Cheerful Shambhala Day and Losar! Tomorrow marks the first day of the Tibetan lunar calendar and the beginning of the Year of the Fire Horse. To celebrate the new year, the Library is releasing two seminars which capture the fearless spirit of the Fire Horse: Warriorship in the Three Yanas (RMDC, CO, 1978) and How to Manifest Enlightened Society (Boulder, CO, 1980).
The seminar Warriorship in the Three Yanas follows the courageous journey of the warrior—a person who faces each moment of life with openness and fearlessness—through the hinayana, mahayana, and vajrayana paths. Based on the practice of mindfulness-awareness meditation, Chögyam Trungpa describes the progression through getting to know our mind, discovering our basic goodness, transplanting a compassionate moon in our heart and an intelligent sun in our head, and appreciating the world as unconditionally sacred. Notably, this seminar was the primary source for Part One of the book Smile at Fear: Awakening the True Heart of Bravery (Shambhala Publications, 2010).
In the seminar How to Manifest Enlightened Society, Trungpa Rinpoche describes how to be in the world with others while cultivating basic goodness, egolessness, joyful discipline, and compassion. Topics of this comprehensive four-talk seminar include working with resistance to meditation, fearlessness in facing our basic goodness, freeing ourselves from ego-clinging, and maintaining continual awareness.
Listen to the seminars and a clip
The notion of sacredness comes from developing a basic sense of gentleness to ourselves so that the irritation of being one with oneself is taken away. When there’s that kind of friendliness to oneself, then one also develops the notion of friendliness to the rest of the world. At that point, the sadness, loneliness, and wretchedness begins to dissipate. We begin to develop a sense of humor. We don’t get so pissed off if we have a bad coffee in the morning. Some natural sense of dignity begins to occur. … It is not so much trying to look for the bright side of our life and using that as a stepping stone; it is unconditional cheerfulness that has no other side—just one side, one taste. And a natural sense of goodness begins to dawn in our heart. Therefore, whatever we experience, whatever we see, whatever we hear, whatever we think—all these activities begin to have some sense of holiness or sacredness in them.
Chögyam Trungpa, from the Warriorship in The Three Yanas seminar, Talk 5: “Sacred World”
The Fire Horse is a symbol of renewed energy and fearlessly charging forward. As we enter this new year, please join us in the charge to make each recorded talk Trungpa Rinpoche gave available to a worldwide audience.