Friday

Humanity is Whole, Complete

by Katja Assmann, reporting from Dechen Choling

Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche welcomed the Being Brave Shambhala Retreat on the first morning and invited all participants to join him on a journey to discover their human goodness. He spoke about his father Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche as a man who had lost everything at a very young age while escaping Tibet, and who dived into his further life with enormous strength and bravery, leaving us his heritage. Without him nobody would be here at Dechen Choling right now. The Sakyong remembered his father saying in one of his last talks that, “we hold the possibilities of the future in our hands.”

He taught about human goodness and the power of thoughts, and pointed out that, “humanity is whole, complete. There are no pieces missing. How we nurture that feeling of humanness is very important.” He also guided the assembly in Shambhala meditation and emphasized the importance of how we incorporate meditation into our daily lives, saying: “We create culture by how we feel about ourselves.”

Sakyong Mipham encouraged the participants to cultivate confidence and bravery by explaining, “the notion of bravery in Shambhala means to always create an atmosphere of opportunity, always seeing what is possible. Thus in a phase of difficulties we actually become stronger.”

The Sakyong concluded the retreat on the last day by presenting his vision of enlightened society, which he describes as the invisible network between people with the inherent human wish to communicate. He says, “Ultimately, it comes down to how we communicate with and respect others. This needs a certain understanding of the other, which means knowing who we are ourselves.”

In the context of enlightened society and how to bring about meditation in our daily life, Rinpoche emphasized the idea of “life as ceremony” which his father, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche taught about as well. He explains it like this, “As a human being we realize that everything we do has tremendous power and potency.”

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To learn more about Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, please click here.

To learn more about Dechen Choling Retreat Center in France, please click here.