Dear Shambhala Transition Team, Kalapa Council, and Community Friends,

We want to thank you for bravely stepping forward to help guide the community through this heart-breaking and critical transition.

As Shambhala practitioners, loyal to the Shambhala vision and sangha, we ask you to use this difficult time, when wounds are raw, to take concrete steps to re-unite our long divided-Shambhala community. To that end, we ask you to include on the Interim Board a meaningful and representative number of venerable and respected leaders who have maintained their ties and devotion to the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages – people like the Dorje Loppon, Judy Lief, Larry Mermelstein, and other excellent teachers. This would go far in mending the division in the sangha that Shambhala can simply not afford right now if it is to survive, heal and thrive again.

For us, the heartbreak started many years ago when ties to the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages – our roots and heritage from the Vidyadhara – were abandoned. Since that time, we have seen our sangha grievously divided.

We feel it is essential to address not only the painful issues of the last month, but also this deep pain many of us have felt for a long time. Neither old nor fresh wounds can be fixed overnight. But a firm resolve to embrace our wider Shambhala community, to be fully inclusive, and to use this critical moment to broaden the Interim Board to reflect that aspiration would greatly help bring us all back together.