Letter to Shambhala Transition Team

This is another challenge for us. We have made it through many in the past. But sometimes just to "make it through" is not enough. These are good suggestions for going further, especially bringing back Kagyu and Nyingma teachers to KCL and other places. It would do my heart good. Victoria Schafer

This sounds sarcastic.

SMR sowed the seeds of his own undoing when he decided to surgically excise our heritage of Kagyu-Nyingma teachings and marginalize his senior students. I've never understood the reasoning for this choice, but a more cynical person than I might say that it was an effort to protect his brand and cordon off teachers from outside SI who might cause his own students to exercise their curiosity and investigate Buddhadharma. As it is, I don't sense much of that curiosity among new meditators at my local center, which is everyone's loss.

I took refuge with the Vidyadhara and went to seminary in 1982. Since that time I have been a student of Khabje Dodrup Chen Rinpoche, Khanpo Thupten Rinpoche and Tulku Thondup but have watched as traditions were lost in the Shambhala world. It would be nice if this precious community and resource could be healed and become what it was meant to be.

Anonymous -- you remind me of that character on Hawaii 5-O who has a basement of conspiracy theories... Let's chill here and unite again Shambhala Terma and Buddhist teachings and any other truth (reality) which has nothing to do with any ism.

Hey everybody!

Please reach out to Reggie Ray. As well as, please find a way to unite senior practitioners into the forthcoming-decision-making council; for they are the key to unlocking the Vidyadhara's intent.

Bravo! And furthermore, let’s have our great living Nyngma and Kagu teachers in for teachings once again.

SMR is guilty of "Religious Misconduct" ;-)

Here here! Couldn't have said it better!

I don't support this. Why? Because I suddenly realized years ago that it's actually really great that SMR has marginalized VCTR and does not teach VCTR's dharma, and it's great that SMR does not promote or do Kagyu or Nyingma practices, and it's great that SMR only teaches his own stuff and has created his own practices and religion ("Sham Buddhism"). SMR and his "dharma" and practices should be judged solely on fact that it's all coming from SMR and it's NOT associated in any way with VCTR's teachings or Kagyu or Nyingma dharma. Hooray!

aka Tenzin Yongdu

Please, please, heal the schism and welcome back those of us who have the Vidyadhara as our teacher. Thank you.

I fully support this petition, in particular the reinvigoration of the Kagyu-Nyingma Path given to us by VCTR.

I was in the middle of my levels for Shambhala Training when the change started. The levels changed names, I had to repeat one because it had been completely replaced by the new version. It was the first twinge that something was going odd. I was on that train to the Kingdom of Shambhala, but wound up in some other place--without the price of admission. Imagine getting on a train going to the city where your parents and friends and guru are all waiting for you. You are working hard, studying, longing to be a full contributing member to the family that raised you. But mysteriously the train arrives in a different city. Your parents aren't there, your friends aren't there, so many people you remember and love: just gone. There are still some friends, but now they are standing behind a desk, trying to sell you books about how great this new city is. There are a couple of the elders in this new city, but one day they invite you into a room and ask for regular contributions of money you don't have. You have to explain, shamefully, that you can't find work and that, no, you have trouble even paying the student fees for Shambhala Training. You go to the big events at the land centers you grew up on, where you learned the most important lessons in your childhood, but something is wrong, somehow. The people are very nice people, but any hard questions about these teachings are deflected into murky metaphysical corners. The contradictions become impossible to ignore. You get fed up with the thin veneers, the fundamental lack of substance. You can remember real MAGIC just ten years before! You're told you must renounce all other teachers if you are to remain. You grab a couple of the last books written by your guru, and simply walk out of the tori gate. Using those books, try and chart a course over the mountains to the city where you last knew your family and guru to be. You practice alone a lot. You keep finding outposts of the Kingdom in Crestone, Kyoto, Bangkok

I support whole-heartedly. These critical connections can't be ignored.

Signed. Great initiative!

It would be wonderful as well if we can again start inviting teachers from the Kagyu. Nyingma and other Buddhist traditions, to come teach at the Shambhala centers. There is only one Dharma.

While I'm not an "old-timer" feeling disenfranchised -- I've only been part of Shambhala for six years -- I've found my exposure to the Kagyu and Nyingma lineages, through contact with many "old-timers", to be the richest part of my experience here; I hope that the renewal of Shambhala will be a less sectarian, insular world and more a gateway to the wide Dharma traditions that Shambhala enfolds.

I support including representatives of the elements of our community who have felt disenfranchised over the years. That said, what I miss most is the completely non-sectarian presentation of the teachings that we used to have in Shambhala Training Levels I-V. You could invite a co-worker to that without feeling you were proselytizing for a religion.