Shambhala Constitution
July 19, 2010 by RFS Editors 
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Edicts of Aśoka
What would the constitution of an enlightened society, country, state look like?
How could it offer a better balance of care, authority, transparency, monarchy, democracy, socialism, checks-and-balances, church and state?
Topics studied could include study of past and current societies, constitutions, and political theories.
Resources identified here will be collected into a Vajra Politics class style curriculum, published on this site.
This table is an initial gathering point around such aspirations.
Shambhala was described by the Vidyadhara as a type of umbrella under which “authentic” spiritual traditions could find a place of refuge…could be
preserved. One question is…who decides what’s an “authentic” tradiition
and what’s not? The Vidyadhara himself chose some Tibetians for his
students to relate to, and some he told them to avoid. In the current situation, we find an exclusivity based on the current Sakyong’s desire to have his students follow Shambhala Buddhism alone, while at the same time allowing a “teacher” who’s authenticity is questioned by even many in his own “tradition, to hold sway over a number of his students. My question here would be what would be the balance of power between a monarchy and whatever such a constitution would establish? Would that be based on how “enlightened” the ruler is? My bottom line is, if you have
an enlightened society, you have to have an enlightened ruler…..can’t have it without one. It’s what the Vidyadhara talked about. Is the purpose of
a constitution to establish checks and balances against autocratic rule?
Has that ever anywhere happened before?
First, the recently created Consitutiion of the Kingdom of Bhutan is worth studying.
Their site seems down right now so I can’t access the direct pdf link, but last night it was fine and hopefully will soon be back up:
http://www.constitution.bt/
I might be wrong on this, but I believe the King who launched this initiative did so against the wishes of the people who preferred he continue as Monarch without the democratic additions he insisted upon. Also, I believe he was one of the Vidyadhara’s first students in that for a while he served as his tutor. If this is a different person, then someone in a subsequent post can correct this error.
Furthermore, he is, I believe, the only living tantric and Buddhist King of an internationally recognised Nation, i.e. a Chakravartin. So as someone holding that sort of position and who had a living connection with the Vidyadhara, and someone who furthermore unified Monarchic with Democratic principles in the form of this Constitution, it is worth examining.
There are 35 sections over 75 pages:
Table of contents
Article 1 ……………………………………………………………………………. 1
Kingdom of Bhutan …………………………………………………………… 1
Article 2 ……………………………………………………………………………. 2
The Institution of Monarchy………………………………………………. 2
Article 3 ……………………………………………………………………………. 9
Spiritual Heritage ……………………………………………………………… 9
Article 4 ………………………………………………………………………….. 10
Culture ……………………………………………………………………………. 10
Article 5 ………………………………………………………………………….. 11
Environment……………………………………………………………………. 11
Article 6 ………………………………………………………………………….. 12
Citizenship ………………………………………………………………………. 12
Article 7 ………………………………………………………………………….. 13
Fundamental Rights ………………………………………………………… 13
Article 8 ………………………………………………………………………….. 16
Fundamental Duties ………………………………………………………… 16
Article 9 ………………………………………………………………………….. 18
Principles of State Policy ………………………………………………….. 18
Article 10 ………………………………………………………………………… 21
Parliament ………………………………………………………………………. 21
Article 11 …………………………………………………………………………. 25
The National Council……………………………………………………….. 25
Article 12 ………………………………………………………………………… 26
The National Assembly …………………………………………………….. 26
Article 13 ………………………………………………………………………… 27
Passing of Bills ………………………………………………………………… 27
Article 14 ………………………………………………………………………… 28
Finance, Trade and Commerce…………………………………………. 28
Article 15 ………………………………………………………………………… 30
Political Parties ……………………………………………………………….. 30
Article 16 ………………………………………………………………………… 34
Public Campaign Financing …………………………………………….. 34
Article 17 ………………………………………………………………………… 35
Formation of Government ……………………………………………….. 35
Article 18 ………………………………………………………………………… 36
The Opposition Party ………………………………………………………. 36
Article 19 ………………………………………………………………………… 37
Interim Government………………………………………………………… 37
Article 20 ………………………………………………………………………… 38
The Executive ………………………………………………………………….. 38
Article 21 ………………………………………………………………………… 39
The Judiciary ………………………………………………………………….. 39
Article 22 ………………………………………………………………………… 42
Local Governments………………………………………………………….. 42
Article 23 ………………………………………………………………………… 46
Elections ………………………………………………………………………….. 46
Article 24 ………………………………………………………………………… 49
Election Commission ……………………………………………………….. 49
Article 25 ………………………………………………………………………… 50
The Royal Audit Authority ………………………………………………. 50
Article 26 ………………………………………………………………………… 51
The Royal Civil Service Commission ………………………………… 51
Article 27 ………………………………………………………………………… 53
The Anti-Corruption Commission ……………………………………. 53
Article 28 ………………………………………………………………………… 54
Defence ……………………………………………………………………………. 54
Article 29 ………………………………………………………………………… 55
The Attorney General ………………………………………………………. 55
Article 30 ………………………………………………………………………… 56
The Pay Commission ……………………………………………………….. 56
Article 31 ………………………………………………………………………… 56
Holders of Constitutional Offices ……………………………………… 56
Article 32 ………………………………………………………………………… 58
Impeachment…………………………………………………………………… 58
Article 33 ………………………………………………………………………… 58
Emergency ………………………………………………………………………. 58
Article 34 ………………………………………………………………………… 60
National Referendum ………………………………………………………. 60
Article 35 ………………………………………………………………………… 61
Amendment & Authoritative Text…………………………………….. 61
First Schedule ………………………………………………………………….. 62
The National Flag and the National Emblem of Bhutan ……. 62
The National Flag ……………………………………………………………. 62
The National Emblem ……………………………………………………… 62
Second Schedule ………………………………………………………………. 63
The National Anthem of Bhutan ………………………………………. 63
Third Schedule ………………………………………………………………… 63
Oath or Affirmation of Office …………………………………………… 63
Fourth Schedule ………………………………………………………………. 63
Oath or Affirmation of Secrecy ………………………………………… 63
Glossary ………………………………………………………………………….. 64
Clearly this is a far more complete document than anything we could aspire to develop here (I suspect), but I think the structure is interesting if one highlights, in order, some of them to reveal the logical progression:
1. Monarchy – definition, nature, function and successsion
2. Spirituality,Culture and Environment
3. Citizenship, Rights, Duties.
4. State, Parliament, National Council, National Assembly, Bills
5. Aspects and various Procedures down to Impeachment and National Referendum
6. Appended: National Flag, Oaths.
Now I don’t know the background as to why His Majesty the Druk Gyalpo Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck insisted on creating this Constitution, i.e.personal conviction, international pressure to maintain independent status or whatever. But I suspect the above 6 point structure is not a bad template to use, i.e. we could try to come up with something that has the same sort of sections and progression, starting with the monarchy and ending with procedural type setup, functionally speaking.
Recommended pith instructions on nature of Sakyong in context of drala: Being on Time 1981 Kalapa Assembly.
Basic root guideline for Citizenry: Shambhala Edict on Wholesome Human Conduct.
(Am not sure what is public domain, what not, so simply citing reference.)
Clarification:
HM Jigme Singye Wangchuk studied with VCTR in England before ascending the throne in 1972. He was the main instigator of the new Constitution and after promulgating it, abdicated in favor of his son, the current Monarch mentioned above as ‘His Majesty the Druk Gyalpo Jigme Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck’.
Historical Note:
In days of yore in the Ziji and other such dharma retail outlets, there was a photograph of CTR on a horse with three cushions. I believe this was taken on his way to the retreat at which he composed the Sadhana of Mahamudra, but it was during that visit in Bhutan for sure. VCTR told me that the three cushions designated Royalty and the horse had been provided by Her Majesty, the mother of his student Jigme Wangchuk.
John, I think defining enlightenment or judging whether or not a Monarch is ‘enlightened’ is a false piste. Also, enlightened society could simply mean a society whose core values cluster around the notion of human life being a precious opportunity to develop virtue.
In terms of checks and balances, one section proposes how Parliament can instigate abdication:
The Druk Gyalpo shall abdicate the Throne for willful
violations of this Constitution or for being subject to permanent
mental disability, on a motion passed by a joint sitting of
Parliament in accordance with the procedure as laid down in
sections 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 of this Article.
21. The motion for abdication shall be tabled for discussion at a
joint sitting of Parliament if not less than two-thirds of the
total number of the members of Parliament submits such a
motion based on any of the grounds in section 20 of this Article.
22. The Druk Gyalpo may respond to the motion in writing or by
addressing the joint sitting of Parliament in person or through
a representative.
9
23. The Chief Justice of Bhutan shall preside over the joint sitting
of Parliament mentioned in section 21 of this Article.
24. If, at such joint sitting of Parliament, not less than three-fourths
of the total number of members of Parliament passes the
motion for abdication, then such a resolution shall be placed
before the people in a National Referendum to be approved or
rejected.
25. On such a resolution being approved by a simple majority of
the total number of votes cast and counted from all the
Dzongkhags in the Kingdom, the Druk Gyalpo shall abdicate
in favour of the heir apparent.
26. Parliament shall make no laws or exercise its powers to amend
the provisions of this Article and section 2 of Article 1 except
through a National Referendum.
(page
+++++++++
Now, there are various aspects to Parliament in this constitution and I shall dig into that area to see to what degree there is an echo of the Deleg/Dekyong structure.
Dear John and Ash
Thanks for your posts.
I have not done my reading as of yet –wanted to concentrate on the American constitution and the English Bill of Rights in the seventeenth century.
However some things striking my mind re Johns post about ‘authenticity’ as to teachers.
I dont know in the western context if you look at how things have developed in a religious and secular sense its always been a march away from what was termed authentic teachings at the time. For example Luther with the Reformation and of course the French revolution so debating the power and authenticity of enlightened teachers in the 21st century is somewhat strange in the western sense where ones religious beliefs/secular conceptions rest on ones conscience.
It seems to me that we had the Vidyadhara here as prime example of a realised Tibetan master in the west in terms of the Kagyu and Nyingmpa teachings but in the context of the shambhala teachings he did not demand people should convert to Buddhism to receive these teachings in fact quite the opposite he just advised people to follow a practice-orientated tradition when practicing these teachings (see FAQ on this site). So that was a pretty open delivery of the teachings for people –so I dont know do ‘we’ need to decide who is authentic or not in delivery of these teachings to people.
Me personally I would only require that you follow certain ethical principles (to be constructed hopefully in a constitution) which allow you to have access to the shambhala terma and to teach it. Yes I dont think we should sit in judgement on others and put up any fences to the dispersal of these teachings in the world. Religious bodies, governmental bodies have done this through the ages and always there is conflict as to who is right and who is wrong or who ‘correctly’ interprets the said scriptures.
Now the concept of the enlightened ruler –well to me it has the sense of teaching with an open hand like the Buddha did to freely teach to whoever requests the teachings. Of course if they want the vajrayana teachings set guidelines could be set out for that too. We could be very matter of fact in this matter.
Also in terms of an enlightened ruler –well if you are to have a diverse enlightened society –some people will see the ruler one way and others another way –how could that not be so. For if you look at the example of a Shambhalian Christian he will be living with loyalties to several things –yes this argument is pretty much like the arguments going on in the UK at the present when people ask can immigrants be loyal to the country? Or can we indeed have a multicultural society and make the thing work. Well despite all these questions the UK, the US and indeed Europe are still functioning –so liberalism and secularism has worked to this extent. Yes we can have allegiance to several things and survive and prosper.
Heres my own personal take on an enlightened ruler -I could see the present Sakyong much in terms of the Japanese Emperor uniting Heaven and Earth that would be a good way to go for me and should be enough of a recognition of him and hopefully eventually her to have access to the shambhala terma. But if that does not work for the present administration ‘we’ will have to go forward with the shambhala teachings as we have got them and see what materialises through the power of karma. As I said before I think things will develop here in an organic fashion anyway.
Well will get back to some reading when I can-again much thanks for all the contributions and I will try and check them all out.
Best
Rita Ashworth
Dear Friends,
Well this is quite amazing. The extraordinary knowledge of many people.
Ash, you must have been sitting on this information already to go!
I have a question: How would one, in this constitution, express the sanctity of all life? And in expressing that, would that mean that John Tischer’s shamam who practices animal sacrifices could not apply for Shambhala citizenship?
And further, how would one settle the current debate between right-to-lifers and abortionists that is always coming up in the USA? And further, not to complicate things, would Shambhalians be vegetarians? And if not, how would butchers and fishermen be treated? …. not with contempt, I hope.
So these are some of the questions I wanted to ask.
Thank you.
John Perks
Well, I have thought about this a little before, but never considered trying to write out something sort of like a ‘constitution’. I don’t have any knowledge of it, simply went to the document because I did read about it’s creation years ago and thought it interesting.
The interplay between the local governments and the National Assembly and the areas where HM appoints members of the civil service is still a little opaque, esp. since he uses many Bhutanese terms describing the local governments. Which is interesting in itself: the more local the topic the more local the lingo used. But I am not sure exactly what power and influence they have, also what share of the purse.
In terms of your questions: first, well part of this exercise is for you to supply the answers, no? My initial contribution is/was to suggest some sort of framework on which to hang an attempt at drafting a constitution of sorts to start with, i.e. the main six sections.
Second, this is part of why decision-making organs exist in a body politic, to adjudicate such issues, no? Such adjudications are called laws and the main purpose of a legislative body is to determine such laws.
As to some of the Sakyong issues above, I thought it interesting that in the BC it clearly states that Buddhism is the national religion but that all faiths are equally protected and HM, as Head of State, protects them all within the kingdom.
Now Shambhala is not an internationally recognised kingdom with particular territory, rather a church with affiliate churches around the world, much like the RC church. But that is a religious model, albeit the institution of the Vatican is very much a secular operation in that it used the Christian faith as a way to provide an authority on earth above that of the Kings. Indeed, one could argue that Christianity, by design or not, first built up and then, with its own internal split, essentially destroyed Monarchical power in Western Civilisation. Even though both institutions still command much of the residual wealth in both $$ and institutional influence, culturally they have faded into the background in terms of overt contribution.
In our case, the challenge here it so consider what a Shambhala Constitution would look like which means defining the role of State and Citizen and Governance structures in functional terms, which is a different exercise from considering the spiritual nitty gritties alone.
In terms of the butchers, I well remember your querying Rinpoche about this on Inglis St. Halifax in 1981 around a pot of bouillabaisse you had made using, I presume, some live or very recently live participant ingredients, so again, I think you can supply that answer!
But the challenge here, I think, has to do with framing HOW (procedurally) the answer is determined and promulgated more than exactly what the answer is per se.
Although not necessarily endorsing the BC, I suspect it will be hard for us to find anything as close to our type of vision so find myself quite comfortable referring to it as the first source of reference. The British constitution is largely ‘unwritten’; the US constitution, as Goedel noticed, is flawed and in any case no longer in effect because of such flaws.
But note how it starts, and it starts very well imho:
Article 1
Kingdom of Bhutan
1. Bhutan is a Sovereign Kingdom and the Sovereign power
belongs to the people of Bhutan.
I think this might be an area where some people are having problems with the Sakyong. He inherits the position, which is both spiritual and temporal in our set up. His spiritual authority in the vajrayana context is beyond question. Once a citizen has taken an oath to him as Sakyong – which I am not sure is done but it used to be done I believe – the two samayas become virtually inseparable.
This is the rub in the debates about the nature and function of the Shambhala teachings.
Does Shambhala’s fruitional expression and practice by definition essentially involve tantric samayas binding the life force in various ways (i.e. is a cult in the positive sense) ?
Or is the Shambhala Way a stand alone spiritual path and discipline whose purpose is to bind the life force to the naturally arising energies of the phenomenal world including human cultural flows, wherein pretty much any and all cultural conventions, including religious ones, can combine as Mark S eloquently expressed above, as two wings of the bird.
But if Shambhala is just one wing, what is the bird?
My editor function is not working so:
in terms of the power of the people issue: the only power it seems the people have in our setup is electing whether or not to play ball in terms of samaya and/or to contribute in various ways, including taxes (contributions) which are voluntary. But apart from that, constitutionally speaking, there is little or none. This is why the inheritance model with such a setup is problematic because the whole thing boils down to whether or not one is sufficiently connected pyschologically to feel loyal in an uplifted, enriching way. If that sense of connection wavers for whatever reason, there is little other binding factor ‘belonging’, as it were, to the citizenry. Everything seems focused on the centralised leadership function of the Sakyong which, again, is blended inseparably with that of a samaya-bound master in a tantric cult. Or in ‘national’ terms such as those addressed in a ‘constitution’, the local entities, be they individual or collective as with a local sangha, by themselves have no basis.
Now this is partly because the current situation is that of a church rather than a kingdom literally grounded on specific geographic territory (such as the Kingdom of Bhutan for example), but that’s not the whole picture. When the principal bond is to one figure at the top (or center using mandalic lingo), this is a highly centralised model which disempowers the local (or fringe) elements, which ultimately comprise the majority of the population (aka the masses). So structurally there is a disconnect.
My point is that the BC Article Nr. 1 is not a bad place to start, constitutionally speaking. Clearly it was a deliberate decision on HM’s part to lead off with this: ‘the sovereign power belongs to the people of Bhutan.’
It is not just a philosophical or legal statement: it is also a dharma, a truth because of course a leader without followers is a leader of nothing, no matter what the title, i.e. the followers – or in this case general population – are ultimately the ones who create and empower the leaders. This is also true in dictatorships, oligarchies, kleptocracies (as we have now), and basically all systems. The real issue, therefore, is the degree of intelligence and virtue involved and how that is nurtured, protected and furthered, which process is probably akin to what is referred to as ‘enlightened’.
Part of the job of a constitution, or whatever, is to define power flows so that on the one hand clear authority can be established, and on the other there are good flows between centre and fringe with all elements therein able to regulate such flows both procedurally and in terms of specific legislative and other decisions.
Another resource – which might be too hard to access – is the rule of law promulgated by Genghis Khan. It was, apparently, mainly encapsulated in 2-3 pages and it worked well even in conquered territories (such as Persia) for many centuries after his death. I have read that he regarded this as his greatest contribution but have not been able to read exactly what this law was!
I would like to remind people that there is no check or balances on Radio Free Shambhala, and a minority can take over this site, and declare a Constitution.
If you know anything about the Tea Party currently, it’s in shambles because there is no real hierarchy within the system, though I think it started out with good intentions.
Ashley, don’t get too worked up here. I would say start your own Shambhala within first.
Also, as I know it, any of the heart felt proposals presented at previous Shambhala Congresses were non binding.
Rob, thanks for the caution. I don’t think there is any sense that a Constitution would be written here and ‘declared’. In any case, the Sakyong would have to declare it.
But contemplating what such a Constitution could/might be is a worthy exercise which would require addressing many issues – often tossed around emotionally – in a quasi pragmatic, functional fashion.
One element that might help conceptually is to take the view that a national Constitution of an actual country is being drafted. This of course has little to do with the current S.I. community, but it makes it easier to work with straightforwardly, at least on the conceptual/envisioning level.
” (1)John, I think defining enlightenment or judging whether or not a Monarch is ‘enlightened’ is a false piste.(2) Also, enlightened society could simply mean a society whose core values cluster around the notion of human life being a precious opportunity to develop virtue.”
As for 1, I agree…very hard to determine, and who has the authority to do so…Other than the Karmapa in VCTR’s example?. 2. You may think that, but what I think is what the Vidyadhara said about enlightened society, which must have someone capable of manifesting as Universal Monarch. It’s a mandala…no center, no fringe. IMHO
Do you have context and citation for that?
But also: the enlightened manifestation of the Chakravartin/Sakyong is partly the result/manifestation of the relative realisation of the population as a whole who have sufficient merit to see a Sakyong as such.
The enlightened qualities, in other words, in this Shambhalian context are not merely the product, so to speak, of the individual in the role of Sakyong. Or put another way: without the ability to perceive with sacred perception, outer and inner drala etc., no such enlightened manifestation would be seen, let alone appreciated.
Finally, mandala by definition means ‘centre and fringe’. It’s a whole, but the whole consists of center and fringe which is what makes the concept meaningful/helpful.
We tend to think of hierarchy as leadership on top with masses on the bottom, i.e. a pyramid. This works well in corporate, military and other hierarchies, but in terms of traditional views of Emperor/Monarch, as I understand it, he/she is more akin to the Heart in the Body/Mind matrix, which, although ultimately the Ruler, is the deep within the central torso rather than simply the highest functions in the upper brain. Even in Western fairy tales about Royalty and suchlike, often you see the Monarch portrayed as the Heart principle because it is at the level of the Heart, or realized bodhicitta speaking Buddhistically, that there is unity in the societal ‘mandala’.
But let us take an Enlightened Monarch as the assumption without getting into how to judge such a thing (and in any case there are many levels of enlightenment). In terms of his exposure and manifestation, the current Sakyong has to be in the top .01% in the world manifesting such qualities, so even if he might not be regarded as perfectly, completely and impeccably enlightened, he sure ain’t bad! (I know you disagree with this).
It sounds like you might be implying that without a perfectly and completely enlightened Monarch that there is no point even considering enlightened society or how to constitute it. I find that a rather lack luster approach, indeed part of the problem. Surely the Shambhala warrior society does not need to depend solely upon a super-enlightened Fuhrer principle for its existence?
That said, John T, I personally have always felt a half-halt when considering this issue, again referencing the seminal 1981 ‘Being on Time’ talk in which he basically describes the role of the Sakyong as being the inner/secret drala principle via which the citizen/student perceives true dralic reality. If this is a reasonable take on his description, it sounds virtually identical to the role of guru in the tantric tradition.
I remember asking the new Sakyong about this at a Vaj program in 1997 (?) at RMDC. The teachings were about the three lineages (also mentioned in the 81 talks) which is what I was thinking about because one of the Tibetan lamas was insisting that nobody, including VCTR, had ever introduced such stuff before (he must have been poorly informed of course). I asked the Sakyong what connection there was between this level of dzogchen type structure and Shambhala and found myself interlocuting with a very, very powerful tulku right there on the spot. It was as if I was talking to an eighth century king; my knees started to buckle and I had a hard time breathing, something which has never happened before or since. His reply – which I barely heard or remember – was that all these things come right out of the mind of Padmasambhava and are fundamentally inseparable. The experience felt akin to that described by DDM in the Being on Time talk viz (one aspect of) the role of Sakyong.
In any case, although I personally have drifted away for reasons I cannot explain or justify even to myself, let alone others, I do not feel that we are dealing with total corruption (as some here do), rather a mandalic obstacle connected to the times we live in, along with the collective obstacles of our population living in those times. Fixating the whole thing on one person, or even one institutional aspect (such as the S.I. administration), is I think a bit of a false piste as well.
It’s all much bigger and deeper than that.
Hi Ash–I’m wondering if you can elaborate further on this: “Although not necessarily endorsing the BC, I suspect it will be hard for us to find anything as close to our type of vision so find myself quite comfortable referring to it as the first source of reference…. the US constitution, as Goedel noticed, is flawed and in any case no longer in effect because of such flaws.”
Which flaws in the US Constitution are you thinking of in particular? Certainly it is flawed in that: a) everything is; and b) we clearly see the ways in which it is being subverted today. But I feel you are being too dismissive of it here. In terms of it being subverted, we know this can happen to any constitution, however well-designed. With regard to the US, it seems to me that since it is often hard to find an overarching sacred View in the culture today (to the extent it had one to begin with), the Constitution has lost a lot of its lungta, as it were. To many people it has become simply a legal document, mere words to be manipulated in the service of ideology and profit.
But… this doesn’t negate its brilliance, does it? Rather, it reminds us that unless sacred View has permeated a culture it is going to be in trouble.
Myself, I find the US Constitution a remarkably “enlightened” (small “e”!) work, and the process through which it came to be a beautiful object-lesson in itself. I always think: well, all the great old cultures of Asia, Africa, Europe, and the (native) Americas have all these deep contributions to make to Shambhala vision, but what does this 235-year-old mere invention of a country have to offer? This purely constructed political entity. But it seems to me that the Constitution–in particular its ingenious balance of powers and that still astounding and revolutionary First Amendment, especially Freedom of Speech and separation of Church and State–is precisely it! This is what the US has to offer, along with another thing (now tragically being threatened as well): its wide-openness to the immigrant.
The US also, as a secular, nonsectarian culture, might be considered a closer model in that respect. Bhutan is a Vajrayana Buddhist society, which makes the majority of people who visit this site feel more at home perhaps, but doesn’t *necessarily* have to be the best model for Shambhala. ? I’m not disagreeing with you Ash about the BC–I haven’t had a chance to delve into it yet–just keeping open our possibilities here. Great ideas so far, by the way!
Dear Common Sense,
Before a Constitution, wouldn’t it be a good idea—and more clarifying of where we stand (or sit)—to consider creating a Declaration of Independence? A basically sane “Tea Party” gesture?
That is, distill down the very particular grievances that have brought us to this “painful point,” and do so ALWAYS in the context of the particular teaching of the Vidyadhara the New Dispensation clearly has contradicted or violated (that would raise them above the level of mere “complaint” and make them indestructible, something that would endure, and people could look at, on-line, or tacked to the front doors of the Boulder and Halifax Shambhala Centers—at least for a few seconds, anyway! I have a good friend in the Bay Area who is one of the last fine letterpress printers. Maybe he could do a run of several hundred and we could present one to “King George” for him to contemplate? Just a thought. A number of Ginsbergian publicity stunts come to mind, here, but I’ll leave those to your imagination: I’m not really an “activist” in the conventional sense, and the Vidyadhara certainly was not a Beatnik!)
The guiding logic here—it’s a suggestion—is from the first talk of the first mandala seminar ever presented by someone who knew what they were talking about on the subject—on the North American continent. That would be the Vidyadhara, and the seminar was ORDERLY CHAOS. The passage I’m referring as the “guiding logic” for a Declaration would be:
“If we do not understand the samsaric aspect of mandala, there is no nirvanic aspect of mandala at all.”
This passage, of course, represents one of the finest of the Vidyadhara’s Vajrayana Buddhist teachings. It seems appropriate to start with an articulation of our grievances in the context of the Vidyadhara’s teachings, than to start with how we might prevent—or at least work more skillfully with—such occurrences from happening again in the future: that is, how to protect the heart of his teachings from the worms (Chihuahuas or King of Chihuahuas) in the future.
I see Declaration and Constitution inseparable the way Samsara and Nirvana are inseparable. I think the Constitution would naturally grow out the Declaration—or, at least, provide some useful nuances that would be helpful in the articulation of what we want to become the Supreme Protector of the Vidyadhara’s teachings against “worms,” the Constitution.
I think a great place to start with what I’m getting at by a particular “declaration”—a model—would be Zer-me Dri’med’s “What Has Changed” somewhere on the RFS site. Maybe someone could provide us with the link for that? I’m a tech klutz. But she was the first person in my experience to have the ovaries to step out of the “Cocoon of Conformity” (which is actually constitutive of a “Great Leap Backwards”) into the light of the Great Eastern Sun, and provide some straight forward and direct feedback to The Kongma Sakyong, Jampal Trinley Dradul, about what grated on her basic intelligence concerning the imposition of Shambhala Buddhism onto what was already there: the Vidyadhara’s peerless teachings. (Think “Victory Over War.” Think “raging diamond which cuts aggression, eternally with corruption.”)
Sherap Paine
damcho, well now you press me I must confess this is why, although quite interested, I hesitated to get involved, namely because I doubt I will be willing to do the due diligence that such an endeavour should involve. But as the direct descendant of a couple of the Dec. of Ind. signers, as well as one of the framers, perhaps I should! (Joseph Howes/Hewes, John Adams).
But – he replies snidely – since you think it enlightened, perhaps you could explain a little why. I have found that every time I try to read it – as I just did before penning this reply – I become distracted and disinterested with a few paragraphs. In short, there is little vision, let alone description of anything approaching sacred outlook.
Let’s look at the introduction:
Preamble
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do
ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
The first goal is to form a ‘more perfect Union’, which basically means creating a Legislature and attendant infrastructure that trumps the States. Of course banding together in order to form a cohesive nation no longer subject to being colonial serfs was a necessary thing – probably. But it’s rather utilitarian when all is said and done. Liberty here simply means reaffirming the sovereignty of the individual which is already – in theory – enshrined in Common Law down from Magna Carta. But it is barely defined.
As to Goedel, this remains a mystery. But he had a brilliant mind, studied for his citizenship exam assiduously, and was disturbed to find logical flaws in the setup which would allow fascism to emerge. I believe this has never been fully explained.
You are right, though, that I was being overly dismissive. I guess I am so disgusted with how America – and the West – has turned into a fascist enterprise that I feel leery of examining its constitution. (One of the early definitions of fascism is ‘the union of State and Corporate power.’ Witness how Google is a product of the intelligence industry etc. etc. etc.
Also, check out how even the UK, a supposed Constitutional Monarchy, is also set up as a corporation, with each individual MP being a separate corporate body with legal rights attached thereto. In other words, current Western models are so corrupted, and evolved from their various and sundry constitutions, that the immediate result lends one to suspect that the constitutions in question leave much to be desired.
The reason for liking the BC constitution in principle does indeed involve the vajrayana buddhist aspect, I suppose, but principally because presumably the heart of that aspect is sacred perception derived from dharma practice, i.e. experientally based. With sacredness as the spiritual ground ‘uniting’ the population, this feels very close to the Shambhala vision essentially even though technically it’s a little different.
I have not studied the Thai constitution and set up, but there too you have a Buddhist monarchy, albeit the Buddhadharma there is Hinayanist and many of them regard the Tibetan tantrics as demonic perversions. But their Royal Family (some of whom I knew growing up) are very royal indeed, not at all Hinayanist. But anyway.
Jim, feel free, but I think a Dec of Ind is a very different project and also one that makes no sense unless one is attempting to set up a different religious school or Shambhala-inspired territory. If the former, no need to declare anything. If the latter, since there is no such territory, let alone population already there, what’s the point? If one wants out, one simply goes out. If one wants or still feels in – as I suspect nearly all of us do in however disgruntled and confused a fashion – then the challenge is more about how to finagle the mandala to include its more quirkily dispersed members somehow, and therein (hopefully) also achieve some breakthroughs in that the obstacles broached will reveal further levels of wisdom and power which will be of benefit to all – not to mention sundry.
The Bhutanese Constitution Preamble (to compare with US above):
Preamble
WE, the people of Bhutan:
BLESSED by the Triple Gem, the protection of our
guardian deities, the wisdom of our leaders, the
everlasting fortunes of the Pelden Drukpa and the
guidance of His Majesty the Druk Gyalpo Jigme
Khesar Namgyel Wangchuck;
SOLEMNLY pledging ourselves to strengthen the
sovereignty of Bhutan, to secure the blessings of
liberty, to ensure justice and tranquillity and to
enhance the unity, happiness and well-being of the
people for all time;
DO HEREBY ordain and adopt this Constitution for
the Kingdom of Bhutan on the Fifteenth Day of the
Fifth Month of the Male Earth Rat Year corresponding
to the Eighteenth Day of July, Two Thousand and
Eight.”
Of interest: opening paragraph starts with ‘blessed by the Triple Gem’ and ends with ‘the guidance of HM the Sakyong. The Triple Gem provides blessings, HM provides guidance.
Now the US also goes for ‘blessings of Liberty’, but there is no Heaven principle to that. So essentially this constitution worships at the shrine of Man and I think remains at a rather Nyen level throughout. There is much more lha, nyen and lu progression in the BC. Also, since it has both a monarchical and a democratic/legislative component, AND was written quite recently in our current era, it is intriguing.
Hmm, what I might try to attempt in the next 7-14 days is simply to take the BC text into a file and then edit it down to something closer to Shambhala and then see how that looks. If so, I can publish the six sections in different comments and then others here can see if it is of any interest at all or a false piste.
It occurs to me going through the document and substituting English equivalents for the many Bhutanese terms that one thing we simply do not have – apart from a functioning Parliament – is an Opposition Party. The purpose of the opposition is to provide a respectable means of debating policies and other matters of importance so that dissent is not necessarily a form of creating schism in the mandala.
Personally, I have never liked Party Politics, but having some sort of body formally allowed to offer regular challenge seems like a very worthy principle, and something missing. In fact, this might be the main (if not only) virtue of the Parliamentary approach since otherwise there is simply no respectable, open way to have substantive debate, demonstrate there are important differences, raise vital issues which the current Authorities might be avoiding or exacerbating etc. Furthermore, such a body is obliged to think for itself, i.e. not necessarily follow any official line.
I have gone through the BC and anglicised as much as possible, also substituting Shambhalian terms and names where easy to do. This will make the document far easier to read for our purposes.
I suspect the sections of greatest interest will be those pertaining to monarchy within the context of the State along with political representation. Much of the document goes into rather detailed explanations of various departments and functions which is a little beyond our scope right now, but they are important in terms of understanding how the various elements balance each other.
I will try to make a stripped down version highlighting interplay between monarch, subjects, representation and various checks and balances and publish that later.
http://www.frenchroadbakery.tk/Shambhala%20Constitution%20Anglicised%20Version%201.htm
Ash–Great work.
Comparing the Preambles to the Bhutanese and US Constitutions is interesting. Clearly the middle paragraph of the former has borrowed a great deal from the latter.
BC: “…to secure the blessings of liberty, to ensure justice and tranquillity and to enhance the unity, happiness and well-being of the people for all time…”
directly derives from: “…in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…” (USC)
As for the first paragraph, indeed that of the BC adds a dimension of lha lacking in the USC. I say this as someone still agnostic about the idea of monarchy, as mentioned before–whenever I see a reference to someone with a long string of titles I hold my nose, I can’t help it! More to say and ask about this at some other point. But certainly the references to the Triple Gem, guardian deities, and wise leadership create a desired quality of lha / sacred view.
I went back to the Declaration of Independence also: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Of course Shambhala does not think in terms of a Creator, but can there not be a sense in which this paragraph contains a Heaven principle? A more Shambhalian version might be something like this: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all human beings arise out of primordial goodness and therefore dwell in equality, and that this equality manifests in certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness… etc” That’s off the top of my head and not necessarily very good at all, but just to suggest that it is possible to change the language from this direction also.
By “enlightened” document of course I’m referencing the relative virtues of the European “Enlightenment”. What is impressive to me about it is its clear-eyed realism and practicality regarding the kleshas and the exercise of power, combined with at least a theoretical affirmation of equality (obviously we are still waiting for full racial equality).
Yes fine work Ash,I think what we are here,is -we are the Loyal Opposition Party….and are acting as such…
Thanks
JP
And why don’t we just start The Loyal Opposition Party of The kingdom of Shambhala..as a legal organization?we are doing it anyhow……
D, yes I agree the Dec of Ind is much better. And personally, I have no problem with God in general esp. when used as an Absolute Principle, which is the case in much Christian and Islamic theology, though of course we won’t use it. But the Dec of Ind is not a constitution.
Clearly also he borrowed.
Lord P: I don’t know why that never occurred to me before, but really there is significant merit in having a formal opposition element. In the BC, for example, he specifically sets it up that of the various Parties competing for election, only the top two get into Parliament, one as the current leadership and the other as Opposition, the other Parties who come short simply not making the cut, the point being, I suppose, to have a strong opposition. In any case, that opposition function was clearly highlighted in the BC, enough so that I woke up to it. Now that he got from the British system. The US system is all back-room arm-twisting with very little debate. Perhaps the British is now the same, but at least it retains form from days of yore.
Before forming a LOP, let’s draft a Constitution as a working basis!
I’ll try to boil down the framework of the BC into something like six sections, each one greatly shortened so that we have something to work with together. For me right now it’s not so important to get the lha elements of the language correct, rather to contemplate the core skeleton on which the flesh and blood later flourish, i.e. principally the roles of and relationships between Monarch, State, People and Legislative Procedures.
I think what we have in S.I. right now, even with the best intentions in the world on the part of all involved, is an almost complete lack of ownership of both process and assets on the part of the People. There is something very unbalanced about this making a genuine two-way flow virtually impossible and skewing everything towards being a large cult (which is not necessarily a negative word). It’s a problem.
More about Loyal Opposition:
a) its officials – after election – are paid salaries by the State whilst sitting in Parliament as MP’s (dekyongs)
b) HM, as Head of State, is not biased towards any Party as long as all Parties are working towards the welfare of the State which includes all people therein. This keeps him above the fray, which also means he is not the one and only focus for all policies in the Kingdom, as is currently the case. It makes for a more influential, and liberated, Monarch, better able to deepen the influence on the Heart level in the society, which is of great and significant benefit to all.
Additionally, if HM, as Head of State, feels that the entire direction of the Parliament is wrong, he can step in with suggestions, even directives.
Or if the People feel that HM has overstepped his authority or is incompetent, they can instigate procedures which can lead to (forced) abdication although only a member of the Royal Family by blood can succeed to the Throne as the next Head of State.
I also find the balance between many of the Officials appointed directly by HM versus the Executive run via the Prime Minister within Parliament of great interest.
There is authority from on high, as it were, exercised by His Majesty and his immediately appointed officials in the Civil Service (again from the British system), and then authority from below, as it were, via the elections, the local and regional Councils leading up to the National Assembly and Councils into Parliament and the Civil service.
It reminds me of a plant or tree. Things come down from above and up from below and where exactly they meet is hard to say, doesn’t even exist in the sense that there is no clear definable spot or middle, but nevertheless that dynamic is essential. Indeed, it is hard to say whether a tree is growing up or down because it is always, every second, doing both. That’s a good dynamic and I think an essential one for any societal set up or constitutional framework.
In this analogy, the role of the Monarch is to hold the Center, i.e. is the Man Principle par excellence whereas we tend to think of it as the Supreme High Holy One at the Top even though we have studied Heaven, Earth, Man and Universal Monarch principles – albeit mainly only in the context of Dharma Art. But these things derive from classic Confucian thought which itself came from old daoist notions which go deep into the mists of time, presumably before the ice age, and are inseparably connected to a ‘Yellow Emperor’ principle who is said to have instigated the entire thing from wisdom-insight, i.e. ultimately even the very amorphous and deeply open – not to mention yogic/tantric – daoist system is a Royal Lineage of sorts.
Swiss Constitution:
Preamble
In the name of God Almighty!Invocatio_Dei
We, the Swiss People and the Cantons,being mindful of our responsibility towards creation,
in renewing our alliance to strengthen liberty and democracy, independence and peace in solidarity and openness towards the world,
determined, with mutual respect and recognition, to live our diversity in unity,
conscious of our common achievements and our responsibility towards future generations,
certain that free is only who uses his freedom, and that the strength of a people is measured by the welfare of the weak,
hereby adopt the following Constitution:
Title 1 General Provisions
Article 1 Swiss Federation
The Swiss People and the Cantons of Zurich, Berne, Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Obwald, Nidwald, Glarus, Zug, Fribourg, Solothurn, Basel-City, Basel-Land, Schaffhausen, Appenzell Outer-Rhodes, Appenzell Inner-Rhodes, St. Gall, Grisons, Aargau, Thurgau, Ticino, Vaud, Valais, Neuchâtel, Geneva, and Jura form the Swiss Federation.
Article 2 Purpose
(1) The Swiss Federation protects the liberty and rights of the people and safeguards the independence and security of the country.
(2) It promotes common welfare, sustainable development, inner cohesion, and cultural diversity of the country.
(3) It ensures the highest possible degree of equal opportunities for all citizens.
(4) It strives to safeguard the long-term preservation of natural resources and to promote a just and peaceful international order.
Article 3 Cantons
The Cantons are sovereignFederalism insofar as their sovereignty is not limited by the Federal Constitution; they exercise all rights not transferred to the Federation.
Article 4 National Languages
The National LanguagesNational_Languages are German, French, Italian, and Romansh.
Article 5 Rule of Law
(1) The law is the basis for and limitation of state activity.
(2) State activity must be in the public interestPublic_Interest and proportionalPrinciple_of_Proportionality.
(3) State institutions and privat entities must act in good faithGood_Faith.
(4) Federation and Cantons respect international law.
Article 6 Individual and Social Responsibility
Every person is responsible for him- or herself and advances, according to his or her abilities, the goals of state and society.
http://www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/sz00000_.html
I was not able to dig up older versions. The Swiss cantons are said to be the oldest continuous democratic systems in post Dark Age Europe. Older models, such as Greek and Roman, don’t really count because so many of the People were not ‘citizens’, so really it was an Upper Class only system with more or less egalitarian (i.e. democratic) principles exercised from within that class.
The US was initially set up in the same way, with only Free Men getting the vote, and that didn’t just mean those who were not slaves, but also those without Property and suchlike. ( I am hazy on the details so please correct me if this is wrong.) In any case, modern notions of Democracy in which all the People ‘rule’ are mistaken and naive.
Magna Carta:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/magnacarta.html
(Seemingly mainly about balancing Monarch and Barons in the feudal system. In this document, a ‘Free Man’ is an Aristocrat essentially since all others in a feudal system, are bound by feudal obligations (i.e. to their local feudal Lord as decided by the Monarch) and are therefore, by definition, not free. I believe this notion of ‘free man’ carried over into the US constitution and I doubt that they would approve of universal suffrage with populations as large as they are today, but who knows?
The Yassa of Genghis Khan:
http://www.coldsiberia.org/webdoc9.htm
a concise list from wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yassa
Commentary:
A.
..the Great Yasa of Chingis Khan, which was not a mere book of laws. Naturally, it also was that, since it contained codification of ancient Mongol customs. The Yasa was however much more than this. It was the philosophical and spiritual content of the work that gave it its impact. This work was, in addition to being a guide in practical matters, also a magical work of great power, a talisman, and contained secret magical formulas as well as philosophical and ethical guidelines for the Mongol people. For this reason it was only a small, select group of people who was allowed to read it directly.
B.
We now go on and take a look at what social patterns were introduced to the Mongols by Chingis Khan. Two main features are immediately obvious:
First: the principle of equality that reigned under Chingis. George Vernadsky describes on page 92 in “The Mongols and Russia”: “It was the imperial [ideological] idea which was the distinctive trait in the Mongol drive of conquest, overcoming, as it did, the primitive mentality of a feudalized clan society. The Mongols waged their wars with the professed aim of achieving universal peace and international stability. The goal achieved, the price for the security of mankind would be permanent service to the state on the part of each and all, this would establish and orderly way of life and social equality. The rich would serve the state to the same extent as the poor, and the poor would be protected from injustice and exploitation by the rich.” On page 105 in the same book Vernadsky again quotes Juwaini, who observed: “There is equality. Each man works as much as another, there is no difference. No attention is paid to a man’s wealth or importance.”
Second: the demands for high endeavor that was placed upon every member of society. Each and everyone had to commit himself to the fullest. Sloth and incompetence were made punishable, and during wartime the order was that the leader who is incompetent shall without fail be put to death. Appointments to positions of influence and power were made by ability alone. Moreover, and uniquely, Chingis Khan ruled that everybody must be given the same opportunities, regardless of birth, race or social position. This principle was forcefully symbolized by Chingis’ order that every soldier in his army must carry a marshal’s baton in his knapsack. (This point is described in Paul Ratchnevsky’s biography.) The implication was that everyone had the possibility of promotion to the highest rank, according to his ability. Simultaneously, such a principle carried with it the message that every individual is in return obliged to develop him- or herself to the utmost. It must be remarked that a strong element in this was the responsibility of all for as
Good idea Ash,first things first,but we do not want an 8th cent;king running around the Shambhala country side without feed back from the locals…so you can count me on the feedback LOP…
When I get time away from burning indoor fires in my 85+d hot little home, I want to investigate just a little what the feudal system was, logistically speaking. All the constitutions we can reference now are initiatives designed to change out of feudalism.
As you know, CTR often said he preferred a medieval approach. At the time I thought he was mainly referring to technology/convenience issues. But I wonder if he had more in mind. In any case, getting a slightly better take on feudalism will help me/us better understand post-feudalism.
In terms of 8th century kings: first, the more I have read the BC, the better it seems to me in terms of its general structure and sweep. As far as I can tell, it ain’t feudal at all, but it does retain a very strong royal lineage as head of state with far more immediate powers than seemingly those of QE II, although my suspicion is that the Royal Institution in Great Britain is actually far more influential than the populace understands, i.e. in rather back-room aka deceptive fashion. I might be wrong.
In terms of S.I. in these times, I think if I can ‘grock’ the structure of the BC constitution viz. role of Monarchy, Administration, Citizenry and Parliament, then this can rather easily be translated into something more applicable to our situation. But best to start first with a fantasy country, I think. Makes the language more straightforward.
The bottom line, I suspect, that both in terms of decision-making and holding of assets there has to be more of a two-way street, that we need to develop a ‘Nyen build’ (as I have called it elsewhere) institutionally speaking that is responsible for various institutions which hold property and assets and this responsibility could be shared by officials appointed by HM as well as those appointed via a deleg/dekyong type system based on spontaneous election. That organ ‘owns’ most sangha assets. This is probably a good place to start practically speaking, but I am getting ahead of the topic here.
One of the first thorough post-feudal works, still in effect today in many aspects and countries apparently, the Code Napoleon.
Not a constitution, but many parallel issues covered therein.
http://www.napoleon-series.org/research/government/c_code.html
Nice to get a document describing feudal Japan or Tang Dynasty Chinese setup.
Wait, are we talking about Genghis Khan here? As in … so-and-so is slightly to the right of Genghis Khan? …
From the Wikipedia article you cited, some of the conjectured laws (based on Persian chroniclers and European visitors to the court):
“Death was the most common punishment, including for minor offenses. For example a soldier not picking up something that fell from the person in front of him would be put to death.”
“Men guilty of the theft of a horse or steer or a thing of equal value will be punished by death and their bodies cut into two parts.”
“To prevent the flight of alien slaves, it is forbidden to give them asylum, food or clothing, under pain of death. Any man who meets an escaped slave and does not bring him back to his master will be punished in the same manner.”
“The women should attend to the care of property, buying and selling at their pleasure. Men should occupy themselves only with hunting and war.”
“Adultery is to be punished by death, and those guilty of it may be slain out of hand.”
“Spies, false witnesses, all men given to infamous vices, and sorcerers are condemned to death.”
“Officers and chieftains who fail in their duty, or do not come at the summons of the Khan are to be slain, especially in remote districts.”
Fabulously understated comment on the Discussion page: “I think Genghis Khan needed to chill out a little bit…” !
I’m reminded of the Eddie Izzard sketch: “Cake or DEATH? Um … cake please …” I mean, yikes!
The Swiss Preamble is pretty cool though.
yeah, well apparently the core document was rather a secret, so many of these ones above are sort of minor offshoots. It would be nice to see a copy of the main laws in Persia a century after his death. I read a while back they kept the basic system for 300 years, long after the Mongol Empire was absorbed into the Chinese, not because they were forced to but because it worked.
Of course reading these types of examples it all seems a little silly, but I suspect the core ones establishing the main ethics, chain of command, rights and duties, must have some pith otherwise it simply couldn’t have lasted, let alone have been effective, which it was for quite a long time. Also, apparently he too was trying to transcend various limitations in tribal and feudal setups generally entrenched in Asia Minor and Asia Major.
And remember, it was his grandson I believe who became a student (and torturer!) of Tusum Khenpa, one of our Karmapa’s.
In any case, I have to agree that the lists such as they are are rather unhelpful!
The most important of celtic institutions,in Ireland and Wales alike ,is kingship,which is always non-hereditary;An interesting feature of Pictish institutions was inheritance through the female.Bede had thoroughly grasped this,for he explains it fully.The antiquarian tracts bear out Bede’s statement,forin a third and most reliable Pictish king-list only two kings are recorded as having fathers who have reigned;there is no clear evidence of succession through the fathers line till the ninth century.Although kings married and had families,their sons did not succeed them …the organization of the royal family seems to have been at times matrilocal as well as matrilinear,but not usually matriarchal..Nora Chadwick The Celts
Ash, agreed–I’m sure there was more to it, and of greater depth.
But this does raise an important point: assuming that list is accurate to at least a moderate extent (and Genghis’s reputation suggests it probably was), how seriously do we want to take anything else? You mentioned having difficulty taking the US Constitution very seriously given the state of things today. But let’s not give any other culture a pass either then. Let’s hold all to the same standards.
Personally I find the death penalty barbaric–an offence against both basic goodness and interdependence. But I think we will find that it has been fairly universal throughout the reigns held up as “enlightened” by the chants (even Aśoka’s, it seems). In that respect at least I do find contemporary European society a better model, more Shambhalian. (Though it should be said that apparently the King of Bhutan formally revoked the death penalty in 2004, and it had not been applied since 1964.)
I don’t want to make too much of one issue. It just seems to me–again precisely from the standpoint of interdependence and basic goodness–that a culture’s endorsement of killing as “justice” casts serious doubt on its dharmic or shambhalian orientation. Persuade me otherwise!
When I read something like the Preamble to the Swiss Constitution, I think: hey, you know, this really is pretty advanced stuff from the perspective of human history. In certain ways we really have progressed quite a bit (in certain places anyway). We can do better, of course. That’s the whole point of Shambhala. But I suppose what I’m saying is: as a *starting* point, we don’t have to be biased in favour of societies that already have some kind of monarchy principle.
Mr. Perks:
could you describe the nature and function of such Royals, specifically the King? In other words, what were kings supposed to be, what were their Qualities, Powers and Roles? Personally I suspect we would be getting closer to the heart of authentic western tradition from such sources rather than the somewhat hobbled versions that emerged in the so-called Dark Ages after the RC had managed to insinuate itself into pretty much everything following the example of the Roman Empire.
Also, if matrilinear, why mainly males (Kings) versus females (Queens) or is this incorrect. Be interesting to see why matrilinear societies still preferred males as main leaders.
And speaking of Rome and Romans (not your favorite topic I suspect – or perhaps it is!), they seem to have created an Empire out of offering – usually via military force of course – an alternative to previous tribal lineages. Perhaps this is why they kept conquering, in order to subjugate the old systems. By and large they succeeded – though perhaps not so well in Ireland and Scotland which retained tribal structures for a long time. Perhaps all tribal structures pre-Roman times would be very close to what is now called ‘Celtic’? I wonder.
In any case, what was the nature of the Monarch in old Celtic societies? (Maybe I should look at that big fat book of mine I am going to send you to find out!)
Of course this is all quite relevant to our Constitutional Exercise in that Shambhala is also a manifestation of the McPoe clan, which clearly is tribal in nature. Our constitution should have tribal elements for sure, even though all modern examples were drawn up to transcend not only tribal (earlier) but also feudal (later) and also imperial (later or different) into something we now think of as ‘Nation States’ (and which probably will be soon transcended in their turn as we morph into various continental, if not outright international, confederations of which the EU is the current prime example, albeit the Chinese did the same thing centuries ago.
Damcho. Agreed with reservations re being biased. However, obviously we have a monarchical situation to deal with in Shambhala and I for one am not interested in trying to re-write that, even as an idle exercise.
In terms of death: this is hard to articulate without the thought and research it deserves but briefly put:
Our notion of individual existence has changed markedly the past few centuries. Crucifixion was invented by a tribal queen who insisted on being killed this way so that her body was not touching the earth and therefore she would no longer re-incarnate within that tribe. People are born and die all the time but in days of yore it was widely felt that one’s soul returned back to the tribe in a fresh infant body. Frankly I suspect there is quite a bit of truth to this in post-flood low population societies from 3-6 millenia ago, but probably less true today.
Be that as it may, individual life was of minor importance compared to the life of the group/tribe/society. Or put another way: they had far less sense of ‘the individual’ than we do today. Remember CTR harping on alot about ‘individualism’? I think this is partly what he was referring to.
Indeed, most of us regard the journey of life as being one of navigating through the traffic of existing societal and other infrastructure to chart our own course somehow. This is a relatively recent, modern experience. It has its advantages, but is not without various disadvantages and pitfalls, many of which are neither perceived nor analysed nowadays.
You won’t find a strong military organisation, for example, even from a modern democracy like the US’s, emphasising the worth of the individual over the group, either in terms of basic chain of command and ethics, or in terms of tactics and strategy in conflict zones. It simply doesn’t work.
A rare and excellent little book on related issues is called ‘Systems of Survival’ by Jane Jacobs in which she demonstrates that even within modern liberal frameworks, very different ethics and morals co-exist where in one sector an action which would be correct is in another sector incorrect, mainly for example in private sector versus public sector. Public sector emphasises hierarchy and loyalty above all, whereas private sector is more about merit and effort. (I haven’t read in a long time and am drastically over simplifying.) But it is very original, and pithy, thinking (as with all of her work).
We have a very hard time looking at systems from the past if we are unable to drop our preconceptions about individual rights and suchlike. Doesn’t mean they are bad or wrong, but they are a filter which makes it very hard to understand how previous generations were viewing things.
People like Bede, for example.
Well very good information on wikipedia on “Brehon law” which covers kingship and a host of other subjects…early Irish
And it does have some interesting info on how the king spends each week,which the Sakyong might find helpful..
Sunday is for drinking ale
Monday judging
Tuesday playing Fidchell
Wedsday watching hounds hunt
Thursday sexual union
Friday for racing horses
Saturday also judging then I expect you start the week all over again..
no notes for what happens if you foul up or forget a day .Perhaps this is where the old saying comes from as to thursday’s “once a king always a king but once a knight is enough”
I knew you would like that bit!
Seems from this article that Kings were just leaders. No notion of Royalty. But I suspect Kings of yore, i.e. our infamous 8th century (and earlier) period are lost in the mists of time in terms of nature and function.
I wish I was back in the Vaughan library in Harrow (UK). It is one of the best private libraries in England and has a very large section filled with white leather bounds texts, many of them from the 13th-15th centuries. I suspect there might be quite a bit in there, the sort of thing which is hard to find online. Though Gutenberg texts have quite a lot of stuff.
I’ll look into my Irish story book and see what I can find. But at this point I need to spend a bit of time reading up on a few things (like this) before trying to tackle a first draft using the BC skeleton.
Of course, anyone else here can be doing whatever they want! It’s not my thread. But I suspect if/when I come up with a first Shambhala-BC version it might be of interest and moreover provide sections with at that point specific materials/issues which can be discussed and debated.
I think you are on the right track,interesting you are building an oven,seems not only bread baking in there,
love
JP
A little more on Brehon law:
http://www.irelandhistory.org//early-social-structure/laws.html
It seems – being very hasty here – that the role of the Kings, of which there were many grades, was to enforce the law which was supra-personal and based on established convention based on prior judgments by the Justices/Brehons.
This relates to our Constitutional exercise in that a Constitution is a supra-personal code defining how a society is structured and functions and no one is above this including the Monarch, although of course in any ideal situation the wisdom and grace of said Monarch make him or her the best Person in the Kingdom to interpret and promulgate such Law.
This is similar to the notion of Dharma versus Buddha or Guru. Although the latter are supreme authorities within their domains, the Buddha lives on via the Dharma he expressed and to which anyone can refer at any time. It would be a strange sort of contemporary Buddhist guru, for example, who would maintain that he has developed a new and superior Dharma. Such a thing would be regarded as a violation or heresy somehow.
In our case, we have some sort of primordial code passed down from the Rigdens via the Druk Sakyong in various root texts and commentaries, the prime ones for this purpose probably being the ‘constellations of completely liberated codependent…’ text, Court Vision and the GES & LOBA texts, not to mention certain discourses in the KA transcripts. Perhaps there are others people feel strongly about. There are perhaps things the current Sakyong has offered as well in this regard, but I am not familiar with them.
But the point here is that a Constitution sets out the core societal Logos or code to which all members therein are bound. The BC constitution clearly presents this type of view.
First full firing under way. Ovens are not fireboxes. Inside temperature is currently around 800F in the vault and 500 on the hearth. The cladding on the outside (outside several insulation layers around the bricks inside) is still at room temperature though. I just raked out the coals and closed the door and will give the ‘thermal mass’ (aka bricks) an hour or so to distribute heat evenly throughout at which point (in theory) I should be able to bake for the next 3-5 hours.
If my first batch (just 10 loaves or so) is successful, I’ll report. If not, I’ll remain silent!
Thats great let me know I will bring the fishes!!
well, I can already tell it won’t be a completely all-victorious first batch. The oven is not yet ready to retain heat because still residual moisture in the mass which takes a few firings to get flushed out. It cooled down very fast after pulling out the fire and because I know it’s not an insulation issue (the outer skin is still room temperature) it just means the bricks aren’t quite ready. The bread will hopefully be edible (the raw dough is already delicious) but won’t turn out with thick crunchy crusts etc. because temp too low.
Ash–Thanks for your insights, as always. I think the work you’re doing here is fantastic and I look forward to reading your adaptation of the Bhutanese Constitution.
I couldn’t agree with you more that in order to understand how previous generations really saw things we need to try and step outside our own framework as much as possible. My point about the death penalty was more that we don’t have to reinvent the wheel each time in studying history–or in conceiving a constitution. We can take some pride in our hard-won 2010 vantage point. For example, we can try to understand societies that incorporated slavery, indeed try to understand their rationale for doing so, while still maintaining that the practice is unquestionably an affront to human dignity. Surely an uncontroversial notion that doesn’t need saying.
From this standpoint I was merely suggesting that we could acknowledge different sorts of Shambhalian virtues, as it were, and start in any of several places, working towards the desired result. That’s why I emphasized the word *starting* in “starting point”. I was trying to offer the thought, perhaps clumsily or simplistically, that just because a society already has a king doesn’t mean it is necessarily closer to fulfilling the mandala principle than every society without one. It could be a horribly corrupt setting sun dictatorship, for example. Anyway, this was all just a first thought on the postulated edicts of Genghis Khan, not Bhutan!
I’m only suggesting that we don’t foreclose on other ways of getting where we need to be save by reference to a system that already uses one desired word rather than another. It’s not about “re-writing” the basic view–only trying to understand it better. I doubt we disagree there in the last analysis.
Indeed, the military is a different matter. I agree. But isn’t that a highly specific situation within the much larger whole? Ie, we’re not writing a constitution for the military.
Also, I agree that our conception of the individual and of the idea of “rights” is relatively recent. But my argument would be that these are ideas not only consonant with Shambhala vision, but that in fact without this basis there can be no “enlightened society” founded on basic goodness. Indeed, “Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior” could only reach the number and variety of people it has in societies which (however imperfectly) allow for people in general to “chart their own course”. In conservative Tibetan society I wonder if it would even have been allowed publication, let alone found such a readership.
With regard to previous societies’ greater valuation of group over individual: yes, but I think the case can be made that the basic intelligence of human beings has been at least trying to move in the direction of “individuals” and “rights” because somewhere deep within it is the recognition that this is the only way each person will be able to find which of the “84,000″ paths will be most helpful for them. So then the challenge becomes how to uplift and strengthen the framework, the centre, and society as a whole so as to provide complementary support, direction, nourishment for what is finally an individual journey. My understanding is that Shambhala is partly just this: not the One Religion that all would ultimately adopt, but (as you put it so well on the other thread) the collective counterpart to the kinds of more “lonely” paths Buddhism, Taoism, and so on emphasize. Partly, but also of course, and most remarkably, a Path in its own right.
D,
yes, I don’t think there is major disagreement anywhere – not that that would be bad if there were.
I found the Genghis stuff unhelpful but I have a sneaking suspicion there could be some nuggets in there even though I won’t take the time to find them. Same with the Code Napoleon. (And pretty much everything else!)
More specifically re: “I was trying to offer the thought, perhaps clumsily or simplistically, that just because a society already has a king doesn’t mean it is necessarily closer to fulfilling the mandala principle than every society without one. It could be a horribly corrupt setting sun dictatorship, for example. ”
Agree totally.
I actually don’t think any system, or even constitution, is foolproof by any means – as history so well demonstrates. I do feel, however, that one criteria worth considering, even if hard to quantify, is demonstrated stability over time.
I don’t know the ins and out of it, but of course the Eastern Roman Empire based in Constantinople comes to mind, one of the largest, most stable and long-lived regimes in post-flood human history. The so-called ‘Byzantine Empire’. Why it lasted so much longer than the Roman Empire based in Rome is probably worth learning about in terms of learning more about how it was constituted, but I probably won’t be able to.
Stability was addressed in the US Const. in terms of having a reasonable attempt at checks and balances, along with various obligations to avoid becoming beholden to Foreign Powers, as well as some sort of balance between Federal and State powers, although to my mind as soon as you set up a central operation whose laws can supercede the fringe/local ones, then inevitably the centre will grow and the fringe will shrink, power wise.
Genghis Khan’s system has been reported as quite stable. This is very different from his rather ruthless modes of conquest. But we’ll probably find it too hard to learn much about it. Similarly the Chinese dynasties have some very good track records but it would take months of study to penetrate into that arena – at least for me. The Chinese History Forum is one of the best on the web, I suspect. You have to take exams in order to become a full member, but there is quite a bit of material available if one is willing to wade through it. Personally, I think Mencius, who wrote quite a bit about basic goodness and so forth, is a Shambhalian social theorist par excellence, but again hard to find perceptive writing about him. If anyone has anything, please provide links.
Finally as to the BC, I am not endorsing Bhutan or its Constitution necessarily, but I am comfortable working with it as a structural skeleton. Given it was written very recently (this century!) by someone who studied with CTR and was a living tantric Monarch in an actual kingdom and also instituted new democratic/Parliamentary elements into what was previously a largely feudal situation, one would be hard pressed to find something better for our purposes, I suspect.
I sympathize with what you are saying about modern progress, but have some reservations. About which later.
Ash,
Pardon me, but that’s amazing about your relatives, especially in the context of this thread: I guess that’s why you’re here.
Did any or all of them come over on the Mayflower, or participate in the Boston Tea Party, by any chance, or were they just (“just”!) signers of the Declaration of Independence, if I got that right?
Jim
Dear All
Been following the argument re constitution but not at the present time had much time for reading.
But I have a few thoughts on what I have been reading on rfs so far.
Suppose must get back to the original idea of seeing the shambhala teachings as a container for all other ‘genuine’ teachings that are happening on this globe –so yes the s.teachings provide the framework for other teachings to emerge from the Cosmic Mirror.
So yes again we are back to the authenticity aspect that Mr Tischer mentioned and I think its still a chestnut re our own western tradition.
Take for example the Reformation in the UK –see Owen Chadwicks book on this which is a concise history of those times.
So yes briefly when you take away the power of Rome from a country you have the flowering of many teachings some bizarre and some ‘more genuine’ even in the eyes of Trungpa Rinpoche. For example you had people in 17th century declaring themselves Messiahs and disrobing and going back to Garden of Eden like life (so nothing new with the hippies) then a bit later the Quakers who Trungpa mentioned of favourably in the second Shambhala book.
So its difficult do you have to leave room for experimentation as is perhaps happening to some degree with Midal who I have heard talked of in unfavourable and favourable aspects (the actual personality of the man being discussed)
Or do people begin to follow the somewhat more direct ‘disciples’ of Trungpa splitting off from SI such as Mr Perks, Reginald Ray and others who offer different takes on the teachings.
So also re the Bhutanese constitution that Ash is favouring to some degree how would this accommodate some one like Midal into that whole thing looking back at the container principle aspect? So we are again back to the ‘power’ of the fundamental King motif.
So as to my own liberal upbringing myself developed perhaps in angst to growing up in the UK!? – I would want everyone to have a voice in this enlightened society monarchist or not monarchist so this only leaves the sakyong principle to be seen in the most widest terms of a person joining heaven and earth much like the Japanese Emperor.
So yes I think we should definitely investigate Shinto because it was mentioned by Trungpa himself in connection with the shambhala teachings.
Re my own tentative connection to Japanese culture I have read some Japanese literature namely Yukio Mishima who did indeed commit sepukku I believe because of the social deterioration of Japanese society. I was intrigued by seeing stuff from Japan on the tv when he with his private army took over the building and urged the young people to support his ‘crusade’ against materialism. But as I read biographies of him I could see that he was slightly off-kilter to say the least but in any case a wonderful writer.
So yes how does a constitution allow the inconoclastic to flower in society and not be subdued by a strict hierarchy and say so of an overbearing monarch? This is the dilemma that has been facing the west since the 17th century in the western
tradition of thought which has allowed to its credit the creation of once ridiculed religious movement into great traditions such as the Methodist and Quaker traditions- now where would they be if liberalism had not been allowed to take its course?
So to some extent I really do find the non-debate in SI very, very perplexing especially in America which is supposed to be the bastion of free debate in the world out of 8,000 members is everyone happy with the changes? Whats going on? Yes its very sad all the talk of loyalty hindering debate.
Just looking again at the governance stuff on the shambhala website re talk of Richard Reoch working closely with the Sakyong on ‘strategic international’ matters. What does that mean? Does anyone know –one person talking to one person again!? Surely strategic international matters should be discussed in a National Assembly so that everyone can have their say on them and vote on them too!
I have inkling myself that it could mean a move to the East re China/India there you would get more ‘converts’ from the present SI set-up because it is beginning measure up more to a Chinese model of running a society.
So yes I have my own shambhala vision for the world independent of SI and I would hope some of my thoughts after 55 years on this planet could be put in some way in this constitution that we are discussing. It would also be great if some one from Midals and Rays organisations could comment on forming a constitution for the wider application of the shambhala teachings I would like to hear their perspective on the whole thing aswell.
to
So yes re the fundamental relationship with the teacher in the whole set up of this coming shambhala society who would I ‘follow’ be ‘inspired’ by I think someone who says to me you can too be the sakyong/sakyong wangmo yourself –ours is a two way relationship and we are working together on this whole thing. So yes I wont accept directives from anyone even if you the teacher think they are good for me in the sense of the present Sakyongs advice into ‘relaxing’ into the teachings now being presented by him through SI. Why do I think like this because I come from the west and secularism to some extent is my tradition and I wont give independence of thought up to no-one but I am willing to work with the teachings in a spirit of investigation to create an enlightened society. So again must say why not more debate in the states? America who has your tongue?
Best
Rita Ashworth
Dear Mr Hartz
Just a quip …..I have come to love Ash over the web like wise James Elliot who is so precise too –indeed I think what shall I write next to James posts because reading his posts is like having crystals explode in your mind.
So I would leave the space for both these writers to do their stuff as they are both provocative, funny, outlandish and learned. Hope to meet them one day.
Well best from subject-land (I can not have another monarch –divided loyalties you know?!)
Rita Ashworth
Jim, they say that anyone who is from a family that has been continuously in England for over 300 years is related to anyone else with same conditions. We’re slow, but over time we breed like rabbits, if you catch my drift.
Same with the Mayflower bunch, it seems. Pretty much anybody on the East Coast whose family goes back a ways (1700’s) is related to pretty much anybody else in same boat. The big item is whether or not you are a direct descendant rather than cousin etc. I gather but since I grew up in England was never all that ‘up’ on such things and find the whole thing a little silly. That branch was in England from the time of 1066 (came over with William I in the same boat supposedly), so I am also related to pretty much everyone in England from that time, with special affinity (somehow) with the Ashley family from which the Marlboroughs and Churchills come which is why my grandfather, father and self have the first name Ashley. Again, a little silly if you ask me, although I do think ancestry can be important if married to continuity of place and culture. Blood alone ain’t enough!
But yes, on paternal side both grandfather and grandmother lines supposedly are direct Mayflower families and each was very proud of this. FWLIW. I think an Adams daughter married a Howes son which is my line, or something like that. Not clear on the details. And yes, it is true: most of them were Freemasons ( like Joseph Howes, a Dec Ind signer) and thus either well-meaning dupes, social climbers or pure evil. Why a deeply religious hard-core Protestant would get into Freemasonry, which at the least has a whole lot of esoteric twaddle, is beyond me, but I have never investigated all that.
Strangely enough, the only time I was invited into a Masonic Lodge was in Boulder. I had an Israeli employer there in the late 90’s; we became very friendly. He took me into a Lodge on Broadway. Sort of dead, artificial atmosphere, like a club without members. But then I am used to vibrant tantric setups. Very strange that a recent Israeli immigrant (with Officer wife working at IBM) would be connected to a little Lodge in Boulder, eh? Maybe all the conspiracy stories are true? In which case, maybe the US constitution should be read over very, very carefully! Certainly they were completely unable to retain sovereignty over their money system, which means they lost their new country in only a couple of generations. There were a few attempts to reverse it in the mid-to-late 1800’s if I recall, but by 1913 it was a done deal and the rest, as they say, is history. Presidents certainly ‘enjoy’ a high probability of being murdered there, presumably if they don’t toe somebody’s line, put it that way.
Thanks for your kind words. I too find Elliot’s pieces deliciously crystalline and very much appreciate them – along with quite a few others here of course.
Not to silly Ash..family lineage very important..years ago Chogyam said to me “I am sorry you did not marry into my family,you will not like it here after I leave”at the time I had no idea what he was talking about .but for Rita Shambhala has no tongue to answer opposition,what the family lineage wants now is “harmonized view”…Chogyam was different Sakyong more like Buddhist Temudgin Mongol,his body smelt of wood fire smoke and saddle leather with raw steel sword,tent and horse culture,that is why I live with celts,same idea,,not tamed by Buddhism but set free by Buddhism,then sit by fire,cook on open fire,smoke the skin…all the old students now wander or live in remote places..and tell stories of Lord Mukpo and the time of warriors…harmonized tongue is ok but cannot speak with me,afraid might speak loudly back,many sparks flying in fire,is not harmony…so that is what things are like,expect no change just enjoy this time Chogyam not far away..
Love,
Seonaidh Lord of the Celts
Cannot reply in kind, tonally, but think I catch the drift. Refreshingly Celtic. Just reading last night how before Celts old Indo-European people in Ireland connected with the red-haired Egyptians. Very old lineages there. As to family, agreed, but only if there is something there, which in your case is true. Well, there is always much there, but often more confusion lineage than helpful family lineage which has to be passed on deliberately, energetically. Many modern people in urban societies barely know their own grandparents who grew up in different places in different cultures. So that sort of lineage obviously recedes and just accessing it via lists of names in a family book doesn’t really mean all that much. Is what I meant to say.
[First Section of doctored BC. Not too many changes with first section. Later on when getting into Parliamentary and Administrative areas will try to cut it down much more. ]
[Draft 1, Condensed Version 1: July 22, 2010]
The Constitution of
The Kingdom of Shambhala
Table of contents
[Have retained full list to show structure of original though not all will be included below]
Article 1 Kingdom of Shambhala
Article 2 The Institution of Monarchy
Article 3 Spiritual Heritage
Article 4 Culture
Article 5 Environment
Article 6 Citizenship
Article 7 Fundamental Rights
Article 8 Fundamental Duties
Article 9 Principles of State Policy
Article 10 Parliament
Article 11 The National Council
Article 12 The National Assembly
Article 13 Passing of Bills
Article 14 Finance, Trade and Commerce
Article 15 Political Parties
Article 16 Public Campaign Financing
Article 17 Formation of Government
Article 18 The Opposition Party
Article 19 Interim Government
Article 20 The Executive
Article 21 The Judiciary
Article 22 Local Governments
Article 23 Elections
Article 24 Election Commission
Article 25 The Royal Audit Authority
Article 26 The Royal Civil Service Commission
Article 27 The Anti-Corruption Commission
Article 28 Defence
Article 29 The Attorney General
Article 30 The Pay Commission
Article 31 Holders of Constitutional Offices
Article 32 Impeachment
Article 33 Emergency
Article 34 National Referendum
Article 35 Amendment & Authoritative Text
First Schedule
The National Flag and the National Emblem of Shambhala
The National Flag
The National Emblem
Second Schedule
The National Anthem of Shambhala
Third Schedule
Oath or Affirmation of Office
Fourth Schedule
Oath or Affirmation of Secrecy
Glossary
Preamble
WE, the people of Shambhala:
BLESSED by the Triple Gem, the protection of the dharmapalas, the wisdom of our teachers and ancestors, the everlasting merit of the Kagyu, Nyingma, Hinayana, Mahayana, Vajrayana and Kalapayana lineages and the guidance of His Majesty the Sakyong Jampal Trinley;
SOLEMNLY pledging ourselves to strengthen the sovereignty of Shambhala, to secure the blessings of liberty, to ensure justice and tranquillity and to enhance the unity, happiness, lungta and well-being of the people throughout time;
DO HEREBY ordain and adopt this Constitution for the Kingdom of Shambhala on the Fifteenth Day of the Sixth Month of the X Year [nc] corresponding to the Eighteenth Day of August, Two Thousand and Ten.
Article 1
Kingdom of Shambhala
1.
Shambhala is a Sovereign Kingdom whose Sovereign power belongs to the people of Shambhala.
2.
The form of Government shall be that of a Constitutional Monarchy. [ as a first stab, why not, even if not necessarily ultimately desirable.]
3.
The international territorial boundary of Shambhala is inviolable and any alteration of areas and boundaries thereof shall be done only with the consent of not less than three-fourths of the total number of members of Parliament. [assumes a Territory for the sake of clear example]
4.
The territory of Shambhala shall comprise twenty Districts with each District consisting of Counties and Municipality. Alteration of areas and boundaries of any District or County shall be done only with the consent of not less than three-fourths of the total number of members of Parliament.
5.
The National Flag and the National Emblem of Shambhala shall be as specified in the First Schedule of this Constitution.
6.
The National Anthem of Shambhala shall be as specified in the Second Schedule of this Constitution.
7.
The National Day of Shambhala shall be Shambhala Day of each year.
8.
Oxonian English is the National Language of Shambhala.
9.
This Constitution is the Supreme Law of the State.
10.
All laws in force in the territory of Shambhala at the time of adopting this Constitution shall continue until altered, repealed or amended by Parliament. However, the provisions of any law, whether made before or after the coming into force of this Constitution, which are inconsistent with this Constitution, shall be null and void.
11.
The Supreme Court shall be the guardian of this Constitution and the final authority on its interpretation.
12.
The rights over mineral resources, rivers, lakes and forests shall vest in the State and are the properties of the State, which shall be regulated by law.
13.
There shall be separation of the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary and no encroachment of each others powers is permissible except to the extent provided for by this Constitution.
Article 2
The Institution of Monarchy
1.
His Majesty the Sakyong is the Head of State and the symbol of unity of the Kingdom and of the people of Shambhala.
2.
The Church and State of Shambhala shall be unified in the person of the Sakyong who, as a Buddhist, shall be the upholder of Church and State.
3.
The title to the Golden Throne of Shambhala shall vest in the legitimate descendants of the Druk Sakyong Dorje Dradul of Mukpo and shall:
(a)
Pass only to children born of lawful marriage;
(b)
Pass by hereditary succession to the direct lineal descendants on the abdication or demise of the Druk Sakyong, in order of seniority, with a prince taking precedence over a princess, subject to the requirement that, in the event of shortcomings in the elder prince, it shall be the sacred duty of the Sakyong to select and proclaim the most capable prince or princess as heir to the Throne;
(c)
Pass to the child of the Queen who is pregnant at the time of the demise of the Sakyong if no heir exists under section 3(b);
(d)
Pass to the nearest collateral line of the descendants of the Sakyong in accordance with the principle of lineal descent, with preference being given for elder over the younger, if the Sakyong has no direct lineal descendant;
(e)
Not pass to children incapable of exercising the Royal Prerogatives by reason of physical or mental infirmity; and
(f)
Not pass to a person entitled to succeed to the Throne who enters into a marriage with a person other than a natural born citizen of Shambhala.
4.
The successor to the Throne shall receive empowerment via the Padmasambhava Dorje brought from Tibet by the Druk Sakyong and shall be crowned on the Golden Throne of Kalapa. [ Enthronement Ceremony will conducted by the current Head of the Nyingma Lineage or the previous Sakyong (in case of abdication) or Sakyong Wangmo if still living? ]
5.
Upon the ascension of the Sakyong to the Throne, the members of the Royal Family, the members of Parliament and the office holders mentioned in section 19 of this Article shall take an Oath of Allegiance to the Sakyong.
6.
Upon reaching the age of sixty-five years, the Sakyong shall step down and hand over the Throne to the Crown Prince or Crown Princess, provided the Royal Heir has come of age.
7.
There shall, subject to the provision of section 9 of this Article, be a Council of Regency when:
(a)
The successor to the Throne has not attained the age of twenty-one years;
(b)
The Sakyong has temporarily relinquished, by Proclamation, the exercise of the Royal Prerogatives; or
(c)
It has been resolved by not less than three-fourths of the total number of members of Parliament in a joint sitting that the Sakyong is unable to exercise the Royal Prerogatives by reason of temporary physical or mental infirmity.
8.
The Council of Regency shall collectively exercise the Royal Prerogatives and the powers vested in the Sakyong under this Constitution and shall be composed of:
(a)
A senior member of the Royal Family nominated by the Privy Council;
(b)
The Prime Minister;
(c)
The Chief Justice of Shambhala;
(d)
The Speaker;
(e)
The Chairperson of the National Council; and
(f)
The Leader of the Opposition Party.
9.
In the case specified under section 7(b) or 7(c) of this Article, the descendant of the Sakyong, who is the heir presumptive, shall, instead of the Council of Regency, become Regent by right, if the heir presumptive has attained the age of twenty-one years.
10.
The members of the Council of Regency shall take an Oath of Allegiance before Parliament to faithfully discharge their duties.
11.
When the successor to the Throne attains the age of twenty-one years or when the Sakyong resumes the exercise of the Royal Prerogatives under sections 7(a) and 7(b) of this Article, notice shall be given by Proclamation. However, when the Sakyong regains the ability to exercise the Royal Prerogatives under section 7(c) of this Article, notice shall be given to that effect by resolution of Parliament.
12.
The members of the Royal Family shall be the reigning and past Monarchs, their Queens and the Royal Children born of lawful marriage.
13.
The Sakyong and the members of the Royal Family shall be entitled to:
(a)
Annuities from the State in accordance with a law made by Parliament;
(b)
All rights and privileges including the provision of palaces and residences for official and personal use; and
(c)
Exemption from taxation on the royal annuity and properties provided for by sections 13(a) and 13(b) of this Article.
14.
There shall be a Privy Council, which shall consist of two members appointed by the Sakyong, one member nominated by the Council of Ministers and one member nominated by the National Council. The Privy Council shall be responsible for:
(a)
All matters pertaining to the privileges of the Sakyong and the Royal Family;
(b)
All matters pertaining to the conduct of the Royal Family;
(c)
Rendering advice to the Sakyong on matters concerning the Throne and the Royal Family;
(d)
All matters pertaining to crown properties; and
(e)
Any other matter as may be commanded by the Sakyong.
15.
The Sakyong shall not be answerable in a court of law for His actions and His person shall be sacrosanct.
16.
The Sakyong, in exercise of His Royal Prerogatives, may:
(a)
Award titles, decorations, empowerment for Ministers, Officials and Subjects in accordance with tradition and custom;
(b)
Grant citizenship, land Kidu (Benefits granted by King or Govt of Shambhala) and other Kidus (Benefits granted by King or Govt of Shambhala);
(c)
Grant amnesty, pardon and reduction of sentences;
(d)
Command Bills and other measures to be introduced in Parliament; and
(e)
Exercise powers relating to matters which are not provided for under this Constitution or other laws.
17.
The Sakyong may promote goodwill and good relations with other countries by receiving state guests and undertaking state visits to other countries.
18.
The Sakyong shall protect and uphold this Constitution in the best interest and for the welfare of the people of Shambhala.
19.
The Sakyong shall, by warrant under His hand and seal, appoint:
(a)
The Chief Justice of Shambhala in accordance with section 4 of Article 21;
(b)
The Royal Court Justices of the Supreme Court in accordance with section 5 of Article 21;
(c)
The Chief Justice of the High Court in accordance with section 11 of Article 21;
(d)
The Royal Court Justices of the High Court in accordance with section 12 of Article 21;
(e)
The Chief Election Commissioner and Election Commissioners in accordance with section 2 of Article 24;
(f)
The Auditor General in accordance with section 2 of Article 25;
(g)
The Chairperson and members of the Royal Civil Service Commission in accordance with section 2 of Article 26;
(h)
The Chairperson and members of the Anti-Corruption Commission in accordance with section 2 of Article 27;
(i)
The heads of the Defence Forces from a list of names recommended by the Service Promotion Board;
(j)
The Attorney General in accordance with section 2 of Article 29;
(k)
The Governor of the Central Bank of Shambhala on the recommendation of the Prime Minister;
(l)
The Chairperson of the Pay Commission in accordance with section 1 of Article 30;
(m)
The Cabinet Secretary on the recommendation of the Prime Minister;
(n)
The Secretary General of the respective Houses on the recommendation of the Royal Civil Service Commission;
(o)
Ambassadors and Consuls on the recommendation of the Prime Minister;
(p)
The Secretaries to the Government on the recommendation of the Prime Minister who shall obtain nominations from the Royal Civil Service Commission on the basis of merit and seniority and in accordance with other relevant rules and regulations; and
(q)
Dzongdag / District Administrators on the recommendation of the Prime Minister who shall obtain nominations from the Royal Civil Service Commission.
20.
The Sakyong shall abdicate the Throne for willful violations of this Constitution or for being subject to permanent mental disability, on a motion passed by a joint sitting of Parliament in accordance with the procedure as laid down in sections 21, 22, 23, 24 and 25 of this Article.
21.
The motion for abdication shall be tabled for discussion at a joint sitting of Parliament if not less than two-thirds of the total number of the members of Parliament submits such a motion based on any of the grounds in section 20 of this Article.
22.
The Sakyong may respond to the motion in writing or by addressing the joint sitting of Parliament in person or through a representative.
23.
The Chief Justice of Shambhala shall preside over the joint sitting of Parliament mentioned in section 21 of this Article.
24.
If, at such joint sitting of Parliament, not less than three-fourths of the total number of members of Parliament passes the motion for abdication, then such a resolution shall be placed before the people in a National Referendum to be approved or rejected.
25.
On such a resolution being approved by a simple majority of the total number of votes cast and counted from all the Districts in the Kingdom, the Sakyong shall abdicate in favour of the heir apparent.
26.
Parliament shall make no laws or exercise its powers to amend the provisions of this Article and section 2 of Article 1 except through a National Referendum.
Now, I didn’t cut this down much, but it lays out quite a lot in terms of the role of the Monarch, the areas over which he exercises direct command which includes giving by inference an overview of the overall structure including the administrative elements including most notably the Parliamentiary Authority embedded from the get-go, the primacy of a Judiciary element, the limitations of the role, the succession etc.
Not surprisingly, this is not all the far from the structure in Court Vision in terms of Monarch, Military (K3), Church (Dorje Loppon), Lord Command Justice (never happened), Prime Minister, Parliament (Dekyong Council).
“expect no change just enjoy this time Chogyam not far away..”
That hits home. Thanks.
I had a bit of time today because of sudden rainstorm and waiting for wood delivery.
I went through the anglicized BC and tried cutting it down. Frankly, it’s still far too long.
At some point will try to write out a one page synopsis of what I think is the principle structural dynamic between the core elements. Hopefully that will be helpful.
It’s no small thing to write a Constitution and I think there is a limit to how much one can strip such a thing down and still have it be a meaningful exercise since without qualifying in procedural terms how the various element inter-react, it is hard to tell what is being suggested. But I have an idea as to how to streamline it and hopefully can come up with a one pager fairly soon. Then that will be something that can be easily discussed on this forum in terms of the core issues it will lay out clearly, albeit in quasi-Constitutional format versus just random opinions being debated/shared.
http://www.frenchroadbakery.tk/Shambhala%20Constitution%20Reduced%201.htm
Alright: first attempt at shortened version.
Shambhala Constitution Outline, Version One:
Following in the lineage and spirit of the mandates of the Druk Sakyong and the Sakyong Jampay Trinlay Dradul*, the following Constitutional outline is proposed for discussion:
1. A Constitutional Monarchy
2. The principal Elements therein comprising:
a. State belonging to all People therein in whom ultimately resides all powers within the State;
b. Monarch – hereditary Royal Family – who symbolizes the Unity of the State and is the Chief Example and Promulgator of the Constitution and the values of Enlightened Society which it purposes to engender (along with various important esoteric leadership functions not elaborated in this structural exercise).
c. Parliament – elected from local communities, two houses with Opposition Party** in effect after elections who administer and develop the Executive and Laws via majority votes (i.e. not full consensus); both Houses and Sakyong must concur for any new Bill or Act to be ratified into Law.
d. ‘Senior’ House is mainly retired or distinguished citizens who are no longer involved in current Executive or Commercial pursuits but whose depth of connection and experience can provide longer term overview in context of established vision, culture and bedrock tradition; 20% of these are appointed by Sakyong directly. Senior House members may no longer run for office in the Lower House nor accept Ministerial Appointments subsequent to election into the Senior House.
e. Local dekyongs elected in neighbourhood delegs via spontaneous consensus; then each regional Dekyong Council elects Member of Parliament (each of whom is by definition a Dekyong), one male and one female, via spontaneous consensus within 48 hours of Regional Government Election.
f. Core Organs of State including:
i. Major: Court, Civil Service, Justice, Military, Local and Regional Governments
ii. Minor: Health, Education, Environment, Ombudsmen, Commerce, Finance
3. Checks and Balances:
a. Office Holders
i. All Constitutional Appointments (such as Lord Command Justice, Kasung Ki Khyap etc.), no matter which branch or Agent proposes depending upon the Office in question, are approved following advice and consent of: Monarch, Parliamentary and Appropriate Commissioners; all impeachments or replacements of the same similarly treated. Generally the Highest Offices (in Justice, Military, Court) are proposed by HM and assented by PM and others, whereas lower offices are proposed by PM (or lower) and ratified by those above up to the Sakyong.
b. Ministerial Appointments to Elected Officials Only
c. Ability for either Monarch or Parliament to call for National Referendum on issues of State where Crown and Parliament cannot form consensus;
d. Parliament has the authority to re-write this Constitution providing there is a National Referendum to sanction amended or new constitution; similarly any new Constitution can only be ratified by an elected Parliament.
e. Political Parties are largely funded by the State, financial contributions are limited, advertising is limited to being an equal amount in terms of column space, websites, radio and television coverage or advertisements etc. such that financial muscle has relatively little effect on ability to campaign etc.
f) f. A Nyen-level Council comprising all Regional Dekyongs who can review Parliamentary initiatives and object by consensus when the Central Government is perceived as encroaching overmuch on Regional and Local governance or policies.
* I can’t find references to his current title(s) so please forgive if this is incorrect.
** As I see it, the main, if not only, virtue of the so-called ‘Party System’ is that after an election there can be official, sanctioned, loyal questioning of the current Government managing the Executive following an election. If there is a way to do this without Parties, great, but without them rather hard to form a government which, from election, is empowered to push things in a general direction upon which it has attracted votes. It seems to be a necessary evil in any Parliamentary system, but the Opposition quotient strikes me as extremely valuable if well conducted.
If is a big little word that covers just about any aspect of any constitution, of course.
PS. Seating in the Parliament is done by Region, not Party, and within each Region the sexes are seated in distinct rows, as with all Shambhala gatherings.
The size of a deleg, and thus overall number, is mainly determined as a percentage of the overall population. Each deleg has one dekyong, but the regional Council of Dekyongs can have any number depending on the population of that Region. Then they elect a certain number of Regional Dekyongs, in equal number of male and female, also in terms of percentage of national population. Generally each region should have similar percentages population-wise, with special formulas created for large Municipal and City populations to smooth out the proportional differences so that rural areas do not become marginalised by their lower population density. In any case, based on an entire population, the total number of Regional Dekyongs elected as MP’s to Parliament will always be a fixed amount (i.e. 50) meaning that each such pair of male and female Dekyongs represents 4% of the population or whatever. So delegs keep getting re-formed in response to changes in population but the number of MP’s does not change.
Final thoughts on this flurry today which has led to the shortened form: Going back to my clumsily penned tree analogy from a different thread:
The trunk, or central column, is the representative element. The roots are the delegs, which vary in number and distribution depending on the various local situations but which funnel into the forming central trunk a Regional Council, also of varying numbers, which then funnels into the trunk a fixed number such that no matter the size of the root system, the trunk essentially remains the same. From this central trunk we go up to the leaf-and-branch system, which are the various organs of governance which take, in turn, multifarious forms dependent upon the priorities and interests of the State, such as Justice, Military, Education and so forth, each of which develop, over time, basic career paths, using employment lingo, with their own respective cultures, traditions and areas of expertise, wherein various Civil Service lineages are naturally appended. These leaves and branches provide needed fuel and energy (including oversight and leadership) for the entire corpus whilst also being completely dependent upon the lower trunk and root system, just as the root system depends upon the upper canopy for overall motivation and context. The two aspects are co-dependently originating.
The Crown in this analogy is the whole tree rather than one part of it in the same way that the entire multi-faceted organism derives originally from a single seed, which in our case is the Cosmic Mirror or Divine Rigden Drala principle. Or rather, as is well put in teh BC constitution, the Monarch is a living symbol of such State unity, i.e. a Mahamudra/Enlightened expression of the overall corpus politicus.
Something like that.
I think until we have a two-way dynamic somewhat along the lines sketched in the above Constitution (short form), that we will continue to have festering problems which, instead of fostering greater wisdom and strength as they are sorted through, instead end up with overmuch pruning, such that although we may well maintain an excellent tree over time, it is unlikely that there will be a forest.
Dear Ash
Thanks for all your hard work on a draft constitution.
I am have to going to print it off and read it through more thoroughly.
Its good to see the parliamentary nature of a Shambhala government discussed in such a manner perhaps for the first time – that is a step forward.
Also having the notion of referendum in there and the possibility of the removal of a Sakyong is good also – I think that chestnut has to be tackled in some manner.
Briefly reading it also can not see the composition of a wider sangha coming through with other religions/secular parties etc –so there are still doctrinal issues in who should have access to the teachings.
I dont know are we going to lump all these people into a loyal opposition party –perhaps they as people would have nothing in common.
So yes perhaps they would also have to hold positions of power within shambhala much as the present arrangement in Northern Ireland with the Democratic Unionists working with Sinn Fein –now theres a comparison!
Of course too there is Mark S’s comment that you could have a Christian Sakyong – or even a secular Sakyong with the shambhala teachings –so I dont know how would the present Sakyong enshrine that as at least a possibility? For I too think that is a possibility because of karma.
So yes its debateable.
Well best from a still sunny UK
Rita Ashworth
I was the one who first wondered out loud what if the next Sakyong decided to be Jewish some years back.
Wouldn’t bother me a bit.
If would if he tried to imposes Judaism on others.
Dear Ashley,Yes indeed a great and wonderful begining,Real Kingdom of Shambhala sound,now all could join in forgetting old pains of this or that ,and work for the good of Enlightened Kingdom of Shambhala,where its fine to expess idea’s without hope or fear…
Tonight I toast your ancestors even the Roman ones,
now if I can sit down with a Roman thats progress,
luck on the bread
Thank you
John
P.S. I love you
Great work, Ash. Haven’t had a chance to do more than skim through but just for now, a few queries:
1) Article 2, section 2: The Church and State of Shambhala shall be unified in the person of the Sakyong who, as a Buddhist, shall be the upholder of Church and State.
Sounds like non-separation of Church and State. ?
2) Article 2, 5: Upon the ascension of the Sakyong to the Throne, the members of the Royal Family, the members of Parliament and the office holders mentioned in section 19 of this Article shall take an Oath of Allegiance to the Sakyong.
Also sounds like what we have now, and I’m unsure how this meshes with Article I, 1: “Shambhala is a Sovereign Kingdom whose Sovereign power belongs to the people of Shambhala.”
What does this “Oath of Allegiance” mean, precisely? I think this is a crucial point. (Perhaps it is specified elsewhere in the Constitution and I didn’t catch it on my first skim.)
3) Finally, is the reference to “Oxonian English” partly tongue-in-cheek? I mean, that’s not a language, of course; it’s a dialect. And not the dialect of Oxfordshire even! Normally official languages are specified in order to indicate the language of government documents and so on. English (at least “polished” written English) is English. “Oxonian” can only have reference to the spoken aspect, and here I’m still confused. Is this saying that when on official business one must put on an Oxonian accent?! I always understood that the meaning of VCTR’s elocution lessons was not to have everyone going around aping Oxford English but rather to create a skillful means for paying attention to our speech so that it might become more precise, clear, and mindful. ?
Ash: first of all I should thank you for reposting something I’d written some time back on the James, Rita, and Ash table. It was encouraging to get such a response. I’ve been away from things for some time now and only just recently noticed as I read through the threads. You’ve written a very great deal and have covered so many topics that I hardly know where to begin. So, here, I’ll just comment on the latest item, this being your definition of ‘monarchy’ as regarding the integrity of the constitution as a whole as distinct from monarchy as a distinctive office, a part of a larger whole, this tree of life metaphor you thoughtfully worked out. I agree. Or it would be better to say that your intuition is very much in line with the idea of the classical tradition regarding the significance of ‘the one’ in the series: ‘one’, ‘few’, ‘many’ (monarchy, aristocracy, democracy). My understanding of the matter of the Greek analysis is that we should employ it in just the same manner as we do with the principles of the separated powers. It’s a form of analysis that is applicable to any and all constitutions we care to examine. We look for the principle of monarchy, which is to say the principle of unity, just as we would look for an executive. Likewise with the other two principles.
My only qualm with the ground of our assumptions as we proceed is this: is ‘legislation’ what we are about? Is that what we want to do? I worry about this. Generally speaking the constitutions of which we speak are essentially legislation machines, machines constructed to produce and disseminate legislative ‘enactments’. So most of the architectural details of the machine are concerned with the dynamics of the process. There should be the right sort of two way flow. Everything should be just and fair and so forth. But the product of the machine is authority, the authorative enactment, ‘law’. What I worry about is ‘legalism’. But not many of us are familiar with this term. This isn’t surprising because it proceeds from the Chinese classical tradition. Most of us are hardly acquainted with our own traditions much less those of our neighbours.
Very briefly, legalism arose during the era of the warring states, this is after the time of Confucius and leading up to the Chin unification (circa 220 BC). Legalism was the doctrine of ’standards’ (unification of weights and measures) and the enactment of ‘laws’ entailing rewards and punishments. It might sound innocuous but it was radically new and revolutionary at the time. Rewards were offered for behaviour that was in line with royal aims which at the time were concentrated into two programs termed ‘agriculture and warfare’ (wealth and power). So if you produced lots of grain to feed the armies or came back from the front with lots of heads from decapitated enemies you would be rewarded, and reliably rewarded. This last is crucial, predictability was the essence of the new program. Likewise if your actions were not in line with the administrative program you would most likely die. The punishments of this regime were draconian. Again, predictability was the aim. Now this new administrative environment of rewards and punishments was aimed at producing a new subject, an obedient, compliant, and predictable subject, the subject of hopes and fears, a properly individuated subject, decisively abstracted out of the former relations of kin and community, now subject to royal administrative ordinances. This is psychological materialism in the raw. This is it.
If you read the Chinese histories, like Ssu Ma chen, you will discover that the tradition regarded this era of the warring states as a time of hell on earth, when people were used like cattle or worse, when materialism held absolute sway, and the leviathans just fought it out until one of them won all the stakes. The first Chin emperor wanted Heaven’s acknowledgement for his title ’son of heaven’ but heaven just pissed on him while he trekked his way up to Mt. Tai. The people endured what they had to endure but nobody liked it. Nobody celebrated the new administrative enactments as a milestone in human advancement inaugurating an era of freedom and equality, as we have.
Well yes, I’m afraid so. This is exactly what we have done. The whole modern era has been just this ‘warring states’ era and we too have been subject to endless rounds of legislation with the aim of increasing wealth and power for the sake of our leaders who are wholly absorbed in their great game calculations. This is so but we insistently believe that we, and we alone, have arrived at the plateau of liberation and stand proudly as a beacon for all of humanity and all times. Now I think this is rather strange and calls for an explanation.
I believe we do this because we are deluded with a very strong dose of spiritual materialism. To explain: we really do believe that we stand apart from the rest of humanity because we alone have achieved a condition of constitutional freedom and equality, never before achieved by any people of any time or place. The standard explanation for this is embedded within our liberal philosophy of progressive history. The long standing conventional explanation for all this emphasizes the central importance of the great Reform initiated by Luther, and more especially Calvin. Previously spiritual vows had been directed to the ‘other world’, or the ‘next world’ but the meaning of Reform was that spiritual aspiration should work out its salvation within the ‘callings’ of ‘this world’.
Max Weber is the pertinent thinker here. He is the thinker of spiritual materialism. I think so. I do hope to hear from others on this matter. I hope very much that contemporary Buddhists and more especially Shambhalians will take the trouble to read the Protestant Ethic and discuss the matter in a public forum such as this. Weber subtitled his masterpiece ‘and the Spirit of Capitalism’. Now at the time (circa 1905) the phrase ’spiritual materialism’ was not available to Weber and would not become available in either German or English until it was floated in the early 70s by Trungpa, of course. But my claim is this: if this phrase had been available to Weber he would have employed it because that’s exactly what he was trying to get at. Read it and see for yourselves.
The Dharma teachers of the past told us to keep our vows, to uphold our vows and beware of downfalls. They always said that this was important and that violated vows had the most serious consequences. A reading of Weber will give the reader an idea of just what kind of consequences can follow from ruptured vows. Please read Weber.
I hope my reader will forgive me for playing the part of a terrorist planting road bombs on the path to constitutional fullness. I do support this and hope everybody will continue: read, read, and read some more. Think, study, contemplate, and discuss and so forth. Me to. But I’m convinced that we cannot just extrapolate an ideal edifice out of our intuitions of what is good, true, and beautiful, or at least not uncritically. We actually are ruled by the Three Lords and have been for centuries. As a consequence our very ideals are polluted. Again, I do not wish to take the wind out of anybody’s sails or impede investigation into this business of the constitution. It is of the greatest importance. But personally I’m even more interested in trying to work out the contours of the constitutions that have already been established by the said Lords of materialism. This entails a line of self criticism basically which will not be welcomed by everybody. Clearly it’s not enough to say that the orient is good and the West is bad, as many have. Nor is it helpful to react to this superficiality with a reassertion of the standard fare: democracy, individualism, science, balance of power constitutions, secularism and so forth. Surely we can do a bit better than all that? Let’s hope so. There’s much to discuss. But enough for now. I thank my readers for the patience it takes to wade through all this confusion. Sincerely, Kevin Frost.
This is already getting so abstracted it is very difficult to make a coherent response.
Ash, It is irresponsible and false to equate samaya with loyalty to a state. Such assumptions are precisely the kind of problem we are now seeing manifest in Shambhala International and is exemplified by any number of theocracies in history. If the constitution is a banner from which we fly our religion, then it is not a constitution, it is religious PR.
It’s really very simply… unless one gets too abstract. If the path is entirely dependent on one’s relationship with the guru or vajra master, as is the case in vajrayana, and the guru is also the head of state, then the very predictable result is an elitist state/church which will use religious principles to achieve political goals which will inevitably include manipulating society in the way a small elite see fit, which will always veer in the direction of the elite’s personal benefit. This is inevitable given human nature. If that is the kind of government we are creating, if we are working on a constitution that supports that kind of theocracy, we should just stop. We would be recreating a monster which has been created many times before.
Loyalty to a state is NOT a form of samaya. It is not a means to a political end. Ever. Please use these terms as they were meant to be used, or better leave them out altogether. (In the link Mark provided, Trungpa Rinpoche himself made a distinction between political conasciousness and the kinds of equanimity and samadhi won through practice. It is NOT the same game.)
I don’t see, as Jim Harz remarks, that any of this so far is or is even meant to respond to the various problems and corruptions that have arisen, (I am mostly thinking about a non-functioning conflict resolution system, for one example, but there is also the split, the disruption of culture which has caused internal conflict, usurpation of previous teachings, and a number of other issues.)
I am extremely wary of relying on the Bhutanese Constitution. What we should keep in mind as we peruse it, the Bhutanese government has been and is still involved in unresolved ethnic cleansing, which they themselves do not deny. If the existence of such a document does not resolve something so obviously in conflict with anything a sane person would consider dharmic, we should be very careful of it.
As far as the American Constitution not expressing sacred view, I am seeing a prejudice for religiosity and flowery language. If something doesn’t inspire immediately, that is not a sign that it does not express sacred view. That’s just as likely a sign of boredom and impatience. As far as I am concerned when people are respecting each other and the human condition, showing concern for others and doing things to help rather than to avoid conflict, that is where sacred view can flourish. All the flowery language making it clear that there is in fact only one state religion, even if there is lipservice to supporting other religions, is a smokescreen for what in Bhutan has manifested as ethnic cleansing.
Actually, it was the Regent who was supposed to oversee the religious aspects of Buddhism., if I understood this correctly. At least that was before the Regent got into trouble, and the Sakyong was toi over see the Kingdom.
The Queen or King of England does not oversee the Church of England.
Having a King or Queen as your religious leader is ones personal choice, but I personally think it’s inviting trouble.
It was Mark who helped me define what the religious role was in Shambhala a few years back. Maybe he can help out again in this department.
Mark S.pointed out that Patrick Sweeney can not have a successor, for example.
Can you (Mark) tell me where you learned that from?
Rob
Kevin Frost:
“My only qualm with the ground of our assumptions as we proceed is this: is ‘legislation’ what we are about?”
A: if you have some sort of rule of law, then all citizens including Monarch are bound to it. In a theocratic State, that is the law of God (or whatever), in a secular State it is law however it is defined. Some sort of code (even an unwritten code of honor) that is above all human agencies. In other words, you do not have rule by individual Person (in the form of Tyrant or Monarch etc.) alone, they too are beholden to certain norms. This extends authority, to a certain degree, to all citizens who together learn and practice such Law and hold each other, from top to bottom, accountable, including of course, and importantly, that there are standards and procedural avenues whereby those in lower strata of society can reasonably challenge abuse by those from above.
Re Lords of Materialism and call to critically examine: bravo, well said.
When this topic was first broached in the Monarch/Shambhala thread I was immediately both interested and hesitant to get involved because of the study such an undertaking could and should involve. Yours is the first post, I think, discussing the aspects in at least one important sort of theoretical and analytical way I suspected it should go (along with other types of input and commentary of course) and I think you would agree that, albeit with some excellent references and insightful thrusts, you barely scratched one of many surfaces rather then delved into any subject matter in depth.
That said, though, one could argue that most modern Constitutions are attempts, however misguided or naive, to contain the Lords of Materialism to some extent or another. CTR’s great insight about ‘spiritual materialism’ did not really address general materialism per se (if I recall correctly), although the Three Lords teachings are definitely key insights about this more generally. But I think it fair to say that whatever the more absolutist and pure intentions of a Rule of Law being above all Actors in a Society, our current contemporary models, both Western and Chinese, are Extremely Materialist and to my mind, at least, deeply flawed to put it mildly, even as secular (as opposed to spiritual) manifestations.
In my proffered anglicized excerpts in the 11.45 am post, right at the beginning where it says we are going to be a Constitutional Monarchy (I had removed the word Democratic from the original to keep it even more simple) I had a parenthesis: ” [as a first stab, why not, even if not necessarily ultimately desirable.]“; because I too am not so sure that there are very many good models out there necessarily, nor that modern Constitutional Republics and Democracies are all they are cracked up to be, indeed they might be rather pernicious frauds. But I lack your education in this, sad to say, so such impressions are more intuitional than informed, which is simply not good enough, although can be a viable starting ground.
I have downloaded the Weber text and will peruse. Thank you for the reference. Never heard of it. I am hoping it will provide some insight into the mentality of the Framers given most of them were hard core Protestants, although there were many different varieties back then including Puritans, Deists and so forth.
Sidebar thought which has been percolating, but is definitely parenthetical:
One of the virtues of having women outside the realm of public affairs, including the vote, is that they were far more influential as the invisible network interwoven in all strata of society from top to bottom, able to communicate both with themselves in unofficial, but no doubt vibrant ways, and of course able to bring considerable depth of counsel to, as well as pressure to bear on, their husbands, brothers and sons, and of course also other women, including therefore other men’s wives and sons and so forth, both individually and in swarms if necessary. Considerable, pervasive societal power in other words.
By allowing them into the public arena, they became more visible and equal in some sense, but lost a huge amount of power in another. I have never seen this discussed anywhere. Frankly, I think all parts of society have lost out because of this even though I know it is a very non PC thing to say. Personally I think the more power women have the better, but also the more that the two genders are separated in terms of Form, also the better, which includes forms of power and influence. There should be two different mandalas or spheres that inter-relate of course, but are kept separate, just like King and Queen or Husband and Wife.
But this is why basically the only change to the BC Const that I offered in the Outline Short Form (as a basis of discussion), was the idea of having Regional Dekyongs elected as MP’s be half male and half female so that the Parliament would end up being 50-50. The other choice – which I did not put in – would be all male or all female. But if it is mixed, then it should be mixed properly and precisely so that the men are still men and the women still women, and seated accordingly, either by Region with the sexes separated, or the entire Chamber with the sexes separated, which come to think of it, would be better: separated altogether by gender, but then seated according to Region, each Region mirrored on the other side of the Hall by the respective members of the opposite sex.
James, sorry you find it abstract. I do go on, I know, but fairly quickly brought things down to a 1.5 page Constitution that can be one (of others) to be considered as subject of contemplation, debate etc. Personally I think it less abstract to have a short document to work with than just loosely discussing ‘Constitution’ without anything specific being discussed.
You can offer your own Constitution of course. Just go ahead and do it.
Re: “It is irresponsible and false to equate samaya with loyalty to a state.”
I think this is a seminal area to contemplate. But first, why don’t you say why?
For example: if the state is based on the principles of basic goodness and the three jewels, then being loyal to that state, and therefore to each other, is both secular and religious at the same time. Perhaps this is a bad thing, but in theory if our state is based on Shambhala principles versus Buddhadharma, then in theory it should be fine.
(I personally have always thought separation of Church and State a tad questionable, to say the least, by the way. Which doesn’t mean there can’t be many religions in one society.)
“It’s really very simple… unless one gets too abstract. If the path is entirely dependent on one’s relationship with the guru or vajra master, as is the case in vajrayana, and the guru is also the head of state, then the very predictable result is an elitist state/church which will use religious principles to achieve political goals which will inevitably include manipulating society in the way a small elite see fit, which will always veer in the direction of the elite’s personal benefit.”
Good points. But we are not talking about a ‘path’ but a Constitution for a country or society. And you seem to totally ignore the bulk of the thrust of my proffered starting model namely the Parliamentary Quotient including numerous checks and balances for all involved.
More importantly, your conclusion there about things being skewed by and to the Elites is a perfect description of the USA right now, a model State which has aggressively, even outrageously, been separating Religion and State. And yet the result is just what you have described in terms of guru-based dynamics. I humbly and warmly encourage you to think through this seeming dichotomy, or rather outrageous co-incidence. Why do both systems lead to the same result? Is there any way a Monarch principle can help mitigate this in a society based on Shambhala principles? Isn’t that a worthy goal? How can my proffered short form be changed (as no doubt it should) to better further this, or rather avoid the pitfall you have described given it is so ubiquitous in history and current world affairs? Please, let’s look at this, that’s the point.
Re: “Loyalty to a state is NOT a form of samaya. It is not a means to a political end. Ever. Please use these terms as they were meant to be used, or better leave them out altogether.” I could have said this above, but please point out where in the Constitution this is raised. Personally, it never crossed my mind to confuse the two, nor did I assume that the Monarch in question, SMR, would preside over a population comprised only of tantrikas all of whom are his students. That might be the case with our current sangha, but this Consitution presupposes, as I said earlier on, an existing country. So yes it is abstract, but the idea is to establish first what a Constitution would be for a ‘real’ country, line up those principles (which as you see can be done in little more than one page which is not bad) and then apply those principles to our current church and see if they point the way to something more immediate and practical in line with our current sangha. But I think it would be very hard to draw up a Constitution just for our current population without getting lost in the various practical twists and bends that our somewhat strange configuration requires (Church with hundreds of local centers throughout the world).
I am sorry you don’t see how something like this relates to conflict resolution. I thought you, more than anyone, would see a link there. We have lack of two way authority which is a sine qua non of any such. We also have no checks and balances.
I have never managed to read anything clear and thorough about the Bhutanese contretemps. They have little record of being wantonly cruel, prone to war and violence, and I suspect there is a problem that needs to be dealt with and for which they have not yet come up with a proper solution. But I confess I don’t know anything about all that. In any case, the Bhutanese people now have the power, should they wish to exercise it, of changing the National Policy regarding this, and in short order.
We face the same issue now in the US: are we going to keep a relatively homogenous society speaking one language or are we going to break up into various zones. Forced immigration of Asians into Britain is ruining the indigenous culture there, no matter how clumsily people like BP’s Nick Griffin express this and how hysterically people respond to such discussions. In other words, without ‘ethnic cleansing’ America is probably finished, and in only a couple more decades.
Or put another way: even if you don’t like religion as a basis, you have to have some sort of Unity principle in a society. You can’t just and only have diversity. Diversity in the context of which One Society? How do you define, constitute and maintain One Society, even if is One comprising every individual on the Planet (a bad idea), or (better) one small country like Bhutan or Shambhala.
Clearly you think the Bhutanese model is so totally flawed it should not be considered. Again, you are free to offer one of your own.
My sense of my short form is that it is just a starting template, nothing more. I deliberately made extremely few changes, but mainly translated various titles and terms into ones familiar to us.
As a starting point, I think it very interesting in this regard: if one has the ability to leave aside whether or not Bhutan is a worthy model by simply reading the language as is, one can contrast this working model with our current model (which is not articulated in constitutional terms, if any) to see how we measure up or down.
In any case, here is a link to the Short Form for reference:
http://www.frenchroadbakery.tk/SC%20OutlineFormat%201.htm
Damcho:
Sorry, I get these via Google mail and earlier replies were covered over by later ones and have just now reviewed the replies in the thread.
Yes, this one does not have separation like the BC one. Of course, that could be a bone of contention, and rightly so. Also, this one presupposes Buddhism as the national religion. Probably not something we want to frame that way. But again, this is just a template, nothing more. The issue is there to be considered, in other words, front and centre.
Probably we could try to translate this into Shambhala terms more assiduously and see if there is a more secular way of doing this which provides both Unity and Sacred Principle.
However, rather than leaping to the conclusion that Church and State must be separated, might be good to consider more whys and hows.
Or put another way: how do we frame a model that promotes Unity and also provides for checks and balances, including dissent and conflict resolution and does the whole thing in the context of perpetrating* a society based upon and furthering human life and society based on bedrock Shambhala principles?
* Old English usage : (comb. form of patrāre to father, bring about; see pater)
2) Yes, I also am not sure how it meshes. My only attempt to address this dynamic – discussing but not formalized in the current first draft template – was the tree business, the two way flow of power thought. I also think, as stated earlier, that this is an essential Dharma, or truth, in any society, since however ignorantly or wisely perceived, the People (which is everyone in all classes without exception) mutually create their own structure, including their leadership and followership. So there is no getting around it. In other words, the People are responsible for the existence of Tyrants who are putting them to death in droves, as well as for overthrowing them. Tyrants only can function because enough people are willing to do their bidding, no matter how unjust, and by extension enough other people letting the Tyrant’s minions lord it over them so they can sleep safely every night in their beds without being poisoned by their servants; they do not and cannot act in a vacuum, just as no Monarch can enjoy authority without the willing consent and yes, loyalty, of the general population.
Allegiance: in the BC constitution there is an oath at the bottom. But basically it should mean that one is loyal to the principles of the constitution which should be based on something. In our case some sort of basic goodness and Warriorship principles.
Re Oxonian: I don’t believe one can pronounce Oxonian English properly with tongue in cheek and therefore would never dream of suggesting such a thing!
Samaya, by the way, means oath which is something to which one is bound. Not all oaths are tantric but all oaths (by definition) are binding. When we use the term ’samaya’ we are referring to an oath to a tantric master. This should not be confused with oaths in general even though fundamentally it is the same dynamic. A marriage oath for example is binding and there are serious consequences when it is broken. But it is not a tantric samaya to a vajra master. Each has specific quotients.
Rob: The Queen of England is the Head of the Church of England, (last time I checked) though other religions are welcome in the Kingdom. Personally I think this is a good model. Why? Because if you separate Church and State and have a Religious Authority like a Pope or Dalai Shambhala Lama separated from the Chakravartin/Monarch/King, they can set up separate lines of authority, thereby violating the Unity Thrust of any Constitution (or society). Nothing can be above or beyond the Authority of the Monarch by definition because such a role unifies all elements of any given society. At least that’s how I see it, constitutionally speaking. But of course this is something worth considering in terms of our fledgling ‘constitution’ here.
On re-reading my Short Form I realise some of my answers above were confused and thus confusing: there is no mentioned Unity of State and Church, nor indeed any mention of Church except in the opening sentence but therein no mention even of Buddhadharma per se. It is left wide open. Those unity of State and church phrases were from the long form. Current form only says:
Following in the lineage and spirit of the mandates of the Druk Sakyong and the Sakyong Trinlay Dradul, the following Constitutional outline is proposed for discussion:
1. A Constitutional Monarchy
2. The principal Elements therein comprising:
a. State belonging to all People therein in whom ultimately resides all powers within the State;
b. Monarch from hereditary Royal Family who symbolizes the Unity of the State and is the Chief Example and Promulgator of the Constitution and the values of Enlightened Society which it purposes to engender.
c. Parliament – elected from local communities, two houses …..
Any problems with that?
Of course one can have that argument, but the thrust I am proposing here is to articulate an over-arching architectural template for a social structure in constitutional terms after which one can get into more detail about specific religious and cultural elements.
This short form did not define the rights and duties of Shambhala citizens which is a shortcoming. But structurally they are a given so no big loss for now. The main intention was to keep it short but not so short that it was overly undefined.
JP: will try to mail off that #*&^!!%ing book!
Dear Ash,
Re: the English monarchy, I think they changed that a number of years ago to read “Defender of the Faiths” rather than “Defender of the Faith” So as to incorporate all religious bodies. I believe this is correct, but Rita could check it out.
QUEEN AND CHURCH OF ENGLAND
The Sovereign holds the title ‘Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England’.
The Church of England, and the monarch’s relation to it, was established through a series of Parliamentary Acts in the 1530s, which brought about the English Reformation.
Henry VIII broke from the Roman Catholic Church by denying papal claims to ecclesiastical or any other jurisdiction, and by declaring himself rather than the Pope as Supreme Head of the Church in England.
There are many examples of the relationship between the established Church and the State.
Archbishops and bishops are appointed by The Queen on the advice of the Prime Minister, who considers the names selected by a Church Commission. They take an oath of allegiance to The Queen on appointment and may not resign without Royal authority.
The connection between Church and State is also symbolised by the fact that the ‘Lords Spiritual’ (consisting of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York and 24 diocesan bishops) sit in the House of Lords. Parish priests also take an oath of allegiance to The Queen.
The General Synod (including the bishops, elected representatives from the clergy and the laity) is the supreme authority of the Church of England. The Queen opens the Synod after the elections in the dioceses every five years.
Since 1919, the Synod (formerly called the Church Assembly) has had the power to pass Measures on any matter concerning the Church of England.
Following acceptance of the Measures by both Houses of Parliament (which cannot amend them), they are submitted for Royal Assent and become law.
Note:
The Preface to the 39 Articles of the Church of England describes the monarch as ‘being by God’s Ordinance, according to Our just Title, Defender of the Faith and … Supreme Governor of the Church of England’.
In addition to legislating for the Church by Measure, the General Synod has the power to legislate by Canon in its own domestic affairs such as worship and doctrine, but The Queen’s assent is required for the promulgation of such Canons. Such assent is given on the Home Secretary’s advice.
In his or her coronation oath, the Sovereign promises to maintain the Church.
The Sovereign must be in communion with the Church of England, that is, a full, confirmed member.
http://web.archive.org/web/20080307003413/www.royalinsight.gov.uk/output/Page4708.asp
( Ash comment: I hope this is current but I think so. Interesting that here too they have both Monarch and Parliament check/balancing each other.)
The authority of the Monarch was always, whether acknowledged or not, whether with formal checks or not, largely Symbolic. This is no small power since ultimately power is a Sign Language phenomenon, or perhaps one could say is communicated principally via the inner mandala of perception and emotion. It is not a building or physical object in other words.
It takes two to tango, i.e. Power-er, and Power-ee. This is mainly on the Symbolic, or Speech, or Inner level when all is said and done. Few modern people see Monarchs in this way and tend to believe they are just fancy dress brigands, sort of like Royal Pirates. (They well may be, but ideally there is a little more to it than that!)
Ash, a few quick thoughts:
“Probably we could try to translate this into Shambhala terms more assiduously and see if there is a more secular way of doing this which provides both Unity and Sacred Principle.”
I think this is a better approach myself.
“Allegiance: in the BC constitution there is an oath at the bottom. But basically it should mean that one is loyal to the principles of the constitution which should be based on something. In our case some sort of basic goodness and Warriorship principles.”
Okay, but in this case the members of Parliament need to be taking an oath of allegiance to the constitution, not to the King. That’s an important distinction I think.
“…the People are responsible for the existence of Tyrants who are putting them to death in droves, as well as for overthrowing them. Tyrants only can function because enough people are willing to do their bidding, no matter how unjust … no Monarch can enjoy authority without the willing consent and yes, loyalty, of the general population.”
I’m not persuaded by this. To say that “the People are responsible for the existence of Tyrants who are putting them to death in droves” assumes a system of equal power. Equal power of expression and equal power of action. We know that this has never been the case. Also, the word “People” in and of itself, capitalized, is just a big homogenizing abstraction, isn’t it? A poor non-white person in the US, say, is going to have a rather different understanding of it than a well-off white person.
And Monarchs can live through a long reign with only the willing consent of a small minority of the population–namely the aristocracy and military. Maybe *eventually* a tyrannical regime always gets toppled. But “eventually” isn’t good enough. We need to be setting up a system with enough checks to keep such a regime from arising in the first place. Once it’s in place, it’s too late.
Another way of viewing the Monarch, perhaps, is that the final, ultimate manifestation of any Society’s Law or Dharma is not a text (Bible, Statues, Ideology), or a statue or other object of worship, but a Human Being with body, speech and mind who, as such, embodies and is the ultimate manifestation and Authority of such Law or Dharma.
This is basically why I prefer it as an ideal model, because of this Human Being quotient. It makes the Constitution, whatever it may be, truly Alive and Present, which no written or other non-bioorganismic, let alone non-orgasmic – existens can effect.
Also, Human Beings are relatively easy to deal with, whereas arguing with a Book or a Statue can be, although perhaps enjoyable, rather a waste of time!
Also, an Enlightened Monarch (what the Shambhala Kingdom aspires to in the role of a Sakyong of course), as a Human Being, can also manifest to all and sundry in the kingdom awareness of and overt Qualities of such Enlightenment, which itself represents the pinnacle of human potential. This is sometimes referred to in other contexts as ’sacred perception’ or ‘awareness of the sacred’.
Such awareness of the sacred can only happen when body and mind are synchronised, one is Alive in the Present, i.e. one is in a good Spiritual State, which hopefully one’s spiritual values and disciplines have helped to engender a karmic disposition towards, to greater and lesser degrees depending upon individual capacities and karmic tendencies.
So a Society aspiring to engender a Sacred Kingdom, or Kingdom of the Sacred, would find it very hard to achieve without a living Human Being embodying the Monarch/Unifying principle as such. So enlightened awareness, which as it arises in the Presence of the Monarch is a mutual perception, i.e. co-dependently arising on the part of Monarch and Subjects, is a living, human experience as well as ongoing societal dynamic. Again, this cannot be done with a Book or Statue since they cannot, in the present tense, speak to you, make decisions about current events, control, prevent, persuade, uplift, design new dances, anthems, adjudicate, inspire, lead armies and so forth.
Esoterically, the Monarch becomes the highest expression of the Gross National Karma Quotient in that, assuming such Society is jolly well bound together in the vision and practice of basic goodness, then the lungta and sacred presence engendered in society in general or during any Assembly with His or Her Majesty, is a living, present expression of the karmic state of awareness, and thus also learning and virtue, of all the members of that Society.
I don’t see any way around having a living, Human Monarch in a Sacred, aka Enlightened, Society. And therefore the notion of separating Church and State becomes, at the very least, highly questionable, if not for Americans and Brits who had to deal with RC Popes and other whatnots, then at least for Shambhalians.
None of the above is meant to imply that various spiritual paths, including individual developmental ones, cannot lead one into a state of sacredness. However, in the societal context, given that all societies throughout time have to have more or less structured hierarchies in order to function as such, from families on up to Empires, such a role as Monarch seems completely unavoidable, not to mention necessary and extremely beneficial in that it can provide a boost, or mechanical advantage as it were, to the pre-existing levels of virtue and decency in any given society.
Indeed, this is the societal fulcrum that a Shambhala Monarch principle represents, namely that by having a Shambhala versus Buddhist or Christian monarch, all faiths, paths and associations are permissible provided their adherents can bind wholeheartedly with the unified Shambhalian basic-goodness-engendered-and-promoting whole. A Monarch could in theory be a Christian or a Buddhist, but they would also, as a member of the family and spiritual lineage of DDM, be in tune with and ultimately empowered by the Rigden principle, so in this context their individual faith might not be important insofar as it might have little or nothing to do with their ability to manifest the four dignities, live in the Kalapa Court, serve the Kingdom as the Embodiment of the Sacred (Human) Being and so forth. Because the Monarch is One, his authoritative scope, or role, embraces All within the Kingdom so he cannot be partisan in any way, either in terms of religious or political doctrines which exist on a different level in the society.
Damcho:
The oath in the long form goes like this:
Third Schedule
Oath or Affirmation of Office
“I, .., do solemnly swear/affirm that I shall uphold the sovereignty
and integrity of Shambhala faithfully, conscientiously discharge my duties in the service of the Shambhala Kingdom and perform the duties of my office without fear or favour to the best of my ability, and that I shall bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of Shambhala. ”
This is lifted almost verbatim from the BC. So loyalty is to Constitution and the principles for which it stands, and these are based, in the first clause on:
“Shambhala is a Sovereign Kingdom whose Sovereign power belongs to the people of Shambhala. ”
The King is first mentioned as someone providing ‘guidance’ and manifesting as a Symbol of the Unity of the Kingdom.
The more I read it, the better it gets. He thought through quite a few of these things. The big difference, I suspect, is that he posits Buddhism as the National Religion, no ifs ands or buts, but he does not put that Religion as something which has any authority whatsoever, procedurally or doctrinally speaking, in the ongoing running or conduct of the State.
With Shambhala we have something that can say a little bit more about the nature of the Kingdom, the rights and duties of the Citizens and officials, but I suspect that structurally, in terms of relations of King, Citizen, Parliament etc. there is nothing in those teachings or lineage per se that would be violated or prejudiced by a system featuring a democratically elected Parliament, or one without. Again, that sort of spiritual aspect is not all that important in terms of the basic structural design, or ethos.
At least so it is increasingly seeming to me.
I could be barking up the wrong tree (and having just found dog shit having somehow miraculously manifested in my driver’s side foot thingies even though I don’t have a dog nor a neighbour that could well be the case!), but I think we are overly habituated to perceiving Shambhala as just another, albeit original and deeply vital, spiritual line, i.e. a new and improved form of BuddhaDharma perhaps.
I think it is a different animal altogether which, although containing pithy esoteric and spiritual elements, is not a religion or spiritual path per se in that it functions principally within an overtly defined societal container rather than being a set of teachings and techniques designed for individuals to study, practice and improve themselves with.
“A poor non-white person in the US, say, is going to have a rather different understanding of it than a well-off white person. ”
Everybody is responsible for the nature of their birth, how they live and where they live.
In any case, since white men have been under siege for decades, and white people in general will soon be minorities in both Europe and the US, the shoe will soon be on the other foot!
“Everybody is responsible for the nature of their birth, how they live and where they live.”
And this is helpful in explaining eg Auschwitz et al … how?
“White men have been under siege for decades…”
Holy &#(*%! By who?! And how?! And where and when?! And a woman’s place is in the home too, you said above… I’m kind of lost here Ash. I suddenly feel like we’re living on different planets.
Auschwitz: in a nutshell, yes. Will not discuss that one another word except small biographical note purely for fun: [ Am great grandson of a Belorussian Rabbi on mother’s side, so one quarter Jewish even though I didn’t know of this until long after my grandfather died since clearly he renounced his Jewish background – even his wife of 50 years did not know, let alone his daughter/my mother; none of his family members – that I have been told of – perished in WWII; one lived in Germany throughout as a diamond merchant; one great uncle who died in a concentration camp did so in Russia years after the war; he was one of the founders of Israel and used to own large portions of what is now Tel Aviv. So maybe I have an Israel founder in the bloodline too come to think of it! )
White men issues: a large, vague topic, best left unexamined here, and ultimately a red herring anyway, i.e. not important. That said: in many ways they have been demonized in the public discourse for several decades now in ways that seem both deliberate as well as factually challenged, not to mention downright unkind. As you did yourself in your remark which is so conventionally accepted these days as to be barely noticeable. But I notice and so do quite a few other ‘white men’. We’re tired of it and I just hope you don’t have to learn the hard way how much worse things can be when we are totally out of the picture, which is about to happen in the sense that there is no longer any such thing (except in shrinking pockets) of ‘white culture’ or a ‘white race’ and therefore the term ‘white men’ will soon be functionally meaningless, a relic of the past. Could be a good thing, of course, but personally I like strong, local, tribal cultures with people more or less looking similar in each one. More fun. That’s my idea of diversity btw, not everyone being the same! ’nuff said.
I don’t recall about ‘women in the home’. I did say I suspect there is/was more power for women when they have the invisible/formless/unofficial chains of communication whereas the men have the official/formal/visible ones, or at the least that there are two separate, parallel networks and it is best to separate their roles and functions as much as possible. I don’t have a precise quote handy but CTR said something along the lines of: ‘the degree of decadence of a society can be measured by the degree to which the sexes are separated’ with the inference being that the less they are separated, the more decadent the society.
Food for thought…
I am not very modern (or perhaps am way ahead and very much post-modern) so am not surprised you feel you and I are on different planets. That’s how I feel most of the time myself when regarding so-called ‘progressive’ societies and the fascist mess they are becoming!
I on the other hand am trying to locate a planet,What about “The White Brotherhood” my freind Shin Shiva is a member ,from an english point of view are the Spanish white?they do smell of garlic,Just to inject {not injest} I am going to try to reseach how more tribal peoples worked out their relationships with each other,this might be useful on the local level such as as townships and villages,will report back
love
O I was wondering what is the ethnic makeup of Shambhala people including Tibetians?
JP
also wonder how the Pashtuns do it?
40,000,000 of them, have been in place since before memory and history, and still very tribal I gather. Which is probably why they are a target and we don’t like them. They just won’t buy our bonds! (or is it buy into our bondage!?)
Swat is a Pashtun area. Early Vajrayogini nexus. Probably where Da Mo/Bodhidharma, who apparently met Milarepa on his way to conquer China some time before Milarepa was born I believe (!), came from.
” I am involved in the land of a ‘Leonine’ (lion-like) and brave people, where every foot of the ground is like a well of steel, confronting my soldier. You have brought only one son into the world, but Everyone in this land can be called an Alexander.[34]
—Alexander the Great, 330 B.C.”
What about Angkor Wat culture anything known?
I think I have a copy of Peter Harris..Zhou Daguan..visit in 1295,translated from the Chinese..will try to locate it….remember it does talk about court CTR and I did some reseach in Charlemont will try to find notes..on Kalapa Court
JP
Ash, I think all of these questions are quite relevant to what we’re trying to do here. They touch the heart of how we conceive of the political realm, the nature of power, interdependence, shared values and purpose, and so on.
With regard to “white men”: first of all, how on earth can what I said be construed as either a “demonization” of white men, “factually challenged,” or “downright unkind”? I merely said that in the US the world looks quite different in certain ways to a poor non-white person than it does to a well-off white one. (I didn’t use the word “man” by the way…) This seems to me so obvious as not to need saying, and is about class as much as it is about race. Can you explain to me how my statement is any of the things you ascribe to it? Choose any or all: demonization; factually challenged; downright unkind.
Beyond this, who, specifically, is doing the demonizing? What are they saying, and what do you think their motivation might be? Do you think your own attachment to what you are calling “white culture” / the “white race” might possibly influence your judgment of these others?
These questions are relevant to our discussion because they very much affect how we understand dissent and minority status in a culture. “White” men still dominate the media, the corporate world, and national politics in the US. So I suppose they must be demonizing themselves? Or are you referring to the swampier outposts of the blogosphere–which, please remember, has two sides. And then there is Fox News… Yes, we now have a half-white president, and are your ears open to the ocean of racialist (and frightening) demonization emanating from those who hate him?
Even more to the point, “race” ultimately doesn’t work as a concept, right? From the standpoint of biological understanding it is in the final analysis incoherent. And from a non-dual perspective that should go without saying also. So I find the idea of “white culture” or a “white race” troubling. Perhaps, again from the standpoint of interdependence, it might also be worth remembering how several hundred years of thinking like that–thinking in terms of “white” versus “black,” combined with the power differential that brought us “3 / 5 of a person,” slavery, lynchings, “separate-but-equal,” and so on might help engender the demonization you are hearing?
For myself, the only phenomenon I can imagine you might be referring to are the Southern jokes beloved of some comedians. I cringe whenever I hear them and never find them funny. Those *are* unkind. But I would argue that these jokes are not about “whiteness” but rather are mocking a particular kind of worldview. What makes them indefensible is that they do so via slurs on the basic intelligence of those holding them. Hannity, Beck, Limbaugh, Coulter, Savage etc etc do the same thing.
The Memoirs of Sir Nyima Sangpo..have interesting info;no?
I found it to be a strange book.
TODOKOS made people nervous.
Some people think it’s happening within.
Dzongsar Rinpoche feels the real enemy is Islam (though, as far as I know Islamic were allowed into Nalanda Unerversity..maybe not). They did end up destroying Nalanda University in India..
Re: Gender. You didn’t specifically say “a woman’s place is in the home,” true. But you did use phrases like: “One of the virtues of having women outside the realm of public affairs, including the vote [sic]…” and “Frankly, I think all parts of society have lost out [by allowing women into the public arena].” Since normally the opposing term to “public” is “private,” I can only assume you were making the traditional contrast between domestic spheres versus public and worldly ones. Practically speaking this means that women belong in the home raising children while men go out in the world and run things. Doesn’t it?
I’m puzzled by the backroom, civilizing influence you speak of. Since women have rarely had much influence over public life in human history until extremely recently, surely we’d have seen evidence that this “power” has had a moderating effect on the appetite for war, bloodshed, and cruelty of all kinds. Which societies are you holding up as having been more sane precisely on account of women having had no power in public affairs?
I would draw the opposite conclusion, that it is in fact the segregation of the sexes and the metaphysicalizing of procreative status into Gender that has played a huge role in many of the perennial problems we have faced. I feel no qualms about disagreeing with Trungpa Rinpoche on the subject of the role of women in society, anymore than I feel quite free to have different musical tastes from him. This is not dharma. Two acharyas even have said to me they felt his views on Gender were somewhat old-fashioned and influenced by his Tibetan upbringing, as it happens. But I’m happy to discuss this from varying standpoints.
I think it’s also worth noticing that today all the fundamentalisms in the world–whether Christian, Islamic, or Jewish–are precisely those views which advocate continued segregation of gender roles.
D,
now I look at your original comment in your post I believe I over-reacted in my characterization of it, but I was ranting a little about a denigration of the ‘rich white man’ in general. It’s more like: it’s okay to have women’s groups, black groups, Jewish groups, and so forth, but try starting a White Man’s or a Whites groups and see what sort of press you will get. Or put another way: the notion of ‘White Pride’ (vs. ‘Gay Pride’), or ‘White Male Pride’ vs ‘Female Pride’ etc. would provoke similar reactions. In any case, it’s all a bit of red herring and I agree that race is basically not all that important. Culture is, though, and culture comes via a community or a People and people usually have similar genes from breeding with each other so their body-mind dispositions blend in with the cultures they are born into. Nowadays with mobile urban culture this is less and less the case and maybe it’s a good thing, who knows. Personally I don’t like it but it’s not a big deal (at least to me) in any case.
Backroom influence doesn’t just mean being a housewife. In upper classes women frequently had very powerful roles in what was called ‘Society’, which was the main territory a Man had to navigate in terms of advancing career and financial standing. And women, probably more than men, have always ruled that aspect of ‘Society’, although again in modern times this aspect has declined significantly.
I don’t see any change in appetite for war and bloodshed because of feminism. The last century, which witnessed its rise in the West was extremely bloody. Recently we see female soldiers in Iraq as part of an invasion which has murdered over a million, and displaced something like 25% of the population. I am not blaming that on anything but don’t buy your premise above. Sounds like a talking point to me. I also don’t buy the feminist talking point that women had little or no influence. Examples: Rome, Greece, Egypt, China, Japan etc. most of which were fiercely ‘male-dominated’ structures.
Now if you talk in terms of the lower classes, they had a much rougher time of it, especially those in slave orders. But then apart from slightly different forms of abuse, life was rough for both males and females therein. In those cases, women who could only operate within the home were way better off than those in the mines, fields, bars and brothels and so on.
Now middle class American women after the war simply had nothing to do in those deadly suburbs. I guess even working in a call center is better than that. But now it takes two young people working 40 hours a week to keep head above water instead of only one. All that’s happened is that the price of labour has gone down by half. Not a great deal if you ask me. But this sort of topic is very hard to type on about and usually just gets everyone upset. So I am sorry to have raised it and now to be responding even further!
Maybe it’s important as you say, but I think not in terms of setting up a Constitution per se. It’s on the next level of detail and procedure perhaps.
If I might say from a Celtic-Buddhist point of view,at some point gender is a myth,each being is both,some beings enlightened ones we think dispay both in equal manifistation,we CB’s also think the whole show is up to the individual being,in how and what they wish to display,we think this is not libralism but common sense,{we think} Sometimes CTR would not like it when I sat with the women in a formal situation which I did a few times,when men were on one side and women on the other ,on the other hand I think he wanted men to experiance Manliness,and Women to experiance Womanlyness fully be for having the experiance of the other,and then the experiance that both states are basically..something else….sorry about the spelling my wife he just stepped out..JP
“I think it’s also worth noticing that today all the fundamentalisms in the world–whether Christian, Islamic, or Jewish–are precisely those views which advocate continued segregation of gender roles.”
Well, of course there are many more than those three, but I take your point.
Actually, I would love to get the perspective of those women in the traditional societies. Many of them would not feel free to express an opinion about it because the conversation is inviting them to cross over a divide that is not supposed to be crossed over, i.e. expressing aspects of the formless world of power they live in – often without thinking or ever talking about it – into the form world where such a subject matter does not exist and.or is taboo. But even many Chinese and Japanese women, for example, who also have to work side by side with males in the work force, compete at schools for diplomas and so forth, still maintain a somewhat traditional stance viz wife to husband, presumably because something about that dynamic sort of works somehow.
The inter-gender dynamic became definitely hostile, even somewhat toxic, in the 80’s and 90’s in America – much more so than in any country in Europe I think – but people just assume that’s the way it has always been or, because it is the latest fashion, it must be better, because we believe we are always progressing forward.
Am not so sure this is true. But again, also don’t regard it as all that important because such attitudes are just particular reflections of an overall cultural dynamic and when that dynamic shifts, so do those types of mores, demonstrating their lack of depth in the first place.
very interesting article on the increasing role of women in public life – in the atlantic monthly:
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/07/the-end-of-men/8135/
“I think he wanted men to experience Manliness,and Women to experience Womanliness fully be for having the experience of the other,and then the experience that both states are basically..something else…”
Yes. Well I think the main thing that at least in many spheres in social interaction, though by no means all of course, a good culture will separate the sexes in various ways. So in different cultures and times ‘manliness’ and ‘womanliness’ can vary, no problem, but at least there is a sense of them being different because there has to be some sort of dynamic between them.
I read that Atlantic article briefly a while back. Pretty good. In another such article some time ago, I seem to remember someone postulating viz. the boys poor performance in mixed schools that when there are many females in the situation two things might be happening:
a) the boys do not want to appear inferior and if they are (academically) then they will try to hide this, often by refusing to participate because it is ‘beneath’ them, they are not interested etc.
b) there is less male status in a situation populated with females, so if lots of women become doctors, there is less status in being a doctor so less males are interested in it.
I have no idea if this is ‘true’ and in any case such truths change from time to time, or rather culture to culture, but I think there is something to it in that many men do not like to compete and/or do not thrive in a situation where the sexes are mixed. A pop psychology explanation might be that most men are hard-wired somehow not to compete with women, rather to protect them or overpower them, i.e. they are never peers with exactly the same role and function as themselves. Which is just another way of saying that maybe it’s better when men and women see themselves as being different and society accommodates this sign / symbol level game by creating different roles for them so they interact as different species, almost.
Maybe it makes for more electrochemical friction which is good for fertility, who knows, although personally I find such theories far too animal realm a view when discussing human interaction.
In Mondo Carne there’s this great scene where the South Sea Islander males spend all day lounging around, putting on outrageous makeup, fingernail polish, and prancing around in drag. Once a year I think. Their wives look on with open scorn. But the men have a great time doing nothing all day (unlike their wives everyday who are busy of course!) Hilarious. They look totally ridiculous dressed up that way but still puffing away on their cigarettes, which seem so out of place in their ‘native’ pristine setting with grass huts, fishing boats from hollowed-out trees etc.
James and Jim have objected it’s all too abstract. Although I think it’s a little hasty a judgment after only a couple of days, I did just have a thought before turning in.
Assuming some sort of structure including Monarch and Parliament via Delegs is in place (not currently the case in real-world S.I.), it just occurred to me:
Rather than have delegs split up into little neighbourhoods as CTR had us do at seminaries and Boulder etc., why not try the following (although the small ones can remain at the same time):
Every center is one deleg. And twice a year there is a deleg meeting which happens on the same (Sun)day throughout the mandala internationally. There is then one Dekyong elected from such meetings for the entire Center good for three years or whatever. But enough time so they can learn how to be a good Dekyong and relate to the following processes as well.
Then you divide the mandala into Regions based on population and from that create Regional Councils comprised of the various respective Dekyongs who meet once or twice a year and come up with various proposals or issues to bring to the Central Administration as well as their Regional Center Directors (i.e. both up and down recommendations). The results from these interchanges goes back into the deleg meetings, both the next MahaDeleg meetings in each Center, and also the small neighbourhood deleg meetings monthly.
From those Regional Councils are elected two Regional Dekyongs who go once a year (ideally paid from the regional centers proportional to population of each center) to an International Maha-Dekyong Council in Halifax for a long weekend during which they meet amongst themselves as a Council, meet with the International Executive and Kalapa Council(?) including the Sakyong, give a report on things from their perspective, make recommendations etc. and so on, with ideally this form and function developing over time such that they have policy-making authority in that some resolutions that they make might have sufficient official and empowered weight that the administration and Sakyong feel duty bound to follow them or at least take them very seriously and have to argue persuasively against them if they disagree. Such things would develop over time as people figured out what sort of things work and don’t on all sides.
Something like that. Fledgling Parliamentary operation taking not too much time or money but in some way linked to every member and being a parallel form of governance conduit to the current Administrative via Executive and Teacher models. Not in conflict with, but as adjunct. Pretty much in line with original deleg guidelines which never got much past the neighbourhood delegs.
Unless I’m just out of touch with later / current developments, in which case: apologies.
In terms of any Opposition Party Quotient: one of their mandates could be to collect and prioritize the list of Top Ten Suggestions from the general membership, including complaints and suggestions of any sort, and again these suggestions should be taken very seriously by the Administration and Sakyong who will have empowered the existence of such Councils in the first place. They become part of the governance structure in other words, and one of their functions is to bring problems, or perception of problems, to the attention of the Administration in a formal, open and organized fashion in such a way that the general citizenry ‘owns’ part of the governance mandala in a format that ensures that they have the opportunity to voice their concerns without the agenda coming down from above in any way. This is a bottom up dynamic, i.e. roots to trunk and will be respected as a vital and necessary dynamic within the overall Shambhala Society.
For example, if conflict resolution comes up as something needing to be dealt with, the Dekyong Council can insist that something be put in place to do so.
(cont) Both the Dekyong Council’s Regional and International meetings will have published Minutes, as will their formal proposals to the Board and Kalapa Council with the Sakyong, as well as the Administration and/or Sakyongs responses to those proposals. This way there is an offering from the populace, so to speak, and a response.
If the DC proposes that we need to set up clear procedures for conflict resolution, the Administration has to come up with a suggestion as to how, or follow the DC’s suggestion if they have offered one if they agree, or articulate why they disagree. In any case, they have to publicly disagree and/or publicly follow through. In this way, the DC has an empowered mandate to effect policy throughout the mandala and in this way the general membership has duties and opportunities to more fully ‘own’ their own sangha.
The Center Dekyongs can oversee Community Meetings and/or suggest special meetings with particular issues to cover, like Town Hall gatherings or Community Hall meetings which happen all over Nova Scotia in rural communities regularly. And then from those meetings they can present specific proposals to their Center Directors. So this is same sort of dynamic on local level as with the Regional and National Councils.
This implies that along with a Center Director appointed by the Administration, there is a Center Dekyong appointed by the membership with similar powers and authority, albeit different aspects of community governance. They do not run the center in any way. The Center Director does all that. But they are responsible for a certain type of community dynamic which won’t happen unless this sort of bottom-up dynamic is put into place. As CTR suggested long ago.
And this can be done in current situation with current infrastructure with minimal commitment of time or funds for all involved.
Nyen build.
A, Thanks for further clarification.
A couple of points come to mind. We’re talking about creating a workable political view and framework–the “Unity” aspect of what you’ve been discussing. What does this mean not only in terms of diverse religious groups, but also diverse cultures in general? If for example there *has* been some kind of ethnic cleansing going on in Bhutan (I’m a little embarrassed to admit I have heard of these charges but have not done any research on them), then might this affect the approach we have been taking so far, as James wonders? So I’d like to say a little more about the question of race and culture, if that’s okay. I think our choice of language here is so important.
You write: “just hope you don’t have to learn the hard way how much worse things can be when we are totally out of the picture, which is about to happen in the sense that there is no longer any such thing (except in shrinking pockets) of ‘white culture’ or a ‘white race’ and therefore the term ‘white men’ will soon be functionally meaningless, a relic of the past.”
But I honestly don’t know what you mean by either “white culture” or a “white race”. I recognize certain aspects of Sardinian culture, Russian culture, southern German culture, and so on, but “white” culture? What is that? What is the “white race”? You emphasize “culture” over “race,” but your use of the term is still racial: “Culture comes via a community or a People and people usually have similar genes from breeding with each other so their body-mind dispositions blend in with the cultures they are born into.” This implies there are such entities as “English genes” for example. But where do these “English genes” come from? Well of course they are a big melting pot of Celtic, Roman, Norman, Anglo-Saxon, Dane, and all sorts of other admixtures. And each of those are melting pots too…
The difference with the changes you are seeing is that they are simply demographic: the result of ordinary impermanence rather than political oppression by Asian- or Latino- or African-Americans. Non-white / non-European ethnicities are having a lot more babies. So what? Nothing I can or want to do about it. Please: all over the world when this kind of fear is raised and people start believing it and acting upon it the results are horrific. Everything that’s good in Spanish or Swedish or Polish culture will find a way to continue. Now if you’re talking about the threat of fundamentalist Islam, that’s different. That’s not a racial one–it’s religious, ideological, and ultimately a fear of theocracy. A fear I share, but again it’s got nothing to do with race.
Likewise: “it’s okay to have women’s groups, black groups, Jewish groups, and so forth, but try starting a White Man’s or a Whites group and see what sort of press you will get.”
I would say context is crucial here. Black Power / Pride emerged in the 1960s, it seems to me, because at a certain point there was a critical mass: enough people getting simply exhausted with the struggle to locate their own basic goodness in a society hostile or aversive to them in all kinds of ways. Exhausted by innumerable daily forms of humiliation and intimidation–little and big. By being constantly treated like potential criminals. By seeing almost no positive representation anywhere at that time, whether it be in Washington or on TV. By the effort to find some kind of continuity of culture as “Americans”–since that thread always ended up in ancestors who were deemed 3/5 the value and humanity of a white person and the literal property of a white man–continuity which an Anglo-Saxon-American or Irish-American never has to think about. By feeling like a leper every time a white person shrank from touching you, from shaking your hand. By reading the poverty and prison and education statistics and seeing how deep the hole is. And on and on. From this standpoint I would argue it’s rather grotesque to speak of the need for “White Pride” in America.
At the same time the concept of “White Pride,” to non-whites and also to a fair number of whites, inescapably brings up images of white sheets and hoods… This was, I assume, partly the point of the Black Panther military gear: to communicate what that feels like. I’m not saying I agree with those tactics, just trying to understand where they came from.
And a thought about this: “I don’t see any change in appetite for war and bloodshed because of feminism. The last century, which witnessed its rise in the West was extremely bloody.”
As far as I’m aware feminist thought had no influence at all over those who brought us the First World War, Nazism, Stalinism, Japanese imperialism. On Mao, Pol Pot, Milosevic, Saddam, or the Taliban.
I think it’s too early to say what the ultimate effects of feminist thought will be on our culture. But it seems to me that most of the values our world is deficient in are ones that tend to be figured as “feminine” or, I think more accurately, yin. Gentleness, humility, respect toward others and the earth, receptivity, empathy. It is no surprise that virtually the whole world breathed a huge sigh of relief when Obama was elected, after 8 years of swaggering machismo, arrogance, and lack of intellectual curiosity. I think of Obama as a product of some of the effects of feminism.
Whether it is all too little, too late remains to be seen. I have to think not.
But yes, we can discuss this later when you try to get me to agree with the idea of segregated seating… ! I would never be electable. There would be days I felt like sitting with the women, and then some stony-eyed rock-jawed kasung would have to physically throw me out of the chamber…
D, first should apologise for overly forceful tone earlier. You see today I was making my first ‘really really hot’ fire in my new oven, and it’s summer, so dealing with roaring flames in already hot weather is sort of ‘intense’. It was only later in the day as everything calmed down, fire-wise, that I noticed that during the afternoon I had got a little ‘heated up’, so I think I let fly rhetorically more than I intended since I was typing away amidst tending to the fire. It was over 1000d F in the oven chamber for a while and it looks like I have got the moisture out sufficiently so that finally, after 3 months of building it, I have a working oven. But that fire is intense! (Then you rake it out and for about 6 hours can bake in a clean, empty brick chamber which, though still very hot, is deliciously peaceful and silent, quietly baking your bread with no machinery running, no seeming work being done, a sort of natural, highly enjoyable miracle.)
Race and gender. Oh dear!
OK, race: again, I basically agree with you. For me, at least, it’s more about culture, homogenous, strong, proud, sane, delightful, intelligent culture, which is mainly a speech level thing, i.e. not even physical per se. However, practically speaking and at least until the last 50 years or so, 90% of human culture was place based in that most people were conceived and raised amongst people most of whom had been conceived and raised in the same or nearby place and therefore tended to look sort of the same, i.e. black in Africa, Masai tribespeople tall and thin from their diets of milk and liver, pygmies, Japanese looking more or less Japanese whereas different Chinese tribes had particular looks physically and so on. It might not be meaningful but it contributes to culture in terms of how they look dressed up, how their speech and clothing and cuisine and physical appearance all play together. Now we have basically urban cultures with different cultural neighbourhoods, Polish, Ukrainian, Irish, Chinese etc. Which is great in a city. But now also we are getting to where these are all blended together, both genetically and culturally and they are getting lost. We have McDonalds in Beijing and Paris, everyone watches television, listens to same rock tunes (I am exaggerating of course).
In terms of the ‘White’ business, I think my point is that for those living in America, Canada and Europe, the so-called ‘white race’ is the host culture (at this point, having wiped out the natives in North America in a shamelessly cruel invasion, but rather wonderful too if you enjoy America’s unsung literary genius, Larry McMurtry of Lonesome Dove fame. Read the books if you haven’t if for no other reason than he has some of the best female characters in American prose).
So there is a white culture as the host culture but for many years now there has been a concerted push to suppress this, and it has succeeded. The emphasis is on feminism, multiculturalism, diversity etc. etc. and the simple fact is that America has become a cultural wasteland in terms of having anything much continuing, culturally speaking, from one generation to the next. Britain is also like this, though perhaps less so in certain areas and classes, I am not sure. Canada is moving rapidly that way as well. Of course rural areas are always slower in this regard, throughout the world (which is why I live in one I suppose).
I am not so much concerned with what the culture is, nor even against feminism and suchlike per se, but the pace of change, the continuous re-invention via one fashionable theory after another, is fundamentally pernicious and I have come to believe it is not just accidental but that there really are some nasty Fabian and other characters doing this somewhat systematically. But that is an area of conspiracy theory we don’t have to tunnel into here.
In any case, the culture, such as it is, now exists from moment to moment, and as such has become a non-culture culture. I think this is a very bad thing. Especially since the main evidenced continuity seem to be entrenched lineages of banking cartels, steadily raking in more and more of the gross national product such that after only a couple of centuries they now collect, in the US alone but other countries are similar, the entire annual tax receipts in income before a single item of expenditure is available for the services for which governments supposedly exist to deliver. In Germany, a typical working salary pays out about 5,000 Euros per annum of which 4,950 go to the banking cartels. They seem to be the only thing which continue, relentlessly, from generation to generation is my point. They should be abolished. Now!
In any case, the ‘white’ business comes up only in this historical context to my mind, because they are the ones who are – or I should probably say ‘were’ at this point – the ‘host culture’. But that host culture is now lost. We have multiculturalism and diversity and equality and all the rest of it and the process have ended up with McDonalds culture and little else. Corporate agendas now dominate every aspect of modern life including the family, food, education, discourse, military expansionism, rotten food systems, polluted aquifers, plastic Everests in the ocean and all the rest of it. The waste of natural and human resources, speaking both practically and spiritually, is heartbreaking when you think about it.
Yes, there are many good things, but also there are many bad things which are overlooked and outright denied. Iatrogenic deaths are the #1 category of deaths but to criticize the medical system, ‘the best in human history’ is heresy, such is the level of superstitious belief in modern-day ’scientism’. All news is propaganda; most four year university courses teach bunkum in order to justify the $100,000 + fees students cough up to get the diploma. It’s endless, as samsara is and always has been.
But is it progress as so many of us seem to believe, like some sort of superstitious belief because that is what we keep being told? Or just more (usually more money)? How good is it that several billion burgers have been sold? Is one billion more progress? Since when was more automatically better?
So even when I’ve calmed down, I can still rant! Anyway, I hope you now understand the context of the ‘white’ business. It’s an historical, rather than a racial, context and again it is because those ‘white cultures’ – to use a simple term – just happen to have been the host cultures in Canada and the US and Britain and we are an English-speaking forum. (I like strong cultures and don’t really think in terms of race anyway.) Hopefully that’s more clear now.
Whoops, I didn’t do gender. Will try to be brief.
I said it earlier: it doesn’t really matter what the roles are, i.e. what is perceived as manly or womanly as JP put it, rather that there be differences, ideally played with artfully in an intelligent, sensitive and ideally humourous fashion. The energy between the sexes is, both scientifically and culturally, that which produces life. It’s important.
When they are all blended together something important gets lost.
There are many valid issues about equal pay, women being able to move forward in the business world and so forth. Unquestionably valid. But also the whole thing is so mundane, or rather banal. It keeps things on a very materialistic, un-uplifted level somehow.
For example, I cannot imagine French men or women putting up with an ethos which makes simple flirtation, for example, (something virtually obligatory in polite French society, i.e. it’s rude if you don’t!) something that can engender lawsuits or getting fired, as is now the case in America.
In any case, my main point is that there should be areas in social interaction where the sexes have separate roles and functions. I don’t think you can equate all traditional forms of society with religious fundamentalists as you did above. Nearly all human cultures, from simple tribes in the Amazon (which are not that simple of course), to extended Empires with great longevity, such as the Chinese, Japanese and Byzantine, have paid assiduous attention to all aspects of cultural expression. Indeed that level of attention is a sure sign of their cultural sophistication and intelligence. And in all cases the roles of the sexes have been clearly differentiated.
The modern line is that this is, or at least was, all due to male dominant narrow-mindedness.
Sorry, I just don’t buy it. I simply don’t believe that the history of the post-flood human race all boils down to men giving women a hard time and loving every minute of it. I think quite a bit was fun was had in the villages, towns, palaces. And not just extra-curricular inter-genderal sport in the haystacks. Fun with music, architecture, war even, science, religion, farming, cabinet making, bridge building, dress making, perfume making, soap making, bread making, writing, exploring, philosophizing, flirting, giving birth, raising children, caring for the elderly, organizing revolutions, conquering the heathen (misguided but fun!) and so forth. And during all this men and women were hating each other all the time, no husbands loved their wives, no wives their husbands amidst all this splendour?
Yes, much of it was ugly, brutish, unfair etc. Same as today, there is much good and much evil. That’s the way it seems to always be in the human realm. But I just don’t buy this fable that since time immemorial males have exploited females and they have been miserable for 10,000 years because of it. It’s a fictitious oi-vay philosophy, a joy-killer.
More importantly, it’s just too banal.
Even more importantly, utterly humourless.
At least for my taste.
And therefore I refuse to believe it!
Good morning from Vermont!
Please forgive me for not providing a clearer explanation on gender and the mandala of form that Trungpa Rinpoche created. Concerning segregated seating: briefly, at the court, the first cultural style was Victorian English. One could even say something like the British Raj. The second influence was Japanese. And, I think, especially from the movies like Kagamusha and other Kurosawa movies. What it seems to me, and this is, by the way, only my observation, that what Trungpa Rinpoche did, was to create a mandala, a form, and invite people in to experience that form fully. And when you went into this atmosphere, there were things that grated on you, because of your ideas about whatever form you were used to.
Nevertheless, form is extremely important.
The Nazis of course were very good at this, and so is corporate America, as Ash has pointed out. But what Trungpa Rinpoche was endeavoring to do, was point out how form could be used in a creative manner to form or create an enlightened society. And this did not mean that form had to remain static. Perhaps that’s enough to say about it at this point.
So I hope that in this constitution, there will be references to gender, national origin, and as I’ve said before, the rights of ALL beings, not just human beings. and I think this makes good sense from the point of view of ecology, which also has other connotations such as environmental sustainability, so that Shambhala, could relate with that issue.
I also would like to say I am certainly more than uneasy about the Bhutan ethnic cleansing situation. And would hope that the constitution would also relate to that in terms of national origin and race as well as, of course, religious freedom.
One other item. Concerning language: Now as I understand it, the host province of NS in which Shambhala is fortunate enough to reside, the province of NS has English, French and Gaelic speakers and perhaps that should be reflected in the Shambhala constitution.
Thank you .
I’m really delighted to be part of this endeavor.
John Perks
Good morning from Cape Breton!
It only flickered there before but with your last post, Dear John, it occurred to me that we are very honored to have one of the people closely involved with the writing of Court Vision involved in this closely related, even parallel, endeavor. Perhaps we could say this is a kind of bottom-up equivalent from his seminal Lha-engendering seed syllable version.
Alright. Gender, ALL beings, ecology.
Bhutan.
In terms of Bhutan: I don’t see anything in the Constitution per se, and more especially in my shortened form, that has anything to do with ethnic cleansing.
Also, as mentioned above, in theory, and assuming Bhutanese people have as much basic goodness as everyone else, with this constitution they can use the Parliament via their local elections to stop this policy.
There were various clauses in the Constitution which I didn’t like and think I blanked out quite a few to keep things simple, but they related to, for example, not allowing Parties to campaign on the basis of a Regional issue or anything which threatened the Unity of the country. The impulse behind this is understandable, even necessary on many levels, but it also raises problems, since a Tyrannical Monarch or frightened Parliament could easily get into locking up any Dissidents of a National Policy in effect (such as ethnic cleansing of a neighbouring district) arguing that such dissent is threatening the Unity of the Realm.
But frankly, this sort of problem exists in pretty much ALL national setups in that challenging the central authority often leads to charges of treason, or at the least social shunning, loss of employment. People are people when all is said and done and no document can prevent this.
This could be a complex endeavour or a somewhat simple one and I would prefer the latter if possible.
What do you think of the short form as an architectural starting point, i.e. Lineage Reference, Territory, Monarch, Citizenship, Parliament/Dekyong element?
I think that’s a good starting point myself. But if people think Parliament is totally out of the question, then now is the time to discuss that and try to come up with the core structure.
Once a core structure is in place – and personally I think the short form is a workable starting point but others might not – then fleshing it out with things like gender and suchlike can be done, and also done with a little flair hopefully.
But first we need to agree on a core structure.
Finally the core structure as is really has nothing to do with Bhutan any more, at least as far as I can see. I just used the structure of that document (again written by a living King who was a student of the Vidyadhara – I mean how much better than that does it get!!!???), put a few Shambhala terms in there in order to replace any reference to Bhutan, and voila.
So: what do you all think of the structure of the Short Form (entitled Outline), not the longer ones which preceded it? I shall paste it in below.
From http://www.frenchroadbakery.tk/SC%20OutlineFormat%201.htm
Shambhala Constitution Outline:
Following in the lineage and spirit of the mandates of the Druk Sakyong and the Sakyong Trinlay Dradul, the following Constitutional outline is proposed for discussion:
1. A Constitutional Monarchy
2. The principal Elements therein comprising:
a. State belonging to all People therein in whom ultimately resides all powers within the State;
b. Monarch – hereditary Royal Family – who symbolizes the Unity of the State and is the Chief Example and Promulgator of the Constitution and the values of Enlightened Society which it purposes to engender.
c. Parliament – elected from local communities, two houses with Opposition Party in effect after elections who administer and develop the Executive and Laws via majority votes (i.e. not full consensus);
d. ‘Senior’ House is mainly retired or distinguished citizens who are no longer involved in current Executive or Commercial pursuits but whose depth of connection and experience can provide longer term overview in context of established vision, culture and bedrock tradition; 20% of these are appointed by Sakyong directly. Senior House members may no longer run for office in the Lower House nor accept Ministerial Appointments subsequent to election into the Senior House.
e. Local dekyongs elected in neighbourhood delegs via spontaneous consensus; then each regional Dekyong Council elects Member of Parliament (each of whom is by definition a Dekyong), one male and one female, via spontaneous consensus within 48 hours of Regional Government Election.
f. Core Organs of State including:
i. Major: Court, Civil Service, Justice, Military, Local and Regional Governments
ii. Minor: Health, Education, Environment, Ombudsmen, Commerce, Finance
3. Checks and Balances:
a. Office Holders
i. All Constitutional Appointments (such as Lord Command Justice, Kasung Ki Khyap etc.), no matter which branch or Agent proposes depending upon the Office in question, are approved following advice and consent of: Monarch, Parliamentary and Appropriate Commissioners; all impeachments or replacements of the same similarly treated.
b. Ministerial Appointments to Elected Officials Only
c. Ability for either Monarch or Parliament to call for National Referendum on issues of State where Crown and Parliament cannot form consensus;
d. Parliament has the authority to re-write this Constitution providing there is a National Referendum to sanction amended or new constitution;
e. Political Parties are largely funded by the State, financial contributions are limited, advertising is limited to being an equal amount in terms of column space, websites, radio and television coverage or advertisements etc. such that financial muscle has relatively little effect on ability to campaign etc.
f. A Nyen-level Council comprising all Regional Dekyongs who can review Parliamentary initiatives and object by consensus when the Central Government is perceived as encroaching overmuch on Regional and Local governance or policies.
** As I see it, the main, if not only, virtue of the so-called ‘Party System’ is that after an election there can be official, sanctioned, loyal questioning of the current Government managing the Executive following an election. If there is a way to do this without Parties, great, but without them rather hard to form a government which, from election, is empowered to push things in a general direction upon which it has attracted votes. It seems to be a necessary evil in any Parliamentary system, but the Opposition quotient strikes me as extremely valuable if well conducted.
If is a big little word that covers just about any aspect of any constitution, of course.
Addendum 1
A. Seating in the Parliament is done by Region, not Party, and within each Region the sexes are seated in distinct rows, as with all Shambhala gatherings.
B. The size of a deleg, and thus overall number, is mainly determined as a percentage of the overall population. Each deleg has one dekyong, but the regional Council of Dekyongs can have any number depending on the population of that Region. Then they elect a certain number of Regional Dekyongs, in equal number of male and female, also in terms of percentage of national population. Generally each region should have similar percentages population-wise, with special formulas created for large Municipal and City populations to smooth out the proportional differences so that rural areas do not become marginalised by their lower population density. In any case, based on an entire population, the total number of Regional Dekyongs elected as MP’s to Parliament will always be a fixed amount (i.e. 50) meaning that each such pair of male and female Dekyongs represents 4% of the population or whatever. So delegs keep getting re-formed in response to changes in population but the number of MP’s does not change.
Notes:
So I hope that in this constitution, there will be references to gender, national origin, and as I’ve said before, the rights of ALL beings, not just human beings. and I think this makes good sense from the point of view of ecology, which also has other connotations such as environmental sustainability, so that Shambhala, could relate with that issue.
I also would like to say I am certainly more than uneasy about the Bhutan ethnic cleansing situation. And would hope that the constitution would also relate to that in terms of national origin and race as well as, of course, religious freedom.
One other item. Concerning language: Now as I understand it, the host province of NS in which Shambhala is fortunate enough to reside, the province of NS has English, French and Gaelic speakers and perhaps that should be reflected in the Shambhala constitution.
Language: I think one language is best as the official language, which means the language in which all official policy is discussed and published. It is fine for ethnic minorities to have their own languages, including, for example, setting up local school systems which teach principally in that language, but then in this country everyone should learn to speak the official language. This was done in France, China, India (English which a high percentage of the polyglot Indian peoples now speak) and so on.
This is not a language issue, rather a local culture issue, so possibly what you are suggesting is that we think through local culture a little more. Of course that is really getting ahead of ourselves in terms of immediate context but it is worthy. To me that gets into the also premature realm of finances in that, assuming there are national tax revenues of sorts, what percentage stays in the local, what in the regional and what in the national Purses. My suggestion would be:
10% to the National
25% to the Regional
65% to the Local.
Let us say there are 100,000 in the population to keep it simple and the average tax is $1000 a year. This mean 100,000,000 per annum gross tax receipts.
10% = $10,000,000 to the central govt.
25% = $25,000,000 shared amongst 10 Regionals = $2,500,000 each
65% = $65,000,000 shared amongst 100 local communities = $650,000 per local community, albeit in practice each local communities receipts will be a function of their population number, not a fixed amount, although ideally each Region is formed such that the populations are equal as much as possible.
This means that Local Governments will have a lot of their own funds. However, it also means that small communities will have a hard time raising lots of $$ for expansionary projects, such as building a port facility. Historically it is large States who have fronted the monies for such things. The real problem seems to be that such States tend to grow large Bureaucracies whose administration eats a greater and greater percentage of the communal/national pie ultimately ripping off the locals, so to speak, also marginalizing their interests.
We are too broke in Nova Scotia to fix rural roads, we are closing small, vibrant and beloved local schools due to lack of funds, but last week Canada just purchased $9 billion worth of fighter jets. This sort of thing happens all the time in most modern Nation States. It’s ridiculous, but also tragic.
In any case, the protection of language really comes down to whether or not smaller communities can have sufficient clout to mount and maintain their various cultural traditions, including linguistic. I for one would certainly hope they could so that in Shambhala Gaelic speakers, for example, would not be disallowed from growing up speaking that language in their homes, not hearing it in schools, and so forth.
Similarly there should be freedom of religion for sure. But really I think the real pressure point there is not the issue (language, religion) but local autonomy. That’s where such things have to be decided on the ground. Or rather: having a Constitution that allows local communities to develop and maintain various cultures will take care of those things.
It also might be that certain care should be taken in articulating, in our Constitution, various Limits on what sort of things can be legislated in Parliament without also being passed by the Regional Councils (akin to the Provincial or State Govts in Canada and US). In other words, neither the Monarch – who can only push policy through Parliament anyway – not Parliament – who can only push with consent of Monarch – can pass legislation which affects Regional citizenry with the consent of the Regional Councils. Again a two-way dynamic in effect.
The Swiss Canton Federation comes to mind in this regard in that the Regions (Cantons) have a great degree of power and autonomy still. I think that’s a good sort of approach.
Strangely enough Hitler was very up on this sort of thing, even insisting that the way stations on his new autobahns be constructed according to each regional tradition, of which there were many. He did not want a single, national style superimposed on local cultures.
“In other words, neither the Monarch – who can only push policy through Parliament anyway – not Parliament – who can only push with consent of Monarch – can pass legislation which affects Regional citizenry with the consent of the Regional Councils. Again a two-way dynamic in effect.”
Sorry, was on the phone and couldn’t edit:
In other words, neither the Monarch – who can only push policy through Parliament anyway – NOR Parliament – who can only push with consent of Monarch – can pass legislation which affects Regional citizenry withOUT the consent of the Regional Councils. Again a two-way dynamic in effect.
In other words, we are going to have to articulate the scope of Powers and Responsibility for Local Governments in relation to the National Parliament.
And then one of the duties of a Monarch is to ensure that overall it remains balanced, i.e. fair to both sectors. The Monarch can step into admonish the Regionals if they are getting too demanding and obstructive, or Parliament if it is overstepping its bounds and starving the Regions (such as with NS these days).
Ash–First of all, I am terribly envious of your powers of output, concentration. Going onto the site this afternoon expecting to catch up on a couple of new posts, I discover I need to add the equivalent of a chapter to my day’s reading! But it’s a gift that you can do this.
Also, thanks for the stimulating conversation. Though your latest posts make it a mixed blessing. They contain so much I’d like to respond to and I don’t think I could come near to doing so adequately.
In any event… We are deeply in agreement re: rotten food systems, propaganda, scientism, military expansionism, and so on. A lot of good ground in common. At a certain point however we seem to diverge sharply, with regard to the causes for this state of affairs and where we could go from here.
I’m still troubled by the concept of something you are calling “white culture” being the “host culture” in the US. This is the way I see it: a bunch of people came over from England, were excellent folk in lots of ways but also … stole whole territories of land belonging to very sophisticated tribes of people already living here (doing so ultimately in the name of God, Manifest Destiny precisely as “White” people, and so on), and eventually ended up more-or-less destroying the culture of more-or-less all of these peoples. First problem. A big one, if you are thinking in terms of “host culture”.
Second problem: at the very foundation of American settlement said “host culture” begins going over to another continent–one whose culture they are convinced, again precisely as “White,” is grossly inferior to their own. They forcibly evict probably over half a million human beings from their homes, buying or stealing them into slavery, in which condition they have no legal or political rights and are subject to countless abuses I don’t need to review.
This is the “host culture” you are referring to, the bearers of civilization in America.
But then it gets even more complicated, because for example when the Irish arrive in the middle of the nineteenth century, the dominant white ethnicities discriminate against them. And likewise when the big waves of immigration a little later in the century begin, bringing large numbers of Italians, Jews from central and eastern Europe, and others, there is again discrimination. Theoretically these are all “white people” we are talking about, yet there are differences in “culture” large enough for the dominant local group to find them threatening.
[cont.]
You say: “For me, at least, it’s more about culture, homogenous, strong, proud, sane, delightful, intelligent culture…” I whole-heartedly agree with every adjective except “homogenous”. I think homogeneity is death. I think it’s what keeps cultures in stagnation, eventually creating postures of defensiveness and fear, nativism and scapegoating of minorities. My Jewish ancestors lived in present-day Poland, Russia, and Hungary, mostly in ghettos. They enriched their surrounding “host culture” in all sorts of ways over a period of centuries, but periodically had to bear the burden of nativist fear in the form of pogroms and other such manifestations of ethnic cleansing. Culminating of course in an attempt at complete extermination which came close to succeeding. The host culture which concocted this idea was old, proud, and homogenous. But it also became obsessed with maintaining some kind of “purity,” and although I certainly don’t wish to minimize the complexities of present-day immigration policy, I would say that the notion of “homogeneity” is quite problematic and has given birth to many terrible acts.
Now you might be about to say “but this is what we are trying to create in Shambhala, precisely a ‘homogenous’ culture–that’s the ‘unity’ aspect”. But Shambhala is not “place based”. It’s scattered over the world, and as an ideal applies universally. In this respect we might say it is more similar to Christianity or Buddhism than to a local culture. Both of these are truly global religions which maintain certain core aspects in common (Buddhism more so than Christianity) while having adapted in various ways to the culture in which they are transplanted. Given the relatively minuscule numbers of Shambhala members and, importantly, their relatively homogenous class and cultural backgrounds at this point, it might seem a straightforward matter to maintain all kinds of culturally specific practices. But Trungpa Rinpoche taught that Shambhalian values are already organically present at the deep wisdom level of many cultures, and that the practices are designed to work with what is already there. In this sense I think of it as a cosmopolitan culture or trans-culture. It has more in common with what you ascribe to the city than the country in that sense.
[cont.]
You say: “So there is a white culture as the host culture but for many years now there has been a concerted push to suppress this…. The emphasis is on feminism, multiculturalism, diversity etc. etc. and the simple fact is that America has become a cultural wasteland in terms of having anything much continuing, culturally speaking, from one generation to the next.”
Hard to respond to this. Leaving aside the cultures it destroyed in order to build itself up, America has been “multicultural” for a very long time. This is kind of its raison d’être (“Give me your tired, your poor / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me…”). And multiculturalism is fantastic! I can make just a few double-clicks and listen to Turkish or Brazilian music stations. I would never have discovered Indian or Vietnamese food otherwise. Or for that matter Buddhism.
I would argue that America has always been something of a “cultural wasteland” compared to any old organic culture simply because it’s so recent, and invented. Perhaps you’re wanting it to be something it isn’t, and never was. ? America’s “culture” from very early on was something quite distinctive, I would say. Multiculturalism and diversity are some of the direct fruits of its experiment.
So here is the link you make: “We have multiculturalism and diversity and equality and all the rest of it and the process has ended up with McDonalds culture and little else. Corporate agendas now dominate every aspect of modern life including the family, food, education, discourse, military expansionism, rotten food systems, polluted aquifers, plastic Everests in the ocean and all the rest of it.”
I don’t see any connection between multiculturalism and corporate agendas, between diversity and military expansionism or rotten food systems, between equality and polluted aquifers. I don’t see it. I think “multiculturalism and diversity and equality” are hardly (or at least shouldn’t be) radical ideas. And I don’t want a Shambhala that doesn’t incorporate them as a matter of course.
I’ll have to take up Gender later… Stay cool!
yes, this is getting a little complicated, not to mention being a conversation that might be detracting from the thread focus. I suggest a separate email conversation after which we can post a summary of sorts because these are important topics but do require a certain amount of back and forth. Shoot me an email if you agree and if not we can continue here. Email is on my website linked above.
Ash
You have been so up worked lately that at times I wonder if you are bi-polar, or on “up lifting pills? (as VCTR used to describe them).
It too many minds to create the current Constitution, It wasn’t done on Internet either. Maybe you are just abundantly enthusiastic.
The only reason John Hancock wrote his famous huge name on the declaration of Independence was because he wanted to be sure King George would see his name.
If Britain had won, everbody who signed The Decarattion would have been hung or shot, and the U.S. Founding Forefathers new this. It was quite an act of bravery.
We don’t need a schism. We need that like a hole in the head.
Rob, I might be bi-polar for all I know, but I have always worked on things this way and am most certainly not worked up about it. I find your remarks sort of inappropriately personal in this regard.
In any case, if you think this is about a schism, please articulate why in terms of the constitutional items offered.
Note: although the term hasn’t come up in my mind in this context, now I think of it I think my intention here is to help avoid any schism, hence the interest in checks, balances and a more fully empowered ‘opposition’ quotient in the current overall governance mandala. Such a dynamic helps avoid the either you are all-in or all-out dilemma which has troubled many of us for some time now I trow.
You could offer something along the lines of a Constitution yourself.
By the way, I had a thought of a personal nature regarding yourself but didn’t type it a couple of days ago. Since you have prompted this, here goes:
I have known you for years and have always thought you have an abundantly gentle heart, a kind heart, but wonder if you appreciate just how gentle and kind it is. I hope you do.
This arose and is now meant in a heartfelt, very friendly way.
Constitutional Thinking in the West
The following is a bit abstract. In our Western tradition of political philosophy and constitutional analysis two distinctive traditions dominate and always have. These are associated with the names of Plato and Aristotle respectively. We have Plato as the exemplary exponent of critical utopian constructivism (one might say), vs Aristotle as the exemplary thinker of moderated common sense who aims not for the ideal but rather the optimal ‘least of evils’.
What I most want to say here is that these two traditions advance different ideas and ideals (or optimal prospects) and that the difference at the end of the day could be characterized as the difference between ‘balance’ (Aristotle) and ‘harmony’ (Plato). That’s what the real difference comes down to. Now thus far the discussion of our prospective constitution has assumed a decidedly Aristotelian aspect insofar as we place our confidence in a central balance of power mechanism to keep royal authority in check by constituting assemblies generated ‘from below’, or constituting democracy to counterbalance monarchy.
I respect the seriousness of the concerns that drive many of us to assert the wisdom of instituting these ‘checks and balances’ into our constitutional forms but nonetheless believe that we’re headed down the wrong path. What is specifically wrong with balance of power systems is the homogenizing tendency of the system itself. All social forces tend to assume the same character of ‘forces’ that want their way.
Originally, Aristotle theorized the Polity as the next best thing to an aristocracy (which he most of all favoured but considered impractical). Genuine aristocracy is founded on the virtue of moderation which proceeds from the virtuous character of the citizenry. But failing this, the next best thing is to try to institute the virtue of moderation in the constitution as the effect of less than virtuous causes, like self interest. The polity is a balance of power system which favours the comparatively moderate middle classes against the extremes of oligarchy and radical democracy. Aristotle explains: when the rich desire to arrogate all public offices to themselves and exclude the people altogether from power the middle classes take fright and lean their weight over to the side of the people. But contrawise, when the demagogues who lead the people threaten to redistribute property, the property owning middle class reacts to this as a threat to their own and shifts their support to the rich. Therefore the middle classes form the ballast of the ship of state, so to say. They effect the virtue of moderation as a consequence of property based self interest.
I bring up the polity of Aristotle as it is the first clearly defined balance of power system known in the West. The principles of this constitution have been revived in modern times as the organizational basis for the most important constitutional systems of modern life. Three are of leading importance. Firstly we have the Westphalian system of states which was explicitly conceived as a system to ensure that any and all powers would be checked from imperial aspirations by the countervailing forces of the other powers, singly or in alliance. Secondly the principles of this system find further scope for a general ordering of things in economic life. The modern economic order theorized by Mandeville and Adam Smith and later political economists established the market as a sphere of pluralistic contention which militated against any tendency to monopoly (or so goes the theory). Finally our pluralistic political institutions enshrining the rights of opposition parties to public representation and participation in the legislative process is also a piece of the same logic. These balance of power systems dominate modern life. And it’s all we know to.
But there are serious problems with systems of this type.
1 The system tends to homogenize all participants into self interested forces.
2 There is an inherent expansive tendency which is not good for sustainability.
3 Worst of all, unvirtuous causes produce virtuous consequences. Big problem.
Our thinking proceeds from an unacknowledged idea of the good which sustains the classical ideal of moderation (not generosity). We worry about immoderate royal ambitions and so we seek to check this tendency with another, our own, by constituting ourselves as a legislative assembly, as democracy, so that royal and democratic forces would tend to a balanced equilibrium and thus achieve the great desired outcome of sustainability in time. Force is pitted against counterforce. The constitution therefore becomes a mechanism for balancing forces against each other. Now there is a defect in this system in that it tends to homogenize all forces as the same kind of force. All political forces become self interested, self aggrandizing, and self seeking in practice, as they must be in order to survive the rigours of the system itself. You see, the system has it’s own imperatives and requires a certain kind of human agency to keep it functioning and well lubricated. The system is not conducive to virtue, or at least not directly, but rather indirectly. And this is the real problem, more below. But the main point here is this homogenizing tendency. All political actors are obliged to have recourse to the same forms of instrumental reason to promote their aspirations: organizing, campaigning, talking points, convenient alliances, power sharing, PR, and so forth and it doesn’t matter whether the aim is democratic, aristocratic, or executive monarchic, the path quality is the same, a sort of moderated warfare basically. Involvement with politics brings everybody down to the same level and commits us to the methods that we really recoil against as contrary to virtue. So this seems to be a familiar problem.
Second. We should note the expansive character of the systems in question. There is an ideological dimension to ‘balance’ thinking that is seriously misleading. We might recall how Marx was aghast when Marshall, Jevons, and the Austrians introduced the theory of margin utility with their intersecting supply and demand curves back in the 1870s. Marx was hostile to this development because he recognized the ideological character of ‘balance’ talk, the serene pure land of equilibrium and sensible moderation. Marx really spoke for his generation of political economists when he castigated the new trend. He understood capitalism as a veritable explosion, a vast revolution of world wide proportions, of tremendous destruction and radical transformative powers. Capitalism was anything but ‘moderate’. Well, he was right. This remarkably expansive character may be seen also in the states system and the modern political systems. Once they were new institutions in America, now everywhere, even Bhutan. A question arises: can something as explosively expansive as this be sustained in time? Capitalism forever? We need to look a bit more carefully at the system we so heavily rely upon.
Last point, the most difficult one. I have argued that the logic of Aristotle’s polity stands as a classical model for the revived classicism of early modern Europe and the major institutions it developed mentioned above. Private and particularistic interests can be constituted in such a way that they synthetically produce a desirable public good. It was Bernard Mandeville who took note of this peculiar logic and shocked Europe with the publication of his ‘Fable of the Bees’ in 1720 wherein he maintained that private vice is conducive to public benefits. Self interest is the motor of the system which provides a plenitude of public goods. Mandeville shocked the sensibilities of his contemporaries because he flatly contradicted the prevailing belief in what I would want to call ‘karma’. Good causes produce good results, evil causes cause evil effects. I do hope my reader will try to take this seriously. This is heavyweight stuff that has never been adequately resolved. Go back and read Gampopa, or Petrul Rinpoche on ‘karma and it’s results’. Virtuous causes are productive of virtuous effects and vice versa. We stopped believing in this during the last few centuries and instead hold what we regard as a more sophisticated humanistic view which sees good proceed from evil and vice versa.
So then, Damcho, Ash, and all others who hold to the worth of balance of power systems as the evident solution to our problems, please try to engage with these long slumbering issues. I believe they are of the greatest importance regarding what we are trying to do. Again, I take seriously and support the concerns that have driven us to the consideration of these questions and the like. But we need to dig deeper.
Last. There is a traditional alternative to the Aristotelian line of thinking about all this which comes under the heading of Plato, idealism, and the ‘mixed regime’, a subject for the next post. Thank you for your patience, Kevin Frost.
Kevin, what an impressive and valuable post. I shall read it a few times more of course.
Believe it or not I am with you on questioning checks and balances and am not knee-jerk gung-ho on them necessarily even though obviously I took a recent, and more or less easily applicable model of self-same, from BC example.
I don’t myself have the pov that the point of checks and balances is only to curtail the power of the Monarch, rather for me the point is to create some sort of mechanism which obliges each sphere to have teeth which engage in the gears, as it were, of the other spheres; or put another way I have tried to suggest: that there is a two way flow from bottom to top and top to bottom which is beneficial for all involved. And it seems, as the daoists also discovered, that if you have two that means you have three, which is the mediation between two, and also where we get Man from Heaven and Earth, yang and yin.
Do you have any simple models of the Platonic vs. the Aristotelian so we can understand the differences better in practical terms?
Also, I did not get why the current models are necessarily expansionist although I heartily concur this is not a good thing.
I would also add that such expansionism is as much due to post-flood ongoing population expansion as it is to the virtues or vices of any system. Perhaps native cultural examples whose populations did not mushroom like so many others can be said to offer a challenge to this a priori assumption, in which case you might be onto something deeply important. I suspect so.
I don’t think the system matters so much as that there is a sense of deep connection to the same Realm on the part of all participant-citizens.
I don’t think this can happen unless there is a strong way for local affairs to be handled locally, national affairs to be handled nationally, and good, essentially instantaneous linkage, even if only on the psychic level as it were, between the two. Note that with this remark and in general I am taking the tack of leaning towards contemplating the flow dynamic rather than the virtue-vice quotient, and perhaps as you have warned later on, this is a serious oversight. On the other hand, I suspect the same structures, so to speak, that engender virtue are no less efficient at engendering vice and vice versa, pun intended. If so, then focusing on the structural dynamic, albeit a little dry and abstract seeming, might be of benefit since the ethical components can later on become the flesh and expressions, presumably of a virtuous bent, on the more impersonal systemic, or logistical, bones.
After you have penned your next one, and I appreciate these must take you considerable time and effort, would you please consider taking a stab at offering a re-edit of the current short form from the BC or another different one of similar length. I think if we try to write out example Constitutions showing the principle structures rather than simply talk about those principles in the abstract that a lot more gets communicated somehow.
I think your post here is deeply informative, not to mention impressive, and I look forward to studying it further. Thank you.
Hello Ash: What follows below was written before your last post. And thank you. The following might partially qualify as a broad overall comparison of the two traditions, idealism and realism, Plato and Aristotle and how they differ. Rereading it now I think I should have said more about the difference between ‘balance’ and ‘harmony’, mechanics and music. You bring up the question of how a mixed regime would resolve the problems we face. In the next posts I’ll try to answer this. Also, the expansive character of our systems is still vague. I’m finding it difficult but will keep at it. ‘A sense of deep connection’ and an example constitution. A tall order but good questions. I’ll try to get something out tonight after I feed the goats, chickens, and get some more wood. It gets cold down here in Tassie at night! We live about a half hours drive from the Antarctic ocean and it’s wintertime here. I understand you’re up in Cape Breton. How are the no-see-ums treating you at this time of year? More later, and thank you for your kind and encouraging remarks.
The Mixed Regime
In the last post I tried to characterize the balance of power idea as an essentially Aristotelian line of thinking that has quite a long history. Here I’d like to say a few things regarding the opposition and discuss the idealistic alternative that comes down from Plato and Polybius. But first a bit of a preface. I went to university after having attended Seminary back in 84. In all my readings of the political philosophers and historians the only (Western) one that really had any sort of purchase on the experiences I had at Seminary was the theory of the mixed regime of Polybius.
Polybius was the leader of the Greek Achaean League, a league of Greek city states that had finally gotten it’s act together but not in time to save themselves from the Romans who were already on their doorstep. Polybius along with 20 other leaders of the league were taken hostage by the Romans and lived under house arrest for almost 20 years, I think. Polybius was domiciled with Rome’s leading family, the Scipios, where he was treated with every honour and consideration. The Romans admired the Greeks and looked to them as the font of culture and philosophy, so these years of defeat and exile were not unpleasant ones. In return for the kind hospitality of his jailor/host Polybius wrote a major historical and theoretical work explaining why the Romans were so successful in all their undertakings. Polybius explained this by recourse to his knowledge of Plato and he presented himself as one who simplifies the masters doctrine rendering it intelligible to his Roman auditors. He basically said that Rome was unchallengeable because it had achieved a genuinely ‘mixed regime’ that synthesized the three good regimes of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, and it was due to this that they could not be defeated.
Polybius held it as an axiom that regimes or constitutions based on a single principle were prone to become their opposites. This is really to say that virtue is always in danger of sinking into corruption. So monarchy becomes tyranny, aristocracy becomes oligarchy, democracy descends into anarchy, or mob rule. The way to forestall the inevitable corruptions of time was then to constitute the three good regimes into a complex synthetic order where the virtues of each will serve to condition the others and thus sustain virtue generally speaking.
Now this basic theory spoke to me and resonated with what I had experienced at Seminary. All this was really do to the remarkable qualities of Trunpa. Specifically it was impossible to lie to this man, as many of us know well. The effect of this, I think, was that it kept our ’senior students’ (read ‘aristocracy’) on pretty good behaviour. At least I thought so, enough to motivate me out of my cautious and suspicious hanging back tendencies. As the leading students were so decent, hard working, and genuine I finally decided to come out of my shell and just pitch in and do my bit to. So basically, and especially after reading Polybius, I realized that Rinpoche had managed to resolve the ever recurrent problem of class conflict, and he did so as a monarch.
So. I came to believe that the basic purpose of a good constitution is to constitute community by overcoming class conflict. This entails a monarchy working mainly on aristocracy to curtail it’s self interested ambitions while encouraging it’s commitment to the general good. Very much Plato’s agenda in the Republic, actually. Interestingly, Plato has almost nothing to say about democracy (the townspeople) in the Republic. He is almost exclusively interested in the guardians, the aristocracy. The big problem is to uplift oligarchy to the plateau of aristocracy, which is to say officials who really work for the general good, and not just their own or that of their class but rather the good of the people. And they should do it on the cheap to, and not burden the people with excessive taxes.
Secondly I came to recognize that monarchy is not contrary to democracy but is rather it’s fundamental condition of possibility (to borrow a Kantian phrase). They are not opposite principles but are rather complimentary. I’m not just making this up. But to view this in historical practice you would really have to look more to Asia rather than Europe for examples of what this comes down to in practice, notably old China.
Yes, China. I did my dissertation on the subject of ‘oriental despotism’, on the origins of this idea and how it came to be recycled in the early modern literature. What I basically found was that it was Aristotle who formulated the first exemplary account which was subsequently revived and revised by Montesquieu during the 18th century. Here I’m fairly flying over vast tracts of theoretical territory in order to sustain the theme of an idealistic alternative to the widely canvassed balance of power constitutional types we are discussing. There’s so much to say. I’ll try to be as brief as possible.
Montesquieu was the author of the idea of separated powers, executive, legislative, and judicial and he used this analysis to qualify all manner of regimes as either legitimate (according to law) or ‘despotic’. He maintained that China was an example of this despotism whereas England was an example of a legitimate monarchy for it exhibited these separated powers and therefore constituted a system where the powers were constitutionally balanced. Now there’s a reason why an argument like this had to be made because his wasn’t the only influential idea floating about. In this regard his great adversary was Voltaire (whom Montesquieu acknowledged as such in a significant footnote in the original text). Voltaire was telling the sovereigns of Europe that China was the leading nation in this world which upheld the exemplary standards of reason and humanity and that the Europeans should emulate this example. The Voltarian line of criticism was radical and inflammatory. Beginning with the doctrine of natural human goodness which grounded the doctrines and practices of the scholar officials who governed the empire, he and his fellow sinophiles viewed Europe critically as a realm of superstition and barbarism. The superstition proceeded from the first estate which upheld the doctrine of fallen nature which legitimised the practice of the second estate of crude and self interested exploitation, superstition and barbarism. Accordingly the radical Voltarian position called for dismantling the authority of the first estate and replacing the false aristocracy with a real one along Chinese lines where the magistrates are chosen on the basis of examined merit and are not allowed to privatise their privileges as was the case in Europe. Needless to say the radical position of Voltaire and the sinophiles provoked a horrified opposition in Europe. The church had been denounced from the high ground of humane ethics while the so called aristocracy was called into question as a presumptuous impostor, merely mimicking the virtues that qualified real aristocracy. According to Voltaire, such an aristocracy was to be found in China, not Europe. This was a slap in the face and not well received by those with the most to lose, such as Montesquieu who spoke authoritively for his class. Montesquieu’s Persian Letters and subsequent Spirit of Laws was a counterattack and his main aim was to demolish the ‘China myth’ that had grown up during the last decades of the 17th and earlier decades of the 18th centuries.
It is hardly possible here to go into the intricacies of this debate but I just want to say that there was one and that’s actually what’s happing now with us. We are reviewing contentious ground that was canvassed centuries ago during the Enlightenment. Our debate here and now is what it was then. We are debating monarchy and how it should be constituted. Here, Damcho, Ash (?), Rita, James, and most have already taken up Montesquieu’s arguments and have urged that these considerations should become the centrepiece of our efforts to generate critical and enlightened notions about our status as a broad based community which we call ‘Shambhala’. Thus I shall have to play the part of Voltaire and try to provide a different account of what our community could be. This is ambitious and difficult, but that cannot be helped. For the moment I will just say that the idealistic line at the time (and now) proceeded from a traditional account of this ‘mixed regime’ as a constitution of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy. I have to come to view Montesquieu as a revisionist in the sense that he revised the traditional theory of the mixed regime into an analysis of governmental functionalism (executive, legislative, judicial). Something gets lost in the process. Most obviously everything has been narrowed down to one class. One might rhetorically ask: ‘who gains?’. Answer: Montesquieu’s class. Q. What do they gain? A. Everything. Q. Who loses? A. Both democracy and monarchy. Democracy, the people, simply fall out of the picture. Monarchy loses its capacity to declare the law. The legislative class rules supreme. The king becomes an i dotting and t crossing functionary, in the English manner, which was much to Montesquieu’s liking. Class rule. Oligarchy has been the case all along. Nothing has changed. Since these matters were discussed long ago there has been no progress in human affairs, not at least if you think in the traditional categories of political analysis as distinct from the new fangled social sciences. We suffered under an oligarchy then and still do.
But in another sense things have changed a great deal. Back then the idea of separated powers was new and had yet to find its grand fulfilment in the American constitution. But that was long ago. Now America is dying. We are confronted with the unnerving spectre of a once great nation going down the tubes. We see businessmen destroying the market, politicians tearing the old constitution into shreds, military leaders doing everything possible to undermine the morale of their soldiers. Everything now is upside down. The present moment is sort of a bardo. The spectre of America’s constitution being undermined and destroyed calls to mind its beginnings, and this coincides with another beginning, that is, our Shambhala. Ours is not a pleasant time in which to live, but it’s a good time to learn because at times like these things become transparent and intelligible (in their insanity).
Last point. I want to express my great appreciation for the gentlemanliness of Damcho and Ash especially for the conduct of this debate as it has progressed so far. We are discussing contentious issues. The ability to do this in a decent and generous manner is all important. This is especially the case given the ‘China’ dimension that figures strongly in the matter at hand. It is said that the Sakyong is sinifying and confucianizing Shambhala. I approve and believe that if this is so then we are probably headed in the right direction. The mere say-so of Kevin Frost will not convince anybody, of course. I think it will take a long time to properly work through these very fundamental issues. But I also wonder how much time we have. As America slides into insolvency and the breakdown of public services it is to be expected that our elites will do what they always have. That is to say it is to be expected that they will raise the spectre of external threats to divert the spotlight from internal disorders that are very much their own doing. Already one can hear the war drums. I believe war will come. Peace requires strenuous efforts to resolve real problems but that’s not what’s happening. War in the next decade is a real possibility. I have little doubt but that people such as myself will come to be branded as traitors in time. So then, to conclude, the context of our discussion has its dimension of awareness, one which I believe will be sorely tested in days and years to come. Something to keep in mind. Again, I am grateful for my readers patience, Kevin Frost.
Kevin, I deeply wish I had your background in terms of these studies. Fwiw, my inclination is to look to the daoist-confucians but I do not have much material to work with. I briefly joined the China History forum a couple of years back to propel studies in this direction but lacked the commitment to do the basic studies required to pass their entrance exam and so never followed through. I am an advanced to intermediate level student of their medical theory,including some working knowledge of yin-yang theory in the context of yoga/quigong, having studied with a reputable lineage holder in Hawaii some years back (as well as Tai Chi with one of Bruce Lee’s mentors!).
Also, I have never been a fan of modern democracy but I do feel that we lack a two-way structure and that this is important somehow.
Historically the area with China I am unfamiliar with in broad terms is the link between the Emperors – who during many strong dynasties were themselves strong in form and function – the Mandarins (aristocracy based at least partly on merit), and local governance. I believe they had something akin to a feudal system but exactly how it worked I don’t know, and I suspect that much depended upon the overall level of virtue and intelligence in the Mandarin class – as you have hinted at – to ensure that society as a whole was virtuous, including limiting too much abuse on the part of local authorities, presumably mainly of the Mandarin class/aristocracy, viz. the peasantry and other lower orders.
There are two countering positive views in your latest post which beg to be clarified, or at least I beg you to clarify them, namely:
a) you mention how your perception of Trungpa having managed to manifest a mandala more or less in line with Polybius’ recommendations, namely as you wrote: “The way to forestall the inevitable corruptions of time was then to constitute the three good regimes into a complex synthetic order where the virtues of each will serve to condition the others and thus sustain virtue generally speaking.”
Then there is the thought in this section that what Trungpa effected, along those lines, was:
“All this was really due to the remarkable qualities of Trunpa. Specifically it was impossible to lie to this man… [This] kept our ’senior students’ (read ‘aristocracy’) on pretty good behaviour…As [they] were so decent, hard working, and genuine,.. and especially after reading Polybius, I realized that Rinpoche had managed to resolve the ever recurrent problem of class conflict, and he did so as a monarch.
So. I came to believe that the basic purpose of a good constitution is to constitute community by overcoming class conflict. This entails a monarchy working mainly on aristocracy to curtail its self interested ambitions while encouraging it’s commitment to the general good. Very much Plato’s agenda in the Republic, actually. Interestingly, Plato has almost nothing to say about democracy (the townspeople) in the Republic. He is almost exclusively interested in the guardians, the aristocracy. The big problem is to uplift oligarchy to the plateau of aristocracy, which is to say officials who really work for the general good, and not just their own or that of their class but rather the good of the people.’
Now I believe it is fair to say that your description above is more or less how you think it should go in terms of your Voltairean model.
Let me see if I understand: first you praise saying Trungpa had grocked how ‘to constitute the three good regimes into a complex synthetic order where the virtues of each will serve to condition the others and thus sustain virtue generally speaking’, but then argue that a systemic approach between the three is not what is called for, rather just having a virtuous aristocracy which will, in turn, spread virtue to all the others automatically, and somehow never fall prone to becoming a corrupt oligarchy?
Where does this virtue come from and continue over time?
Also, there seems to be a little leap between praising the fact that all three systems are indeed in balance – and my first take on Polybius is that he makes a good point about balancing all three core elements (no matter how you get there) – and your next Voltairian or sinophilic/confucian suggestion is to reduce monarchy and role of People by simply engendering enlightened aristocracy.
I am not interested in arguing for the sake of it. I am not wedded to democracy, per se, although I think given our large populations these days and the current cultural mindset that it cannot easily be circumvented, but I do think that VCTR was onto something vital when, during his last 2-3 years, he fairly consistently pushed the deleg system and mentioned frequently – though alas not often enough in public since he was largely bedridden at that point – that there should be several levels of dekyongs going all the way up to the Board, which was our closest thing to Executive-cum-Parliament at the time with our 10,000 or less international population.
Well, when you have time, I again request you try to give us a one pager or so like my short form to show how it might look different.
Perhaps we can agree that what needs first to be articulated are the core roles of:
State – in terms of if any mission needs to be stated or it is implied by the others
Monarch
Aristocracy
Parliament
Local Governance
General Citizenry
I had the thought on awakening this morning to better craft an Upper and Lower Parliament structure with Upper having more to do with aristocratic principles and Lower having more to do with ensuring Regional and Local Governance is excellent and not disempowered and shall still attempt this.
But I also suspect that your input here might promote a paradigm shift out of the sort of Constitution we have been considering from current Western models, of which the BC is the most recent example.
(I think you will enjoy 5000 years of human history by Andre Gunder Frank, in which he explains just how dominant the CHinese model was up to about 1750.)
PS, in terms of the above suggested cores: under Parliament, for example, you could just write : ‘n/a’. But the idea is to be able to play with various structures and see how they resonate before trying to flesh them out, which can come later.
Also finally: could you try to characterize in what way, from your understanding, SMR is sino-fying these days. The part I find most difficult these past years is that although I find most of his pronouncements via letter eminently and profoundly worthy (for example the recent one about Shambhala Households), I just can’t get a feel for what sort of world we are and are building towards. It just didn’t for years and still doesn’t click. Furthermore, there seems to almost no structural or logistical discourse discussing things in anything like this fashion, and he doesn’t – at least publicly – offer anything like this either, so I am left with basically no idea as to what the political vision is, nor where the Shambhala mandala is headed, or at least intends to be headed. In fact, this inability to connect either with head or heart, has led me, somewhat unwillingly but relentlessly, to basically turn my back on the whole thing even though (obviously) it is of deep concern and interest.
PPS. Also in your initial praise of the Trungpa model as you perceived it at Seminary you realized this was effected by his functioning as a Monarch. But then later you seem to advocate a system without one. Is this consistent, in your view, and if so, how?
Finally, let me say how truly delighted I am to see a discussion of class in a way that is not immediately knee-jerk hostile. How classes are managed is basically the name of the game. But it became a dirty word in democratic societies of late mainly due to the perverted influence of the propagandists pulling the populist strings throughout our corrupted societal structures these days. There are always classes in any social group. Has to be dealt with, and is both source of strength as well as potential agency of dysfunction and worse.
Antarctica! Any UFO’s?
Latest version of Short form with clearer categories including Citizenry and Civil Service quotients which were missing before. Also simpler suggestion as to how Regional Dekyong Council could play role.
1 and 2 basically lay it out. 3 is more procedural but provides impression as to how the core elements interplay.
For those wishing to play with whole document:
http://www.frenchroadbakery.tk/SC%20OutlineFormat%202.htm
(am unable to paste in without losing formatting without which is unreadable. Sorry.)
Dear Everyone,
Well, certainly very thought provoking posts! and again fine minds, if I might say so.
I don’t know how this relates, but what is happening here in Vermont, because of the current economic situation, which by the way, I don’t think will rebound to the good old bank and stock market days, so what is happening is alot of emphasis by locals on sustainability. Everybody, it seems, these days, has small farms (ie gardens, goats, chickens, and so forth) Also there are community gardens in some of the villages for people who dont have land.
The bartering system is becoming more prevailant. Now, I remember Trungpa Rinpoche talking about the basis structure in Shambhala would be small agricultural, pastoral peasantry, if you want, or any combination of these. And, it’s also interesting that Kevin talks about goats and chickens and Ash is baking bread.
I wonder, and excuse my strange mind, if the constitution could be seen somewhat like a food chain? That is why initially I talked about interdependency and evolution. That is, rather than having a revolution it could be an evolution. and presumably, rather than a declaration of independence it would be a declaration of interdependence. I’m sorry to talk in such esoteric terms, but that’s just the style of my mind. I don’t always know what it is that I’m trying to get at. But I think what I’m saying is: I’d rather liked that several of you mentioned looking at this from a completely different angle. Kevin and Ash both mentioned this.
What Trungpa Rinpoche foretold was that the whole economic structure of the world would change. He even mentioned in the Kingdom (Nova Scotia) that one might have to go back to horse and cart transportation. It’s easier to see this now possibly happening, even within the United States… certainly in Vermont. Windmills and solar panels are going up here like nothing I’ve ever seen before. And people everywhere talk about things changing. This is a very interesting time, indeed.
And following a statement that Trungpa Rinpoche always used was “Keep it simple.”
And from that point of view, what are the basic building blocks of this society? Are we talking about family and what would a Shambhala family look like? I have not read the current Shambhala household book. If somebody has a copy, perhaps they could email me a copy if it’s not on the restricted list.
I’m going to try to get some others involved in our posts here.
I think Kidder Smith could be helpful if he would. He was a professor of Chinese studies at Bowdoin College and a long time student of Trungpa Rinpoche.
I’m not sure I’ve added very much here, but just to let you know I’m reading everything – which I find very interesting and exhilarating.
Thank you.
John Perks
JP: I think we could have the opening para. of the Lightning of Blessings here as a root text. If it is inappropriate to print here than I beg the moderator to delete the post an apologise:
“In the midst of great wisdom without beginning or end,
The sky of purified false conceptions
Constellations of completely liberated dependent truth shine
And the Sun of Basic Goodness, complete perfection, arises.”
Now this is not about interdependency as you mention above per se, but it is some sort of foundational statement about the nature of wisdom and confusion and the first dot of establishing Enlightened Society, the first moment as it were.
As to interdependency and different approaches, I still feel – perhaps pedantically – that we can try to express those in terms of how core given principles are put together or defined, such as CItizenry, State, Monarch, Parliament and suchlike.
I mean: if you are drafting the Constitution of a State, then that State, both its nature and location etc., should be defined. Similarly presumably its core visions, motivations, aspirations and suchlike. A purely Pirate State would have different such expressions than a purely Monastic State, to give an extreme example.
Once you have a State, which is the One principle, this implies Many, otherwise no need to worry about One. The State is a ‘Union’ of the Many. Now that many need ways to both link as One and also work through inevitable vicissitudes, or at least changes, i.e. processes that naturally arise in any living situation.
So you have One (embodied by the Monarch principle however it is constituted, whether in a person, a book or simply a verse or word).
You have the Many (the people in that State).
You have Relationship (usually expressed as various class, hierarchy and other systems or expressions).
I don’t see any way around this. So whether there is a bottom-up (or many-to-few if you prefer) funneling of decision-making mandate in a so-called democratic fashion, or simply an all-encompassing rule by Benevolent Dictator in a ‘there can be only one’ format, i.e. whether or not the particularized notion of a ‘Parliament’ is appropriate, there still has to be some sort of mediation, or fulcrum, or linkage between One and Many for any ongoing flexibility and adaptation, including dealing with issues related to war and peace, plenty and famine, progress or corruption etc.
I think a basic setup involving State, Crown, People, Governance is inevitable and there are no end of ways such relationships can be defined, ways that are very subtle or very crude. But it is best to try to write them out as Constitutions, I think, rather than abstract theories about various aspects.
This is not to criticize any inputs nor to try to hasten the process here, which is excellent, but I would feel better if there were more written-out Constitutions (in short format) than my sole offering here, or clauses of Constitutions, or also the reason I offer the short one is as a template that you can copy onto your computer and then play with and bring back something different and explain why and what it brings to the table.
Somehow it brings it to another level in both practical and conceptual terms.
PS to all and esp. Kevin: I just remembered that CTR gave me a copy of the Analects of Confucius for my birthday, presumably knowing that I was about to start work in the College of the A.P. which unfortunately never had another gathering after that point! Or maybe his Kusung just picked it off the shelf because nobody ever read it, I don’t know. But I have a nice Trungpa-signed copy of the Analects.
I do hope you can bring Kidder in on this. He was one of my first thoughts as people who could be very helpful. (I am still reeling from Kevin’s contributions. All is good, but sometimes people who actually know their history and subject matter, let’s face it, bring a certain something that is very valuable.
Damcho: by auspicious (or other) co-incidence, the controversial (Jewish) revisionist Henry Makow has published on his site today an article entitled ‘Manliness’, although he did not write it himself, authored by a the pseudonymous ‘Confucian’.
It deals with some of the gender issue aspects touched on previously in this thread, but also links with Confucian and other traditional outlooks (as well as harping on various pernicious initiatives underfoot in contemporary society which is where it is, to some, controversial).
But worth a gander.
Ash, I won’t have time for a proper post on gender until later today or tomorrow, but did have a look at the link you mentioned. Honestly, I think it is one of the most confused, not to mention paranoid, things I’ve seen in a long time. (I don’t read news blogs or I’m sure there would be plenty up there with him.)
But I wouldn’t even begin to know how to respond to that. He praises a set of desired behaviours he chooses to call “manliness”. Great, that’s not the point. The point is that we’re human beings, following a human path. We have been struggling to transcend the animal realm for millennia, the realm of survival, whose structure is gender, and to become fully human beings.
There is not a male enlightenment or a female enlightenment; there is enlightenment. When bodhisattvas appear sambhogakayically to us, they do so–or at least we represent them doing so–as male or female, because we happen to procreate by means of complementary function (“sexual reproduction”) and therefore have sexed forms. But bodhisattvas aren’t half-beings. They are fully enlightened (or near enough). Avalokitesvara is male in India and female as Guan Yin in China, illustrating that gender is empty appearance, not something to be attached to. Sukhavati, I read somewhere long ago (and may be misremembering), consists only of males. Interpret that how you will, but one thing it means is that, logically, it’s a realm without gender.
Every single one of the qualities he is pushing as “manliness” are qualities desirable in women too. And every single one of the desirable qualities we ascribe to the “feminine” (which he doesn’t seem that interested in) are qualities men had better cultivate too.
The lone commenter to the article says: “My dear friend who reads your articles regularly just asked me to take a look, so I did and I have to ask – how terrified of your penis are you? Substitute the idea of human – humanity – humanistic – humanitarianism – into your concept of manliness – and then you might have some clue to your responsibility as a “gentleman” – but wait – i forget – the yin yang is a conspiracy too – the concept of the masculine and the feminine being contained, integral, a part of – must be more Maoist dogma…”
To which Mr. Makow replies–in the true spirit of a “gentleman”: “Any man who is ruled by a woman is a pussy. That’s what you are.”
That would seem to be the true spirit of what he is about. That says it far better than the article.
Anyway, more when I am freer.
I do not endorse the article in any way necessarily. It just arose today in the wider public discourse and, interestingly enough, combines a gender discussion with reference to Confucius, which also popped up here earlier. I totally missed the pussy remark you cite. Very tasteless.
It sounds like you approve of an essentially androgynous approach to the genders, i.e. they are the same with only slightly minor biological body parts. That is a perfectly understandable point of view.
But of course there have been many others and, historically speaking, it is one of a rather small minority. Not that that makes it wrong, or anything, but surely someone with such a minority opinion should be able to see there might be other sides to it, especially considering throughout history, in no end of ways, there have been?
Let me try this: I’ll reverse my earlier remark from above which introduced this topic into the discussion thusly:
for example, if we had a system where only the women held public office and navigated the outer mandalas including defence from invaders, form the majority of the police and army, navigate into new territories, clear out the forests and turn them into farmland, build the bridges, create city infrastructure with heating and running water and suchlike, and meanwhile the menfold mainly stayed invisible in these spheres with their own formless networks of opinion and influence, I think that could work fine, although I suspect it’s not the best way.
Again, it doesn’t really matter what the roles are necessarily, but it is good to have polarity. So if you have all together all the time both public and private life, then where do you separate them in the culture? There isn’t any time or place left, practically speaking. And there, I think, something important is lost.
The whole thing doesn’t have to involve mutual hostility or one-upmanship at all. That said, I suspect there will always be a certain degree of dominance and submission in the dynamic because it just seems to be part of the setup somehow versus only difference per se. Just as in larger groups there are always leaders and followers. The world just sort of seems to work that way somehow.
For example, these days it appears like many (mainly western) women want to be as dominant as the males, who they try to make less dominant in society in any case, but then it also seems that they resent or despise mates who are too submissive and wimpy. It’s a bit of a conundrum!
I Like the opening Para;When I say interdependance,I mean how it all relates and functions
well, I think the bottom line is that long with inevitable smaller and greater vicissitudes which accompany any human endeavor, ultimately all involved, of high, middle and low estate, should be proud and delighted to be part of the whole.
One could have a simple ‘one perfect leader’ model I suppose, but that won’t take care of everything unless he/she can delegate just about everything, at which point you have to have an organisation which takes care of most things so even a one person model still ends up dealing with all the same things. One at the ‘top’ or centre. The masses throughout at ‘the bottom’ or fringe, and various elements in between. There is no other way. Never has been, never will.
And such things are mutually co-creating and interdependent. Choiceless. So the issue is whether you can do it all with harmony and grace including dealing with change and internal/external obstacles, including outright conflict, or not.
I felt a little light bulb went off around the Loyal Opposition Party business. Something like that would be helpful in any society. Now we are getting into more subtlety about how to go about balance, virtue etc. viz. either overtly checking and balancing or simply running a very virtuous upper class in which case everything takes care of itself somehow because the people at the top are the best and brightest. Not sure I buy it, but also I find overly defined setups with endless levels of X,Y and Z rather questionable, if not just too boring, as well.
Did you get anywhere on tribal structure. Last night I was reading from the Gaelic History book (I’ll soon be sending you) a treatise – in anecdote form – on logic. Making the playful – and somewhat snarky – case that Gaelic has lots of very specific logical and philosophical terms which English simply doesn’t have, and therefore telling the explanatory anecdotes in English but using the Gaelic logical/philosophical terms they exemplified. Fun, but also I couldn’t quite follow it, but very smart stuff. Tonight will search for more on kings which was the original intention. All this talk of Plato and Demosthenes and Confucius. I wondered what the Gaels would have to say. They have a lot, but it takes quite a bit of effort to enter that realm and I am not familiar with it. Except when encountering boisterousness in Cape Breton bars; there are teachings there, but not much in the way of overt logic, epistemology and suchlike.
People around here do the same as in Ireland in many rural areas (though not mine): they raise the right hand, palm out, in greeting. They also do it to each other when someone is coming from the other direction in a car. One soul traveling in the body greeting the other soul. Nice.
Yes well not the perfect leader model,gentle leader benevolent,as in CV..”the prince will treat even the revolutionary spirits amoung them with great kindness,gentleness is the best whip,which every one will respect”..so perhaps revolutionary spirits in loyal opposition…loyal because we love the Sakyong and the Kingdom,oppostion because we have questions about what is happening,and what is being put out in our name so to speak..again the current Sakyong does not represent all Shambhalalians,as we know not being members of SI,but here I am talking about square one again,and that is why we should continue with this,will check more tribal as in family ..clan blood line and fostering..
Thanks good night sweet prince
Love
JP
Jahvohl, Guten Nacht, unser lieber PanzerFeistBauerMeister* und erstwhile KDapon of yore!
Ash.
The Panzerfeist was an early model Shambhala shoulder-launched ‘Black Powder’ missile first tested by its maker, Major-Dapon Perks, on the sweet ego-killing fields of RMDC in the illustrious Fall, crisp clear and pregnant with an upcoming birth, 1981.
The Panzerfeist performed superbly, accompanied by bagpipes on the launch site on the splendid hill overlooking the Magyel Pomra Encampment, but unfortunately none of the intended targets, even though it was already 10.am, were up to see its majestic trajectory.
Those Lazy Kasung Vajra Bastards!
mediocre but interesting presentation of interdependency in quantum ‘holographic’ theories.
One cannot find a single electron, nor ultimately any event, which exists independently as such, since its very characteristics depend upon relationship.
It’s just a fancy way of saying that anything in space-time has dimension (front back up down) in which case it is dependent upon everything else in space-time for its particular space-time location and character, which is in constant flux.
Small mistake at the end where they say sight works by taking in light and the processing in the brain. Partly true; but recent research has been able to confirm what old Hindu and daoist yogis maintained is that also there is energy going out from the eyes towards the object of sight. Personally, I think one of the main functions of the brain is to help create the seeming three-dimensional world we live in in ways we do not yet understand. We help create worlds out of swirling elements which, without our input, would be utterly formless which ultimately is what they are right now in any case.
Now how that can be woven into a constitution….
I know: Parliament continuously plays that old Party Game where you have to keep getting up, then all sit down when the music stops and the one who doesn’t have a seat (one is taken away) has to make a spontaneous discourse! Or gets to be Prime Minister for the Day.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dpRPTwsKJs&feature=player_embedded#!
AH yes dear Ash,good idea,will tell Panzerfeist story on Celtic Buddhist table,this is musical tables…the debate continues…how is bread?and where is my f&#@#$ book?
Love
JP
Well, having finally dug it up a few days ago as part of moving everything around to accommodate a new bakery, I am looking to see anything about monarchy before shipping it off. But now I have found it, I WILL ship it. It’s not what I said it was. It’s ‘The Hebridean Collection’ by D.A. Fergusson and A.J. MacDonald published in 1984, subtitled: “Eachdruidhean Agus Sgeulachdan Bho Sheanachaidhean Uuidhist” – Accounts and Stories of the Uist Sennachies. The book is in both English and Gaelic.
Of interest to this thread, tangentially, the oath of the Sennachies:
“Instruction through Vows
To preserve inviolate the history of the fathers,
To pass it along without bias by instruction,
From mouth to mouth, from knee to knee,
The witness and the heritage most precious
In the power of the free, as opposed to the unfree,
Without injury to any person or thing,
Without twisting the truth, in opposing deceit,
Without strengthening evil, without weakening justice,
So long as the blood is warm, and breath in the body,
To the awakening of the Feinn.”
And opposite that is all written in the Gaelic.
One of the authors, MacDonald, was brought up as a Sennachie. This book is stories from that line, going back at least 400 years, but obviously connected to earlier ones from before they moved to the Hebredes. It is only 500 pages long.
Did first real batch of bread yesterday. Delicious. One loaf had almost psychedelic caramelization on the upper crust. Most of the others had the same but on the lower crust only. I take this as a message: although there is upper crust potential (societally speaking), the majority of the clientele are going to be of the lower crust type (not surprisingly given where I live).
So although I intend to give those lower crust customers a jolly well caramelized (lots of different browns and golds with hints of black and russet, like a good beard on a stout redhead!) upper crust, I am not going to get all precious about it, i.e. making this bread something ‘high-falutin’.
Also, if I can get farmers wives to buy it, it must be good, since a) they bake their own so b) there is a little pride involved in buying it from a strange guy down the road from God Only Knows Where living in that Ratty Old Trailer!
In short: it’s the best bread I’ve tasted since living in Europe, and I had small problems with the dough, timing of the fire etc. so they didn’t even come out right.
I also know it’s good because right now in broad daylight a squirrel has invaded the bakery and is eating one of the loaves. The first night I baked something in a too cool oven, within hours he had found a way in – despite my killer cat who regularly makes mincemeat out of rabbits three times her size, and I haven’t seen a squirrel around here in years – and demolished a loaf. At least the squirrels around here have good taste!
PS. The more I consider having some sort of formal opposition principle, the better it sounds. The more I consider having a Parliament, the less I like it. What a beast!
AH there you go ,thats pure celtic no parliament,what do you think about confederation of tribes which Kevin is talking about?..it is interesting in Astrix comic books the ” boss” liked the romans,said we should be like them,he would order ginantonicus ,well you know that was never going to fly with me ,I was all for the gaul’s I said once the magic potion was drala juice he laughed at that..we have been talking about bakery here..what oven cost you ?..love JP
This is a commercial oven so I really had to use bricks and it is much larger than a home oven would need to be. So I paid about 3 months time and $3,000 to make. Which is not bad considering the cheapest commercial-sized used electric bakery oven I could find was the same price.
To make your own you can do it for about $100.00 for hearth firebricks and build the rest from stone and clay and, up your alley no doubt, old empty wine bottle for insulating underneath the hearth! Of course you don’t have to use firebrick either. Good stone can handle it, but it’s tricky to do it right so they don’t explode when heated so firebricks a good solution.
But many old stone ovens in Europe, still standing. Home oven has to be large enough inside to handle about 4 loaves of bread so good also for roasting small beasts. Much easier to build and a clay dome, about 2.5″ around will stand up structurally for years, whereas when about 3′*4′ like mine, clay would collapse so I had to go with brick.
Good book on that by Kiko Denzer. I think you should build one, but try for an old-fashioned mainly stone style. Will go with your dolmens. Makes fantastic slow roast, can cook beans for a day or so when oven still warm but not nearly warm enough for breads; also in olden days people would use them to sterilize clothing and bedding. Nice things. Best built outdoors.
Am still somewhat amazed that even when it’s blazing hot inside, way above 1000dF, I have a simple wooden door guiding the air up the chimney (almost not necessary) and that door doesn’t burn, albeit it is covered with a baking pan I screwed onto the fire side. But still. It’s hot and that wood should burn. But it doesn’t. Good thing too! Another thing you would like about a brick oven – if you can find good old red bricks, not new concrete fake bricks – is that you burn the fire REALLY REALLY hot. So it’s dramatic.
PS. Actually it was much closer to $2,000 for the oven. I also had to do some remodelling. And if I were in the States, it would have been closer to $1,000 because everything out here that needs custom ordering is around double what it is in the US, sometimes more.
But then I got my ‘88 Mercedes for only $800, so what goes around comes around I guess.
JP: in terms of the Native Federations, I don’t know the details. Maybe Kevin does (sounds like it!). But my impression is that they were similar to a Dekyong Council type configuration in that
a) individual tribes had their own leaderships, with a Chief as the Head of that particular tribe or band
b) then there were larger tribes with multiple smaller heads who usually would also have one Head over them all but only when they had to confer together
c) then there were federations with many tribes, and that’s the part I don’t know about.
But it’s similar in the sense that you have local communities who can contribute a representative (often the Chief presumably in their case but in ours could be a Dekyong) to a larger pan-community Council.
Now in our case also, as currently configured, the deleg system was mainly a feedback, rather than governance, mechanism, although I believe many suggestions were given that there would later on be Dekyong-based legislative bodies, and/or Dekyong participation in the Administration.
To me the root concept behind confederations is that they are partnerships amongst autonomous partners, meaning there is no strong Central Government lording it over those partners.
Personally, I have always felt this to be a superior model in many ways.
But if you have cities in the mix, this changes things. I suspect that many of the developments of the Greek systems which Kevin cites have as much to do with the growth of city populations as to any superior philosophy. Cities change things: although you have an identifiable, large population in a relatively small space, that population depends upon an extended rural territory for its being, so you need a far more complex set of governance procedures to balance those different components which will include, by definition, many small rural communities scattered around but who need to be brought under the same overall ‘we’, both for logistical as well as military reasons. It changes the picture significantly from independent tribes, many of whom in olden times moved from place to place with the seasons. Cities also necessitate bureaucracies to manage complex logistical things that come up with large, concentrated populations.
The Chinese had complex governance systems early on because they had large cities early on. Merchants from Europe around and after Marco Polo brought back dizzying descriptions of Asia. A rich captain in Europe going over there for the first time had his mind blown by the first large port – more ships in that one port than throughout Europe. And then when he got onto the next and larger port, there were twice as many as the one before. By the time they made it to the large ports in China, Europe felt like a minor backwater. Which it was at the time in comparison. Again, Gunder Frank’s book ‘ReOrient’ is interesting on this. Including how and why the Spinning Jenny was purposefully invented in order to gain access to Asian markets once we ran out of easy gold and silver from the Americas with which to trade with them.
You can call it something other than checks and balances if you want, but it turns out that any society that can’t or doesn’t have a functioning system for conflict resolution or in other words a justice system, it will collapse back into chiefdoms or tribalism.
There’s a quality to these discussions that implies everything one does, all aspects of society and so forth, are direct cause and effect of decisions each individual makes. This is rather disturbing in its blanket ability to blame any victim for any suffering they are going through. If Bodhisattvas go around telling anyone who suffers, it’s their own dann fauklt, well, then fuck ‘em. I don’t need them on my team.
If this were true, there would be no need to teach about compassion or to admonsh people to be kind and help others as much as possible. What a very cold noncaring and impersonal view of other people’s suffering.
Sounds typically monarchical.
Chieftain and tribal systems do not have to be unjust. I think that sort of quotient (virtue) cannot be guaranteed by any system per se. Any society can become virtuous or vicious with the same system.
You can have the best justice system in the world gradually infiltrated by agents bent on undermining the society.
I have no doubt there still are many tribal systems more just than anything we have come up with.
And it is possible that not all monarchs were perverse egomaniacs. Certainly if they all were and by definition have to be, it’s not good. But then if that was the case, we wouldn’t have been students of CTR, would we, nor witnessed that there is another way. So methinks you are generalising with one slant a tad overmuch, James.
Also justice is just one of many checks and balances. For example I was reading of a more simple, traditional one in a military memoir this morning: the tradition in the Army that except in dire or extreme situations, a senior officer would never step in to tell a junior officer how to fulfill their appointed task. So usually it would go like: ‘we need to take that bridge. XI Corps will handle it, supported by Y Engineer Corps with air cover from AF Z Squad. Colonel Mustard is in charge of taking that Bridge. Any questions?’
After chain of command is settled, then Colonel Mustard is in charge of taking the bridge and General Ketchup would not tell him exactly how to do it, nor wire in instructions on a headset – even if they had that ability.
This is a clear separation of roles, which is also a form of check and balance. But it takes a disciplined, established culture for such codes of conduct to be transmitted and adhered to. The best way, ultimately, for as Confucius and others have remarked, if justice is mainly administered via court systems and punishments, it is like treating disease long after it has developed rather than preventing its arising – in this case non-virtue – in the first place.
Can we take it from your response that in your Constitution there would be no Monarch?
General thought: it seems to me that this Table could incorporate two distinct projects.
1) Ongoing, free-form explorations of the nature of government, constitutional systems, culture etc, such as has been going on. As Mark wrote in the intro, these could provide a set of resources used for a “Vajra Politics” curriculum in the future.
As far as an actual, detailed, comprehensive Constitution arising from this work, I suspect this will be a fair bit further down the road. This is of course completely fine and expected.
2) Along with this however, I’d like to propose a more short-term and concrete project, if anyone has time and inspiration to do this (I definitely won’t have time from September on and possibly not before then either, but then I was thinking more in terms of an experienced teacher writing this anyway). This project would be short, as I envision it, maybe 1-2 pages even, or a little longer if necessary. It would be a statement / teaching regarding a Shambhalian view of government. Now of course there are lots of things VCTR said about this. But they are scattered throughout various talks and have different contexts. The difference here is that we would be trying to put together something really concrete and concise. And something that specifically addresses the concerns many of us have been raising here.
Constitutions always sound like legal documents, I guess because that’s what they mostly are… What I’m imagining here leaves out all the really detailed specifics, but is rather a statement of principles, of vision. It seems to me that this might then provide a good and inspiring starting point for further discussion. And of course more than one person could offer a version.
Personally I would be more interested in someone’s own thought-out presentation then simply bringing together references from “Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior” and so on, trying to tie them together so everything fits. Obviously VCTR’s words represent the most important reference point, but they still have to be interpreted; there’s no getting around that. In any case I’d love to see what someone who has thought deeply about all these questions might come up with if they sat down one day and let the vision out.
We need the theory, but we need the concrete too, to stay inspired and so that all feel like they can participate.
How does this sound?
Well
These articles are getting too longish, which I wa srude to Ash, but nobody want’s to read very long articles on a computer monitor? Nobody, really.
I’m legally blind, and I do head aches when I try to read them.
Please cut them shorter.
Rob
well, Rob, I understand. Unfortunately the way I think – and always have done since youth, is usually by writing out as I think. It might also be English schoolboy training because that is how they train you there.
That said, do you really think you can come up with a constitution with nothing more than one paragraph comments? Perhaps this is just not the thread that interests you, which is fine isn’t it?
For example, along with many others of course, I find Kevin’s long posts very informative, and also appropriate. But they are long, and really need to be to provide the scope of perspective he is bringing to the subject matter.
Anyway. I offered one model and am now reflecting. No other model has been offered yet, but many things being discussed. Now damcho wants something slightly different, i.e. background study to reference earlier lineage guidelines, which sounds fine. And there we are for now.
In terms of your suggestion, D, yes wouldn’t that be nice. Barring that, I think we can trust our accumulated experience and insight to at least take a stab at things. We can come up with a general brushstroke. If it has merit, and then legs, far more detailed work can no doubt be done later. But if you have a good sense of Shambhala, warriorship, Buddhadharma, humanity and suchlike, I wonder how much more one really needs, although of course as you pointed out, any previous guidelines or comments would be helpful.
Mark elsewhere linked an excerpt from some remarks on politics by VCTR in Google Books.
Dear Ash, Rob and All
Some brief comments -second Ash’s thing about the English writing which does at times become long but that is indeed the tradition where 2,000 word essays when I went to college for my degree were the main form.
I agree also with Damcho about the political comments that CTR made you have to hunt around for them in the established publications so a more concise list of his ‘political’ writings would be useful.
So yes welcome Mark Szp. references to political ideas of CTR but we do need more for our discussion I believe.
Been away from the board because have been doing workshops with people from the states -hope to join in much more in the coming weeks.
Best from the UK
Rita Ashworth
Hello All,damco seems like a good idea for “Vajra Politics Curriculum”so am on board with that so to speak,interesting developments,
Kind Regards,
JP
The only problem with the idea is that although excellent, it might not happen since nobody might compile such information. This being a forum/blog type thing, might be better to contribute information about where to find source material, links to anything publicly available, offer summaries oneself. Otherwise if we say we will wait until somebody writes it out, although again a good idea, doesn’t mean it will happen. It’s just an idea.
I woke up with the idea of changing my short form to incorporate two elements which have come up recently (amongst others), namely including animals etc. and also emphasizing Aristocracy over too much checks and balances.
This also shows how easy it is to make sweeping changes using the one page template offered earlier. Took me about 30 minutes to revise. I suggest others play with similar revisions.
Shambhala Constitution Outline 3:
Emphasizing Aristocracy
Following in the lineage and spirit of the mandates of the Druk Sakyong*, the following Constitutional outline is proposed for discussion:
1. A Constitutional Monarchy whose Constitution embodies the doctrines and lineage of Shambhala.
2. The principal Elements therein comprising:
a. State comprising all People and Sentient Beings therein in whom ultimately reside all powers within the State (‘Enlightened Society’);
b. Monarch from hereditary line of Druk Sakyong who symbolizes the Unity of the State and is the Chief Protector of the Constitution, the Realm, the People and all sentient beings therein including animals, plants, ghosts, protectors and any other Beings associated with the Realm.
c. Citizenry – The People (‘members’) of such Society have various Rights and Duties, principally the right to develop lives and livelihoods spiritually and otherwise in accordance with Shambhala principles, and the duty to protect the unity of the Realm and help all others.
d. Governance: Councils, of which:
i. Dekyong Councils: comprising Dekyongs elected from each deleg; oversee the Local Administrations which are combination of locally elected Officials and nationally appointed Civil Service Officers. Dekyong Councils can object to, which latter the Dekyong Councils can object to and/or dismiss.
ii. ii. National Dekyong Assembly (House of Commons): comprising all elected Dekyongs, meets quarterly with power to push or block new initiatives to and from Shambhala Council, issue a vote of no confidence in House of Lords.
iii. Shambhala Council (House of Lords / Aristocrats) comprising retired or distinguished citizens; 20% of these are appointed by Sakyong, the rest by the People, one male and one female from each Region and City from where they are elected. From this body is elected the Prime Minister. They set policy, provide oversight but do not administer.
iv. Opposition (‘Checks and Balances’) Quotient – [election and function to be determined]. Includes Ombudsmen, Special Commissioners and Royal Fool.
e. Governance Civil Service (‘Administration’) including Elements such as Church (‘Vajradhatu’, Justice, Military, and suchlike. Appointed mainly by HM and Prime Ministers with approval of Shambhala Council by majority vote. Overseen by Governance Council comprising HM via His appointed GC Secretary, Prime Minister, National Ombudsman (elected), and Heads (Lord Protectors) of the Civil Service branches (appointed by HM with PM approval).
* Druk Sakyong because over time the list would grow too long; more importantly, each subsequent Sakyong is bound to the original root Sakyong which maintains primordial continuity.
Comments, Notes:
1. Freedom of Religion is assumed because all Powers reside in the People who elect members to the Shambhala Council who determine all National Policies. So it is not necessary to get into details of this, along with many other types of issues, including race, gender, agricultural, ecological, conflict resolution and so forth. This includes whether or not there are national taxes, the distribution of the same, a national school or health care system and so forth. All such issues are worked through in the Council structures, as defined in this Constitution, all of which ultimately depend upon the spontaneously elected Dekyongs in local Delegs.
2. The Constitution can only be changed with a National Referendum showing any new clause or alteration therein. Such changes can only be offered once a decade.
(Document for editing: http://www.frenchroadbakery.tk/SC%20OutlineFormat%203.htm )
Rita, I grew up there in the 60’s 70’s. We didn’t count the words, but the typical homework assignment (boarding school homework) from age 13 onwards was about 10 legal pages, handwritten, so way over 2,000 words, probably more like 5-10,000. A-levels were 3 hours of non-stop writing, essentially crafting 3-5 homework length essays during the course of the exam, essays which had been studied for and practiced for a couple of years before sitting the exam. I have been told they are the equivalent of graduate school type essays in the US in terms of length and depth of detail expected, but have no idea myself having not been to US graduate school. Certainly the couple of undergrad programs I took (Syracuse,NY and Naropa) had nothing like the emphasis on written essays of the English system.
Creating enlightened society is not about “fixing the world” or making the world a “better place.” Samasara can’t be “fixed.” Shambhala International is also just samsaric, and since you can’t fix samsara. Shambhala International can’t be fixed either. It has to be recognized for what it is .
When you are distracted you are back in samsara, linear time and space; when you are not distracted, you are liberated and everything is “illuminated” i.e. enlightened in the timeless moment. .. Practice is about familiarizing yourself with non-distraction, those glimpses of non-distraction when everything is perfect just as it is and one becomes stable in that. If a critical mass of people could remain undistracted, and take their own “royal seat,” that would create an enlightened society without effort. Natural compassion would arise.
What is fundamentally wrong with Shambhala International and teachers like the Sakyong is that they are not about “liberating you from samsara”, i.e. endless distraction, They are all about keeping you fixated and distracted in samsara, so that is why it is fraudulent and a lie. It really is that simple. Samsara and nirvana become one when you are no longer distracted and hooked by the three times. If a teacher or organization is not about “liberation” than you are truly just spinning in samsara and confusion endlessly.
Agreed about samsara-nirvana-fixation-liberation etc. But if you were to be part of setting up a country based on Shambhala Principles, how do you think, ideally, that should be done, or look like?
One thing I meant to say earlier on that have expressed elsewhere a couple of months back, and the principal reason why I am interested in this Constitutional thread is that I feel that we as the early sangha in the West of the Vajradhatu-Shambhalian line have unfinished business.
VCTR laid out a brilliant context and structure along with pith instruction and training. He also set up a lineage with successors, albeit granted there was a rocky transition period in the years immediately following his death. However, in the years immediately preceding his death, along with encouraging a move to Nova Scotia, he also gave various guidelines about setting up a deleg-dekyong-governance element to function at the heart of our governance system. He also intimated, I believe, that this is something we should work on ourselves, i.e. it should come from us rather that being overly formulated from high.
I do not have evidence for this, but I do recall that when in Boulder the Dekyong Council (?) or perhaps one deleg, relayed the message that their main request was for him to start his talks on time because of babysitter issues, to which he subsequently complied. I had the personal impression at the time that although he honored the request, he was disappointed in the message in that he was hoping for something a little bit more ‘political’ or far-reaching (i.e. feedback to the Board or whatever), whereas this was somewhat domestic and also only involved with his role and function in regards to a rather narrow, particular issue. But again: that is purely a personal opinion.
In any case, I have felt for years and continue to believe that we as the sangha or Shambhala Citizenry so to speak have unfinished business in terms of coming up with more bottoms-up quotients in the governance system and we should not be looking too much to CTR or SMR to provide more guidelines beyond what was already given (delegs dekyongs), nor the energy and insight to craft it into a document, and then later into policy. This is our job and we have not attempted to undertake it.
Without a much better bottoms-up quotient, we will not approach anything like a societal or national mandalic model and remain more of a single-leader church or cult. This is not necessarily bad, but I don’t think it’s the right or effective container for the Shambhala Enlightened Society thrust.
Finally about the new Lhadrang(?) and suchlike. Although concerned by the reports of financial questionability from Karelis and Blouin, my first thought is that the current western order has now started going through what the Chinese call ‘interesting times’ and in the West we might call ‘bloody nightmares’. If this is so, then shoring up the core lineage persons and teachings to weather that storm and remain standing thereafter is a very wise, prudent move. I for one would, if involved and asked, have recommended something like that during these times.
On paper, Communism looked great as far as alleviating human suffering, but that of the matter is, where ever you find human beings, you will find humans that will corrupt and take advantage of their own systems for personal gain.
Some places more then others.
I’m not promoting anarchy. I’m sure if they (anarchists) took power, they would become corrupt too.
Ash how do I find your email?
ash (at) frenchroadbakery (dot) tk.
I think one of the big differences between modern systems and traditional ones is that the law was based more on an honor code rather than a set of statutes which are subject to endless interpretation. Of course honor codes are not foolproof either.
Communism was not based on an honor code, rather was tyranny dressed up as egalitarianism. In any case, since it was financed by international financiers – aka ‘bankster’s – it was a fraud from the get-go no matter what the writings were.
Hopefully we can do much better than that since our view is based on Shambhala augmented with personal experience from practice and studying, and studying with living teachers who fruitionally embody the view and practice.
As a suggestion of the kind of thing we might produce, I offer the following thoughts–with the BIG proviso that they are just off the top of my head and nothing special. Offered merely to see if they might encourage others to write. Most of the people here have been in the sangha twice as long as me or more…
So, I wonder if we might write up something short, again maybe 2 pages or so, roughly, which could be organized according to some of the major themes of Shambhala training. The following is one possibility of many, of course. I think 4 or 5 is a good number though, to keep the View compact and clear. The idea is to draw out political / governmental implications, while maintaining a teaching style. A more detailed Constitution as such can come along later bit by bit with its specifics.
1) Basic goodness
2) Natural hierarchy
3) Genuine heart of sadness / Awakened heart
4) Sacred world
5) Great eastern sun / Enlightened society
It seems to me that numbers 1 and 2 complement each other, basic goodness being in a sense a “democratic” principle and natural hierarchy a kind of “aristocratic” one. I see Basic Goodness as coming first because it is so foundational to everything which follows, something reflected in the extent to which VCTR discussed it, as well as it appearing as the first teaching in Shambhala training. But the two exist in a kind of complementary relationship, it seems to me.
Under 1) could be a pith statement of this teaching. This could then be followed by a presentation of the main implications for society and culture. To my mind, one of these is the radical equality of beings at the deepest level. So perhaps in this section we might discuss what this means: equality of life, respect, valuation, and so on. What governmental / constitutional principles follow from this, in the kind of society and world we would like to create?
Natural hierarchy then comes along with its own implications. There is a wonderful presentation of this on pages 164ff. in “Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala” using the metaphor of the four seasons. This concept exists in a very fertile kind of relationship with basic goodness.
For example, someone might look at the blogosphere from the standpoint of basic goodness. They might say: isn’t it incredible that everybody can express themselves these days on any subject they like. Of course, it’s not everybody–plenty of people still don’t have access, or don’t speak English, which has become the semi-official language of the internet. But all the same it can’t be denied what an amazing thing it is to be able to publish yourself, to set up a page which you can then direct anyone in the world to.
[cont.]
[from above]
But then the other side of the coin is that we have somone who has spent 30 or 40 years of their life studying and contemplating a subject, and the comments section to their essay on that subject might be filled with opinionated, even violent attacks by those who’ve read precisely one book, maybe even a quite dubious one at that, or an article or two, or even merely another blog entry by someone with equally sparse knowledge of the subject! An echo chamber of ignorance and aggression. So democracy can become quite a vague term. Certain aspects of equality need to be enshrined as a matter of course; at the same time, we need to be quite clear that everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses, which is where natural hierarchy comes in.
From the reverse angle, there are blind spots too of course. Our socio-economic system creates various hierarchies that are fallacious. Nurses get paid a fraction of what most doctors earn. Why is this? A cleaner or dishwasher is paid 1% or whatever of what a CEO might make. But how do we justify saying that anyone’s labour is any less valuable than anyone else’s? So then here we need to be quite clear about what is meant by “natural” hierarchy.
Trungpa Rinpoche says (pp. 101-2 of the same book): “But hierarchy has been mismanaged and misused. The ambition of Shambhala vision is to rectify that situation, not to make the situation more autocratic or dictatorial. Leaders should be more humble, and workers should be more proud, more arrogant maybe. By the leaders’ having humbleness and the workers’ having more arrogance, there will be a meeting point somewhere. Enlightened society can function that way, in the juxtaposition of the two, in generations to come.
“Often, the workers do not have enough arrogance. They feel bad because they don’t have enough money and possessions. The leaders have too much of both.”
[By the way, there then follows a hilarious account about Rinpoche's experience meeting members of the US Congress in 1980, ending with--"It was amazing. You could actually tell who was the highest and who was the lowest on the totem pole by how crazy they were. The higher they were, the crazier. What does that say about people in positions of power? The more power they get, the crazier they become."]
[cont.]
[from above]
So–lots of interesting conversations we could have I think by bringing together 1) and 2). In one or both of these sections could be discussed the reality of abuse of power, how any system, no matter how well set up, can easily become corrupted. Why does this occur? Perhaps 1) could include the necessity of checks and balances. (If an actual Constitution were organized according to themes like this, the details of representation would be in 1), monarchy in 2. I realize some would in that case prefer monarchy to come first. On the other hand, it seems to me that the larger or more primordial view is that we are all in reality Rigden Kings. In any event, something for discussion…)
Then section 3) because one never sees in Constitutions explicit reference to the centrality of kindness, gentleness, compassion. Browsing through this book today, I’m coming across the word “gentleness” all over the place. So here, in this section, we might talk about some of the problems that have been brought up with regard to conflict resolution and just plain kindness and decency within the sangha / society. This would seem utterly central. We could discuss the idea of having responsibility for one another. Etc etc. The US and Swiss Constitutions quoted above in this Table don’t get to this level of course. They reach “promoting the general welfare” and so on. We need real heart at the heart of it all, I feel. The genuine heart of sadness.
I’m running out of time today but very briefly: section 4), Sacred World, could relate to our greater responsibilities towards the Earth and all sentient beings, amongst other things. And Section 5) might bring everything together. The full vision of enlightened society, warriorship, fearlessness, and so on.
Again, I don’t necessarily find the above very good. Just wanted to suggest one possible format for a statement of general principles. I’ll follow this up with a few further interesting quotations from the book GES I’ve come across today.
(all quotations from VCTR’s Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala)
(p. 118)
“The point of Shambhala vision is to benefit others. We are not going to be simply strong, self-made individuals. You might think that, when you become a lord, you are going to employ servants. ‘I’m going to project my power onto others to subjugate them. They’re going to listen to what I have to say, and my wishes and commands will be carried out.’ In this case, it is just the opposite. Lordship is just like loving someone for the first time in your life or falling in love with someone. We are talking about that kind of sympathy and gentleness. That is the essence of lordship.”
(pp. 186-7)
“*Lord* or *lady* here also means power, a sense of reality in which real strength can be wielded by every one of us. Power is not power over somebody else, in the sense of an overlord. In this case, power is the power to be yourself. The original lord inspires that power in you. You have power to open your bloody eyes, your bloody nose, your bloody mouth. You have bloody power, wonderful power, extraordinary power.
“On the whole, the warriors of Shambhala are not afraid of anybody. We hold ourselves with good head and shoulders. With good head and shoulders, we do not subjugate ourselves or submit to anybody else–bloody anybody else. We can be *ourselves*, my lords and ladies.”
(p. 78)
“I had an interesting conversation with someone about the movie *Star Wars*. There is a famous phrase in the movie, which is “May the force be with you.” It’s rather like saying, “May energy be with you.” That is not a scientific approach. You just take a certain attitude, and by assuming that attitude, you accomplish the whole thing. When I heard that phrase in the movie, I was very excited, because it reminded me of the presentation of the Shambhala principles. Dot: force. You don’t have to be scientific about it. At this point, if you need a reminder, the dot will be your password. When you have a dot, you are not even in the junction, but you are on top of the situation. Think of a dot in space. Dot.
“Whoever makes the final and primordial connection with the dot will be the king or queen of Shambhala who joins heaven and earth. But there is not even a king. There is just the dot. The dot king. Just a tiny black dot who is the king of Shambhala. It is possible that people can achieve that, in the same way that we talk about enlightenment. How many buddhas will there be? How many kings and queens of Shambhala will there be? It is saying the same thing.”
(p. 91)
Re: a Shambhalian judiciary: “There is so much punishment involved in learning. You’re bad; therefore, you’d better be good…. That kind of logic is frequently used to educate people, and it has affected a lot of you.
“Shambhala education is education without punishment, absolutely. Many people have tried that approach but find it quite difficult. They often end up punishing people anyway. It’s tricky, but I think it’s quite possible. We can be free from the mentality of praise and blame. We can create the world of basic goodness, that world that is good altogether, and nothing in that world is detrimental or problematic. To start with, there is an area of *good white*. Then, in the middle of that, you put a little dot, which is the good yellow of the Great Eastern Sun. That should make you smile.”
(pp. 132-3)
“I’m quite desperate. A lot of other teachers must have experienced this desperation. I am so desperate. You can help the world. You, you, you, you, and you–all of you–can help the world. You know what the problems are. You know the difficulties. Let us do something. Let us not chicken out. Let us actually do it properly. Please, please, please! We are trying to reach the higher realms and help others to do so, instead of being stuck in the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, and the animal realm–which are the other alternatives, the lower realms. Let’s do it. Please think about that. I wish that you would all take a personal vow to help others who are going through such turmoil….
“Shambhala vision applies to people of any faith, not just people who believe in Buddhism. Anyone can benefit from the Shambhala training and Shambhala vision, without its undermining their faith or their relationship with their minister, their priest, their bishop, their pope, whatever religious leaders they may follow. The Shambhala vision does not distinguish a Buddhist from a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a Moslem, a Hindu. That’s why we call it the Shambhala *kingdom*. A kingdom should have lots of different spiritual disciplines in it. That’s why we are here.”
(p. 176)
“In spite of being sad and devastated, there is something lovely taking place. There is some smile, some beauty. In the Shambhala world, we call that *daringness*. In the Buddhist language, we call it compassion. Daringness is sympathetic to oneself. There is no suicidal sadness involved *at all*. Rather, there is a sense of big, open mind in dealing with others, which is beautiful, wonderful.
“We find ourselves shedding tears at the same time that we are smiling. We are crying and laughing at once. That is the ideal Shambhalian mentality: we cry and we smile at the same time. Isn’t it wonderful? A flower needs sunshine together with raindrops to blossom so beautifully. For that matter, a rainbow is made out of the tears falling from our eyes, mixed with a shot of sunshine. That is how a rainbow becomes a rainbow–sunshine mixed with tears. From that point of view, the Shambhala philosophy is the philosophy of a rainbow.”
Royal Communism
Dear readers and friends: a number of questions and comments have come up thus far, quite a few, and already I feel that I’m way behind on these things. I request patience and hope to reply to the queries thus far. But tonight I’ve a bee in my bonnet and want to say a few things that have been bottled up for a long time. Over on Walter Fordham’s site there is an interview with Frank Berliner called ‘Turn it Yourself’. The following paragraph is a verbatim extract.
“On his last visit to Berkeley in 1985 or 1986 he was quite sick and frail but the quality of his exertion and determination coming from him was almost terrifyingly intense. He called a meeting of his senior students from the Bay Area and told us that things were going to get worse in this country, that we may feel comfortable, but that our comfort was like honey on a razor blade. He said that there would be economic problems and earthquakes, that the weather would become more extreme because the dralas would not be protecting the situation, and that it would be harder and harder to practice genuine dharma because of the level of aggression in the country. He said there would be a resurgence of political reactionism and religious fundamentalism, which would make the environment less and less hospitable to what we are doing and we should all leave.”
The above seems to me one of the most studiously avoided communiqués in our history as a community. And I suppose it’s not too difficult to understand why. Many students moved to Nova Scotia and for many it was a very difficult go, and not all stayed. In the meantime the message in the above paragraph seems to have been airbrushed out of the picture. I hearsay that it has been declared that Halifax is just one centre among others, As well, the disaffections within the community that resulted in this board have made Nova Scotia less of a magnet for many of the older (Trungpa’s) students. Lastly, It’s not the easiest place to live. So, a short list of why it might be that the message has gotten buried.
Back in the late 80s and throughout the 90s the air was thick with the message considered here. But during the last decade, almost nothing. There was on the Bratboard for a while a concerted effort to form an ‘intentional community’, focused around Grandpa Alex’s practice centre based ecotopia. I understand Mr. DeNicola was a card carrying doom and gloomer like myself and tried to get the kids together to work something out. It was talked up, talked out, and gradually died down as the topics led elsewhere. Otherwise, nearly a dead silence. A few years back I had occasion to mention ‘peak oil’ on Mr. Fords website and got a response from Suzanne Duarte who told me that she’d had the hardest time getting these bad news messages across in the community. Perhaps we have one of these ‘don’t entertain the messenger’ problems hereabouts. we gloomers.
About a decade ago when America went on one of its periodic bombing sprees, Serbia this time, I had a sort of vision. That’s too lofty a word really, it was thought, just, but it also had that quality that I could feel and not mistake. First I saw homeless people, and lots of refugees, people seeking asylum. Then I saw refugee camps with flags and banners and saw Shambhala. Then it occurred to me that taking in refugees is what the Mukpo’s have been doing all along in a certain sense.
It was then that I came to appreciate my precious experience of Seminary. Our event format was so meticulously crafted by Rinpoche, attentive to every detail, like a fine vessel, like a lifeboat actually. Instant community. Within days hundreds of people, many of whom don’t know each other, are quickly domiciled, introduced to the study and practice schedule, organized into deleks, the rota distributed, and soon fulfil the necessary tasks: cooking, cleaning and such. A community that practices, studies, and works together, within days. And we’ve done this with tents to.
What is most needed at this point is to sink economic roots into the ground, literally. It would be good for practice centres who have a bit of land to, if possible, cultivate a garden and making this part of the rota. This might actually be helpful for people later on. In the meantime I hope very much that the communities of which Mr. Perks has spoken will continue to develop our ability to feed ourselves and produce necessities (plus a bit of comfort). I think that is actually the most important thing at this time. Our day will come.
There is a political context that is pertinent here. In the coming years Canada is likely to get hit with a wave of refugees headed north, people wanting to get out of the States. Nova Scotia will get it’s share, especially of people who have heard about the Buddhist Shambhala community there, and fellow travellers. It would be politically undesirable for the refugees hosted by Shambhala to compete for scarce jobs in a time of (probable) high unemployment and where the Provincial social security net is stretched to the limit. To avoid local hostilities and taxing a weak government we should strive to make the communities as self sufficient as can be and strive further to go as far as to be able to provide employment for the jobless of the local communities to obtain necessities. If we could do that, our communities could earn the welcome of the settled community and be regarded as a source of stability.
Things that work in one place can often work well in others to, and if so, then things could get large, and potentially very very large. This could happen quickly. Then we’d have a real monarchy. A wave is coming: if you can ride it, like Surfer Joe, you could ride it all the way home, all the way to the kingdom. Does the Sakyong surf? What were they really doing out there in Ojai anyway? Now it’s well understood that Joe was cool. But even cooler than Joe was Duke Paoa Kahanamoku of Hawaii, and a hero there. One morning in 1925 he paddled out in rough seas off California and brought back to shore a dozen men whose fishing boat had capsized. How cool is that?
The above then is a utopia and it is on this highly fabricated ground that I should most like to pursue our discussions regarding constitutional matters, a sort of ‘advanced scenario’ ground where we could consider the problems and possibilities of our emergent Shambhala kingdom. Of this just a few more words and stop. There appear to be possibilities for democracy here, a people who can manage their own affairs via their own institutions, notably the deleks and dekyong councils which seem to me tailor made for communism, with real hammers and sickles. To be sure the already established business owners and employers of our community will do what they can for the expected refugees but it cannot be expected that large numbers could at present be supported with the means available. Possibilities are open but I think some planning is in order that could benefit by the experiences of some of our dissidents out in the sticks. We’ll see. But politically it indicates people who have a means of really becoming a people. So then in the spectre of swelling ranks of the homeless, refugees and asylum seekers it is possible to envision the becoming of democracy in Shambhala. To conclude then. I’m all for royal communism and this is a call for all you pinkos out there to stand up and make yourself heard. You White Guards too. We can do this. Workers of the world Unite!
I am your servant, Kevin Frost
Damcho: Interesting. In my last draft I put the Monarch last but thought people might think I was being derogatory or something so moved it back up. The idea was that you start with the Realm and the People and then how they organise the State and at the end you have the Monarch whose job is to bind it all together in sacred outlook.
Personally, when I have a little sentence at the beginning saying the whole thing is based on Shambhala view, I assume it covers all the loverly aspects you mentioned above, along with the nice selection of quotes etc.
A–No disagreement at all necessarily. Just a different tack, in parallel. One would be more fully in teaching style, and concise, while the other fills in the details.
Again mine might not even be a good idea–just throwing it out there.
Kevin, most of us were aware of the coming collapse predicted by VCTR. But when everything recovered after the crash and the 90’s credit boom ensued, it has been largely forgotten, or at least not often mentioned. I have been thinking of it more and more of late and indeed quite a few others are beginning to drop hints here and there, even in my remote Cape Breton area, of maybe the sh*t being about to really hit the fan. Conversations about group security, food supply, things like that. And these are hard-nosed ‘redneck’ types in American lingo, i.e. not New Agers or anything like that. People just Know that some bad stuff’s coming down although most Canadians, even though they might regard all politicians as little better than crooks, nevertheless believe that everything is basically okay and the Government is basically good. Beliefs are the last thing to change in the human cognitive-emotive complex.
I don’t know what exactly communism is. All I know is that there is no King and no private property. But there was no private property under Kings, who granted Lord X or Peasant Y – who really was beholden to Lord X of course – the right to stay where they were for a while, a privilege which could be revoked at any time, which often happened in days of yore (disgrace, banishment, execution and so forth).
Now we have private property in the West, though at any point eminent domain can kick in, corporations can discover minerals on your land and you have to leave, or maybe they want to make your land part of a National Park. But generally we have it and can pass it onto our children.
But is communism really about local communities running their own show? I know the native population in the Russian province near Siberia thought so in the 60’s; they were fiercely loyal to the USSR according to Farlay Mowat in Siber, because they felt autonomous. They had their deer, unlike the unfortunate and criminally abused Inuit of Gentle Canada. I suspect they still do too.
Do I understand you aright that this Constitution-writing business is too abstract and airy-faerie and really we should just get into setting up local survival networks? But if so, surely the vast majority of people involved won’t have anything to do with practice or Shambhala per se. Now if our community were preparing for that and interested in taking a leadership role in the province… But that is another sort of hypothetical thing in which we are organizing for something that doesn’t exist yet, just as we are writing a Constitution for a kingdom that doesn’t exist territorially.
I have felt for years that the NS initiative has not been well appreciated and that we should and could have put far more energy into establishing ( or rather blending into existing) local communities in rural areas and getting involved in the basics such as forestry management, farming, food supplies and suchlike versus only coming together for practice and mounting Levels. First we need to get down to ground here, and that means not only clustering in the Big City where there are Jobs, but also getting into the rural areas, as challenging as that might be livelihood-wise. CTR also went on quite a bit during that same period about the great value and worth of farmers, esp. in the Maritime context and whilst people were thinking of moving up there, and doing so.
But all that is so far from where we are at, mainly discussing spiritual matters and internal obstacles etc.
I caught the tail end of the brat site during a period when interest flickered again for a few months (like now). I suggested Kalapa Valley. It is highly fertile for growing certain types of things, could easily have greenhouse operation, trees, public events (sewage system for 1,000 people a day still working which means it is ideal for a relatively low cost village development in the main field, which SMR designated in 1995 as the ‘Outer Zone’, really it is such an incredibly opportune and easy set up, like no other property internationally, but nobody, nobody, nobody gets it or is interested, amazing..), near a 1,000 large local community which is quite vibrant and with several multi-hundred person community halls, a five star hotel and many other smaller ones. A great place to start. But the idea is a non-starter because, since it involves our Administration, you just know there is no way to get any headway with a new idea. Or whatever.
But anyway, I think local community has to be the base both for dealing with any apocalypse, but also any sort of bona fide kingdom. I don’t get the feeling that there is much interest in that sort of view in S.I. which seems more involved with operating an international membership church of sorts.
There is another extraordinary characteristic of KV in practical terms: it is bordered up the river by Crown Land, and the deal there is (at least it was when I discussed it with the Dept. in question 10 years ago) is that if you want to buy Crown Land adjoining your property you can as long as you swap it for land somewhere else in the Province. Which means expansion up the valley, which goes many miles, is quite feasible, so there is potentially much more than the 2-3 mile, narrow 120 acre property currently owned.
I think the book I read about this was in KV, but it is a picture book showing lots of charming Japanese villages in valleys. Truly charming and timeless, like that last scene in Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams, his favorite film and a real masterpiece. It’s about drala as much as anything else. In an earlier scene (it’s a series of ten dreams), somebody walks into Van Gogh’s Cornfields masterpiece in the Louvre and ends up walking through a painted landscape that turns into the actual field where the painting was made and there is Martin Scorsese (a Kurosawa fan) playing the part of a red-headed van Gogh, furiously painting away in the noonday sun, brain boiling amidst the cacaphony of virulent packs of angry crows. Van Gogh was the real life model for a Christ-like character in a Zola novel (Germinal?) during the time he was a penniless preacher in an impoverished mining community.
Ash: ‘Do I understand you aright that this constitution writing business is too abstract and airy-faerie and really we should just get into setting up local survival networks?’ No! I wholeheartedly support efforts to probe the problems and prospects of our community pitched at the level of constitutional analysis. I did preface the thingie with regrets that I’d not yet been able to respond to the numerous points that come up in the blueprint construction exercise. Please continue. In that regard the aim of royal communism was to revision the ground of things. Right now the forms of our community (SI) are typically corporate operating in a world that shows signs of serious malfunctions. The ‘advanced situation’ outlined above was laid out to revise our vision of what the ground could look like and this is especially significant regards the deleks. At present there is a monarch and an aristocracy but no democracy. But I believe that in the not too distant future that could dramatically change. So my approach is dual. On the one hand the essay was an exercise in utopian construction and should be treated as such, a troubleshooting diagram of sorts. And yet at the same time it’s quite serious and definite. Our little corporate monarchy really is going to get hit with waves of refugees and if we can rise to the occasion we could end up with …. everything. I was kind of hoping to elicit some comment on the outrageously ambitious character of the whole thing.
But in a sense the communism’s for real. I suppose that’s where I must have lost you, and perhaps Mr. Makow too? Communism is about community or it’s about nothing. The history of communism is a history of regrettable failures largely because communists, being modern liberals of a radical sort, never understood or even approved of real communities and by that I mean kinship based extending structures. My sense is that only now is it possible to establish ‘real’ communism because of Trungpa who taught us Shambhala and royal government. And so I’m taking liberties with the words and my reader is free to regard the whole thing as a piece of humour, playing on words and such. And yet it’s actually the right term. In this sense: in view of the upcoming refugee situation we need to plan. That. And we can, thanks to the delek system of community organization in conjunction with our rota thing. I am convinced that Rinpoche saw this stuff coming and bequeathed to us a form capable of meeting the needs of times to come. The implicit claim here is that the ‘organizational format’ which we are so familiar with is actually a terma, a form that is not substantial in the conventional sense but only opens up when the time is right. Not yet, but soon. In the meantime, let’s prepare. And plan.
I know that such like thinking is marginal as regards SI. But that’s ok. The real forward movements are happening in the smaller communities that are actually touching the earth. This is where real progress is happening. The administration doesn’t matter. All they have to do is provide a study/practice organization, which they do. That’s good and essential to. You say that most people who get washed into our net aren’t Buddhists? Fine. But in our setup if you want in you have to sit. (but now I’m legislating, these situations could be handled variously). Personally I think the sitting should be mandatory and also the work. Maybe the study stuff should be diversified and open. But still there should be study and a culture of study should pervade the community atmosphere. This is important in developing a common ‘language’ a common culture. That takes time. But time is something we can structure to.
Your further comments. Basically yes, I’m very much with you on the several points you brought up. But again, fuck em. They’re irrelevant. What’s relevant is, well, of course, practice, study, being decent and such, but also growing food, animal husbandry, ability to make things we all need, and ovens capable of a ‘land and bread’ sort of politics. I really think you’re doing fine and will make an excellent communist. But first we have to talk about Makow and all that. Very much looking forwards to this to! Look at it this way: now the kasung will have whites and reds to game, you know? (shit, I wasn’t going to do this but cant resist. I can see a time when white vs red could become a serious issue. Well, it cannot be otherwise. This is our karma and we’ve got to sort it out. Really, everybody’s trying to work on this if I’m not mistaken. But enough.)
Finally, and I’ll stop! NO NO NO to the question of constitutional thinking being airy fairy. The last message I should want to send out. For both of us especially this stuff has been brewing for a long time. My concern was about ground. The ‘advanced situation’ is for critical and constructive thinking. Please carry on now and in the future. What we are trying to study did not begin yesterday and it won’t end with us. But we can do our bit. for now, best wishes, Kevin.
This is getting remarkably bizarre. Suggesting articles, Ash, you haven’t even read to support a point??? I don’t have a problem with volume, but I do when it goes in so many pointless directions. Makes it very hard to see what’s being proposed, and impossible to respond coherently. But conflating samaya with loyalty to state is embedded. I could pull together quotes to show you have claimed there should be no separation of church and state, that samaya and Church are synonymous, that samaya and vows of loyalty are the same thing, and more. Redefining samaya so it doesn’t carry the vajrayana implication it surely must in a community so deeply involved in vajrayana, is a superficial word game that does not mitigate. There are too many reasons why this is a problem to unpack here and now.
No, Ash, presenting a finished idea is not more productive than finding a consensus that makes some kind of sense. It instead proposes an already constructed form with no thought towards a plethora of underlying and unexamined assumptions. Suggesting I propose my own constitution was a joke right? Getting from no document to one that has any coherence and consensus will require teamwork, time and group effort, or it will be something that does not express the inspiration and insight of many people the author may not see eye to eye with. We haven’t even defined yet what a constitution ideally does.
I’m not sure a full blown constitution describing governmental set-up is what was ever intended. The declaration of Independence came first, then over many years and a lot of hard work, the founders wrote the Constitution. I suggest a Declaration of Interdependance (or something like that) is probably more doable, and will make constitutional issues as yet undefined easier to deal with.
The constitution presented by Ash is a tweaked version of a constitution written by a government that is currently (still) involved in unresolved ethnic cleansing. I’m sure one can wax poetic about how it isn’t really ethnic cleansing, people earn whatever happens to them through karma,“let them eat cake’ and all that, but if the mindset that wrote that constitution, which also shaped the government that has carried out ethnic cleansing, and further how that constitution, a core expression of any government… if this constitution is not examined in light of what has been justified and protected under its guidance – internationally recognized ethnic cleansing – then we are involved in an exercise of group denial.
I haven’t dissected the Bhutanese constitution yet, 75 pages plus Preamble, Parliamentary Entitlements Act, and glossary, but see they took from the America as an opner “We the People…” (that’s rich.) – but I would bet heavily that an unwillingness to separate church and state is one of the reasons they can feel so justified and secure with their ethnic cleansing (… along with the fact that they threw out almost 20% of the population that probably would have formed a viable opposition – sound familiar?).
(cont.)
It is also true the Bhutanese government wants to control the culture to what I think is an unhealthy degree, even down to dictating the style of clothing people are allowed to wear. You probably want to say how quaint and charming that is, like at Oxford or Eton or some other 18th century school, but for the results of doing that on a national level rather than a school or organization, we can look to Bhutan.
Societies don’t ‘choose’ systems beyond tribalism or chiefdoms. The sheer complexity of society is and was a factor beyond individual or central control that has forced and will force societies to develop new forms of government. Going beyond primitive systems was a necessity to increasing complexity, i.e. larger and more interdependent societies, not an experiment with shaping culture.
No doubt one can find exceptions to any rule – as I’ve said a couple of times we can surely find communist enclaves in China somewhere that exhibit Shambhalian tendencies, but that’s not an endorsement of communism as a rule, it is more a proof of basic goodness, and anyway does not negate the general direction of human culture and social organizations. Figuring out ways to label what’s going on now as evil or bad (and the before times as so bloody marvelous) is just fire and brimstone smokescreen.
In tribalism and chiefdoms there is no real rule of law, no contracts, no financial system (which isn’t to defend the current one). They have no real stability as they change from generation to generation, entirely dependent on local situations, resources and the whims of the current ruler. In that type of society culture would not develop beyond a certain level. You would have no Beethovens or Mozarts, no Renoirs or Picassos, no sciences or industry or international cooperation, no national or international media, among many other benefits, and the passing down of wisdom from generation to generation would be extremely narrow and restricted.
Your ideas about female and male roles are equally archaic. The roles of women and men have not changed because someone made a misguided decision to change them. The development of culture has demanded or shaped how roles have changed. Yes there are painful stages in any change and some to regret, but in the long run deep seated aspects like the roles of men and women, are changes that are not under the control of any central government, nor of a constitution. I shudder to think a constitution should have anything to do with dictating those levels of social behavior.
(cont.)
If one were to examine cultures in which those traditional roles still exist, and then look at cultures where they have developed beyond those kinds of traditional roles, one would be very hard pressed to show that women’s, not to mention’s men’s lots are in any way better in societies in which such traditional roles have been strictly followed. (And, Ash, any claims to know the emotional lives of people in the before times is pure projection, and it doesn’t count to point at long ago times for which there is no supporting historical record, nor to claim some obscure exception as the rule.)
There are too many points which don’t sound right, to respond to. This all reminds me of a good friend of mine who was sometimes so profound I wondered if he had some mystical insight, some things he said seemed to come from somewhere very deep. But more often he was so off the point that I couldn’t see how he got there. The thing was, even when he was talking nonsense, he spoke with as much conviction and enthusiasm as when he seemed insightful. I said to him once that if there ever comes a day when he can tell the difference, he will have become a wise man.
In the inspiration that more enlightened government than what we already know, will very likely not be any of the forms we now cling to.
Mr. Kevin Frost,
Thanks for quoting CTR from 1985 or so.
And now a word from the People’s Front of Judea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUBAx8jbYNs
Dear All and Ash
This is a more succinct document and has an English air to it re a constitutional monarchy.
I am not sure about the Dekyong Council meeting quarterly –why quarterly-surely it should be based as a full-time body if funds permitted in the future otherwise it could not be informed in a quick as time as possible of issues and how they should be debated in a thorough manner.
So I definitely do think that CTR when he said he wanted a National Assembly in his remarks to David Rome about his will on the Chronicle Project that he wanted a ‘permanent’ National Assembly. How could this not be so if we are talking of a fully-fledged parliamentary system to govern a shambhala society comprising of different sectors such as other religions and other secular groups. They too would have to have a place in this government.
Just also read James comment on a Declaration of Interdependence which also sounds very interesting –so yes perhaps we should debate this before we go into shambhala constitutional building. We may end up with some of Ashs ideas prevailing in this Declaration but perhaps we do indeed need to establish first principles. I dont know could someone put up the Declaration of American Independence as a reference article. Our Declaration of Interdependence might indeed have a monarchical aspect – I have not totally made up my mind about how to see the monarch principle yet as it is so deep a construct psychologically
Getting back to Ashs suggestions I am also not sure about the upper body –the House of Lords equivalent electing the PM –surely the Dekyongs can do that –suppose you might have put this in because you did not want to put too much emphasis on democracy but if everyone is practicing the teachings I think you can trust people to behave in the appropriate manner and come up with the best choice of person to represent them.
The depiction of the sakyong principle is more inclusive as representing the realm as whole which is good.
Re Mr Frosts comment on communism –yes I do believe there should be some form of communism operating within the society particularly as it relates to the necessities of life such as food and health, thats to some degree why I was focussing on the communism aspect in the Triad. Also Mr Frosts quoting CTR about leaving the states – I have heard this quote percolating in peoples conversations quite recently because of the several disasters that have hit America in the recent years. I have also read in the popular press and seen on the TV pundits discussing the parlous state of the American economy with the kind of edge of feeling that things might indeed collapse to an extent they have not done before. So whether this whole thing is going to happen to this extent I am not sure but surely in the mean time we could start to discuss more sustainable alternatives and support them each in our way.
I also do believe re Trungpas politics that not enough discussion has gone on in regard to the actual financial basis of the coming shambhalian society. I myself would like to get away from the dues concept and think in terms of general taxation otherwise the ‘money’ problem is always going to rear its head. So the present system of the Ladrang somewhat holding the purse strings I cant quite follow in terms of Trungpas structure of a society which is inclusive, diverse and governed in tandem with a National Assembly and a somewhat constitutional monarch. Surely the financial basis of the Kingdom has to be decided by people who actually know what is happening in the field and have the appropriate knowledge of how things should go forward. An insular Ladrang can not do that even though at this time it might indeed be ‘protecting’ the assets of the Kingdom from possible worst case economic scenarios. So yes I would like all the people to have some say in how the funds are used.
I also think we should be supporting all efforts in the world to establish political peace this ties in with Trungpas teachings on the Kasung where the prime motive is Victory over War. I particularly think we should in all our different groups support the creation of a Palestine homeland and a solution to the Middle Eastern troubles in the most concrete way possible. This area of the world has been afflicted for so many years and if peace could come here it would take the heat out of many political divergences in the world generally. So yes if we indeed did come up with a constitution the political aspect could not be isolationist but internationalist.
Of course to aswell if we got away from the dues thingie the organisation/kingdom would be more inclusive and less a club for the middle-classes and their insecurities.
Economically I do know for sure that the present UK government is in cut mode and is indeed talking of 25% cuts in some public departments –so yes the outsourcing dread rears its head again for many of us in the UK and Europe as a whole
Also re Ashs comment on KV thats really interesting – yes when I heard that KV was just going to be a park or power spot for some reason I myself found that off-putting aswell as I did indeed feel that the place could support some form of community (based on some form of agriculture? And Ashes further comment about buying Crown land does sound interesting). I dont know does anyone else have any ideas on KV that would be interesting to know.
Yes I do think Ash is floating good and mad ideas –so even if he is taking some liberties re constitutions better for them to be taken and just out there than not – so that the conversation is as free-flowing as possible. (I am sure other contributors will make their points known too in the fullness of time)
As to the depth and breadth of Ash’s articles –yes it is an English thing to do that –so that is Ashs training. Also yes even today if you have a boarding school education it still gives you the edge in becoming at some stage a politician aswell –we only need to look at the composition of the British government to see this. So if people are aware of this may be Ashs contributions could be looked at in a different light as somewhat a product of English educational history. Of course too English society is changing and a more European outlook is starting to happen so hopefully too in due course government will become more inclusive.
In conclusion yes maybe we do indeed need to look at First Principles re James Declaration of Interdependence suggestion then follow through on that to a constitution that is broad and inclusive which may indeed use some of Ashs and other peoples viewpoints.
Best from the Old UK
Rita Ashworth
Dear Constitution Threaders,
My apolgies for interrupting.
On July 20th in my “Declaration of Independence” suggestion (or ploy) above, I made one of those devastating teensy-weensy typos that throws the meaning off of what I intended to say by 180 degrees.
For the record, here is what I meant to say:
“Think ‘Victory Over War.’ Think ‘raging diamond which cuts aggression, eternally without corruption.’”
Thank you for your indulgence.
Sherap Paine
Dear friends,
All very very interesting posts. And I do think we should move ahead with some kind of alliance or interdependency proclamation, from the grass roots, that is, ordinary Shambhalians like us, who are heirs to CTR’s legacy, which would incorporate many of the quotes of CTR that Damcho suggested.
The present Sakyong is doing his thing- establishing the lineage of Sakyongs. So it seems that we, the subjects, should do our own thing and establish a strong ground roots initiative, so to speak.
Certainly the idea of rural communities working with non-Buddhists, which is by the way, quite a relief, and Buddhists, seems to be the way to go, I would think. And some kind of sustainable agricultural development which would be most helpful to everyone in the coming years.
Anyway, this is what we’re doing in Vermont. Some of the small towns here are endeavoring to make themselves totally sustainable economically. And there have been many meetings along these lines. Vt is a very interesting state with no large cities and largely agricultural. And believe it or not, there is a fairly large sucessionist group within the state. NH as well has this, but from a more republican base, where as Vermont is social democratic, except in the NE kingdom, interesting name, which is what might be called redneck.
Anyhow, I could see close association with NS and eastern Canada, including Shambhala people, because as the saying goes, “when the shit hits the fan, we all are in the same boat.”
To get back to the point, a declaration of interdependency sounds promising. Then, when the timing is right, joining with the monarchy with a constitutional endeavor. And by the way, to cut out all the negativity, rather than revolution we should talk about evolution. I think, development of the Kalapa valley is a brilliant idea. We might need even another table to talk about things like: ovens for bread, not the types of ovens the Nazi’s talked about, market gardening, animal husbandry, and so forth.
Anyhow, all these ideas seem quite promising in the development of the Kingdom of Shambhala. Thank you.
John Perks
And further…
To talk about the elephant in the room, which is Shabhala International Corporation… perhaps at the time of conception a family run corporation might have been a good idea. But now, I think, in terms of a kingdom, as a whole, a private family run corporation, might not be the way to go, and in fact, may be outmoded and a hindrance to progress.
And everyone should please remember that we ALL are heirs to Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s legacy, and we ALL have vision. And that vision, as a whole, should be respected.
So, I say, let us move together towards the establishment of that vision.
That is why I like the idea of an interdependency of all beings, including the monarchy, cooperating in the establishment of that. Otherwise, the continual turmoil within and without the Shambhala International Corporation is going to continue and leadership must come from many individuals not just the Sakyong
Thank you.
John Perks
Lively!
Kevin, gotcha. Now I understand communist post from earlier much better.
I think where USSR went wrong is that
a) funded by Banksters in NY, London and Germany (even during a war with Germany and UK fighting each other – story of Lenin being held up then released in Halifax for example).
b) largely run by the Jewish ethnic minority who proceeded to perpetrate a truly horrendous bloodbath against the indigenous Russian-Christian culture including boiling priests alive and suchlike
c) structurally speaking did not base the communism on the local communities but in an oligarchy that was far more tyrannical and oppressive than the Tsars they replaced. The Russian peasantry had the highest standard of living in the western world before the revolution and to this day they have never caught up.
So whatever it was, it wasn’t ‘communism’. Which is why I still don’t have much sense of what it could be and also suspect it can never be.
But perhaps there is a way to combine something that has relative local autonomy within an overall Unified State with Monarch has symbol for that unity.
I think your remarks about his political structure suggestions being like terma is spot on.
I didn’t say that I/we were working with local communities in any Shambhalian Way, although I believe some people are doing this in rural NS in various ways. But the idea in principle is the subject. Just wanted to make that clear.
Jamie, will read through all of yours later but first:
calm down please in terms of personal attacks. If YOU read the article in question you will see the remark she cited was in the comments. I didn’t read the comments, just the article, and in any case it was linked to show that there is ongoing interest in that topic, whereas Damcho seemed to think it was from ‘another planet’ or something. That was all. I don’t necessarily agree with it although I do think there has been a concerted, consistent effort to undermine family, male roles, female roles, Christianity and suchlike, essentially making people into some sort of good drone principle a la Brave New World. Fabianism and their heirs, many of whom are in high places today all over the western world which seems to be following their script.
Ok, maybe there need to be Two Documents worked on here:
a) Declaration of Interdependence
b) Constitution Outline.
Rita, re ‘quarterly Dekyong Council’.
Yes, well this one was an attempt to skew towards an aristocratic system following Kevin’s comments. It was also to show how easy it is to work with my short form to come up with different configurations. You should try one yourself and submit it!
Also, there is some virtue to having govt – which just sets policy, remember, it doesn’t administer – meet infrequently. All they are doing is make changes to the law. Ideally this doesn’t need to happen very often. For example, you can have a law establishing what percentage of the following is in place:
a) taxation of individuals as percentage of income and also Gross National Revenue
b) expenditure of Court as percentage of GNR;
c) expenditure of Military, Church, whatever similarly as percentages, also ratio of local govt to national govt. No need for endless bills.
d) laws about rights, conflict resolution and suchlike which then happen in local venues administered by local civil service which is largely elected in situ.
Specifically, the reason for the quarterly idea is that this is a gathering of ALL dekyongs from every deleg, i.e. they live in different places so by definition they couldn’t both sit together permanently in one place and also remain grounded in the communities who elected them as Dekyongs. Whereas the ‘Lords’ are elected from the various regional or local Dekyong councils as representative to a single National Assembly.
But the main point at first, I think, is to think about the overall structure and play with different configurations. I am not really proposing any of them per se. The short form makes it very easy to play. I’ll try a communist one later. I hope you and Kevin and others do too.
Finally a small point I noticed in James’ posts which I will read through slowly later (have to run now): re samaya and loyalty etc. This is an important topic, but my view on this is that Vajrayana Samaya is a secret mandala agreement between guru and disciple and should have nothing to do with the realm of politics at all, whatsoever. However, taking a sacred oath to protect the realm and the Sakyong is par for the course. That doesn’t mean one cannot resist, because one is not taking an oath to the person but the role and function. In any case, I think you are right to point out that this is a key aspect.
Am not sure, though, that separating Church from State in a Monarchical system will make any difference. What if your tantric samaya is with the Sakyong? Whether Church and State are separated or not, that conondrum exists.This is where you get into the ‘honor code’ realm.
There is a limit to what any document can define or determine, no matter how long, although shorter is better because it pares things down to the core principles which are the only things it needs to enunciate and carve in stone to remain generation after generation through all the changes that human realm life properly undergoes. But the principles can remain. Ultimately, it’s an honor code whether it admits it or not. Similarly, a document might separate or join Church and state, but in terms of the samaya business, that ultimately will be settled event by event, not by legislation no matter how you try to structure it with the written word on a legal document.
Finally, since I didn’t leave yet: I don’t give a flying fart about Bhutan per se. The short form I now have has nothing to do with Bhutan any more. It’s just a simple template for a Constitution that includes Monarchy and Representation, nothing more. It is preambled with one sentence or so saying it runs on Shambhala principles. And then various aspects like Dekyongs and suchlike are my ideas for how it could play out. But basically it is down to a few short paragraphs that allow one to very quickly play with different structures. Try playing with it, that’s the point! Have fun.
Re a declaration of interdependence: that was basically the idea of the post above. Those headings don’t need to be used obviously–people could choose different ones or in a different order. But the thought is that we create a clear political vision first, in ordinary and general language. Then we have something concrete fairly quickly, and it can also provide further direction and energy to inspire the rest of the work.
Ash, for some reason I always end up responding to you…! Now, two things:
1) Could you back up the following?: one of the reasons the USSR went wrong was because it was “largely run by the Jewish ethnic minority who proceeded to perpetrate a truly horrendous bloodbath against the indigenous Russian-Christian culture including boiling priests alive and suchlike”. This sounds like Protocols of the Elders of Zion material (though I realize that came before).
2) Also: “Am not sure, though, that separating Church from State in a Monarchical system will make any difference. What if your tantric samaya is with the Sakyong? Whether Church and State are separated or not, that conundrum exists.This is where you get into the ‘honor code’ realm.”
I would say this is precisely the point. People’s tantric samayas ARE with the Sakyong, and he IS the (fully ruling) King as well. And many of us have seen where this leads. Everybody is taking sacred “loyalty oaths” to protect him and defend the realm. This is dodgy enough, to my mind (aren’t we supposed to be on the side of all sentient beings? shouldn’t we be taking a loyalty oath to the world?) but then when samaya to the very same person is added to the mix, there’s a whole lot of confusion being created. Tremendous difficulty drawing lines, perhaps impossible. And lots of people get harmed. James, Fionna, myself, and many others have experienced this. An “honor code” isn’t enough I’m afraid.
Finally, John P., thanks so much for all your cheerfulness! That’s another word I came across all over the place yesterday reading through Great Eastern Sun. Rinpoche always telling us to smile. We need it so much. Many thanks.
D, well it’s a simple fact that a very high percentage of the leadership class that emerged out of the so-called Peoples Revolution were Jewish. Also that most of the funds came from Jewish bankers etc. in the US and elsewhere. And that Christian elites were systematically purged, especially members of the clergy whereas no such thing happened to Jewish religious figures (though of course most were atheists anyway). It’s not PC to say it, but the facts are there in plain sight. Churchill even wrote about it as early as 1920, barely 3 years after the demise of the Romanovs.
As to the samaya: I was assuming a ‘model’ Shambhala following some of the quotes above in which the Kingdom would be host to many different religions. So many would not have a tantric samaya with a Sakyong but some would. I was not thinking about the current church situation today with the current population. Sorry that wasn’t clear. This whole thing for me is an exercise in first positing an ideal country-type vision without worrying about current situation and demographics, just to lay out some sort of framework. Others of course might have a different view.
I do think there is a clear difference between tantric samayas and loyalty oaths. First of all, there are many levels of oath. A basic one for all, including the Monarch, is basically ‘to uphold the Constitution’. In a situation where it is widely felt that His Majesty is not upholding the Constitution, or that HM is proposing something that is against the Constitution, or just as likely that the Parliament gets twisted about an issue and tries to change things in a way that is not in accord with the Constitution, then various authorities, agencies, procedures and so forth come in to check such initiatives, and all members with roles therein, including the Monarch, can be removed from office.
I haven’t checked, but although such things are clearly in the reviled Bhutanese Constitution, I don’t know if Genghis Khan had a similar thing (that the Great Khan can be booted out if he violates a code). It wouldn’t surprise me either way, but his system was principally a para-tribal honor code system, also not a simplistic feudal system either because there was a State (several actually, linked but independently governed as with Persia viz. China for example) with Governor-Kings and a set of laws which all had to follow (or very nasty things could happen to them!).
In any case, I don’t think it’s a big deal to clearly separate tantric vows from basic vows, nor should it be impossible to determine if Parliamentary Bill X, or Edict Y, goes against the Constitution and to have the means to have vigorous debate about it before it is passed into law.
Tantric samayas are in the realm of the secret mandala and should have absolutely nothing to do with politics. Neither the teachers involved nor their students need have any confusion about this. If there is such confusion, then such people should not be elected by the people to high office in the first place and/or the Dekyongs have the authority to sack Civil Service officers who are so loyal to their Vajra Master that they promulgate bad policies quite industrially, convinced they are doing His Master’s will or somesuch.
Why do I favor union of Church and State? Mainly for ceremonial reasons. State Ceremonies involve the entire population, during which certain types of lineage and blessings are invoked. You can’t do such ceremonies with 15 different religions all bringing in their various doctrines and deities. Far too cumbersome.
So either you have Shambhalian-only rituals, or you have one Chief Religion that comes into play for official funerals, weddings, harvest celebrations, blessings of the fleet and so forth. Of course local communities can have whatever rituals they please, either Shambhalian or Sikh or Athayasca Shamanic. Up to them.
We have to sit with the fact that at least the first two Sakyongs in this line are advanced tantric Buddhist masters who wear both hats somehow. This is a fact. Whether it is ideal or not is something worth considering, and/or how to clearly separate those functions. But no matter what, as we have it now and are likely to in the future, one human being is likely to be both a Monarch and a Vajra Master (or Mistress). (Is it Vajra Mistress or Vajra Madam?) So there has to be something that works for a single human being in that position to carry out two separate and different aspects of their role.
In the 1981 Being on Time talk, the Shambhala version of the tantric master was described in terms of the Sakyong’s role. Very interesting. I regard this as a root teaching, or description of the role of a Sakyong in the inner-secret mandala. We are working mainly with the outer mandala issues right now. At least I think we are – or should be. They should not be confused or blended into one willy-nilly.
Lastly, please don’t think I have a solid view on all this. I didn’t go to the Rigden Abhishekha because I was not clear on the commitments and vows etc. especially in this Sakyong/V Master context. Not being able to be wholeheartedly connected, I chose to avoid. So I won’t ever do the Scorpion Seal retreats and suchlike either I suppose.
In any case, I can always go sit in my oven with the door closed for a while.
Dark.
And warm.
Dear Friends,
The idea of the Declaration of Interdependence would be an interim document where the subjects of Shambhala and the Sakyong could find a way of working together to create the Kingdom of Shambhala.
So the declaration can come from the subjects (us), and it could suggest a number of ways that this Kingdom might be achieved and could include the dissolution of Shambhala International Corporation (which represents a partial number of subjects) to a constitutional document which would involve ALL subjects, including the monarchy.
It is my personal feeling that the constitution of Shambhala, if there were to be one, would have to be worked out with accepted representatives of the people, which means that ALL people would have to agree on these representatives. There would be reporting back to the people by the representatives.
After,many negotiations a constitution could be worked on. But right now, we are in a situation where SIC does not represent ALL Shambhalians, as to the constant references to samaya, and what it means is in debate.
So one of the points in the Declaration of Interdependency would be to work out With the monarchy the differences between loyalty to the monarch and the Kingdom, and that of loyalty to the Guru (ie samaya) so that the sakyong would have his own Shambh