Ancient
Tibetan prophesy
and the Kingdom of Shambhala
-
an interview between Joanna Macy and Choegyal Rinpoche
-THE SHAMBHALA WARRIOR-
Joanna Macy recounts the ancient Tibetan prophesy of the coming of the Kingdom
of Shambhala. "Tell me, Choegyal Rinpoche, about the coming of the Kingdom of
Shambahla." Among the Tibetans I had been hearing referenced to this ancient
prophesy, 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 preparation 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 warrior 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."
This article is from Joanna Macy's Widening Circles Memoirs, published in the Timeline/Jan/Feb issue. Timeline is published by the Foundation of Global Community http://www.globalcommunity.org/index.shtml