing weight of capitalist markets and capitalist social relations. As Marx put it, under capitalism we carry our relation to others in our pockets. Marx would now have to add, sadly, that those “others” must now include the animals of the field and the birds of the sky (Daniel, 2:38) as well as the fields and sky themselves.”–“A Good Without Light,” Curtis White, Tin House
48. Suzanne Duarte on September 23rd, 2009 2:20 pm
    

    Edward, sorry to pick a bone with your former teacher, but there is a difference between personal and local death and change and global ecological unsustainability. A sustainable society does not diminish the chances of future generations to have what they need to sustain and perpetuate themselves. A sustainable society does not deplete its resource base – the natural world’s ability to regenerate itself. Sorry, Edward, but our civilization has depleted its resource base. We can now see the limits of the natural world to regenerate and to absorb human wastes.

    The difference between our situation today and that of an African village or tribe hundreds of years ago, is indeed a matter of scale. Humans have overpopulated the Earth. We are in what is called ‘overshoot’ in ecology – human numbers have overshot the Earth’s carrying capacity by a factor of 3. All of this has occurred since the industrial revolution, and especially since the discovery and use of fossil fuels, a nonrenewable resource. Species are becoming extinct at a rate 1,000 times faster than the average background rate. Ecosystems are collapsing. The oceans are over 90% depleted of their fish stocks. Coral reefs, the nurseries of the oceans, are dying. Aside from the grim fact that humans are leaving an impoverished planet for future generations of all sentient beings, we are facing depleted soils, depleted aquifers, and water and food shortages within the lifetimes of humans now living. As Richard Heinberg puts it in titles of his books, “the party’s over,” we have reached “peak everything.” The only way to go after the peak is down. Progress is over.

    You ask, “As Buddhists and Shambhalians, is our job to try to conquer the powerful people who manipulate our feelings of fear and hope, to destroy (or at least “overcome”) these sources of feedback and irritation in our world?”

    Who said anything about conquering others? I would suggest that in an enlightened society, meditation puts a leash on the inner predator, the reptilian brain. We would check our own impulses to deceive and manipulate both ourselves and others for personal gain. We would not allow ourselves to be manipulated by our own greed, self-aggrandizing fantasies, and fears – including fear of death. A warrior conquers those base-chakra tendencies, makes friends with herself, and has a sense of humor and honesty about his own impulses to fall out of integrity.

    You say, “If modern civilization does “come to an end” as you say Suzanne, perhaps it would just be replaced by another civilization based on hope and fear?”

    One thing we can be sure of is that there will never be another civilization like ours, at least not on this planet, after we’ve depleted fossil fuels. Don’t try to argue about this until you’ve read the Peak Oil Primer at http://www.postpeakliving.com/peak-oil-primer. It’s possible that humans could revert in some places to agrarian feudalism.

    A Shambhala society could be agrarian without the feudalism. I think we should try it.
49. Edward on September 23rd, 2009 3:37 pm
    

    Hi Suzanne,

    So nice to hear from you again.

    I was asking, what is *radically different*, on the experiential level, about identifying with a small village and feeling that our village is threatened, and identifying with a large place that we see on our televisions (which we label “the earth”), that we also feel is threatened? The outward details are different– of course– but in each case there is a feeling of uncertainty, and of threat.

    Perhaps our village worked some voodoo or created some bad karma, which ends up bringing our village’s destruction later on?

    Anyway… all these fixed, solid ideas people have all this ecological stuff… In some ways, our concerns and ideas about “peak oil” and “global warming” could become a form of entertainment. We love talking about this stuff. It’s very exciting.

    Several years ago I came across an old news clip from the 1980s: http://www.popmodal.com/video/2959/Water-Car-Inventor-Killed-Full-Story . It’s about an inventor who had visits from NASA and the pentagon and so on. There’s another video floating around somewhere that’s an old hour-long documentary about him, including interviews with NASA officials.

    I had to watch this video a couple times because it didn’t make sense the first time. I thought it was a joke or something.

    Anyway, when I first saw this video– whether or not any of it is “true”, who knows?– I realized just how closed-minded I am, how prejudiced I am. And how I depend on corporate media for just about all of my ideas and beliefs. If “think tanks” or corporate media tell me to fear X, then I just go along with it, because it’s easier than thinking for myself.

    I used to wonder why people like CTR and other teachers didn’t quit teaching about spiritual things and switch over to being full-time environmentalists, you know, to save the planet first, and then we can do more frivolous things like meditate. But I’ve since come to a completely different way of looking at it. I think we could solve our societal and environmental problems in a day, or at least in a month, if human beings developed a different relationship with greed and ignorance and aggression. But probably not before then.

    For better or worse, people who are very afraid of the earth being destroyed are easy to manipulate. It would be nice if there could be some sort of virtuous occupation that would make us immune to manipulation. Maybe Communism is safe? But unfortunately I don’t know of any. Outside of learning to work with hope and fear, and learning to work with our neighbors and life experiences and all that.

    P.S. Wasn’t CTR an oil baron at one point?

    P.P.S. Aside from playing the devil’s advocate… I think it really sucks that human beings are wiping out entire species and polluting the planet and destroying everything.
50. rita ashworth on September 24th, 2009 5:56 am
    

    Edward re the rich I think its the statement in the Monty Python sketch that fits them – where Eric Idle(?) states -this sketch is getting too silly.

    For example when Trungpa came to London in 1981 the whole event got too silly with his rich honcheroos hanging around. I remember looking in this small kitchen and it was quite bizarre there must have been about five men in suits doing the washing-up -it was kind of weird.

    Another kind of weirdness re the rich is the present G20 debating limits to bankers salaries -where did that come from – who put that on the agenda.
    I dont know if you get silly richness you get a sort of revulsion for it. Satiation has been reached as some commentator might say.

    But the problem with all this richness too is that affects others directly as
    Suzanne points out – so in some respects yes richy weirdness must stop
    in both religious and non-religious circles.

    Anyway for America it will stop in the next century when she is overtaken by China as an economic power. Vajradhara knows how the world will be then – it might be better(?!) – could it be(?) – I do have some Chinese cousins – the Liverpool connection again and the disapora of Chinese people around the world might indeed change China for the best – its a long shot – I know.

    Yeh Trungpa was into everything you can imagine including business – I think he also stated at one time that he would be ok with working in a factory – so perhaps the next Sakyong should work in a factory or head up a waste management service for an environmental company – it could prove lucrative?! But then again too Trungpa was indeed into the conception of ‘enlightened society’ -where everyone reached enlightenment and for that to to happen you do indeed need time off work to practice meditation – so yes he was into a social construct of society aswell based on the method of meditation.

    Well I think that is all I can say on the matter for the moment -hope that the debate goes on.

    Best

    Rita Ashworth
    Stockport UK
51. James Elliott on September 25th, 2009 1:50 am
    

    It would seem everyone insists on there being a split between sacred and secular, as: „The secular without the sacred loses touch with wisdom, and goes crazy.”

    This is certainly the position taken by religions through the ages, that without the church society will drift into evil ways and civilization will fall apart. Enough religious groups, ours included, point at the current state of society or the world as evidence of what happens as their religions have been pushed out of the political process.

    The problem is that’s poppycock. Politicians everywhere treat religious views with more care and sensitivity than the environment, science or economics. So religion has become, as it so often has before, one of the reasons we are collectively incapable of relating to the problems of environment, energy, crime, morality, economics, or just taking care of each other in anything approaching a sane way.

    The insistence that there is a split in our supra-ego or collective will, that can be fixed by my religion (or any other religions I can understand) seems to me like the view of ‘basic badness’ which claims the need for an external authority to hold us in line. I may be wrong, but I thought the Shambhala teachings took a very different approach.

    If that split is not really the problem with our institutes, then clinging to it avoids or even exacerbates the mistake, taking us farther away from practical and real solutions, which is frankly the same position many religions have taken for hundreds of years already.

    It isn’t that there is nothing to be done other than meditation. If there’s anything that can encourage sanity and seeing the world for what it is, then that’s right up there. Clearly we are on the brink of something calamitous, and we need to see it.

    For causes of social ills Suzanne Duarte’s reminder about the end of oil is closer to real causes of social troubles.

    I would also suggest Jared Diamond’s “Gun’s, Germs and Steel” and “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Suceed.” And Pinker’s “The Blank Slate”, a synopsis on current state of sciences of the mind.

    From these we see a rather natural progression rather than a big evil. According to Jared any system, ecosystem, economic, social whatever, tends towards adding complexity because of the advantages. Adding complexity saves or creates more energy than it costs. But at some point the complexity costs more energy than it provides. If a system or society does not accidentally or intentionally make changes at that point, then it will collapse.

    In Pinker’s book he describes surprising findings confirming basic goodness in human beings. There is currently a concerted effort to squelch these findings from being openly disseminated, because it would undermine fundamental principles upon which education, justice and law, economics, religion and much of society is based. There are fears that were it widely known, society as we know it would crumble. Paradoxically, that’s exactly what the findings say would not happen.

    In the inspiration that one man’s secular is another man’s hell.
52. Suzanne Duarte on September 25th, 2009 10:23 am
    

    James, I think you got mixed up between Diamond and Tainter. The latter is the one who proposed the theory of complexity:

    Joseph Tainter: The Collapse of Complex Societies – According to Joseph Tainter, author of The Collapse of Complex Societies, societies become more complex as they try to solve problems. Social complexity can include differentiated social and economic roles, reliance on symbolic and abstract communication, and the existence of a class of information producers and analysts who are not involved in primary resource production. Such complexity requires a substantial “energy” subsidy (meaning resources, or other forms of wealth). When a society confronts a “problem,” such as a shortage of or difficulty in gaining access to energy, it tends to create new layers of bureaucracy, infrastructure, or social class to address the challenge. In Tainter’s view, while invasions, crop failures, disease or environmental degradation may be the apparent causes of societal collapse, the ultimate cause is diminishing returns on investments in social complexity.
    Part 1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSt5xdouXi8&feature=related
    Part 2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zmFR4bwjhY&feature=related
    Part 3 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mPUO8pvYfdk&feature=related

    Here’s something else that might interest some people on this thread:

    The Barbaric Heart: Interview with Curtis White by Danny Jensen 9/22/09
    http://www.takepart.com/blog/2009/09/22/takepart-exclusive-interview-with-curtis-white-author-of-the-barbaric-heart/#comment-198975

    White says: I was reading Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and started thinking about the concept of the barbaric. Roman virtue was not all that different from the virtues of the barbarians: they were both willing to profit from violence, and they both thought that the only virtue was triumph. Winning. What we don’t quite understand is how faithful our culture has been to this idea of virtue over the last two thousand years. Virtue as violence with a skill set is still the leading source of national pride in our military, in our business leaders, in our athletes, and in our action movie heroes.

    A new way to think about the causes of the destruction of the natural world is to see it as this ancient (if not primeval) tendency in Western culture to admire survival through violence. If we allowed the arts, philosophy and religion to play an equal role with science and technology, we would understand the relationship between capitalism, the dehumanization of work, and the destruction of the earth.

    Market economies and capitalism are not the same thing. There were market economies before there was capitalism. Capitalism is a hierarchical order of power that has assumed the function of markets while really only being interested in impoverishing others for the sake of their own privilege and wealth.

    A novelist, essayist, and professor of English at Illinois State University, White has written several widely acclaimed books, including The Middle Mind: Why Americans Don’t Think for Themselves.
53. Suzanne Duarte on September 25th, 2009 12:40 pm
    

    Just heard this through the grapevine: “The phrase “Three Lords of Materialism” is actually “outer, inner and secret barbarians” in Tibetan.”
54. Edward on September 25th, 2009 12:41 pm
    

    I could be wrong, but I think all of this might be a lot more simple than we think it is.

    We Americans don’t think for ourselves because we are afraid of ourselves. We never take the time to sit still for a few minutes and make friends with ourselves. That’s pretty much it.

    We are suckers for hope and fear. Chogyam Trungpa worked very hard to try to give people another option. He worked tremendously hard at it. I’ve heard that he expected that some huge number of people– tens of millions or something– might take Shambhala Training and benefit tremendously from it.

    I don’t think the problems we see in society are based primarily on violence, or on capitalism, or on science or technology, or on any of that. Science and technology are just like the arts or philosophy– they can either be tools to help us, or they can be used to create garbage and pollution (I’m making a value judgment here that some art is better than other). Violence is a problem because we are afraid of feeling our emotions, and we act out our emotions so we don’t have to feel them. Capitalism– in the sense of selling our extra apples to our neighbor, using a medium of exchange– I can’t see how we could completely eliminate that, or how that’s inherently evil.

    I also don’t think there’s a problem with people not using the word “sacred” enough, or that our government needs to change to give lip service to sacred concepts, or to reward us for doing some sort of spiritual practice. Nor do I think that forming conceptual entities to aid us in doing business with each other– which we call corporations– is necessarily evil.

    I think the only problem we have, the main problem I should probably be focused on, is that people like myself who have benefited from CTR’s Shambhala Teachings are not working harder to make those same teachings available to others.
55. Edward on September 25th, 2009 12:53 pm
    

    Without science and technology, we wouldn’t be having this discussion. Maybe CTR’s books would have never been printed on a printing press. Certainly I wouldn’t be able to listen to his talks on my ipod. Maybe some monks somewhere would be hand-copying his lectures, one at a time, to go into a vault for preservation.

    Science and technology are just tools. It’s all the masses of people who utilize those tools that determine whether they’re used in a helpful way or not.

    Saying that some evil people somewhere are responsible for our problems is just another way of giving our power away, and reinforcing our feeling of powerlessness and worthlessness. It’s like repeating a mantra or something, constantly reinforcing the idea that the “other” is the problem, rather than our own attitude, our own relationship with our world.

    One of my Level directors said “we are afraid of the vividness of our own experience.”

    If we insist on living like that, then we need other people to make decisions for us and to control our lives, because we are refusing to take responsibility for ourselves.
56. rita ashworth on September 26th, 2009 7:49 am
    

    “Saying that some evil people somewhere are responsible for our problems is just another way of giving our power away, and reinforcing our feeling of powerlessness and worthlessness. It’s like repeating a mantra or something, constantly reinforcing the idea that the “other” is the problem, rather than our own attitude, our own relationship with our world.”

    Edward I dont think Suzanne and I are saying the above rather we are just
    looking at the world and seeing the present state of it as in the just looking practice advocated by CTR.

    I would not want to divide the world into two camps -them and us -that old duality but these are strange times both environmentally -did you read about the red dust storm in Sydney-and economically -the G20 discussing the greed of bankers -very weird -perhaps its a result of globalisation………I listened to the utube excerpts given by Suzanne -even academics on this tape think the time is out of joint with capitalism.

    I have never been sure about the capitalist project and now globalisation – I dont think Trungpa was either -who really know if the tens of millions were practicing these shambhala teachings that it would not have an effect on the economic order of life. If you were truly fearless I am sure you would feel the suffering in the present world most acutely and it would result in a change in the political situation of the world I am sure.

    Yes this is conjecture at the present time -but religious movements in the past such as Methodism have had an effect on the political order with the growth of socially aware parties in the widest sense. I think it is useful as James Elliot points out that we should join with people that are exploring sanity in its most widest sense in the Arts, philosophy, and the economic order and did not Trungpa also do this in his lifetime – if you look at the personal connections he had with brilliant thinkers in the twentieth century it was enormous – for example Laing, Ginsberg, the whole Tibetan tradition, – it was really a melding of eastern and western thought which should still go on.

    I think the present times actually nudge people into recognising their own power – even in my own locality people are discussing quite acutely what is happening in the world and they are looking for new answers to things in both politics and religion – so yes there is a quiet revolution going on – coming from the media to a certain extent and also from peoples own predicament in these socially turbulent times.

    Hope the debate goes on

    Best

    Rita Ashworth
    Stockport UK
57. James Elliott on September 27th, 2009 6:12 am
    

    Suzanne D.

    I never heard of Tainter, so it’s ignorance not confusion. Tainter published first but I’m sure the idea of over complexity causing collapse was already a given in some sciences. Whatever the origins, their presentations from what I can glean seem to complete each other very well, describing exactly the same phenomena with slightly different scope and focus.

    Diamond gathers research from various sciences primarily but not only anthropology that indicate this progression is a phenomenon of nature. It doesn’t require horrible intentions; it can be the cumulative effect of thousands or millions of good intentions. As conscious beings we may have more choices if we don’t take refuge in denial, but consciousness does not create that dynamic.

    So I really don’t like Curtis White’s premise that Western culture’s aggressiveness is based on Roman mindsets like “willing to profit from violence” or “the only virtue is winning”. It’s a theory without scientific support, so it feels like too much projection and negative assumption indicating an agenda other than a simple observation.

    You can’t find any culture, Inuit, American Indian, African, Asian, anywhere on the planet that has not valued those same things.

    If traits are universal, and I think you’ll find those are, then it’s more like a species trait than a cultural virus or meme we caught from imperialistic Romans. (Does Curtis have something against Italians?)

    The Romans were successful like no one else, btw, due to their proximity to the Fertile Crescent, and therefore their head start in developing technologies, not because they adhered to ‘violence = success’. Following White’s premise of how memes are passed down, it would make perhaps more sense to thank the Romans for our technological aptitude, something which was unique about them at that time.

    Whatever the case to view our current fix and the destruction of the natural world as being caused by a primordial tendency inherited from an ancient culture is like blaming our great great grandparents for our negative traits, but going like waaaaay back.

    There is certainly plenty of truth regarding people or corporations destroying things, proof that politicians are corrupt, businessmen and bankers exploitive and so on. I’m not denying any of that.

    Nevertheless, assumptions that we could have been living in harmony with nature without exploiting natural resources if only (your theory here) while populating the planet with going on 9 billion people now, that all it would have taken is the right attitude somewhere along the line or a change of attitude right now, and we then can solve or wouldn’t have had these kinds of problems, such theories tend towards fantasy. I don’t see how they can help in any practical way.

    That’s why I keep asking what specifically Shambhala Teachings have to offer to these times as is often claimed. If theories don’t have at least one foot on the ground, then they are more like the imprint of a bird in the sky.

    In the inspiration that inspiration can be like a gas pedal, but never a steering wheel.
58. Suzanne Duarte on September 27th, 2009 6:49 pm
    

    Hi James Elliott,

    I’m afraid I have to disagree with you about this statement: “You can’t find any culture, Inuit, American Indian, African, Asian, anywhere on the planet that has not valued those same things” – re: “willing to profit from violence” or “the only virtue is winning”.

    I have heard of tribes who did not hold predatory values. the Bushmen of the Kalahari thought that aggression was insane, and said that they think (or ‘know’) with their hearts, according to Lauren van der Post. Back in the 1920′s Carl Jung visited the Taos Pueblo and the chief told him his people thought whites are insane because whites think that they think with their heads, whereas the Taos people think with their hearts. Other Native American tribes people have said the same thing: whites are insane because they are preoccupied with “talking talking inside their heads.”

    Jung, based on his experience at Taos Pueblo, had the stunning realization that European (and American) culture is predatory. He said that’s why they use raptors and other predators to symbolize their dominance.

    Re: “Whatever the case to view our current fix and the destruction of the natural world as being caused by a primordial tendency inherited from an ancient culture is like blaming our great great grandparents for our negative traits, but going like waaaaay back.”

    Actually, Clarissa Pinkola Estes (a well-known Jungian psychotherapist, poet and author) has said that “culture is the family of the family.” Family conditioning usually is a microcosm of cultural conditioning. Culture for most people is like water to a fish. She also has written about the “natural predator of the psyche,” which is the most dangerous and deceptive archetype in the psyche, and extremely destructive if it is allowed to ‘win.’ It can take over entire cultures, she says, “[E]ach group and culture appears to also have its own natural psychic predator, and we see from history that there are eras in cultures during which the predator is identified with and allowed absolute sovereignty until the people who believe otherwise become a tide. . . . In a culture where the predator rules, all new life needing to be born, all old life needing to be gone, is unable to move and the soul-lives of its citizenry are frozen with both fear and spiritual famine.” (Women Who Run With The Wolves, Chapter 2.)

    Changing the predator culture therefore can only be accomplished by confronting and facing down the predatory tendencies in our own psyches – tendencies to coerce, psychological blackmail, profiting from exploitation of others, lying, cheating, killing, you name it.

    I believe that the Shambhala teachings offer the way to bring cessation to all of that on a collective level – if we each of us fearlessly faced down the predator within ourselves, we could create an enlightened society. The existence of the predator (which I believe resides in the reptilian brain) does not mean we do not have Basic Goodness. (Cont. . . . )
59. Suzanne Duarte on September 27th, 2009 7:39 pm
    

    Cont. . .

    But we need to use our neo-cortex to protect the limbic brain (or mammalian brain, where compassion, empathy and nurturing originate) – or Basic Goodness – from being manipulated and ‘eaten’ by the predator. The neo-cortex is the human part of the brain that makes rational decisions. Meditation gives the neo-cortex the chance to direct traffic, so to speak. Or, as eco-theologian Matthew Fox says, “meditation puts a leash on the reptilian brain.”

    The Buddhist precepts, as you and I discussed elsewhere, are also meant to put a leash on the predator, or the reptilian brain. Practice, whether Buddhist or Shambhalian, enables us to keep at least one foot on the ground. And it starts with the ground within our own bodies and minds. Renunciation is the foot of mediation, as is said.
60. Edward on September 28th, 2009 3:54 pm
    

    Hi Suzanne,

    Are you saying that compassion, empathy and nurturing are the same thing as “basic goodness”?

    Do you suppose lizards or chameleons– animals without mammalian brains– lack basic goodness, or might be slightly deficient in it?

    Just trying to get clarification so I can better appreciate this discussion.

    E
61. Suzanne Duarte on September 28th, 2009 5:51 pm
    

    Very clever, Edward. I was looking at these issues from the pov of human intelligence and our capacity or potential to choose how to respond to impulses from the reptilian and limbic brains. I’m sure that from Gaia’s pov every living creature has basic goodness because they have a role to play in the living web of life or they wouldn’t be there. Personally, I appreciate the basic goodness and beauty of all Gaia’s children, including Tasmanian Devils and Komodo Dragons.
62. Nick Wright on September 28th, 2009 11:50 pm
    

    Edward,

    I’ve been away, but your comment below gave rise to a late response.

    What you say about “working harder to make those same teachings available to others” is very important, if I may say so. To me it means first working on our own embodiment of the teachings as an example of what the teachings produce in people. As both sakyongs have said, people are magnetized (made curious) by the behaviour of Shambhala warriors above all; it is the first contact and the most direct invitation (or not).

    The organizational level is also important, but organizations are made up of people, and it is the personal contact rather than the conceptual/organizational framework that will have the most influence.

    The Sakyong Dorje Dradul said “Just do it! Please do it!” The Sakyong Jampal Dradul said “Manifest!”

    I think we should concentrate first on manifesting, and see what comes of that.

    Nick Wright

    —–Original Message—–
    From: Radio Free Shambhala [mailto:weblog@radiofreeshambhala.org]
    Sent: Friday, September 25, 2009 1:41 PM
    To: nickcw@eastlink.ca
    Subject: [Radio Free Shambhala] New Comment On: Shambhala from 21st Century

    There is a new comment on the post “Shambhala from 21st Century”.
    http://radiofreeshambhala.org/2009/09/21stcentury/

    Author: Edward
    Comment:
    I could be wrong, but I think all of this might be a lot more simple than we think it is.

    We Americans don’t think for ourselves because we are afraid of ourselves. We never take the time to sit still for a few minutes and make friends with ourselves. That’s pretty much it.

    We are suckers for hope and fear. Chogyam Trungpa worked very hard to try to give people another option. He worked tremendously hard at it. I’ve heard that he expected that some huge number of people– tens of millions or something– might take Shambhala Training and benefit tremendously from it.

    I don’t think the problems we see in society are based primarily on violence, or on capitalism, or on science or technology, or on any of that. Science and technology are just like the arts or philosophy– they can either be tools to help us, or they can be used to create garbage and pollution (I’m making a value judgment here that some art is better than other). Violence is a problem because we are afraid of feeling our emotions, and we act out our emotions so we don’t have to feel them. Capitalism– in the sense of selling our extra apples to our neighbor, using a medium of exchange– I can’t see how we could completely eliminate that, or how that’s inherently evil.

    I also don’t think there’s a problem with people not using the word “sacred” enough, or that our government needs to change to give lip service to sacred concepts, or to reward us for doing some sort of spiritual practice. Nor do I think that forming conceptual entities to aid us in doing business with each other– which we call corporations– is necessarily evil.

    I think the only problem we have, the main problem I should probably be focused on, is that people like myself who have benefited from CTR’s Shambhala
63. James Elliott on September 29th, 2009 12:58 pm
    

    Suzanne,

    I read that Jung’s encounters with the Pueblo deepened his belief that humans need a sense of their individual and cultural significance to be psychologically healthy. On this I agree 110% and think Trungpa Rinpoche spoke enough about culture, its inherent wisdom, to suggest he held this view as well. I can’t imagine how a view that Western culture since Roman times has been locked into a rapacious aggressive mindset could ever lead to that understanding.

    Most of the plains tribes were warlike. If the Pueblo Indians were an exception, then their circumstances have to be examined to understand why. They were a farming tribe which was rare. What was their geography? How stable their tribe? Did they have writing? What enemies did they have? There are more factors than we can know, but cultural inculcation does not explain their uniqueness or their myths, just as their myths do not explain how they arrived at where they were.

    We can look at Western culture similarly. In some towns across America and Western culture altogether, you will find communities and people as peaceful and sedentary as the Pueblos, putting the myth to Western aggressivness. Some are involved in projects that benefit people far from where they live, or are exemplary experiments in local production or sustainable living, and other things we won’t imagine or acknowledge if we buy into the model of aggressive Western culture.

    I respect Jung’s work with archetypes, which may have something to say about visualization practice, but if he indeed pointed at animals taken as tokens by nation states as proof of their predatory nature he loses some points by me. The eagle is far superior to the turkey which was the first choice when America was choosing, because they were eating a lot of it. (Kudos to Benjamin Franklin who nixed the turkey idea.) The Shambhala flag has four animals: a tiger, a lion, a dragon and a garuda. Apparently one predator wasn’t enough for us.

    Lauren van der Post was discredited because it was proven he was dishonest in his writings, and apparently fathered a child with a 14 year old native. Maybe his downfall is overblown, but I can’t accept him as an objective voice. The Kalahari’s circumstances would need the same kind of scrutiny as the Pueblos.

    I’m sure Clarissa Pinkola Estes has benefited a lot of people. I see she’s involved in literacy projects. But her assertions about what’s happening to us on a cultural level are poetry not science or anthropology, and have no basis in research or verifiable cause and effect that I can discern.

    She puts forth ideas like: “Each group and culture has its own natural predator of the psyche” – “destructive if it is allowed to ‘win’.” – “soul-lives of its citizenry are frozen with both fear and spiritual famine” Where are these ideas coming from?

    (cont.)
64. James Elliott on September 29th, 2009 12:59 pm
    

    We can believe whatever we want, but to me her model of culture sounds made up and unconvincing, in the same way most psychological models are, and doesn’t reflect things I’ve read, learned, studied or experienced about how mind works, or how culture is formed or flows, or what it even is. (In my experience people who make grand statements about culture, are hard pressed to give a coherent definition of what it is.)

    I can’t remember anything in the teachings to confirm the notion that precepts or meditation are about using the neo-cortex to protect the limbic brain from being consumed by the reptilian brain. Without getting into the internal warfare this implies, isn’t the neo-cortex the part of the brain the Indians were saying makes us so crazy?

    My understanding of discipline, practice, meditation and precepts is quite different than that. Maybe these are concepts which express our preconceptions more accurately than dharma?

    I might have some understanding of how practice could help me, but still don’t know how Shambhala teachings have something significantly different or effective to offer these times on a cultural level. I have my doubts, and some reason to believe that approaching dharma as a means to change or organize culture is anathema to the pith meaning and aims of practice itself. I agree with Nick’s suggestion that we focus on the individual’s development, but don’t see the organization as exemplary in this.

    If practice helps us keep at least one foot on the ground, it will do that by giving us enough space, courage and insight, not to adhere to models of the human psyche and behavior which may speak to our subjective and largely instinctive view of things, but which otherwise are surrounded by smoke and mirrors rather than evidence, a clue usually indicating they probably aren’t true.

    The term “Gross National Happiness” invented by the Bhutanese as an alternative to GNP, as they carried out ethnic cleansing is another case in point. It sounds lovely, but…

    In the inspiration of finding the right language by exploring many avenues.
65. rita ashworth on September 29th, 2009 2:05 pm
    

    “I might have some understanding of how practice could help me, but still don’t know how Shambhala teachings have something significantly different or effective to offer these times on a cultural level. I have my doubts, and some reason to believe that approaching dharma as a means to change or organize culture is anathema to the pith meaning and aims of practice itself. ” James Elliot

    Yes I agree with you James the shambhala teachings are not a means to change or organize culture, if we approached them in this manner it would be a wrong viewpoint. Nevertheless the outcome of the shambhala teachings I have found is that people become more reflective and open to hearing different points of view on the world and perhaps seeing the world in a different manner with more clarity for example even just the use of ordinary objects in your own home.

    What is culture? -Its a great debate -there is working-class culture, there is middle-class culture, there are nation cultures, tribe cultures even sub-cultures such as punk. So culture in the west is diverse at the present time, however, if you gave all these cultures an overview of shambhala meditation would they change or intensify -perhaps the punk artist would become even more of a punk artist -or more of a surrealist perhaps. What I mean is you can not detonate your contact to your own culture by practicing meditation that is what I understand by ‘bad faith’ -if I have got that concept right. For me therefore culture means melding the shambhala teachings into my own culture, perhaps my own writings for example and this process is exemplified in True Perception by CTR.

    Re politics can the same process occur-yes I think it can-but its quite a subtle process in this instance -perhaps one day you get a conception that drugs are bad for people because you have that personal experience of seeing that rotund drug dealer in the frame of a window with all his attendant acolytes shuffling around him -something strikes you as not quite right about this situation – its just a twinge of revulsion – that CTR also talks about when he says you feel when you start practicing meditation that you dont want to hang out with the old crowd you were used to.

    Also too I got a hit on this sense of revulsion when I was watching the Motorcycle Diaries film on Che Guevara last night when Che became more allied with the leper colony and its people than the catholic church and the medics running the facility because they were running the facility with such hidebound rules.

    So yes I would welcome a wider discussion on what we deem to be culture and its relation to politics. Interesting debate occuring on this thread.

    best

    Rita Ashworth
    Stockport UK
66. James Elliott on October 3rd, 2009 6:01 pm
    

    Rita,

    I like your examples. A punker would have problems with the roll of clergy, but agree a punker, or anyone, could realize awake-mind and practice what they do in a realized way. The punker movement, btw, started with iconoclastic ideals that are similar to Dadaism, and in a way the spiritual aim of overcoming ego. Chances are an awake punker would probably not be as self destructive as many have been.

    The word culture as we tend to use it has become too all purpose, used to describe something too complex for words as a single entity that’s generally good or generally bad. If left vague the tendency we all have to project one’s own thingy can become difficult to discern.

    The problem with trying to intentionally affect culture directly is similar. If affecting culture is our intention what are our goals and ideals really based on? How much of it is instinct that is searching for confirmation, security, status or something else? Who’s to say?

    How well do we understand the culture we are mucking with? Is it possible to know a ‘culture’ completely? Add to that so many others with ideals, maybe clear and profound or muddled, vague or emotional, shared or made up, suppressed and bitter, etc, and harmony becomes more unlikely, when conceptual ideals are thought of as the tool or catalyst for forming society.

    I am reading “The Alphabet Versus the Goddess” by Leonard Shlain, am only ¼ through, not sure I agree with his premise, but am so far drawn to his recounting of how culture has been and still is transformed by the development of the simple alphabet. (Alphabet defined as a system requiring less than 30 symbols.)

    Writing had existed for several thousand years in pictographic forms, using sometimes thousands of symbols or hundreds of syllables. When the alphabet emerged, the ability to exchange abstract ideas exploded. This affected culture profoundly, including, for better or worse, the development of paternalistic monotheism, which could only come about with the ability to exchange abstract concepts with many people.

    Monotheism and other consequences of the alphabet happened not because elite planned it. They did all they could to stop it. It happened because a new tool emerged out of many experiments and generations of experience, and auspicious circumstances. The tool did not create new memes or ideals, nor a new structure for religion or society, but rather on the most fundamental level a new way to do the thinking and communicating about those things.

    Perhaps Shambhala vision is similar. Without the already well established forms of Tibetan Buddhism, Shambhala vision doesn’t, I don’t believe, dictate a preconceived form for enlightened society. Perhaps instead Shambhala vision provides only the spiritual alphabet. Perhaps instead of sweeping visions, or finding a language as suggested, maybe it is only the alphabet we need focus on.

    In the inspiration that: “Transcending isn’t actually about rising above something, it’s perhaps more like going underneath it.”
    (A memory from a talk by Trungpa Rinpoche, paraphrased.)
67. John Tischer on November 30th, 2010 6:08 pm
    

    I wanted to post this on a different thread. I’ve listened to RR’s current talk on Dispatches a couple of times now, and I took some notes, which I’ll post here.
    The reason why I’m doing this is to stimulate interest in what RR really is saying in his interview. I’m hoping there might be enough interest for one of you parsers out there to really break down what Richard is saying in a way that is transparent. I’m too lazy and only into sensationalism. Here are my notes. I acknowledge when I express my opinion.

    the canopy (Shambhala) is supported by a crystal pole which is the practitioners. How to reach countless people. What binds his students (trust, devotion) “trust in what?” (Trust=loyalty)
    not asking for loyalty to (SMR) as a person…it’s loyalty to the “seat” of the Sakyong, which is the seat of transmission. (i.e. the seat holds the transmission, not the person J.T.) SMR’s responsibility as holder of that seat is to transfer that to the next Sakyong So, loyalty is to “what this stands for”…
    (i.e. not to a human being but to a principle, J.T.)

    (Folks, this is how Christianity began—J.T.)

    if we don’t create a culture (of kindness) around this (the actual training, fundraising, ect.)…
    then all of the actual business of Shambhala will be in vain. RR says “that’s the overriding strategic objective.”

    “Do you think there’s something deeper here than trust?” (could there be? J.T.)
68. rita ashworth on December 1st, 2010 6:31 am
    

    Dear John

    I have just listened to the interview again

    First thoughts on it – I thought Richard was more conciliatory a touch to the arguments going on about the teachings going forward. I think Richard was trying to emphasise hearing other peoples points of view on subjects based on personal practice. But of course where he is coming from is still allied personally to the Sakyongs vision.

    His analogy of the stupa as having open and locked rooms –yes that stems from the vajrayana path, but truly I dont see that locked vision with the shambhala teachings. On the contrary I still see the whole thing being wide open for people. As an aside on this have recently listened on utube to some teachings on St Teresa of Avila where there are notions of allying prayer with a Kingdom or could one say enlightened society

    So yes the whole vision of where SI is at is to see the Shambhala teachings as the Protector of the Buddhadharma in this dark age so therefore the prior emphasis and focus on shambhala. Personally I dont and never have seen the whole thing that way. I see Shambhala as arising naturally from practice more in the sense that Chris Chandler said where you get pure lands re dzogchen and also Mark Szps emphasis on interaction with nature and introspection. So the approaches to Shambhala for me could be diverse and not a one way path. Yes I agree to reach Shambhala outside of the present system developing within SI has to be set out in some manner – I await further discussion of this on rfs. I have some notions of how it could be done myself.

    I did hear that there might be some added support for the Kagyu and Nyingmpa paths from Mermelstein and the Loppon, but no concrete mention of what that was and no further discussion on the actual Kagyu lineage being passed to westerners as Mark Smith talked about.

    So yes Richards interview was a tad more open to questions about the future of Shambhala but if you see the Shambhala teachings having that open quality for many that CTR talked about, how has this interview taken that appreciation of the teachings any further. It seems to be a ‘nicer’ presentation of where they are still at so there is not a lot of vigorous debate going on in this interview. Yes I hope rfs could interview RR aswell and not just having him go through the Project website as the first point of call.

    Best Rita Ashworth
69. John Tischer on December 1st, 2010 11:44 am
    

    Rita,

    The idea of being loyal to a principle or throne which RR describes as SMR’s
    vision is contrary to all we were taught by VCTR in terms of teacher/student
    relationship in Vajrayana. It reminds me of the story of Naropa asking Marpa which he would prostrate to, the mandala or himself. Marpa wrongly chooses the mandala which is the creation of the teacher and is chastised. Seems to be the same problem here: if there is no enlightened ruler, there is no throne.
70. Dan Montgomery on December 1st, 2010 2:59 pm
    

    Quite right, John. This notion of “sacred governance” that Richard Reoch speaks of should not be confused with the Vajrayana teacher-student relationship. Unfortunately, I think that Richard and the Sakyong are the ones confusing it. As recently as 2004, I was involved on the Mandala Governing Council and we spent many weeks and months trying to establish a structure in which there was a distinction between the “secular” side, which basically operated according to the principles you outlined in your notes, above, and the “sacred” in which the Vajrayana was transmitted. Given that, then, the question was, what does it mean to be a member in this group, and can someone see the Sakyong as secular leader and have someone else as a teacher? A lot of work went into sorting this out, and at the end of the day, the Sakyong wasn’t particularly interested in what we all came up with. We had a big meeting at SMC and essentially all he wanted to talk about was the Rigden Abhisheka that he had just channeled. Richard rewrote our report himself and came up with this idea of “secular sacred governance”, which made absolutely no sense to me, but I think was intended to say that the Sakyong had to be both the temporal ruler AND the spiritual teacher.

    More importantly, it became clear to me that the Sakyong is not prepared to listen to anything coming from the ground up – which is in fact at odds with CTR’s description of Court Vision and Practice. I think Richard Reoch tries to play the “Lord Chancellor” role in that he does acknowledge and even articulate divergent points of view within the community, as Rita mentioned. But, at the end of the day, that doesn’t seem to have any real impact on the way things are done.

    Taken by itself, the notion that one should be loyal to the “principle” or the “seat” of the Sakyong is no different than the old ideas that have supported monarchy through the ages. And, I believe that political forms evolve in order to support increasing levels of societal complexity. The messiness of modern democracy is an expression of that, and there’s no way that a monarchy can actually manage a complex society. In places like the UK, it’s really primarily symbolic, rather than actually involved in day to day governance.

    Bottom line = as a political philosophy, this is all silly-poo wishful thinking with no real intellectual rigor to it.
71. John Tischer on December 1st, 2010 6:28 pm
    

    Thanks for articulating that, Dan.
72. rita ashworth on December 2nd, 2010 5:20 am
    

    Dear Dan

    The writer in me again-can you tell us more extensively what happened at that 2004 meeting. Were minutes taken of what the Mandala Council came up with. Could you give us a more thorough explanation of what people created and RR’s final report.

    This meeting in 2004 seems to be one of those crux moments when people gave up asking questions and went with the Plan.

    Can people post anonymously on what they thought occurred at that meeting. I for one would like to know more of what happened.

    The post on the thangka from Lady Diana-welcoming. An English lady remembers where she hails from.

    Though of course I still want to explore Shambhala Art for myself

    Best

    Rita Ashworth Stockport UK
73. James Elliott on December 3rd, 2010 3:05 am
    

    First, thank you for your reporting Dan. That is one of the reasons RFS is so needed.

    Richard’s interview felt like he is putting forth how he sees things not over but beside what SMR says. The logic isn’t wrong, it’s just that… well… I don’t think that’s what’s actually going on. Hard as they try, saying something is so doesn’t make it so. At one point Richard says “I don’t know if he believes this, but he said…” and then he gives a description of what he thought was meant.
    The problem was, has been and still is, within not only Richard’s interview but the introductory essay to this thread too, how to get from here to there and perhaps that we have framed the problem as such. (If something is awry with society and this world, it is as much if not more due to our successes and new problems arising out of new complexities – not because we have become greedy and selfish and unaware of sacredness.)

    He mentions a comment from Trungpa Rinpoche about ‘what kinds of hands would be on deck’. Trungpa Rinpoche referred to the need to overcome ego before one spoke about what to do in the world. Without regard to the pith of that statement, Richard says what kind of soldier’s SMR wants on deck. He speaks of dedication not egoless-ness.

    Another thing that glared was how Richard described, as if it were a key point, the Shambhala teachings are a tool we have been given, with which we can change society, because, as I understood what he said, it gives us the ability to listen better, therefore we can understand others, therefore we can… get them to change in ways we deem good? If one hasn’t assured the qualities of hands on deck, this is a toxic way to approach dharma, whatever tools one may or may not have been given, or to push a specific agenda.

    And so I underline Dan’s point. Whether we refer to the student/teacher relationship and how it is different than what binds a society together, or we refer to the need to separate church and state, or discrimination between practice and politics, I think it is all the same issue.

    The most disturbing thing about your report, Dan, was not that SMR disagreed or made another decision, but that he seemed to lose interest and talked of other things. Echoing Rita, that meeting, all that lead up to it and its results would make an interesting report.
74. John Tischer on December 3rd, 2010 2:17 pm
    

    Given the YEARS of evidence, the alienation of VCTR’s
    students, the amalgamation of Shambhala and Buddhist
    paths into something that illuminates neither, the
    burgeoning materialism, the theistic monarchism, ect., how can anyone trust a thing SMR says or does? I sure don’t.
75. John Perks on December 4th, 2010 7:40 pm
    

    Dear John,you are correct so how do we move forward as a unified community or maybe thats impossible at this time?
76. John Tischer on December 5th, 2010 12:15 am
    

    Dear John I don’t know but perhaps if we remain true to our hearts as I know you do there may not be hope but there will still be the wholesome truth.
77. John Perks on December 5th, 2010 5:21 am
    

    Dear John,
    Yes that sounds true,perhaps the union is with the heart and mind of VCTR,that is why we are always yearning,
    painful as any cupid’s arrows shot into the heart
    the consistant vision
    in the wilderness of winter visitors come and go…..love to you
78. Rob Graffis on December 5th, 2010 1:00 pm
    

    I’m thinking of the slogan “Don’t Drive Things To A Painful Point”.
    Unifying this community at this point might doing just that if done in a forced manner..
    To much complaining just drags anybody down. No complaining at all would be a sign of “a good German” (I use that term because my grandfather came from the strict”Good German” school, though he was quite a U.S. Patriot during World War II as a scientist).
    If anybody read the Sakyong’s recent open letter, he said what people may be doing is forgetting the King and Queen principal, but he didn’t really go any further.
    What seems to have been forgotten is people who are too obiedent in the Community is too focused on the King and Queen (and presently the Mukpo Baby), and have forgotten that the whole idea behind the Sakyong and the Sakyong Wangmo is to join Heaven and Earth. If you recval (especially those who have done Ikabana or dabbles with the I Ching), is that man (us) is in between Heaven and Earth. The idea isn’t too merely worship the King and Queen. Everybody is a King or Queen within their own mandala.
    I presently see no real unification in our community happening. We know a lot of people are unhappy with Shambhala Buddhism, and we know the present leadership is not going to change their direction.
    We should be a content and workable community with workable complaints, or difference of views if we were a real community. Not a “”Your Way And MY Way” etc. community. That is not a workable community. I wish I could say Democracy works, but if we have noticed the silly behavior of Congress during the last decade and a half, we are seeing that is falling apart too. People are less and less have a real say so within Democracy, but then again, people voted in the same morons who are taking away their right to have a voice.
    I wish I had a workable answer.
79. John Tischer on December 5th, 2010 1:56 pm
    

    Yes, there is no oversight in the Shambhala Community (that I know of), is there? Upaya council? Is there even a board of directors? (if there is, one hardly hears about them)…and who Does SMR listen to? His wife? If there’s no one, that’s a simple dictatorship. Since there’s no one above him (or even beside him), there’s no recourse to grievances….so everything sounds like whining. If SMR was just a lama, I wouldn’t criticise him because there would be no point. But he is a political entity, so, unless you’re talking dictatorship, his actions should be open to
    examination.

    His bandwagon is big enough and rich enough (it seems) that he can do whatever he wants. Even if
    one thought he should be removed, there is no one
    (or body) that can do that. The only ones that can alter his policies are himself or his heir. And there seem to be a lot of people that think he’s doing just fine.

    Many older students don’t even care about the debate.
    As time goes on, our voices will fade and whatever happens will just happen….just like what’s happening in the USA now as Rob pointed out.
80. rita ashworth on December 5th, 2010 5:14 pm
    

    Dear Rob and the Johns,

    Well what has happened I think is that CTR’s dharma and shambhala teachings are in transitioning mode now in the west.

    I dont see people that have left whether to go to other teachers, or evolve ‘new’ groups, such as Ray, will return.

    So I am beginning to think that the lineage will be the sangha as described in the book The Mishap Lineage by Trungpa Rinpoche, – and for me personally though I regard some Tibetan teachers with interest I dont feel like tipping my toe in any of their waters for some time to come.
    So I think I am in my gap years somewhat from the Tibetan tradition.

    So in some manner or other I will have to work with what I have got from the past from CTR.

    So my heart is with the ideal of the sangha at present –what will stem from that in the future is any ones guess!

    Best Rita Ashworth
81. James Elliott on December 6th, 2010 2:59 am
    

    Mr. Perks,

    Within a strictly hierarchical organization, any moves towards or changes to engender more unity in the community have to be explicitly supported by the center of the mandala, and mere theater won’t suffice. One can bring some people along that way, but culture doesn’t move or develop on those levels. If it’s just theater, it’s divisive.

    The notion that the king is ‘just’ the king, the rest is all up to us, has some truth in terms of one’s personal motivation, but in terms of reformation or administrative infrastructure, external factors that are clearly in a political sphere explicitly controlled by the powers that be, the PTB have to participate and indeed support such moves.

    In Lieu of that, or in order to lead eventually up to that, simply having discussions, raising the bar on how people think about these kinds of issues may be all we can do. I’ve talked with friends who have ideas about some of these things, but as soon as I delve into it deeper, without rancour or denial, they admit they have never thought about these things in the ways discussed for example on this site, so don’t really have any response. So perhaps through discussion, which would at times need more monitoring than up to now around sensitive points, we can encourage enough people, even those within the system to actually consider things from these points of view.

    In another vein…

    SMR in his letter says the community has gone thorough a healing process over the last 20 years, and so now can look forward because (he implied) the past has been dealt with. Does anybody else know about that healing process, were there any specific efforts in that direction, anything anyone took part in that I’m not aware of? Does anyone know what that means?
82. John Tischer on December 6th, 2010 3:17 pm
    

    Dear James,

    My guess about the “healing process”
    would be that those that will be getting on the bandwagon are established, and those that have a differing p.o.v. have given up to a large extent to being heard. We’ve been successfully ignored. No squeeky, no oil.

    There are some telling things between the lines of that letter, which seems to be about 95% platitudes. One is his urgency to move forward, so’s not to have another
    “vacillating generation.” I wonder who he’s talking about? I know we didn’t vacillate
    when VCTR was around…there was no time for that.
83. rita ashworth on December 6th, 2010 5:49 pm
    

    Dear James

    A very good post yet again.

    I think on rfs I have indeed raised points that are connected to evolving shambhalian culture in the west from the discussion of Art to politics which would bring about an inclusive culture.

    But I am beginning to think with the prevalent direction of SI hanging in the air peoples minds are no longer focussed on hearing what the writers here are pointing out as to other ways of proceeding. I dont think this is bringing things to a painful point it is merely stating the actual situation as it is.

    I think to go further with any discussion on this site we would have to go back to square one with the shambhala teachings as they were given initially.

    And indeed my own questions about process, politics and culture re shambhala are still hanging in the ether –so that is troubling.

    Yes personally if I was the President or leader of Shambhala International I would be looking around at all the division and trying to see some way that everyone could be accommodated in a greater mandala such as the National Assembly that CTR talked about and have access to the teachings in some manner whilst also pursuing their heart connection to Trungpa’s teachings.

    This might indeed call for people like Ray and others to have some ‘legitimate’ stamp put on the way they are teaching. Perhaps a commission could state well Ray is not teaching our curriculum but he is a long term student of CTR and a member( in some form or other) of our wider ‘family’ of meditators – I am not saying this because I have a connection to Mr Rays sangha but merely to state that some ‘legislative’ form could be found to proceed with all the different takes on CTR’s teachings.

    As to the healing process , I have only vaguely heard of the introduction of talking circles in the SI sangha. I am not sure about their operation in the west, – I have experienced them and I feel though people are listened to there is still not enough depth of conversation and debate coming out of this form for a complex society as the west is. I await hearing about other methods of ‘healing’ which is a whole topic in itself but surely the healing must be done on even ground and not within the context of one system holding sway.

    Well best from the UK

    Rita Ashworth
84. James Elliott on December 6th, 2010 7:03 pm
    

    Hi Rita,

    Talking circles are simply a way to talk in a group. It’s very basic. It’s actually the same way 12 step groups are led, though they don’t pass an arrow around. It’s a way for people to talk without ricocheting off responses constantly. Very effective in that, but not a healing process.

    I think a healing process would have to be open and tangible and we’d all know something about it. I have no idea if something was actually done, or if this is just an attempt to say it happened so we are healed, a sort of faith healing through the internet.

    John,
    Haven’t combed through the letter in detail but had some questions. Maybe a thread to discuss that and Richard’s Interview as one of the current events unfolding? That’s the sort of thing we’d all be very busy discussing the meaning of for days every time Trungpa Rinpoche made some announcement or other.
85. rita ashworth on December 7th, 2010 2:57 pm
    

    Dear James,

    Thank you for your further post.

    I have checked the Sakyongs letter re your points about healing.

    Healing is mentioned on the 1st page 2nd paragraph where he states the community has gone through a healing process and page 4 paragraph 4 where he states “our community has healed and recovered and it is growing.”

    I dont know when the healing process has occurred and I have been following stuff for quite a while on the web. Maybe something happened at the Congresses? I do remember the Atishas 13 group that was set up to discuss the Regent (think that was what it was called), and I do recall reading this group took place at one of the Congresses in Halifax, which used the talking circle method but I dont know if the Atishas groups went sangha-wide.

    Re the talking circle principle I dont know if that process will become extensive in SI again. If you check Shambhala Times of November 27 Rebecca Hazell writes of certain additional methods that will be used in the Way of Shambhala to enhance the programme where she states.

    “To cultivate deep listening the Way of Shambhala uses methods drawn from traditional meditation and contemplation exercises as well as from successful leadership trainings”. There is also talk of a ‘dialogue’ process happening – I dont know what that is based upon. Hope some one can comment on the dialogue process.

    So I dont know –where are these additions coming from for the shambhala trainings. Input of psychologists or the curriculum team which I think includes Carolyn Mandelker, and Adam Lobel? People could ask about that.

    It seems to me that there is a fashion of melding the dharma with some other takes on experience. To a degree Shambhala is emphasising the deep listening aspect and others such as Ray are emphasising the body aspect.

    Myself I think you can have the deep listening as adjuncts to the shambhala teachings but putting them within the teachings themselves is debateable I think because each of these spheres of experience have their own logic and could one also say non-logic if we are talking of basic goodness in a fundamental sense.

    So yes there is psychology but also there is actual experience which goes beyond psychology. Of course such use of psychological trainings is also beginning to be more prevalent in a lot of religions –so there is indeed a huge debate about this in all religious spheres outside of Buddhism.

    So I hope the above has somewhat covered your queries James. Look forward to yours and others take on the above.

    Best Rita Ashworth
86. Jester on December 7th, 2010 8:40 pm
    

    Here’s a little hi-lo art that people here may find to be a bit of a hoot. Bear with it, it’s kinda fun and somewhat edifying. Way ahead of the curve in portraying our current malaise. Ya never know.

    http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-9005367754264973286&ei=ZAdHSbzRMJnWqAOd-LWdDA&q=they%20live#
87. Judy Schenk on December 7th, 2010 10:47 pm
    

    Hi Rita,
    I’ve been finding the new curriculum Way of Shambhala courses to be brilliantly crafted and thought out. Ever 2 hr session includes a large group ‘talking circle’ in which dialogue occurs, as well as teachings, meditations, contemplations, as well as splitting up into groups of 2, 3 or 4 to dialogue about designated topics, then returning to the larger circle. The person teaching the ones I’ve attended has an astonishingly deep understanding of dharma, so the courses have been *amazing*. Extremely moving, challenging, heart and mind-opening, growth-provoking.
    Many Centers offer them now. The best way to find out about them is to attend one! You’re guaranteed to enjoy it.
    Judy
88. rita ashworth on December 8th, 2010 5:44 am
    

    Dear Ms Schenk

    Thank you for that breakdown of the present Way of Shambhala.

    Could you please be more specific about teachings, meditations and contemplations and the time duration of each one.

    It sounds to me that the 2 hour session is beginning to resemble a more formal educational operation that to some degree you might find in a university setting or I suppose a better equivalent would be a theological college or may be even a course in a therapeutic setting.

    I have just done a part-time teaching qualification and I am familiar with some of these methods. It would be interesting to know who actually suggested that the Way of Shambhala should be constructed in this manner, who indeed was responsible for this format? Were psychologists prevalent in designing the curriculum for example or was it primarily the work of more Buddhist inspired practitioners and co-ordinators.

    Of course such methods are I think still debateable within the context of following a meditational path which in the end is fundamentally beyond logic- so its difficult . So indeed educational/religious debates are going on about you transmit such teachings to people. For example I know from recent conversations with vicars in the progressive Christian church sector that many new methods for transmitting the essence of the meditational experience are being explored. So no one definitive way has come into being.

    However, despite my reply above, though our various methods for ‘achieving’ connection to mindfulness and awareness may be different, I think the fundamental connection I have with the shambhala teachings is based on them still being open for everyone in their entirety.

    In this respect I take as my basis my own exploration of poetry, literature, solitude, some koan study and introspection as elements in ‘touching’ awareness. This is why I am still so interested in where Mark Szp. and others are coming from in his take on the shambhala teachings and I indeed hope others, especially older students, will comment on such explanations of the shambhala teachings. For example Ellen Mains has commented on this somewhat in brief aside on shamanic teachings on the Chronicle Project. People can post anonymously on this if they wish to.

    I do believe to some extent on the shambhala teachings being explored fully in this present age but not to the detriment of formal vajrayana Buddhist practice. So I am all for personal choice in these matters at the seminary stage. But yes too I am only just beginning to explore how the shambhala teachings could be promulgated without having the one way approach that is being designed at present. So yes outside of SI too these discussions are indeed going on I believe about ‘educational’ formats which I am highly interested in.

    Well thanks again for your post, Ms Schenk.

    I think James may be thinking of his reply. Hope he posts soon as I am curious as to what he might say!

    Best from the UK

    Rita Ashworth
89. Judy Schenk on December 8th, 2010 8:10 am
    

    Hi Rita,
    My experience has been that each class in each course has a different percentage of meditation, contemplation, discussion, small groups, teachings. I understand that a group of Acharyas got together with SMR to re-design the courses in an effort to engage people more with the material, with each other, with the actual experience of working with dharma teachings in everyday life.
    It really is hard to debate and discuss about the courses without having actually experienced one. I can only re-iterate that I think you would be moved and delighted by the experience..!
    Judy
90. Anonymous on December 8th, 2010 10:29 am
    

    This may seem “delightful” to you Judy S, but it is disasterous for the promulgation of the authentic dharma. It is mixing “lineages” of psychology with the authentic dharma. One path makes you happier,
    Temporarily in samsara, the other path can lead to liberation. I don’t need experience , your description tells us our worst fears and what we were warned would happen if we let the Naropa psychology students take over the mandala. Having been fully exposed to many psychology programs, this is group psychology techniques over decades, I can assure you , what you are doing is not an authentic lineage path of the Buddhadharma.
    What is happening in this mandala is the use of group psychology techniques to keep people “happy, and content and CONFORMING. Just as psychology has often been used in the service of the state, it is now being used to keep a level of “group think” in the “sangha” of SI. What was it SMR recently said?
    We want to turn “me” into “we.?”
    My god what is the karma of this? To confuse hundreds of students thinking they are coming to the genuine dharma and instead they would be better off going to a academic class that at least is using the cutting edge wisdom of their own lineage, instead of rehashing old 60’s group dynamic concepts mixed in with practice.
    WHAT A MESS he has created. And the older students, the third stringers left , have let him do it! It is phenomenal that one person, in two decades could destroy a whole mandala.
    No chance now to experience the vast, empty clear space of the Shambhala teachings, now it will be filled up with group psychotherapy techniques!..and talking circles.
    They say that following someone with no more realization than yourself, (and in this case less) is like jumping over a cliff with him.
    Good luck to you, you may be a very nice person, and I am sure you are sincere, but you are actually now part of the confusion that SMR is creating through his students, I am sorry to say. It is not wonderful, it .is not “brilliant” it is a disaster .
91. Judy Schenk on December 8th, 2010 1:32 pm
    

    Dear Anonymous,

    I appreciate you sharing your thoughts and feelings.

    I feel as though I should apologize for not being able to share your feelings that what is happening in Shambhala is “disastrous”…!

    We all experience things differently.

    I’m not new to buddhism. And I’m not a student of SMR, exceot in that I appreciate his writings and talks.
    My interest is in deepening my awareness, wisdom, compassion, humility, opening my heart and mind. Improving my ability to “stay” with things as they are, as they unfold. Decreasing my reactivity, working with my habitual patterns, strong emotions. Doing less harm. Becoming genuinely kinder, less self-absorbed. Less defensive.
    I confess that I don’t share all the concern about “authentic lineages’, etc.
    I find that profound teachings can come from anyone and anywhere.
    I can’t apologize for the fact that my experiences in Shambhala with the practice, teachings, and sangha have been profoundly helpful to me. I don’t at all experience it as a terrible mess.
    I’ve always relied on my own heart, mind, and gut to tell me what is “authentic dharma”. That’s all any of us can ultimately do, and what the Buddha taught.
    You must realize that no one who has not participated in a Way of Shambhala course is in any position to comment on them.
    My experience (for which I do not apologize!) has been that the new curriculum courses help to provide a context in which to experience the vast, empty, clear space of the teachings.
    I didn’t come to Shambhala as a complete stranger to that vast, empty clear space. And I don’t think it makes sense to assume that anyone who doesn’t think it’s all a “disaster”, must be a confused and deluded conformist who got sucked in to the clever, evil ‘groupthink’ plot that is supposedly unfolding.
    I am not an apologist for SMR, nor for his decisions, nor for anything that’s happened/happening with Shambhala. Nor is everything exactly the way I would prefer it.
    I just want a community to practice with whose vision I share.
    What is important to me, is that I share the vision that it’s all about cultivating awareness, gentleness and strength.
    My impression of SMR is that he is a genuine, loving, compassionate man who is deeply committed to Shambhala and the dharma.
    I’m grateful to be welcomed to practice with this group.
    Warm regards,
    Judy
92. Anonymous on December 8th, 2010 2:38 pm
    

    Dear Judy,
    I too have had many euphoric experiences with group dynamic situations. They leave one exhilarated and wanting to go back for more.One wants to spread the word, and you are. That’s what they hope from your euphoria.
    But this is NOT the buddhadharma that he is teaching, the buddhadharma which is not about euphoria, or extremes, or feeling all snuggly and happy with a group of other confused people glowingly expressing the wonderful experience of it all. It will ensure that you forever stay in this group to keep going back for more and more “euphoric experiences in the group” . The administration hopes to give you an experience of euphoria, so you will keep coming back for more euphoric group bonding. Because if you bond to the members of the group, then you are hooked. That’s what is really happening. But the group dynamics will never let you see that. The whole point of sitting practice in the buddhadharma is to stay with the boredom, the silence, so that one can watch one’s own monkey mind and need for constant distraction. What the darling little administrators are doing, to make you all very very comfortable, because they don’t believe that you can sit with the actual dharma practices that were given by CTR , and they say this privately, did you know that? is to make sure you are NEVER BORED. You are all too distracted , too confused, to actually benefit from the authentic , and straight-up dharma practices that CTR gave us. So now you all get this hybridized, psychologized version so you will never never be bored. Because the Sakyong can’t be bored he assumes you can’t handle any boredom. So he has adapted the pristine dharma teachings of his father, to keep you all hooked, and what better way then to bond you as a group?
    So I don’t care what SMR is doing, it’s that he has stolen his father’s mandala, and has made up something that will appeal to the most distracted and incapable of sitting with the real dharma practices students, because he just wants lots and lots of students, and the less demanding it is, with many little “entertainments” built in , and the more he can bond you together as a group, you will come back, for more and more and you will be sending , all of you, thinking you are getting the real dharma, lots and lots of money to keep the Sakyong also NOT BORED FOREVER.
93. Mark Szpakowski on December 8th, 2010 2:46 pm
    

    The latest comments here are way off topic for this article. I will post an article soon (before tomorrow) which can be a more suitable container for discussion such as this. Please hold on.
94. Judy Schenk on December 8th, 2010 3:29 pm
    

    Anonymous, I completely agree that meditation is the pivotal practice. (as SMR is constantly saying) I sit with boredom daily, and once a week for an hour with the sangha. I try to do weekthuns and nyinthuns whenever I can. But I think the interactive, sangha stuff is important as well. Judy
95. John Tischer on December 8th, 2010 7:16 pm
    

    Buddhism is not about “getting better”.
    It is about experiencing all experience completely and fully. By doing that, natural mind sorts ITSELF out.
96. Joe Schmidt on December 9th, 2010 9:40 am
    

    bindutheclown recently wrote [the post has been disappeared]:

    “The secret was secret not because it was sleazy or shameful. The secret was secret because it could be taken the wrong way. But now the secret is out, it may attract the lunatic fringe who take no pre-requisites. The symbol is now the institution. In the eyes of Joe Schmidt, KOS is a laughing stock. Who’ll be magnetised to a sect ruled by His-and-Her Majesties? What next, mass arranged weddings and past-life regressions?”

    Though, of course, everyone is very polite, as when a psych patient tells us he cannot go home to see his father because his father is so huge that he fills up the whole kitchen and there’s no room, we just nod and go along agreeably.

    The newspaper does make a big splash over our ostentatious rites, but isn’t it really a bit tongue-in-cheek? Of course, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald likes to endear and not alienate its many sangha advertisers and subscribers.

    But no matter how we glorify it, it’s still just weird jargon and nonsense, a quaint anachronism like civil war re-enactments. Beings with critical intelligence will avoid this magic kingdom like the plague, impressed only by its apparent silliness, because KOS is manifesting crazily and conspicuously out of touch and in a little world of its own far outside the ordinary conventions of society.

    Unfortunate ones will miss the chance of a lifetime. Fortunate ones will find other gateways to the dharma. The heart-breaking part is the irreversibility of it, because like the VROT fiasco there is no way to retract or redact now. And also heart-breaking is the strong possibility that Big Brother will disappear this post too.
97. Mark Szpakowski on December 9th, 2010 9:53 am
    

    Bindu the Clown’s post has not been disappeared.

    Bindu the Clown’s post was made to a different article.

    Chris should pause and take a good look around before shooting from the hip.
98. Joe Schmidt on December 9th, 2010 11:06 am
    

    Easy does it, Mark. It was a misunderstanding: the search-this-site function appears not to be working, since when I type in bindutheclown, no matches are found; and the Vajradhara Thangka in Boulder article isn’t listed in the Recent Posts column; to find it, one must search the archives. We regret any confusion.

    O but my dear Mark, I can follow the first two premises of your syllogism, but then you take a leap I cannot follow. It is you have shot from the hip. I am not Chris if that is what you meant to suggest. I am Joe Schmidt.
99. Suzanne Duarte on December 9th, 2010 12:56 pm
    

    Joe Schmidt’s comment is interesting in that it makes a point I haven’t considered before: that SMR’s Shambhala may appear so ridiculous that many people may not be able to take Trungpa’s Shambhala teachings seriously, simply because they are associated with Shambhala International. “Joe” says:

    “But no matter how we glorify it, it’s still just weird jargon and nonsense, a quaint anachronism like civil war re-enactments. Beings with critical intelligence will avoid this magic kingdom like the plague, impressed only by its apparent silliness, because KOS is manifesting crazily and conspicuously out of touch and in a little world of its own far outside the ordinary conventions of society…. The heart-breaking part is the irreversibility of it, because like the VROT fiasco there is no way to retract or redact now.”

    “Joe Schmidt,” as I recall, was CTR’s name for everyman, the man on the street, the ordinary person. The writer is anonymous. But his point that KOS is “conspicuously out of touch and in a little world of its own far outside the ordinary conventions of society” is exactly what Trungpa R. did not want KOS to be. As Mark has said in his article above, the idea – CTR’s vision, in fact – is to bring the sense of sacredness into secular life, so that ordinary, conventional people can catch a whiff of sacredness and upliftedness that will inspire interest and appreciation, rather than put them off. The message of Basic Goodness is meant to reach all people in order to uplift the state of the world, most of whom will not be able to relate to religious trappings from medieval Tibet.

    As “bindutheclown” said, “Who’ll be magnetised to a sect ruled by His-and-Her Majesties?” The brocade-laden theocracy of Shambhala International may indeed appear anachronistic and insular. I wonder where SMR imagines his 12 million Shambhalians are going to come from, when CTR’s own students are put off.
100. Judy Schenk on December 9th, 2010 10:51 pm
     

     I’ve been thinking about what you said, John T., that “buddhism is about exeriencing all experience completely and fully, and by doing that, Natural Mind sorts itself out”. I think that’s true.
     You also said “buddhism is not about ‘getting better’ “.
     I’m thinking that even when natural mind sorts itself out, we still have to work unceasingly and whole-heartedly with learning how to handle our kleshas skillfully, learning how to handle ourselves so that we don’t harm others, etc. The eightfold path is a self-improvement plan, don’t you think? It’s about cultivating right view, speech, action, intention, etc.. moment-by-moment effort to improve our ability to skillfully and open-heartedly manifest our kindness, gentleness, compassion…
101. John Tischer on December 9th, 2010 11:30 pm
     

     Judy,

     More accurately like a self dissolution plan. All those “rights” you mention are
     because we have wrong views, not because they’re something new or not innate. The “work” we do is giving up wrong views. The reason why it’s “work”
     is because we believe in them, cling to them strongly. If we could just let go of them, it wouldn’t be “work” at all. But if we feel we’re “getting somewhere” by all this work, that itself is spiritual materialism….and we’re kidding ourselves.
     Big obstacle.

     We’re really trying to just let ourselves be…it’s just that simple and for just that reason why the path seems so hard. We can’t let ourselves be!
102. John Tischer on December 9th, 2010 11:59 pm
     

     sorry for the extra post/

     Judy said:

     ” we still have to work unceasingly and whole-heartedly with learning how to handle our kleshas skillfully, learning how to handle ourselves so that we don’t harm others, etc.”

     Yes…and as natural mind sorts itself out,
     it no longer feels like work…more like joy.
103. Judy Schenk on December 10th, 2010 10:26 pm
     

     That was beautifully put, John.

     Paradoxically…. we do ‘progress’ though, don’t we.
     We soften, open, cling less tightly… There’s more space to be and respond with gentleness.

     And if we train and practice and there is no ‘progress’…
     if we aren’t become kinder as the years pass… there must be areas of our ‘selves’ that we’re avoiding, pretending about.
     And that’s why I think we need the mirrors that are our teachers, and sangha. To help us see and relate/work with our blind spots.
104. Monika on December 11th, 2010 8:36 am
     

     Suzanne, your latest comment: “…that SMR’s Shambhala may appear so ridiculous that many people may not be able to take Trungpa’s Shambhala teachings seriously, simply because they are associated with Shambhala International.” reminded me of an experience I have made lately when attending a shambala training.

     For many years I have read teachings by CTR and they always were a big support to me and gave me a flavour of some other (sacred?) dimension, beyond my ordinary secular and conceptual mind.

     Now for the first time I went to a Shambala centre with the hope to connect more with CTR and his teachings. But it was not what I had expected: No possibility to connect with CTR Kagyü-Nyingma tradition (because no Vajradhara on the shrine), a mixture of teachings from CTR and SMR were given, different terms were used for one practise (some terms connecting to CTR teachings, some to SMR teachings), techniques which I am familiar with from encounter groups were introduced, also some forms of gymnastics… So this was all very nice and fine (gave me a good feeling of getting together with other people and talk to them). But to me there was someting missing on an energetic level and on the level of “cutting through” which I was so familiar with from reading CTR teachings.

     I just went to one of such trainings because I missed CTR in all of this and I found it disconcerting not to know whether I was connecting with SMR or with CTR by the teachings and practices that were given. So now I decided to continue just sticking to CTR books,… still in search of a Western Buddhism…..
105. Jane Doe on December 11th, 2010 11:41 am
     

     okay Monika, me too…so here is my meek understanding of how-to instructions i have heard in CTR’s books: i am NOT supposed to be materialising, and i AM supposed to be remaining in the dharmadhatu. is this agree with your understanding? that is just my little splinter of understanding. Maybe each and every splinter of understanding split by the schism in our sangha can take root in the earth and spread underground in all directions like living time capsule~~with the help of great lamas like Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche, Khandro Rinpoche and Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, to name just three…
106. Chris on December 11th, 2010 2:19 pm
     

     Dear Mark:

     You should pause before you make assumptions. I don’t know Bindu the Clown. But thank goodness there are a few people who do shoot from the hip, without hesitation when needed. I suggest you read the article pre edited, on Negative Negativity 1972-Garuda. by CTR,

     Hesitation is the problem . It has been for over a decade when the signs were all pointing to what was going to happen.

     I find this site a vehicle to simply drain off energy. And talk around everything. As long as RFS is still trying to please SI, than nothing is happening here that is of any benefit to affect anything of import. It’s a waste of time, in that respect. Until CTR students can face the facts and walk away from this , you are simply feeding it. Giving it way too much importance, it will be maybe a footnote in the history books. Let it implode from its own hubris as it will. You are just further inflating it since it is too late now. This is so NOT CTR ‘s mandala now, why bother with it.

     As they say, the more a group talks about “harmony” and how well they are doing, and how successful they are, as the PR gets more and more inflated and bizarre, the probability is, it is close to its demise.

     Chris
107. Suzanne Duarte on December 11th, 2010 3:38 pm
     

     Dear Monika,

     Thank you for your story. To perceive “someting missing on an energetic level and on the level of ‘cutting through’” from one experience of a Shambhala Training program is very perceptive and good prajna. I’m sure many other people who appreciate CTR’s teachings, and go to Shambhala Centers, are equally disconcerted, as you say: “I missed CTR in all of this and I found it disconcerting not to know whether I was connecting with SMR or with CTR by the teachings and practices that were given. So now I decided to continue just sticking to CTR books,… still in search of a Western Buddhism…..”

     We don’t often hear from such people, although a few have become regulars on RFS. So thanks for sharing your experience. I am sad that people like you don’t know where else to go – because CTR’s mandala no longer exists as CTR’s mandala. Some of us would like to remedy that.

     Btw, please disregard “Jane Doe’s” snarky remarks. S/he’s obviously a troll.
108. Monika on December 11th, 2010 3:45 pm
     

     Dear Chris, maybe I should not meddle here because I don’t really belong to the Shambala sangha (although I have a lot of admiration for the teachings of CTR and I learned a lot from his teachings). But I feel that this site is really doing a great job. (I also suffer from split sangha but in a different mandala.)

     What you say: “I find this site a vehicle to simply drain off energy.” I feel that it is so important when deeling with difficulties in a sangha to be able to share ones thoughts and emotions with others who can understand. I have the situation that I can hardly talk to anyone because most of the people of my former sangha are on “the other side” and they would not want to listen to what I have to say. Therefore I really benefit from your courage to talk about the situation in shambala publicly and openly on RFS. Many of the things you discuss here on this site help me to better understand the mechanisms I have experienced and am still experiencing.

     So please keep it going!

     Suzanne, thanks for your nice comment. Maybe one has to accept “snarky remarks” once one starts to be critical.

     (I know I am breaking several rules here right now with my comment (off topic, more than one comment a day) but it really was my heart wish to respond here, so apologies.)
109. Judy Schenk on December 11th, 2010 3:48 pm
     

     Suzanne – I can’t believe you said such a mean thing re: Jane Doe’s remarks. You owe her an apology. I and others appreciated her post.

     *This* is how VCTR taught you to be in the world..??!!
110. Rob Graffis on December 11th, 2010 8:05 pm
     

     Actually, Shambhala (or a lot of it), is about decorum, not unlike Confucianism..
     What were Jane Doe’s terrible remarks that made her a troll?
111. John Tischer on December 12th, 2010 1:35 am
     

     Alright, anybody wanna wrestle?
112. Jane Doe on December 12th, 2010 8:17 am
     

     that’s okay, no harm done…anyway, after message to Monika, i wrestled in my mnd with those two directions to don’t materialise and to remain in dharmadhatu and thought of how really they are two ways of saying same thing~~materialising IS believing that the daydream i em grasping is true~~Losing touch that way IS always exit from primordial space~~my mind is toy of subconscious gossip but in essence is thamel gyi shepa, thanks to our dearest heart-mother and heart-father gurus.
113. Chris on December 12th, 2010 1:02 pm
     

     Dear Monika:
     Yes it is important for people to “process” but not if they are censored with others ideas of decorum because they are still half-in half-out of caring what Shambhala and the Sakyong thinks of this site.

     I believe that CTR students have experienced spiritual abuse and I suggest we start really looking at what that means, and how hard it is to recover from this.

     I feel that this mandala turned into a cult of personality, enabled by the double grief that CTR students went through after CTR AND the Regents death, I feel that this left us open and more vulnerable and because we loved CTR so much we let someone ill-equipped to take over this mandala and then we hesitated and began taking care of him, enabling him until he turned the mandala into HIS TRIP.

     This is a very long journey of recovery, but if we still keep second guessing ourselves about what we feel and censoring our anger over this it will not help at all. This is what people do, who really cant believe what has happened and so are in a constant state of ambivalence and they never face it.

     The problem I see here is that SI is having a slow death and people are all at different phases of seeing the spiritual abuse for what it is.

     If this can remain a site that allows uncensored discussion (and trust that people are not going to go beserk) than it will allow the healing process for everyone to occur.

     I am grateful to RFS, I think I said this before, for providing me with an opportunity to process my journey here , get in touch with my anger and move through it, but they didn’t make it easy, I hope they make it easier now., So that could be the major role RFS could serve.

     Chris.
114. Jester on December 12th, 2010 4:22 pm
     

     The End is the Beginning.

     “You can’t say that Soto Zen is gradual. It doesn’t stress brilliance or your own effort, but it’s not gradual, because when you say “gradual,” it implies that you are getting somewhere. That implies stages. ‘Here we are over here in the not so good place. We’re going to go over there to the better place, which we get to by steps and stages. Now we are halfway there. Now we are three quarters of the way there. Now we are 90% there. And now we’re there!’

     “Soto Zen is resistant to anything like that. Suzuki Roshi’s ‘beginner’s mind,’ a traditional phrase in Soto Zen, is typical. Every moment is the beginning. And every moment is the end. So the advanced practice in Soto Zen is exactly the same as the beginning practice in Soto Zen. It’s very simple: Sit, pay attention, breathe, and be present for what is there. That is what you learn on the first day, and that is the practice you do on the last day of your life. If you do it all your life, it is the same practice. You probably feel different about it after a long time, but the practice itself is the same. The attitude is that every moment is a new awakening. The first moment of awakening is a good moment. The last moment of awakening is also a good moment. There aren’t any steps or stages in between.

     “So in a certain way, the very gentle way of Soto Zen is also sudden. Suddenly every minute! Suddenly now and suddenly now and suddenly now”

     ~Norman Fischer, from Sandokai 2010, Talk 2
115. Rob Graffis on December 12th, 2010 5:29 pm
     

     The problem is (Chris), without censorship or structure people do go berserk. You should know. .
     Suzuki Roshi did say give a cow an open field and they will become content. What needs to be emphasized also is Zen is a very disciplined. To much of an open pasture invites chaos, or an “anything goes” mentality. That is inviting chaos. You can’t have it both ways. Expressing anger to the point of insanity is self defeating. It took structure to create and monitor (some what) this web site. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be here.
     Respect that structure.
     Chris, I have requested her privately to do so with no results. Please take me off your spam list. I’m still getting your company’s junk mail via you..
     If that is harassing mail, I’m a glowing example.
     Signed,
     Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche’s poster boy, as you put it.
     Stop pretending you can’t get ugly at times. That kind of behavior is not caused by Shambhala International.
116. bindutheclown on December 12th, 2010 6:18 pm
     

     Speaking [Jane] of schism, [and thanks Jane for lovely aspiration prayer]:

     The original By-laws of Vajradhatu by the VCTR were in force at the time of the VROT “crisis”.
     But the By-laws were ignored by the then-Board of Directors.
     The By-laws bound the Board to remove a President if he were found to be responsible for creating a schism in the sangha, which VROT most certainly was responsible for creating.
     But the Board never would even bring the matter up to a vote.

     Today there is a new Board with new corporate By-laws which evidently have no provision for the removal of a chief exec who creates a schism in the sangha.
     Or else it is another lapdog Board.
     What do the By-laws of the current legal Shambhala entity say exactly, can RFS post the document?
117. Chris on December 12th, 2010 6:54 pm
     

     You are getting junk email because someone ( you Rob? since you have sent me hate mail for about two years since I refused to take your telephone calls anymore listening to your diatribes against shambhala, the sakyong and jeff waltcher. Thats really what this is about. . I don’t know how you are able to compartmentalized like you do, Its quite a defense mechanism, and its quite bizarre. But that’s what happens when one speaks out, one can expect this kind of reaction from unexpected quarters. Or maybe its one of the cultists? Who knows who cares. I have dropped a 500 lb weight and have escaped a CULT. I wish that all of you will be free someday from this, even you Rob.
118. Chris on December 12th, 2010 7:14 pm
     

     You are getting junk email because someone has hacked my contact list in hotmail.
119. James Elliott on December 13th, 2010 2:54 am
     

     To bindutheclown.

     Excellent suggestion. We could maybe have a separate thread for that, post the new bylaws and then discuss. Does anyone have access? Do they exist?

     Much of the problems we had in our group here a few years ago were specifically because an acharaya was giving permissions and support that went directly against the charter of the organization (not to mention lying to, manipulating and bullying members). We were told this by people in the administration, and were told at that time that the charter of Vajradhatu was still the guideline, and that the acharaya wasn’t allowed to give the permissions he was giving, but no one did anything to stop it.

     Some people have said in these threads that all complaints are null and void because bad stuff happened in the before times. Well, if they were, they were also not good then, but we could see by the bylaws of the charter that Trungpa Rinpoche tried to build into the organization ways to stop abuse, to create some kind of limits and directives which in some instances were designed to head off festering conflict before it could even take root. (For example, there was a directive that there should never be two groups in one city or area, because of the competition it would eventually foster. Some of it simple obvious stuff like that.)

     What does the ‘new’ charter of Shambala International do on this level? Were Vajradhatu bylaws designed by Trungpa Rinpoche with the then Board of Directors at least one of whom was a lawyer (John Roper) simply jettisoned and better barricades against the ignorant masses set up (saw an essay on another site once implying this), or are the bylaws similar in scope and intent, and simply ignored due to religious contingencies which prevent the kind practical sanity such situations are crying for?

     In the inspiration that laws and rules are the hinayana of society (or a site like RFS), and without hinayana, you don’t have mahayana or vajrayana.
120. rita ashworth on December 13th, 2010 5:55 am
     

     Dear James

     An interesting post.

     Yes the Regent situation I did investigate that and I was sent a copy of the Vajradhatu bye-laws by some one in the States as to the setting up of the organisation which I recall for legal purposes did include the removal of the Director of First Class i.e. the Regent by the Board.

     But consider also on top of this within the context of Vajradhatu and now within SI there are the oaths of loyalty which I dont think have a legal basis, although I am willing to receive contrary information on this.

     I think in most religious institutions too in the west you have a similar set up in that you have the legal law of the country acting on the organisation and within the body of the church set methods of how you conduct the operation. In the UK with the Church of England because it is an established church of the state some of its ‘laws’ have to still be passed by Parliament and signed by the Queen –so it is a kind of hybrid as regards to church legislation.

     I think what the Congress has set up and as far as I can see from reading all the documentation of SI is that if you have some disagreement about the way the Sakyong is leading the organisation you go through the Office of the President which is Richard Reochs office, but as Richard has sworn a loyalty oath to the Sakyong I dont think he could act impartially in a lot of the cases –so its difficult indeed how could you have an impartial investigation of the way the Sakyong conducts the organisation – bring in outside people or psychotherapists?

     Re Dan Montgomery’s post about the 2004 meeting of the Mandala Council at SMC that is interesting and even now under the present system of governance within SI you could still have an investigation in retrospect I believe. Yes I think under this procedure people on the Mandala Council at the time could still go to the Dorje Kasung and state we think the President did not represent our discussions in the final document that was written in respect to the Sakyongs status as temporal/spiritual ruler. It would still be people in the community investigating people in the community but at least it would be seen to following the governance procedure that SI has set up. So yes I think people if they were at all interested in following this route could make their representations to the Head of the Kasung.

     Best Rita Ashworth
121. Judy Schenk on December 13th, 2010 8:13 am
     

     In the days of Vajradhatu, how did people proceed when they had disagreements about the way Trungpa Rinpoche was doing things?
122. Judy Schenk on December 13th, 2010 10:09 am
     

     btw, Jane Doe, Thankyou for your moving and poetic posts. I’ve really enjoyed them. It sounds like you’ve come up with a wonderful understanding about your query re: meditation.
     I deeply appreciate your graciousness in the face of being treated so rudely here on Radio Free Shambhala. As a dharma practitioner and student of the loving-kindness and gentleness teachings of Trungpa Rinpoche, I am very embarrassed and ashamed for all of us that you received such a response to your post. I cannot fathom how Suzanne and Monika interpreted it as “snarky”. I should also say, that from what Mark and Edward said in their intial explanation interview for setting up this website in 2008, all points of view (and, I believe by inference, all people) are welcome here.
     Judy
123. Rob Graffis on December 13th, 2010 10:47 am
     

     Judy

     Up till Rinpoche’s final years, his students had some type of access to him, whether it would be communty talks, seminars, Seminary talks, or Naropa Institute talks during the question and answer period. At the Naropa talks, people would line up afterwords to say what ever to him. He was fairly accessible. Initially, you could request private or group audience interviews (through your meditation instructor) though you may have had to wait 6 months or more before your request may be granted. In any case, you would get a response from his office.was granted People can and did have pretty open communications with him. I’ve had a couple minor kvetches with him, but that is the student teacher relationship.He (or the Regent) also assigned Ambassadors from Boulder to act on his behalf in 1977. Many ambassadors had day jobs, so it wasn’t a glorious position necessarily.
     .
124. Joe Schmidt on December 13th, 2010 11:24 am
     

     I appreciate bindutheclown’s earnestness. But isn’t it just leading into another dead-end of namtok wogyu, or subconscious gossip, as Jane says. That’s not the genuine legacy of Trungpa Rinpoche that I wish to ensure a future. Investigating this technicality seems like a red herring to me.

     Accept that there is a schism, and make other arrangements, as Jane Doe eloquently advises. And maybe come up with a motto like hers that encapsulates for each of us the legacy we each are heirs and heiresses to, as our VCTR heritage seeds of understanding.

     In the olden days, everybody in Boulder had moved there from somewhere else just to live in proximity to Rinpoche and be his student. We would from time-to-time receive xeroxed letters from Rinpoche in the mail; I still have them. I wonder if these letters are enshrined in the time capsule.
125. James Elliott on December 13th, 2010 1:10 pm
     

     Joe Schmidt,

     I suppose your right, that accepting there’s a schism, and making other arrangements is sound advice, if the only thing your concerned about is your own thingy. As soon as you see others caught in detrimental dynamics however, I think it is incumbent on one to at least discuss such things and present the possibility that there are healthier ways to go. We have examples even within this community, but others abound.

     I maintain such discussions are not only relevant but important, not because I want someone to do something for me as such, but rather because I know other people who have been very poorly treated by people who were given implied and sometimes explicit spiritual and temporal authority. Imagine an acharaya calling you up and telling you that other people are right to hate you. Completely insane, not only a-dharmic but no modern psychology model supports that either.

     I know people who are repulsed by Shambhala and spiritual paths altogether because they believe that they are about manipulation and control. This is so false it needs to be said. But too, that has been their experience so one can’t argue them out of it and telling them to go elsewhere is not a healthy response.

     Shambhala is an organization that works with these sorts of things. That doesn’t make it free of responsibility. It needs to be held accountable. It doesn’t matter which side of any schism you are on, anyone not blinded by denial or devotion should be concerned about these things. For the sake of others, not just for our own thingy, our own corner of happiness.

     It is clear to me that because there are currently no tangible attempts to hold that sort of thing in check, the very least we can do is bring it up to let people know who find themselves caught up in shenanigans that it isn’t normal and there are other possibilities.

     Does Shambhala have a charter and guidelines? Vajradhatu certainly did and it included all kinds of rules intended to prevent conflict. Does Shambhala even pretend to work with members on this level or have they shucked that responsibility altogether? That’s a valid question and the answer, either way, has far reaching results.

     Traditionally the dharma is packed with warnings all along the way. Maybe that’s the function of dissent when the PTB have dropped those kinds of traditional concerns.
126. John Tischer on December 13th, 2010 1:23 pm
     

     Judy,

     I went to 1974 seminary. One night after a talk, I spoke to Rinpoche. At that time, the whole seminary had devolved into a party…very few people in the shrine room. I complained to Rinpoche: ” No one is sitting.” He asked me “What should we do?” After the shock of him asking my opinion, I said:” Maybe they should sit more before they get here.” The next year, seminary had a dathun requirement.

     I’m not saying 1to1 correspondence…still…
127. bindutheclown on December 13th, 2010 8:39 pm
     

     Thanks Joe, right you are, it’s just another cul-de-sac of the psyche…there is no plausible scenario in which the minutiae and red-tape [irony!] of VCTR’s by-laws could ever have enough leverage to be a game-changer now…

     James, are you really seriously sure that your aspiration here is purely a bodhisattvic one to educate and protect sentient beings from dangers you feel are posed by SI?

     If you are really sure, then your aspiration will be much better served carrying a picket sign outside the Pic Building (formerly Boulder Dharmadhatu) to rescue beings before they cross the threshold.
128. Suzanne Duarte on December 13th, 2010 9:34 pm
     

     Um, ‘bindutheclown,’ the Pic Building was never Boulder Dharmadhatu. It was Dorje Dzong, preceded by Karma Dzong at 1111 Pearl St., both of which housed the seat of government, Vajradhatu, which was consecrated by Vajradhara in the Dorje Dzong shrine room. And I believe James lives in Europe now, though of course he can speak for himself.
129. James Elliott on December 14th, 2010 3:12 am
     

     Binduthe clown asks for the bylaws of Shambhala and then denounces that as a cul de sac of the psyche? If I actually took a picket sign to the PIC building as suggested, no doubt bindutheclown would tell me how neurotic that was as well. Talking in two directions at once… hmmm. Do we have another plant.

     Making my character the issue is a red herring. It doesn’t matter whether my motivations are purely Bodhisattvic or not. As if you could tell. In an environment in which understanding, enlightenment or neurosis is measured by the degree one is in accord with the party line (or not), there will be no enlightenment sowieso.

     Whether or not I am altruistic or not, I stood by relatively passively while an acharaya manipulated, bullied and lied to people. Not just a personal opinion, pretty much everyone involved knew that was happening. His actions had extremely detrimental results for several people.

     I may not effect change directly, have no illusions I alone would accomplish anything in that direction, but to turn one’s back and put it out of my mind when I know such people are given authority and protected by the current regime, well I may not be bodhisattvic, but that would make me culpable.

     So from that point of view, yeah, I guess it’s all about me and not wanting to be culpable through intentional ignorance. What an ass.

     I’ll say it again. It doesn’t matter where one’s allegiances lie. There are things that go on which members on either side of whatever divide you want to draw should be concerned about. Or is the whole thing a sham?

     If Shambhala can’t find its way to work with those kinds of universal issues of dishonesty, abuse, bad PR in a much healthier way than up to now, then our pretensions about enlightened society are worse than none at all. It is these sorts of fundamentals: laws, justice, healthy conflict resolution, upon which enlightened society will be built. Not religious dogmas and devotional intoxication or getting rid of the heathens. Knowing what the bylaws are if there are any and holding officials accountable would be a step in the right direction.

     In the inspiration that sometimes “What you don’t know is far more relevant than what you do know” (from N.N. Taleb’s “The Black Swan”)
130. Judy Schenk on December 14th, 2010 7:19 am
     

     John, What a great story! So *you’re* responsible for that dathun requirement! Well, I’m all for sitting more.

     Rob, I guess in Trungpa Rinpoche’s final years, Shambhala had grown so much that he just couldn’t meet with everyone..?
     I certainly like the idea of established channels through which to request private and group interviews. Communication with the community seems so important. I guess in the present set-up, the acharyas and shastris are SMR’s ‘ambassadors’..? I don’t know much about how things work in Halifax and in the big international picture. SI is so *huge*. I guess things will be getting more organized when SMR returns from retreat…
     What happened with CTR if people met with him about something they disagreed with, and he still proceeded in a way they disagreed with? Was there some sort of recourse to force him to comply with the sangha’s wishes..?
     I also wonder how the Tibetan system handled sangha disagreements with their lineage holders through the centuries.. There must have been similar problems whenever a beloved guru died, and a new lineage holder assumed the role..?
131. Jane Doe on December 14th, 2010 9:14 am
     

     luckily, when we took refuge, we didn’t take refuge in Vajradhatu, Shambhala Training, or SI~~we took refuge in the Buddha, refuge in the dharma, and refuge not just in the fickle and irritable sangha of our peers and siblings but also refuge in the ultimate sangha of bodhisattvas and arhats…this isn’t an exact quote but to paraphrase Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche from memory, he says that taking refuge in the triple gems, or the three jewels of Buddha, dharma, and sangha at a profound level is the discipline of taking refuge in acceptance of the truth of the facts of life or laws of nature, whether we like it or not, such as that all compounded things like sand castles and mandalas are impermanent…
132. Chris on December 14th, 2010 11:43 am
     

     From: Take back your life: Recovering from Cults and Abusive Situations:
     “A cult cannot be truly explored or understood without understanding its leader. Psychologists Edward Levine and Chares Shaiova write that a cult’s formation, proselytizing methods, and means of influence and control “”are determined by certain salient personalty characteristics of (the ) cult leader…Such individuals are authoritarian personalities who attempt to compensate for their deep, intense feelings of inferiority, insecurity, and hostility by forming cultic groups primarily to attract those whome the can psychologically coerce into and keep in a pass-submissive state, and secondarilty to use them to increase their income (status, or other gain). In examining the motives and activites of cult leaders, it is painfully ovious that cult like is rarely pleasant for devotees because they pwer imbalance in cults breeds injustices and abuses of all sorts. As a defense agains the heightened anxiety that accompanies such powerlessness, many people in cults and abusive relationships assume a stance of self-blame. Typically this seof-deprecating attitude is reinforced by the group’s self-serving message that the followers are never good enough and are to blame for everthing that goes wrong. DEMYSTIFYING THE CULT LEADER’S POWER IS AN IMPORTANT PART OF THE PSYCHO-EDUCATIONAL RECOVERY PROCESS. THIS EXAMINATION OF POWER IS CRITICAL TO TRULY GAINING FREEDOM AND INDEPENDENCE FROM THE LEADER’S CONTROL. … To heal from a traumatic experience of this type, it is important to understand who and what the perpetrator is. So long as there are illusions about the leaders motivation, powers, and abilities, those who have been in such a grip deprive themselves of an important opportunity for growth: the chance to empoer themselves and to become free of the tyranny of dependicy on others for their well-being, spiritual growth , or happiness.
133. damchö on December 14th, 2010 1:10 pm
     

     James: “It doesn’t matter where one’s allegiances lie. There are things that go on which members on either side of whatever divide you want to draw should be concerned about. Or is the whole thing a sham?

     If Shambhala can’t find its way to work with those kinds of universal issues of dishonesty, abuse…in a much healthier way than up to now, then our pretensions about enlightened society are worse than none at all.”

     Yes. This is the core point, for me anyway.
134. anonymous on December 14th, 2010 1:34 pm
     

     “I also wonder how the Tibetan system handled sangha disagreements with their lineage holders through the centuries..”

     Poisoning, and assassination was one favorite method.
135. John Tischer on December 14th, 2010 1:38 pm
     

     Judy,

     There could have been plenty of people that gave him that advice. Point is,
     he listened.
136. Rob Graffis on December 14th, 2010 5:08 pm
     

     I had put this on “In Appreciation” as well.

     First, I appreciate the re-reminder (I have bought this point up) concerning the three Jewels. Of the three Jewels, the third one, the Sangha has been put on the back burner by this present administration, which many of them very much wanted to cooperate with at first, but were not only not listened too, but somewhat invited to leave if they don’t like it.
     Secondly, those who had Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche as their teacher, and mistakenly believed they automatically had to follow the Sakyong as their “Guru”, were not discouraged from doing so. Remember, the Sakyong was designated to be our Secular leader more then a spiritual one. Even if he was designated to be a spiritual leader, our root teachers are the ones we have made a deep connection with, not whom we are told to.
     The absolute teachers and sangha are the Buddhas, Bodhisattvas and those who one the Way.
     As far as communicating to Chhoyam Trungpa R. goes in the final years, the Regent took over those resonsibilities as time went on.
     I have to admit, I even mad a semi complaint about The Regent to Rinoocher, and his only response was “That’s our Regent”.
     Rinpoche was basically too sick and unpredictable to see people anymore.
     You also have to remember, Rinpoche started the group, and most of us joined it because of him, not because we wanted to become Buddhist.
     It woiuld kind of be like protesting the founder of a company who you asked to work for.
     The Sakyong is a successor. Not a founder).
     Many of us did not choose him as a teacher.
     Long before his father died, many of us knew he was not going to be our own personal spiritual guide. Shambhala, yes, but not Buddhist. It was not out of disrespect.
     That is why it was confounding to many of us that he mixed Buddhism and Shambhala as the same thing.
     That would be like mixing Shintoism and Buddhism as the same thing.
137. rita ashworth on December 14th, 2010 5:29 pm
     

     Dear James et al

     Thanks for your latest post.

     Just been doing some brief research on Shambhala website re Dan Montgomery’s comments on governance. Found Community as Practice Contemplating Shambhala Buddhist Culture 2004 (SMC) on Shambhala Congress website (prepared by Mary Whetsell) which is interesting because it shows a lot of discussion about the role of the Sakyong –so people could look at that if they wanted to.

     Secular Sacred Governance report is on the main Shambhala website proper. Now this is the concept that Dan Montgomery states Richard Reoch came up with on his post of 1st December 2010 which made no sense to him. It would be useful to know from Dan if any other reports were written down besides the one I found above compiled by Ms Whetsell in 2004 as I can not find any others online.

     On another tack re the discussions about people going off from SI and doing their own thing –yes its a gamble but then isn’t everything. I still dont know what to make of Ray –heard stories for and against, but yes he seems to be flourishing and attracting people to his centres and groups. So I dont know the lay of the land may become clearer after another 10 years for all of us besides SI’s thrust to the fantastical, big number, grand, mega,
     12 million??!!

     Yes so many scenarios could happen with people drifting away from SI, indeed as rfs provides a growing forum for people to comment and to gauge what is happening out there others may decide to start setting up different groups that is also a possibility.

     Well hope people can check the stuff above –it proves interesting reading. In Secular Sacred Governance Richard spent lots of time poring over the OED about the word secular, and of course loads of debate has gone on this site about ‘that’ word. Wonder how long he was glued to the OED?!

     Well best from the UK. Also brief news we are trying our best to free Assange but the Swedes wont let us! Hope people continue to back up Assange worldwide.

     Rita Ashworth
138. Suzanne Duarte on December 14th, 2010 9:19 pm
     

     Rob Graffis, could you clarify what you’re saying in this paragraph?:

     “Of the three Jewels, the third one, the Sangha has been put on the back burner by this present administration, which many of them very much wanted to cooperate with at first, but were not only not listened too, but somewhat invited to leave if they don’t like it.”

     I certainly have noticed that the third jewel, the Sangha, has been put on the back burner by the current administration. The dissing of CTR’s sangha has been obvious for many years, especially because CTR took such pains to nurture his sangha with the sacred outlook of the dharma.

     However, I’m curious about what you’re saying here: “which many of them very much wanted to cooperate with at first, but were not only not listened too, but somewhat invited to leave if they don’t like it.”

     Who do you mean by “them”? Who wanted to cooperate with what, and who was not listened to and “somewhat invited to leave if they don’t like it.” And what does that “it” refer to?

     Can you clarify?
139. Chris on December 15th, 2010 10:47 am
     

     “A cult can be either a sharply bounded social group or a diffusely bounded social movement held together through a shared commitment to a “charismatic leader” (through his/her own charisma or lacking charisma, then characteristics inflated by the media (sic). It upholds a transcendent philosophy, (often but not always religious in nature) and requires a high level of commitment from its members in words or deeds”. “In Eastern Cults, usually the leader draws from and DISTORTS an Eastern-based philosophy or religion..”
     Lilich goes on to describe four, “interlocking dimensions” that are present in the cult’s social structure:

     1. Charismatic Authority: this is the emotional bond between a leader and his followers. It lends the “legitimacy” needed by the leader and “grants authority” to everything he does, while at the same time “justifying and reinforcing followers’ responses to the leader and/or his ideas and goals. Charisma, is the hook that links a devotee to a leader and his ideas.” The leader accomplishes this through “priviledge and command” and the desired effect is that followers will have faith in and “identify” with the leader.
     2. Transcendental Belief System: the “overarching ideology” that binds the devotees to the group and keeps them behaving according to the group’s rules and norms. The leader and his administration layout the “methodology” or “recipe” necessary to travel the path and it provides a “world view” that offers both “meaning and purpose” through a “moral imperative.”This requires each member to subject himself to the programmatic structure laid out. The members can feel a sense of connection a larger goal. The belief system is “internalized” and behaviors and attitudes conform to the group’s goals.
     3.Systems of Control: This provides organizational structure. Its primary purpose is to “create a behavioral system and disciplinary code through “rules, regulations, and sanctions.” The “effect is compliance or better yet obedience.”
     4. Systems of Influence: This is the networks of social influence and interactions that are present in the group’s social relationships. It becomes a “group culture” that teaches members to “adapt their thoughts, attitudes and behaviors in relation to their new beliefs. The purpose of the “system of influence” is to shape the group culture and to “institutionalize” the group norms.
     Lilich: on Cults.
140. Mark Szpakowski on December 15th, 2010 3:27 pm
     

     Comments on this post are now disabled. Also, I’ve removed the last few comments.