On Differing Views and Paths
by Andrew Safer
Radio Free Shambhala
July 16, 2009
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Radio Free Shambhala: As you know, there has been tension and disagreement between some of Trungpa Rinpoche’s senior students and some of the students of the Sakyong, regarding changes to the practice path and differences of view. Many of these senior students do not feel that there is room for them within the Shambhala mandala.
Richard Reoch: It’s true that some of the long-term students of the Vidyadhara feel like they’re not supported. I and others have been in conversation with some of the long-term acharyas to see what is the practice support that is needed that would continue to nurture their path, and not make them feel excluded.
RFS: Sometimes the samaya of these senior students has been questioned.
Richard Reoch: That’s not what I feel Shambhala vision is about. I do not believe we should be commenting on or having the presumption to comment on another practitioner’s samaya. We all have a common, deep karmic connection. Probably most of us can’t even fathom it. We are all in this extraordinary lineage stream. We have a deep shared vision, at least about what Shambhala means, in an archetypal sense, in our subconscious.
To regard someone who is maintaining samaya within the Shambhala lineage as a dissenter is a mistaken view. It is not helpful to comment on the legitimacy of another person’s practice of samaya. Perhaps this happens because we don’t have the ground for the perpetuation of lineage in this culture. If you think several generations ahead, are we going to say that the students of the next Sakyong are dissenters because they’re following the teachings of Mipham? This is a fundamental misunderstanding of lineage.
One problem with the transplantation of egoless devotion from a culture like Tibet to a culture like we have in the West is we don’t have a tradition of lineage in modern form. We don’t have the cultural roots to support that. We are all grappling with how to understand this profound teaching.
I try to use the office I hold (as President), and the authority that goes with it to deal with this issue. When members of our community are described as “border tribes”–when they write me or meet with me–I devote a lot of time and try to learn from them. I think there has been a kind of polarization in which extreme language is used. We genuinely have to go deeper, beneath this level of argument, to find the commonality. I’m definitely doing that, person to person.
kla klo - savages, barbarous members of the border tribes, one of indistinct speech, Moslems, barbarian, heathen, inhuman, pagan, wild, musalman of india, hwi-hwi or hwi-tse in china, nation without laws, uncivilized race, barbarian, savage [JV]
-- English Tibetan Dictionary
Maybe now that the current orientation of the path is getting clearer, we need to have a conversation with the senior acharyas about precisely what could be the support that can be provided for people who started on a particular element of the path of Shambhala and that needs to continue and be supported?
Five Sakyongs down the road, there will be people who say “I make a personal connection by reading the works of the Vidyadhara.” Others will say, “How fortunate it was for Shambhala that Mipham the Great reincarnated as the Sakyong.” Eventually, it’s not just about tolerating differences; it’s about appreciating the incredible richness that’s available in our kingdom.
RFS: The real question is: how are the teaching stream and legacy of Trungpa Rinpoche going to continue?
Richard Reoch: I’ve been in discussions with Carolyn Gimian since the beginning of the Chogyam Trungpa Legacy Project about the importance of that initiative. The analogy we have used is that the Legacy Project is like a presidential library, so things don’t end up smoldering and being lost. I’ve had some initial conversations with some of the longer-term students and acharyas about how to create an identifiable and helpful framework so no one is seen as being on one track or the other, or as renegades which is antithetical to the long-term survival of the lineage.
RFS: Many people who are devoted to Trungpa Rinpoche and who don’t consider the Sakyong to be their teacher don’t feel welcomed by the community, and they’re afraid to speak up.
Richard Reoch: One of the earliest statements issued by the Mandala Governing Council created after the first Shambhala Congress was a statement on the commitment to openness. I asked members of that council to list the issues that people are afraid to speak up about. We seemed to have inherited an incredible atmosphere of fear, and I did not understand that. I had no idea the extent to which this community was traumatized. When I asked what issues were not being addressed, people were afraid to name the issues. I think we all realized, “Wow, we can’t even talk about what we can’t talk about!” Opening up that discussion was like Glasnost and Perestroika in Shambhala.
Trauma is a psychological dimension of oppression. This is true not only in relation to patriarchy and gender, where the traumatic effects of oppression have been most widely explored, but in relation to all forms of oppression. James Baldwin's famous statement that "to be Black in the United States is to be in a constant state of rage" is an expression of the psychological reality that oppression is constantly traumatizing. In turn, the effects of trauma - particularly chronic identification as victim and powerless rage - create a range of obstacles to social change. These are obstacles which we need to identify and understand in order to develop more effective social change strategies.
Oppression, which is the systemic abuse of power, renders people powerless. In turn, powerlessness is the hallmark of traumatic experience. It is therefore inevitable that trauma will be pervasive in a society organized around domination, both because oppression creates countless discrete acts of domination and because institutionalized oppression in itself creates powerlessness and trauma.
This is the case with every organized system of privilege, power and inequality: racism, xenophobia, class oppression, ableism, homophobia, and ageism as well as patriarchy. The breadth and depth of domination in our society generates an extraordinary volume of recurring traumatic experience. Virtually everyone routinely runs up against forces on one continuum of oppression or another - individuals in dominant positions, images, written words, institutional arrangements, cultural norms, laws, policies - which demean or degrade or devalue or humiliate or violate or arbitrarily constrain them, and in the face of which they have no sense of efficacy or control. This happens at work, at home, at school, on the streets, in stores, in the media, and in the macro-structures of economic and political power. The result is endless, chronic opportunities for people to experience themselves as victims and to experience traumatic rage.
-- Chapter 4: Trauma and Oppression [EXCERPT], Power-Under: Trauma and Nonviolent Social Change, by Steven Wineman
I talked to Larry Mermelstein, and asked, “Is there anything we can do to reduce this climate of fear?” Some people were experiencing this fear in a very palpable way. If we can’t create a social framework in which we understand that people will have different points of view, then all the notions of fearlessness and openheartedness–everything we’re so proud of about the Shambhala inheritance–absolutely won’t take root. We can’t build an enlightened society on a basis of fear.
Wherever I go, I invite people to talk to me about this so I can out find more about it. Sometimes, because someone has said something extremely abusive, we feel like we’re going to lose membership There are people hiding out, as if they’re the old Chi Kung masters at the height of the Cultural Revolution hoping they’re not noticed by the Red Guards. It’s a slow process of personal conversation, trying to address these tendencies of people persecuting each other.
When Radio Free Shambhala was established, people contacted me as if this was the end of the world. “No, just think ahead,” I said. “If we think about the new golden age of Shambhala, there will be countless websites and social networking opportunities where people express their experience of the dharma and of different teachers, including what others might disagree with. If there’s one thing that prevents establishing the kingdom of Shambhala, it’s called fascism, and I’m not having anything to do with that.”
President Reoch writes: “I was asked by Radio Free Shambhala to talk about the current guidelines for inviting teachers and, in the course of that, asked if I could talk also about the issue of fear in our mandala. I am delighted that Radio Free Shambhala is posting that interview on its website. Along these very same lines, I was deeply touched to hear the Sakyong say recently: ‘It is not a matter of us all agreeing. It is a matter of us not giving up.'”
980 Responses to “On Differing Views and Paths”
rita ashworth on April 8th, 2010 3:22 pm
Dear James
An interesting post –very thought provoking.
Yes I have been thinking of Ash’s [Sir Ashley Playfair-Howes?] post about the monarchy, democracy, communism triad re Trungpa’s comment mainly personally into the way I have seen SI operating at present.
Sir Ashley Playfair-Howes
Ashley Playfair-Howes, aka Wangpo Tseknyi Lord Happy Life, was born in Williamstown, Mass. to an old Yankee seafaring family. He was later raised in London, England where he enjoyed the dubious distinction of attending the notorious, if not infamous, Harrow School, as had his distant relation, Sir Winston Churchill. Whilst at Naropa Institute's Theater Program in 1976, he became a student of the Vidyadhara. From then until 1998, he served in various capacities both in the Civilian Administration and the Kalapa Court. During this time he often enjoyed working and living with Lord Perks, the Kushap Kyi Khyap. The Venerable Seonaidh, a patient and wily hunter, a born-again (and again) trickster, a loyal mentor and friend to boot, has been stalking Ashley for decades and finally sprang his kindly trap this year, 2015. Both to fulfill the aspirations and instructions of his root guru who encouraged him to write books about Buddhadharma and teach co-emergent wisdom, and to please one of his most beloved students and friends, Ashley has now joyfully agreed to carry on the Venerable Seonaidh's emerging Celtic Buddhist Lineage in whatever way he can, especially in Cape Breton Island where he has been living since 1999.
He was invested into the Peerage as Sir Ashley Playfair-Howes, Baron of Bras D'Or, Commander, Lord of the Isles, at an investiture performed on May 3rd 2015, Vaishakha Day (Lord Buddha's Birthday) at Anadaire Center, Saxton's River, Vermont.
-- Sir Ashley Playfair-Howes, by celticbuddhism.org
For example how do all those people in SI see the whole thing playing out politically or do they even consider politics. I don't know sometimes I feel this sense is developing if that people do certain practices somehow magically an enlightened society will manifest.[/b] So yes there is that strange fascination with doing things in the ‘correct and loyal’ manner according to what is the standard viewpoint.
To me there can be no standard viewpoint even Ash’s [Sir Ashley Playfair-Howes?] reply about the realm of Nowness and KOS [Kingdom of Shambhala] manifesting from that was a tad suspect – as in the sense well the magic thing is entering into the conversation again, of course I know what he means and how he is employing the term but then teachers tell you to do that don't they –just sit –the whole thing will all work out ok – and I wonder about that way of doing things.
So sort of crunching along as my philosopher lecturer Mr Holly used to do I ask questions re politics and hierarchy. For example when Ash [Sir Ashley Playfair-Howes?] mentioned the communism angle my eyes opened up a bit wider –wow at last I thought reality is entering the situation but then again as you and Ash [Sir Ashley Playfair-Howes?] have unpacked the situation I thought no we are still going to have to deal with the monarch motif even to establish the glimmerings of an enlightened society and then I really thought no way again. It is something to have the guru as King or the Christian concept of the Christ within you in a religious sense but to transpose that to the running of society in samsara is a big leap forward.
Any way lets take it forward a bit with some queries as to an imagined structure re enlightened society –well if Trungpa was the King in our pragamatic workaday world and if he was still alive how would he relate to politics. Well re politics if he had founded a National Assembly what would have been his role in it. Perhaps his role would have been somewhat limited as in the sense that only if the people were having some really mega-crisis would he step in –that CCL attitude – at the end of his life for example when he seemed very reluctant to step in and sort things out –even to make any comment at all. So may be that could be a role of King somewhat….. the just watching aspect.
Could we transpose this ‘non-involvement’ to the present SI set-up – no I don't think so –now its certain path ways to get to Shambhala –the whole org is going mad in conducting interviews here and there to go forward with the correct way of entering into the whole thing, you must go this particular way to get the real hit on the Shambhala teachings etc, etc.
What happened to the CCL attitude and just letting the whole thing develop organically-what happened to the teacher leaving people the freedom to make mistakes but still some how work the whole thing out. So yes I suppose I am asking about the role of the King ok Queen as well to do just absolutely nothing but to leave it up to the students as in the sense when Trungpa said my students will be concerned with setting up of enlightened society –where the emphasis is on the students and not the King role (but of course Trungpa has instituted that method with his statement!) So yes I think the whole King/Sakyong interaction with the sangha will have to be more unpacked before we can even get some glimpse of the democracy and communism coming from it or should we say intertwined with it.
As to the conversation proceeding –yes I would like to go on with it a little more because we are sussing out ‘practical’ connections re the setting up of a society. To say that this discussion is not fruitful and that we should all just sit and just be is also not a totally good thing to do as well –because within the dharma too there is that whole thing of the study discipline as well. So yeh lets go on until we get ‘called’ on it……..ssssshhhhhhh –someones listening in………
O yeh Ash [Sir Ashley Playfair-Howes?] looking for stuff on utube on Marx –got this great video on Mark Steel – a socialist worker comedian –hes hilarious –you might want to check him out-a definite bolshie nutcase but very clever!
Well best
Rita Ashworth
Chris on April 12th, 2010 2:51 pm
The Practice Lineage or Remembering Who We Are:
Or: “Not letting the moralists get you down”:
“Everyone in the lineage of the practicing tradition has been extremely sarcastic and critical of the current scenes taking place around them. They were extremely critical of the subtle corruption taking place in the name of the dharma. We could say that the Practice Lineage is the guardian of the buddhadharma not only in Tibet alone, but in the rest of the world. Someone should at least have a critical view of how things should happen, how things shouldn’t happen. That particular sharp-vision, traditionally known as “prajna-vision” is very important, and that is a very lively situation, a living situation, in fact, that is why we are here.
The Practice Lineage is the most pure and is unhampered by any kind of spiritual materialism”.
From “The Mishap Lineage: Transforming Confusion into Wisdom” by Chogyam Trungpa
James Elliott on April 13th, 2010 2:24 am
Thanks Chris. I was indeed letting moralists get me down.
I know I get too wordy, but these are not simple issues to unpack, especially in a milieu in which we haven’t given them much thought, something many people before us have in fact done.
In any case, it would seem structures being established are not automatically in favor of members, and not best left to ruling elite out of touch with their subjects and in some cases I’ve witnessed reality.
Distinguishing between spiritual practice and politics has become somehow problematic within Shambhala, and as long as that’s the case, as long as ‘our’ politics is treated as something sacred, then whatever corruption occurs is unassailable, undermining one of the most fundamental needs any society must have for continuity and well being.
Here’s a poem that’s somewhat apropos, a little more on the lighter side, and I hope a bit of fun…
***
John Castlebury on April 13th, 2010 10:24 am
Thanks Chris,
With all due respect, the passage you quote from The Mishap Lineage [pub. 2009] is not an authoritative quotation, simply because Rinpoche didn’t personally authorize the final wording.
Who knows for sure that you are quoting Rinpoche and not his editor? So therefore how can we honestly quote Rinpoche from texts published since his death?
It’s safer if we rely on texts Rinpoche authorized while he was alive; then we can safely quote “chapter and verse”. Not to split hairs, but this is a distinction WITH a difference.
Andrew Safer on April 13th, 2010 1:36 pm
John:
Re: your comment about the quote from The Mishap Lineage, I’m going to be honest here. I found it quite offensive. Ms. Gimian worked very closely with the Vidyadhara for many years. She is extremely well trained to edit the talks he gave and to present his teachings to the public. There is no question in my mind about that.
Having said that, no one is perfect. Even highly trained editors have to make judgment calls when committing words that were presented orally to the “permanence” of print in a published book. “Perfection” is an impossibility in this regard.
I am aware that you are in possession of a considerable amount of the Vidyadhara’s poetry (unedited), and appreciate the custodial role you have assumed in this regard. However, I’m sad to see that being in possession of such treasures has caused you to cast aspersions on the Vidyadhara’s highly trained and qualified editors.
By making a statement like this, you are suggesting that Ms. Gimian’s editing is not to be trusted. By implication, you are suggesting that all of the Vidyadhara’s teachings that have been published in book form since 1987 are substandard. I think you are doing the public a disservice by expressing this view, and don’t think it does much for your credibility. I’m also wondering if this is a subtle game of one-upsmanship we are witnessing here.
John Castlebury on April 13th, 2010 5:15 pm
Dear Andrew,
Well sorry you got so angry because you feel John cast aspersions on the noble editors, which isn’t even true. Edited text is not literally Rinpoche’s voice, is it? Or do you see an equivalency? But if a text is edited by editors, it’s no longer the text of Rinpoche’s exact words. That’s all I said, not that that’s a good thing or that’s a bad thing; it just is so.
In the case of a book designed for wider readership it makes perfect sense to edit for the sake of clarity, of course. But for purposes of quotation, a quote from material that has been changed by editors is not equivalent to an original quote of Rinpoche, even though the editors are highly trained and qualified; this is obvious.
So you found this pointing out the obvious to be offensive and cast the very aspersions at John that you accuse John of casting. I really don’t see the controversy, it’s only controversial if you twist what I said [“not to be trusted” and “substandard” are your words, not mine] to make your case.
JimWilton on April 13th, 2010 7:47 pm
Well, I guess we are all fucked then. There were no tape recorders or even paper and pencils in the time of Shakyamuni Buddha.
Nothing to do but rely on the fact that someone heard the teachings and put them into practice and passed the teachings on by discovering compassion and living their life. We’re fucked!
James Elliott on April 14th, 2010 2:11 am
I didn’t like John’s comment much either, not in a big way, please don’t take it personal John, but the timing made it seem to imply Chris’ quote was completely meaningless. I can’t see anything else it may have added to the discussion at hand.
Quotes from Trungpa Rinpoche can of course be used similarly to the way a Jehovah’s Witness uses them.
I met a guy once had a photographic memory and he used to invite door to door bible thumpers in to debate. He could, without looking in the book quote chapter and verse, ‘proving’ the opposite of whatever the proselytizers were preaching.
They would assume he was making stuff up, so he would tell them which chapter, verse, or psalm, they’d look it up and see it was true, glance at him with a tinge of fear and search in their dog-eared stickum marked tomes for another quote to refute him further, like a bouncing ball hall of conflicting mirrors. It was great fun. (I think some of his victims may have thought him some kind of demon.)
The point is quotes can be used to support whatever one wants. I don’t see the sense in demanding pure and unadulterated direct quotes from Trungpa Rinpoche. The way he spoke was very often dependent on how the person(s) he was talking to grasped what he was saying. (How much he had to explain and how much he could abbreviate.) Very often there were gaps in grammar and diction, all more than made up for in the pith teachings contained, but for written language, there are very few direct quotations from him in the purest sense of the word.
Many of the things I know he said, often because I was there when he said them or had impeccable sources, can only ever be considered paraphrasing. I don’t believe that teachings necessarily lose their pith meaning or truth as a result of being handled by … us.
Even when there is a direct quote, my thinking is we have to put something of ourselves in them in discussions or they begin to sound flat. Like bible thumpers.
In this particular case, if we don’t pick a specific target for the quote, (which would probably be an aggressive use of his words but I thought this one encouraged people disheartened by moralists and authoritarians -maybe just my take,) it is more likely than not Trungpa Rinpoche probably did say something along those lines.
Certainly the spirit of that quote is evident in the body of teachings about spiritual materialism and any number of officially sanctioned things he ‘definitely’ did say regarding credentials, the Tibetan church, courage, one’s principles, and about having a sense of humor and mistrust towards the rules laid down around us being a way of ensuring success.
In the inspiration of not reinterpreting the dharma, and not holding it at arms length either.
rita ashworth on April 14th, 2010 7:00 am
Dear Chris,
Thanks for that post re practice.
Yes there is the moralists getting us down re the one and only way etc etc –suppose that's why to a certain extent exploring other ways of seeing the whole thing or unpacking different scenarios re what we have studied in the past.
But yes I agree you can not get a definitive way that the shambhala teachings and of course the Buddhadharma teachings will manifest despite what SI states because of course with Shambhala we are discussing and experiencing a manifold awaking to basic goodness and who really knows how this will pan out. Mover-onners in all their little groups at the moment but even that may change as time passes so that we could meet in a more convivial, mad way than SI. And perhaps as you suggest if the little groups now evolving could be more loosely structured and freer that would be great as well.
Wow to Julie Greene doing the maîtri teachings in Crestone –what a gift for people –hope other teachers outside of SI will follow suit with this –this is a really interesting development.
So yes what is the tone of all the new stuff happening perhaps a wish to be less structured, less hierarchical -- seems to fit the times especially if you look at the way young people organise themselves nowadays in relation to politics aka environmental demos etc etc. Even conventionally too staid politicians seem to know the game is up on authoritarian modes of governance for example Uk in election mode at moment and we could have a hung parliament because nobody trusts anyone now after the expenses scandal. So yes anything that evolves from Shambhala in different ways in the future will have to be very fluid and open-ended and leave gigantic room for peoples continual input-don't think that will be biased anarchy but may be true anarchy because of course the teachings on basic goodness undercut ego.
Re Cape Breton and its position in all this – yes maybe Trungpa was seeing far into the future when he designated it as the main place but still I think more moves need to be made by everyone in supporting the shambhala teachings there as it is a somewhat important place in the growing mandala.
Yes also re the debate about quoting CTR –yes its difficult area. I did do a report for the Buddhist Society magazine on one of his talks in London and when I listened to the tape several times it was like listening to something very deep and almost mesmerising. May be from doing all those debates on Buddhism in Tibet he was dealing in a method of discussion that was almost ‘translucent’ certainly when I read his stuff I have the sensation of things going deeper and in a sense being more open as well so even his standard works have the sensation of poetry. But isn’t this feeling the nature of all religious/artistic language because we are dealing with imponderables which transcend the mundane, a big branch of religious studies for example is the use of religious language to exemplify connections with our ultimate nature which is of course ‘extraordinarily’ ordinary as well!. But of course also you can use the whole conception of language to mystify people so its a fine line interpreting what is going on within the religious context. Indeed at college I spent whole terms just debating certain chapters of Descartes on religion and also what people are doing when they use religious language and debate – yes a very interesting topic to discuss the use of language in all the different formats.
Well yes John hope you can get CTR’s poetry out in book form soon would love to read it that would be great.
Well best
Rita Ashworth
Chris on April 14th, 2010 12:14 pm
James,
Thanks for your poem, by the way.
As for the quote, it was one of those auspicious “open the book and the pages fall to that particular passage.” It cheered me up, was apropos and I thought I would share it for that reason.
There has been a tendency here for some to use the Mahayana as a big stick to silence people and was how it was inappropriately used for centuries by the monastic ruling elite to keep the peasants from revolting. Gross inequalities of wealth and labor were justified by using the Mahayana teachings on “merit” and karma to keep people quiet and satisfied with their lot and to keep the ladrangs (labrangs) “full.” So , not surprising that, once again, we see people, who are supportive of this return to a feudal monastic system in SI in order, to “keep harmony” rationalizing and justifying the current SI scene by bringing out the mahayana teachings to try and silence people.
Anyway, thank goodness this is NOT 14th c Tibet and that we, as Westerners, can and should keep speaking out against the same old corruption, wherever we find it, such as this monastic, archaic system coming to shear the infantilized Western Buddhist sheep, the latter who stubbornly refuse to look at relative realty or the real History of Old Tibet in order to sustain their fantasies into old age. Some of us, however, feel that corruption of the dharma is not worth that price to keep ourselves infantalized. Particularly when it’s done in the name of Chogyam Trungpa.
John Castlebury on April 14th, 2010 5:02 pm
That quotation from The Mishap Lineage is incorrect. It is found on page 23 with the browse function at shambhala.com.
The passage as quoted by Chris says:
That particular sharp-vision, traditionally known as “prajna-vision” is very important, and that is a very lively situation, a living situation, in fact, that is why we are here.
But the actual text says:
That particular sharp vision, traditionally known as “prajna vision,” is very important. And that is a very lively situation, a living situation, which still is up-to-date. In fact, that is why we are here.
Chris on April 14th, 2010 7:40 pm
Thanks John. Adding that phrase further emphasizes how much he was stressing that the Practice Lineage’s role, as guardian of the dharma against spiritual materialism, is for NOW. So thanks for the correction. He wouldn’t have said it in three different ways, i.e. “that is a very lively situation, a living situation, which still is up-to-date” if he didn’t mean us to really hear it.
Ginny Lipson on April 15th, 2010 11:12 am
Sorry to interrupt this thread, I didn’t know where to put this piece. It is an update on the earthquake situation, from Khenpo Tsering, just received late last night. Surmang was less affected, and the Shedra still stands! Trungpa Rinpoche the 12th is safe. However, so much else has been destroyed, if you have been following the news, including Thrangu Monastery, and also monks dead, people buried, dead children, etc. Catastrophic. Here is the letter I just sent to the Sangha. (Konchok Foundation has started an earthquake relief fund)
Dear Sangha,
I want to thank you all so much from beyond the bottom of my heart for all the donations that are pouring in for the earthquake relief situation. I won’t know the final Tally yet, as there are so many and more still coming in…and we are still scrambling to get news, and communicate with each other about what to do, etc.
Khenpo Tsering arrived safely to Jeykundo last evening (our time), managed to obtain a cell phone, and called us. Here is a first hand report, slightly edited. some good news and some really sad news:
The cell phone service is Jyekundo is intermittent, it cuts in and out. He doesn’t have a car battery charger and doesn’t know how he’s going to recharge the phone. The power is out in Jyekundo.
I was able to reach Khenpo Tsering tonight in Jyekundo by cell phone. It’s been a very long 24 hours for him since he called me from Xining last night just after the earthquake had happened. He was leaving immediately for Jyekundo at that time to help with the rescue efforts.
The road from Xining to Jyekundo is open. There are some cracks in the road and rocks on the road but it is passable. On the way down to Jyekundo, Khenpo passed at least a thousand cars or vehicles that were taking injured people up to hospitals in Xining. There is not nearly enough hospital capacity in Jyekundo for all of the injured people.
Khenpo said that Jyekundo is “completely destroyed.” He said that probably 95% of the buildings in the city have been destroyed. He said that, if anyone has seen the movie “2012,” it looks like that. Even some of the more recent larger buildings collapsed. He said that one six or seven story building collapsed “like the World Trade Center.” He went first to his own family’s house in Jyekundo to look for his family and dig them out if necessary. Unlike most houses, his family’s house did not collapse. It has a large crack in it, the back wall is tilting at an angle, and it will have to be rebuilt, but it did not fall down. His father, sister, and brother are ok and were not injured. Khenpo said that he has a number of other relatives in Jyekundo and he thinks that six or seven of them were killed.
He said that he and his family members have been spending all of their time helping other people dig in collapsed buildings, trying to find people who are still alive, but they haven’t found anyone alive. He said that he has pulled out several people who were already dead.
There are now a large number of Chinese soldiers in Jyekundo who are helping to dig but not enough compared to how many collapsed buildings that there are, and the soldiers don’t have enough heavy equipment.
Khenpo said that about eight hundred bodies that have been pulled out of the rubble so far but “there are thousands more bodies still buried in the collapsed buildings.” I said that the reports here are of ten thousand people injured and he said that it was at least that many and repeated that there isn’t enough space in the hospitals for all of them.
No one is staying inside any of the buildings that are still standing and everyone is living outside in tents or in whatever way that they can. He’s sleeping in his car.
Surmang Dutsi Til was not seriously affected by the earthquake. He has not been there in this first day since the earthquake but he was told that the earthquake was not so large there (Surmang is much further from the epicenter than Jyekundo is). He was told that no one was injured at Surmang Dutsi Til, and that several buildings have cracks in them from the earthquake, but none collapsed. He was told that there was no damage at all to the new shedra building complex at Surmang, which he described as very strongly built compared to how other buildings are constructed in the region. Khenpo has not heard yet of any damage at Surmang Namgyaltse. He has been told that the damage in the Nangchen heartland, centered around the town of Sharda, was not nearly as bad as around Jyekundo.
Trungpa XII Rinpoche is at Derge right now, which was not affected by the earthquake. Damcho Tenphel Rinpoche was at Kyere and most of the family members of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche are in that area, which was not affected by the earthquake. However, several of the Vidyadhara’s nieces or nephews have been living in Jyekundo and Khenpo has no news yet of what has happened to them. Aten Rinpoche is alright, I believe he was at Surmang at the time of the earthquake but he has now come up to Jyekundo to help out. One of Aten Rinpoche’s relatives is a khenpo at Thrangu monastery and was killed.
Thrangu monastery was the monastery most severely damaged by the earthquake from the reports that Khenpo has received. He was told that it is “95% destroyed” and that many monks there are dead, but no one yet knows how many. Benchen monastery wasn’t damaged as badly even though it is very close to Thrangu monastery. Domkhar monastery in Jyekundo was already in the process of being moved from its precarious hillside perch to a safer location in the valley and he think there wasn’t so much of a problem for them as a result. The Sakya monastery on a hilltop in Jyekundo has major damage but the buildings did not collapse.
Thirty or forty families from the Surmang area now have winter houses in Jyekundo, which they were living in when the earthquake happened. He knows all of these families and is trying to check up on them. He thinks that all of them have lost their houses and probably ten to twenty people were killed from the Surmang families.
He asked me to tell the Shambhala sangha that, if we are able to send money, that would be very helpful, because everyone who was involved in this earthquake needs help. He is going to find the Surmang families first to see how he can help them but there are many people who need help. Everyone who was living in Jyekundo has lost their house and has had people close to them who was killed or injured.
damchö on April 15th, 2010 10:22 pm
James, I love your poem, thanks. Dylanesque, somehow, but better.
Also, I liked your thought way back on the Dadaists etc.
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Ash [Sir Ashley Playfair-Howes?] on April 16th, 2010 12:44 am
Rita, did not answer one of yr. queries a while back about ‘unpacking’ individuality issue. Nor James’ about ‘certainty of Monarchy’. Was away from home quite a bit of late, and also internet connection often slower than dialup and this page takes forever to open up.
Individuality: born in the 50’s (and now in them again!) and raised in England which perhaps had more of a sense of this than America but only to a degree, we were exposed to a more socialised culture. So-called ‘Confucian’ societies had this, and still have this, even more so, as do most traditional European cultures, and, I suspect, nearly all traditional cultures. In other words, one is part of a group, or rather one’s personal behavior is mainly a function and expression of a group, or societal, dynamic. Hence the great emphasis on speech, manners, dress, cultural expression of all sorts, all of which involve how an ‘individual’ manifests within a larger societal context. That larger context is the ‘Realm’.
During a little window of connectivity last night, I was watching some video clips of Tsar Nicholas, his coronation and marriage, probably some of the earliest news reels ever made. People all arranged according to class, traditional dress, soldiers marching, bells ringing, ceremony, ritual and so on, but what struck me forcefully was the clear bond (samaya) of the assembled population. Nobody was barking orders all over the place telling them what to do and say, and yet everyone was finely attuned to behaving appropriately. Much in England when I was a boy there was very similar.
Now in the post war years, there has been a veritable orgy of ‘individualism’ even though, interestingly enough, people seem to have less and less individual character, both in terms of vigor and virtue. When a person devotes much of their developmental and expressive energies towards individual view and manifestation, they are by definition distancing themselves from the group and thereby heightening the sense of self and other, creating more aggression and neurosis of all sorts. And then, in order to function, they need psychoanalysis and happy pills. Strange world.
In any case, I think that is what he was referring to in terms of individualism. But that sort of negative individualism only makes sense to point out within the context of a more or less sane, vibrant culture. If you have general breakdown of social norms and virtues, then just blindly following along, i.e. failing to have one’s own individual integrity, becomes a similar problem on the flip side of the dynamic. I think that is what I was referring to. And also perhaps in the context of RFS, where there is a strong sense of the group having one astray, it is not necessarily ‘individualistic’ in the negative sense, to buck the trend.
James, I don’t have historical references handy, I am sorry to say. So speaking idealistically, perhaps I could say that when you have a strong society, then a natural Monarch principle inevitably is created one way or another and embodied by one particular, living, human Monarch.
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Ash [Sir Ashley Playfair-Howes?] on April 16th, 2010 12:59 am
But that principle transcends any ‘individual’. It is more like a particular moment, a particular perception.
When a group is assembled and they tune into something together versus milling about aimlessly, when they focus on the same thing, group shamatha occurs immediately, and especially so in a well ordered, well socialised mandala. And when such groups assemble, they naturally wish to tune into something together. Frequently this takes the form of listening to a speaker, or witnessing a ritual. In any case, there is a single object of group focus.
In this example of a communal event, the Monarch principle is that single object of group/societal focus. For the group to have a shared moment there must be that shared object of focus, at which point the object itself becomes less important than the mutual experience, or rather the group mind that is sharing the same state at the same place and time. This is similar to the shift of shamatha to vipashana perhaps, in that once the mind is still on an object, then a wider world opens up automatically and the mind itself, which is formless, becomes the object. So society shares the same state generally, altogether, by first focusing on the same particular.
Now in the context of social hierarchy, or structure, if an individual Monarch starts taking the role as some sort of license to achieve all sorts of individualistic (often hedonistic or narcissistic) goodies, and forgets that his or her rank and role is in fact a function of the entire Realm including each and every inhabitant therein, that Monarch has gone astray, just like a meditator excited by the efflorescence of a particularly luminous state, and who, in trying to maintain that state, capture that state, separate that state from the streaming of unfolding ever-changing nowness, or being, turns it into a nyam, which is another way of saying that ego is trying to possess a sense of egolessness, which is akin to trying to imprison liberation.
So the role of Monarch, ideally, is to act as a conduit for focus (or example) within an overall societal context which is attuned to group awareness. And since we are all basically good and sane, with fundamentally lovely hearts, such Monarch and such Subjects, by so attuning their minds together, will naturally tend to create more and more luminous, enriching, pacifying and powerful atmospheres together, and thus there will be further socialisation, sophistication and sanity of expression of goodness, skill, expression, intelligence, compassion and so forth. When a society lacks a Monarch principle, it does not have a way to have shared focus, and thus shared Heart-Mind, and thus promote mutual goodness.
Everyone watching television on their sofa is a particularly glaring samsaric perversion of the Monarch principle. It is neither individualistic nor properly socialised behavior, rather some dim ghost realm imitation delivered via a machine throwing up projections of living people, but without living people being actually there in reality.