“Trungpa’s warrior is a most appealing figure, embodying qualities that every spiritual tradition would hold dear. The principal discipline recommended here—being genuine moment after moment—allows one to discover the magic inherent in phenomena, where the synchronization of body and mind becomes an attunement to the natural order.” —Yoga Journal
This path revolves around two key themes. First, humans are innately awake and dignified, “basically good.” And second, society, as an expression of human nature, is also basically good. Thus, becoming a Shambhala warrior has nothing to do with making war or acting aggressively. Rather, it is the discovery of the seed of bravery within us all.
Shambhala is about the path of warriorship, or the path of bravery, that is open to any human being who seeks a genuine and fearless existence. The title Dorje Dradul means the “indestructible, or adamantine, warrior.”
Part One How To Be A Warrior
Here the word warrior is taken from the Tibetan and literally means “one who is brave.”
The key to warriorship and the first principle of Shambhala vision is not being afraid of who you are. Ultimately, that is the definition of bravery: not being afraid of yourself.
When we are afraid of ourselves and afraid of the seeming threat the world presents, then we become extremely selfish. We want to build our own little nests, our own cocoons, so that we can live by ourselves in a secure way.
The important point is to realize that you are never off duty. You can never just relax, because the whole world needs help.
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.
If we are simply miserable and wretched beings, how can we possibly imagine, let alone realize, an enlightened society?
have an actual connection to reality that can wake us up and make us feel basically, fundamentally good. Shambhala vision is tuning in to our ability to wake ourselves up and recognize that goodness can happen to us. In fact, it is happening already.
A genuine sense of humor is having a light touch: not beating reality into the ground but appreciating reality with a light touch. The basis of Shambhala vision is rediscovering that perfect and real sense of humor, that light touch of appreciation. If you look at yourself, if you look at your mind, if you look at your activities, you can repossess the humor that you have lost in the course of your life.
A fork is a fork, of course. It is a simple implement of eating. But at the same time, the extension of your sanity and your dignity may depend on how you use your fork. Very simply, Shambhala vision is trying to provoke you to understand how you live, your relationship with ordinary life.
The essence of warriorship, or the essence of human bravery, is refusing to give up on anyone or anything. We can never say that we are simply falling to pieces or that anyone else is, and we can never say that about the world either. Within our lifetime there will be great problems in the world, but let us make sure that within our lifetime no disasters happen.
TWO DISCOVERING BASIC GOODNESS By simply being on the spot, your life can become workable and even wonderful. You realize that you are capable of sitting like a king or queen on a throne. The regalness of that situation shows you the dignity that comes from being still and simple.
By simply being on the spot, your life can become workable and even wonderful. You realize that you are capable of sitting like a king or queen on a throne. The regalness of that situation shows you the dignity that comes from being still and simple.
A great deal of chaos in the world occurs because people don’t appreciate themselves. Having never developed sympathy or gentleness toward themselves, they cannot experience harmony or peace within themselves, and therefore, what they project to others is also inharmonious and confused.
This is the means of rediscovering ourselves and our basic goodness, the means to tune ourselves in to genuine reality, without any expectations or preconceptions.
In the practice of meditation, an upright posture is extremely important. Having an upright back is not an artificial posture. It is natural to the human body. When you slouch, that is unusual. You can’t breathe properly when you slouch, and slouching also is a sign of giving in to neurosis. So when you sit erect, you are proclaiming to yourself and to the rest of the world that you are going to be a warrior, a fully human being.
To have a straight back you do not have to strain yourself by pulling up your shoulders; the uprightness comes naturally from sitting simply but proudly on the ground or on your meditation cushion. Then, because your back is upright, you feel no trace of shyness or embarrassment, so you do not hold your head down. You are not bending to anything. Because of that, your shoulders become straight automatically, so you develop a good sense of head and shoulders. Then you can allow your legs to rest naturally in a cross-legged position; your knees do not have to touch the ground. You complete your posture by placing your hands lightly, palms down, on your thighs. This provides a further sense of assuming your spot properly. In that posture, you don’t just gaze randomly around. You have a sense that you are there properly; therefore your eyes are open, but your gaze is directed slightly downward, maybe six feet in front of you. In that way, your vision does not wander here and there, but you have a further sense of deliberateness and definiteness. You can see this royal pose in some Egyptian and South American sculptures, as well as in Oriental statues. It is a universal posture, not limited to one culture or time.
In your daily life, you should also be aware of your posture, your head and shoulders, how you walk, and how you look at people. Even when you are not meditating, you can maintain a dignified state of existence. You can transcend your embarrassment and take pride in being a human being. Such pride is acceptable and good.
The practice of meditation is very precise. It has to be on the dot, right on the dot. It is quite hard work, but if you remember the importance of your posture, that will allow you to synchronize your mind and body. If you don’t have good posture, your practice will be like a lame horse trying to pull a cart.
You are working with your mind and your body, and when the two work together, you never leave reality.
This method of synchronizing your mind and body is training you to be very simple and to feel that you are not special, but ordinary, extra-ordinary. You sit simply, as a warrior, and out of that, a sense of individual dignity arises. You are sitting on the earth and you realize that this earth deserves you and you deserve this earth. You are there—fully, personally, genuinely. So meditation practice in the Shambhala tradition is designed to educate people to be honest and genuine, true to themselves.
THREE THE GENUINE HEART OF SADNESS Through the practice of sitting still and following your breath as it goes out and dissolves, you are connecting with your heart. By simply letting yourself be, as you are, you develop genuine sympathy toward yourself.
Through the practice of sitting still and following your breath as it goes out and dissolves, you are connecting with your heart. By simply letting yourself be, as you are, you develop genuine sympathy toward yourself.
Basic goodness is very closely connected to the idea of bodhicitta in the Buddhist tradition. Bodhi means “awake” or “wakeful,” and citta means “heart,” so bodhicitta is “awakened heart.”
How many times have you tried to shield yourself by reading the newspaper, watching television, or just spacing out? That is the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question: how much have you connected with yourself at all in your whole life? The sitting practice of meditation, as we discussed in the last chapter, is the means to rediscover basic goodness, and beyond that, it is the means to awaken this genuine heart within yourself.
When you slouch, you are trying to hide your heart, trying to protect it by slumping over. But when you sit upright but relaxed in the posture of meditation, your heart is naked. Your entire being is exposed—to yourself, first of all, but to others as well.
you search for awakened heart, if you put your hand through your rib cage and feel for it, there is nothing there except for tenderness. You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness. This kind of sadness doesn’t come from being mistreated. You don’t feel sad because someone has insulted you or because you feel impoverished. Rather, this experience of sadness is unconditioned. It occurs because your heart is completely exposed. There is no skin or tissue covering it; it is pure raw meat. Even if a tiny mosquito lands on it, you feel so touched. Your experience is raw and tender and so personal.
You feel sore and soft, and if you open your eyes to the rest of the world, you feel tremendous sadness. This kind of sadness doesn’t come from being mistreated. You don’t feel sad because someone has insulted you or because you feel impoverished. Rather, this experience of sadness is unconditioned. It occurs because your heart is completely exposed. There is no skin or tissue covering it; it is pure raw meat. Even if a tiny mosquito lands on it, you feel so touched. Your experience is raw and tender and so personal.
For the warrior, this experience of sad and tender heart is what gives…
Real fearlessness is the product of tenderness. It comes from letting the world tickle your heart, your raw and beautiful heart. You are willing to open up, without resistance or shyness, and face the…
FOUR FEAR AND FEARLESSNESS Acknowledging fear is not a cause for depression or discouragement. Because we possess such fear, we also are potentially entitled to experience fearlessness. True fearlessness…
True fearlessness is not the reduction of fear; but…
In order to experience fearlessness, it is necessary to experience fear. The essence of cowardice is not…
On another level, we are afraid that we can’t handle the demands of the world. This fear expresses itself as a feeling of inadequacy. We feel that our own lives are overwhelming, and…
Sometimes fear manifests in the form of restlessness: doodling on a notepad, playing with our fingers, or fidgeting in our chairs. We feel that we have to keep ourselves moving all the time, like an engine running in a car. The pistons go up and down, up and down. As long as the pistons keep moving, we feel safe. Otherwise, we are afraid we might die on the spot. There are innumerable strategies that we use to take our minds off fear. Some people take tranquilizers. Some people do yoga. Some people watch television or read a magazine or go…
There are innumerable strategies that we use to take our minds off fear. Some people take tranquilizers. Some people do yoga. Some people watch television or read a magazine or go to a bar to have a beer. From the coward’s point of view, boredom should be avoided, because when we are bored we begin to feel anxious. We are getting closer to…
So cowardice is trying to live our lives as though…
Fear has to be acknowledged. We have to realize our fear and reconcile ourselves with fear. We should look at how we move, how we talk, how we conduct ourselves, how we chew our nails, how we sometimes put our hands in our pockets uselessly. Then we will find something out about how fear is expressed in the form of restlessness.…
Going beyond fear begins when we examine our fear: our anxiety, nervousness, concern, and restlessness. If we look into our fear, if we look beneath its veneer, the first thing we find is sadness beneath the nervousness. Nervousness is cranking up, vibrating, all the time. When we slow down, when we relax with our fear, we find sadness, which is calm and gentle. Sadness hits you in your heart, and your body produces a tear. Before you cry, there is a feeling in your chest and then, after that, you produce tears in your eyes. You are about to produce rain or a waterfall in your…
The birth of the warrior is like the first growth of a reindeer’s horns. At first, the horns are very soft and almost rubbery, and they have little hairs growing on them. They are not yet horns, as such: they are just sloppy growths with blood inside. Then, as the reindeer ages, the horns grow stronger, developing four points or ten points or even forty points. Fearlessness, at the beginning, is like those rubbery horns. They look like horns, but you can’t quite fight with…
soft, lumpy growths on your head. But then the reindeer begins to realize that it should have horns, that horns are a natural part of being a reindeer. In the same way, when a human being first gives birth to the tender heart of warriorship, he or she may feel extremely awkward or uncertain about how to relate to this kind of fearlessness. But then, as you experience this sadness more and more, you realize that human beings should be tender and open. So you no longer need to feel shy or embarrassed about being…
In the same way, when a human being first gives birth to the tender heart of warriorship, he or she may feel extremely awkward or uncertain about how to relate to this kind of fearlessness. But then, as you experience this sadness more and more, you realize that human beings should be tender and open. So you no longer need to feel shy or embarrassed about being gentle. In fact, your softness…
When you see red or green or yellow or black, you respond to it from the bottom of your heart. When you see someone else crying or laughing or being afraid, you respond to that as well. At that point, your beginning level…
When you begin to feel comfortable being a gentle and decent person, your reindeer horns no longer have little hairs growing on them—they are becoming real horns. Situations become very real, quite real, and on the other hand, quite ordinary. Fear evolves into fearlessness naturally, very simply, and quite straightforwardly. The ideal of warriorship is that the warrior should be sad and tender, and because of that, the warrior can be very brave as well. Without that heartfelt sadness, bravery is brittle, like a china cup. If you drop it, it will break or chip. But the bravery of the warrior is like a…
If you drop it, it will break or chip. But the bravery of the warrior is like a lacquer cup, which has a wooden base covered with layers of lacquer. If the cup drops, it will bounce rather…
FIVE SYNCHRONIZING MIND AND BODY Synchronizing mind and body is not a concept or a random technique someone thought up for self-improvement. Rather, it is a basic principle of how to be a human being and how to use…
SYNCHRONIZING MIND AND BODY Synchronizing mind and body is not a concept or a random technique someone thought up for self-improvement. Rather, it is a basic principle of how to be a human being and how to use…
The expression of basic goodness is always connected with gentleness—not feeble, lukewarm, milk-and-honey gentleness, but wholehearted, perky gentleness with good head and shoulders. Gentleness, in this sense, comes from experiencing the absence of doubt, or doubtlessness. Being without doubt has nothing to do with accepting the validity of a philosophy or concept. It is not that you should be converted or subjected to someone’s crusade until you have no doubt about your beliefs. We are not talking about doubtless people who become evangelical crusaders, ready to sacrifice themselves for their beliefs. Absence of doubt is trusting in the heart, trusting yourself. Being without doubt means that you have connected with yourself, that you have experienced mind and body being synchronized together. When mind and body are synchronized, then you have no doubt.
Absence of doubt is trusting in the heart, trusting yourself. Being without doubt means that you have connected with yourself, that you have experienced mind and body being synchronized together. When mind and body are synchronized, then you have no doubt.
The body can be likened to a camera, and the mind to the film inside the camera. The question is how you can use them together. When the aperture and the shutter speed of the camera are properly set, in relation to the speed of the film inside the camera, then you can take good, accurate photographs, because you have synchronized the camera and the film. Similarly, when mind and body are properly synchronized, then you have clear perception and you have a sense of being without doubt, being without the tremors and the shaking and the shortsightedness of anxiety, which make your behavior totally inaccurate.
synchronized the camera and the film. Similarly, when mind and body are properly synchronized, then you have clear perception and you have a sense of being without doubt, being without the tremors and the shaking and the shortsightedness of anxiety, which make your behavior totally inaccurate.
You can’t not look. There is no other world. This is your world; it is your feast. You inherited this; you inherited these eyeballs; you inherited this world of color. Look at the greatness of the whole thing. Look! Don’t hesitate—look! Open your eyes. Don’t blink, and look, look—look further.
The more you look, the more inquisitive you are, the more you are bound to see. Your looking process is not restrained because you are genuine, you are gentle, you have nothing to lose, and you have nothing to fight against. You can look so much, you can look further, and then you can see so beautifully. In fact, you can feel the warmth of red and the coolness of blue and the richness of yellow and the penetrating quality of green—all at once. You appreciate the world around you. It is a fantastic new discovery of the world. You would like to explore the entire universe.
Synchronizing mind and body is looking and seeing directly beyond language. This is not because of a disrespect for language but because your internal dialogue becomes subconscious gossip. You develop your own poetry and daydreams; you develop your own swear words; and you begin to have conversations between you and yourself and your lover and your teacher—all in your mind. On the other hand, when you feel that you can afford to relax and perceive the world directly, then your vision can expand. You can see on the spot with wakefulness. Your eyes begin to open, wider and wider, and you see that the world is colorful and fresh and so precise; every sharp angle is fantastic.
Rather, here fearlessness means being able to respond accurately to the phenomenal world altogether. It simply means being accurate and absolutely direct in relating with the phenomenal world by means of your sense perceptions, your mind, and your sense of vision.
You begin to realize that you have a perfect right to be in this universe, to be this way, and you see that there is a basic hospitality that this world provides to you. You have looked and you have seen, and you…
This discovery is the first glimpse of what is called the Great Eastern Sun. When we say sun here, we mean the sun of human dignity, the sun of human power. The Great Eastern Sun is a rising sun rather than a setting sun, so it represents the dawning, or awakening, of human dignity—the rising of human…
SIX THE DAWN OF THE GREAT EASTERN SUN The way of the Great Eastern Sun is based on seeing that there is a natural source of radiance and brilliance in this world—which…
The way of the Great Eastern Sun is based on seeing that there is a natural source of radiance and brilliance in this world—which is the…
The dawn of the Great Eastern Sun is based on actual experience. It is not a concept. You realize that you can uplift yourself, that you can appreciate your existence as a human being. Whether you are a gas station attendant or the president of your country doesn’t really matter. When you experience the goodness of being alive, you can respect who and what you are. You need not be intimidated by lots of bills to pay, diapers to change, food to cook, or papers to be filed. Fundamentally, in spite of all…
You realize that you can uplift yourself, that you can appreciate your existence as a human being. Whether you are a gas station attendant or the president of your country doesn’t really matter. When you experience the goodness of being alive, you can respect who and what you are. You need not be intimidated by lots of bills to pay, diapers to change, food to cook, or papers to be filed. Fundamentally, in spite of all those…
Because we appreciate the world, we don’t make a mess in it. We take care of our bodies, we take care of our minds, and we take care of our world. The world around us is regarded as very sacred, so we have to constantly serve our world and clean it up. The setting-sun vision is that washing things and cleaning up should be the domain of hired help.
You have a giant vision, which you can’t consume, and you end up throwing most of it away. There is not even a program to recycle the leftovers. Everything goes to the dump. It is no wonder we have such big problems disposing of our garbage.
They can pay for luxury and ignore reality. In that way of doing things, you never see the dirt properly, and you may never see the food properly, either. Everything is compartmentalized, so you can never experience things completely. We are not talking purely about food; we are talking about everything that goes on in the setting-sun world: packaged food, packaged vacations, package deals of all kinds. There is no room to experience doubtlessness in that world; there is no room to be gentle; there is no room to experience reality fully and properly.
The basis of Great Eastern Sun vision is realizing that the world is clean and pure to begin with. There is no problem with cleaning things up, if we realize that we are just returning them to their natural, original state. It is like having your teeth cleaned. When you leave the dentist’s office, your teeth feel so good. You feel as though you had a new set of teeth, but in actual fact, it is just that your teeth are clean. You realize that they are basically good teeth.
SEVEN THE COCOON The way of cowardice is to embed ourselves in a cocoon, in which we perpetuate our habitual patterns. When we are constantly re-creating our basic patterns of behavior and thought, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh ground.
By darkness, we mean enclosing ourselves in a familiar world in which we can hide or go to sleep. It is as though we would like to re-enter our mother’s womb and hide there forever so that we could avoid being born. When we are afraid of waking up and afraid of experiencing our own fear, we create a cocoon to shield ourselves from the vision of the Great Eastern Sun.
The way of cowardice is to embed ourselves in this cocoon, in which we perpetuate our habitual patterns. When we are constantly re-creating our basic patterns of behavior and thought, we never have to leap into fresh air or onto fresh ground. Instead, we wrap ourselves in our own dark environment, where our only companion is the smell of our own sweat.
It is comfortable and sleepy: an intense and very familiar home. In the world of the cocoon, such things as spring cleaning have never been known. We feel that it is too much work, too much trouble, to clean it up. We would prefer to go back to sleep. In the cocoon there is no idea of light at all, until we experience some longing for openness, some longing for something other than the smell of our own sweat. When we begin to examine that comfortable darkness—look at it, smell it, feel it—we find it is claustrophobic. So the first impulse that draws us away from the darkness of the cocoon toward the light of the Great Eastern Sun is a longing for ventilation. As soon as we begin to sense the possibility of fresh air, we realize that our arms and legs are being restricted. We want to stretch out and walk, dance, even jump. We realize that there is an alternative to our cocoon: we discover that we could be free from that trap. With that longing for fresh air, for a breeze of delight, we open our eyes, and we begin to look for an alternative environment to our cocoon. And to our surprise, we begin to see light, even though it may be hazy at first. The tearing of the cocoon takes place at that point.
If we don’t look back, then we will have difficulty relating to the reality of the setting sun. You see, we cannot just reject the world of the cocoon, even though it is quite horrific and unnecessary. We have to develop genuine sympathy for our own experiences of darkness as well as those of others. Otherwise, our journey out of the cocoon simply becomes a setting-sun holiday. Without the reference point of looking back, we have a tendency to create a new cocoon in the Great Eastern Sun. Now that we have left the darkness behind, we feel that we can just bathe in the sun, lying in the sand and stupefying ourselves.
This brings a feeling of being a truly human being. Physically, psychologically, domestically, spiritually, we feel that we can lead our lives in the fullest way. There is a gut-level sense of health and wholesomeness taking place in our lives, as if we were holding a solid brick of gold. It is heavy and full, and it shines with a golden color. There is something very real and, at the same time, very rich about our human existence. Out of that feeling, a tremendous sense of health can be propagated to others. In fact, propagating health to our world becomes a basic discipline of warriorship. By discipline we do not mean something unpleasant or artificial that is imposed from outside. Rather, this discipline is an organic process that expands naturally from our own experience. When we feel healthy and wholesome ourselves, then we cannot help projecting that healthiness to others.
For the warrior, interest happens spontaneously because there is already so much health and togetherness taking place in his or her life. The warrior feels that the world is naturally full of interest: the visual world, the emotional world, whatever world he or she might have. So interest or inquisitiveness manifests as raw delight, delight together with rawness or tenderness.
You are so vulnerable that you cannot help being touched by your world. That is a sort of saving grace, or safety precaution, so that the warrior never goes astray and never grows a thick skin. Whenever there is interest, the warrior also reflects back to the sadness, the…
In the same way, the Great Eastern Sun creates an atmosphere in which you can constantly move forward, recharging energy all the time. Your whole life is constantly moving forward, even though you may be doing something quite repetitive, such as working in a factory or at a hamburger stand. Whatever you may be doing, every minute of every hour is a new chapter, a new page. A warrior doesn’t need color television or video games. A warrior doesn’t need to read comic books to be entertained or to be…
For the true warrior, there is no warfare. This is the idea of being all-victorious. When you are all-victorious, there is nothing to conquer, no fundamental problem or obstacle to overcome. This attitude is not based on suppressing or overlooking negativity, particularly. But if you look back and trace back through your life—who you are, what you are, and why you are in this world—if you look through that step-by-step, you won’t find any fundamental problems. This is not a matter of talking yourself into believing that everything is okay. Rather, if you actually look, if you take your whole being apart and examine it, you find that you are genuine and good as you are. In fact, the whole of existence is well constructed, so that there is very little room for mishaps of any kind. There are, of course, constant challenges, but the sense of challenge is quite different from the setting-sun feeling that you are condemned to your world and your problems. Occasionally people are…
EIGHT RENUNCIATION AND DARING What the warrior renounces is anything in his experience that is a barrier between himself and others. In other words, renunciation is making yourself…
Tenderness contains an element of sadness, as we have discussed. It is not the sadness of feeling sorry for yourself or feeling deprived, but it is a natural situation of fullness. You feel so full and rich, as if you were about to shed tears. Your eyes are full of tears, and the moment you blink, the tears will spill out of your eyes and roll down your cheeks. In order to be a good warrior, one has to feel this sad and tender heart. A person who does not feel alone and sad cannot be a warrior at all. The warrior is sensitive to every aspect of phenomena—sight, smell, sound, feelings. He appreciates everything that goes on in his world, as an artist does. Her experience is full and extremely vivid. The rustling of leaves and the sounds of raindrops on his coat are very loud. Occasional butterflies fluttering around her may be almost unbearable because she is so sensitive. Because of his sensitivity, the warrior can then go further in…
understand the higher meaning of existence. In the Shambhala context, renunciation is quite different. What the warrior renounces is anything in his experience that is a barrier between himself and others. In other words, renunciation is making yourself more available, more gentle and open to others. Any hesitation about opening yourself to others is removed. For the sake of others, you renounce your privacy. The need for renunciation arises when you begin to feel that basic goodness belongs to you. Of course, you cannot make a personal possession out of basic goodness. It is the…
Renunciation also is necessary if you are frightened by the vision of the Great Eastern Sun. When you realize how vast and good the Great Eastern Sun is, sometimes you feel overwhelmed. You feel that you need a little shelter from it, a roof over your head and three square meals a day. You try to build a little nest, a little home, to contain or limit what you have seen. It seems too vast, so you would like to take photographs of the Great Eastern Sun and keep them as a memory, rather than staring directly into the light. The principle of renunciation is to reject any small-mindedness of that kind. The sitting practice of meditation provides an ideal environment to develop renunciation. In meditation, as you work with your breath, you regard any thoughts that arise as just your thinking process. You don’t hold on…
Whether your thoughts are good or bad, exciting or boring, blissful or miserable, you let them be. You don’t accept some and reject others. You have a sense of greater space…
You experience your thoughts, you label them “thinking,” and you come back to your breath, going out, expanding,…
very simple, but it is quite profound. You experience your world directly, and you do not have to limit that experience. You can be completely open, with nothing to defend and nothing to fear. In that way, you are developing…
A selfish person is like a turtle carrying its home on its back wherever it goes. At some point you have to leave home and embrace a larger world. That is the absolute prerequisite for being able to care for others. In order to overcome selfishness, it is necessary to be daring. It is as though you were dressed in your swimsuit, standing on the diving board with a pool in front of you, and you ask yourself, “Now what?” The obvious answer is “Jump.” That is daring. You might wonder if you will sink or hurt yourself if you jump. You might. There is no insurance, but it is worthwhile jumping to find out what will happen. The student warrior has to jump. We are so accustomed to accepting what is bad for us and rejecting what is good for us. We are attracted to our cocoons, our selfishness, and we are…
You can just be, just let yourself be, without holding on to the constant reference points that mind manufactures. You do not have to get rid of your thoughts. They are a natural process; they are fine; let them be as well. But let yourself go out with the breath, let it dissolve. See what happens. When you let yourself go in that way, you develop trust in the strength of your being and trust in your ability to open and extend yourself to others. You realize that you are rich and resourceful enough to give selflessly to others, and as well, you find that you have tremendous willingness to do so. But then, once you have made a leap of daring, you might become arrogant. You might say to yourself, “Look, I have jumped! I am so great, so fantastic!” But arrogant warriorship does not…
At this point, having completely renounced her own comfort and privacy, paradoxically, the warrior finds herself more alone. She is like an island…
Although the warrior’s life is dedicated to helping others, she realizes that she will never be able to completely share her experience with others. The fullness of her experience is her own, and she must live with her own truth. Yet she is more and more in love with the world. That combination of love affair and loneliness is what enables the warrior to constantly reach out to help others. By renouncing her private world, the warrior discovers a greater universe and a fuller and…
NINE CELEBRATING THE JOURNEY Warriorship is a continual journey. To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine…
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…
The result of renunciation is that you enter the warrior’s world, a world in which you are more available and open to others but also more brokenhearted and alone. You begin to understand that warriorship is a path or a thread that runs through your entire life. It is not just a technique that you apply when an obstacle arises or when you are unhappy or depressed. Warriorship is a continual journey. To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life. That is the warrior’s discipline. There are, unfortunately, many negative connotations of the word discipline. Discipline is often associated with punishment, imposing arbitrary rules and authority,
or control. In the Shambhala tradition, however, discipline is connected with how to become thoroughly gentle and genuine. It is associated with how to overcome selfishness and how to promote egolessness, or basic goodness, in yourself and others. Discipline shows you how to make the journey of warriorship. It guides you in the way of the warrior and shows you how to live in the warrior’s world. The warrior’s discipline is unwavering and all-pervasive. Therefore, it is like the sun. The light of the sun shines wherever the sun rises. The sun does not decide to shine on one piece of land and neglect another. The sunshine is all-pervasive. Similarly, the warrior’s discipline is not selective. The warrior never neglects his discipline or forgets it. His awareness and sensitivity are constantly extended. Even if a situation is very demanding or difficult, the warrior never gives up. He always conducts himself well, with gentleness and warmth, to begin with, and he always maintains his loyalty to sentient beings who are trapped in the setting-sun world.
Temptation here refers to anything that promotes ego and goes against the vision of egolessness and basic goodness. There are many temptations, big and small. You can be tempted by a cookie or a million dollars. With the sharpness of the arrow, you can clearly see the setting sun or any degraded activities that are going on—in yourself first, to be honest, and then in the rest of the world. But then to actually avoid temptation, you need the bow: you need to harness your insight with skillful action. This principle of the bow and arrow is learning to say “no” to ungenuineness, to say
“no” to carelessness or crudeness, to say “no” to lack of wakefulness. In order to say “no” properly, you need both the bow and the arrow. It has to be done with gentleness, which is the bow, and with sharpness, which is the arrow. Joining the two together, you realize that you can make a distinction: you can discriminate between indulging and appreciating. You can look at the world and see the way things actually work. Then you can overcome the myth, which is your own myth, that you can’t say “no”—that you can’t say “no” to the setting-sun world, or “no” to yourself when you feel like sinking into depression or indulgence. So the bow and arrow are connected first of all with overcoming the temptation of the setting-sun world. When you learn to overcome temptation, then the arrow of intellect and the bow of action can manifest as trust in your world. This brings further inquisitiveness. You want to look into every situation and examine it, so that you won’t be fooling yourself by relying on belief alone. Instead, you want to make a personal discovery of reality through your own intelligence and ability. The sense of trust is that when you apply your inquisitiveness, when you look into a situation, you know that you will get a definite response. If you take steps to accomplish something, that action will have a result—either failure or success. When you shoot your arrow, either it will hit the target or it will miss. Trust is knowing that there will be a message.
When you trust in that message, the reflection of the phenomenal world, the world begins to seem like a bank, or reservoir, of richness. You feel that you are living in a rich world, one that never runs out of messages. A problem arises only if you try to manipulate a situation to your advantage or ignore it. Then you are violating your relationship of trust with the phenomenal world, so then the reservoir might dry up. But usually you will get a message first. If you are being too arrogant, you will find yourself being pushed down by heaven, and if you are being too timid, you will find yourself being raised up by earth.
Ordinarily, trusting in your world means that you expect to be taken care of or to be saved. You think that the world will give you what you want—or at least what you expect. But as a warrior, you are willing to take a chance; you are willing to expose yourself to the phenomenal world, and you trust that it will give you a message, either of success or failure. Those messages are regarded neither as punishment nor as congratulation. You trust, not in success, but in reality. You begin to realize that you usually fail when action and intellect are undisciplined or unsynchronized, and that you usually succeed when intelligence and action are fully joined. But whatever the result that comes from your action, that result is not an end in itself. You can always go beyond the result; it is the seed for a further journey. So a sense of continually
going forward and celebrating your journey comes from practicing the warrior’s discipline of the bow and arrow. The final aspect of the warrior’s discipline is meditative awareness. This principle of discipline is connected with how to take your seat in the warrior’s world. The unwavering sun of discipline provides a path of exertion and joy that allows you to make your journey, while the bow and arrow principle provides a weapon to overcome temptation and penetrate the vast reservoir of resources in the phenomenal world. But neither of these can fulfill itself unless the warrior has a solid seat, or sense of presence, in her world. Meditative awareness enables the warrior to take her seat properly. It shows her how to regain her balance when she loses it, and how to use the messages of the phenomenal world to further her discipline, rather than simply being distracted or overwhelmed by the feedback.
At first, the echo may be fairly faint, but then it becomes louder and louder. The warrior is constantly reminded that he has to be on the spot, on the dot, because he is choosing to live in a world that does not give him the setting sun’s concept of rest. Sometimes you might feel that the setting-sun world would be a tremendous relief. You don’t have to work too hard there; you can flop and forget your echo. But then you may find it refreshing to return to the echo, because the setting-sun world is too deadly. There is not even an echo in that world. From the echo of meditative awareness, you develop a sense of balance, which is a step toward taking command of your world. You feel that you are riding in the saddle, riding the fickle horse of mind. Even though the horse underneath you may move, you can still maintain your seat. As long as you have good posture in the saddle, you can overcome any startling or unexpected moves. And whenever you slip because you have a bad seat, you simply regain your posture; you don’t fall off the horse. In the process of losing your awareness, you regain it because of the process of losing it. Slipping, in itself, corrects itself. It happens automatically. You begin to feel highly skilled, highly trained. The warrior’s awareness is not based on the training of ultimate paranoia. It is based on the training of ultimate solidity—trusting in basic goodness. That does not
mean that you have to be heavy or boring, but simply that you have a sense of being solidly rooted or established. You have trust and you have constant joyfulness; therefore you can’t be startled. Sudden excitement or exaggerated reactions to situations need not occur at this level. You belong to the world of warriors. When little things happen—good or bad, right or wrong—you don’t exaggerate them. You constantly come back to your saddle and your posture. The warrior is never amazed. If somebody comes up to you and says, “I’m going to kill you right now” or “I have a present of a million dollars for you,” you are not amazed. You simply assume your seat in the saddle.
When you take your seat on the earth properly, you do not need witnesses to confirm your validity. In a traditional story of the Buddha, when he attained enlightenment someone asked him, “How do we know that you are enlightened?” He said, “Earth is my witness.” He touched the earth with his hand, which is known as the earth-touching mudra, or gesture. That is the same concept as holding your seat in the saddle. You are completely grounded in reality. Someone may say, “How do I know that you are not overreacting to situations?” You can say, simply, “My posture in the saddle speaks for itself.” At this point, you begin to experience the fundamental notion of fearlessness. You are willing to be awake in whatever situation may present itself to you, and you feel that you can take command of your life altogether, because you are not on the side of either success or failure. Success and failure are your journey. Of course, you may still experience fear within the context of fearlessness. There may be times on your journey when you are so petrified that you vibrate in…
TEN LETTING GO When you live your life in accordance with basic goodness, then you develop natural elegance. Your life can be spacious and relaxed without having to be sloppy. You can actually let go of your depression and embarrassment about being a human being, and you can cheer up. The result of practicing the discipline of warriorship is that you learn to stop ambition and frivolity, and out of that, you develop a good sense of balance. Balance comes not from holding on to a situation but from making friends with heaven and earth. Earth is gravity, or practicality. Heaven is vision or the experience of open space in…
Freedom here does not mean being wild or sloppy; rather, it is letting yourself go so that you fully experience your existence as a human being. Letting go is completely conquering the idea that discipline is a punishment for a mistake or a bad deed that you have committed or might like to commit.
For example, a professional driver in an auto race can drive at two hundred miles an hour on the race track because of his training. He knows the limits of the engine and the steering and the tires; he knows the weight of the car, the road conditions, and the weather conditions. So he can drive fast without it becoming suicidal. Instead, it becomes a dance. But if you play with letting go before you have established a proper connection with discipline, then it is quite dangerous. If you are learning to ski and you try to let go and relax at an early level of your athletic training, you might easily fracture a bone. So if you mimic letting go, you may run into trouble. You might think that based on this discussion, you will never have sufficient training to let go and relax in your discipline. You might feel that you will never be ready to be a daring person. But once you have made a basic connection to discipline, it is time to let go of those doubts. If you are waiting for your discipline to become immaculate, that time will never come, unless you let go.
Obviously, letting go is more than just relaxation. It is relaxation based on being in tune with the environment, the world. One of the important principles of letting go is living in the challenge.
Living in the challenge is not based on responding to extraordinary demands that you have created for yourself by failing to relate to the details of your life. For the warrior, every moment is a challenge to be genuine, and each challenge is delightful.…
The setting-sun version of letting go is to take a vacation or to get drunk and become wild and sloppy and do outrageous things that, in your “right” mind, you would never contemplate. The Shambhala understanding is, obviously, quite different. For the warrior, letting go is not based on getting away from the constraints of ordinary life. It is quite the opposite. It is going further into your life, because you understand that…
The setting-sun understanding of cheering up is talking yourself into feeling better, rather than actually cheering up. When you wake up in the morning and get out of bed, you go into the bathroom and look at yourself in the mirror. Your hair is somewhat disheveled, you are half asleep, and there are bags under your eyes. In the setting-sun world, you say to yourself, with a big sigh, “Here we go again.” You feel that you have to crank yourself up to get through the day. To use another example, when the Iranian revolutionaries were guarding the hostages at the American Embassy, they probably woke up in the morning with a feeling of delight: “Great! We have hostages next door!” That is a setting-sun version of cheerfulness. Cheering up is not based on artificial willpower or creating an enemy and conquering him in order to make yourself feel more alive. Human beings have basic goodness, not next door, but in them already. When you look at yourself in the mirror you can appreciate what you see without worrying about whether what you see is what should be. You can pick up on the possibilities of basic goodness and cheer yourself up, if you just relax with yourself. Getting out of bed, walking into the bathroom, taking a shower, eating breakfast—you can appreciate whatever you do, without always worrying whether it fits your discipline or your plan for the day. You can have that much trust in yourself, and that will allow you to practice discipline much more thoroughly than if you constantly worry and…
to clean it up, not because you feel bad or oppressed by dirt, but because you feel good. If you take the time to clean up and move in properly, you can transform a dumpy apartment into an accommodating…
Your body is an extension of basic goodness. It is the closest implement, or tool, that you have to express basic goodness, so appreciating your body is very important. The food you eat, the liquor you drink, the clothes you wear, and getting proper exercise are all important. You don’t have to jog or do…
You can still express dignity and goodness. You may be wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but you can be a dignified person wearing a T-shirt and cutoff jeans. The problem arises when you don’t have respect for yourself and therefore for your clothes. If you go to bed in a depression and throw your clothes on the floor, that is a problem. The basic point is that when you live your life in accordance with basic goodness, then you develop natural elegance. Your life can be spacious and relaxed without having to be sloppy. You can actually let go of your depression and embarrassment about being a human being, and you can cheer up. You don’t have to blame the world for your problems. You can relax and appreciate the world. Then there is a further stage of letting go, which is telling the truth. When you have doubts about yourself or doubts about the trustworthiness of your world, then you may feel that you have to manipulate the truth in order to protect yourself. For example, when you have a job interview, you may not be entirely truthful with your potential employer. You may feel that you have to bend the truth to get the job. You think that you have to make yourself appear better than you are.
But telling the truth does not mean that you have to bare your innermost secrets and expose everything that you are ashamed of. You have nothing to be ashamed of! That is the basis for telling the truth. You may not be the greatest scholar or mechanic or artist or lover in the world, but what you are is genuinely, basically good. If you actually feel that, then you can let go of hesitation and self-consciousness and tell the truth, without exaggeration or denigration.
When you do not say what you feel, you generate confusion for yourself and confusion for others. Avoiding the truth defeats the purpose of speech as communication. Telling the truth is also connected with gentleness. A Shambhala person speaks gently: he or she doesn’t bark. Gentle speech expresses your dignity, as does having good head and shoulders. It would be very strange if someone had good head and shoulders and began to bark. It would be very incongruous.
If you want to communicate with others, you don’t have to shout and bang on the table in order to get them to listen. If you are telling the truth, then you can speak gently, and your words will have power. The final stage of letting go is being without deception. Deception here does not refer to deliberately misleading others. Rather, your self-deception, your own hesitation and self-doubt, may confuse other people or actually deceive them.
You are deceiving others if your question is not a genuine request for help but simply reflects your lack of self-confidence.
Self-deception often arises because you are afraid of your own intelligence and afraid that you won’t be able to deal properly with your life. You are unable to acknowledge your own innate wisdom. Instead, you see wisdom as some monumental thing outside yourself.
You can let go of hesitation, and therefore, you can be without deception. There is an uplifted quality to your life, which exists effortlessly. The result of letting go is contacting that uplifted energy, which allows you to completely join together discipline and delight, so that discipline becomes both effortless and splendid. Everyone has experienced a wind of energy or power in their lives. For example, athletes feel a surge of energy when they are engaged in their sport. Or a person may experience a torrent of love or passion for another human being to whom he or she is attracted. Sometimes, we feel energy as a cool breeze of delight rather than a strong wind. For example, when you are hot and perspiring, if you take a shower, you feel so delightfully cool and energized at the same time. Normally, we think that this energy comes from a definite source or has a particular cause. We associate it with the situation in which we became so energized. Athletes may become addicted to their sport because of the “rush” they experience. Some people become addicted to falling in love over and over again because they feel so good and alive when they are in love. The result of letting go is that you discover a bank of self-existing energy that is always available to you—beyond any circumstance. It actually comes from nowhere, but is always there. It is the energy of basic goodness. This self-existing energy is called windhorse in the Shambhala teachings. The wind principle is that the energy of basic goodness is strong and exuberant and brilliant. It can actually radiate tremendous power in your life. But at the same time, basic goodness can be ridden, which is the principle of the horse. By following the disciplines of warriorship, particularly the discipline of letting go, you can harness the wind of goodness. In some sense the horse is never tamed—basic goodness never becomes your personal possession. But you can invoke and provoke the uplifted energy of basic goodness in your life. You begin to see how you can create basic goodness for yourself and others on the spot, fully and ideally, not only on a philosophical level, but on a concrete, physical level. When you contact the energy of windhorse, you can naturally let go of worrying about your own state of mind, and you can begin to think of others. You feel a longing to share your discovery of goodness with your brothers and sisters, your mother and father, friends of all kinds who would also benefit from the message of basic goodness.
Experiencing the upliftedness of the world is a joyous situation, but it also brings sadness. It is like falling in love. When you are in love, being with your lover is both delightful and very painful. You feel both joy and sorrow. That is not a problem; in fact, it is wonderful. It is the ideal human emotion. The warrior who experiences windhorse feels the joy and sorrow of love in everything he does. He feels hot and cold, sweet and sour, simultaneously. Whether things go well or things go badly, whether there is success or failure, he feels sad and delighted at once. In that way, the warrior begins to understand the meaning of unconditional confidence. The Tibetan word for confidence is ziji. Zi means “shine” or “glitter,” and ji means “splendor” or “dignity” and sometimes also has the sense of “monolithic.” So ziji expresses shining out, rejoicing while remaining dignified. Sometimes confidence means that, being in a choiceless state, you trust in yourself and use your savings, information, strength, good memory, and stiff upper lip, and you accelerate your aggression and tell yourself that you’re going to make it. That is the way of amateur warriors. In this case, confidence does not mean that you have confidence in something, but it is remaining in the state of confidence, free from competition or one-upmanship. This is an unconditional state in which you simply possess an unwavering state of mind that needs no reference point. There is no room for doubt; even the question of doubt does not occur. This kind of confidence contains gentleness, because the notion of fear does not arise; sturdiness, because in the state of confidence there is ever-present resourcefulness; and joy, because trusting in the heart brings a greater sense of humor. This confidence can manifest as majesty, elegance, and richness in a person’s life. How to realize those qualities in your life is the topic of part 2 of this book.
Part Two Sacredness: The…
Eleven Nowness
This is an organic expression of the greater vision of warriorship. It is based on the appreciation of a larger world. In the process of becoming a warrior, you naturally begin to feel a deep fellowship with human beings. That is the real basis for helping others and, ultimately, for making a genuine contribution to society. However, your connection to other human beings and your concern for their welfare have to be manifested personally, practically. Abstractly caring about others is not enough.
That wisdom has been passed down to you, and it is actually present in your everyday domestic life. So by appreciating your family tradition, you are opening yourself further to the richness of the world.
I was born in a cowshed in eastern Tibet, where people have never seen a tree. The people of that region live on pasture land that has no trees or even bushes. They subsist on meat and milk products throughout the whole year. I was born a son of this genuine earth, the son of a peasant. At a very early age I was recognized as a tulku, or incarnate lama, and I was taken to the Surmang monasteries to receive my training and become a monk. So, almost from birth, I was taken out of my family
situation and placed in a monastic environment. I was always called by my religious name, Trungpa Rinpoche. Nevertheless, I never forgot my birth.
The way to experience nowness is to realize that this very moment, this very point in your life, is always the occasion. So the consideration of where you are and what you are, on the spot, is very important. This is one reason that your family situation, your domestic everyday life, is so important. You should regard your home as sacred, as a golden opportunity to experience nowness. Appreciating sacredness begins very simply by taking an interest in all the details of your life. Interest is simply applying awareness to what goes on in your everyday life—awareness while you’re cooking, awareness while you’re driving, awareness while you’re changing diapers, even awareness while you’re arguing. Such awareness can help to free you from speed, chaos, neurosis, and resentment of all kinds. It can free you from the obstacles to nowness so that you can cheer up on the spot, all the time.
The only answer is nowness. Now is the important point. That now is a real now. If you are unable to experience now, then you are corrupted because you are looking for another now, which is impossible. If you do that, there can only be past or future.
TWELVE DISCOVERING MAGIC Any perception can connect us to reality properly and fully. What we see doesn’t have to be pretty, particularly; we can appreciate anything that exists. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real, is taking place in everything.
This original state of being can be likened to a primordial, or cosmic, mirror. By primordial we mean unconditioned, not caused by any circumstances. Something primordial is not a reaction for or against any situation. All conditionality comes from unconditionality. Anything that is made has to come from what was unmade to begin with. If something is conditioned, it has been created or formed. In the English language, we speak of formulating ideas or plans, or we may say, “How should we form our organization?” or we may talk about the formation of a cloud. In contrast to that, the unconditioned is free from being formed, free from creation. This unconditioned state is likened to a primordial mirror because like a mirror, it is willing to reflect anything, from the gross level up to the refined level, and it still remains as it is. The basic frame of reference of the cosmic mirror is quite vast, and it is free from any bias: kill or cure, hope or fear. The way to look back and experience the state of being of the cosmic mirror is simply to relax. In this case relaxation is quite different from the setting-sun idea of flopping or taking time off, entertaining yourself with a good vacation. Relaxation here refers to relaxing the mind, letting go of the anxiety and concepts and depression that normally bind you. The way to relax, or rest the mind in nowness, is through the practice of meditation. In part 1, we discussed how the practice of meditation is connected to renouncing small-mindedness and personal territory. In meditation you are neither “for” nor “against” your experience.
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 can see the unconditionality of reality, which remains very simply in things as they are, very simply. When you are able to look at things without saying, “This is for me or against me,” “I can go along with this” or “I cannot go along with this,” then you are experiencing the state of being of the cosmic mirror, the wisdom of the cosmic mirror.
You experience a vast realm of perceptions unfolding. There is unlimited sound, unlimited sight, unlimited taste, unlimited feeling, and so on. The realm of perception is limitless, so limitless that perception itself is primordial, unthinkable, beyond thought. There are so many perceptions that they are beyond imagination. There are a vast number of sounds. There are sounds that you have never heard. There are sights and colors that you…
In some religious traditions, sense perceptions are regarded as problematic because they arouse worldly desires. However, in the Shambhala tradition, which is a secular tradition rather than a religious one, sense perceptions are regarded as sacred. They are regarded as basically good. They are a natural…
Normally, we limit the meaning of perceptions. Food reminds us of eating; dirt reminds us to clean the house; snow reminds us that we have to clean off the car to get to work; a face reminds us of our love or hate. In other words, we fit what we see into a comfortable or familiar scheme. We shut any vastness or possibilities of deeper perception out of our hearts by fixating on our own interpretation of phenomena. But it is possible to go beyond personal interpretation, to let vastness into our hearts
through the medium of perception. We always have a choice: we can limit our perception so that we close off vastness, or we can allow vastness to touch us. When we draw down the power and depth of vastness into a single perception, then we are discovering and invoking magic.
When you can experience those two things together, as one, so to speak, then you have access to tremendous vision and power in the world—you find that they are inherently connected to your own vision, your own being. That is discovering magic. We are not talking here about an intellectual revelation; we are speaking of actual experience. We are talking about how we actually perceive reality. The discovery of drala may come as an extraordinary smell, a fantastic sound, a vivid color, an unnatural taste. Any perception can connect us to reality properly and fully. What we see doesn’t have to be pretty, particularly; we can appreciate anything that exists. There is some principle of magic in everything, some living quality. Something living, something real, is taking place in everything.
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint Exupéry is another wonderful example of literature that evokes the sense of ordinary, or elemental, magic. At one point in this story, the little prince meets a fox. The prince is very lonely and wants the fox to play with him, but the fox says that he cannot play unless he is tamed. The little prince asks the meaning of the word tame. The fox explains that it means “to establish ties” in such a way that the fox will become unique to the little prince, and the prince unique to the fox. Later, after the fox has been tamed and the little prince must leave him, the fox also tells the prince what he calls “my secret, a very simple secret,” which is that “it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” Saint Exupéry has a different vocabulary here for describing the discovery of magic, or drala, but the experience is basically the same. Discovering drala is indeed to establish ties to your world so that each perception becomes unique. It is to see with the heart so that what is invisible to the eye becomes visible as the living magic of reality. There may be thousands or billions of perceptions, but they are still one. If you see one candle, you know exactly what all the candles in the whole world look like. They are all made out of fire, flame. Seeing one drop of water can be seeing all water.
THIRTEEN HOW TO INVOKE MAGIC When you express gentleness and precision in your environment, then real brilliance and power can descend onto that situation. If you try to manufacture that presence out of your own ego, it will never happen. You cannot own the power and the magic of this world. It is always available, but it does not belong to anyone.
The phenomenal world that all human beings experience is fickle and flexible and also merciless. You often wonder whether you can ride on that fickle and merciless situation or it is going to ride on you. To use an analogy, either you are riding on a donkey or the donkey is riding on you. Ordinarily, in your experience of the world it is questionable who is riding on whom. The more you struggle to gain the upper hand, the more speed and aggression you manufacture to overcome your obstacles, the more you become subject to the phenomenal world. The real challenge is to transcend that duality altogether. It is possible to contact energy that is beyond dualism, beyond aggression—energy that is neither for you nor against you. That is the energy of drala. Drala is not a god or spirit, but fundamentally it is connecting the wisdom of your own being with the power of things as they are.
The essence of this way or path is transcending cowardice and manifesting bravery. That is the best and only way to invoke drala: by creating an atmosphere of bravery. We have already talked about the qualities of bravery. The fundamental aspect of bravery is being without deception. Deception in this case is self-deception, doubting yourself so that you are cut off from the vision of the Great Eastern Sun.
There are many other examples of invoking external drala. I have read, for instance, that some American Indians in the Southwest grow vegetables in the desert sands. The soil, from an objective standpoint, is completely infertile. If you just threw a handful of seeds into that earth, nothing would grow. But the Indians have been cultivating that soil for generations; they have a deep connection to that earth, and they care for it. To them it is sacred ground, and because of that their plants grow. That is real magic. The attitude of sacredness toward your environment will bring drala. You may live in a dirt hut with no floor and only one window, but if you regard that space as sacred, if you care for it with your heart and mind, then it will be a palace. The idea of sacred space is also what gives grandeur to a great cathedral, like Chartres, or to a house of government, like the English houses of Parliament. Churches are consciously built as sacred places, whereas a house of government may never have been conceived of as “sacred” by its architects.
They radiate a particular atmosphere that you cannot help but feel. The Greeks and the Romans laid out their cities with some understanding of external drala. You might say that putting a fountain in the center of a square or at a crossroads is a random choice. But when you come upon that fountain, it does not feel random at all. It is in its own proper place, and it seems to enhance the space around it.
But you can take the time to plan good, nutritious meals, and you can enjoy cooking your food, eating it, and then cleaning up and putting the leftovers away. Beyond that, you invoke internal drala by developing greater awareness of how you use your mouth altogether. You put food in your mouth; you drink liquids through your mouth; you smoke cigarettes in your mouth. It is as if the mouth were a big hole or a big garbage pail: you put everything through it. Your mouth is the biggest gate: you talk out of it, you cry out of it, and you kiss out of it. You use your mouth so much that it becomes a sort of cosmic gateway. Imagine that you were being watched by Martians. They would be amazed by how much you use your mouth.
When you eat, you can eat slowly and moderately, and you can appreciate what you eat. When you talk, it isn’t necessary to continually blurt out everything that is on your mind. You can say what you have to say, gently, and then you can stop. You can let someone else talk, or you can appreciate the silence.
This synchronization, or connectedness, is something that you can actually see. You can see people’s connection to internal drala by the way they behave: the way they pick up their teacups, the way they smoke their cigarettes, or the way they run their hands through their hair. Whatever you do always manifests how you are feeling about yourself and your environment—whether you feel kindness toward yourself or resentment and anger toward yourself; whether you feel good about your environment or whether you feel bad about your environment. That can always be detected by your gait and your…
your teeth—reflect your connection or disconnection with the world. When that connection is completely synchronized, then you are experiencing internal drala. Finally, there is what is known as invoking secret drala, which is the product of invoking the external and internal drala principles. Because you have created a sacred environment around you and because you have synchronized your body so beautifully,…
Lung means “wind” and ta means “horse.” Invoking secret drala is the experience of raising windhorse, raising a wind of delight and power and riding on, or conquering, that energy. Such wind can come with great force, like a typhoon that can blow down trees and buildings and create huge waves in the water. The personal experience of this wind comes as a feeling of being completely and powerfully in the present. The horse aspect is that in spite of the power of this great wind, you also feel stability. You are never swayed by the confusion of life, never swayed by excitement or depression. You can ride on the energy of your life. So windhorse is not purely movement and speed, but it includes practicality and discrimination, a natural sense of…
You experience the very moment of your state of mind. It is fresh and youthful and virginal. That very moment is innocent and genuine. It does not contain doubt or disbelief at all. It is gullible, in the positive sense, and it is completely fresh. Secret drala is experiencing that very moment of your state of mind, which is the essence of nowness. You actually experience being…
FOURTEEN OVERCOMING ARROGANCE When you are fully gentle, without arrogance and without aggression, you see the brilliance of the universe. You develop a true perception of the universe.
When the environment is stuffy and full of arrogant, self-styled men and women, the dralas are repelled. But then, what happens if a warrior, someone who embodies nonaggression, freedom from arrogance, and humbleness, walks into that room? When such a person enters an intense situation full of arrogance and pollution, quite possibly the occupants of the room begin to feel funny. They feel that they can’t have any fun and games anymore, because someone who won’t collaborate in their deception has walked in. They can’t continue to crack setting-sun jokes or indulge and
sprawl on the floor, so usually they will leave. The warrior is left alone, sitting in that room. But then, after a while, a different group of people may walk in, looking for a fresh room, a clean atmosphere. They begin to assemble—gentle people who smile without arrogance or aggression. The atmosphere is quite different from the previous setting-sun gathering.
When the warrior-students experience an environment where the dralas are present, where reality is present, where the possibility of sanity is always there, they can appreciate the mountains, clouds, sky, sunshine, trees, flowers, brooks, the occasional cries and laughter of children. That is the main point of invoking drala: to appreciate reality fully and properly.
When you are fully gentle, without arrogance and without aggression, you see the brilliance of the universe. You develop a true perception of the universe. You can appreciate green, nicely shaped blades of grass, and you can appreciate a striped grasshopper with a tinge of copper color and black antennae.
Fifteen Overcoming Habitual Patterns
The process of freeing yourself from arrogance and cutting off your habitual tendencies is a very drastic measure, but it is necessary in order to help others in this world.