spirituality or...
“The British monarch has nothing to say. “Heaven and earth begin to join “The mind of the pauper is small because it is OK, if you say so. But... but.. might there be another way to look at this, however (I'm sorry, excuse me) Western?  Attachment and Loss - Volume 1
Feel free to take the size of those cover images as some measure of how much I value the ideas the books contain. I'd take one single copy of anything by John Bowlby over the whole back catalog of Shambhala Publications -- which will evidently publish anything as long as it panders to the lowest, most narcissistic inclinations of the Mystic Bourgeoisie.   
But moving on -- as we all must, eventually -- the following is from the book site for Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies For Modern Life by Sakyong Mipham... Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche is the head of the Shambhala Buddhist lineage, a spiritual and family lineage that descends through his family, the Mukpo clan. This tradition emphasizes the basic goodness of all beings and teaches the art of courageous warriorship based on wisdom and compassion.Anyone who attended Oxford University in the 1960s -- indeed, anytime after roughly 1933 -- ought to have known better than to bandy about the word "Aryan." Unless, of course, it wasn't mere bandying. And anyone launching something called Shambhala anything might be expected to be familiar with the historical associations. The following is from Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, who received his Ph.D. from (well, would you look at that!) Oxford University. Originally rooted in Tibetan and Mongolian mythology, the notion of hidden sacred centers in the East was first popularized to Western audiences by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, the founder of modern Theosophy. In The Secret Doctrine (1888), based on the "Stanzas of Dzyan," which she claimed to have read in a secret Himalayan lamasery, Blavatsky maintained that there existed many similar centers of esoteric learning and initiation; magnificent libraries and fabulous monasteries were supposed to lie in mountain caves and underground labyrinths in the unexplored regions of Central Asia. Notable examples of these centers were the subterranean city of Agadi, thought to lie in Babylonia, and the fair oasis of Shamballah in the Gobi Desert, where the divine instructors of the Aryan race were said to have preserved their sacred lore. Other Theosophical writers later extended these speculations. Annie Bessant and Charles Leadbeater described "Shambhalla" as a city founded circa 70,000 BC by the leader of the Aryan race on the shores of a now-vanished Gobi Sea, while Alice Bailey identified "Shamballa" as the seat of the "Lord of the World," again in the Gobi Desert, who watches over the evolution of men until all have been saved.  Alice Bailey, btw, was a rabid anti-Semite. But of course all this is beside the point. Shambhala figures in the Kalachakra Tantra, which pre-dates Madame B. by some goodly number of years. And perhaps Trungpa was just kidding with that reference to subjugation and Aryan diction. He was a great kidder. Perhaps his son is kidding, too, with this business about Ruling. Tibet was, after all, the very model of an Aryan theocracy. Who knows? Perhaps it's a whole line of kidders.
Or... perhaps it's a pathetic attempt to model a "spiritual kingdom" on outworn -- and good riddance -- British notions of monarchy and empire. While you're Ruling Your World, don't rule that one out. Related...
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posted by Christopher Locke at #
Tuesday, November 15, 2005
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