Are you a Shambala Warrior??
I am and I've only known that for a year. It happened last November during a weekend workshop based on the teachings of Joanna Macy. Joanna is an inspirational eco-philosopher who has drawn together threads of Buddhism, systems theory and deep ecology into a methodology that transmutes the energy of despair for our planet into the energy of action for change. During the weekend I heard for the first time the story of the Shambhala Warriors, an 8th Century Tibetan Buddhist prophecy as told to Joanna by Choegyal Rinpoche. Here it is.
There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. In this era, great barbarian powers have arisen. One is in the western hemisphere and one in the centre of the Eurasian land mass. Although these two powers have spent their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other, they have much in common: weapons of unfathomable destructive power, and technologies that lay waste our world. In this era, when the whole future of sentient life seems to hang by the frailest of threads, the kingdom of Shambhala begins to emerge.
You can't go there, for it is not a place, it is not a geopolitical entity. It exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors. Nor can you recognize a Shambhala warrior when you see her or him, for they wear no uniform, or insignia, and they carry no banners. They have no barricades on which to climb to threaten the enemy, or behind which they can hide to rest or regroup. They do not even have any home turf. Always they must move on the terrain of the barbarians themselves.
Now the time comes when great courage - moral and physical - is required of the Shambhala warriors, for they must go into the very heart of the barbarian power, into the pits and pockets and citadels where the weapons are kept to dismantle them. To dismantle weapons, in every sense of the word, they must go into the corridors of power where decisions are made.
The Shambhala warriors have the courage to do this because they know that these weapons are manomaya. They are "mind-made". Made by the human mind, they can be unmade by the human mind. The Shambhala warriors know the dangers that threaten life on Earth are not visited upon us by any extraterrestrial powers, satanic deities, or preordained evil fate. They arise from our own decisions, our own lifestyles, and our own relationships.
So in this time, the Shambhala warriors go into training. They train in the use of two weapons. The weapons are compassion and insight. Both are necessary. You have to have compassion because it gives you the juice, the power, the passion to move. When you open to the pain of the world you move, you act. But that weapon by itself is not enough. It can burn you out, so you need the other - you need insight into the radical interdependence of all phenomena. With that wisdom you know that it is not a battle between good guys and bad guys, but that the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart. With insight into our profound interrelatedness, you know that actions undertaken with pure intent have repercussions throughout the web of life, beyond what you can measure or discern. By itself, that insight may appear too cool, too conceptual, to sustain you and keep you moving, so you need the heat of the compassion. Together within each Shambhala warrior and among the warriors themselves, these two can sustain us as agents of wholesome change. They are gifts for us to claim now in the healing of our world.
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