Dear Ellen,

Concerns for accessibility are still part of the Diversity Working Group but a separate group on Accessibility & Disability was formed. Much progress especially with general awareness of accessibility issues as well as close captioning on the Shambhala.org website was made under the leadership Mr. Hamish Maclaren, the original chairperson. Currently, Mr Stefan Carmien is the chairperson.

Best,
Charlene Leung

As the Dorje Dradul said in Shambhala: the Sacred Path of the Warrior, “The Shambhala teachings are founded on the premise that there is basic human wisdom that can help to solve the world’s problems. This wisdom does not belong to any one culture or religion, nor does it come only from the West or the East.”

The Shambhala Aspirations on Diversity, Accessibility and Compassionate Conduct, the seminal document of the Diversity Working Group, adopted by the Sakyong’s Council in 2005, aspires that “our Shambhala Centers welcome the human wisdom of all people regardless of religion, spiritual tradition or teachers, path of practice, opinions, class, nationality, culture, ethnicity, race, language, age, gender, sexual orientation, or physical, perceptual or mental abilities.”

Manifesting the “premise” of the Vidyadhara’s “Shambhala teachings” and the “Shambhala Aspirations” of the Sakyong’s Council, as excerpted above, are without a doubt difficult to accomplish. They both describe personal and social journeys in a world of complex differences, conflicts, and personal-societal-cultural habitual patterns, or cocoons. It would be naïve for any of us to believe otherwise, yet equally naïve, as practitioners, to deny the premise of “basic human wisdom,” or goodness, that connects us all to each other. And therein lies the challenge – how to uncover “the way things are” for us, and for other, in a way that respects differences and honors common ground.

I believe our challenge is to not only acknowledge our rich cultural, social, and personal differences, but to actively explore these differences so we can appreciate and welcome them. In doing so, we discover our shared humanity, our basic goodness which is the ground of good human society. How we find our basic humanity, which is more fundamental than our cultural differences, must come from within our own communities. I have co-hosted the Acharya’s talks at several Northern California Shambhala Centers and find they not only raise challenging issues but provide an opportunity for open, heart-felt discussion. Each time I co-facilitated the talks the compassion in the group was palpable.

The Diversity Working Group (DWG) put together extensive user guides for these two talks to help facilitators create an environment conducive for potentially difficult conversations. Currently, the DWG aspiration is that these discussions occur especially among members in all three pillars of Shambhala society. From high-level leadership to new students, conversations about diversity and privilege will lead us to understanding how we ultimately can be more inclusive of each other. The answer to how is Yes! Saying yes to exploring how we unconsciously treat those we view as other is a beginning.

In the past four years I have been Chairperson of the DWG, we have become more focused on looking beyond the personal to the organizational systems of privilege and oppression that are within and without Shambhala. Beyond personal awareness of differences (which of course is the place to start), we look at how hierarchies of advantage and disadvantage around difference are organizationally reinforced. How does not having diversity awareness in our Shambhala culture reinforce a lack of diversity? How can Shambhala, represented by leaders, teachers, instructors, kasung, and community members, move towards including the wisdom of more diverse people? The DWG work has included incorporating diversity awareness in leadership gatherings and teacher/instructor trainings. We also support local Shambhala Centers in developing diversity awareness programming. A diversity awareness group on the Shambhala Network is being launched.

As Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche writes in the Treatise on Enlightened Society, “Enlightened society is not an attempt to highlight the culture’s positive aspects and ignore the negative. Rather, the totality is illuminated. Thus, by definition, an enlightened society has the ability to comprehend the full spectrum of human activity….Recognizing the nature of all to be primordial, unstained and complete, we vow to create good human society.”

If your are interested in being involved or have questions please email me.

Shastri Charlene Leung
[email protected]

A response to Charles Marrow’s post –

Amanda Hester’s article, “Diving into Diversity”, based on her interview with Achara Judith Simmer-Brown and her viewing of AJSB’s recorded talk, “Enlightened Society Celebrates Diversity”, was recently critiqued by Charles Marrow: “This goal of Shambhala International to increase the sense of inclusion and diversity may be difficult to accomplish.” I agree with Charles that “inclusion and diversity” are “difficult to accomplish,” but on the other hand their opposites – exclusion and monocultural prejudice – have resulted in much human suffering and I don’t see a way out of our taking some responsibility and using the skillful means of dharma to work with that suffering and its causes.

Charles comments further on Amanda’s article: “It reads to me as a generic philosophy of feel good humanism and, perhaps does not acknowledge a valid sense of one’s own culture, values, symbolism and sense of place in the world.” As a member of the Diversity Working Group, I would ask Charles if he has listened to Acharya Simmer-Brown’s talk(s) or has taken part in a discussion following those talks. My own experience is that the Acharya’s open and honest inquiry into differences and common ground sound nothing like “…feel good humanism” that “does not acknowledge a valid sense of one’s own culture…” As with other practices, diversity work begins by exploring one’s personal diversity as well as the diversity of other people in the room, and it expands from there. I’ve found in every group that my personal assumptions of difference are challenged but workable when brought to the skillful means of dharma.

It is true that Mr. Marrow’s “read” is a common view of “diversity work” – that it is driven by fix-it, feel-good solutions while failing to explore and respect real differences between peoples. Or, conversely, it’s driven by blame and guilt. These views and others arise in every discussion on diversity I’ve witnessed. However, greater awareness through what arises, no matter how uncomfortable, can lead to uncovering common ground, or common groundlessness and, hopefully, the shared inspiration to look further.

Charles describes his personal experiences of being a Canadian relating to Japanese Culture and Cree Native culture, as well as the divisions and separation within our sangha between “Shambhala Buddhist philosophy” and “Vajradhatu traditions.” He gives personal examples of how diverse individuals in diverse groups inevitably struggle with “underlying tension,” “non-negotiable barriers,” and hitting “brick walls,” despite good intentions and much time and energy expended. I also find this to be true. Encountering sensitive diversity issues in a “safe environment” or the “real world” and the vulnerability and confusion that can arise between my self and other is challenging and long term but ultimately a satisfying journey that sharpens my practice and my bond with humanity.

Charles concludes that, despite discussions on diversity in Shambhala for years, “…it is unclear to me what progress has been made.” I almost agree, in that the progress of “kindness” or “compassion”, or the “understanding” of habitual patterns or personal-cultural cocoons and unearned systems of societal privilege and oppression, are not easily measured even when strongly felt. When I consider diversity in Shambhala, I also wonder where we are going and what we will look like in fifty or a hundred years, but at the moment I’m more interested in the open questions: Is creating enlightened society possible? What does diversity have to do with it? How do we exclude others? And I regularly fall back on the Sakyong’s words: “Society begins with two,” which seems a good and ever-present place to start.

– Robert Pressnall

Charles on the whole agree….but we also need new art forms…myself not so much looking to the East any more…disengaging from that. And also too diversity is diversity is diversity…things erupt in ones consciousness, awareness that take us from organisational methods. I feel enlightened society may come more now from erruptions of this sort than organisation. These erruptions also seem to be occurring in western conventional society too now and I think they should be nurtured and not contained.

This is excellant. But I am also wondering is Accessibility has been dropped as a committee, or if it is simply seperate?

Greetings –

This goal of Shambhala International to increase the sense of inclusion and diversity may be difficult to accomplish. It reads to me as a generic philosophy of feel good humanism and, perhaps does not acknowledge a valid sense of ones own culture, values, symbolism and sense of place in the world. In short, you cannot be all things to all people. It also has been discussed within Shambhala International off and on for many years and it is unclear to me what progress has been made.

I can easily think of some personal examples regarding cultural and social inclusion. I live in Edmonton which is a largish multicultural city in the smallish multicultural country of Canada. I have a long term and current interest in Japanese Culture, largely through practicing the tea ceremony. In interacting with with well educated and liberal Japanese, both in Edmonton and also in trips to Japan, there is a strong sense that we both want a sense of acceptance and working towards a common goal. For example, offering a beautiful tea ceremony.

Within this there is an underlying tension in spite of being interested in each others culture, i.e. the Japanese sometimes want to be relaxed and informal like North Americans and the North Americans are attracted to the strong sense of tradition and deep culture of Japan. However, both sides are going to come to a non-negotiable barrier that varies with individual and circumstances.

For example, I have a close Japanese friend who is very fluent in English. She will often be speaking and sending emails in near perfect English, then occassionally she will ‘lose it’ and her English will go to barely comprehensible pidgin English. This confused me to begin with. Eventually, as I saw this pattern, I concluded she went to pidgin English when she felt she was losing her sense of Japanese-ness and / or she was stressed out when the topic of conversation had some built in disagreement between us.

From my side, especially while visiting Japan, there were issues / trigger points regarding domestic customs. For example, there is a keen sense of detail in Japanese households have about which shoes or slippers you wear or do not wear in given areas of the house. Eventhough I know the basics of these customs there were times when I just got it “wrong” and was told, in no uncertain terms, that this was the case. So in these two fairly simple examples between a Japanese and a Canadian (me), both sides are going to kind of hit a brick wall where you are not able or willing to compromise or adapt further.

In Alberta Canada, with its diversity, I could also call forth examples of interaction with Cree Native acquaintances where I might like to visit one of them on the nearby reserve but do not have the time or energy to get in to the feel of that aboriginal culture to a degree they would be comfortable or I would be comfortable socializing in each others homes.

For Shambhala International, much more importantly, there is the long term overhanging issue of division within the sangha in the sense of separation between those following the Shambhala Buddhist philosophy and those of us that feel our place is in the atmosphere and culture of the Vajradhatu traditions. I do not know if it is useful to try to explicitly approach this topic as it has been with us for so long. For myself, the energy I have to address this issue is much less than five or ten years ago.

Those are my thoughts,
Charles Marrow