Earth, Water, Fire and All the Elements
SMCD has been around since the 1970s. Because Chögyam Trungpa essentially created our community and was himself a vajrayana master, the Shambhala community has always had a flavor of his training — this is to say a “vajra” flavor. During the last several years, vajrayana practice at our center has languished a bit, but may be on its way back. SMCD is presenting a class on Mr. Trungpa’s seminal Sadhana of Mahamudra, offered by Shambhala Online and taught by John Rockwell, one of the most experienced teachers in the Shambhala community. This makes the hearts of the Denver vajrayana sangha happy and invigorated. It indicates we are regaining something that changed during the last several years, when the whole community realigned with the formal stepping back of its guru Sakyong Mipham, Chögyam Trungpa’s son. Both of these Rinpoches remain beloved, albeit controversial figures. I believe history will look on both as pioneers of American Buddhism.
The course takes it’s title from the language of the Sadhana of Mahamudra — with the subtitle of Reading the Sadhana of Mahamudra as if for the First Time. As Mr. Rockwell says during the first segment of his class, while the Shambhala community has reconfigured the role of the guru over the last several years, its heart remains. This is because so many of the longer-term students were vajrayana practitioners, and they continue to influence the worldwide mandala and perpetuate the “flavor” of that original imprint. One could say that the “heart of Shambhala” is a vajrayana heart.
This might seem cliquish, even often off-putting to people simply interested in learning to meditate. But the style of meditation practiced in Shambhala is typical of what is called “Mahamudra,” a very open and accepting style of shamatha or mindfulness meditation which literally means “peaceful abiding.” The word “abiding” is interesting in English — somewhere between “being,” “resting,” “enduring” and “patiently enduring.” It is a subtle difference, or flavor, of openness and receptivity, a basic acceptance of reality. In the Kagyu school or sect of Tibetan Buddhism, mahamudra shamatha is regarded as among the higher forms of practice, allowing the practitioner to “cut through” what is extraneous in experience and learn to identify that part of the mind’s flow which liberates the practitioner from suffering. It takes a great deal of practice, but the full power of the basic practice is offered to students of Shambhala from the very first. It is reflected in the title of Shambhala Training Level I: The Art of Being Human. Shambala Training is a program that Mr. Trungpa developed to present the pithy heart of his training as a Kagyu monk to Western aspirants to meditation.
The text of the Sadhana of Mahamudra was articulated amidst much confusion on the part of Mr. Trungpa as to how to plant the seed of what seemed to him “authentic dharma” in the soil of Western students in the 1970s. Fifty years later, it still seems very new and fresh. It was meant to be open to all practitioners on the new and full moons, and SMCD has been presenting it again on a monthly basis. If you are interested, you may attend a recitation and practice of the Sadhana of Mahamudra at our center on May 21, in person or online. Please join us for this rich gift!
Earth, Water, Fire and All the Elements: Reading the Sadhana of Mahamudra as if for the First Time meets online April 27th-June 1st (6 Thursday evenings, 6:30-8:30 PM). More information and registration is here.
Post by Larry Seidl
