Archive for the 'Meditations' Category
“The goal of warriorship is to express basic goodness in its most complete, fresh, and brilliant form. This is possible when realize that you do not possess basic goodness but that you are the basic goodness itself. Therefore, training yourself to be a warrior is learning to rest in basic goodness, to rest in a complete state of simplicity. In the Buddhist tradition, that state of being is called egolessness.”
Chogyam Trungpa
Overcome both hope and fear.
When you hope for something in your life, if it doesn’t happen, you are disappointed or upset. If it does happen, then you become elated and excited. You are constantly riding a roller coaster up and down. With nothing to hope for and nothing to fear, fearlessness is achieved.
Don’t spell out the truth.
When you spell out the truth, it loses its essence and becomes either “my” truth or “your” truth. By implying the truth, it doesn’t become anyone’s property. When the dragon wants a rainstorm he causes thunder and lightning. That brings the rain. Truth is generated from its environment; in that way it becomes a powerful reality. From this point of view, studying the imprint of truth is more important that the truth itself. The truth doesn’t need a handle.
To join heaven and earth, go beyond selfishness.
To bring together vision and practicality, you need confidence and trust in yourself. Beyond that, you have to be without selfishness. If someone thinks, “Now I have it! Ha ha!”—that doesn’t work. Joining heaven and earth happens only if you go beyond an egoistic attitude. The master warrior is extremely humble.
Give yourself time to be.
Give yourself a break. Enjoy that day, your normal existence. We have to learn to be kinder to ourselves, much kinder. Smile a lot, although nobody is watching. Listen to your own brook, echoing yourself. A lot of problems come from self-hatred. Let us let go of that; let us let it go away. Let us be real people. Let us be genuine people.
Cheer up.
A lot of us feel attacked by our own aggression and by our own misery and pain. However, even in the darkest of the Dark Age, there is always light. That light comes with a smile, the smile of Shambhala, the smile of fearlessness. The cheerfulness is what we call the Great Eastern Sun. We are capable of smiling beautifully, utterly, extraordinarily. We can always cheer up.
Don’t cause the Great Eastern Sun to eclipse.
Developing meekness is one of the disciplines or dignities of the warrior. Meekness is not feebleness but strength and brilliance that come from resting in a state of simplicity, being uncomplicated and approachable. In that state, simple awareness allows you to refrain from activities that dim the vision of the Great Eastern Sun, the warrior’s vision of wakeful sanity. Then your mind is not filled with ordinary preoccupations. When you are not seduced by trivial situations, there is a sense of uplifted mind and vast vision.
Precise and perky, you are never caught in the trap of doubt.
The fundamental doubt is doubting yourself, which occurs when body and mind are unsynchronized. Continuous discipline joins body and mind and brings unconditional cheerfulness. When discipline becomes a pleasure rather then a demand, you are free from the lower realms, free from living purely for survival. You possess the goodness of the higher realms, meaning you are clear and precise, free from doubt. At this stage, the warrior is always aware and never confused as to what to accept and what to reject.
A good self-existing sword: desire to sharpen it will make it dull.
When, out of hope and fear, you apply a competitive and comparative logic to your experience, trying to measure how much you have fathomed, how much is left to fathom, or how much someone else has fathomed, you are just dulling you sword, the sharpness of your mind. Instead, have confidence in your awareness and relax in you ability to connect with a larger vision, the experience of vast mind.
This is part 9 in a continuing series on Shambhala. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, or Part 8
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Tags: basic, goodness, Shambhala
When we see a bright color, we are witnessing our own inherent goodness. When we hear a beautiful sound, we are hearing our own basic goodness. When we step out of the shower, we feel fresh and clean, and when we walk out of a stuffy room, we appreciate the sudden whiff of fresh air. These events may take a fraction of a second, but they are real experiences of goodness. They happen to us all the time, but usually we ignore them as mundane or purely coincidental. According to Shambhala principles, however, it is worthwhile to recognize and take advantage of those moments, because they are revealing basic nonaggression and freshness in our lives—basic goodness. Chogyam Trungpa
A warrior never needs to take time off.
Uplifting your head and shoulders may sometimes give you back pain or a strained neck, but uplifting yourself is necessary. The journey may be demanding, but there is no way of avoiding it.
Always think only of the good of others.
The point of the warriorship is to become a gentle and tamed human being who can make a genuine contribution to this world. The warrior’s journey is based on discovering what is intrinsically good about human existence and how to share that basic nature of goodness with others.
Cultivate authentic presence.
Authentic presence is genuineness that radiates both gentleness and brilliance to others. Cultivate inner authentic presence by letting go of selfishness and regarding other people’s welfare as more important than your own.
Join survival and celebration.
There appears to be conflict between survival and celebration. Survival, taking care of your basic needs, is based on pragmatism, exertion, and often drudgery. Celebration, on the other hand, is often connected with extravagance and doing something beyond your means. For the warrior, ruling your world means that you can live in a dignified and disciplined way, without frivolity, and at the same time enjoy your life.
The warrior is not afraid of space.
The coward lives in constant terror of space: afraid of darkness because he can’t see anything, afraid of silence because he can’t hear anything. The setting-sun world teaches you to wear a suit of armor to protect yourself. But what are your protecting yourself from? Space. The challenge of warriorship is to step out of the cocoon, to step out into space, by being brave and at the same time gentle.
Cultivate natural decorum.
In the warrior’s world, a sense of order or hierarchy is based on allowing things to flower. This comes from the discovery of wakefulness, or the Great Eastern Sun, reflected in everything. You see possibilities of order in the world that are not based on struggle and aggression. This understanding of hierarchy manifests on a personal level as natural decorum, or intrinsically knowing how to behave. Because you experience dignity and elegance that do not have to be cultivated or imposed, you see how to be quite naturally in the world.
Apply the seven principles of richness.
To cultivate harmony in your life, view yourself as the ruler of your world. The ruler’s first richness is to have a mate, a King or a Queen. This represents extending yourself and cultivating decency. Whether you have a partner or live by yourself, you develop decency and reasonability in relationships. The second richness is Minister, representing friends who provide counsel or advice. Third is the General, representing fearless protection, a companion who will take care of you. Then, you need exertion and energy, the richness of the Horse. Next, the principle of the Elephant is that you are earthy, steady, not swayed by confusion. The sixth richness is the Wish-granting jewel, connected with generosity. You are open and hospitable. Finally, you hold the Wheel of command. You take your seat properly in you life, so that all these principles work together.
This is part 8 in a continuing series on Shambhala. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, or Part 7
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Tags: basic, goodness, journey, Shambhala
Poetic Teachings on Life and Death
Naughty or good, I am Thy child.
Paramahansa Yogananda
What, you ask, is the beginning of it all?
And it is this …
Existence that multiplied itself for sheer delight of being
and plunged into numberless trillions of forms
so that it might find itself innumerably.
Integral yoga - Sri Aurobindo
Step into the Sunlight
Feel the pain wash away
Enter in the Soul-light
Just BE in today.
Forget all emotion
Put your trust in the day
Let the past rush on by you
Put your Self in THE WAY.
One & Infinite - Lynne Milum - Universal light
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
The Rubaiyat - Omar Khayyam - 11th century
Silence becomes the Son of a prince,
To be silent but brave in battle:
It befits a man to be merry and glad
Until the day of his death.
The coward believes he will live forever
If he holds back in the battle,
But in old age he shall have no peace
Though spears have spared his limbs.
The Poetic Edda - Nordic Oral Tradition - 6th century ±
The greatest tragedy in life is not death;
the greatest tragedy takes place
when our talents and capabilities are underutilized
and allowed to rust while we are living. Amma
This life, you must know
as the tiny splash of a raindrop.
A thing of beauty that disappears as it comes into being.
Therefore, set your goal.
Make use of every day and every night.
Tibetan Buddhist - Tsongkhapa
There is only one time
when it is essential to awaken.
That time is now.
Buddha
Today, like every other day,
we wake up empty and frightened.
Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading.
Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
Sufi Mystic - Jelaluddin Rumi - 13th century
Write it on your heart
that every day is the best day in the year.
He is rich who owns the day, and no one owns the day
who allows it to be invaded with fret and anxiety.
Finish every day and be done with it.
You have done what you could.
Some blunders and absurdities, no doubt crept in.
Forget them as soon as you can, tomorrow is a new day;
begin it well and serenely, with too high a spirit
to be cumbered with your old nonsense.
This new day is too dear,
with its hopes and invitations,
to waste a moment on the yesterdays.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dance, when you’re broken open.
Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you’re perfectly free.
Sufi Mystic - Jelaluddin Rumi - 13th century
Believe more deeply.
Hold your face up to the light,
even though for the moment you do not see.
Bill Wilson - Cofounder Alcoholics Anonymous
God does not send us despair in order to kill us; he
sends it in order to awaken us to new life.
Reflections - Hermann Hesse
Fearlessness is better than a faint-heart
for any man who puts his nose out of doors.
The length of my life and the day of my death were fated long ago.
For Scirnis - Norse Mythology
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice, and
Politics without principle.
The Seven Deadly sins - Mahatma Gandhi
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day
cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,
open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one,
even as the river and the sea are one.In the depth of your hopes and desires
lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like the seeds dreaming beneath the snow
your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams,
for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd
when he stands before the king whose hand
is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling,
that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?
For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind
and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing,
but to free the breath from its restless tides,
that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? On death - Kahlil Gibran 
I have lots of things to teach you now,
in case we ever meet,
concerning the message that was transmitted to me
under a pine tree in North Carolina
on a cold winter moonlit night.
It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry.
It’s all like a dream.
Everything is ecstasy, inside.
We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds.
But in our true blissful essence of mind is known
that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.
Close your eyes,
let your hands and nerve-ends drop,
stop breathing for 3 seconds,
listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world,
and you will remember the lesson you forgot,
which was taught in immense milky ways
of cloudy innumerable worlds
long ago and not even at all.
It is all one vast awakened thing.
I call it the golden eternity.
It is perfect.
We were never really born,
we will never really die.
It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea
of a personal self,
other selves,
many selves everywhere,
or one universal self.
Self is only an idea, a mortal idea.
That which passes through everything, is one thing.
It’s a dream already ended.
There’s nothing from staring at mountains months on end.
They never show any expression,
they are like empty space.
Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away.
Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space,
which is the one universal essence of mind,
the one vast awakenerhood,
empty and awake,
will never crumble away because it was never born. The world you see is just a movie in your mind.
Letter to Ex-wife - Jack Kerouac
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Tags: death, Life, poetic, teaching
The Shambhala teachings are not based on converting the world to another theory. The premise of Shambhala vision is that, in order to establish an enlightened society for others, we need to discover what inherently we have to offer the world. So, to begin with, we should make an effort to examine our own experience, in order to see what it contains that is of value in helping ourselves and others to uplift their existence.
Chogyam Trungpa
The very moment is always the occasion.
The principle of nowness is very important to any effort to establish an enlightened society. You may wonder what the best approach is to helping society and how you can know what you are doing is authentic and good. The only answer is nowness. The way to relax, or rest the mind in nowness, is through the practice of meditation. In meditation you take an unbiased approach. You let things be as they are, without judgment, and in that way you yourself learn to be.
Let your wisdom as a human being connect with the power of things as they are. There is no fundamental separation or duality between you and your world. This discovery many arise as an extraordinary smell, a fantastic sound, a vivid color, an usual taste. Any perception can connect you to reality properly and fully. If you are able to relax-relax to a cloud by looking at it, relax to a drop of rain and experience its genuineness-you see the unconditionality of reality, which remains very simply in things as they are. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real is talking place in everything.
Without arrogance, see the brilliance of the universe.
We can’t ignore the phenomenal world. We should always take the opportunity, seize it on the spot. Appreciate the world, which is so vivid and beautiful. Arrogant people are so involved with themselves and competing so much with others that they won’t even look.
Rest with gentle patience and strength.
This slogan is connected with realizing unconditional confidence. Here, confidence does not mean having confidence in something, but remaining in the state of confidence, free from competition and one-upmanship. There is no room for doubt; even the question of doubt does not occur. This confidence contains gentleness, because the notion of fear does not arise; sturdiness, because in the state of confidence there is an ever present resourcefulness; and joy, because trusting in the heart brings a greater sense of humor.
Appreciate the accomplishments of your ancestors
The failure to appreciate the resourcefulness of human existence-which we call basic goodness-has become one of the world’s biggest problems. However, we need to find the link between tradition and the present experience of life. Nowness, or the magic of the present moment, is what joins the wisdom of the past with the present. When you appreciate a painting, a piece of music, or a work of literature, no matter when it was created, you appreciate it Now. You experience the same nowness in which it was created. It is always now.
This is part 7 in a continuing series on Shambhala. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6 or Part 8.
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Tags: enlightened, kingdom, Shambhala, teachings
“Other legends say that the kingdom of Shambhala disappeared from the earth many centuries ago. At a certain point, the entire society had become enlightened, and the kingdom vanished into another more celestial realm.” Chogyam Trungpa
This is part 6 in a continuing series on Shambhala. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 7 or Part 8.
The ultimate warrior protects the world
-
You are willing to be awake in whatever situation presents itself to you. You feel that you can take command of your life, because you are not on the side of either success or failure. Success and failure are your journey. The warrior’s duty is to generate compassion and warmth for others, with complete absence of laziness. Your discipline and dedication are unwavering.
Don’t confuse letting go with arrogance or indulgence
-
Letting go is relaxing within the discipline you have already developed, in order to experience freedom… …rather than getting away from the constraints of ordinary life, letting go is going further into your life. You understand that your life, as it is, contains the means to unconditionally cheer you up.
The Warrior’s awareness is like an echo
-
When the warrior starts to lose track of discipline, by taking time off or indulging in a setting-sun mentality, a state of mind that is degraded and confused, awareness is like an echo that bounces back on you. At first, the echo may be fairly faint, but then it becomes louder and louder. You are constantly reminded that you have to be on the spot.
Take delight in others and propagate dignity
-
People often say that it’s too difficult to work with others, that it’s impossible to help them, but that is not true; it has been done, and you can do so as well. Shambhala vision is not purely a philosophy.
Don’t freeze Windhorse into ice
-
The self-existing energy that comes from letting go is called windhorse in Shambhala teachings. Wind is the energy of basic goodness, strong, exuberant, and brilliant. At the same time, basic goodness can be ridden, or employed in your life, which is the principle of the horse. When you contact the energy windhorse, you can naturally let go of worrying about your own state of mind and you begin to think of others. If you are unable to let go your selfishness, you might freeze the windhorse into ice.
Take your seat in the warrior’s world
-
The practice of meditation also allows you to be completely grounded in reality. Then, if someone asks, “How do I know that you are not overreacting to situations?” You simply reply, “My posture in the saddle, my seat on the Earth, speaks for itself.”
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Tags: buddhist, philosophy, Vision, warrior
“Shambhala vision teaches that, in the face of the world’s greatest problems we can be heroic and kind at the same time.” Chogyam Trungpa This is part 5 in a continuing series on Shambhala. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 6, Part 7, or Part 8.
Daring to let go, the warrior is great in friendliness.
- We are attracted to our cocoons, our selfishness, and afraid of stepping beyond ourselves. To overcome hesitation and to commit oneself to others’ welfare, the student warrior has to jump. A leap is necessary. This occurs in the practice of meditation when you step beyond the ups and downs of your thinking process and let yourself go with your breath. Let it dissolve. By letting go, you develop trust in the strength of your being. Then, you also find that you have tremendous willingness to give selflessly to others.
The humble warrior is Supreme.
- You need to cultivate gentleness, so that you remain humble, soft, and open. Allow tenderness to come into your heart. Renounce putting on a new suit of armor or growing thick skin. The warrior who has accomplished true renunciation is completely naked and raw, without even skin or tissue. You are able to be, quite fearlessly, what you are.
You cannot possess basic goodness.
- The goal of warriorship is to express basic goodness in its most complete, fresh, and brilliant form. This is possible when you realize that you do not possess basic goodness, but you are the basic goodness itself.
The warrior’s discipline is like the sun.
Join the arrow of intellect with the bow of skillful means.
- With the sharpness of your intelligence, the arrow of intellect, you can clearly see the setting sun, or any degraded tendencies in yourself or the world. Then, you need to harness your insight with skillful action, which is the bow. When the arrow of intellect is joined with the bow of skillful means, you are never tempted by the seductions of the setting-sun world. Temptation here refers to anything that promotes ego and goes against the vision of egolessness and basic goodness. Together, the principle of the bow and arrow allows you to say “no” to ungenuineness, to carelessness, crudeness, or lack of wakefulness.
This is part 5 in a continuing series on Shambhala. Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, or Part 4.
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Tags: heroic, humble, kind, Vision, warrior
To join heaven and earth, go beyond selfishness.
Give yourself time to be.
