Sharing Shambhala, Part I, October 16, 2021

Trungpa Rinpoche is my root guru. I had a moment in a Vajrayana talk, it was sort of just me and him in the room, even though there were probably 300 people there. Two years later, I ran into his son, and I feel like lightning struck twice. And I’ve spent the last 40 years making sense of that. And I still haven’t made sense of it. More and more, I don’t see their views as separate.

I think we are in trauma as a community… And it’s really up to us. If there’s one Shambhala or there’s two Shambhalas, or there’s three Shambhalas, he’s not really going to give us any instructions on how to proceed. It’s up to us.

There was an expression that with Trungpa Rinpoche, it felt that he was meeting them where they are, whereas with the Sakyong, it feels like he’s not meeting people where they are. He’s actually having people go to him. And it makes it feel like there’s just a kind of a one-way street rather than a relationship.

That people are making people who maybe don’t go along with exactly what the Sakyong is doing, to feel like they’re wrong… There are genuine warriors that respect the teachings who may not be studying with the Sakyong. And that can be part of the diversity.

The question of samaya was very important. Because people in this group, have studied and practiced a lot over the years, but not sure why they have to take the samaya again, with the current Sakyong. Because they’re already connected to the teachings and the teacher and the lineage.

We can all help by focusing on what binds us, what we share: our confidence in our basic goodness, our awakened nature and our ability to bring out our natural wisdom and compassion through meditation practice. And I’ve just tuned in to the love that we feel before we get into political conversations and to try to see this period of uncertainty as path to help us find our ground in the uncertainty.

I feel like part of the problem is that everyone’s assuming we’re still reacting the way we did three years ago. And we need to move past that; we’ve had three years. And this conversation is very, very, very helpful for that.

I realized how totally personal each of our reactions is, and I think that’s where the power lies, and how we work with each other with that is what is going to get us through this.

It felt good to be heard in the community. To just kind of unfold and say out loud things that have spun around in my head.