The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (45 page)

Appreciating your perceptions is the next topic. The way your hair is done, the way your clothes are worn, the way you handle all the details of your life have a lot to do with the basic sense of daring. You don’t have to buy the most expensive suit from Brooks Brothers. Simply keep yourself neat and tidy, whatever you wear. And when you look at yourself, take pride in yourself. That kind of pride is not regarded as arrogance at all. Just be a good lady, a good gentleman. Take pride in yourself. Even though you might be wearing just a sheet or a loincloth, still, you can be elegant. I don’t quite mean that literally, but there are such possibilities. Look at yourself. You are fantastic; you look so good. You are capable. You
do
have the goodness that we’ve been discussing.

The key to daring is your state of mind. When there’s no aggression, there is natural passion—the passion to be, the passion to beautify yourself, the passion to look good, the passion to hold up your head and shoulders.
Head and shoulders
means, in this case, the basic elegance of enlightenment, as the Buddha exemplified. If you want to know what I’m talking about, you might look at some of the statues of the
lohans,
who were Buddhist saints and great practitioners of meditation. You can see their posture of good head and shoulders.

You can achieve that, not only for yourself, but you can help others to uplift themselves. If you have a child or a little brother or sister who thrives on being a hunchback when he or she eats—hunching over and making a lot of noises while shoveling in the food—you can correct the child’s behavior. “John, sit up.” “Joanne, sit up.” “Let’s eat a nice, elegant dinner together.” That doesn’t mean you have to go out and buy the best Wedgwood china, but you can still have a beautiful meal, nicely presented, properly eaten, properly drunk.

A statue of a lohan, or disciple of the Buddha, in the posture of meditation
.

PHOTO FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE BRITISH MUSEUM.

The goal of the Shambhala teachings is to uplift human conditions. Ever since the creation of the notion of a republic and the creation of the notion of individualism, leadership has gone downhill. Our leaders—kings and queens, presidents and prime ministers—have failed us. Let us have a new king, a good queen, a good prime minister. Let us have good head and shoulders. Let us eat properly at our dining room tables; let us drink properly; and let us not overindulge. The rich are the worst offenders in this part of the world, because they can afford to drink from sunrise to sunset, but at the end of it all, they still go downhill, with no notion of human dignity, no notion of daring, no notion of goodness at all. I suppose we could call that some kind of magic bad joke.

You are the vanguard of human society. We talk about the dark age and how the world is going downhill. The world might destroy itself, but
not quite yet
. You are the vanguard to uplift your society—to begin with, your parents, your friends. There is such a thing as the Shambhala principle of upliftedness. It is the simple appreciation of the world, the appreciation of the sunrise, and also the appreciation that the one dot, one thought, does exist. When somebody is choking or about to throw up, that person only thinks one thought, just one thought. And that’s a good thought! It cuts all the rest of the thoughts. I hope you understand.

From that one good thought, a person can start to eat properly, work properly, sleep properly, sit properly. And from that, you can understand and attain the higher realms. The higher realms are the realm of the gods; the realm of the demigods, or the jealous gods; and the human realm. The realm of the gods, by the way, doesn’t mean the realm of Jehovah,
the
God, but just godliness. The realm of the jealous gods is consumed with achievement and competition. It is the realm of energy, competence, and power. The human realm, very simply, is the realm where we can be proper human beings. Traditionally, it is necessary to attain these states of mind or states of existence and to transcend the horrific pain of the lower realms before you can attain ultimate freedom or enlightenment.

I’m quite desperate. A lot of other teachers must have experienced this desperation. I am so desperate. You can help the world. You, you, you, you, and you—all of you—can help the world. You know what the problems are. You know the difficulties. Let us do something. Let us not chicken out. Let us actually do it properly. Please, please, please! We are trying to reach the higher realms and help others to do so, instead of being stuck in the hell realm, the hungry ghost realm, and the animal realm—which are the other alternatives, the lower realms. Let’s do it. Please think about that. I wish that you would all take a personal vow to help others who are going through such turmoil. People often say that it’s too difficult to work with others. It’s impossible to help them. But that’s not true. It has been done. Look at yourselves. You are all uplifted people. You are part of the higher realms. Some of you might question that about yourselves, but it’s not a real question. It’s just a thought.

Shambhala vision applies to people of any faith, not just people who believe in Buddhism. Anyone can benefit from the Shambhala training and Shambhala vision, without its undermining their faith or their relationship with their minister, their priest, their bishop, their pope, whatever religious leaders they may follow. The Shambhala vision does not distinguish a Buddhist from a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu. That’s why we call it the Shambhala
Kingdom
. A kingdom should have lots of different spiritual disciplines in it. That’s why we are here.

We may talk about elegance and beauty and such highfalutin stuff as kingship. But we are fundamentally talking about settling down and having a home. Maybe you should get married. Find out about taking care of a child, having a husband or wife, having a home. It will change your entire life! Go look for a mate, have a baby, have a beautiful home, whatever you can afford. You might marry a rich man or woman, but even if you don’t, you can make your home beautiful. The point is that we’re talking about
life
. Of course, not every Shambhalian has to get married. The main point is not feeding one’s own ego or one’s self-deception.

People in the past—including even Marx, Lenin, and Mao Tse-tung—tried to figure out how people could live together in society. I’ve read some very interesting books by people who worked
so
hard for the benefit of others. I would recommend the writings on Quakerism and also the Rudolph Steiner philosophy. Just make sure that you don’t get carried away with them. They may only be about 40 percent trustworthy, but still, they’re extremely good. Those early pioneers were really trying to explore Shambhala-type possibilities. Unfortunately, they lacked a spiritual discipline such as the sitting practice of meditation, which the buddhadharma offers. So they didn’t know precisely how to do it, but nevertheless, I think it would be valuable to study the literature of the Quakers and the Steiner school. They weren’t like Hitler, Mussolini, or Mao Tse-tung. They were real human people. Well, of course, they were human! I mean here that they were human-concerned people, concerned about others. They didn’t want to rule the world. They simply wanted to experience the reality of the world and to present it to others.

For instance, Rudolf Steiner thought that children shouldn’t see any sharp corners, so in the educational system that he developed, columns and picture frames were always rounded. That might be slightly crazy. But generally, we should be appreciative of people who have put so much energy into understanding the world, so that we can finally have Shambhala vision.

Many people have tried their best to present Shambhala possibilities. We can’t look down on them and say how stupid and uninspired they were. Each one of those people was a fantastic individual. For instance, George Fox, the Quaker leader who lived in the 1600s, in his own way introduced the notion of meditation. In those days, you couldn’t get married without saying a prayer. But George Fox simply said, “There is not going to be any prayer. The bride and bridegroom are going to sit in silence and get married in that silence.” Isn’t that revolutionary, especially for that time in history?

It would be worth investigating further the origins of Shambhala vision in the European traditions. It would be good to conduct a study of Western historical figures who tried to achieve the Shambhala vision of enlightened society. Some of you might have a tendency to be uppity and look down on the past, which shouldn’t really happen at all. People of the past have not just achieved some simple little thing. They have contributed so much wisdom to the world. We should pay tribute to those people of the past and appreciate them as our ancestors.

That is the fruition or the conclusion of our discussion. However, warriors of the Great Eastern Sun never say good night. We always say good morning no matter what time of day it is, because we are not connected with the setting sun at all. We always say good morning because the Great Eastern Sun always shines.
Great
means that you are not infected by ignorance.
East
is where things always begin. The sun always rises in the east. And
Sun
is all-pervasive power and strength, which illuminate your responsibility as well as your genuineness. Genuineness always shines through, like the sun. We’ve already said quite a lot about
good,
and
morning
I don’t have to explain. It is always morning.

1
.
Dharma art
is a term coined by the author to refer to art that is based on nonaggression and that expresses the basic dharma, or truth, of things as they are.
Dharma Art,
a book presenting the author’s views on art, was published in 1996 by Shambhala Publications. The installations he refers to here were a series of rooms that embodied different qualities and aspects of life and utilized interesting arrangements of colors, furniture, and objects, often with provocative flower arrangements in their midst.

TWELVE

The Big No

You
cannot
destroy life. You cannot by any means, for any religious, spiritual, or metaphysical reasons, step on an ant or kill your mosquitoes—at all. That is Buddhism. That is Shambhala. You have to respect
everybody.
You cannot make a random judgment on that at all. That is the rule of the king of Shambhala, and that is the Big No. You can’t act on your desires alone. You have to contemplate the details of what needs to be removed and what needs to be cultivated
.

O
UR TOPIC IS DECENCY.
Decency here is not in contrast to the indecency of, say, wearing two different-colored socks or not having your zipper done up. We are talking about decency as something more profound to be realized and understood. The first part of decency is what is called modesty, which here is the absence of arrogance. The second part of decency is being
so
kind and wise, but without laying your trip on others.

Decency means never being tired or made haggard by others. There’s always some enjoyment in dealing with the world, whether you are dealing with people, with other sentient beings, or even with inanimate objects. You could be dealing with your garden; it could be your horse; it could be your dog, your cat, or your stove. No matter what you are doing, the sense of decency is being absolutely on the spot, without falling to the level of uncaring and crudeness.

Finally, decency is being loyal to others, loyal to the most intimate experiences that you’ve shared with others, and it is having loyalty to the principle of Shambhala vision. I would like to encourage that enormously. The Shambhala
training
is just an educational system, and we are not asking for your loyalty to that, particularly. You can hold on to being a Freudian or a Jungian, or to whatever philosophy you hold. Nonetheless, you should also hold your loyalty to Shambhala vision. That loyalty is twofold. Quite simply, it is a commitment to (1) working gently with yourself and (2) being kind to others. When those two concur, there’s no alternative, no other way but to develop enlightened society. So enlightened society is quite an important part of our work and our vision. Enlightened society is pragmatic: it comes from trust, faith, and the genuine experience of reality. At the same time, it requires greater and further vision to propagate this vision to other human beings, to bring them into this society.

The next aspect of decency is being free from trickery, free from the tricks we play on ourselves or on each other to maintain our basic existence. When we’re having trouble maintaining our ground or our selves, we play all kinds of tricks. For example, you invite a potential employee to dinner so that you can seduce him or her with an offer, saying, “Look, I can offer you this great job and all this money. Please come work for me and build my ego up for me. Please do.” Trickery brings hope and fear. You’re so tempted; at the same time, you’re so afraid.