The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (5 page)

Unlike some of his other books that follow the logic of specific seminars he taught, the structure
of Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
was based on the logic of the Shambhala Training levels, as well as on the logics of the Shambhala teachings that were presented to the directors of Shambhala Training and at Kalapa Assembly. This was in keeping with the instructions that Rinpoche gave me about how to put the book together from his talks. Most of the logic of the book was developed before specific material was selected and independent of the existing material. Generally, I found that Rinpoche had already given the talks that were needed for different sections of the book, although in many cases, I combined a number of talks to make one chapter of the book.

Sometimes, material appeared fortuitously when it was needed. For example, I had a difficult time finding the right material on meditation practice. Of course, Rinpoche had given hundreds of talks on the sitting practice of meditation, but many of them were presented in a Buddhst context. He had often left the description of meditation for his senior students to present in Shambhala Training. At the same time that I was working on this book, in my role as the editor in chief of Vajradhatu Publications, I was responsible for overseeing the editing and transcription of many other talks and seminars given to the Buddhist community. One day at the office, the transcript of a public talk that Chögyam Trungpa had given recently at the Town Hall in Barnet, Vermont, arrived in the mail. I was skimming through it before putting it in a pile of materials to be filed. Lo and behold, here was the very talk on meditation that I was seeking. In this lecture, Rinpoche presented meditation from the point of view of basic goodness and warriorship. This transcript provided the basis and the structure for chapter 2 of
Shambhala,
“Discovering Basic Goodness.”
¹⁸

Rinpoche also dictated original material for several chapters. For the opening chapter, he consulted a Tibetan text by the great scholar-practitioner Mipham Rinpoche. He read the text in Tibetan and provided me with a word-by-word translation of a section that gives a description of the location and appearance of the Shambhala kingdom and its capital, Kalapa. He also dictated his foreword to the book and major sections of the chapter “Authentic Presence.” This chapter includes a detailed description of stages of warriorship, which are called the four dignities of the Shambhala Warrior: meek, perky, outrageous, and inscrutable. During his year-long 1977 retreat at Charlemont, Massachusetts, Rinpoche had written an article entitled “Inscrutability,” which was adapted for the section “The Warrior of Inscrutable,” part of the “Authentic Presence” chapter. It’s a wonderful piece on the most advanced stages of warriorship, which are characterized by the inscrutable and fearless attainment of the dragon warrior of Shambhala. To match the style and depth of this piece, Trungpa Rinpoche agreed to dictate material on the warriors of meek, perky, and outrageous. We had a meeting for this purpose at the 1983 Vajradhatu Seminary held in Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania. Before he dictated the material, I was able to ask him a number of questions about the manuscript. We had a fairly lengthy discussion of what the title for the book should be. Rinpoche suggested “The Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala.” We adopted that as a tentative title for a time, but eventually—pretty much at the last minute—we changed it to
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
. The abandoned title ended up being used fifteen years later as the perfect title for his second book on the Shambhala teachings, published posthumously.

One of the questions I asked Chögyam Trungpa in our meeting at Seminary was “What is the relationship between the four dignities and the drala principle?” (For this discussion to make sense to the readers, they will need to be familiar with these two concepts as they are discussed in
Shambhala
.) I thought he would give some conceptual answer about stages on the warrior’s path or something like that. Instead, he said, very intensely but straightforwardly, “Well, that’s how you become one of them.” A little bit of questioning clarified that he was saying that, by following the path of the four dignities, a student warrior can become a drala, the embodiment of power and magic in the Shambhala world.

I had a tape running to record our conversation, and a number of other people were also at this meeting. This was lucky, because when people heard what he had said, they expressed shock. “No, he didn’t say
that,
did he?” But he had said that. This one line turned out to be the key to editing the last chapter of the book, “The Shambhala Lineage,” which had been giving me a great deal of trouble.

Back in Boulder, a month or so later, one Friday evening, Rinpoche was giving the opening Shambhala Training talk in a weekend program of the Shambhala Education Program. It was a fairly advanced level of study. Rather than attending the talk, I stayed home to work on the last chapter of
Shambhala,
as I was under a strict deadline to get the manuscript to the publisher. I felt really stuck. That night, I was mulling over what he had said in our meeting at Seminary. I kept going over the discussion. I remember that I took a long bath and washed my hair. For some reason, I took a lot of baths and showers while I was working on this book, sometimes several times a day. Something about the water often provoked an insight for me. I don’t know why. In any case, I remember that I was standing in the bathroom, combing my wet hair, when I had a real “aha!” moment. Someone who was interested in the book had asked me if there was going to be anything in it about the Three Courts, which are somewhat like the three kayas in the Buddhist tradition. All of a sudden something clicked, and I remember thinking very loudly, “That’s it! That’s it. The Three Courts! That’s it.” I just about started dancing around the room. I knew then that I needed to reread the talk that Rinpoche had given at the 1978 Kalapa Assembly on the Sakyong principle, or the principle of rulership, both as it is embodied in human form in the Shambhala world and in its relationship to other, more “cosmic” levels of ruling and command. In that talk, I found most of the material that I needed for the last chapter of the book.

Interestingly enough, later, when I saw the transcript of the talk that Trungpa Rinpoche had given that night, it was about many of the same topics that came up in my mind as I was combing my hair at home. So I could have found the material for the last chapter by going to his talk or by staying home! Throughout the period that I worked on
Shambhala
, I always felt that Chögyam Trungpa was extremely accessible and involved. Whether or not he was there in person, he always seemed to be right there. I felt that he was extraordinarily generous in giving me the opportunity to work on the book and that he was also generous in helping me, in person and in spirit, as the book took shape.

The last instruction that Rinpoche gave me about the book was that I should be sure to give the manuscript to a number of non-Buddhist readers and that I should try to solicit feedback from people who had never meditated. I did find a number of such readers, and their feedback was both encouraging—most of them loved the book—and critically helpful. They could pinpoint precisely where the material was confusing, boring, or missing the point. Many small but important revisions came out of these comments.

Shortly before the book was published, after it was already at the typesetter’s, there was a brief crisis of confidence. One of Rinpoche’s senior students read the book at that point and phoned Shambhala in a panic, saying that the book went too far, that it had outrageous material in it, and that we should pull it back and reedit it.
¹⁹
I received a call from my editor to give me this feedback. I have to say that I was anything but receptive to these suggestions, coming so late in the process. Eventually, however, we agreed on a few minor changes and proceeded with the publication of the book. Shambhala Publications, however, did cut the initial print run by several thousand copies because they were a bit worried about whether the book would be well received.

In retrospect, twenty years and half a million copies in twelve languages later, these fears seem amusing, but at the time, they were disconcerting. It probably should have come as no surprise that a book about warriorship and overcoming doubt, fear, and obstacles in one’s life would involve an obstacle like this in its own process of being born.

Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
is divided into three sections. In the first, “How to Be a Warrior,” Chögyam Trungpa laid out many of the themes and the principles of the Shambhala teachings, which also guided and inspired his later presentations in other contexts, such as dharma art. The contrast between Great Eastern Sun vision and setting-sun vision is a fundamental theme. The setting sun represents the depressed and degraded aspects of human existence, which lead to an aggressive and materialistic outlook. This is contrasted with the vision of the Great Eastern Sun, which is based on human wakefulness and the celebration of life, rather than on the fear of death that dominates the setting-sun outlook. The basis of the Shambhala view is recognizing the inherent goodness of human beings, the goodness of our experience and of the world around us. Such goodness is unconditioned and undiluted. It is like the all-pervasive light of the sun, which can be temporarily covered by clouds but never fundamentally dimmed. The way of the warrior is based on connecting with the ground of basic goodness. This is accomplished through the sitting practice of meditation, as well as by paying attention to the details of one’s life, through training in mindfulness and awareness. The practice of meditation and the application of mindful delight lead to the synchronization of the warrior’s body and mind, which gives rise to a relaxed confidence. A kind of joyful sadness is the warrior’s constant companion. He or she recognizes that aloneness is a friend and that fear is the starting point for fearlessness. The quality of all these teachings is that they are direct, heartfelt, and authentic.

The second section of the book, “Sacredness: The Warrior’s World,” helps to connect the individual path of warriorship with the larger view of how to transform one’s world, how to help others, and ultimately how to contribute to an enlightened society. Rinpoche speaks of magic here, by which he means the utter aliveness of ordinary perception that can connect us to the inherent sacredness of our experience. He speaks of natural hierarchy, exemplified by the four seasons, as the basis for understanding how to rule our world and how to connect with genuine leadership. The final section of the book, “Authentic Presence,” which I have already touched on, gives us a view of the Shambhala lineage—in its most primordial as well as human forms—and introduces us to the universal monarch. Here, in contrast to the conventional view, the monarch is a human being so tender and stripped of pretense that it is as though he or she is utterly naked, even without skin.

As I have said,
Shambhala
found a wide readership. The talks on which it is based were given with such simplicity, such directness, and so much love that it would be hard to imagine they would not have reached a broad audience. Even today, almost twenty years after its publication, the book remains a classic, one that continues to inspire.

Great Eastern Sun: The Wisdom of Shambhala,
published posthumously in 1999, on the cusp of the millennium, covers much of the same ground, with the addition of a playful primordial dot—or focal point of wakefulness—that pops up throughout the book, presenting the possibility of a first fresh thought at any moment.
Great Eastern Sun,
based almost entirely on the Level Five talks given by Trungpa Rinpoche within Shambhala Training, is organized around three fundamental themes from the Shambhala teachings: trust, renunciation, and letting go, which are interwoven in the many chapters of the book. Trust here is trusting in oneself and also trust in the unconditional nature of goodness. Renunciation involves giving up self-centered notions of privacy and learning how to step beyond our depression. Letting go is about the principle of daring, letting go of self-deception and discovering how to invoke uplifted energy.
Great Eastern Sun
celebrates and invokes the sense of genuine being that underlies all experience. At the same time that it provokes us to action, it encourages us to relax, especially in this speedy world of ours, and to give ourselves a break, give ourselves time to be, without agendas. Overall, the Shambhala teachings present a view of life as sacred existence. They show Chögyam Trungpa’s brilliance in joining together the biggest and the smallest moments in life: showing us how the transformation of society is related to the kitchen sink.

The articles appended in Volume Eight both echo and embellish the themes presented in these two books. “Basic Goodness” gives us the first good dot of Chögyam Trungpa’s presentation of the Shambhala teachings. It is an edited version of the first public talk that he gave on Shambhala warriorship. It evokes and explains the meaning of basic goodness, and it exhorts us to pay attention to how we live each moment, so that it becomes the expression of warriorship. “Fully Human: Introduction to the Principles of Shambhala Vision” is based on the first talk of the long seminar at Naropa in the summer of 1979, given in tandem with the Vajra Regent Ösel Tendzin. As mentioned above, many of these talks were edited for inclusion in
Shambhala
. In this article, Rinpoche gives us a detailed explanation of both Great Eastern Sun and setting-sun vision.

“The Shambhala World,” the next article in Volume Eight, is a lightly edited version of a public talk given in San Francisco in 1982. Here Trungpa Rinpoche states his emphatic belief that nuclear holocaust is not going to take place. He predicts that human life will continue for at least one thousand years more and advises people that “I’m afraid that we’re going to have to lead lives which are very boring.” He also reiterates the concepts of basic goodness and the bravery of the warrior, and connects the meaning of enlightened society with realizing our basic goodness and applying it to help others.