See full article here that this list pertains to.

This list includes all countries with Shambhala Centers or groups.

If you know of a better email address for any of these heads of government,
kindly inform Richard Reoch at richardreoch@gn.apc.org

(A draft email for you to send or adapt is included below for ease of copying.)

Australia: https://www.pm.gov.au/contact-your-pm
Austria: heinz.fischer@hofburg.at
Belgium: charles.michel@premier.fed.be
Brazil: protocolo@planalto.gov.br
Canada: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/contactpm
Chile: http://www.gob.cl/escribenos/
Czech Republic: Fax: +420 224 373 300
Denmark: stm@stm.dk
Finland: presidentti@tpk.fi
France: http://www.elysee.fr/ecrire-au-president-de-la-republique/
Germany: https://www.bundeskanzlerin.de/Webs/BKin/DE/Service/Kontakt/kontaktform_node.html
Greece: mail@primeminister.gr
Hungary: titkarsag@me.gov.hu
Iceland: http://www.taoiseach.gov.ie/eng/Contact_Us/
Italy: matteo@governo.it
Korea, Republic of: webmaster@pmo.go.kr
Mexico: http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/contacto/
Netherlands: https://www.government.nl/contact/contact-form
New Zealand: j.key@ministers.govt.nz
Poland: sprm@kprm.gov.pl
Russian Federation: http://eng.letters.kremlin.ru/
Slovenia: gp.kpv(at)gov.si
South Africa: http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=65
Spain: https://portal-scc.presidencia.gob.es/ciudadan@s/contacto.jsp
Sweden: statsradsberedningen.registrator@gov.se
Switzerland: https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/contact/contact-form.html
Taiwan: http://english.president.gov.tw/Default.aspx?tabid=537&Step=Write
Thailand: The Secretariat of the Prime Minister, Government House, 1 Phitsanulok Road, Dusit, Bangkok 10300
Ukraine: http://www.president.gov.ua/en
United Kingdom: https://email.number10.gov.uk/
United States: https://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments

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D R A F T E M A I L

Dear President (name) or Prime Minister (name),

I am writing to urge you to respond generously to the recent United Nations appeal to help the thousands of refugees and migrants who have been risking their lives by crossing the Bay of Bengal and the Andaman Sea. This appeal was launched on Friday 1 June by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees: http://www.unhcr.org/557175819.html

As a concerned citizen of our country, and also as a Buddhist who cares deeply about the suffering that is involved in this complex situation, I am pleased that the United Nations is offering its expert assistance to assist the victims and help resolve some of the root causes. I hope that our country can support this effort by making a generous contribution to the appeal.

Yours sincerely,
(your name)
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photo credit: Domiriel via photopin cc

“And in that moment, he was finally able to accept it all. In the deepest recesses of his soul, Tsukuru Tazaki understood. One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony.”
~ Haruki Murakami, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Jerry Colonna, a former venture capitalist in New York City, is now a business and life coach integrating Buddhism into his and others everyday life. If you do a little research, you find that he’s worked for JP Morgan, helped begin the entrepreneurial ecosystem Silicone Alley, and been hailed by magazines like Forbes and Upside as being one of the more influential businessmen out there in today’s New Economy.

He is also touted as being a Jedi-like yogi who can help you live a genuine life and meet the demands of shareholders; though rumour has it he’ll probably make you cry in the process. Jerry helps people find their ‘ah-ha’ moment, so we decided to find out what his was.

Jerry talks about two moments that come to mind, when his heart said ‘ah-ha’, when everything clicked in terms of his contemplative path. With the first, he talks about the first time he met Pema Chodron, when he was still fairly new in his exploration of Buddhism, still very much in his head, reading as much as he could possibly read.

It was 2003 and there was a fundraiser event going on at Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson’s apartment. Jerry describes, “It was kind of cool. I didn’t know it then, but everyone who was in the New York Buddhist Mafia, they were there, which was really cool, and I’m walking around, just totally lost, and Lou is walking around in tight black leather jeans and a t-shirt, and Laurie is being Laurie, and it was just mind-blowing.”

During the evening Pema came in and began to give a teaching on the nature of groundlessness and impermanence. Jerry notes that it was the first time he had ever encountered “a truly powerful teacher”. He was doing what most of the people in the room were doing, thinking, “Oh I get it, this is really starting to make sense”, when suddenly Pema pauses and says: “Now some of you are sitting here thinking ‘I get it, this makes sense’. But what you’ve done is, you’ve just slipped ground in beneath the concept of groundlessness.” Shaken, Jerry blurts out, “Well that’s not fair!” But Pema just looked at him calmly and said, “Catholic, right?”

Jerry remembers feeling that with this simple response Pema had cut through his desire to know the catechism of the path, helping him to realize that he had been looking to replace one form of ‘the right way’ with another form of ‘the right way’. He describes getting a chance later that evening to just sit with Pema for a few minutes, and ending up “in a puddle of tears, just crying, and she leans over to me and taps my hand and says, ‘Honey, you’re not open enough. You think you’re open. You need to open more.’ And I felt like I was dissected, like she had just sliced me open, taken out my organs, put them on the table, and said, ‘Huh, look at him.’ So that was one powerful ‘ah-ha’ moment.”

Jerry’s second moment came from one of the sutras, in a teaching that was very profound. He reflects on it, paraphrasing what the Buddha was saying to his students as, “Don’t take my word for it. Try it. If it works for you, great, and if it doesn’t, great.” Jerry says that this sentiment in the Buddhist teachings, “Blew this little catholic boy’s mind, because this was non-dogmatic philosophy. I thought, ‘what? I actually am responsible for figuring much of this out myself?’

I felt a wave of relief because it meant that not only was it scary, but I was in it. I could just work with what is, instead of constantly struggling to get the pat on the head, the A+, the ‘atta-boy. I had to just do it myself.”

Read more articles in the Radical Compassion column by clicking here.

~~

CEO Coach Jerry Colonna

Reviewing the New Release of Devotion and Crazy Wisdom: Teachings on the Sadhana of Mahamudra

Available through Shambhala Media

written by Frank Ryan

In 1963 Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche received a Spaulding scholarship to attend Oxford University. Sailing from Bombay to Tilbury aboard the P&O Line he immersed himself into Western culture. This blended with his prior, amazingly disciplined training growing up in Eastern Tibet, as well as the wisdom traditions of Kagyu, Nyingma, and Shambhala.

In 1968, when he returned to Bhutan at the invitation of Her Majesty the Queen, Ashi Kesang, all of these streams coalesced in the form of a retreat at Taktsang in the upper reaches of Paro valley.

This was a profound turning point in the planting of a genuine path of personal transformation and societal well-being leading up to the twenty-first century. With amazing deep insight Devotion & Crazy Wisdom: Teachings on The Sadhana of Mahamudra, a recent publication of Vajradhatu Press, explores the contours of how that particular retreat and the sadhana, or practice, that arose from that retreat naturally evolved.

Devotion & Crazy Wisdom draws from two seminars presented nearly forty years ago. Part One, “The Embodiment of All the Siddhas,” draws on a seminar of the same name which Chogyam Trungpa presented in Vermont in September 1975. Part Two, “The Sadhana of Mahamudra,” was a seminar given three months later in Colorado.

The book opens with a forward and introduction which brilliantly contextualize the life of the author and the Sadhana of Mahamudra liturgy itself. Chogyam Trungpa’s opening discussion of the immediate background of the sadhana is detailed and amazingly candid. As embodied by this very remarkable teacher we witness both the challenges and opportunities that existed toward the end of the last century for establishing a viable spiritual tradition in the world. The play between the traditional world of Bhutan with its medieval formality and lockstep tradition, and the vast potential and materialism of the twentieth century world he had encountered since fleeing Tibet is expressed with penetrating immediacy.

The terma (“hidden treasure”) tradition of transmitting the essence of teachings in Tibet is ordinarily shrouded in cryptic indirection but his presentation is disarmingly direct. Few are capable of describing how two of the most powerful contemplative traditions on earth can be joined in a single practice as an attempt to “create a better soup stock, a better flavoring.”

In an era fascinated with the exotic trappings of Eastern traditions, instead of focusing on such aspects of the sadhana as “the great mountain of torma, ornamented with the eight kinds of consciousness” he touches on the indispensible underpinnings of the practice. This includes the role of the teacher, devotion, crazy wisdom, and the mandala of the siddhas. The reader’s consideration is directed towards the experience, not the abstraction, of the contemporary spiritual journey.

This separates this text – as well as the complementary six video and four audio recordings of the talks – from dry scholarly analysis. Each lineage figure, each section, and every aspect, such as “luminosity,” is presented with thorough precision. Constantly underscoring the primacy of experiential understanding, his instruction is simple and direct. For instance, the understanding of the “offering section,” explained in terms of how one would cook and present a meal for others as a offering from the heart in “100 percent ethnic style” is much more compelling than the standard formulation of the seven-fold offering often found in the Mahayana tradition.

It’s striking that Part Two, “The Sadhana of Mahamudra,” doesn’t devolve into just a technical presentation of the various sections of the sadhana. Rather than the obvious flair and energy of the practice, the focus on the view is relentless. The recurrent message is: slow down, open, and appreciate the textures of your life before venturing into the supposed realm of the exotic. What is the motivation for truly giving? What are the obstacles to giving? What is the actual experience of “giving the giver?”

The question-and-answer sections which accompany each talk underscore the approach that discovering goodness and wisdom is a collaborative process. Although the accents of the seventies reveal themselves in several questions referencing “primal screams” and Peter O’Toole movies, there’s an undeniable level of probing intelligence. Interplay between teacher and student is on full display.

The closing chapter, “Historical Commentary: Part Two” is remarkable for both its scope and candor. In the twenty-first century it’s rare to hear a Tibetan lama of this caliber note that there “was tremendous corruption, confusion, lack of faith, and lack of practice in Tibet.” Neither avoiding this truth nor dwelling on negativity, he contrasts this with the opportunity available to those in the West to act in accord with “the highest code of discipline, meditation and wisdom.”

Both the extensive Glossary and vivid illustrations provides greater depth in plumbing the depth of the sadhana itself. In a sense, the photograph of a young and vibrant Chogyam Trungpa on horseback juxtaposed to the formidable power of the temple complex of Paro Taktsang encapsulates the wisdom of Devotion & Crazy Wisdom: Teachings on The Sadhana of Mahamudra.

It is an invitation to partake in living wisdom, not static spiritual voyeurism.

~~
Order your copy at Shambhala Media.

Drawing by Daniel Lucas

I provide pastoral counseling to Daniel Lucas. Since the age of 19, Daniel has lived at the maximum security prison in Jackson, Georgia. He is on death row. Daniel was homeless and hopeless, and at 19 years of age he and an accomplice committed a brutal murder. His co-defendant was put to death four years ago.

Three years ago at the age of 32 Daniel became interested in Buddha dharma. It fascinates me how this man, sequestered in a maximum security prison, came in contact with such teachings. (He was drawn to Buddhist paintings in an art book he found in the prison library.) It is a further fascination that Daniel Lucas, who spoke very little to anyone his whole life, spoke up for himself when the prison tried to prevent him from pursuing his interest in Buddhism.

Daniel taught himself the dharma and struggled to teach himself to meditate. He did not know anyone with these beliefs or who did these practices. Never-the-less, he found Pema Chodron and Thich Nhat Hanh. He wrote to them and they corresponded with him sending him books, practice materials, and instructions.

Daniel learned about taking refuge and boddhisatva vows and wrote to Gampo Abbey to learn how he might take the vows. Les Ste. Marie at the Abbey was the first to maintain a correspondence with Daniel and he contacted us at Atlanta Shambhala seeing if we could arrange for Daniel to receive vows. Plans were made with Acharya Richard John that when he came to teach in Atlanta, he would visit Daniel. When Shastri Holly Gayley, who was teaching in Atlanta at the time these plans were being made, learned of all of this, she donated the money for the liturgy and practice materials to be sent to Daniel.

Daniel received the vows from Acharya Richard in fall 2014. Since that time, I have been visiting Daniel at Jackson prison about twice a month, and I also talk with him by phone. Daniel is more knowledgeable about dharma than I am. He is a serious practitioner.

Essentially, he lives the life of a monk. He has a small cell and no freedoms. He is permitted seven books at a given time. This means that when he receives practices or dharma books, he takes notes and commits the practices to memory so that he can give up those materials in order to have others. He has become a vegetarian. He sees no others except for the allotted one hour a day of yard time. He studies dharma and practices.

Daniel is able to see the sky when he is lying on his bunk looking at a window high up in his cell. He practices formless meditation in this way. His other practices include shamatha-vipashyana, tonglen, Vajrasattva purification practice, and lujong (Tibetan yoga).

While in prison, Daniel began to draw. At that time inmates were permitted art materials but this is no longer so. Now Daniel is allotted only paper, one pencil, and one pen. Recently, Daniel bought some colored pencils from a fellow inmate who no longer used them. These are worn down to be about two inches long. Above is a drawing of Buddha Daniel drew with his “new” pencils.

I am a person who is phobic about driving. But I drive one hour each way to Jackson, Georgia twice a month because I so look forward to being with this person. Daniel and I talk dharma and practice. We have some difficult conversations: about death, about emotions that arise with practice, about acceptance and forgiveness. I have learned about his childhood, filled with abuse and neglect, where “home” was a place that filled him with dread.

The time is coming soon now for Daniel. He has begun to give away all of his worldly goods. Mostly these are dharma materials. Recently, Daniel gave me CDs of songs being sung at Gampo Abbey. Daniel likes these a lot and I feel kind of bad accepting this. However, Daniel gave them to me for the Atlanta Shambhala Sangha. I had mentioned to him that we didn’t sing much and I wished I knew more songs that I might share. And then these came in the mail.

I am writing this because I want the sangha to know about Daniel Lucas and how we came to be involved with him. His legal team keeps in touch with me and I expect to see more of them in the next few months. These people are all fantastic – smart and open-hearted. The fact that Daniel has magnetized these people to become a part of his life makes an impression on me. Add to this group, people you may know or know of, e.g. Richard John, Holly Gayley, Les Ste. Marie, Pema Chodron, Thich Nhat Hanh, and the sanghas of Lama Yeshe, the Dalia Lama, and Gampo Abbey.

Daniel has much regret. And guilt. And shame. And sorrow for what he did. Prison actually helped Daniel. With basic needs of food and shelter provided and the time to become sober, Daniel became clear of mind. And of all places, it was here that he found something that made sense to him – dharma.

You may appreciate that dharma is not the easiest view of life to understand or practice. So you may be able to appreciate too that Daniel is extremely intelligent, as well as artistically gifted, warm, generous, and earnest. He takes his Bohdisattva vow seriously, trying to live with kindness. He is lively with a positive outlook regarding life. Richard John described it best, when after meeting Daniel he said, “He just beams.”

I have every reason to believe that Daniel Lucas will be executed before the end of this year. I will want to share his death with you all when this comes about.

The Poet is Profound. The Poet is a Jester.

Interview with Acharya David Schneider by Valerie Lorig

written and edited by J. R. Gilness

When author David Schneider was a fledgling student of Zen, he and his cohorts celebrated the end of retreat with a picnic at the crest of a mountain. During a hike on one of these special occasions, Schneider recalls, “I started having all these great ideas, and when I got up there, I started to write them all down in my notebook.”

“David, stop writing poetry,” snapped his friend and mentor, Philip Whalen.

“I’m not writing poetry,” Schneider blatantly lied, “I’m writing to my mother.”

“‘Dear Mother,’” responded Whalen, in mock-narration, “‘I’m writing poetry.’”

Such was the wit of the late Philip Whalen.

Schneider’s latest book, Crowded by Beauty, is the first authorized biography and chronicle of Whalen’s life and poetry. Often overlooked among the pantheon of Beat Generation contemporaries like Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, Whalen takes center stage during Schneider’s interview with Shambhala Times, and he is well worth the attention.

Fumbling for a delicate way of describing Whalen, Schneider begins, “He was… laaaarge–” and then more bluntly concedes: “He was fat. He was enormous! And he was hilarious!”

Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder and Lew Welch

Like any great comedian, though, Whalen exercised mindful timing in his unorthodoxy. Most of the time he followed the rules, which is exactly what made the exceptions so amusing. On a whim, explains Schneider, Whalen once decided to tiptoe down the aisle at mealtime. “You’re looking at someone who’s in the high two-fifties or three-hundred pounds – quite a large fellow – tiptoeing in these robes, and it was just hilarious.”

If the sacred jester is a universal motif in world religion and folklore, then Philip Whalen might have been one of its live incarnations. His humor was like a guardrail that prevented himself – and others – from swerving into the sanctimonious or losing touch with the very purpose of the spiritual path: to be present with reality.

With his unique demeanor, Whalen had attracted a cadre of young men who would sit at the feet of the proverbial master, but Schneider wonders aloud, what were they trying to get? They weren’t studying poetry or Buddhism or Zen with him. Instead, they were following the lead of an older brother figure who made them feel comfortable making mistakes. After all, he not only committed faux pas himself, but made them with confident gusto. He filled the often-aloof silence with affection and generated a welcoming atmosphere.

David Schneider describes a unique moment in an army/navy surplus store in Santa Fe. Whalen entered wearing a t-shirt, jeans, and orange dayglo hat, with his raksu balanced over his big belly. Out of the blue, a fellow patron who appeared to come from Santa Fe’s eccentric bohemian scene approached him and said, “Sir, I don’t know what it is you do, but you do something, and I want to study it with you.” Though Schneider never found out who that stranger was or what became of him, he says it bespeaks of how magnetic Whalen could be.

Despite his avuncular attraction and extraversion, Whalen was primarily a scholar who relished his alone time. “He needed to go back and forth between high-stimulation and scholarly solitude,” says Schneider. Whalen didn’t have a wife or a life partner. Nobody had ever even seen him with a romantic interest, though Schneider reveals that Whalen had had several lovers, both male and female. “The Beats – except for Allen [Ginsberg] – were really discrete… especially the gay beats. They were not out. People were not out in the 50s and 60s,” Schneider explains.

Though an avid hiker and wildlife observer, Whalen struggled with his weight. His doctor ordered him to cut his caloric intake and monitor his eating habits, and these dietary patterns surfaced in his journals. Schneider laughs over the details that took over Whalen’s journals — the amount of cottage cheese he ate for breakfast, or how many calories were accumulated each day. It adds a human touch and is a reminder of the mundane aspects of a man whose appeal lies greatly in his relatability.

Schneider explains that he wrote Crowded by Beauty so that people would get a feeling for who Philip Whalen – the person – really was. The title, it seems, fits a profound and koan-like backstory, though in fact the anecdote behind it is far more befitting of Whalen’s persona.

David Schneider

Sometimes writers’ thoughts, which are so creative and productive and quick, can create a feeling of claustrophobia or crowding, says Schneider, relating the overstimulation of the hardware store to the overstimulation of one’s own ideas. Without a way to find space in between those thoughts, Beat writers like Whalen could suffer until they found cathartic release. Through his years of Zen meditation, Whalen learned to find space, and be at ease in it.

Between securing permissions, conducting interviews and doing research – Whalen’s papers, and those of his friends are mostly on the West Coast of the United States, and Schneider lives in Koln, Germany — Crowded by Beauty has been a decade in the making. With this book, Schneider has opened the window on a man who was not originally one of the “famous Beats” but who may find a posthumous place in the new generation’s pantheon.

COLUMN: Shambhala Economics

Welcome to Shambhala Economics, a column in the Shambhala Times where we publish articles on uplifted ways to view and engage in the economic side of life. Layth Matthews who is a long time student of Shambhala Buddhism and author of, “The Four Noble Truths of Wealth: a Buddhist View of Economic Life” will act as host, editor, and contributor for the column.

by Layth Matthews

It is increasingly clear that our world is in need of some bold new aspirations. Although capitalism and democracy have extended economic development and freedom to more people than ever before, climate change and financial imbalances are threatening to erase these gains at an alarming rate, and there is still so much socio-economic suffering all over the world.

Advancements in technology are creating distractions as well as opportunities to remove dual standards of justice on a global scale, or watch our world descend into the hunger games that follow from ethnocentricity, nationalism, and “single family dwelling” mindsets. The world is getting smaller, so we must think larger.

The only lasting way to “think bigger” is to start smaller. It is not possible to make meaningful and sustainable global change without first examining our own individualistic, competitive, habitual materialism. By making the initial investment to understand ourselves better, we can discover solutions that transcend the endless cycle of aggression.

Why is the examination and elevation of individual perspective so important? Sakyong Mipham has said by ignoring the role of mind in our experience we tend toward defensive interpretations of everything. Egocentricity is a form of near-sightedness that keeps us focused on immature definitions of “self-interest”, ignorant of the wider consequences and possibilities of our choices. Before we start looking for a whole new economic model, we could look to a deeper understanding of what Adam Smith called “self-interest”.

Adam Smith was a Scottish moral philosopher who established a manifesto for free market capitalism with his book, “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776. In Adam Smith’s world each of us is guided to meet the needs of others by the “invisible hand” of our own self-interest. Buddhism has no problem with this logic, the only question being “what is a self?”

From the Buddhist perspective the ultimate self-interest is awakening from the illusion of a static continuous ego. Being fully awake and free from the fetters of ego is the ultimate wealth and compassion is economically efficient as both means and ultimate expression of such wealth. Livelihood and commerce are vehicles of compassion.

Applying Adam Smith’s logic we can assume that the invisible hand of bigger minded choices in the grocery store, at work, in the traffic circle, and in the stock market will simply meet the higher needs of others and transform the economy, all by themselves. The speed with which the economy transforms is a function of how much individuals have internalized a holistic interpretation of self-interest.

Meeting the higher needs of oneself and others i.e. the radiation of well-being through the economy, is possible by setting our aspirations higher, which leads to more outrageous decision-making, no matter what economic model you use. Outrageous, meaning with a definition of success that is practical but not egocentric and extends beyond one lifetime.

The practical and wonderful beginning of that is to develop a more unconditional appreciation of one’s experience as a human being, and that begins with a more subtle understanding of mind. Learning to appreciate the full range of our experience through contemplative practice, we discover the self-existing richness of the world as it is and the inseparable connection between perception and richness.

Appreciation is not the denial of problems to be solved, but rather the source of capacity with which to address them. Buddhism would have us rely more on expanding perception and appreciation vs. heavy logic and competitive cynicism. The spacious clarity of mindfulness and awareness brings farsighted wisdom to personal decisions and organizational policies like the reunification of old friends.

With right understanding we can use technology to help us see the larger implications of our actions instead of just for convenience and entertainment. Good citizenship is a product of feedback and understanding not control (e.g. Interactive speed limit signs vs. traffic cameras). By shortening the feedback loop of farsighted choices we can help others fulfill their higher aspirations instead of just their most impulsive ones.

Global Well-Being by Aspiration Over Time
The global Well-Being chart above is a graphic representation of the next 100 years of human experience differentiated by commitment to a high mutual aspiration or the lack thereof. The orange line represents the aspiration toward “open migration” meaning a world where anyone in any country would be free to relocate anywhere else to seek work or just generally better living conditions. The blue line represents what I call “Ambivalent Isolationism”, which is the situation we have now also known as “business as usual”.

Ambivalent isolationism is where people have altruistic tendencies overall, but lack the confidence in the inherent worthiness (basic goodness) of every human being to remain focused on a long-term plan in the face of shocks, logics, and distractions that inevitably confront us. Hence we make some progress, extending some “charity” altruistically during good times, but quickly withdraw from such conditional generosity when it is not confirmed by the right amount of gratitude, conversions, or is challenged by political tides. Hence we cyclically retreat behind increasingly fortified borders to feed our desperation for control.

“Open Migration” here represents an aspiration based on an unshakable faith in the primordially pure nature and worthiness of every human being, essentially regarding every human being as family. Such unshakable faith can only be established experientially.

Through the practice of sitting meditation we gain an unconditional confidence in our own basic goodness and it is an easy step from there to recognize the same in others. Setting an aspiration toward open migration removes the tendency to retreat to fixations on our own comfort and keeps the priority firmly on stabilizing and uplifting the well-being of others wherever they may be. In this way, ethnocentric, nationalistic, and egocentric borders can become increasingly porous rather than increasingly fortified.

The Way of The Economic Warrior
On the Shambhala path the idea of warriorship is the entry point to a sacred path through life. The idea of sacred path is that every situation we are in has its own integrity and is worthy of our full attention and appreciation. Indeed there are advanced teachings that suggest every situation of our lives, including our dead end jobs, is the perfect learning situation for each of us.

Warriorship is basically an orientation toward problem solving by means of clearer perception vs. manipulation. We call it warriorship because it is very brave to appreciate things as they are rather than comment on how they should be. The path of warriorship begins on the meditation cushion where we practice abandoning the content of our preoccupations in favor of a larger perspective on the comings and goings of mental activity overall. This kind of warriorship is characterized by gentleness because open perception requires vulnerability and patience.

The application of warriorship in everyday economic life is the same as on the meditation cushion. It is the practice of withholding judgment and learning to appreciate the subtle qualities of every situation as much as we can and resisting defensive attitudes. Life becomes a rich experience of subtle perception. Decisions are informed with more information.

What would happen if you showed up for work wide awake but completely unguarded? People would wonder what you’re really up to! Taking your egocentric goggles off, you might see right into the beating hearts of your customers and co-workers. This would remove the myopia from your choices and organically transform your organization and the economy.

From the Shambhala point of view an enlightened society is one characterized by a universal confidence in basic goodness. We can infer that an enlightened economy is one based on wealthy outlook. How can we create enlightened economy? By exploring the reliability of this view of unconditional wealthiness through the practice of sitting meditation.

~~
Layth Matthews, is Senior Mortgage Advisor and CEO of RateMiser Mortgage Advisors and the Author of “The Four Noble Truths of Wealth: a Buddhist view of economic life”. He is a Shambhala Training Director and a Former Director of the Victoria Shambhala Center. He lives in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada with his wife and three children.

Pamela Krasney

Pamela was a very active and inspiring person in our Shambhala world. Many of us knew her as a friend and fellow practitioner, supporter of our Centers and Region, longtime Board member of Shambhala Mountain Center, member of the Shambhala Trust, and Board member of Naropa University. She was also involved in many other causes, and gave herself to a number of important projects. You could not be around Pamela without being inspired by her energy, her dedication, her sharp wit, and her compassionate nature.

A description of her life taken from Naropa University encapsulates many of the aspects of her journey:

Pamela Krasney was an innovative, catalytic and deeply authentic social activist for more than half a century, starting with her participation in the Free Speech Movement at the University of California, Berkeley, where she was an art history major in the mid-nineteen-sixties. Moving to San Francisco after graduation, she became involved with the San Francisco Mime Troupe and the Diggers, a community arts and action group that provided free street theater, food, medical care, transport, and temporary housing in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and opened “Free Stores” that gave away their stock.

Pamela became a Tibetan Buddhist practitioner in 1974 and lived for the next decade in Boulder, Colorado, where she was a student of Chogyam Trungpa, and worked for and attended Naropa Institute (now Naropa University), earning an MA in Contemplative Psychology in 1983 and serving on Naropa’s board for the past thirty years, much of that time as Development Chair.

with husband Marty Krasney

After returning to California and marrying in 1984, Pamela was active in the HIV/AIDS community, initially as a caregiver and eventually as the Chair of the Marin AIDS Project. Since 1999, when she befriended and began to work with Jarvis Masters, a wrongly-convicted Death Row inmate at San Quentin State Prison, Pamela was a fervent criminal justice and anti-death penalty advocate. She was active in Human Rights Watch, was on the board of Death Penalty Focus for many years and had been serving as a director of the Prison Mindfulness Institute (with Acharya Fleet Maull).

She lived with her husband Marty in Sausalito, California and had two children and two grandchildren, and more best friends than anyone else.

Pamela will be greatly missed by all of us who knew her, and by all the people whose lives she touched who may never have met her. The Boulder Shambhala community will be having an event to celebrate her life later in the summer.

A Warrior of Generosity
Tribute by Gregory Lubkin
Kalapa Patron and Co-Chair, Shambhala Trust

If someone had set out to create the perfect model of generosity in the Shambhala world, they could not have improved on Pamela Krasney. Many years ago, when I was an underemployed and underpaid professor of medieval history, she convinced me that I could somehow afford to donate hundreds of dollars a month for three years to help Shambhala Mountain Center build a proper dining room. Pamela convinced me in part because she was giving so generously herself that I felt ashamed not to donate something myself. She convinced me in part because she had such enthusiasm and certainty about the importance of SMC that I felt inspired to contribute what I could. And she convinced me in part because she pierced my sense of poverty, so that I could see the powerful abundance pervading the world of warriorship. In the words of another leading Shambhala patron, she taught us how to give until it felt good.

Pamela bore her wisdom lightly, but she was relentless in her efforts to be of benefit. Her boundless generosity was genuinely refreshing, and happily balanced by a cheerful irreverence. Besides being been one of Shambhala’s most active and effective donors and fund-raisers, Pamela sat on many charitable boards and shared her intelligence and experience widely. Even in her last weeks, she successfully steered through the Shambhala Trust grant process a new project addressing issues of at-risk youth in the San Francisco Bay Area.

For those of us who have been working with Pamela in Shambhala’s mandala of generosity, it is difficult to imagine life without her keen mind, her ready wit, and her open heart. We will miss her terribly.

My Good Friend Pamela
poem by Vicki Hitchcock

at the Sukhavati for Pamela in Mill Valley

My good friend Pamela was the queen of dead headers
Not the “grateful” kind traveling the country in VW buses
I’m talking about the ones who master the art of picking dead blossoms off of plants..
Her plants, your plants, perfect stranger’s plants
Plants in front of fancy hotels while she was waiting for the valet to bring her car
No plant was safe from her fearless care
No dead leaf could rest for long on her lawn
No weeds could settle in her flower beds Even in these last few months, of weekly treatments, she would shuffle out hunched over to pick dropped leaves and clean up unruly bushes.. She always took care of everyone and every thing in her world On her last afternoon she escaped into her beloved garden
To pull and pick a few pesky intruders
And then, as she climbed into her bed to rest a moment, her heart suddenly stopped
Her heart that so many of us relied on
Her heart that held so many of us in its fierce and honest embrace..
Stopped.. Just like that.
Later that night, as I am on my porch sharing the news with a fellow shattered friend in another town, I break down.
“you’ll never believe what I’m doing right this minute” I blubber, laughing and crying at once,
“I’m dead heading my fucking plant!” A loud hoot erupts in space and we two friends left here laugh and cry together for a long time…
Too many losses to hold in a single moment
It will take years.
That night, a soft rain came, soaking our parched gardens, sending a shower of brilliant yellow leaves onto the grateful grass…
Bringing the whisper of a smile to our broken hearts

Share your tributes and memories here, below in the comments section.

Dechen Choling Shambhala Retreat Center in Southern France
Turns 20 Years Old

article by Maggie Lewis

We’ve got a lot to celebrate! This is our 20th anniversary at Dechen Choling and we are so proud to be here. We are nestled in the French countryside, and invite the world to come and experience not only the beauty of our landscape but also the teachings of Shambhala and so many other things which lead to being awake and present in this wonderful world.

We’ve come a long way in these twenty years. We had a vision, to begin with, of a land center here in Europe. The Shambhala mandala was growing across from North America to Europe and we needed to find the right space to host larger programs. After several fruitless searches, we found the Chateau Mas Marvent in the Limousin area of France, three hours south of Paris by train.

The land here is like the softness of the universe with clean air, a wonderful river nearby, and magnificent trees, some of which are a hundred and fifty years old. It has a heart shaped lake as well. The land was perfect except for the fact that it needed a great deal of work to get it into shape as a dharma and practice center. Somehow it attracted the right group of crazy, talented, dedicated people to stay and help the flower start to bloom.

Many things were needed: heating and radiators for a start. Massive staircases had to be constructed; walls removed or replaced in different configurations; a kitchen that could feed up to 300 people; an office; a computer and a phone line: many toilets and showers as well.

During the first three years the place was pretty much a building site. People kept turning up to help and stayed on because the group bonded strongly in the cause of getting things rolling. There was so much to do and people felt so good to be working together for the one goal of having a beautiful land center. The beauty of the land and the space was so inspiring that it magnetized creative, practical and tireless workers who all wanted the same thing.

In between barbecues and lovely dinners under the stars and swimming in the river, there was the first dathun. Programs started to happen and people came. They donated everything from ancient garden tools to sewing machines, a car, a few tents and endless boxes of dishes and curtains and cooking pots. A very large tent was rented to host the first program with the Sakyong.

At one point, the rain was so hard and so loud that we couldn’t hear him and he couldn’t hear himself. There was just pure joy and laughter in the tent. In order for the phenomenal world to be bound together in great bliss it soon became clear that we needed a proper shrine room and not a tent. The beginnings of what was to become Drala Hall started to take shape. The plan was to turn three separate barns into one amazing space with a kitchen, three dormitories, men’s and women’s showers, five toilets – including the one for disabled visitors with their own shower. And so the plans unfolded and the budget for this huge project came into being. With much help from our sangha sisters and brothers across Europe we raised the money for the work to start.

It was a tremendous effort lasting a year. Massive machinery arrived, steel beams were put in to hold the structure of three barns under one enormous roof. Solar panels were installed along with under-floor heating, and the eco-friendly lime and hemp walls were finished by hand. The design of the windows allows the natural light from the first moment of dawn to fill the shrine room until the last rays of sunset. The light is there throughout the whole day. It is truly a magical place for practice.

Since Drala Hall was finished we have also built a highly efficient eco-sewage system for the land, a totally organic garden, a space designed for children throughout the summer, and the kitchen serves only organic food. The summers see our tents spring up in three different camp sites plus another one for the staff. There has been lighting installed along the paths for evening walks. Fifty small trees were planted around the land early in 2015. The cemetery has been cleaned and will have a bench put there soon. In fact benches will be in place this year as part of our 20th year celebrations. We want people to be able to sit and enjoy the lake view and other beautiful spots at Dechen Choling.

Happily we are nearly at the end of some of our legal and economic problems. It has been a struggle at times, but with continuing hard work and dedication to keep this beautiful center up and running, we have the support from so many people.

Our neighbours are wonderful. This part of France is not developed economically but the people in the valley are honest and helpful and kind. Our group from Limoges, which meets each month on the first Sunday and on Thursday evenings, is growing steadily. Our 20th anniversary will see us inviting the local Mayor and many of those artisans who have helped to create and sustain Dechen Choling over the years. We will have a festival as well and open days for the public to come in and see what we have on offer.

There are future plans, of course, for a larger kitchen and dining room to be built. Also there is talk of moving all the administration into the chateau, and building more accommodation space for participants and staff. Improvements are always a subject for the management team. Slowly it keeps growing and coming together and year after year we have families returning for Family Camp. Watching these kids grow up over the years is truly exciting and rewarding. They are now grown (well some of them) with their own families and we have another generation of young warriors to host and nurture.

As this is a special year, our director, Konstanze Brockstedt, has provided us with the challenge of creating 20 projects to improve and enjoy and to commemorate this occasion. There is a new cut flower garden in the shape of a crescent moon and sun created in the permaculture style. We are planning to upgrade the lovely Marpa room with it’s bay window overlooking the lake and the future Stupa by replacing the bay window with a wonderful new window providing insulation for the winter months, as well as replacing the balcony off the Sakyong’s room above the Marpa room. The rose porch will be repaired and painted. We have six gorgeous new benches to place around the estate so that people can sit and enjoy the beautiful scenery. We will have a fence around our eco purification site, and new roses have been planted. Other small and large improvements are awaiting our attention. Some very necessary work to the roof is also being done as well as new pillows for our guests.

We are looking forward to a wonderful summer and autumn with the Sakyong coming here again to give us his warmth, humour and wisdom and hopefully you will be able to join us. If not this year, then in the very near future….

Learn more about Dechen Choling by clicking here.

photo by Ali Hunsberger

So, this young white boy walks into one of the oldest,
most revered African-American churches in Charleston, SC
to sit down and pray in Bible study with the church members —
his mental state, a deranged, but calm, psychosis simmering.
Nobody saw it coming, though the vacancy in his eyes might have betrayed it —
when suddenly, this devil-made-me-do-it despicable shadow puppet of white
supremacist culture broke through his chest like an alien relic of the KKK —
and he started shooting people.

He got a gun for his journey into manhood, a gift for his 21st birthday.
But what was it that caused him to take hold of it this night inside God’s house?
That is the question, isn’t it?
This young man betrayed his own humanity, and something is not right here.
This gun, these bullets, too many bullets, nine precious beautiful lives lost.
Something is just not right here, and even these words can do this no justice.
Even these words are just a story, just a narrative looking for a resolution,
looking for an explanation, looking to ease the pain, buyback some blame.
But it just keeps coming back to this final resting place —
that something, something is terribly wrong with this picture.
Why does this young man have a gun in his hand?
Something is not right here. Something is not right.
Can we all just see that for a minute? and stop —
stop right where you are, don’t take another step.
Think about it – what just happened here, what continues to happen.
Just feel it, let your broken-heart cry.

© Debra Hiers, 20 June 2015, Atlanta, GA

photo by Charles Blackhall

Over the last couple of years I have noticed more difficulty remembering and retaining continuity of thoughts and ideas, a common result of aging. I have also noticed changes in my sensory experiences: hearing, vision, taste, smell, touch.

Our senses connect us to the world, to each other. As we age our senses begin to decline. In sensory experience there is a minimum level of stimulation (called threshold) that is required to become aware of a sensation. Aging increases this threshold. We begin to lose our sensory connectedness. These sensory losses affect our lives in many ways. They can contribute to social withdrawal, isolation, paranoia, anxiety and depression. How will we manage these changes, losses as Shambhalians?

Vision: All the eye structures change with aging. The corneas become less sensitive; pupils decrease in size and react more slowly in response to darkness and bright light. The lens becomes less flexible and slightly cloudy. Eyes sink into sockets as fat deposits decrease. Eye muscles weaken and our visual field decreases. Vitreous, the gel like substance in eyes, shrinks, creating particles called floaters. Sharpness of vision or visual acuity declines.

Presbyopia, difficulty focusing on something close, may necessitate reading or bifocal glasses. Less tolerance of glare and bright lights and reduced peripheral vision may limit activity and cause difficulty driving at night. Dry eyes can cause infection, inflammation and scarring of the cornea.

Common eye problems that may develop as we age are cataracts, glaucoma, macular degeneration and diabetic and hypertensive retinopathy.

Personally, when I am reading, the words are more difficult to focus on and blurry spots often occur. No cataracts yet, but that is almost a given as we age. I get tested yearly for glaucoma as my father was diagnosed with it and it is a genetic condition.

Taste and Smell: These senses work together. Most taste come from odors. There are 9,000 taste buds which decrease as we age, and each remaining taste bud loses mass or atrophies. Sensitivity to the four tastes often declines with salty and sweet tastes being lost first, followed by bitter and sour. Is this why elderly people often want more salt on their food or crave sweets? The mouth produces less saliva resulting in dry mouth and reduced taste. For many people there is a loss of appetite because food is not as appealing.

Sense of smell may diminish. This may be related to loss of nerve endings in the nose and to less mucus being produced in the nose. Mucus helps odors stay long enough to be detected by the nerve endings. It also helps clear odors from the nerve endings. Medications can greatly affect our sense of taste and smell.

For me food does not seem to taste as good as it used to. I find there are certain smells and tastes that I yearn for. Is this because taste and smell are so indelibly rooted in our inner brain and pre-conceptual years?

Touch, including balance, vibration and pain: With aging we may experience reduced or changed sensations. Decreased blood flow and nerve damage (peripheral neuropathy) can affect our ability to detect pain, hot and cold, pressure and vibrations, increasing our risk of burns, frostbite, hypothermia and pressure ulcers. Perceiving where our body is in relation to the ground may be reduced, resulting in problems with walking.

Our skin also thins as we age making us more sensitive to touch and vulnerable to injury. Elderly people often feel uncomfortably cold because of decreased circulation.

Hearing: Hearing is considered our “social sense”. It keeps us connected to others through the ability to communicate. Hearing loss can have a profound effect on our understanding of information and social interactions. Helen Keller, who was both deaf and blind, said that “Blindness separates people from things; deafness separates people from people.”

Presbycusis, or age related hearing loss is the 3rd leading chronic condition affecting adults over 75. Sensorineural hearing loss is progressive, bilateral, with a gradual onset. An associated symptom of hearing loss is tinnitus, a persistent, abnormal ear noise or ringing. Today, with almost constant exposure to sound levels above 85db (the threshold where permanent inner ear nerve damage occurs), hearing loss has become a fact of life.

My hearing loss is not solely age related as I first noticed it when I was 20. It has continued on a slow, steady decline over the last 45 years, and I am now labeled (and in fact) profoundly HoH or hard of hearing.

Declining hearing is rather insidious as it begins unnoticed, slowly, imperceptibly at first. The repercussions of missing a word here and there, then parts of a conversation, the punch line of jokes are cumulative. Humans have a repertoire of compensatory tactics to manage this. But hearing loss takes its toll. It is only recently dawning on me how significant an impact my hearing loss has had in my life. I have been severely affected in social interactions, relationships and learning. Group situations I avoid, as I cannot understand 98% of the conversations. I now even feel an intellectual loss from missing vital, basic information on a day to day basis. Hearing the teachings at the Shambhala Center or public gatherings is almost impossible.

Hearing aides are the main option available for people who are HoH. I am thankful every day for them as they enable me to continue to interact in the world. But they are not a panacea for all hearing losses; they do not help me in group situations. And they are expensive ranging from $1,500 – $4,000 per aide. For people who are almost completely deaf cochlear implants may be an option. An implant does not restore normal hearing. Instead, it can give a deaf person a useful representation of sounds in the environment and help him or her to understand speech.

Being able to hear clearly is becoming difficult for many people in the aging Shambhala community. The Halifax Shambhala steering committee on aging is looking into wireless headphones to enable HoH people to hear talks and presentations at the Center.

Mind: Specifically in this context I am thinking of dementia. This vast and intense change in a person’s mental state is beyond my ability to comment on here. I am hoping that more knowledgeable people in the Shambhala community will delve into this experience, especially as it pertains to Shambhala path and practice. Is this aging sensory loss and disconnecting to the world a preparatory process, like dress rehearsals, for our encounter with the dissolution of our senses upon death?

It is not my intention to make aging sound grim. Aging is happening each moment from birth. At some point it is about giving up rather than getting. It usually involves greater needs. How will we manage these changes and losses? How can we help each other as more of us become elderly? Sharing information, ideas and experiences seems to be a good start.

The Halifax Shambhala Center hosts the Shambhala Seniors Outreach and Support Group which meets the last Wednesday of each month from noon to 1:30pm. Anyone is welcome. There are also two online forums on the Shambhala Network: Aging in Shambhala and Shambhala Seniors Online Forum.

~~
Pamela Dreiling has been a Shambhala student since 1973. She works in homecare and helps her daughter Anna on an organic farm in Nova Scotia. Pamela is a member of the Halifax Shambhala Steering Committee on Aging.

The Sakyong will be appearing in a documentary this Sunday June 28. CBS News Religion & Culture covered the Sakyong’s visit to Chicago as a part of a program looking at mindfulness and meditation in today’s society.

Three years ago, the Sakyong challenged Chicago Shambhala Meditation Center to bring peace, hope and empowerment to their surrounding community. In May, the Sakyong visited Chicago again and spoke about making peace possible at Fourth Presbyterian Church, checked in with community members and faith leaders, and delivered a community talk at Shambhala Chicago. Follow this link Facebook.com/CBSReligion to see when the broadcast might air locally or cbsnews.com/religion-and-culture to watch online starting the June 28.

COLUMN: Poetry Space

curated by the Shambhala Times Poetry Space Editorial Board
led by Jeff Fink

Now that summer has made its appearance across the land (at least here in the Northern hemisphere,) we’re delighted to offer this edition of Poetry Space. Summer is a slow time for us as many Shambhalians turn to a variety of retreat practices and summer fun competes with the poetry muse for our attentions – a long-winded way of saying send us your submissions! We operate on a rolling submission basis, publishing when we have enough new work for the editors to chew on.

Our poetry cupboards are bare – please help us fill them with the richness that you continue to bring. poetry.shambhalatimes@gmail.com

Two poems from writers new to Poetry Space, both touched by summer…

In the Garden

A sharp breeze
The bamboo sways
In shifting shadows
A fat robin sits
Undisturbed

~~
by Larry Barnett Larry is the former Director of the Shambhala Center in Sonoma, in Northern California, and has just completed a three-year post in the Kalapa Executive as Communications Director for Shambhala International. A regular contributor to the local Sonoma paper, his work cans be found at sonomasun.com/category/public-citizen.

Take is Easy, Take it Hard
For Bubba

In the winter I wait for summer.
In the thick of summer, it seems like cooler,
more tolerable weather will never circle back around.
Days and weeks are spiraling past, while simultaneously the bus never seems to round the corner.
My friend, you write: Innocents, awaiting the divine, suddenly propelled forward on the edge of an alien tsunami. Fifty years gone in a blink. And knowing that fifty days and fifty years can blink and drag and blink and drag… how can I argue? How can I deny it?
Instead I will say this:
Go get Marly, walk down and let him splash in the river and shake his natty fur.
Sit in the garden near Phebe’s witchy thistle patch.
Sit in the grass, lay down in the grass. Rest your head on the belly of that smelly precious dog.
Light a bonfire, drink wine from a coffee cup on the darkening porch. Dance until the record skips
then tell jokes in the kitchen, mosquito slapping. Scratch your beard, take a swim and shake your natty fur. Let your grown son be a child. Take it easy and take it hard.
Go get Marly and walk down to the river,
I will watch for the bus finally rounding the corner
and find myself aboard.

~~
by Angel Hogan Angel regularly attends the Philadelphia Shambhala Center, and works for the Life Course Outcomes Research Program at Drexel University. She has performed as part of the Black Women’s Arts Festival, Literary Death Match and the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. Her publications include Anthology Philly, Apiary, Forgotten Philadelphia, Quay Journal and SenSexuala: A Most Unique Anthology. See more at: www.angelhogan.com.

Note on process
We are receiving new submissions continually, and we collect these until we have a sufficient number to review for possible publication. While it’s still early days, it feels like we will be publishing new work quarterly, although if we do receive a large number of submissions, we may choose to publish more frequently.

We have a panel of three editors who review all submissions; the submissions are stripped of all identifiers when they’re sent to the editors. To that end, please submit your poems left margin justified in a simple black font so it’s easier to collect them for review.

Please submit no more than three (3) poems in the body of an email to poetry.shambhalatimes@gmail.com. We will remove the poet’s name from the submission before it goes to our editors for a blind review, and will make every effort to let you know whether your poem(s) have been selected for publication within three or four weeks. All rights revert to the author 30 days after publication.

Improvements to the Shambhala App

The Shambhala Trust held its Spring 2015 meeting in a familiar location – Boulder, where the Trust hosted a small reception at the Shambhala Center to celebrate 20 years of identifying, mentoring, and funding innovative and strategic projects that advance the Shambhala vision of awakened society. Naropa University generously made a space at its Nalanda Campus available for the weekend meeting.

The Trust has provided funding in the past for major projects central to the Shambhala mandala, including the four land centers, the Great Stupa, the Way of Shambhala curriculum, and expansion into South America and New Zealand. The emphasis now is on projects that “turn the flower outwards,” benefiting the wider world and expanding the vision of awakened society. However, the Trust still considers “internal” projects that Shambhala’s current budgeting does not cover.

Four proposals were considered at the Spring meeting. Trust pledges will fund over 90 percent of the amounts requested for those projects and current administrative needs. Proponents for three of the proposals were able to attend the meeting and give the Trust a more personal connection to their vision and inspiration. The project requests are being funded as follows (all figures in U.S. dollars unless stated otherwise):

Mind Body Awareness (MBA) Project: The MBA Project in Oakland has worked with at-risk youth in the San Francisco Bay Area for fifteen years. Roger Miller, MBA’s executive director, presented his proposal to convene a gathering of insightful and experienced people in this field to create an updated curriculum for conveying the life skills need by this population. The Shambhala Trust was asked to provide 25% of the amount required to fund the curriculum development activities. The Trust has raised $8,600 of the $10,000 requested.

Gesar Opera Project

Lama Chonam provided details about the importance and impact of this particular version of the Gesar Opera. The Chinese government looks favorably on this event as a cultural and educational manifestation. Lama Chonam offered an unexpectedly positive and encouraging glimpse of the relationship between the Tibetan and Chinese communities. The members of the Trust have been so inspired that they have raised $7,200, much more than the $6,000 requested.

Online Captions for Global Reach

Shambhala Meditation Smartphone App: In a competitive market of meditation timers and related smartphone applications, Shambhala member Gordon Shotwell spent his own resources developing a Shambhala meditation app. With recent changes in the iPhone platform making that app obsolete, Gordon applied on behalf of Shambhala for a grant to update the existing app, extend it to the Android platform, and provide additional content, including talks by acharyas recorded for the purpose.

The Trust decided to fund the proposal with some suggestions to make it more widely attractive and raise its profile. Those suggestions included pursuing some mutually supportive interface with Shambhala Online, cross-marketing with other Shambhala organs, providing further information about Shambhala centers that interested users could attend, and ensuring that the development process stayed within platform protocols, to protect the app’s security. James Hoagland generously offered the use of the new Centre East studio in Halifax to ensure that production quality is top-notch. The request was for a grant of 10,000 dollars Canadian (currently, about US $8,300 at bank exchange rates), of which the Trust has raised $6,900.

Shambhala Trust at Naropa

The Shambhala Trust does not manage an ongoing body of funds but meets twice a year to consider project applications. The Trust has had an upsurge in fresh energy and membership recently, having made it easier for people with a sense of inspiration and generosity to participate. Members make various levels of financial and energetic commitment to the Trust, and their specific contributions are not revealed publicly.

Trust members decide individually whether and how much they want to allocate to a given project. Not all projects are accepted for funding; some are considered unsuitable for one reason or another, while others may be viewed as deserving but in need of further development. In general, the Trust regards its mentoring function as an important part of its value, helping applicants to sharpen proposals and strengthen implementation.

The Trust welcomes inquiries from community members who are interested in its work and would like to offer support for worthy projects or to submit a grant proposal. For more information, visit the Trust website at www.shambhalatrust.org.

The Sakyong, having just emerged from leading a deep retreat at Shambhala Mountain Center, wants to share with the Shambhala community the following letter he has written to Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church.

Letter to Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church

To the congregation of Mother Emanuel, and to the families and loved ones of the recently deceased, I write to you from deep meditation retreat in Colorado, with sadness and compassion in my heart.

Accidents can strike suddenly. Sickness can slowly whither our body and spirit. Natural disasters leave us in a state of panic at the elemental power of the world. But in facing terrorism arising through the poison of racism, we are shocked into a state of horror—personally experiencing humanity at its most violent.

In this time of instability and extreme challenge, where can we find refuge? What can transcend these illusory boundaries of race, ethnic origin, personal background, or orientation of any sort?

Our only reliable source of strength is the goodness of our hearts. Our only foundation for coming to terms with the suffering of the times is our innate need to be decent human beings.

All of humanity has this worthiness, locked deep beneath the layers of hope and fear. I write to you today from that fundamental place, in the midst of our loved ones being taken from us, and our very identity being stripped away. Underneath the bewilderment, grief, and anger, we find ourselves questioning the whole thing—our ground has been shaken.

However, when we come this close to senseless terror, we begin to glimpse our true nature—goodness—and we remember the goodness of those we have lost. We see this kind of bravery in the profound forgiveness voiced by the families of those who were killed in South Carolina. This is such an example of basic goodness and the power of forgiveness, right in the midst of the most ruthless violence and pain.

We must find and reside on that innate ground of human goodness in order to move through the darkness of this age. We must take refuge in the warmth of human decency in order to weather the pain and confusion that assaults the sanctuary of our very heart. We must join together in wisdom and kindness to combat the senseless terror we see all around us.

With profound love,

The Sakyong
June 28, 2015

photo credit: David Gabriel Fischer · Zen Photography via photopin cc

“When you walk into this world of reality, the greater or cosmic world, you will find … a deep sense of aloneness. It is possible that this world could become a palace or a kingdom to you, but as its king or queen, you will be a monarch with a broken heart. It is not a bad thing to be, by any means. In fact it is the way to be a decent human being—and beyond that a glorious human being who can help others.”
~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

In an interview marking Naropa University’s 40th anniversary celebrations, Board Chair Jerry Colonna reflected on the notion of “Radical Compassion,” the theme of Naropa’s symposium in honor of this milestone.

Jerry is a former venture capitalist turned professional coach who also serves widely in the non-profit world beyond Naropa. He brings his experience of working with his coaching clients to his understanding of just how compassion can be radical in the context of business as well as daily life. Describing corporations as collections of broken hearted individuals struggling for a sense of purpose, he sees his work as a way to help make the workplace nonviolent to self, community, and the planet. To do that, he says, one needs to live fully in every milieu — and refrain from “ghetto-izing” compassion into the so-called spiritual compartment of one’s life.

“[R]adical compassion to me is not a soft compassion. It’s not a compassion that comes from a place of privilege…. To me, radical compassion is not me helping you. It’s us confronting the pain and suffering of the world together.” This perspective imbued the presentations offered at the Naropa symposium, where speakers of diverse backgrounds and orientations — from spiritual teachers and contemplatives to environmental activists and research scientists — brought their understanding of how to relate to, confront, and change the many seemingly insurmountable challenges we face as a society. In different ways and with different language, the point seemed to be, as it was put in the title of one plenary panel discussion, opening our hearts to the world as it is.

And experiencing the world as it is includes witnessing our own grief and broken-heartedness, rather than pushing them away. In Jerry’s words, that means “normalizing” our feeling of broken heart — discovering that everyone feels this way, rather than internalizing the notion that the feeling is not OK. For all its political connotations, the word radical points to that which lies at the root, that which is fundamental.

So, in this way, says Jerry, “Radical compassion is seeing the interconnectedness of all things… the illusion of our separateness is really behind the broken-heartedness. And that when we touch into our interconnectedness, we get past that sadness. It’s like ‘oh, oh, we’re not equal, we are the same.’”

Jerry further points to reflections by Christian contemplative Thomas Merton on the Buddhist tradition of the begging bowl: “[M]onks will go out in the morning with nothing, and perhaps no one will put food into the bowl, and perhaps someone will put food into the bowl. The symbol of the bowl is a symbol of our interconnectedness because the act of placing something into the bowl, and the act of receiving from the bowl is the same act. It’s an expression of our shared humanity. It’s an opportunity to demonstrate more fully our brokenness and our humanity.”

As one Radical Compassion Symposium participant posted as part of an opening group exercise: Heart to heart = radical.

Read more articles in the Radical Compassion column by clicking here.

~~

CEO Coach Jerry Colonna

The Shambhala Diversity Working Group Celebrates Marriage Equality

by Robert Pressnall,
Diversity Working Group member and former Northern California Regional Head of Education

On behalf of the Shambhala International Diversity Working Group, I would like to extend congratulations for the decades of inspiration and hard labor that accomplished the legalization of marriage equality for gay and lesbian couples and their families and children in the United States. As well, we are grateful to the majority of the U.S. Supreme Court for legitimizing your right to marry. The last time this happened was in 1967 when mixed-race couples were allowed to marry throughout the US. Once you find a love to celebrate, accordingly, you may obtain the document with all due benefits and responsibilities. As Cornell West wrote: “Justice is what love looks like in public.”

I was told nearing my own wedding that Chogyam Trungpa called marriage “the fast track to enlightenment” but at the time I didn’t understand. I thought, “Great! No sweat, we love each other, this will be easy.” Thirty-four years later I’ve learned that, of course, anyone you care for and love, and devote time and energy to, and raise your children with, that same person holds up a mirror, daily, for you to look into and find yourself in all your flawed, beautiful, wondrous glory. And at the same time they see themselves in your reflection. Once you realize there is no escape, nowhere to hide, you begin a conversation.

And so you walk side by side as companions, alone-together. And it is for this person, this love, this union, and the greater good of humanity and lineage that we aspire to enlighten ourselves and surrender to others, knowing marriage is not a solo journey but a fast track with two parallel rails joined by vehicles of communication and meditation, and wheels of feeling, being and touching, hand in hand, step by step, a nucleus of enlightened society. The contract is for others to witness and know you. Or you can fold it into a paper airplane and launch it into space!

Super-congratulations to the many gay and lesbian couples who have made this journey thus far without a piece of paper. But now that you have been granted the privilege and the right to read between the lines of your vows and jump onto the fast track with another person when the time is right, you are free, totally, anytime you dare to take the leap.

miksang photo by Charles Blackhall

FACING REALITY: BEGINNING CONVERSATIONS
As the Chairperson of the Diversity Working Group for Shambhala International, I am familiar with our collective avoidance of challenging topics like racism and oppression. And, admittedly, I have avoided the topic of global warming. These were the expressed topics of the International Western Dharma Teachers Gathering I attended in early June.

For many in the US, racial awareness has been heightened this year with widespread media coverage of the mistreatment and killing of blacks by police. And especially now with the shootings at the prominent Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopalian Church in Charleston, SC, we can no longer ignore racial injustice. We may wonder what has become of humanity when a young man can join a Bible study class as a newcomer and after an hour get up and shoot 9 people while family and classmates witness. As the Sakyong has been telling us, we are at a crossroads – what we actually think about humanity makes a difference. Yet how can we not lose hope in the face of such horror? The young white shooter at the black church said he wanted to start a race war.

How can we possibly undo the materialism of racism and other oppressions? As dharma practitioners, what is our responsibility in responding to global concerns? In Shambhala we talk about creating enlightened society and protecting the earth. Is it possible without addressing the systemic exploitation of people and the planet?

We can begin by having conversations – opening our hearts and minds, giving voice to the deep sadness and depth of despair and even to the anger of injustice – to uncover and deeply understand our interconnectedness. Thus we can evolve on a path that leads beyond denial and extinction. This is how we join heaven and earth.

Locally, at Northern California Shambhala’s Oakland satellite center, a pop-up weekly sitting and discussion group, the focus of discussion, contemplation, and dyads – led by a new Shambhala Guide – was the killings of the 9 Bible study members:

• Susie Jackson, 87, choir member & usher board member
• Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, 45, minister, speech therapist, mother
• Rev. DePayne Middleton-Doctor, 49, school administrator
• Ethel Lee Lance, 70, retired
• The Rev. Daniel Lee Simmons, Sr., 74, ministerial staff at Emanuel AME Church
• The Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney, 41, state senator
• Cynthia Hurd, 54, librarian
• Myra Thompson, 59, bible study teacher
• Tywanza Sanders, 26 poet, artist, businessman

Perhaps a renewed sense of the goodness of humanity arose when family members and the AME Church spoke of forgiveness and understanding of the shooter. Earlier in the day of the shootings, the youngest killed, 26 year-old Tywanza Sanders, posted on Instagram a quote by Jackie Robinson, the first African American to break the so-called color barrier in major league baseball: “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.”

BEYOND HESITATION: DEEPENING CONVERSATIONS

International Western Dharma Teachers Gathering, Omega Institute, NY, June 1-5, 2015

Nearly 200 dharma teachers met at Omega Institute in rural upstate NY, June 1 – 5. These gatherings were first initiated over 20 years ago by the Dalai Lama and Lama Surya Das in Dharamsala to strengthen bonds and exchange on the most important needs, trends and challenges of bringing the Buddhadharma to the Western world.

Participants included monks and nuns from both ethnic and convert communities, lay priests, teachers and ministers from vipassana, Zen, Tibetan lineages, and Pure Land representatives from Nichiren and Soka Gakkai lineages. The diversity of who we are was explicitly welcomed: our varied physical ability statuses, genders, gender spectrum expressions, races, ages, sexual orientations, traditions, geographic locations, socio-economic classes, and monastic and lay lifestyles, to name a few.

The Western Dharma Teachers Gathering presenters balanced conceptual and experiential learning to create the space to raise our awareness, to exchange ideas, to ask questions, and to hold space for the shock and pain of the grave realities we face. The participants brought varied levels of knowledge about interconnections between the historical legacy of slavery, the laws that were created to privilege some and oppress others, the current events, and our own often unconscious attitudes and behaviors.

I gained a greater appreciation for how we are all interconnected, and how we are all part of social systems around the world that were often built to protect and benefit some groups at the expense of others. This attitude has led to the exploitation of people and our mother earth, and has resulted in global warming and the mass extinction of many species worldwide. And the pace is accelerating. Can we wake up? What can we do? As dharma teachers we must continue to open our hearts and minds to global concerns and the interdependence of all beings and to join with others by engaging ourselves in solutions of body, speech and mind.

DIVERSITY, SOCIAL CONDITIONING, AND CULTURAL HUMILITY
Having been chosen to present a break out workshop “Diversity, Social Conditioning, and Cultural Humility,” I was honored to share the work of both the Diversity Working Group and the UNtraining, an organization in which I teach, that is dedicated to healing personal and social oppression (UNTraining.org). The term “cultural humility” was coined by Tervalon and Garcia, two American social workers in the nineties, and continues to be timely.

One workshop participant was in tears feeling the impact of racism and how it seems to have manifested as segregated sanghas in western Buddhism. She had never quite seen so clearly how the history of slavery and many laws and social policies are the karmic beginning of so much suffering that we see in the US today. She was devastated and wondered what she could possibly do in the face of overwhelm. How can we make the teachings more accessible, she wanted to know.

At this point, perhaps, it is not a matter of simply trying to bring more diverse people into our sanghas; it’s also about opening to our own personal and cultural awareness of ourselves and other cultures, and having the bravery and curiosity to see what we don’t see: who we are, karmically, as individuals and groups. It’s a practice of seeing how we unconsciously participate in a world that exploits people, animals, and nature, and often excludes “other” people from our communities, and sometimes excludes “other ideas” from our own contemplations. Uncovering the complexities of how we were raised in a culture of exploitation – a throw away culture, a culture of ISMs – can feel disheartening and even bring up guilt or shame.

However, when we acknowledge our caring hearts and stay connected to basic goodness and the truth of “the way things are,” we can fearlessly develop self awareness with an attitude of inquiry, sensitivity and active listening. We can develop what’s been called “cultural humility”, the life long process of self reflection and self critique that supports cultural differences and helps to create inclusive and interdependent cultures. The Shambhala Diversity Working Group is introducing practices that help us more deeply explore our societal habitual patterns and cocoons while staying connected to Shambhala principles such basic goodness as we engage in the everyday local and global worlds we live in.

HOMO SAPIEN SAPIEN UNIVERSALIS
Pope Francis, in a hundred-and-eighty-page encyclical addressed “to every single person on the planet,” recently described climate change as one of the world’s most pressing moral, ethical, and religious challenges. At the Western Dharma Teachers Gathering, Rinaldo Brutoco, a renowned speaker for raising awareness of global warming in the business world, shared the Sakyong’s and the Pope’s sentiments that we are at a crossroads. He warned that given the trajectory we are on with respect to global warming, we are headed toward extinction. He further suggested we should remember that we evolved from homo sapiens (Neanderthals or the species standing erect, that “knows”) to modern day humans or homo sapien-sapiens (the erect standing species that “knows that it knows” or “is aware”). But that is not enough, we must evolve into homo sapien sapien universalis – the erect ones who know they know they are interconnected to all.

These are some of our challenges in the journey to create enlightened society.

~~
Charlene Leung was appointed by the Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche as a Shastri in 2010. She has served as the Chairperson of the Diversity Working Group since 2009.

Sakyong Wangmo, photo by Ian Bascetta

The day dawned crisp and blue, not too hot, and finally not too cold on a recent Vermont June morning. The Sakyong Wangmo would be coming to Karme Choling for an auspicious regional gathering of Shambhalians.

Karme Choling staff busied themselves to set up, making huge amounts of the special desil – Tibetan sweet rice (a delicious combination of white rice, cashews, raisins, sugar and butter) and the special milky-sweet Tibetan tea. The invitation went out to the regional community around Vermont. Clothes were ironed, pins put on, the garden prepped and even one small baby gussied up to meet the Sakyong Wangmo.

At a quarter to four in the afternoon, the entire Karme Choling staff and visitors from St. Johnsbury, White River Junction and even Montpelier lined the driveway leading to Karme Choling. It had been three years since the Sakyong Wangmo had visited, and needless to say, everyone was very excited.

The very first visit of the Sakyong Wangmo to Karme Choling was a delightful and elegant picnic in the upper meadow, named Togal Ridge. As Acharya Suzanne Duquette recalls, “the Sakyong, Sakyong Wangmo and two of her sisters attended that gathering. There was a white tent and formal picnic service. All this happened on a beautiful fall day.” In 2012, there was a visit to Karme Choling as well as an appearance at the St. Johnsbury Shambhala Center for a tea and rice ceremony.

On this recent occasion, arriving to the melodious call of five conches, the Sakyong Wangmo was greeted by all present, and then ushered inside to be welcomed by the Acharyas and Assistant Directors of Karme Choling. Everyone else filed down the hall to take their seats in the beautiful main shrine room for the traditional tea and rice ceremony, performed to rouse auspiciousness.

Hosting the Sakyong Wangmo in this way, for a tea and rice ceremony, provokes auspiciousness in a variety of ways. The opportunity to share space with the Sakyong Wangmo, which does not arise very often, as she herself pointed out, she is a busy mother with three daughters, is a rare gift. Being in her presence, one is confronted with incredible elegance, grace, warmth and love. Partaking of the traditional ceremony also allows her to enjoy everyone’s presence and greet the community.

During the gathering, the Sakyong Wangmo engaged with those present, asking where everyone was from, what programs were happening at the moment and how many staff are currently working at Karme Choling. Tara Bass, Assistant Director, also introduced the Sakyong Wangmo to each person as people passed to offer her a kata. It was very touching for everyone to greet her personally and offered many moments of delightful interaction. With one person who was a musician for example, the Sakyong Wangmo said, “Oh, you’ll have to perform next time,” referring to the previous visit the Sakyong Wangmo had made to the St. Johnsbury Shambhala Center a few years ago at which live music had been offered (read more about that here). In response, Sal the musician said, “You, too!” There was much laughter.

Joyful too, was the introduction of this author’s baby daughter, Odessa Rose, to the Sakyong Wangmo. Both were clearly delighted to meet each other. Baby Odessa reaching out with a kata in her hands, the Sakyong Wangmo took it and tied it nice and snug back around Odessa. We parents could not have been more overjoyed!

Once the delightful gathering was finished, the Sakyong Wangmo very much enjoyed a Karme Choling garden tour in the beautiful afternoon light. She asked a number of questions about what was planted and in particular said that she was so happy that the garden has many of her favorite foods, including potatoes, tomatoes, leeks, and strawberries. The garden staff sent over a box of the favorites she mentioned to the Sakyong Wangmo that very night. The Sakyong Wangmo also loves hot peppers and Emily and Gary, who run the garden, were delighted and smiled when they promised to send a good sized shipment of their best hot peppers as soon as they become ripe, in late July or early August.

As Acharya Duquette shares, “the Sakyong Wangmo expressed such tremendous curiosity and interest throughout her visit to Karme Choling. She was very relaxed and engaging, exuding a warmth that helped everyone to relax and enjoy themselves. It was a totally delightful afternoon for all who attended.”

The global Shambhala community will mark the enthronement anniversary of Kongma Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche on July 5th. Hosted by the Boulder Shambhala Center, the live broadcast begins at 11am Mountain / 1pm Eastern / 7pm Central Europe. The celebration will include remarks by Acharya Judith Simmer-Brown and mandala offerings by members of the Sakyong’s family and leadership council. The Sakyong will offer an address to the assembly.

Viewers are encouraged to gather beforehand to practice the Shambhala Sadhana in celebration of this auspicious occasion. This online event is free and open to all. The event page is here: shambhalaonline.org/20th-anniversary-of-sakyong-enthronement

To view memorial articles about the Sakyong’s 20th anniversary, click here and click here

On May 26, 2015, two Davis Shambhala Meditation Center members received City of Davis “Thong Hu Nuynh” Awards. Shastri Manny Medieros was recognized for Civil Rights Advocacy and Judith MacBrine was recognized as Public Servant of the Year.

article by Judith MacBrine

For Manny, receiving the award was difficult. But the award was also about pride of family: his nuclear family, his family of origin and his Shambhala family. Manny grew up in a family that taught him to value service to others and to not draw attention to himself.

As it happened, on the day of the award, Manny was unable to personally receive it due to an earlier agreement to co-lead an out-of-town weekthun. “I dodged that bullet,” he laughed. Instead, Manny’s daughter Sarah, grandson Wesley, and grandchild-in-utero, received the award for him. In her acceptance remarks, Sarah said, “My dad always tends to be quite humble about these things. I’m always impressed to hear what he has accomplished because he doesn’t always share everything with us…I’m very proud of him.”

Manny Medeiros received the award for his lifetime of legal work focused on expanding the protections and empowerments of marginalized classes of Californians. Manny worked to:

Manny Medeiros

For Judith, the best part of the award was being nominated for it. “When you’ve been in the trenches with people and they “see” you – your commitment, your skills, your humanity – and they want to honor you, it’s quite a humbling thing.”

Judith’s niche is working with government. Her particular passions are working with conflict and with issues of societal power and privilege. She has been active with the Yolo County Neighborhood Court, a facilitator of community dialogues between community members of color and the Davis Police Department, and is implementing the Alternative Conflict Resolution Pilot Program with the Davis Police Department, among many other activities focused on improving the Davis community.

Judith MacBrine

Judith suggests that the real story here isn’t that she and Manny were recognized with awards but that so many people, unnamed, are actively engaged in creating enlightened society in their own ways.

As mentioned by Davis Mayor Pro Tem, Robb Davis, “So much of what is going right in our [Davis] community is not in the public eye. The real connective tissue of the community is the efforts of people who are giving their time and even their professional skills and advice. [The Thong Hy Hyuhn Awards are] one of the few spaces in our community where we get to celebrate all the unique gifts that people have. I love it. These are acts of peace-building. We have such a conflictual society. These are people who are going counter to that by going with the moral arc – the “grain” – of the universe which, as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, bends toward justice. How can’t that be emotive? It’s like seeing a vision of what the world must be. I think of that every time. It’s like getting a glimpse of the future.”

As Shambhala warriors, we “arrange the throne of the king” by:

Receiving something like the Davis Thong Hu Nuynh Award, reminds us of these warrior attributes, especially that – each of us – has an integral part in the larger mandala.