Warrior of Shambhala
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. This seems to be the final
session of our course, and I would like to present a general idea
of the whole concept of the warrior of Shambhala that we’ve been
discussing and studying. At the same time it’s maybe hard to
experience the genuine heart of the warrior. Tonight’s talk is
related with the idea that when you go home, you can carry
something along with you and you can practice constantly, so this
particular study here in Boulder does not purely become a day in
your practice, but you have something to relate with the rest of
your life.
The topic tonight is the notion of fearlessness. At the same
time, in order to experience fearlessness, there is a need to
experience fear. The notion of fear is manifested on several
levels, sometimes in the form of uncertainty, and sometimes in the
form of laziness, and sometimes in the form of unnecessary
nostalgia. When we talk about unnecessary nostalgia that is to say
that people begin to feel their early days, the so-called ‘good old
days’ when they had tremendous neurosis, they had great fun and
wish they could crank that up again. And sometimes we do so. All of
those things come from the notion of wanting to re-enter into the
mother’s womb and hide there, forever. Wishing that you never had
to be born; hide in the mother’s womb, or hide in a cocoon – so you
never want to come out as silk. Hide in your egg, so you never have
to hatch and grow wings. We have that tendency all along, which is
called the coward attitude. You prefer to wear a t-shirt with your
body odor rather than wearing a clean garment, because having a
t-shirt with body odor is much more homey.
Cowardliness here means that you would like to perpetuate your
family heritage, either in the form of laziness, resistance, and
doubt, whatever. But the whole thing boils down to cowardliness
allowing us to recreate our own basic pattern, so you don’t have to
constantly jump out into fresh air or fresh ground at all. Then we
can still maintain, resist and learn to love our armpit smell and
our own excrement as a homey gesture, that you have a very intense
and a very familiar home. From the world of a coward, such a thing
as ‘spring cleaning’ has never been known.
Partly regarded as family heirloom because of your inheritance,
and partly regarded as too much work to clean up the whole thing,
you don’t want to do that. It’s too much hassle, or problem. You
might even say it costs more money to clean everything and you
don’t want to let go of your ‘good-bad, bad-good’ memory.
There is something else connected to coward situation that we
have discussed before in connection with the setting sun concept.
From the setting sun level, boredom should be avoided.
Entertainment should be promoted. Death should not be voiced. So
everybody is trying to live a basic life where death is unknown.
From the vision of the setting sun perspective there was a period
in history where everybody is looking for the potion of longevity.
Supposedly there’s no such thing at all. If there were such a
thing, suppose you would have to put up with this world for a
thousand years without dying, which would be absolutely terribly
deadly. Long before you get to your thousandth birthday you would
probably commit suicide already.
The notion of coward concept, or setting sun concept in this
case, which is saying the same thing, is not experiencing enough
reality of one’s own fear. That’s what it actually boils down to –
one’s own fear. Fear has intellectual fear, and psychological fear,
and abrupt fear of all kinds takes place. Intellectual fear is in
terms of logic that we can’t last very long, so therefore we are
afraid altogether, totally petrified basically. Psychological fear
is that we can’t handle our world for that long. There’s a fear
that one day we’re going to stop somewhere. Abrupt fear is that
panic. New situations happen in our lives suddenly and we feel we
can’t handle it. There is a jump, a twitch, happening all the time,
a sense of restlessness. You begin to do doodles on your note pad,
you begin to check your knees and arms, afraid of dying on the
spot. You have to crank it up all the time like a running engine in
the motor car, the pistons going up and down all the time. As long
as the pistons in your engine are going up and down you feel safe.
That kind of fear has to be acknowledged to begin with.
We have to realize and reconcile with that kind of fear.
Although categories of fear, which probably I haven’t covered all
of them, but roughly just pure headlines. There are lots of
categories of fear – how we chew our nails, the way we move, the
way we talk, the way we look, the way we conduct ourselves, the way
we walk, when we begin to put our hand in our pocket unnecessarily.
We want to find something about our fear in the form of
restlessness. There is tremendous anxiety. General anxiety happens
constantly – fear. Sometimes you might say “I’m not afraid of
anything. I’m not fearful.” True, but why do you even have to say
that? Ladies and gentlemen, we must face that there’s some kind of
fear lurking behind the whole thing, always, in every thing we
do.
But it’s not as bad as that. On the other hand, because you
possess such fear, therefore it is possible you are entitled to
experience fearlessness, which is not a reduction of fear,
particularly, but beyond fear. Unfortunately in the English
language we do not have that kind of term. ‘Fearlessness’ is the
closest we can find. ‘Less’ does not necessarily mean less of fear,
but beyond fear, absence of fear; beyond fear.
When we begin to flip to the other side of the coin of that
particular fear – your anxiousness, anxiety, nervousness, concerns,
restlessness and so forth – if you flipped back even toward the
possibilities of basic goodness, Great Eastern Sun possibilities,
the first thing we find is very sad, some kind of sadness, opposed
to nervousness. Nervousness is cranking up, vibrating all along.
Sadness is calm and sad, and maybe slightly soothing, but not
necessarily so, but just sad. It sort of hits behind the back of
our head and your body begins to produce a tear. Before you cry,
you know there’s that back of head feeling and then after that you
begin to produce tears in your eyes – that kind of ozone concept.
Negative ions begin to come to your head, so you’re about to
produce rain or waterfall in your eyes. That kind of ozone concept
is sad and lonely, and romantic maybe at the same time. It’s the
first step of fearlessness.
You don’t feel that’s so great and fantastic particularly. You
might think that when we talk about you experiencing fearlessness
you will think or expect there will be a ‘ta ta ta dum’ of some
kind, or just becoming a big shot. It doesn’t happen that way.
Human condition has to work with soft - very softness brings very
harshness to an end at the same time in the warrior principle.
So first there’s the birth of the warrior, like the analogy of
an antelope, reindeer. When they are young they grow horns that are
very soft and almost rubbery, growing little hairs on it. It’s not
necessarily a horn as such, it’s just a floppy thing that grows
with blood inside. And then as they age they grow stronger horns
with ten points or four points or forty points. They begin to
develop antelope horns. That’s the idea. At the beginning it’s very
rubbery horn – it looks like a horn but doesn’t quite fight with
it. That’s the kind of sadness we are talking about – the floppy,
rubbery horns of antelopes concept. That’s an interesting
point.
So there’s some kind of sadness. That particular kind of sadness
is also connected with the heartfelt sadness, it touches your heart
so much, and therefore it tickles your heart quite painfully. It’s
a question of uncertainty, how to feel that kind of fearlessness on
a very simple level. When that begins to evolve further, we begin
to realize that particular sadness and tenderness – tremendous
tenderness. This makes the basic idea that a warrior should be
tender and decent.
That decency and tenderness begins to evolve further and we
begin to appreciate our world around us – sense perceptions, sight,
smell, hearing, visual, smelling, and audible things begin to
become very interesting. Because you are so tender already, you
cannot help looking at the tenderness that takes place around us.
We talked about that before in one of the previous talks. When you
see red, green, yellow, white, black – we respond to that from the
bottom of our heart, even visually. We begin to hear notes – high
and low notes. We begin to feel temperatures that way; we begin to
respond, which is the beginning level of tenderness developing into
warriorship principle.
Your antelope horns now begin to have little hairs growing on it
and its hairs fall out and begins to create ‘horn concept’, begins
to become real horn. You’re about to develop real, good horn.
Beyond that, tenderness, softness, and sadness begin to make sense.
The tenderness begins to become notion of reasonability, or
decency. Softness begins to become passionate. And the rest of it
begins to develop some sense that you are willing to tell the truth
all along.
So as we go on, the situation begins to become very real at this
point, quite real. And on the other hand it may be quite ordinary.
You might say that you have heard this before. But interestingly
you haven’t heard it before this way, with some kind of twist. Fear
begins to evolve as fearlessness naturally, very simply; quite
straightforward. Warrior concept has begun to happen.
The ideal warrior should be very sad, and very tender. And
because of that, the warrior could be very brave as well. Because
of sadness and softness, therefore warrior can be brave. If warrior
doesn’t have any heart, it would be like a porcelain cup, having no
blood in it. If you drop it, it breaks, it chips off. The warrior’s
concept of existence is like lacquer work, where the wood inside
and the lacquer work outside, it bounces when it drops, which is
traditional utensils that are used in traditional warrior cultures
– lacquer work. Even from a technological point of view, this
relates to the actual physical and psychological situation of a
warrior. When it drops, it bounces, it doesn’t crack right away. It
preserves its own lacquer work, its designs and everything. It’s
soft and hard at the same time, which is an interesting concept of
utensil approach, or even furniture approach.
Summarizing the discussion of the previous weeks, we’re trying
to point out the journey that we’ve made in terms of even studying,
that could become very natural and ordinary, as long as you could
be decent in your lifestyle situation when you go home. We always
recommend having a good household –clean home, but not too clean;
good living, but not too good living. Moderations of that kind are
dictated by the situation of your psychological state of being,
whether you can actually relate with the genuineness of it.
Sometimes a genuine situation has to be controlled by
experiencing some reference point. How much are you going to make
the whole thing into a custom-made Shambhala vision? You have a
brown suit, beige ties, maroon socks, and beige suede shoes. If you
begin to match everything, an ideal prescription, there’s something
very suspicious about that whole thing. You should have some
situations where you can actually push off a little bit more, so
that everything’s not matched from the prescription, but there is
some area of your own expressions could come through.
Ideal set-up of whole thing, ideal prescription, does not work.
That’s what went wrong in the past when everybody who had some kind
of vision had prescribed a ‘trip’ to the world, and they had
everything worked out in minute details – “this and that, that and
this”. There’s no room. To make a double stitch instead of a single
stitch is never allowed. And then we create the problem of
Christian ethic, Catholic ethic, Judaic ethic, Hindu ethic,
Japanese ethic – that you are not allowed to make a mistake. In
this case in Shambhala vision you are allowed to make a mistake of
‘three stitches.’ Then you probably learn on the fourth stitch that
you made a mistake, and you can come back and you relieve your
threads and try it with a first stitch once more. So we have room.
Nobody is condemned because of basic goodness; everybody is
trusted. You can do so all along. Take pride in yourselves, and
share it with everybody. That seems to be the basic point.
I think at this point we have to close, sadly tonight and the
rest of the Institute that has been taking place this summer, which
I appreciate very much. I hope all of you will come back and work
with us. Your participation has been very helpful. Particularly
that a lot of you had also the first session and second session put
together, which makes perfect sense of Dharma and world put
together, of enlightened society combined together. That is
wonderful. Please take it back home, and don’t forget to practice.
I appreciate you very much.
Please come back. Cheer up. A lot of sense of humor is needed.
It’s very sad that we are not going to see this kind of situation
for at least one year. Next year obviously something will continue,
but idea is that our main concern of Naropa Institute altogether is
to have intellect and intuition put together. Therefore we do not
pollute the world. Our concern is pollution; very much intellectual
pollution, study pollution, psychological pollution. We’ve been
working on that with every department of the Institute. And we have
achieved somewhat good success with this, but we have to work much
further, with your help. Our Institute should not become a garbage
piece, but should become the cleanser. Maybe that might mean a lot
of diarrheas to flush down, lots of showers to flush above, and all
sorts of things like that. But we take pride in that kind of
situation. We are willing to do that. And I don’t think that will
particularly increase our water bill, but we can do so even if it’s
expensive. We can come up with our own good water.
I thank you everybody for being so good, and genuine and decent.
And please don’t forget, this is not your dream, that you dreamt
Naropa Institute. You went here, and one summer you woke up the
next day. This is reality. On the other hand, this could be
regarded as a nightmare. Maybe nightmares make more sense to people
because they stick in their minds much more so. But it is a very
genuine and gentle nightmare, which has never been heard of in
history of the past. Nightmares are regarded as bad, but this is a
good nightmare. Please come back with us, with a good sense of
humor. Thank you very much.