Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Shambhala Day Address
Year of the Wood Monkey

Feb 21, 2004
Recorded in retreat, Scotland

Good morning, everybody. I would like to wish everybody a very cheerful Shambhala Day. I feel very good to be able express my new year's wishes from retreat, especially knowing that the mandala is in good hands. We have Mr. Reoch and many other capable people who are now leading the endeavors and affairs of the sangha. Being in retreat is timely for me, and I feel good about being here, because I am able to practice, study, and do some writing. It seems like a good period, and even though we have a tradition of my speaking to you in person, the idea was that this year the celebration could be led by the sangha leadership, and it would be a sangha event.

Although I am obviously thinking about everybody, this is really the opportunity for the sangha to come together and appreciate each other. This is the core message for us, especially after the Shambhala Congress, where people gathered to express their feelings and concerns, as well as appeciation for the mandala-where it is now, and what needs to happen in the future. It was extremely good for that event to occur, especially with Mr. Reoch in the leadership position. It is seems to symbolize that the people in the community-all of you-really need to come forward. Obviously many of you already have, but I really feel like the next stage is for even more of you to do so. Even though I am continually in a position of leadership myself, I feel that I can best be a leader by making sure that other people come forward.

So this is really a time of sangha, of community. In terms of what we are as a community, as practitioners of Shambhala buddhadharma , and how we can help the world, I think that one of the important elements is that we can be inspiring to others. Obviously, we have many inspiring teachers. But what might be most effective is if individuals in the community can get together and live cohesively and enjoy each other's company. Obviously, the world is getting smaller. Shambhala vision is how we can work together. The community should have a sense of pride about being who we are. We should be able not only to get along, but also to be able to flourish. The Congress was actually a sign, a good omen in terms of the future, that we are able to come together, that we are not all secretly trying to plan our escape. Rather, we are secretly trying to figure out how we can help each other more.

The Tibetan word for sangha, gendun, means "those who are engaged in virtue." At the basis, virtue really means always being concerned about others. A community is people who are engaged in virtue together. That's interesting, because according to the principles of Shambhala, what is windhorse? It is having success, the ability to do what we want with our life. It is to accomplish what we want with our life. What is the best way to do this? Always thinking about others. In fact, it is said that if we can accomplish the welfare of others, our own wishes are immediately or simultaneously accomplished.

We often go about our lives in a convoluted way where we feel like trying to get things for ourselves is how to get what we want. But the teachings of Shambhala and of buddhadharma are saying that the best way to actually get what you want is to have others in mind. That is the notion of virtue-being generous, being patient, helping others, thinking well of others, saying good things. It doesn't matter that this is a difficult time in which to do this; in fact, it is more important to do this kind of practice in a difficult time. I feel like virtue should be the core of who we are as a community-not in terms of being uptight or prudish or overly moralistic, but in a most basic way. According to the laws of karma, nobody actually gets what they want by thinking about themselves. That is just against the basic laws of karma.

If we are intelligent, we get up in the morning with a proper motivation, a proper approach. What is it that we first think of in the morning? Are we immediately concerned about what we want to get done, and then about how are we going about that? If our first thought is about ourselves in that particular way, then according to the teachings, it's guaranteed not to work. If we believe the teachings about cause and effect and conditions, then we know that we get what we want by contemplating others. If we think about others, we don't even have to think about what we want to get done; it will happen simultaneously, it will happen auspiciously. In the tradition of dharma, that's what we mean by "auspicious."

I think it is an interesting time for us in that way. Engaging in practice and study myself, as I meet people and look around, I think that this is a very simple way of looking at life. Sometimes we don't pay enough attention to these very simple things. We can detect that we're not paying attention by our windhorse getting weaker. Many times when I talk to people, I can tell that their windhorse is weakened. Essentially, they have gone around leading their life in a backwards way. As they engage in life more, they accumulate more and more obstacles, and have a harder time raising windhorse and doing what they want.

When we do a lhasang to bring down the magic energy of enlightenment and drala, the smoke of the lhasang is said to purify those obstacles that are actually on us. It gets into our pores and allows us to have a fresh start. A lhasang is considered to be very important, because it immediately raises our windhorse. It connects us with the dralas, the enlightened beings. It is said that how we lead our life affects our personal drala. We can weaken our personal drala, or we can increase our personal drala, purely by how we lead our life. At the core of how we lead our life is having the proper approach-the right attitude and motivation, view, or direction. If we get up out of bed and we are confused about what we are doing, then our life is going to unfold in that way.

For this particular year, I am hoping that people can find time to practice together as a group. The time I am recommending is the fourth lunar month, which would be roughly around June this year.* That would be a good time-it is considered to be an auspicious month. It could be a time for sangha to practice together and try to help each other in a very basic way, just orienting and supporting ourselves. We are all going through life, and we all have our difficulties, but we can gather windhorse as a group and individually.

There are different practices that we could do. Obviously, one of the most basic and powerful ones is just taming our mind, having our mind walking with us. There is also bodhicitta practice, and in addition, people have their own personal practices. One of the ways we can orient ourselves is to contemplate basic goodness, and I am hoping that we can do a basic goodness practice. I'm calling this "the four sessions of basic goodness." We can do it together on a particular day. I am hoping it would happen four times in that month, maybe once a week-whatever is convenient for the various centers and people's schedules. People can get together for a morning or all day, depending on their schedules. The important thing is that people make the effort to be together, even though we also have our own personal practice.

The four sessions of basic goodness could start by people getting together and doing a little sitting. Then maybe they could do a little purification of the body by doing some shamatha yoga. A lhasang practice might also be good, because I think whenever we feel low, energy-wise, our mind is full of doubt about our own enlightenment, our possibilities. If we have that kind of mind, we are not going to be successful, we are not going to be able to do what we want, so we have to raise our energy. The dharma has told us that our energy has to do with our mind and attitude, so that has to be purified.

If we are not clear about what we are doing, we are probably going to go out and engage in life becoming more and more obscured. In Tibetan, this notion of contamination is called drip. It's a sense that wherever you go, you just make yourself heavier and thicker, with less and less inspiration to do anything, let alone practice. Drip is just a natural unfolding of karma. You get into negativity and the result is negativity. If you get into positive situations, you begin to think about positive situations unfolding in the future.

So the first part of this practice would be to do the lhasang and then to sit down when we are saying, "KI KI SO SO ASHE LHA GYEL LO," and to use that as a mantra. Everybody sits down and begins to contemplate, and the first thing to contemplate is the Tiger and the principle of discernment, what we call payu in Tibetan. Payu has a quality of contemplating and thinking about what your action is going to be. It is very important that we have this level of discernment. Tiger has this quality of meekness, because they are totally aware of karma, they are totally aware of who they are. They also know how to make a decision. I think many times we just are not able to make decisions or stay with decisions. Many times we are simply too casual about what we are deciding to do. So payu is the notion of contemplating what we are going to do.

Life is happening presently. Ideally speaking, we should be seeing life as a magical experience. Every moment is a precious moment. Every decision we make has repercussions in the future. So payu is not being overly paranoid; it is just being careful, aware of what is going on, and deciding what we are going to do based on that. We can really break that down into body, speech, and mind. Is our mind full of jealousy? Is our mind full of wanting things? We can just observe ourselves; notice those times when somebody else has something, and we want it. We are coveting what they have. If we are caught in aggression, if we are caught in jealousy, we can look at ourselves and see that this behavior is not going to work out to well for us. So we just contemplate it. The result of contemplation is that it finally begins to occur to us, "What is it that I want to do? What would be the right decision? I have the opportunity right now, what am I going to do? If I make certain decisions, I will get certain outcomes. That is the law of karma."

Karma is the basic flow of nature, so-not to be too heavy-I think we need to really consider our actions, because we get into a lot of entanglement when we do not have this ability to be discerning, knowing what to do. We bumble into things and hope they work out. Dharma and the Shambhala teachings are saying that the first quality is Tiger-that quality of mindfulness, is meekness, not being overly arrogant. We are entering into that kind of practice where we are orienting ourselves.

So we begin to relax and contemplate, saying, "KI KI SO SO," very softly to ourselves. The notion of "KI KI SO SO" is that we are raising our windhorse. How is it that we are able to accomplish what we want? How is it that we have confidence? We have confidence when we know what the right thing to do is. If we know what the right thing to do is, the more confident we feel, and the more inspiration, the more exertion, and the more ability we have to stay with it. This comes from that element of being Tiger, being very sure of ourselves, knowing what to do. This is inner strength, inner peace. We have enough calmness of mind to reflect on our life. We are not so speedy that we cannot even reflect about what we want to do.

What unfolds from here naturally is the next session of basic goodness, which is the Lion. This has the quality of finally coming to a decision. We know what we want to do. We want to do the virtuous thing. We realize that the way to make a decision is to consider, "How is it beneficial for others? If I am going to say something, is it going to help them? Or am I just going to say something snide, or something aggressive? And what kind of good is that going to do?" If we decide that we are going to say something aggressive or that we are going to gossip, the reality is that the gossip and aggression is just going to come back at us; people are going to be talking about us in that particular way. It is just a cycle; this is the moment where we decide what to do.

This is being like a Lion. The Lion is high on the mountain. The notion of height is a sense of joy. It feels good to know that one is doing the right thing, so there is a sense of levity. In Tibetan, we always talk about the snow lion being in the mountain meadows. There is a sense that we are leading our life and it feels good. We just feel lighter altogether. If we are leading our life and we don't know what we are doing and we are confused, it is probably an indication that we are not leading a life according to these principles. We are leading a non-virtuous life in which we are contemplating our own selves and our own desires In reality, it is not working out for us. Now we feel a levity or lightness or release from that. That brings us to the next session, which is Garuda, outrageous.

There could be a gong between sessions, just to indicate that we've moved on to the next one. Each session is orienting our minds, so we feel inspired and more confidence.

The Garuda is outrageous, because the Garuda has gone beyond the conventional way of doing things, which is to be totally fixated, totally attached. It is outrageous. The most outrageous thing you could do in this world is to have wisdom-prajna-and to have contentment. The Garuda is wise and therefore is able to go expand in all areas. There is nothing that Garuda does not know. The principle of Garuda, which is in all of us, can understand reality, understand emptiness, understand the notion of selflessness. Most of us tend not to have contentment. If we do not have contentment, satisfaction, we will never be happy.

No matter how much money we make or how much food we eat, at some point we just have to be content. Being content allows us joy in our life. When we have desire, wanting just a little more, we have hope and fear. We are always wanting something-our mind is perpetually wanting, wanting, wanting. At night we can't sleep, hoping it will work out, and fearing that it won't. That is lack of contentment, that is lack of Garuda principle, lack of prajna.

There is a very famous quote by Tilopa, who was talking to Naropa, saying something like, "It's not the appearances that are the problem. It is not the world out there that is causing suffering. It's our attachment, our holding on. It is the mind, the mind holding on." It is not the ice cream saying, "Come and get me," it is the mind wanting it. So we really have to consider contemplation and meditation. We have to begin to let go. We are going to have to let go by really digging deep and looking at the nature of things.

Obviously, people are at different levels of practice and study. True freedom, true liberation, is going to come from egolessness, selflessness. Contemplating that, we realize that if we are always going to be holding on, then we will always get suffering, we will always be discontent, we will always have anxiety. So the quality of Garuda is be outrageous, and the best way to do this is be content, to be happy with what we have. Without contentment, we can be the wealthiest person in the world, the one with the most things, the one with the most success, and there will always be something else we want. Outrageous is the sense of appreciating what we have.

Finally, we come to the Dragon. Dragon is the complete sense of inscrutability, the Great Eastern Sun. We are fundamentally the Rigden, we are fundamentally enlightened, we are fundamentally awake. We can sit here and just have confidence in that. That is the final stage of realizing our true basic goodness. We radiate a sense of warmth from our heart. We visualize the sun in our heart radiating out, saying that we are here, that we are leading a good life, that we are trying to help others. It is relaxed; we are not particularly uptight about this whole thing. It is just basic reality. All the great teachers have been telling us that we are fundamentally enlightened, so we should rest and contemplate that, contemplate the fortune of having that.

At the end of the month of practice we could do a dedication for the centers. It could be a social or some kind of event like that. During this time, people can still do other practices if they wish. The point of practicing as a group is we are orienting ourselves. If we enter the world in this way, we have a sense of who we are, an orientation in our life. I think that the power lies in having certain times of the year when the sangha practices together, when we do things together. There are many activities and we have many projects happening, but the fundamental ongoing project is for all of us to build our community and show that we can live in a decent way. The principle is that enlightened society is at least people trying to bring out the goodness.

Obviously, we are faulted in many ways. We do all kinds of things, but that should not deter us. We should help each other and bring out the basic goodness in all of us. The four sessions of basic goodness is a very basic confidence-raising practice-that's how I like to think about it. We sit down and then all of a sudden, with this kind of attitude, we feel like we can accomplish anything. So hopefully that can happen. Even though people may not be able to do it as a group all the time, you can try it at home-having a lhasang, a bit of sitting, and contemplating these various aspects of who we are. It's a way of increasing our group energy, and a good way of entering into the new year, fundamentally reflecting and contemplating.

This is something I am trying to do even here in retreat, contemplating, "What is the purpose of my life? How much time do all of us have? How can we utilize it?" I'm thinking about how to balance. We shouldn't be too extreme, being completely lazy and not doing anything, or-on the other hand-being fanatical about everything. But we do need to have a level of exertion and a level of discipline. I myself know and I think many of you know, that if we engage in a little bit of discipline and exertion, what comes out is joy. So I hope this is not too much for this morning.

Certainly, as you can tell, I have been thinking about everybody. I know that many things are going on, and I will see some of you at the various teachings that I will be doing this next year. But I feel good that I am able to mix teaching with practice and study, and I also feel good that the community has come together in terms of trying to figure out how we are going to move forward. One thing that came out of the Congress is that it is really important for all of us to feel like we are working on this together, and that there is a master plan, which is that we will all attain complete perfect enlightenment. Meanwhile, we should at least get along and have good lives. I don't think we have to be completely alienated from each other; we can incorporate a sense of working in our world with the dharmic view.

Again, I would like to wish everybody well. I would like to express my appreciation for the leadership-Mr. Reoch, Mr. Lief, members of the Board and the Council of the Makkyi Rabjam, the Dorje Kasung, center directors, and everybody else-and obviously the practitioners who are engaged in this thing called life. I hope we will be able to meet again and again. So many warm greetings from a very warm Scotland, and I hope to see everybody soon. Please have a good feast and celebration today. May many, many auspiciousnesses occur. So be well, and tashi delek. Thank you.

*According to the Tibetan calendar, the fourth month occurs this year from May 20- June 17, 2004