XPost: alt.religion.buddhism.tibetan, soc.culture.china, soc.culture.hongkong   
   XPost: talk.politics.tibet, talk.religion.buddhism   
   From: peterterpstra@versatel.nl   
      
   Shambhala the Path of the Warrior   
   by William A. Gordon   
      
      
   Speaking of warriorship in the context of the search for inner and outer peace   
   might seem at first glance to be   
   contradictory. The warrior in history is usually associated with unchecked   
   aggression, with hostile Indian tribes in   
   our early history, or with the violent assaults of nomads who roamed across   
   Europe and Asia in ancient times   
   destroying whole cities and villages. On the other hand, the warrior of   
   Shambhala, as described originally by   
   Chogyam Trungpa, combines fearlessness and gentleness. The warrior is not,   
   therefore, addicted to naked   
   aggression as the way of accomplishing his individual and selfish will, or,   
   for that matter, the will of his or her   
   state or nation. For the warrior, fearlessness is the source of strength and   
   though it is mythically identified with   
   masculine energies, it is not the exclusive property of men.   
      
   Gentleness, which is mythically the feminine side, is related to heart, with   
   openness to others, with sympathy,   
   compassion, and understanding. When people arrive at a Shambhala Center to   
   begin to learn meditation and to   
   incorporate the attitudes it brings into their lives, the reaction to   
   “warriorship” is at first ambiguous. Somehow   
   the meditative path seems to evoke quietness, suspension of action, letting   
   go. How is that connected with being   
   a warrior? How especially is it connected with the history of the term warrior   
   and its identification with war and   
   violence?   
      
   The Shambhala view of warriorship shares some of the qualities of earlier   
   warrior traditions such as those from   
   the Middle Ages that combined fearlessness with dignity and wisdom. The most   
   important quality of the Shambhala   
   warrior is being non-aggressive. The Shambhala warrior is defined by   
   gentleness and fearlessness. As Chogyam   
   Trungpa said it, “the first principle of warriorship is not being afraid of   
   who you are.” That simple statement,   
   however, contains a world of further investigation, searching, discipline, and   
   openness to what we have become in   
   this world and how we react to situations and people. The ultimate goal of the   
   Shambhala path is to create an   
   enlightened society of wise and compassionate human beings, which is the   
   tradition of the Kingdom of Shambhala,   
      
   Shambhala, in other words, is very ancient. Its origins have been lost in   
   time. Chogyam Trungpa, while he was in   
   Tibet, had a vision of the possibility of bringing the insights of the   
   meditative path into how we could create a   
   sane compassionate society. When forced to leave after the Chinese Communist   
   invasion of that country, he wrote   
   an early version of the Shambhala view while hiding from the Chinese military   
   in a cave. But when he was forced   
   to cross a river with the Chinese shooting at him and his party, the   
   manuscript was lost. It was not until years   
   later, after reaching India and finally coming to the United States that the   
   vision was given to him once more and   
   he began to dictate the material we now have as the teachings of the path of   
   the warrior.   
   The Teachings of Shambhala   
   Basic Goodness   
      
   Shambhala Training begins with the notion of basic goodness. The essence of   
   basic goodness is the recognition that   
   ordinary sense consciousness, looking, touching, tasting, smelling, hearing,   
   has in it, no matter what the   
   circumstances, a core of primordial energy which is beyond good and bad. This   
   energy is said to be   
   "unconditional," "unoriginated," and indestructible." To appreciate this   
   teaching, one has to realize how much   
   Western thinking, despite its rationalism, is dominated by the notion of   
   "original sin." Not only does this Western   
   tradition instill in us the feeling of innate evil in human affairs, but it   
   separates us from the universe as sacred in   
   itself. In fact, to show just how concrete such a difference can be, a   
   Japanese economist recently attributed the   
   problem with "quality control" in America to the "belief in original sin."   
   Shambhala begins very differently, with an   
   emphasis on “basic goodness.”   
      
   The first step for a spiritual search is to examine our own habitual minds.   
   Meditation practice is like a box of tools   
   for examining what and who we are, what the world is, and what our connection   
   is with that world.. We begin to   
   understand by means of meditation technique that the object world is not the   
   source of the problem, rather that   
   it is how we relate to that world that causes pain. If at this point we start   
   actually walking the path of Shambhala   
   meditation, we are given a very large generalization to help us understand   
   ourselves and the world. We are told   
   that the world and ourselves are basically good, that we already have   
   everything we need, and that realizing the   
   basic goodness in our own lives can revolutionize how we experience self and   
   world. Basic goodness become a kind   
   of background, or perhaps we should say the sky in which we work with the   
   details of everyday world.   
      
   As we practice meditation over time, we may find we can go further and begin   
   to understand and then let go of   
   the various reference points that we have internalized during the process of   
   growing up. We can see through all   
   those concepts that defined how things were related to each other and to us.   
   These reference points were not,   
   for the most part, wrong, but they become so solid we can’t see beyond them.   
   We need to learn how to connect   
   with our human world in ways beyond our interactions with a mere collection of   
   objects. Trying to accomplish that   
   task with our conceptual, analytical mind too limited and narrow. Conceptual   
   mind actually makes everything more   
   solid. Somehow we have to go beyond that ordinary practical understanding to a   
   deeper realization. So, as a first   
   step, we should look more carefully at basic goodness.   
      
   Waking up, through the practice of meditation, allows us to distance ourselves   
   from our personal clinging to   
   outcomes, and to see the whole situation, as it were, from a birdseye view. We   
   can recognize the energy of anger   
   as a way of connecting with something very positive in our experience. By not   
   projecting emotions, we can see   
   how they originate, what nourishes them, how to go beyond them. So, as I say,   
   emotions are energy, and there is   
   nothing wrong with them. However, they are often connected to old systems, so   
   that their main engine is fear. By   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)