Shambhala from 21st Century

66 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.)

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