"Tell me,
Choegyal Rinpoche, about the coming of the Kingdom of
Shambhala."
Among
the Tibetans I had been hearing references to this
ancient prophecy, and conjectures that, after twelve
centuries, it was coming true in our time. "Can
you please tell me in your own words?" I asked.
And slowly, with pauses to reflect, he did. Watching
his face, I listened to every word. I was arrested by
his description of the Shambhala warrior, for this
was clearly a metaphor for the bodhisattva - the hero
figure that had so caught my attention in my studies
of Mahayana Buddhism. Later in my room by the gully,
I wrote down what he said.
"There
comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger.
Barbarian powers have arisen. Although they waste
their wealth in preparations to annihilate each
other, they have much in common: weapons of
unfathomable devastation and technologies that lay
waste the world. It is now, when the future of all
beings hangs by the frailest of threads, that the
kingdom of Shambhala emerges.
"You
cannot go there, for it is not a place. It exists in
the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors. But
you cannot recognize a Shambhala warrior by sight,
for there is no uniform or insignia, there are no
banners. And there are no barricades from which to
threaten the enemy, for the Shambhala warriors have
no land of their own. Always they move on the terrain
of the barbarians themselves.
"Now
comes the time when great courage is required of the
Shambhala warriors, moral and physical courage. For
they must go into the very heart of the barbarian
power and dismantle the weapons. To remove these
weapons, in every sense of the word, they must go
into the corridors of power where the decisions are
made.
"The
Shambhala warriors know they can do this because the
weapons are manomaya, mind-made. This is very
important to remember, Joanna. These weapons are made
by the human mind. So they can be unmade by the human
mind! The Shambhala warriors know that the dangers
that threaten life on Earth do not come from evil
deities or extraterrestrial powers. They arise from
our own choices and relationships. So, now, the
Shambhala warriors must go into training.
"How
do they train?" I asked.
"They
train in the use of two weapons." That is the
word he used - weapons.
"What
are they?" I asked. And he held up his hands the
way the lamas hold the ritual objects of dorje and
bell, as they dance.
"The
weapons are compassion and insight. Both are
necessary. We need this first one," he said,
lifting his right hand, "because it provides us
the fuel, it moves us out to act on behalf of other
beings. But by itself it can burn us out. So we need
the second as well, which is insight into the
dependent co-arising of all things. It lets us see
that the battle is not between good people and bad
people, for the line between good and evil runs
through every human heart. We realize that we are
interconnected, as in a web, and that each act with
pure motivation affects the entire web, bringing
consequences we cannot measure or even see.
"But
insight alone," he said, "can seem too cool
to keep us going. So we need as well the heat of
compassion, our openness to the world's pain. Both
weapons or tools are necessary to the Shambhala
warrior."
from Joanna
Macy's memoir Widening Circles. Reprinted with
permission from New Society Publishers.
This piece was also printed in HopeDance Issue #26,
Working With Conflict
