Shambhala

IN TIBET, as well as many other Asian countries, there are stories about a legendary kingdom that was a source of learning and culture for present-day Asian societies. According to the legends, this was a place of peace and prosperity, governed by wise and compassionate rulers. The citizens were equally kind and learned, so that, in general, the kingdom was a model society. This place was called Shambhala.

It is said that Buddhism played an important role in the development of the Shambhala society. The legends tell us that Shakyamuni Buddha gave advanced tantric teachings to the first king of Shambhala, Dawa Sangpo. These teachings, which are preserved as the Kalacakra Tantra, are considered to be among the most profound wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism. After the king had received this instruction, the stories say that all of the people of Shambhala began to practice meditation and to follow the Buddhist path of loving kindness and concern for all beings. In this way, not just the rulers but all of the subjects of the kingdom became highly developed people.
Among the Tibetan people, there is a popular belief that the kingdom of Shambhala can still be found, hidden in a remote valley somewhere in the Himalayas. There are, as well, a number of Buddhist texts that give detailed but obscure directions for reaching Shambhala, but there are mixed opinions as to whether these should be taken literally or metaphorically. There are also many texts that give us elaborate descriptions of the kingdom. For example, according to the Great Commentary on the Kalacakra by the renowned nineteenth-century Buddhist teacher Mipham, the land of Shambhala is north of the river Sita, and the country is divided by eight mountain ranges. The palace of the Rigdens, or the imperial rulers of Shambhala, is built on top of a circular mountain in the center of the country. This mountain, Mipham tells us, is named Kailasa. The palace, which is called the palace of Kalapa, comprises many square miles. In front of it to the south is a beautiful park known as Malaya, and in the middle of the park is a temple devoted to Kalacakra that was built by Dawa Sangpo.

I've just purchased the book, Shambhala, by Chogyam Trungpa, from which the above is excerpted. It occurs to me that we here at Le Cafe represent a sort of modern online Shambhala...no?

How many of you are already familiar with the ways of the Shambhala Warrior? This is not a warrior of violence, but of gentleness, working with the basic goodness of man...


Warriorship here does not refer to making war on others. Aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution. Here the word “warrior” is taken from the Tibetan pawo, which literally means “one who is brave.” Warriorship in this context is the tradition of human bravery, or the tradition of fearlessness. The North American Indians had such a tradition, and it also existed in South American Indian societies. The Japanese ideal of the samurai also represented a warrior tradition of wisdom, and there have been principles of enlightened warriorship in Western Christian societies as well. King Arthur is a legendary example of warriorship in the Western tradition, and great rulers in the Bible, such as King David, are examples of warriors common to both the Jewish and Christian traditions. On our planet earth there have been many fine examples of warriorship.

The key to warriorship and the first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are. Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself. Shambhala vision teaches that, in the face of the world’s great problems, we can be heroic and kind at the same time. Shambhala vision is the opposite of selfishness. When we are afraid of ourselves and afraid of the seeming threat the world presents, then we become extremely selfish. We want to build our own little nests, our own cocoons, so that we can live by ourselves in a secure way.
But we can be much more brave than that. We must try to think beyond our homes, beyond the fire burning in the fireplace, beyond sending our children to school or getting to work in the morning. We must try to think how we can help this world. If we don’t help, nobody will. It is our turn to help the world.

The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything. We can never say that we are simply falling to pieces or that anyone else is, and we can never say that about the world either.



I particularly like what he says about self-esteem and self-forgiveness.

A GREAT DEAL of chaos in the world occurs because people don’t appreciate themselves. Having never developed sympathy or gentleness towards themselves, they cannot experience harmony or peace within themselves, and therefore, what they project to others is also inharmonious and confused. Instead of appreciating our lives, we often take our existence for granted or we find it depressing and burdensome. People threaten to commit suicide because they aren’t getting what they think they deserve out of life. They blackmail others with the threat of suicide, saying that they will kill themselves if certain things don’t change. Certainly we should take our lives seriously, but that doesn’t mean driving ourselves to the brink of disaster by complaining about our problems or holding a grudge against the world. We have to accept personal responsibility for uplifting our lives.
When you don’t punish or condemn yourself, when you relax more and appreciate your body and mind, you begin to contact the fundamental notion of basic goodness in yourself. So it is extremely important to be willing to open yourself to yourself. Developing tenderness towards yourself allows you to see both your problems and your potential accurately.

Trungpa teaches "basic goodness", defined thus by the online Shambhala Glossary...

BASIC GOODNESS: "If we are willing to take an unbiased look, we will find that, in spite of all our problems and confusion, all our emotional and psychological ups and downs, there is something basically good about our existence as human beings. We have moments of basic non-aggression and freshness...it is worthwhile to take advantage of these moments...we have an actual connection to reality that can wake us up and make us feel basically, fundamentally good." (see Warrior) "The realization that we can directly experience and work with reality." (pg 29-33) "In the ordinary sense, we think of space as something vacant or dead. But in this case, space is a vast world that has capabilities of absorbing, acknowledging, and accommodating...if you look into it, you can't find anything. If you try to put your finger on it, you find that you don't even have finger to put! That is the primordial nature of basic goodness, and it is that nature which allows a human being to become a warrior, to become the warrior of all warriors." (pg 155) (see Warrior, Sacred Space)"...when you relax more and appreciate your body and mind, you begin to contact the fundamental notion of basic goodness in yourself. So it is extremely important to be willing to open yourself to yourself. Developing tenderness towards yourself allows you to see both your problems and your potential accurately. You don't feel that you have to ignore your problems or exaggerate your potential. That kind of gentleness towards yourself and appreciation of yourself is very necessary. It provides the ground for helping yourself and others." (pg 35-36) "The way to begin is with ourselves. From being open and honest with ourselves, we can also learn to be open with others. So we can work with the rest of the world, on the basis of the goodness we discover in ourselves. Therefore, meditation practice is regarded as a good and and in fact excellent way to overcome warfare in the world: our own warfare as well as greater warfare." (pg 41) (see Meditation)

I think this is something common to the general Buddhist view of humanity - seeing people as fundamentally good - everyone is good, just with wrong perceptions.

If we could, I thought it would be nice to use this thread as a sort of place for talking about Trungpa's teachings and about spiritual warriorship in general...  even if no one else is interested in discussion, I could still "blog" about my Shambhala readings...

On a very related note, is anyone here a fan of Pema Chodron?

oh this is awesome Selina, i would love to hear more!

There's a Shambhala meditation center in my neighborhood and this is their core principle:

http://chicago.shambhala.org/shambhala-principle/

Ohh I believe I can say there is some sort of interest! Don't encourage me too much, or I'll never stop posting this stuff!

I have a lot to learn. But here are a few nice Trungpa quotes, to start with:

“When you relate to thoughts obsessively, you are actually feeding them because thoughts need your attention to survive. Once you begin to pay attention to them and categorize them, then they become very powerful. You are feeding them energy because you are not seeing them as simple phenomena. If one tries to quiet them down, that is another way of feeding them.” 
― Chögyam Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

“Are the great spiritual teachings really advocating that we fight evil because we are on the side of light, the side of peace? Are they telling us to fight against that other 'undesirable' side, the bad and the black. That is a big question. If there is wisdom in the sacred teachings, there should not be any war. As long as a person is involved with warfare, trying to defend or attack, then his action is not sacred; it is mundane, dualistic, a battlefield situation.”
― Chögyam Trungpa, Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism

and my favourite of all:

“Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the world. You are willing to share your heart with others.”
― Chögyam Trungpa

James Redfield's 'Secret of Shambhala:In search of the Eleventh Insight' talks about an expedition to Shambhala, but it's obviously a fiction.
Nicholas Roerich also talks about Shambala warriors, but he actually ventured a lot in this area himself in times when it was still very unknown and closed to tourists. His books are really interesting.

An interesting interview on the concept of guilt from a Shambhala/Nyingma Buddhist perspective

Realizing Guiltlessness

The Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche speaks with Pema Chodron.

Pema Chödrön, an American nun in the Shambhala lineage of Tibetan Buddhism currently practices under the guidance of the Venerable Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche, a teacher in the Nyingma lineage of Tibetan Buddhism.



At his retreat center last spring, Pema Chödrön spoke with Dzigar Kongtrul about a primary obstacle Westerners face in their practice: guilt.

Pema Chödrön: Rinpoche, since you’ve been living in North America for some time and know Western mind and culture well—what do you think is the most beneficial advice you can give to dharma students here?
Ven. Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche: The most important thing that I see Western students needing to realize is guiltlessness.

PC:  Guiltlessness?

VDKR:  Yes, guiltlessness. They need to realize that the person or the mind is, by its very nature, innocent.

PC: Could you explain what you mean by “innocent”?

VDKR: I mean that from the Buddhist point of view we can understand that all the things we do to harm ourselves and others come from deep-rooted confusions and ignorance but that the mind is by its very nature pure and enlightened. When we feel a tremendous amount of guilt, we forget this view.

PC: I think sometimes Western students have trouble believing this view.

VDKR: The fact that all sentient beings long for happiness and freedom proves that the nature of their mind is pure and innocent.

PC: But it seems that we identify more with “bad me” than with pure and innocent.

VDKR: This sense of “bad me” comes from not understanding the view of selflessness that is so central to the Buddhist path. Understanding that there is no solid, singular, or permanent “me” makes it possible to accommodate whatever arises in life without feeling so intimidated by our experience, without rolling over like a defeated dog in a dogfight. We can see that things arise due to our karma playing itself out and that it does not necessarily have to be so personal. In this way we can identify with something greater—which is our nature itself. From this perspective, since there is no solid, singular, permanent self, there’s not going to be a “bad” self to feel guilty about. Mind is innocent but influenced by ignorance and wrong conceptual beliefs that project a self. But there is no self.

PC: So how do we realize selflessness?

VDKR: Mind has an innate intelligence, and this intelligence can be cultivated—so that one can realize selflessness—which is the opposite of this projected “me.” This is our true nature.

PC: With this in mind, how do we approach that deep-rooted tendency of feeling guilty?

VDKR: First, just on a basic level, we can remind ourselves that guilt has no benefit of any sort and only increases our neurotic attachment to the self. But, more importantly, we can see that guilt is actually the way we try to escape responsibility for our actions and circumstances. We feel guilty when we don’t fully accept our circumstances. Instead, we continually try to protect and cherish this imaginary self. When we feel guilty, we are actually substantiating this “self” even further, rather than honestly looking at the situation in front of us. If we remember that the mind is innocent, even though we so often act out of ignorance we can distance ourselves from the situation enough to actually look at it honestly. Guilt, on the other hand, is a sidetrack with no resolution—it’s endless. You may feel like you are facing something because you are steeped in it—kind of rubbing your nose in how very bad it is—but actually you are not accepting it.

PC: Rinpoche, if I’ve done something harmful and I’m not to feel guilty about it, then how can I come to terms with what I’ve done? How can I completely acknowledge what I’ve done and yet not feel guilt?

VDKR: Through means of regret. Regret is a function of mind’s intelligence. We can see what we’ve done to cause suffering to ourselves and others. We acknowledge what we’ve done and also resolve not to do it again. This is very helpful. We see it clearly and acknowledge it so it does not remain in our mind stream. To be able to self-reflect in this way brings tremendous freedom. It’s like you stop fighting your circumstances and look honestly. Because your view of self is not so tightly knit, you can look without intimidation. We do this practice of acknowledging and purifying, with deep regret about what we’ve done to cause harm. We expose it to ourselves.

PC: Rinpoche, I don’t really see the difference between regret and guilt. There’s still the sense that one has done something bad.

VDKR: The difference between guilt and regret is that guilt never faces the wrongdoing straightforwardly. There’s just this strong emotion of “I wish it hadn’t happened. I wish I didn’t do it. I wish I had never gotten angry” or “I wish I didn’t do that embarrassing thing,” and so on. Regret is the opposite of guilt. We acknowledge it, we expose to ourselves that we have done something harmful and how it came about from our ignorance, but we don’t get caught in emotions and story lines. The sense of remorse is not anywhere near as heavy as the “bad me” that guilt produces. As a matter of fact, the sensation of wholehearted remorse is freeing. By applying the view of selflessness, we can see how unhelpful guilty feelings freeze us in our perception of ourselves as “bad me.” When one feels room to open and can see that out of ignorance, not out of an intrinsic “bad me,” one has done something to trouble others, then there’s no hesitation to see that. And there is no hesitation, if it seems beneficial, to apologize.

PC: Thank you. That certainly clarifies a lot for me. Are there other benefits that come from reflecting on guiltlessness?

VDKR: When one realizes guiltlessness within oneself, one feels freer and lighter. The attachment to the self, which we all have, lifts. We also start to work with our minds better. The mind is more agile and flexible, because our intelligence becomes the reference point instead of this self we so desperately grasp onto. Then we can break down our actions more precisely and work with our actions in more creative ways in the future, with more wisdom. In the case of relating to the wrongdoings of others, we see that the nature of their mind is also innocent, guiltless. Ignorance has influenced them and they are blinded and vulnerable. And because they are helpless under the power of ignorance, it is easier for us to generate compassion for them and forgive them as well. It is much easier to do all this when we see the person as innocent rather than guilty and intrinsically bad.

PC: One of the most important aspects of being a teacher is to point out the student’s blind spots. How do you work with this when students have so much trouble seeing their faults?

VDKR: This is a good question. Ultimately, nothing significant can really take place within the practice or within the student-teacher relationship until the student is ready to see his or her faults without heavy guilt. To the extent that a student wants to do this, he or she is a practitioner. When a teacher points out these dark hidden areas, the ignorance is being addressed and exposed for the student’s benefit, rather than in order to increase a sense of an intrinsic bad self. But a teacher also needs to maintain an awareness of the true identity of the student. The teacher also points out the student’s basic nature so that he or she can identify with his or her own goodness, and not with guilt or defensiveness. Then there is plenty of room to look at the hidden corners that really are fleeting and temporary. Both student and teacher must have an awareness of the student’s blind spots and his or her Buddha-nature.

PC: So the readiness to self-reflect seems to be the key here.

VDKR: The readiness to self-reflect coupled with the greater view of selflessness, which really makes it possible to look. When we are able to do this, all in all, we will become much more carefree, free of struggle.

PC: Struggle?

VDKR: Yes, the struggle is the guilt—not wanting to look. With the view of guiltlessness we can work with wrong or right, did or didn’t. It doesn’t matter. We can feel free to work with that situation without struggle. The mind is more agile because there is more space—space to look without feeling threatened. Once guilt has awakened, it has this extra-strength feeling of intrinsically “bad me.” This is not helpful and not true and not in accord with the way things are. If we bring the view of egolessness to our guilt, it will pop the deep part of our emotional attachment to this intrinsic “bad me.” I feel certain that realizing guiltlessness and selflessness is very helpful for all practitioners.

Just some links/quotes on Lojong practice, self-hatred, and self-compassion:

TONGLEN

In order to have compassion for others, we have to have compassion for ourselves.

In particular, to care about other people who are fearful, angry, jealous, overpowered by addictions of all kinds, arrogant, proud, miserly, selfish, mean —you name it— to have compassion and to care for these people, means not to run from the pain of finding these things in ourselves. In fact, one's whole attitude toward pain can change. Instead of fending it off and hiding from it, one could open one's heart and allow oneself to feel that pain, feel it as something that will soften and purify us and make us far more loving and kind.

The tonglen practice is a method for connecting with suffering —ours and that which is all around us— everywhere we go. It is a method for overcoming fear of suffering and for dissolving the tightness of our heart. Primarily it is a method for awakening the compassion that is inherent in all of us, no matter how cruel or cold we might seem
to be.

We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other's pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain, our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment.

At that point you can change the focus and begin to do tonglen for what you are feeling and for millions of others just like you who at that very moment of time are feeling exactly the same stuckness and misery. Maybe you are able to name your pain. You recognize it clearly as terror or revulsion or anger or wanting to get revenge. So you breathe in for all the people who are caught with that same emotion and you send out relief or whatever opens up the space for yourself and all those countless others. Maybe you can't name what you're feeling. But you can feel it —a tightness in the stomach, a heavy darkness or whatever. Just contact what you are feeling and breathe in, take it in —for all of us and send out relief to all of us.

People often say that this practice goes against the grain of how we usually hold ourselves together. Truthfully, this practice does go against the grain of wanting things on our own terms, of wanting it to work out for ourselves no matter what happens to the others. The practice dissolves the armor of self-protection we've tried so hard to create around ourselves. In Buddhist language one would say that it dissolves the fixation and clinging of ego.

Tonglen reverses the usual logic of avoiding suffering and seeking pleasure and, in the process, we become liberated from a very ancient prison of selfishness. We begin to feel love both for ourselves and others and also we begin to take care of ourselves and others. It awakens our compassion and it also introduces us to a far larger view of reality. It introduces us to the unlimited spaciousness that Buddhists call shunyata. By doing the practice, we begin to connect with the open dimension of our being. At first we experience this as things not being such a big deal or so solid as they seemed before.

http://old-shambhala.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/tonglen1.php



Boiling it all down to the simplest possible formula, there are three main poisons: passion, aggression, and ignorance. We could talk about these in different ways—for example, craving, aversion and couldn’t care less. Addictions of all kind come under the category of craving, which is wanting, wanting, wanting—feeling that we have to have some kind of resolution. Aversion encompasses violence, rage, hatred, and negativity of all kind, as well as garden-variety irritation. And ignorance? Nowadays it’s called denial.

- Pema Chodron

“Feel the wounded heart that’s underneath the addiction, self-loathing or anger. If someone comes along and shoots an arrow into your heart, it’s fruitless to stand there and yell at the person. It would be much better to turn your attention to the fact that there’s an arrow in your heart and to relate to that wound…They give us the chance to work on patience and kindness, the chance not to give up on ourselves, and not to act out or repress. They give us the chance to change our habits completely. This is what helps both ourselves and others.”

- Pema Chodron

Lojong:

In your daily life, try to 1) Maintain an awareness of the preciousness of human life. 2) Be aware of the reality that life ends; death comes for everyone. 3) Recall that whatever you do, whether virtuous or not, has a result; what goes around comes around. 4) Contemplate that as long as you are too focused on self-importance and too caught up in thinking about how you are good or bad, you will suffer. Obsessing about getting what you want and avoiding what you don’t want does not result in happiness.

http://www.lionsroar.com/dont-give-up/



Sharon Salzberg/Dalai Lama on self-hatred:
http://www.rebelbuddha.com/2011/01/buddha-nature/

‘War and peace start in the hearts of individuals. Strangely enough, even though all beings would like to live in peace, our method for obtaining peace over the generations seems not to be very effective: we seek peace and happiness by going to war. This can occur at the level of our domestic situation, in our relationships with those close to us. Maybe we come home from work and we’re tired and we just want some peace; but at home all hell is breaking loose for one reason or another, and so we start yelling at people. What is our motivation? We want some happiness and ease and peace, but what we do is get even more worked up and we get everyone else worked up too. This is a familiar scenario in our homes, in our workplaces, in our communities, even when we’re just driving our cars. We’re just driving along and someone cuts in front of us and then what? Well, we don’t like it, so we roll down the window and scream at them. War begins when we harden our hearts, and we harden them easily—in minor ways and then in quite serious, major ways, such as hatred and prejudice—whenever we feel uncomfortable. It’s so sad, really, because our motivation in hardening our hearts is to find some kind of ease, some kind of freedom from the distress that we’re feeling.

[...]

We often complain about other people's fundamentalism. But whenever we harden our hearts, what is going on with us? There's an uneasiness and then a tightening, a shutting down, and then the next thing we know, the chain reaction begins and we become very righteous about our right to kill the mosquito or yell at the person in the car or whatever it might be. We ourselves become fundamentalists, which is to say we become very self-righteous about our personal point of view ...

Jarvis Masters, who is a prisoner on death row, has written one of my favorite spiritual books, called Finding Freedom. In a chapter called 'Angry Faces,' Jarvis has his TV on in his cell but he doesn't have the sound on because he's using the light of the TV to read. And every once in a while, he looks up at the screen, then yells to people down the cell block to ask what's happening.

The first time, someone yells back, 'It's the Ku Klux Klan, Jarvis, and they're all yelling and complaining about how it's the blacks and the Jews who are responsible for all these problems.' About half an hour later, he yells again, 'Hey, what's happening now?' And a voice calls back, 'That's the Greenpeace folks. They're demonstrating about the fact that the rivers are being polluted and trees are being cut down and the animals are being hurt and our Earth is being destroyed.' Some time later, he calls out again, 'Now, what's going on?' And someone says, 'Oh, Jarvis, that's the U.S. Senate and that guy who's up there now talking, he's blaming the other guys, the other side, the other political party, for all the financial difficulty this country's in.'

Jarvis starts laughing and he calls down, 'I've learned something here tonight. Sometimes they're wearing Klan outfits, sometimes they're wearing Greenpeace outfits, sometimes they're wearing suits and ties, but they all have the same angry faces."


Excerpted from Pema Chodron, Practicing Peace in Times of War

SelinaM wrote:

How many of you are already familiar with the ways of the Shambhala Warrior? This is not a warrior of violence, but of gentleness, working with the basic goodness of man...

The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything. We can never say that we are simply falling to pieces or that anyone else is, and we can never say that about the world either.

Kept you waiting, huh?  

Alright, finally, here it is: the long-awaited, mysterious third video, dedicated to Selina and Night-Eyes. The ending lines is what I believe being a spiritual warrior is all about.

Those eggs crackin yet Princess?

Welcome back to Shambhala, on the invitation of President Roosevelt.

President Roosevelt wrote:
Kept you waiting, huh?  

Alright, finally, here it is: the long-awaited, mysterious third video, dedicated to Selina and Night-Eyes. The ending lines is what I believe being a spiritual warrior is all about.

Thank you President!

Sadly I can't watch it in my country. But I will have a look once I'm back in Australia next week.

Looks like I'm going to love it though - I love Philip Glass...



(yes, dedicated to you, CR...though it really doesn't belong in this thread )

he also wrote the soundtrack to The Illusionist (Glass, that is):



(start at 2:26 for the music/magic trick)

(I think Norton's character in The Illusionist is a spiritual warrior...of sorts... )



Just to tease CR, I searched for "Shambhala egg" hoping for something a bit special...but found this instead...



Magnum Chaos represented at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome….The cosmic egg of Orphism was taken as the raw material for the alchemical magnum opus in early Greek alchemy.

Fifth-century Orphic cosmogony had a "Womb of Darkness" in which the Wind lay a Cosmic Egg whence Eros was hatched, who set the universe in motion.




Trungpa….
"Student: Would you translate bardo again?

Trungpa Rinpoche: Bar means "in-between" or "gap" or "the middle," and do means "island," so altogether bardo means "that which exists between two situations." It is like the experience of living, which is between birth and death.

Student: What is not bardo?

Trungpa Rinpoche: The beginning and the end. [Laughter]"….TRANSCENDING MADNESS by Chogyam Trungpa

From this article: http://balkhandshambhala.blogspot.com/2013/11/the-gap-greek-chaos.html

and the Wikipedia page for "Chaos (cosmogony)"

lunareclipse wrote:Those eggs crackin yet Princess?

Actually I think perhaps - despite all my teasing - it would be best for PR to leave his own cosmic eggs alone. It's better that I keep them as weapons to arm myself against the next lingerie onslaught!!