Society as Possibility: On the
Semantic Range of the Tibetan Term Sipa
By
Holly Gayley
Tibet
has been credited as a repository of ancient wisdom, even as its political and
social systems prior to 1950 have been viewed more ambiguously. The
three-century rule under the auspices of successive Dalai Lamas has been condemned
by some as an oppressive feudal theocracy and idealized by others as a Shangri-la ruled by a benevolent "god-king."[1] What vision of society is captured
in usages of the Tibetan term sipa, which can mean both "society" and
"possibility," and how has this been reimagined in recent decades?
One avenue to pursue such a question would be to look at the deployment of this
term and its implications as the Tibetan government in exile has transitioned
to democracy.[2]
Instead, I am interested in charting a different type of innovation, one in
which the Tibetan Buddhist master Chšgyam Trungpa and his son and lineage heir Sakyong
Mipham have probed the valences of the term sipa and
fashioned a fresh vision for contemporary society.
Under
the banner of Shambhala, Chšgyam Trungpa coined the term "enlightened
society" (mi'i srid pa bzang po) to capture a
distinctive approach to combining spiritual and mundane pursuits. This approach
seeks to integrate the practice of meditation into the kitchen-sink challenges
of daily life and a concern for the state of the world today, socially and
ecologically. This vision is modernist to the extent that it locates the sacred
within the immanent details of ordinary life and does not advocate renouncing
the world in the quest for enlightenment. At the same time, it attempts to
reverse the prevailing tendencies to value quantity over quality, efficiency
over aesthetics, and profit over integrity, asserting instead what Chšgyam
Trungpa called "modern society with medieval dignity."[3]
The new
motto of Shambhala, "making enlightened society possible," contains a
pun on the Tibetan term, sipa (pronounced
"see-pa," transliterated srid pa).[4] Given that sipa can mean both "society" and
"possibility," this motto suggests a certain perspective on society. Sometimes
we think of society as a fixed structure in which individuals move between
positions, like a board game or systems diagram. In the Shambhala view, society
is an emergent phenomenon, based on causes and conditions, but also open to
improvisation and unforeseen opportunities. What can one learn about
the Shambhala view of society through an exploration of the term sipa? Such an exploration promises to illuminate the
nuances in how the two lineage holders of Shambhala, Chšgyam Trungpa and
Sakyong Mipham, have deployed this term and characterized the social vision of
Shambhala as a synthesis of the sacred and secular.
In
Tibetan, the term sipa has a
wide semantic range. It can refer to the cosmos or temporal order, the worldly
or secular domain, and mundane existence as a whole. For
example, sipa is the word for "existence"
in the bhavacakra
or "wheel of existence" (srid pa'i khor lo), commonly depicted
in murals at Buddhist monasteries across the Tibetan plateau as an enormous wheel,
representing saṃsāra
and depicting the six realms of Buddhist cosmology. In this sense, for
Tibetans, sipa stands for saṃsāra
itself, the round of rebirth governed by karma and characterized by suffering. However,
the term has a still broader application; sipa can
also refer to politics or society. One of its main usages in Tibet is contained in
the phrase, chšsi zungdrel (chos srid zung 'brel), which refers to
the union of religion and politics, or alternatively the integration of the
spiritual and temporal orders, i.e., the sacred and secular.[5] This phrase is essential
to understanding the Tibetan ideal of Buddhist polity and shares much with the widespread
Buddhist paradigm of governance by a righteous king, dharmarāja, or "wheel-turning"
emperor, cakravartin.
The
union of religion and politics is a long-standing ideal in Tibet, epitomized in
the rule of the Dalai Lamas from 1642 to 1951. During this period, each successive
Dalai Lama served as both the political head of state—though his regents
often ruled on his behalf—and as a religious icon, the emanation of the
bodhisattva of compassion, Avalokiteśvara. Tibetans
also harken to the imperial period of the seventh to ninth centuries, when the
Tibetan empire dominated vast tracts of central Asia, as embodying the ideal of
chšsi zungdrel. Despite the violent conquests required
to forge an empire, Songtsen Gampo
is memorialized in Tibetan histories for his role in introducing Buddhism into
Tibet. Later in the imperial line, Trisong Detsen sponsored the massive project of translating Buddhist
canonical texts into Tibetan. For this reason, Tibetans have regarded them as dharmarājas and emanations of bodhisattvas.
When
the term sipa is used in the Shambhala tradition, it
refers to society rather than politics. Chšgyam Trungpa coined the term "enlightened
society" as a defining feature and aim of the Shambhala path. This aim
draws its inspiration from the legend of Shambhala, a mythical kingdom that may
have existed in Central Asia in which all of the citizens were said to attain enlightenment.
According to this legend, ShambhalaÕs first king Sucandra, or Dawa Zangpo in Tibetan, received the Kālacakra
teachings from the Buddha himself and propagated them to the citizens of his
kingdom.[6] At some point, with their
collective enlightenment, Shambhala is said to have disappeared from the world of
ordinary perception and to have become a pure land. In line with this legend, Tibetan
literature contains guidebooks to Shambhala that chart a visionary pilgrimage to
this ethereal destination.
Even
so, the Shambhala tradition, as inaugurated by Chšgyam Trungpa in the 1970s, advocates
neither a mystical journey to an ethereal destination nor an escape from the
mundane. Quite the contrary, the aim is to create an enlightened society here
and now—in this very world and in one's own domestic situation.[7] In his main public
exposition on the Shambhala path, Shambhala:
The Sacred Path of the Warrior, Chšgyam Trungpa states:
To begin with, you have to look at your
ordinary domestic reality: your knives, your forks, your plates, your
telephone, your dishwasher, and your towels—ordinary things. There is
nothing mystical or extraordinary about them, but if there is no connection
with ordinary everyday situations, if you don't examine your mundane life, then
you will never find any humor or dignity, or, ultimately, any reality.
The way you comb your hair, the way you
dress, the way you wash your dishes—all of those activities are an extension
of sanity; they are a way of connecting with reality. A fork is a fork, of
course. It is a simple implement of eating. But at the same time, the extension
of your sanity and your dignity may depend on how you use your fork. Very
simply, Shambhala vision is trying to provoke you to understand how you live,
your relationship with ordinary life.[8]
With its attention to the
mundane features of everyday life, the Shambhala tradition promotes a
householder path that is distinct from the early Buddhist emphasis on
renunciation—wandering homeless and relying on alms—in order to
transcend saṃsāra and attain nirvāṇa.
Instead, the idea is to use the mundane occurrences and challenges of everyday
life to awaken in the world and
develop a sanity that entails a direct relationship with one's present reality.
The
Shambhala path draws on the tantric collapse of the distinction between saṃsāra and nirvāṇa. Rather than renouncing the world, the
tantric practitioner seeks to discover the sacred in the mundane, captured in
the term "sacred outlook" or "pure perception" (dag snang).
Sacred outlook involves not discriminating between pure and impure and thereby
engaging in worldly—sometimes antinomian—activities
as integral to tantric practice. Recall the tales of
tantric heroes such as Tilopa, who ground sesame
seeds in order to extract the essence, i.e., the sesame oil, a metaphor for
one's true nature.[9]
In Tibet, the non-monastic tantric vocation of the yogin or ngakpa (sngags pa) embodies this approach to the Buddhist path. Ngakpas keep their hair long, rather than shaved as monks
do, wear white robes rather than saffron ones, and often marry and have families;
they are householder yogins.
One can
only make sense of the Shambhala vision of society as synthesizing the sacred
and secular within the context of sacred outlook from Buddhist tantra (also called the vajrayāna or "indestructible
vehicle"). As one Shambhala website puts it, "The Shambhala teachings
bring the sacred outlook of the vajrayana path of
individual transformation into the 21st century western secular
households."[10]
This speaks to the integration of sacred outlook into the Shambhala teachings,
particularly in relation to the household, and echoes the importance that
Chšgyam Trungpa placed on "ordinary domestic reality," the kitchen-sink
level of concerns and challenges of everyday life.
Nonetheless,
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior
expresses sacred outlook in secular terms. There Chšgyam Trungpa refers to
Shambhala as a "secular tradition rather than a religious one"
offering "the possibility of uplifting our personal existence and that of
others without the help of any religious outlook."[11] At the same time, he
proposes a "sacred world... which exists spontaneously, naturally in the
phenomenal world," akin to the tantric view of sacred outlook. In
the Shambhala articulation of "sacred world," the sacred is immanent
in the ordinary world—in everyday sights and sounds—and accessible
through the senses. Neither rejected as a source of temptation nor indulged merely
as a source of pleasure, the senses here serve as the gateway to reality and
sacredness. In other words, the sacred—naturalized and thereby dislodged
from any specific religion—is to be found in the secular rather than set
apart from it, recognizing "the potential for sacredness in every
situation."[12]
More
than a decade ago, Sakyong Mipham made a shift in the presentation of Shambhala
as a secular tradition by introducing the name, Shambhala Buddhism. In introducing
this name, he underscored the degree to which the Buddhist path of self-cultivation
and the Shambhala emphasis on enlightened society work in tandem. Here we find echoes
of chšsi zungdrel. In a
talk titled, "Shambhala Buddhism" and reprinted on Shambhala.org,
Sakyong Mipham affirmed the "view that spiritual and secular activities
are inseparable" and hence the imperative to synthesize the sacred and
secular, or the spiritual and temporal aspects of daily life.[13] This view is the impetus
for the "In Everyday Life" series, which has become integral to the
Shambhala core curriculum in recent years and encourages applying the
principles of meditation and the Shambhala teachings to the arenas of
household, livelihood, and community. As a corollary, in his recent publication,
The Shambhala Principle, Sakyong
Mipham emphasizes "the inseparability of personal and social
transformation" and elsewhere introduces the term "social
enlightenment."[14]
At
first, a vision of society that combines the sacred and secular may appear to
be an oxymoron. After all, a secular society is one in which religion has been
relegated to the private sphere outside the domain of civic life and especially
politics, hence the separation of church and state. So how could the secular,
which by this definition excludes religion, be conjoined with the sacred? Of
course, the process of secularization has been more complicated. Not only has
the modern nation state produced its own kind of "civil religion" but
also the secularization thesis—which imagined that the process of modernization
would produce a decline in religious belief and practice—has been
questioned altogether, due to the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.[15] Moreover, a medieval European
conception of "secularization" had two different strains: one attempted
to marginalize the religious by excluding it from the public secular sphere
while the other aimed "to spiritualize the temporal and bring the
religious life of perfection out of the monasteries into the secular
world."[16]
In the latter version, secularizing meant to collapse boundaries between the
religious and secular, encouraging monastics to break out of the cloister and engage
in the world. The impulse to collapse boundaries, such that spiritual practice
comes to infuse ordinary life, resonates with the Shambhala notion of
synthesizing the sacred and secular.
With
this background in place, let us return to the question of society as
possibility. For this, I would like to examine the opening lines of The Letter of the Black Ashe (A shad nag po'i yig ge), one of the root
texts of the Shambhala teachings.[17] In these lines, which
appear in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of
the Warrior, Chšgyam Trungpa uses the term sipa
twice, first to describe the field of possibility, captured in the image of a
"cosmic mirror" (srid pa'i me long), and second to depict the arising of human
society (mi yi srid pa) out of that.[18] These lines read:
From the great cosmic mirror
Without beginning and without end,
Human society became manifest.
At that time liberation and confusion arose.[19]
This is the source for the
Shambhala view of the emergent nature of society. Chšgyam Trungpa defines the
cosmic mirror as the unconditioned ground of existence from which conditioned
phenomena arise.[20]
Like a mirror, it reflects whatever arises without bias. As in the tantric
teachings on "co-emergence" (lhan gcig skyes pa), the
possibility for liberation or confusion arises simultaneously in each moment.
But in this case the text refers to the liberation or confusion of a society
rather than an individual. As the passage continues, out of that ground of possibility
arises humanity as a collective, which either goes the way of liberation to
create a dignified human society or goes the way of confusion to create a
degraded society.
Subsequent
lines of this text portray these divergent pathways. On the one hand is a
fear-based society of cowards hiding in jungles and caves, feeding on one
another's flesh, roiling in hatred and lust. And on
the other is a loving and generous society, free of strife, comprised of confident
warriors inhabiting highland mountains and plentiful plains of wheat and
barley. These lines create a poetic contrast in stark, black-and-white terms
between possible outlooks and outcomes for a society. However, this is not
intended to be an origin account or creation myth. Given the emphasis on
working with fear to develop bravery and confidence in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior, it makes more sense to
read this as a metaphor for a choice made moment by moment. In the world where
shades of gray present themselves continually, there is a choice each moment to
act with openness and a concern for others or with fear and an instinct to
protect one's own interests first and foremost.
Of
course, this begs the question: How do the choices of individuals create a
collective outcome? There may be no easy answer to this. Neither Chšgyam
Trungpa nor Sakyong Mipham has articulated a notion of collective karma to my
knowledge. Yet, in vividly contrasting the arising of a collective based on
fear with one characterized by confidence, the Shambhala teachings depict human
society as contingent, arising and taking shape according to the disposition and
actions of its members. It implies that society is co-created as a dynamic series
of interactions. Though conditioned by cultural norms, status
differentials, and authoritative discourses, interactions are nonetheless uncertain,
open-ended improvisations that create the contours of one's relationships and
communities.
To
further unpack the Shambhala vision of society as emergent and contingent—arising
from a field of possibility—it is helpful to consider how Sakyong Mipham
has recently defined society. In The
Shambhala Principle, he underscores that society is based on interactions
and relationships between individuals, starting with two people—"just
you and me" as he puts it, quoting his father—and expanding into
larger networks from there. He states, "Even in a large city, the
relationships are still between two individuals."[21] Approaching society from
the micro-level of daily interactions rather than the macro-level of institutions
makes it easier to imagine the importance of an individual's choice on the
outlook and outcome of a collective, such as a family dynamic or office politics.
To this effect, Sakyong Mipham states, "with the
simplest daily interactions, we can create enlightened society."[22]
Yet,
since those relationships expand into larger networks, Sakyong Mipham suggests
that the effect of such daily interactions may be greater:
Most of us do not consider a conversation
with another as creating culture, or affecting the world much at all. Yet our
seemingly minor exchanges have the power to gain momentum and begin to shift
the social and environmental dynamics of our planet. The world is made up of
millions and billions of "just you and me" interactions, which
include our relationship with everything—people, the environment, even
our teacup. These interactions create energetic networks, expanding exponentially.[23]
Without defining explicitly how
the micro-level and macro-level meet, the Shambhala vision of society seeks to
empower individuals and communities in shaping our world. It offers a
distinctive understanding of social transformation, moment by moment. What
we think, say, and do impacts our surroundings, and similarly our surroundings—particularly
dominant social values and media representations—impact what we think,
say, and do. This is no doubt why personal and social transformation
go hand in hand in Sakyong Mipham's presentation.
The
notion that society is created one interaction and relationship at a time makes
room for improvisation and a sense of possibility. Whether on the level of
personal support, social service, or collective action, this is an affirmation
that one can make a difference. Otherwise, the social, economic, and
environmental problems facing the world can seem daunting and intractable.
Perhaps this is why Sakyong Mipham coined the slogan, "making the
impossible possible," suggesting that however discouraging the current
state of affairs appears to be, it is still possible to reverse course. He
expresses society as an emergent field of possibility: "Let us now
re-empower the word society so that
every time we have a conversation, it is an expression of possibility."[24]
Holly Gayley is Assistant Professor of
Buddhist Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research examines
the revitalization of Buddhism in contemporary Tibet and the writings of
contemporary Buddhist teachers from the region of Golok.
She has been part of the Shambhala community since 1992 and was appointed as a shastri or
senior teacher in 2010.
[1] The former view is typical of the
Chinese state in their white papers on Tibet
(http://www.china.org.cn/e-white/tibet/). On the latter view, see Donald Lopez,
Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism
and the West (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998).
[2] This approach has
already effectively been pursued by Emmi Okada
in her presentation, "Constructing Tibetan Secularism in Exile" at
the 13th Seminar of the International Association of Tibetan Studies in
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia during July 21–27, 2013.
[3] On modernism, religious and otherwise,
see Charles Jones, "Transitions in the Practice and Defense of Chinese
Pure Land Buddhism" in Buddhism in
the Modern World: Adaptations of an Ancient Tradition, edited by Steven
Heine and Charles Prebish (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2003). The phrase, "modern society with medieval dignity,"
appears in the 1979 Kalapa Assembly Transcripts
(Halifax, Nova Scotia: Vajradhatu Publications,
1996).
[4] This motto can currently be found on
Shambhala.org and Shambhala Center websites.
[5] See contributions by David Ruegg and Ishihama Yumiko to The Relationship Between Religion and State
(chos srid zung 'brel) in Traditional Tibet,
edited by Chrisoph CŸppers
(Lumbini, Nepal: Lumbini
International Research Institute, 2004).
[6] For a discussion of the connection
between the legend of Shambhala and the Kālacakra Tantra, see Nick Trautz,
"Shambhala in the Kalacakra Tantra"
on The Shambhala Times. Available at:
http://shambhalatimes.org/2010/08/08/shambhala-in-the-kalachakra-tantra.
[7] In this way, the Shambhala emphasis on
"enlightened society" is comparable to the efforts by Chinese
modernists like Taixu to create a pure land on earth
(Jones 2003).
[8] Chšgyam Trungpa 1984: 32–3.
[9] Tilopa's story
includes other more antinomian aspects in Kagyu accounts of his life, traced to
a short biography attributed to Marpa the Translator.
See, for example, a retelling by Khenpo Karthar Rinpoche, delivered at Karma Triyana
Dharmachakra in March 1986. Available at:
http://www.kagyu.org/kagyulineage/lineage/kag02.php. For other stories of the
tantric siddhas or "accomplished
ones," see James Robinson, Buddhas Lions: The
Lives of the Eighty-Four Siddhas (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1979).
[10] This phrase appears in the description
for a program on "The Sacred and Secular" with the Dorje Loppšn, Lodrš
Dorje. Available at:
http://boston.shambhala.org/program-details/?id=7610.
[11] Chšgyam Trungpa 1984: 102 and 27,
respectively. Indeed, Shambhala is secular to the extent that it offers a path
of personal transformation through the Shambhala Training Levels, which are
open to people of any religious background. Advance programs and practices,
however, presume Buddhist commitments such as the refuge and bodhisattva vows.
[12] Ibid., 126.
[13] This
quote comes from a talk that Sakyong Mipham gave at a Kalapa
Assembly on May 23, 2000. Available at:
http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/sakyong_talk01.php.
[14] Sakyong Mipham, The Shambhala Principle (New York: Harmony Books, 2013): x. The
term "social enlightenment" appears in "The Letter of the
Morning Sun," composed in Halifax in Autumn 2010.
[15] For a reappraisal of the secularlization thesis, see Rethinking Secularism, edited by Craig Calhoun, Mark Jurgensmeyer, and VanAntwerpen
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). On civil religion, see Robert Bellah, "Civil Religion in America," Daedalus 96/1
(1967): 1–21.
[16] JosŽ Casanova,
"The Secular, Secularizations, Secularism" in Calhoun, Jurgensmeyer and VanAntwerpen
2011: 56.
[17] These root texts are considered to be terma (gter ma), which literally means
"treasure" and refers to the revelations of a great master, typically
but not always within the Nyingma school of Tibetan
Buddhism. For an overview of terma, see Tulku Thondup, The Hidden Teachings of Tibet (Boston:
Wisdom Publications, 1997).
[18] Human society is spelled mi yi srid pa in this verse as part of the Tibetan convention
of extending or condensing the number of syllables in any given line to fit the
poetic meter.
[19] Chšgyam Trungpa 1984: 23. The Tibetan is
available on the adjacent page.
[20] Ibid., 100 ff.
[21] Sakyong Mipham 2013: 88.
[22] Ibid., 93.
[23] Ibid., 92.
[24] Ibid., 94.