The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (51 page)

Ki Ki So So

Ki Ki So So

Ki Ki So So

Good morning
.

S
ANITY
I
S
J
OYFUL

Riding on a white horse,

Carrying the full blade sword,

Holding the victorious view—without wearing glasses—

As I hear the fluttering of the banner of victory,

As I smell horse dung,

As I hear the troops chattering along with their suits of armor—

I feel so romantic

And so brave.

As I carry the bow and arrow in my hand—

It is better than making love to a maiden:

As I defeat the enemy, I feel so good,

I feel so compassionate—

Love and kindness to my enemies.

That is why I will say,

Ki Ki So So!

Maybe the Dorje Dradül is mad,

But on the other hand

The sanest person on earth is the Dorje Dradül.

Ki Ki So So!

D. D
.

1
. A mythical bird.

2
. In the Shambhala teachings, the manifestation, strength, or bravery that transcends or conquers aggression. Sometimes translated as “war god,”
drala
means “being above or beyond war.”

3
.
Ki Ki So So
is a traditional victory chant in Tibet. It is often chanted during a ritual purification ceremony called a lhasang, which involves the burning of juniper and passing sacred objects through the smoke. It is also chanted when one reaches the top of a mountain pass. The traveler places a flag in a rock cairn on top of the pass and chants the warrior’s cry. Chögyam Trungpa describes how he performed this ritual during his escape from Tibet: “Ahead of us lay the very high pass of Sharkong La; it was extremely steep and the weather was very stormy, so when we had got about halfway up we camped for the night. . . . The next morning we returned to the climb. . . . When we reached the top of the pass, I, Kino Tulku and Akong Tulku dismounted to give the traditional traveler’s shout of victory, after which we duly added a flag to the cairn” (
Born in Tibet,
p. 176).

SEVENTEEN

Transmission

G
OOD MORNING, EVERYONE.
Tonight is your final confirmation as Shambhala warriors. Ironically, the warriors of Shambhala do not create war. The word
warrior,
by itself, may mean a creator of war or a warmonger, but the warriors of Shambhala are the opposite—of course. The Shambhala warrior does not create war,
at all,
but is somebody who creates peace. The warriors of Shambhala are those who are interested in subjugating their own desires for war and for aggression. Last night we talked about sadness. That quality is precisely the heart of warriorship. The warrior is completely in tune with people and with their various levels of emotionality. We are the opposite of warmongers.

How beautiful is red! How beautiful is yellow! How beautiful is green! How beautiful is blue! How beautiful is gray! When we look around, how beautiful it is. How beautiful to see a person sitting upright enjoying their meal. How good to see a person taking a shower, lathering their hair. How good it is, a person shaving. How good it is, the ladies combing their hair. They comb their hair as if it were the mane of a Shambhala tiger or a lion’s mane—whether they use hair dryers or not.

We are always good warriors of Shambhala: good tigers, good lions, good garudas, good dragons, with great teeth, beautiful shiny faces, beautiful hands. How beautiful the demeanor of human existence. The Shambhala world is an individual world. At the same time, it is a world that we share. When we relate with the rest of the world, we should be well groomed. That is one of the very first principles of Shambhala decorum.

I would like to discuss the concept of a Shambhala lord a bit further.
Lord
is an Old English word. In French, lord is
seigneur,
and in Spanish, it is
señor. Lord
here does not mean “overlord.” An overlord uses other people, regarding them as serfs, as people with no dignity. An overlord uses others as dishwashers and busboys or as rickshaw haulers. In this case, when we talk about a lord, when we talk about Lord Mukpo, we are talking about identifying ourselves with the sun and the moon.

Lord Mukpo is not going to kill people or make people work in the sewerage system or in the lowest of the lowest of the lowest places that you can think of. Lord Mukpo is brilliance. As lords and ladies of Shambhala, we can be together with the sun and the moon, the moon of skillful means and the sun of brilliance, which are the masculine and the feminine principles. The lords and ladies of Shambhala dare not take advantage of their own inadequacy or the inadequacy of others.

Lord
or
lady
here also means power, a sense of reality in which real strength can be wielded by every one of us. Power is not power over somebody else, in the sense of an overlord. In this case, power is the power to be yourself. The original lord inspires that power in you. You have power to open your bloody
¹
eyes, your bloody nose, your bloody mouth. You have bloody power, wonderful power, extraordinary power.

On the whole, the warriors of Shambhala are not afraid of anybody. We hold ourselves with good head and shoulders. With good head and shoulders, we do not subjugate ourselves or submit to anybody else—bloody anybody else. We can be
ourselves,
my lords and ladies.

Let us hold up our head and shoulders, OK? This will be the transmission of the power of warriorship. Hold up your spine. Open your eyes. Head and shoulders at its best. I want you to say the cry of the Shambhala warriors after me. When you say that, you receive the transmission, and you will have the power altogether.

OK. First, hold yourselves up. OK? Ready? Repeat after me:
Ki Ki So So
.

Ki Ki So So

Let us bow. Let us be humble and bow much more. Make a good bow, a gentle bow. Power and strength have occurred already. You don’t have to hang on to that. Now you can surrender; you can really bow.

PLEASE smile. Have fun! It is as if the span of an eagle’s wings were suddenly given to you. As if the haughtiness and the head and shoulders of the deer were given to you. As if the quickness of the fish were given to you. I am overjoyed to share this with you. I have been holding back for so long!

There is a mutual understanding between all of you and myself, my heritage, my lineage. With your concern for humanity, we will surely help others. That seems to be the case, and that seems to be the point. That seems to be the reason why we are here together: to help others.

B
ATTLE
C
RY

Riding on the horse who is impeccably, militarily trained,

Carrying the six weapons with one’s head and shoulders up for the warfare.

Contemplating whether you are fighting in the name of passion or aggression—

Should you crush a jar of honey with your fist or slash it with a sword?—

I am wondering whether I am what I am.

My deeds and thoughts will synchronize in the name of great dralas.

I wonder whether I may kiss the sword

Or lick the blade.

Shock should not be the warrior’s startle;

But beauty and gentleness are the warrior’s treasure.

When man fights man, should there be bloodshed?

Wallowing in one’s depression doesn’t seem to be the way to achieve true warriorship.

I enjoy fields of blooming warriors who chant the war cry.

I also enjoy warriors riding horses that never buck but smoothly sail through enemy troops.

1
. The word
bloody
here is used to intensify or lend force to the word it precedes. This usage, according to the
Oxford English Dictionary,
goes back to the end of the seventeenth century, when aristocratic rowdies were called “bloods.” The phrase “bloody drunk,” for example, meant as drunk as a blood, or as drunk as a lord.

Part Five

ALL-VICTORIOUS

The Warrior’s Smile

EIGHTEEN

A Question of Heart

T
HE QUESTION
that we’re going to discuss tonight is a very simple one. It is a question of heart. As warriors, we should have a soft heart. That is what the world needs. The heart of warriorship is also fearlessness. Having a heart
at all
is based on being fearless and manifesting a sense of warriorship. When we talk about becoming a warrior, we are not talking about conducting
war
fare, but we’re talking about manifesting fearlessness and gentleness that can save the world.

We have to be genuine, which means not having aggression and being true to oneself. In that way, we can build an enlightened society. Enlightened society cannot be built and cannot develop on the level of dreams or concepts. Enlightened society has to be real and good, honest and genuine.

A lot of us feel attacked by our own aggression and by our own misery and pain. But none of that particularly presents an obstacle to creating enlightened society. What we need, to begin with, is to develop kindness toward ourselves and then to develop kindness toward others. It sounds very simpleminded, which it is. At the same time, it is
very
difficult to practice.

I would like to keep our discussion very simple and direct. Pain causes a lot of chaos and resentment, and we have to overcome that. It is an extremely simple logic. Once we can overcome pain, we discover intrinsic joy, and we have less resentment toward the world and ourselves. By being here, naturally being here, we have less resentment. Resentment is not being here. We are somewhere else, because we are preoccupied with something else. When we are here, we are simply here—without resentment and without preoccupation. And by being here, we become cheerful. Let me see you smile. That’s it! Good luck.

Student:
What should we do if people take advantage of our kindheartedness and use it against us? Most people feel that they can only give so much, but they also need to receive. We feel we can’t give and give and give to people who just take and take and take.

Dorje Dradül of Mukpo:
Give your goodness back to them. Let them glow. You have that much power. You can do it. You don’t need to rely on anybody else’s goodness. You have a resource already, which is your own goodness. You are already good, and you can actually transmit that goodness to others. In Buddhism, we call it tathagatagarbha, or buddha nature.

Suppose you heard a talk about the heart. You might say, “Where is
my
heart? Do
I
have one?” Examine yourself and your state of being. You will find that you have the heart of goodness
in you
. You have it, and you’d better use it. One of the problems we have is feeling poverty-stricken. To overcome that, we have to be direct, and we have to trust ourselves. We are
not
poverty-stricken. If we are capable of smiling, we have goodness in us, always. Whether young or old, very old or very young, still, there are always possibilities of a smile. In fact, people do smile, at least three times a day. That is goodness. So keep smiling. Enjoy your being.

Student:
When you give a general prescription like “Be kind, smile, and be true to yourself,” I can’t help but think about women being abused and raped, about one class of people exploiting and oppressing other classes, or about people starving to death. On a world scale, I see incredible alienation, exploitation, and class oppression. How can what you’re saying change the world?

Dorje Dradül of Mukpo:
We can change the world, definitely. The problem is that we don’t smile when chaos occurs to us. When chaos occurs, even within that chaos, we can smile, which cures confusion and resentment. Do you understand?

Student:
When you say to smile, are you saying that we should throw the hatred out?

Dorje Dradül of Mukpo:
Absolutely. Yes. You got it.

Student:
Could you talk about the Tibetan legends concerning the Kingdom of Shambhala?

Dorje Dradül of Mukpo:
Shambhala was an enlightened society that manifested nonaggression. Its geographic location was in the middle of Asia, in the middle, or the heart, of the Orient. The Shambhala society was able to transmute aggression into love. Consequently, everybody in Shambhala attained enlightenment, so they no longer needed to fight wars. Finally, the whole society, the whole country—including all the buildings—ceased to exist on the earthly plane. That is the story of Shambhala.

Student:
Do you think the Kingdom of Shambhala will manifest again on a worldwide scale as a golden or enlightened age?

Dorje Dradül of Mukpo:
You bet.

Student:
Do you have any time frame for that—say, a hundred years or two hundred years from now?

Dorje Dradül of Mukpo:
Right now. It is possible.

Student:
Many lamas have said it may happen within a hundred or two hundred years.

Dorje Dradül of Mukpo:
That’s speculation. It happens right now.

NINETEEN

The Mukpo Clan

G
OOD MORNING,
ladies and gentlemen. I say good morning, even though it’s evening, because as far as we are concerned, the sun always rises, and the sun is the source of brilliance. For the warriors of Shambhala, the sun is never a setting sun. This has nothing to do with cultural philosophy of any kind. The sun always shines because
you
always shine. You are shining at this moment. The sun is a symbol of that
ever glowing
.