Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche (1939 – 1987) was a Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher and the founder of the Shambhala community.
Trungpa packed a lot into his relatively short life. He received traditional monastic training in the Kagyu and Nyingma traditions in Tibet, and then later studied comparative religion, philosophy, and fine arts at Oxford University. In 1967, he founded the Samye Ling meditation centre in Scotland, the first Tibetan Buddhist practice centre in the West. He went on to found Vajradhatu, which evolved into the Shambhala organization.
His legacy includes Naropa University–the first Buddhist-based university in North America–Shambhala Publications, and hundreds of meditation groups and practice centers around the world.
A key element of the Shambhala path is peacemaking, as it manifests in the journey of the “Shambhala warrior.” While peacemaking and warrior-ship may seem contradictory, Trungpa’s “crazy wisdom” brought these apparent dualities together in a skillful way.
This quote comes from the book Ocean of Dharma: The Everyday Wisdom of Chogyam Trungpa. 365 Teachings on Living Life with Courage and Compassion.
For the Shambhala warrior, the actual, basic notion of victory is not so much that you have one-upped your enemy and therefore you are victorious. Rather, no enemy exists at all; therefore, there is victory. This is the idea of unconditional warriorship and unconditional victory. In connection with this, the concept of sacredness is that fearlessness is carried into everyday life situations, even brushing your teeth.
So fearlessness occurs all over the place, all the time. Fearlessness here is also unconditional. In this way, fearlessness becomes cheerful and very light. There’s no need for cowardice or fear at all, or any moments of doubt. Actually what we’re talking about is doubtlessness, we could say, rather than fearlessness. There’s no doubt. There are no second thoughts.
Everything is a complete warrior’s world. So here victory is not having to deal with an enemy at all. It is the notion of no enemy. The whole world is a friend.
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