The Kingdom of Shambhala
This is a version of the story Joanna (Macy) was told by her teacher. It has been passed down from generation to generation for twelve thousand years at least. Many people, myself included, believe that this is the time to which the prophesy of the Kingdom of Shambhala refers.
There will come a time when all life on Earth is in danger. Great Barbarian forces have arisen. Although these powers spend their wealth in preparations to annihilate one another, in reality they have a great deal in common – weapons of unfathomable destructive power and technologies that lay waste to the world. And at this time when all sentient life hangs by a single thread, the Kingdom of Shambhala will emerge.
But you cannot go there, for it is not a place – the Kingdom of Shambhala exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala Warriors. And you cannot tell a Shambhala Warrior by looking at them for they have no uniforms, wear no insignia, carry no banners. They have no barricades on which to climb to threaten the enemy or to hide behind or launch missiles from. S W have no home turf, but must move always on the terrain of the barbarians themselves.
The time comes when great courage, moral and physical courage – is required from Shambhala Warriors, for they must go into the very heart of the barbarian powers, into the places where the weapons are kept, to dismantle them. To dismantle these weapons they must go into the corridors of power where decisions are made.
And how can have such courage? The Shambhala warriors have the courage to do this because they know that the weapons are manomaya, mind-made. Made by the human mind they can be unmade by the human mind. Shambhala Warriors know that the dangers that threaten life on Earth are not visited upon us by extra-terrestrial forces, or satanic deities or pre-ordained evil fate. The dangers that threaten our very existence arise out of our own decisions, our lifestyles, our relationships.
So how are Shambhala Warriors to prepare for this great task? Shambhala warriors are trained in the use of two weapons – insight and compassion. Both are necessary. You need compassion for it gives you the juice, the power the passion, to move. It calls us forth, it enables us to respond to the needs of the world without concern for ourselves – but compassion has heat, with too much compassion we can burn out so we need to coolness that insight brings. Insight allows us to see the radical interconnectedness of all things. Through insight we can see that there are no enemies, it gives us the wisdom to see that there are no ‘bad guys’ or ‘good guys’. In seeing how all things are interconnected, we see that in truth the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart. With insight we know that actions taken with pure intent resonate throughout the web of life, beyond what we can measure or discern. But of itself, insight can be too cool, too conceptual to sustain us and keep us moving, so we need the heat of compassion. Together these two can sustain us as agents of effective change. These are the gifts passed down to us from generation to generation that we can claim now in the healing of our world.