Vajrayogini in the sky, ©2013 Lee Weingrad

by Lee Weingrad

“It’s not a question of discovering who you are. It’s a question of discovering who you are not!”
Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche 1984, Boulder

It was a strange thing for me to think, “I know everything about this place.” It wasn’t deja vu. It wasn’t an instant sense of, “I could live here,” the way I felt in Amsterdam in 1995. It wasn’t a feeling of love. It was instant connection and familiarity coming up from the earth, through the soles of my feet, in a way that Kathmandu was not. A week earlier I was riding with Tim Olmstead on his motor scooter through the crowded, exhaust-choked streets of Bodha. There were cows everywhere. Sacred cows. He said to me, “if you get into a traffic accident and hit a cow, leave the country.” Wow. That got my attention. It made me feel like I was in an episode of Star Trek that was left on the cutting room floor. Lhasa was not all that foreign.

I settled into the Kirey Hotel, in the Kirey district near the Barkhor. The Barkhor is the inner circumambulation (khora, Tib.) circle in Lhasa, the road that surrounds the Jokhang, the temple that contains the holiest statue in Tibet, the Jowo Rinpoche. It was a place I would get to know very well.

I checked in. It seemed, amazingly that the owner, Dawa and all the young women who worked there were in on some joke, because no matter what happened in the next month I stayed there, they were laughing. When they saw something funny they would laugh. When they hurt themselves, they would laugh. Especially when I would try to photograph them and they would dive under the table in the office. I would start to get the joke, which involved the delight not just in everyday life, but in the very weirdness of foreigners.

My goal was to find a ride from Lhasa to Surmang. But I realized that I needed to get to know how the place worked, to tune into it, rather than burst upon this place.

Although late in the afternoon, I wasted no time after check-in, walking the ¼ mile over to the Jokhang. The front of the temple was crowded with pilgrims, about 20 of which were doing full prostrations to the building and the Jowo Rinpoche inside. Outside, there were two 15 foot-high white conical incense pots, with juniper lhasang releasing vast billows of white smoke. There was a stele, a stone post with a notice written by the Chinese Tang Emperor in Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese. All in front of a vast square, Soviet style, the communist government had created by clearing a whole section of apartments.

And of course there were groups of people: short apron-clad Lhasa women, and the men, with their Newari-square faces, monks, tall Khampas with their black chubas and long ribbon adorned hair braids wrapped around the tops of their heads. And dogs, lots of dogs. Aside from the din of mantras chanted you could hear people laughing, an echo of the women at the Kirey. It was the bar scene from Star Wars.

I couldn’t see any foreigners. This was my first day in Lhasa.

Over the next month, I would go to the Barkhor nearly every day. I started to notice some interesting details. Like the street in front of the Kirey was “Renmin Lu”, meaning, in Chinese, “the people’s street.” There was hardly any traffic. It was quiet. I remember the dogs, mangy, but somewhat aware of their place. They mostly lived on picking through the omnipresent garbage piles. One day in the meat market I noticed that there were dogs who lived there too, under the tables of the meat vendors. It taught me something about karma.

On my second day I went to the Jokhang. Until 6 or 7 years before it was closed by the Red Guards and converted into a pig stye. It houses the Jowo Rinpoche, a life-sized statue of the 9 year-old Shakyamuni Buddha. It was given by the daughter of the Tang emperor, Princess Wen Cheng Gongjiu, in the 700’s to her husband, the Tibetan King, Songtsen Gampo. It is said that the Tang Emperor had it brought from India and that it was made during the lifetime of Shakyamuni Buddha and blessed by him. If this is true, it is the only such extant statue of Lord Buddha.

Now, 6 years after the demise of the Cultural Revolution and the Gang of Four, it seemed like, “and now back to your regularly scheduled program.” Making my way, I only had a very rudimentary knowledge of Tibetan. I could utter totally dysfunctional phrases, like thamal gyi shepa and Dorje Palmo. Nearly useless. My Chinese was relatively much better. I arrived at the Jokhang entrance to find out that it was closed to visitors. Through the crack in the door, I told the monk in Chinese that I was an American Buddhist on pilgrimage to my lama’s monastery in Kham. Smiling and uttering a mantra, the door opened. About 10 Tibetan pilgrims followed.

The inner courtyard was awash in butter lamps. Hundreds of them. The outer chamber of the Jokhang was dark and had the smell of yak butter. There was Guru Rinpoche. There was Maitreya Buddha.

I went to the Barkhor nearly every day. I met now-famous Bönpo Lama Tenzin Wangyal there. I felt that I was beginning to get into the rhythm of the Lhasa. It had a very open feeling, since there were very few tourists, and no one knew what to do with us foreigners. Travel permits to even be in Lhasa were either mandatory or irrelevant, depending who you talked to. Many of us tested the limits of the new openness. A friend of mine, and devoted student of Trungpa Rinpoche, Paul Kloppenburg, made it all the way to Pema Kö near India in S. Tibet searching for 1000 pages of Trungpa Rinpoche’s abandoned writings before some local official pulled the plug and he got sent back to Lhasa. I felt like I was in some reincarnation of Paris in the 20’s. With bad food.

Next installment coming soon…

Read Part Two here.

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Lee Weingrad, also known as Wangli, was born in New York City and is a product of a middle class Jewish family and suburban New York City public schools. In 1972 he met Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and has been a student of his ever since. In 1986 he took his first trip to abroad: to Tibet, journeying overland from the Nepal border. He lives with his wife Wang Wenjing and children in Beijing. Meeting Trungpa Rinpoche’s eldest son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, in Kathmandu, the two decided to form Friends of Surmang, to bring some help to Surmang Tibetans in the form of clinics, hospitals and other kinds of community development. Lee has transitioned away from English teaching to concentrate on the Surmang Foundation’s work fulltime. Learn more about the Surmang Foundation here.

by President Richard Reoch

Leading figures in the worlds of faith, communications, social action and cultural change spoke out at the “Creating Enlightened Society” gathering hosted by the Sakyong, Jamgon Mipham Rinpoche, in Richmond, California, last weekend. We present clips from the talks by The Rt. Rev. Marc Hadley Andrus, Episcopal Bishop of California; Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams, Founder of the Center for Transformative Change; Jyoti, Spiritual Director of the Center for Sacred Studies, and Chade-Meng Tang, Founder, Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute.

The Sakyong speaks of “going beyond our borders”:

For the opening event and remarks by Jyoti, please click here.

On Saturday night of the historic Creating Enlightened Society event, the Bay Area Ziji Collective hosted the first of many promised “Enlightened Dance Parties.”

Good human societies from the four directions gathered and threw the proverbial “it” down after a day of inspired listening, discussion, and contemplation. To the ecstatic beats of the much anticipated DJ Dragonfly, young and old discovered once more the wisdom of their bodies, gyrating upon the dance floor. Others turned their thoughts to vibrant colors on an enormous finger painting sheet, while the muses lingered over collective poetic compositions on four clickety-clackety typewriters. For some in the room, it felt that enlightened society had arrived.

Humans of Earth are advised to keep their eyes open for future Enlightened Dance Parties – they will be experiences not to be missed.

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Alex Van Gils and Rees Sweeney-Taylor are two of the leaders of the Bay Area Ziji Collective, a community dedicated to uplifting themselves and society through the practice of meditation and the transformative power of collective action. Visit www.zijicollective.org for more information!

In a presentation filled with wit, heart and wisdom, California Episcopal Bishop Marc Andrus held his audience in rapt attention for over an hour as he moved through topics as diverse as contemporary physics, holocaust studies, and the meaning of “wonder.” Speaking at the recent Shambhala sponsored “Creating Enlightened Society” event in the San Francisco Bay Area’s Craneway Pavillion, and citing historical and literary references almost too numerous to catalogue, Bishop Andrus opted to forego using the stage, and instead spoke from the floor, microphone in hand, pacing left and right in the comfortable style of a community organizer working with his team members.

Though wide-ranging, his presentation was in clear support of the hypothesis that all and everything is an expression of basic goodness, and he returned to that topic time and again. The “wonder” he described, an overwhelming emotional sense of connection that is at once life-affirming and life-changing, he connected to the childhood discovery of a paramecium in a drop of pond-water, recognition of the moment of the creation of our universe of time and space, and the sudden heart-felt connection between strangers that they are actually one and the same. Using the language of modern physics, he described the quantum reality of entanglement, the property of instantaneous connection between particles separated by vast distance, and how it relates to our experience of wonder.

In telling the moving story of a small village of 5,000 people in France in which its Huguenot population saved an equal number of Jews during World War II, he illustrated his point that this quality of entanglement connects all living things to one another and is the basis of compassion. Casting back 75 years to the work of analyst Carl Jung while also referencing contemporary research indicating consciousness may be a “non-local” phenomenon, Bishop Andrus suggested that our current age expresses an appreciation of complexity, a contemporary understanding of ancient, intuitive wisdom, which he called “most valid.” Complexity, he noted, is a property of life itself, and it is increasingly complex. Yet, hewing back to the “initial condition,” the beginning of time, space and matter, he suggested, is basic goodness itself, as is all that follows.

Bishop Andrus took his audience where he wanted to take them, an excursion through the universe of the human heart and society. Though a Bishop in the Episcopal Church, he never mentioned the word God, and never had to. Remarkably, the Bishop had constructed a presentation in perfect concordance with a question asked of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche the night before about the difference between basic goodness and God. The Sakyong, not skipping a beat, replied, “one less ‘o’”, an answer one suspects, with which the Bishop would agree.

reported by Joshua Silberstein
Chief of Staff for the Sakyong
photos by Breton Hoagland

On May 15th, the Sakyong presented at the 14th annual Festival of Faiths in Louisville, Kentucky. The Festival of Faiths encourages interfaith dialogue as a means to help create the conditions for peace and compassion in the world and specifically in the city of Louisville. The Sakyong presented alongside his friend Bishop Marc Andrus, the Bishop of the California Episcopal Diocese. The Sakyong and the Bishop met each other, along with festival organizer Owsley Brown III, when he presented his vision for enlightened society at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco during the 2012 events there. Bishop Andrus also presented at the 2013 Creating Enlightened Society Festival just prior to the Festival of Faiths.

The Sakyong and Bishop Andrus used their time to talk about mandala principle in Tibetan Buddhism and in early Christianity and to open a deeper understanding of the path from silence to compassionate life. After they each presented from their traditions they engaged in dialogue looking at how the meanings of mandala relate to the view and practicality of everyday life. Of the 400 people present, 150 were students from Seneca High School.

After the presentation, the Sakyong then had a chance to meet with 23 members of the Lexington and Louisville Shambhala groups where they engaged in discussion. The Sakyong then offered a blessing to the group.

Later in the day, the Mayor of Louisville, Greg Fischer, requested a meeting with the Sakyong to discuss what the Sakyong had seen while relating to the issue of youth violence in Chicago. The Mayor brought several members of his cabinet, including the Chief of Police Steve Conrad. Mayor Fischer took the courageous act of having the city of Louisville sign the Charter for Compassion and created the possibility for Louisville to be one of the first cities to include compassion in their platform and policies. It was a wide-ranging discussion that covered the particular hopes and challenges of the city of Louisville along with looking into how we can create better environments and examples for our young people.

The Sakyong and the Mayor then joined a dinner being held in their honor by the Brown family who are the organizers of the Festival of Faiths along with the other partners and presenters. The Festival of Faiths will culminate with a visit to the city of Louisville by His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

left to right: Mayor Greg Fischer, Dr. LaQuandra Nesbitt Director of Public Health, James Rice Special Security for the Mayor, the Sakyong, Tony Peyton Director of Policy, Sadiqa Reynolds Chief of Community Building, Chief Steve Conrad Chief of Louisville Metro Police Department, Anthony Smith Director for Safe Neighborhoods

reported by Joshua Silberstein, Chief of Staff for Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
photo by Breton Hoagland

On Thursday, May 9th, the Sakyong was invited to have lunch and tour the Google facility in Mountain View, CA. Our host, Chade-Meng Tan was one of Google’s earliest engineers.

Among many other things, Chade-Meng Tan helped build Google’s first mobile search service, and headed the team that kept a vigilant eye on Google’s search quality. After a successful 8-year stint in Engineering and 2 years as Google EDU’s Head of Personal Growth, he now serves with Google’s Talent Team. His current job description is to, “Enlighten minds, open hearts, create world peace,” and his job title is “Jolly Good Fellow.” He is also the creator and teacher of a meditation training for Google employees entitled, “Search Inside Yourself.”

During lunch, the Sakyong and Meng talked about the intricacies of Buddhist ideas and action, and their mutual inspiration to benefit the world. Meng shared that he felt the main aspiration of Google employees was to change the world for the better. This led to a discussion on how we bring that aspiration into action not only on the meditation cushion but throughout corporations and influencing the world to accept peace as a skillful means for the health of humanity.

Joining the Sakyong and Meng on this tour were Acharyas Adam Lobel and Alan Schwartz, Northern California Regional Director Joanne Martin Braun and Chief of Staff Joshua Silberstein.

For more information on Chade-Meng Tan please click here.

photo by Laura Chenoweth

I used to think that the spiritual path in some ways was just trying to get to the insights that come with aging faster. When you’re younger it’s so hard to get to that point of just relaxing a little bit, accepting yourself a little bit, not trying so hard all the time.

In meditation practice there is a sense that, when you are on the cushion, you are really a luminous nobody. You’re not trying to do anything or prove anything and when you are, you just label it thinking and then you come back to your luminous nobody. That sense of relief, that you’re not struggling all the time, is a quality of our being that’s going to be very important to us when, on an outer level, we may very well be struggling with illness, pain and loss.

When I think about aging, I think about support that we’d like to have. And yet, we can’t really count on having a lot of support. So there’s a call in practice to make re-acquaintance, and to really get intimate, with our inner resources that we will need when things are difficult.

It comes back again to the very simple question: What am I gaining and what am I losing? What is aging teaching me? What am I learning?

One thing I noticed about the Vidydhara, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, that stands out more as I get older, is that I never heard him complain about anything, ever. He had opinions about things, but I never heard him just complain.

In terms of my friends now, as we get older, there is a lot of complaint, there is a lot of woe is me. What do they call it? The organ recital; everyone has an organ they can talk about, and what happened to it.

You could say, of course, there’s a lot to complain about, there’s a lot to feel bad about. There’s a lot to fear. How do we deal with that fear? That is a basic question that comes up in different forms at different stages of life.

As well, there is the question: How do we honor the elders and our heritage that they represent, those who’ve come before. We’re not really good at any of that in my humble opinion, so how can we do so?

I think the other thing that becomes very clear on the path at a certain point is that we’re taught many things; we’re taught all sorts of views and schemes, we’re taught all sort of practices and we do our best to understand our tradition. Yet at a certain point it becomes very clear that you and your individual path can only be generalized so much. You reach a point where you have to forge your particular path within what you’ve been taught and what you’ve inherited.

In the traditional literature there is said to be a point where, as you are practicing, you need input, you need support, you need to have a teacher, you need something to surrender to, and you need to gather as much accurate information about the tradition as possible. But at a certain point you have to have the confidence to find your own way.

That has been termed the “inner guru”. At a certain point we have to mature in the sense of saying to our self: “Okay, I’ve taken this all in, now what do I actually experience, what do I actually believe, and am I willing to go with that? With all respect and with all confidence, what is my particular mark, what is my particular insight, what is my path within all of that?”

That’s really difficult. In a way it’s like taking away the training wheels. Training wheels, in this case, are there to support us so we can reach the point of truly trusting our own wisdom, our own insight. We see and hear what we actually see and hear. We don’t have to pretend and we don’t have anything to prove to our self or anyone else.

This is a real possibility and an incredible benefit of aging. It is really poignant and also liberating. With aging you reach a point where you can cut through, rather than looking for authority or looking for someone to tell us what to do. You don’t need to look for someone to approve of what you do, to boost you up. You can drop that kind of tentative quality of asking ‘is that okay’, or ‘did I say the right thing?’

You can say the hell with it. It just is. It is okay, and I’m okay, and that’s the way it is. Take it or leave it, it’s wonderful. So all you codgers and long-in-the-tooth, nattering nincompoops, I think in fact you’re at a very powerful point where you can do so much for the sangha, for your fellow practitioners, for younger folks and for older folks.

It’s a time to integrate, a time to bring it all together, and there isn’t that much time. There isn’t that much time, and that’s fine.

Excerpted and lightly edited from a talk given by Acharya Emeritus Judy Lief in January 2013 at the Boulder Shambhala Centre. The video of the full talk is available through Shambhala Online.

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Acharya Judy Lief is the editor of The Profound Treasury of the Ocean of Dharma, and has been a teacher for more than 30 years in the Buddhist and Shambhala traditions. A close student of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Lief worked with Trungpa as executive editor of Vajradhatu Publications, and from 1980-1985 as the dean of Naropa University. Lief also authored Making Friends with Death: A Buddhist Guide to Encountering Mortality (Shambhala, 2001), and has been presenting classes and workshops on a contemplative approach to death and dying, as well as the teachings of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, since 1976.

To read more articles in this Column, please click here.

by Leslie Gossett
Shambhala Times Reporter

Amidst the murmurs of the dispersed audience and the sounds of eating, drinking and talking, are the sounds of instruments floating through the large space. Everyone has wandered away from stage in search of dinner, and the imminent performance by the Friction Quartet is announced.

The Friction Quartet is a San Francisco Bay Area contemporary quartet, and their performance last night was quite a gift. The first piece was Buddhist Studies #1, composed by James Craft. It was composed specifically for the quartet to be performed at Creating Enlightened Society. The piece is “an expression of the yearnings, silence, and altogether human-ness found both in meditation and in the ancient traditions of Tibetan Buddhism,” James explains on his website, www.jamescraftmusic.com.

The piece opens with a haunting and solemn note which soon has the quartet dancing in a deep resonance. People are drawn closer to the stage. There is a quietness and depth pervading the sound. The sun is just starting to melt toward the horizon, so the glow that matches the music casts shadows slantwise upon our feet. I look around and people’s heads – now bodies – are swaying with the flow. I think of rolling waves washing me into space. The piece invokes a certain tenderness- a mirrored chord of longing that seems both familiar and primordial.

James writes, “as a composer, I try to bridge the gap between myself and the public by expressing what I think is meaningful.” Listening to the intimacy of his piece, I certainly felt that union.

The next piece performed by the Friction Quartet was Alex Van Gils’ The Water Which Flows Here. Alex composed this piece inspired by the text of the Sadhana of Mahamudra, a text written by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. “The water which flows here is the Buddha Mamaki, who is the lake of the mirrorlike wisdom, clear and pure, as though the sky had melted,” Alex writes. The piece is dedicated to Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche.

As the music begins, one can sense the eagerness of the audience after hearing what the quartet is offering. In his introduction, Alex pointed out that the piece also contains elements of spikiness and violence, and the opening notes do have that spiky quality. There is both chaos and continuity. The arms, and bows, of the musicians move hastily – jerkily until a single soft note is reached and they are joined in a slow and sustained quiet precision. The feeling moves through softness and begins to gain strength. The bows turn into dancers gracefully gliding across the strings – asking questions of them, or making declarations perhaps. Player and played become one – the quality of intimacy touching my heart. Then the pace quickens – a liveliness and a surety emerges. I feel like I could cry. The music moves again, breathing, slow and deep, and then a light fluttering overtone. To watch the musicians is to see the utter embodiment of the music. They are so fully there – connected – exchanging glances as their bodies move, dip, sway, as if they are not four different people.

Alex has managed to express the tone, the feeling, the afterglow one experiences while practicing, and after having practiced the Sadhana of Mahamudra. The audience seems touched. The applause is strong and full of love.

When I asked Alex about his creative process, he read this to me, the words of Peter Lieberson, “The creative process is fundamentally a process of visualization: in the case of composing music, you see what you hear. Out of the space of mind something flashes — a first thought — that has potential. Further ideas occur as offshoots or main limbs through paying attention and through coincidence. Soon a form is before you that takes on a particular authority. Then sidetracks are out of the question.” One can sense this in the composition – the quality of clear creation.

The final piece performed by the Friction Quartet is a composition by Gabriella Smith called Riprap. I wasn’t able to find out from her the context or inspiration of the piece, but it certainly left an impression.

As the performance begins, a chorus is plucked that invokes rain drops, then the flow of tones takes over. I imagine a river winding in the dark, stumbling and slowing down in its flow. Then the drops quicken – louder now. The heads of the quartet players are bobbing up and down. And then the percussion begins (the quartet is joined by a marimba at this point). Scaly, sliding, sharp. I anticipate something. There is a poignancy, a pregnant sound. A sharpness slicing through slow movement, invoking curiosity. Then a haunting, drawing out. A brilliant resonance, and a cacophony. And finally a resolution, piercing and shining. A unified soaring. And the musicians draw out the final note, almost in agony.

The audience is moved, and ready for more.

As Mark Summer, cellist from the Turtle Island Quartet, sets up on stage, I ponder the connection between music and enlightened society. This weekend has revolved around the idea that one moves from the personal to the communal and then to the societal in terms of transformation. Isn’t music just precisely the transition? From the personal to the communal, an offering is made. To play music in such a way as we are witnessing, requires a great deal of vulnerability and courage. There must exist some willingness to connect to something outside oneself, to extend oneself into the world. Listening and receiving that brings with it that same quality of opening. This is a pretty amazing foundation for relating to one another with compassion, wisdom, and dignity.

Mark embodies the joy that comes from that connection as he takes his seat on stage. One is immediately aware of the great joy he possesses at being there, at playing his cello. He smiles and moves with levity and grace. His performance is vibrant. He first plays “Julie-O,” a piece he wrote for his sister. One can sense the tenderness in its notes. Mark then offered tunes from Hendrix, the Beatles, and Paul Simon. As his set is closing, he expresses how honored he is to be “opening for the Sakyong.” “I will remember this,” he laughs, “until the day I die… or at least until tomorrow.” And before he leaves the stage to allow for preparations for the Sakyong’s evening address, he reminds us that it is in whatever we do – as a cellist, a lawyer, a doctor – that we must ask how we can contribute to the creation of an enlightened society.

With the lingering of inspiration and connection, the musical evening concluded, making way for more inquiry. How can we continue to touch in with the personal and offer it outward to the rest of our community?

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Click on each link to hear the sounds of the musicians: Friction Quartet, James Craft, Alex Van Gils, Gabriella Smith, and Mark Summer.

Leslie Gossett is a student of all things human. She lives in Silicon Valley where she works with children, words, mind, and body

by Leslie Gossett
Shambhala Times Reporter

Arriving at the Craneway Pavilion is striking. Walking toward the entrance, a cutting breeze pushes into your skin, directly from the water which opens itself in front of you like endless potential. Walking through the door, your eyes scan the immensity of the space – some things familiar (the section of red and yellow gomdens against one window), and others unexpected (giant lantern-like shapes glowing on the ceiling). The hustle and bustle is not there, though people are moving back and forth, in and out, carrying trays of food, and searching for misplaced clipboards. There is a peace about the space. A lightness. And an excitement.

Sailboats pass back and forth behind the stage, and the fog rolls in and out making the skyline visible, and then not. There are rows of windows along the ceiling as well, and seagulls cast their calligraphed shadows across the tops of people’s heads, and then are gone. The light changes throughout the day, and one feels as if the world is also inside, amongst these glass walls.

The atmosphere on Saturday morning was one of camaraderie and brilliance. People were happy to see one another and to be here for this experience. In spite of the fact that the coffee ran out well before our need for it, everyone was in good spirits. Gathering with curiosity, we listened to Acharyas Skjei and Lobel orient us for the morning. We broke into groups to express how it was that we were arriving in the room and what were our aspirations for ourselves and our society. The mics were opened for people to share some of these sentiments. There were many questions about how to hold both the potential of enlightened society and the terrible situations that exist all around us. Many expressed a desire for connection, communication, understanding, and love. Others brought forth the awkwardness and uncertainty that understandably lies beneath the surface of any honest inquiry.

As one participant was sharing, a wave of awe swept through the room as we spotted Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche through the windows, walking up to the doorway beside the stage. His entourage surrounded him, holding a parasol over his head. The brightness of his orange and yellow robes sparked against the backdrop of the water behind, striking the present moment. It seemed that at just that moment, the smell of incense cloaked the space, and held us there in the profundity of our intention. As he entered, the crowd erupted into three rounds of “Ki Ki So So”. And sitting upon his seat, one could feel the gratitude – his toward those who had gathered, and ours toward his being here with us.

He spoke to us of how a meditation practice is integral to both our own being and to society as a whole. The flavor of what he had to say was very much one of workability. “The first thing,” Rinpoche said, “is to be happy with who you are – so you can relax.” He explained that creating a culture in which we feel safe enough to relax and to connect to being human allows for the natural qualities of mindfulness, curiosity, and presence to arise. He continued by guiding us all through a meditation practice which allowed us to “address the human heart and mind.” The aspects of this practice cultivated the space to really be there, and to connect with something larger.

After the Sakyong’s address, speaking to one another of our own relationship to feeling, there was certainly a sense of shared vulnerability. As humans, we allow ourselves to feel what we feel, we have the strength and dignity to be here and take up space, and we are capable of tapping into “universal goodness or potency.” Breaking for lunch on that note left us with a sense of workability and okay-ness (and also some grumbling bellies).

This weekend promises to be full of beauty and inspiration. See you there:
creatingsociety.com

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Stay tuned this weekend on the Shambhala Times for live reports about the weekend’s events. Thanks in advance to all of the reporters and photographers who will be on the ground gathering the reports for our readers!

Leslie Gossett is a student of all things human. She lives in Silicon Valley where she works with children, words, mind, and body

report and video by President Richard Reoch

“We’re in such a high, auspicious moment on earth,” said Jyoti, Spiritual Director of the Center for Sacred Studies as she opened the “Creating Enlightened Society” gathering hosted by Shambhala in Northern California. She is world famous for bringing together the Thirteen Grandmothers dedicated to preserving the indigenous wisdom and culture of the first nations of humanity.

“I know that I would rather spend my time dreaming this, than the one I find when I turn on TV,” she told the gathering.

The weekend is taking place in Craneway Pavilion that overlooks Richmond Harbour of San Francisco Bay. The first night was opened by by Shambhala Acharyas Adam Lobel and Susan Skjei.

“Creating Enlightened Society” is the second in a four-city tour of public dialogues hosted by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. His book, The Shambhala Principle, was published this past week. He is to address the gathering over the weekend along with Bishop Marc Andrus, the Episcopal Bishop of California; the Reverend Angel Kyodo Williams, founder of the Center for Transformative Change; and Chade-Meng Tan, founder of the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute.

The Craneway Pavilion event follows the Sakyong’s “Imagining Peace” weekend in Chicago at the end of April which brought together more than 40 organizations, youth leaders and social activists, addressing the challenge of youth violence in that city.

San Francisco, photo by Sarah Lipton

The anticipation is so thick you could slice it with the proverbial knife. I haven’t even seen all the hustle and bustle actually taking place in Richmond, but if the buzz of emails, phone calls, and text messages around here is any indication, then the whole place is pulsating.

The heartbeat of basic goodness doesn’t acknowledge start dates or registration times. Rather it gives life to those things. It’s Friday, and this weekend’s Creating Enlightened Society event is something we’ve all been looking forward to since it was just a murmur of possibility.

An entire weekend devoted to engaging with each other around the ideas of peace, compassion, and dignity is something one can easily get excited about. Amazingly, but not surprisingly, people are already cultivating these attitudes and practices in the context of its preparation.

My inbox has been blowing up with links to ride share lists, housing for out-of-towners, work study opportunities, and people offering time, services, or money to help each other which whatever aspect of the event falls under their guidance. The question underneath all this buzz is simple, “How can I help?”.

This is precisely the question that moves us toward enlightened society. In each moment, and in each task, how can we act and speak from the confidence that we have something to offer? We help one another create the space to cultivate an attitude of helping one another. Dear fellow humans, we are well on our way.

This weekend promises to be full of beauty and inspiration. See you there:
creatingsociety.com

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Stay tuned this weekend on the Shambhala Times for live reports about the weekend’s events. Thanks in advance to all of the reporters and photographers who will be on the ground gathering the reports for our readers!

Leslie Gossett is a student of all things human. She lives in Silicon Valley where she works with children, words, mind, and body

Sakyong Mipham signs a copy of The Shambhala Principle

Sakyong Mipham signed hundreds of copies of his new book, The Shambhala Principle; Discovering Humanity’s Hidden Treasure yesterday. There was joy in the air as people waited patiently in line at the Halifax Shambhala Center to say hello and have the Sakyong sign their copy of his much anticipated book.

The Sakyong greeted the children, teachers, Acharyas, leadership, citizens and friends of Shambhala and cheerfully signed copy after copy. He exchanged greetings with everyone and shared laughter with many.

Released on May 7th to coincide with Basic Goodness Day, The Shambhala Principle is all about basic goodness; the inherent love, wisdom and courage that every human being possesses deep within their heart. It teaches how recognizing basic goodness in ourselves and others leads to enlightened society.

Sakyong Mipham and Acharya Hayward

To order a copy of the book from Shambhala Media click here.

photo by Diana Church

by Sarah Sutherland, Regional Secretary to the Sakyong Wangmo

Fifty years ago this May, Tibetan refugees fleeing political turmoil and religious persecution first arrived in the Chandragiri valley of Orissa — a remote corner of India. Since then, the Ripa family lineage has taken its seat there and thrived. Today, more than 4,000 community members live in five settlement camps collectively known as Phuntsokling and nearly 400 monks practice in the magnificent Rigon Thupten Mindroling monastery.

In advance of this anniversary, the Shambhala Times spoke with the Sakyong Wangmo, who reflected on her experience of growing up in Orissa, where her father and uncle guided and nurtured the spiritual and physical well being of the Tibetan community. The Sakyong Wangmo also shared her thoughts about Phuntsokling today, especially her aspiration to improve the quality of life there by helping to complete construction of much-needed roads between the settlement camps.

Before the road project, school children and the elderly traveled the unpaved roads in Phuntsokling with difficulty.

“My family came from the cold, mountainous region of Kham in eastern Tibet,” she continued, “which I consider my ancestral home. I, however, was born in the warm, tropical state of Orissa, whose sights and smells are very much part of my childhood.”

“Though my family resides in a compound near Rigon Thupten Mindroling, I know very well the hardships the villagers face, particularly during monsoon season,” the Sakyong Wangmo said. “The roads turn to mud, making it dangerous for people to travel between camps. Some people drive, risking accidents, but many people walk and need to transport their animals along these roads. It’s very unsanitary. Even worse, the heavy rains can’t drain properly, so water builds up and floods into people’s homes. Unfortunately, the lack of drainage also leaves huge pools of water along the road, where mosquitoes breed. For people walking on the roads and living nearby, these conditions make them vulnerable to contracting malaria.”

In fact, with the largest number of malaria patients and deaths due to malaria, Orissa has the ignoble title of “malaria capital” of India. (According to the Ripa Ladrang Foundation, which oversees the Malaria Prevention Fund, malaria is the most common health problem and cause of mortality among the residents of Orissa.)

Today, thousands of Tibetans of all ages travel between the camps, which are four to five kilometers apart, to reach the school, hospital, monastery and merchants. When the roads are not wet and muddy in the summer, they are often dry and cracked in the winter, making travel and life difficult.

Fortunately — thanks to a project funded by the Sakyong Foundation — the road to camp 2 is now concrete and includes proper drains and culverts. Inspiration for this road project blossomed in 2006 at the Royal Wedding in Orissa, where Tibetans and Westerners gathered to celebrate the marriage of the Sakyong and Sakyong Wangmo and the joining of the Shambhala and Ripa lineages. Pledges made at that time by students and supporters of the Sakyong and Sakyong Wangmo enabled the Sakyong Foundation to grant $80,000 to the road project in 2008.

After the new road and culverts were built, the quality of life at settlement camp 2 improved greatly.

But with the roads to four other settlement camps still unpaved and hazardous, work remains.

Inspired to further the road construction, the Sakyong Wangmo has initiated a fund to help support this and other humanitarian projects that improve living conditions for Tibetans in exile.

Called the Sakyong Wangmo Fund, the Sakyong Wangmo’s endeavor rests under the auspices of the Sakyong Foundation. All funds raised will be directed toward projects that the Sakyong Wangmo believes will benefit the well being of the Tibetan community, such as building roads between the settlement camps of Phuntsokling.

Despite its name — which means “the land of happiness and plenty” — Phuntsokling is not entitled to receive any Indian government-run social development aid or programs due to its status as a refugee community. (The Central Tibetan Administration, which is the Tibetan government in exile based in Dharmsala and led by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, oversees the welfare of Tibetan refugees in India and elsewhere.)

The Ripa family and its monastic and lay communities settled in Orissa decades ago — and many more thousands of Tibetans made their homes in five other settlements in India. Most improvements in the settlement camps are made by individual families or are undertaken by the monastery. At Rigon Thupten Mindroling, Jigme Rinpoche directs the Pure Water Project as well as sponsorship programs for monks and the elderly. For the most part, however, there are very few projects to improve public infrastructure.

As a result, the road project the Sakyong Wangmo aspires to fund — which would minimize accidents, improve sanitation and reduce malaria — would be a considered a significant humanitarian accomplishment. And such a gesture is sure to be felt not only by the people in Phuntsokling but by the entire Tibetan community in exile, from Orissa to Dharmsala.

“In my role as Earth Protector and lineage holder, I feel a deep responsibility to help guard and preserve the wisdom of the Tibetan culture,” said the Sakyong. “Please join the Sakyong Wangmo and myself in this humanitarian effort.”

Plans for constructing a new road at camp 5 are now underway. Watch for more news on the road project and the Sakyong Wanmgo Fund in the coming months.

Please consider making a gift towards the completion of the four roads and drainage systems in Phuntsokling. Donations can be made online at: www.sakyongfoundation.org/chandragiri

“I am so happy that the Sakyong will be hosting a special benefit dinner to initiate the Sakyong Wangmo Fund at The Sakyong Foundation when he is teaching on Shambhala Meditation in Boulder in June. Please join in to celebrate and support this cause.” – the Sakyong Wangmo

If you would like more information about the benefit dinner hosted by the Sakyong on June 30, or to reserve a place at the event, please contact Jane Vosper at jvosper@sakyongfoundation.org.

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The Pure Water Project.

Halifax, photo by Sarah Lipton

It is early May. It is sunny Halifax, but a little cold and we are wishing for warm spring days. The Profound Treasury Tour rolls into town from Boston. Where have we been? Where are we now? If it’s Friday, it must be Halifax!

The weather dralas gave us beautiful days for the panels in New York and Boston. Thousands of blooming trees, tulips and daffodils filled the parks in Manhattan, and the streets were mobbed with people out for the sun. Sunday evening, May 28th, the auditorium at the Rubin Museum was quite full as Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, Acharya Emeritus Judith Lief and Shastri Ethan Nichtern took to the stage with moderator Melvin McLeod, Editor in Chief of the Shambhala Sun.

Park in NY in bloom, photo by Carolyn Gimian

Judy Lief at the Profound Treasury dinner at ABC Kitchen

Then Judy was on the train to Boston with Nikko Odiseos, President of Shambhala Publications and the moderator of the panel at Harvard. Harvard was our mishap panel. Both Elizabeth Matthis Namgyal and Mirabai Bush were unable to be there, due to personal issues that came up at the last minute. So Charles Lief, President of Naropa, and Carolyn Gimian, Director of the Legacy Project, were commandeered to join in as panelists.

We were in the Sperry Room in Andover Hall,with close to 100 in the audience. Someone in the audience pointed out that this is the room where William James taught in the early 1900s at the Harvard Divinity School. The charismatic Buddhist spokesman Dharmapala attended one of the James’s lectures in this room and James, it is said, invited Dharmapala to take his chair, saying of Buddhism that: “This is the psychology that everybody will be studying twenty five years from now.”

Nikko and Judy on the train to Boston

Then we were on the plane to Halifax. And here we are, ready for the final panel. I’ll send that report in the next few days.

All of the panels are being filmed, by the way, and we’ll announce the location of the recordings – as soon as we know!!!

From the road, your correspondent, Carolyn Gimian.

review by Dixie Griffin Good

In Chicago for the Imagining Peace conference in April 2013, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche told a riveted audience at Rockefeller Chapel, “Right now, even though there are very important social, environmental, and economic issues, I feel like a fundamental and essential issue is how we regard human nature. In a sense, that is the most important global issue: How do we actually think about ourselves?”

This question, and the Sakyong’s theme for the talk — humanity’s inherent goodness — may seem overly simplistic at first glance. In Chicago, where youth homicides exceed those of any other city in our gun-saturated nation, was he actually saying the equivalent of, “I’m okay, you’re okay”? That some kind of feel-good approach will solve the crime, poverty, materialism, and aggression that plague the world? For a moment I held my breath and wondered if the street-wise citizens of the Windy City would laugh him off the stage, or even run him out of town.

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The Sakyong’s confidence in basic goodness goes beyond pop psychology treatises on self-esteem. In fact, it is rooted in ancient philosophy and cultural wisdom that go back centuries, well before the term “new age” become a genre or derisive label. In his latest book, The Shambhala Principle, the Sakyong explores deeply this question about human nature and invites readers to reflect on their views as well. The Shambhala Principle posits that people and society are good, and that this universal theme runs through the great religious and philosophical currents of human thought.

“This universality is not a watering down of any tradition; it is the nucleus at the heart of all tradition. It is not something we create. It is something we discover.”

The book takes pains to describe the universality of the view of humanity as one of goodness or virtue. The Shambhala Principle and its correlates are rooted in the philosophies espoused by Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Mencius and Confucius, as well as various religious philosophies, including Buddhism.

Doubt about the goodness of human nature, however, dominates the current world view. The author exposes deeply-held notions stemming from our cultural milieu — that humans are selfish creatures, motivated only by self-interest and materialism; that we are inherently flawed, incomplete or lacking. Operating as we have been from this view of man’s fundamentally brutish nature, we’ve created a world of hurt and have damaged the environment. Now, the Sakyong writes, humans are at a crossroads where one road leads to fully destroying the world and the other leads to creating a good future.

We uncover our wisdom and discover our innate goodness by examining our deep-seated assumptions. The Sakyong writes,

Is it really our nature to be fearful and aggressive, or could it be that we are actually gentle and fearless at heart? Underneath the stress and anxiety, is it possible there is peace? If our self-reflection turns up an inkling of that, we can draw power from it, daring to shift our destiny. In this way, the Shambhala principle is a socially transformative process through which confusion about human nature becomes confidence in human worthiness.

The book takes the form of an extended dialogue between the author and his father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a key figure in the spread of Buddhism in the West and the founder of Shambhala. The Vidyadhara’s spirit, warmth and wisdom fill the pages, and we see him through the eyes of the Sakyong as a small boy growing into a young man.

The book opens with the father summoning the 12-year-old boy to his room, with the news that the youth would one day become the next sakyong, or earth protector. From there, conversations between father and son thread through the narrative, taking the reader through the land of Shambhala, and providing glimpses of the Vidyadhara’s insight and wisdom. Remarkably, Trunpa Rinpoche’s confidence in basic goodness remained unshaken even after witnessing, as a young man, horrific destruction and fleeing the Chinese invasion of Tibet. As the Sakyong poignantly describes it, his father courageously carried “this ember of goodness” across the world’s highest mountains to place it in his son’s hands and heart.

The Shambhala Principle describes the impact of our thoughts and feelings on our world through intention. When we choose to cultivate our wisdom and goodness through meditation, the mind is “full of gentleness and humor, precision and strength, and dignity arises.” We create a “sustainable internal environment that will have a potent effect on our world.” As chaos theory explains, a small change can create a dramatic long-term shift in a large system. The book charts a path where an individual — by paying attention, meditating, reflecting and choosing compassion — can affect her or his own body, speech and mind; in turn, these affect the world around us in small but significant ways.

Readers will find plenty of practical action steps: pay attention, be awake to the moment, get to know and trust one’s goodness. Those who have studied the Shambhala path will recognize many familiar concepts and instructions, from the four dignities to the terma references, to the cosmic mirror and more. For those who are new to Shambhala or Buddhist teachings, the author provides an excellent overview to the path of moving from “worrier to warrior,” from making friends with oneself to creating enlightened society one conversation at a time.

At times the book wavers between acknowledging the complexities of modern life and following Trungpa Rinpoche’s admonition to keep it simple. For example, the chapters on health and education seem to gloss over important issues. Perhaps these topics will be treated more thoroughly in future writings. The book’s strength is its ability to inspire the reader to join heaven and earth. “By working with the mind,” the Sakyong writes, “we align our spiritual aspirations with our daily lives for the benefit of the future.”

~~~

Sitting on the stage in Chicago, this slight figure dressed in golden robes had the audacity to proclaim human goodness just days after bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, hours before a weekend of discussions about ending youth violence. He was and is bold enough to question society’s prevailing mood of tension and anxiety, the dominant tempo of speed, the pervading influence of materialism, and the strong undercurrent of fear.

The Sakyong was not laughed at or run out of town. His message was not met with charges of Pollyannaism or unfounded optimism, because somehow he embodies the message. His genuine presence and dignity give people pause, opening enough space to say, “Could he be right? Is this true?” The audience gave him a standing ovation. He spent the next two days meeting with youth, activists, former gang members and followers of Shambhala. When he spoke about using meditation and reflecting on human nature as tools for fighting violence, people listened with respect. And gratitude. It was a gathering of enlightened society, based on the Shambhala principle.

Read more about the book and how to order it here: www.sakyong.com
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Dixie Griffin Good loves the Shambhala Times and its amazing team of contributors. She lives in Denver with two Good teenagers and a pretty good cat. Her name translates to: Southern Garuda Sangpo. On gmail and twitter, she’s DixieGee.