The Collected Works of Chögyam Trungpa: Volume Eight (69 page)

V:
Yes.

Thank you for arriving here safely—in one piece—and for taking part in this short but very potent training program—though we have a long way to go. It is very definite and very serious. Thank you.

DEDICATION OF MERIT

Radiating confidence, peaceful,

Illuminating the way of discipline,

Eternal ruler of the three worlds:

May the Great Eastern Sun be victorious.

By the confidence of the Golden Sun of the Great East,

May the lotus garden of the Rigdens’ wisdom bloom;

May the dark ignorance of sentient beings be dispelled;

May all beings enjoy profound, brilliant glory.

From a Shambhala text and Dedication of Merit by
C
HÖGYAM
T
RUNGPA
, D
ORJE
D
RADÜL
OF
M
UKPO.
Translated from the Tibetan by the Nālandā Translation Committee
.

GLOSSARY

T
HE DEFINITIONS
in this glossary are particular to the use of the terms in the text.

Ashe
(Tib.; pronounced
ah-shay
): A primordial symbol representing the heart of warriorship.

Ashoka
(d. 238?
BCE
): The last major emperor in the Mauryan dynasty of India. He converted to Buddhism and renounced armed conflict in the eighth year of his reign, when he saw the sufferings that a war he had promoted had inflicted on the conquered people. Buddhism at that time was a small Indian sect, and his patronage of the Buddhist religion is credited with its spread throughout India.
      After his conversion, Ashoka resolved to live according to the dharma, to serve his subjects and all humanity. His approach to spreading the dharma was an ecumenical one; he did not try to convert others to the Buddhist faith but instead promoted ethical behavior and the practice of such virtues as honesty, compassion, mercy, nonviolence, and freedom from materialism. He founded hospitals for people and animals, and was known for such public works as planting roadside trees, constructing rest houses, and digging wells.
      He established a special class of high officials who were designated as “dharma ministers.” Their duties were to relieve suffering wherever they encountered it and specifically to look to the special needs of women, neighboring peoples, and other religious communities. He built a number of stupas (religious memorials) and monasteries, and inscribed his understanding of the dharma on a number of rocks and pillars, known as the Rock Edicts and the Pillar Edicts. The lion capital of the pillar at Sarnath erected by Ashoka is today the national emblem of India.

bija
(Skt.): Energy, seed, or root power. In a bija mantra, or seed syllable, the nature of a particular aspect of reality is concentrated in the form of a symbolic or onomatopoeic sound. In the Shambhala teachings Chögyam Trungpa describes the primordial dot as a bija.
See also
mantra
and
OM, AH, HUM
.

bija mantra
(Skt.): Seed syllable.
See
bija
and
mantra.

bodhisattva
(Skt.): Literally, an awake being. A bodhisattva is an individual who has committed himself or herself to helping others and who gives up personal satisfaction for the goal of relieving the suffering of others. In the Buddhist teachings, a bodhisattva is more specifically one who has committed himself or herself to practicing the six paramitas, or the transcendent virtues, of generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation, and knowledge.

buddhadharma
(Skt.): The teaching of the Buddha or the truth taught by the Buddha.
See also
dharma.

buddha nature
: The enlightened basic nature of all beings. In the Shambhala teachings, basic goodness is similar to the concept of buddha-nature.
See also
tathagatagarbha.

ch’i
(Chin.): A Chinese term with many meanings, including air, breath, ether, and energy. The concept of ch’i is not unlike the idea of windhorse in the Shambhala teachings. (See chapter 9 of
Great Eastern Sun
.) The concept of ch’i is also prevalent in some schools of Japanese philosophy (where it is called
ki
).
Ch’i
refers to primordial energy or life force, which may be internal or external—that is, personal or cosmic. Ch’i as life energy is a central concept in Taoist breathing exercises aimed at strengthening and increasing this energy.

dharma
(Skt.): Truth, norm, phenomenon, or law. Often used to refer to the teachings of the Buddha, which are also called the buddhadharma.
Dharma
may also refer to the basic manifestation of reality or to the elements of phenomenal existence.

dharma art
: A term coined by Chögyam Trungpa to refer to art that is based on nonaggression and that expresses the basic dharma, or truth, of things as they are.

drala
(Tib.): In the Shambhala teachings, the manifestation, strength, or bravery that transcends or conquers aggression. Although sometimes conventionally translated as “war god,”
drala
is used by Chögyam Trungpa to mean a force or an energy that is above or beyond war.

garuda
(Skt.): A mythical bird that is half-man and half-beast. The garuda is associated with tremendous speed and power. Like the phoenix, it is said to arise from the ashes of destruction; thus, it has an indestructible quality.

Gesar of Ling
: A great warrior-king in northeastern Tibet, the same area from which Chögyam Trungpa hailed. Gesar was a member of the Mukpo clan, to which Trungpa Rinpoche also belonged, and Rinpoche felt such a connection with his ancestor that he gave the name Gesar to his third son. Gesar of Ling’s life and exploits inspired the greatest epic of Tibetan literature, which was passed down by oral tradition to the present day. As with many epic heroes, Gesar of Ling’s historical origins have been somewhat obscured by his mythic dimension. According to Alexandra David-Néel, who was one of the first Westerners to collect a version of the Gesar epic, he may have lived in the seventh or eighth century
CE
; others place him as late as the twelfth century.
      In his foreword to the Shambhala Publications edition of
The Superhuman Life of Gesar of Ling
by Alexandra David-Néel and Lama Yongden, Chögyam Trungpa wrote: “We can regard the whole story [of Gesar of Ling] as a display of how the warrior’s mind works. Gesar represents the ideal warrior, the principle of all-victorious confidence. As the central force of sanity, he conquers all his enemies, the evil forces of the four directions, who turn people’s minds away from the true teachings of Buddhism, the teachings that say it is possible to attain ultimate self-realization.”

Kagyü
(Tib.): The “ear-whispered” lineage or the lineage of oral command.
Ka
refers to the oral instructions of the teacher. The Kagyü is one of the four primary lineages of Tibetan Buddhism. The Kagyü teachings were brought from India to Tibet by Marpa the Translator in the eleventh century.

Karma Kagyü
:
Karma
in Sanskrit means “action” or “deed”;
Kagyü
is Tibetan for the oral or ear-whispered lineage. The Karma Kagyü is a main subdivision of the Kagyü lineage or school of Buddhism, which was founded by Tüsum Khyenpa, the first Karmapa, or head of the Karma Kagyü lineage. Chögyam Trungpa was a major teacher in the Karma Kagyü school of Tibetan Buddhism.
See also
Kagyü.

Karmapa, His Holiness the sixteenth Gyalwa
: The Karmapa is the head of the Karma Kagyü school or lineage of Tibetan Buddhism, to which Chögyam Trungpa also belonged.
Karmapa
literally means “The Man of Action” in Tibetan.
Gyalwa
means “Victorious One.” The Karmapa is sometimes also called the Gyalwang Karmapa.
Gyalwang
means “Lord of the Victorious Ones.” The sixteenth Karmapa, Rangjung Rikpe Dorje, enthroned Chögyam Trungpa as the eleventh Trungpa when he was a young child. The Karmapa, like Chögyam Trungpa, escaped from Tibet in 1959. He established his new seat, Rumtek monastery, in Sikkim. He traveled to North America three times, sponsored by Vajradhatu (Chögyam Trungpa’s Buddhist organization) and Karma Triyana Dharmachakra (a Kagyü monastery in New York State), in 1974, 1976-1977, and 1980. His Holiness passed away from complications of cancer in November 1981.

Khyentse Rinpoche, His Holiness Dilgo
: A great teacher of the Nyingma lineage, one of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism. Khyentse Rinpoche was one of the important spiritual influences on Chögyam Trungpa, who first studied with him in Tibet. Later, Trungpa Rinpoche hosted Khyentse Rinpoche’s visits to North America, in 1976 and 1982. In 1982, Khyentse Rinpoche conferred a major Shambhala empowerment, the Sakyong Abhisheka, on Chögyam Trungpa. His Holiness also conducted the funeral ceremonies for Chögyam Trungpa in 1987. His Holiness remained an adviser to Trungpa Rinpoche’s students and community until he himself passed away in 1991.

kyudo
(Jap.): The traditional art of Japanese archery. The great Japanese archery master Kanjuro Shibata Sensei met and became a close associate of Trungpa Rinpoche in the 1980s. Shibata Sensei has lived part of the year in Boulder, Colorado, since that time and has taught kyudo to many hundreds of Chögyam Trungpa’s Buddhist and Shambhala students.

lama
(Tib.; Skt.
guru
): A realized teacher or spiritual master.

lohan
(Chin.; Skt.
arhat
): The ideal of a saint or realized one in the early schools of Buddhism.
Lohan
also refers to a disciple of the Buddha. In some Chinese Buddhist temples and caves, there are impressive statues of the five hundred lohans engaged in various activities or manifesting various states of mind. There is also a group of sixteen or eighteen lohans considered in some forms of Chinese Buddhism to be the major disciples of the Buddha. In the Shambhala teachings, Chögyam Trungpa used the image of the lohan as the ideal meditator.

mahayana
(Skt.): The great vehicle, or the open path; one of the three major traditions of Buddhism. Most of the schools of mahayana Buddhism emphasize the emptiness of phenomena, the development of compassion, and the acknowledgment of universal buddha nature.

mantra
(Skt.): Generally, a sacred sound or chant. More specifically, a mantra is a sound or collection of sounds associated with a particular deity or energy in the vajrayana, or tantric, tradition of Buddhism. Mantra is considered to be a form of mind protection, and it was described by Chögyam Trungpa as onomatopoeic, archetypal, primordial sound.

mara
(Skt., Pali): Literally, death or destroying. In the story of the Buddha’s enlightenment, Mara as the embodiment of death attacks the Buddha and tries to prevent him from attaining enlightenment as he sits under the bodhi tree meditating just before his final awakening. More generally, the maras refer to the obstacles to enlightenment and the negative forces in the world.

Milarepa
: The most famous of all Tibetan poets and one of Tibet’s greatest saints. He was the chief disciple of Marpa the Translator, who brought the Kagyü teachings from India to Tibet in the eleventh century. After studying with Marpa, Milarepa became a wandering yogin who spent many years in solitary retreat, practicing asceticism and undergoing great deprivation. His beautiful songs of meditative realization have been translated into many Western languages, including an English translation,
The Hundred Thousand Songs of Milarepa,
translated by Garma C. C. Chang.

OM, AH, HUM
: Three of the most famous and most common bija mantras used in visualization and mantra practices in the vajrayana tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. Tibetan deities, which are nontheistic representations of various energies or aspects of reality, are sometimes visualized with the syllables
OM, AH,
and
HUM
located in the head, throat, and heart centers. This is done as a way of connecting with and actualizing the energies that the deities represent.
See also
bija
and
mantra.

pawo
(Tib.): A warrior.
Pawo
literally means “one who is brave” and is used in the Shambhala teachings to mean one who conquers aggression rather than one who wages war.

prajna
(Skt.): Knowledge, as well as the natural sharpness of awareness, that sees, discriminates, and also cuts through the veils of ignorance.

Rigden
(Tib.): One of the kings of Shambhala, who are said to watch over worldly affairs from their celestial kingdom. Symbolically, the Rigdens represent the complete attainment of bravery and compassion in the Shambhala teachings.

samsara
(Skt.): The vicious cycle of existence, arising from ignorance and characterized by suffering.

sangha
(Skt.): The community of Buddhist practitioners. In
Great Eastern Sun,
Chögyam Trungpa writes: “From the Buddhist point of view, friends who create discipline and lighten up our ego are called the
sangha
. In the Shambhala culture, we call such friends
warriors
. Warriors can cheer one another up and together create a warrior society.”

Songtsen Gampo
: The first great Buddhist king of Tibet. Under his reign, Tibet consolidated a great deal of political power, and in fact, his rule began a period of both political and religious greatness that lasted some two hundred years, from the middle of the seventh century
CE
until around 836, when Ralpachen, the last of the kings in Songtsen Gampo’s line, was assassinated. One of Songtsen Gampo’s greatest accomplishments was the introduction of a written Tibetan alphabet, which was required for the translation of Indian Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Tibetan. He also established the Tibetan capital at Lhasa. He constructed the oldest and most revered temple in Lhasa, the Jokhang, to house a sacred Tibetan statue, the Jobo Rinpoche, which was brought to Tibet by his Chinese wife, a princess of the Chinese court.
      In
Born in Tibet,
Chögyam Trungpa’s autobiographical account of his upbringing in and departure from Tibet (see Volume One of
The Collected Works
), he talks about encountering sutras carved into the rocks by Songtsen Gampo’s ministers while they waited to receive the Chinese princess arriving from China. Trungpa Rinpoche writes: “I returned to Surmang [his monastery] by way of the valley of Bi where in the seventh century King Songtsen Gampo sent his ministers to receive and welcome the Chinese princess he was to marry. Here we saw the Buddhist sutras which the ministers had carved on the rocks while waiting for her arrival; some of these are in archaic Tibetan and others in Sanskrit. . . . While the princess was resting in the valley, she saw these texts and added a huge image of Vairochana Buddha of over twenty feet in height.”