Shambhala: Cultivating Fearlessness in a Doomsday World

 

Fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known . . . When we choose to love we choose to move against fear—against alienation and separation. -- bell hooks 

Shambhala Buddhism posits a philosophy of personal warriorship as the root of basic human wisdom that is available to help solve the world’s problems. Throughout many Asian cultures there are stories of a legendary kingdom of Shambhala: a kingdom of peace and prosperity, governed by wise and compassionate rulers with equally kind and learned citizens, creating a caring and harmonious model society. It is said that the kingdom of Shambhala was formed upon the teachings of the Kalachakra Tantra, a most revered wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism, which focuses on the Wheel of Time and tantric immersion within it as the mode of ultimate non-dual transcendence. Thus, Shambhala teachings uphold the image of the Shambhala kingdom as the ideal of secular enlightenment which can be achieved through the initiation of warriorship. 

Shambhala warriorship is not of the weapon-wielding aggressors that may come to mind, but a tradition of human bravery and fearlessness that has existed in many cultures and mythologies throughout history. Fearlessness in this tradition is not to be without fear, for fear is part of the nature of being human, but to see fear and go courageously beyond it, empowered by the goodness of the world. 

The first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are. From a compassion toward oneself one can cultivate a compassion for all other living beings, and from this place can begin to help the world. However, Shambhala teaches an important distinction that additional chaos can be created if we try to impose our ideas or help upon others without fully understanding the impact. This warriorship is not about control or subjective hierarchy, but a personal journey inward that allows us to discover what we inherently have to offer the world. Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh said in his book How to Love: 

If you pour a handful of salt into a cup of water, the water becomes undrinkable. But if you pour the salt into a river, people can continue to draw the water to cook, wash, and drink. The river is immense, and it has the capacity to receive, embrace, and transform. When our hearts are small, our understanding and compassion are limited, and we suffer. We can’t accept or tolerate others and their shortcomings, and we demand that they change. But when our hearts expand, these same things don’t make us suffer anymore. We have a lot of understanding and compassion and can embrace others. We accept others as they are, and then they have a chance to transform.

While this idea is not specific to Shambhala vision, it is a useful illustration of warriorship in practice. Shambhala vision dictates that through first cultivating tenderness and compassion for ourselves by discovering our own inherent goodness (through the practice of meditation and self examination), we can extend that goodness to others and create a relational society of care -- and further, that true transformation can only begin from compassion. Redemption is only possible from forgiveness -- and as the oft repeated proverb says, it is love that begets love. Discovering the inherent goodness of the world around us is an essential tenet of Shambhala wisdom and to me the most obvious motivating factor in fighting to create a better world. As Chogyam Trungpa wrote in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, “Shambhala vision is tuning into our ability to wake ourselves up and recognize that goodness can happen to us. In fact, it is happening already.” This is where the root of my connection and personal attraction to this brand of fearlessness arrives. In the era of the anthro/capital/patriarchocene, the conversation surrounding climate change has become increasingly terrifying. There is literally a doomsday clock installed a block away from my university dictating the shockingly small amount of time we have left to fix things before the climate collapses and takes human life along with it. It shocks, and it should! If it might help jolt people into action, it’s important. However, in my own experience, the weight of all this doom and gloom can also become paralyzing. 

As a sensitive feminist teenager in a small conservative town, I was overwhelmed with what I diagnosed to be the problems of society and how un-seriously my community was taking them. I was suicidal for years because of how my focus was glued to all of the badness in the world -- the damage seemed too deep to be redeemed and I didn’t see the way out. I was paralyzed with existential dread and anger at my own unwilling existence in this sick sad world that I didn’t ask to be born into. As a teenager I, through tears, asked my dad what the fucking point was -- and I’ve repeated his response to many friends throughout my college years: “I don’t know, ice cream?” His point was that there are no real answers to why we’re here, but there are lots of good things to appreciate while we’re here. Ice cream, sunshine on my skin, soft cats, kissing, tender and present friendships, the bright green of grass and the bright blue of my nail polish and how the sun reflects the golden Empire State Building onto the refracted-kaleidoscope glass side of the New School University Center around 5 pm on a blue sky winter day! 

Through beginning meditative practices of noticing and really letting the goodness of things I enjoyed penetrate my shield of cynicism, I began to find a world worth fighting for revealing itself to me all around. And this brings me to my agreement with the Shambhala vision: I see spirituality’s function in my own relationship to the anthropocene as a strengthening mechanism, one that allows me to forgive the cruelty and ignorance of the world around me, and to encourage understanding as the first step of problem-solving. Rather than simply condemning the pain of society, which was previously too painful to truly look at, I spend time trying to understand why people do the things they do or think the things they think, and with the guiding principle of warriorship, I can extend compassion beyond my fears, and with it, the opportunity to transform. 

This is expressed in a global context through the Shambhala vision of the Great Eastern Sun, which Trungpa describes as “seeing that there is a natural source of radiance and brilliance in this world--which is the innate wakefulness of human beings”(Shambhala, 44). The Dawn of the Great Eastern Sun is fundamentally a philosophy of hope -- to see that it is ultimately a worthwhile situation to be a human being, no matter the grim circumstances and challenges that may intimidate. It dictates the belief that when we appreciate the world, we don’t make a mess in it. Trungpa writes: “The world around us is regarded as very sacred, so we have to constantly serve our world and clean it up.” The Shambhala diagnosis of the capitalocene is one of a Setting Sun vision, in which we 

shield ourselves from dirt as much as we can, so that we don’t have to look at it--we just get rid of anything unpleasant. As long as we have a pleasurable situation, we forget about the leftovers... We leave the job of cleaning up to somebody else.

This creates an oppressive social-hierarchy, dividing those who “get rid of other people’s dirt and those who take pleasure in producing the dirt” (Shambhala, 47). It is clear how this extends ecologically: we, in privileged consumptive society, take pleasure in our convenient consumption of plastic goods and gas-guzzling vehicles and close our eyes as we throw the trash into trucks that take the evidence far out of our sights and minds, leaving it to others, future generations, and other countries to clean up the mess. The basis of the Great Eastern Sun vision is realizing that “the world is clean and pure to begin with”, and therefore, cleaning it up is simply returning to its natural state -- the inevitably natural direction that humans must realize. This, of course, begins with ourselves, by telling the truth and diagnosing our negative emotions honestly, rather than shoving the dirt away. 

This is also expressed in psychologist Carl Jung’s concept of Shadow Work: we must honestly look at and integrate our subconscious dark sides in order to grow and transform ourselves. If the psychological, personal shadow refers to our habits/tendencies/thoughts that we repress, the same can be said of our societal shadow: the dark sides of systems that don’t align with the propagandistic messages of the State/Corporations that depend on them are forced into shadow. We ignore the draconian policies and criminal wages enforced on Amazon’s laborers because 2 day shipping is too damn convenient. We ignore the ravaging of rainforests because the coffee plantations that rise in their places make Mondays more bearable. We ignore the effects of poverty and hide the suffering in prisons. This problem extends directly to present day abolition movements and our use of incarceration to avoid engaging with people’s problems. As Angela Davis wrote: 

Prison relieves us of the responsibility of seriously engaging with the problems of our society, especially those produced by racism and, increasingly, global capitalism. Prisons do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings. Homelessness, unemployment, drug addiction, mental illness, and illiteracy are only a few of the problems that disappear from public view when the human beings contending with them are relegated to cages.

Shambhala warriorship challenges us to listen to those who are suffering and work compassionately to address their needs, solving the roots of the issues rather than hiding away the problematic effects. As all practices of Buddhism based on dependent origination remind us, nothing occurs out of a vacuum; every effect can be broken down into deeper causes. Thus, in order to create lasting solution, we must go beyond our fears of their harmful effects and address the root systemic causes. Warriorship is thus not only a practice of reflective meditation, but one of disciplined and discerning investigation. 

 Through the perspective of Shambhala vision along with shadow work, it is clear the battle to improve these systems must begin with drawing our global attention to their shadows. And when they feel too big, too far from our control, we must start by meditating with ourselves and remembering that fundamentally, “our existence is good, and it is all launderable,” to transcend our fear and hopelessness. There is always goodness available, waiting to be cleaned by us -- if we can only find the courage to understand how and why the dirt is getting there. 

(AR)

Image: A pointe shoe and mandible found at an offering altar at the Shambhala Stupa in Redfeather, Colorado by Alex Riesberg.