A Useful Analogy?

There’s a possibly useful historical perspective and analogy that might apply to the question of whether the Shambhala Vision (as well the Dharma Art) of Chögyam Trungpa and of many of his followers is in its breadth and in its depth fundamentally for Buddhists, or equally for people of any religious practice.

Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, was himself a Jew, as were all his original disciples. Yet very soon, though not without controversy, Christianity opened itself up to people who were not Jewish. As it says in one of its texts (Galatians 3:28), there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female.

This seems roughly comparable to the situation with the Shambhala of Chögyam Trungpa, who was himself a Buddhist, and whose Buddhist students made up 99% of the original citizens of his Shambala Kingdom. Yet it was always clear to me, as one of those Buddhist students, as well as to my fellow participants in this grand experiment, that the intention was quite explicitly to have Shambhala and the full range of its teachings and practices available to all. As Chögyam Trungpa says in Great Eastern Sun, The Wisdom of Shambhala, p 133:

Shambhala vision applies to people of any faith, not just people who believe in Buddhism… 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 spiritual disciplines in it. That’s why we are here.

Now in the last few years there has much of what I would call revisionism and antidestablishmentarianism (yet another historical perspective), with the mainstream Shambhala Buddhist organization saying that Chögyam Trungpa’s Shambhala was always intended primarily for Buddhists, with non-Buddhists able to share some of the beginning practices, but that ultimately they can not be full, first-class citizens and subjects. Mitchell Levy, for example, in his recent Chronicles podcast, says that non-buddhists can participate in a Shambhala society but not in the Church (which, if it’s Buddhist, is understandable), the Military, or the Government. I think that the root of such a view lies in equating Chögyam Trungpa’s Shambhala exclusively with the Tibetan Buddhist Kalachakra teachings (he explicitly says it’s not just that). This view, for many, ignores the very heart and essence of Shambhala vision and of the ever increasing relevance  of its simple, precise language to our 21st century world.

The analogy with the relationship between Christianity and Judaism is not perfect: among others, the Buddhist/Shambhala relationship is not one between two religions, but between a religion and a society/state/kingdom. Nevertheless, I think it can be helpful in offering some perspective on an issue that currently divides communities inspired by Chögyam Trungpa.

- Mark Szpakowski

Through a Glass Darkly: Christian Non-Theism

Moses has to settle for a dialogue with a burning bush; the Israelites roll the dice on a pillar of dust and flame; whatever Job witnesses he does so in a whirlwind, and keeps mum about his encounter. One day, we will see the Lord “face to face”; but for now, as Saint Paul rhapsodizes, we can only glimpse the divine “through a glass darkly.” In the Judeo-Christian tradition, no one sees the face of God and lives (unless one is a televangelist). Ultimate reality conceals itself from the discursive mind and manifests only in the elements of nature. These are but a few of the Scriptural sources of Christian non-theism.

From a Buddhist perspective, theism is “fixed mind”; from a Judeo-Christian perspective, it is “idolatry,” which is a sin. (For the secular modernist, theism is neurosis à la Freud.) Christian theology is shot through with non-theism. At the beginning of the High Middle Ages, for instance, Saint Anselm (1033–1109) postulates that God is that which is beyond mind’s conception; fast forward to the Death-of-God era, and Paul Tillich (1886–1965) writes with a distinctly Dharmic sensibility that God is the “ground of being.” Of course, Sunday morning congregants occasionally fall prey to theistic theism. The killjoy Jehovah who casts down thunderbolts and the cosmic Santa Claus who doles out spiritual bobbles do provide certainty and comfort, but, they also infantilize the minds of the devout. The good news is that the great majority of mainstream Christians are not Biblical literalists. They have a more spacious view of the cosmos. From my own experience at Saint Agnes Church, I can report that there is a vanguard of parishioners who are happy to take shamatha instruction from me, a Christian Shambhalian, when I transpose the language of meditation into the vernacular. It’s not that great a leap for them or for me.

Sangha members would do well to read Thich Nhat Hanh’s Living Buddha, Living Christ (1995) and Christ and Buddha as Brothers (1999). The Vietnamese monk grew up in a country teeming with French missionaries and saturated with Catholic culture. He understands the cathedral-like structure of theology and has a genuine devotion to Christ. Thich Nhat Hanh speaks Christian with no trace of an accent. In my travels, I have only ever met a handful of sangha members who can both speak Christian and love the language.

Given their heart connection to the Buddhadharma and the time they must invest in practice, it’s perfectly reasonable that Buddhist Shambhalians would have little desire to master the grammar and syntax of Christian non-theism. If the subject is broached, a few can cite Meister Eckhart (1260–1328) as a non-theistic fellow traveler or reference the friendship that the Vidhyadhara shared with the great Trappist monk, Thomas Merton (1915–1968). More often than not, though, what I hear in the Shambhala center cloak room are mutterings about the benighted Christian right, and what I hear in church is intercessory prayer for hapless “non-believers,” which can be code for Buddhists and practitioners of other Eastern religions.

So how do we overcome this dialogue of the deaf? The Speaking-of-Silence type Buddhist-Christian events are powerful gatherings, but logistically difficult to pull off. The strategy that I’ve adopted over the last twenty years is to use the Shambhala teachings, which for me constitute a secular or civic path, to serve as a bridge between Buddhism and Christianity, two religious paths. I’ve learned enough Buddhism to be able to speak the language, albeit with a thick accent. Whenever someone at the center shows an interest in my religious tradition, I try to translate the discourse of my Christian faith into the Buddhist tongue. A good place to start is with Greek apophatic or negative theology. If my interlocutor is inquisitive enough, we can travel quickly from Mount Athos to Vulture Peak Mountain. Naturally, all languages have their idioms. There is not a perfect Christian analogue for every Buddhist concept, and vice-versa. But, ultimately, the point of the endeavor is to move beyond language, beyond religion.

In my years of Shambhala training, I’ve noted that near the end of a long Saturday afternoon in the shrine room there are neither theists nor non-theists. Instead, there are “tea-ists”: frazzled meditators anxiously anticipating the four o’clock tea break. Whether you are a Buddhist or a Christian, if you sit long enough on a gomden, you will realize that neither Buddha nor Christ is going to swoop down and save you from the vexation of your mind and the roiling in your heart. A Christian in Shambhala is like Elijah. Elijah searches everywhere for God: he climbs mountains, he braves fire and earthquakes, and he shakes his fist at the empty sky … until he is exhausted. When Elijah finally stops ranting, when his heart finally breaks, he sits down and starts to listen to the silence of the hills. It’s in this silence that he first hears the Word of God. Elijah: Judeo-Christian prophet or bodhisattva manqué? Merely human, I suggest.

 

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Image Credits

Top: Elijah, fifteenth-century icon

Bottom: Thich Nhat Hahn, calligraphy

 

Calcutta is Everywhere

For Mother Theresa there are two Calcuttas: there is the actual city of lepers and outcasts, where “suffering … is much more physical, much more material”; and there is the Calcutta of the mind, where “suffering is much deeper and more hidden.” The tangible Calcutta is a seething Indian metropolis; the intangible Calcutta is a soul lost in a burb somewhere in the West.

“You can find Calcutta all over the world,” she says, “if you have eyes to see; not only to see, but to look.” To look at the tangible Calcutta is to contemplate the causes and effects of a rigid, hierarchical social system and the lopsided distribution of scarce material resources. To look at the intangible Calcutta is to contemplate box store USA, whose superabundance of material wealth cannot hide the anomie that wastes away its citizens.

Who is hungrier: the living skeleton that a Missionary of Charity wraps in a blanket or the zoned-out football fan who hauls into Costco in his SUV, hunting down the perfect 60’ flat screen? The former is too weak to stand, the latter too emotionally compartmentalized to love his family. The Beatitudes differ on the question on poverty. Luke’s Jesus says that the materially destitute are blessed in the eyes of the Lord; Matthew’s Jesus says that it is the mentally impoverished who are blessed. Jesus himself makes no such distinction between the atrophied body and the sickly mind.

In Dharmic terms, Mother Theresa’s Calcutta is the lair of the Three Lords. As warriors, the right attitude to adopt in order to eradicate materialism in all forms is that of daring and renunciation:

What the warrior renounces [says the Druk Sakyong] is anything in his experience that is a barrier between himself and others. In other words, renunciation is making yourself more available, more gentle, and open to others. Any hesitation about opening yourself to others is removed. For the sake of others you renounce your privacy. (Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, 59.)

Jesus’ approach to renunciation is distinctive of the warrior. Jesus heals and hence becomes the leper shunned by the village. He embraces the denizens of all the Calcuttas of his time: tax collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans, and so on. For him there is no “other”; there is just us—each made in the image of God, or, if you will, the embodiment of basic goodness or tatagathagharba.

The dissolution of self and other is at the heart of Jesus’ kingdom message, a kingdom which is within you, in front of your eyes, or in your midst. In other words, it can be tapped into on the spot. (It resembles Shambhala vision in its immediacy.) Of course, if comes with a cost, the crucifixion of one’s own ego fixation. But how else are we going to clean up the world’s real and imagined Calcuttas? If you won’t save this world, asked Trungpa Rinpoche, who will? This is a question that all of us, regardless of our faith tradition or philosophical inclination, are called to answer.