Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior

Chögyam Trungpa

Notes on Trungpa’s Shambhala: basic goodness as the starting claim, the cocoon that keeps it out of reach, and bravery as facing yourself without deception.

Reading notes in Google Docs, shared with Way of the Peaceful Warrior.

Chögyam Trungpa was a Tibetan Buddhist teacher, and the Shambhala teaching he set out here is presented as a secular path rather than a religious one. The warrior in his title is not a fighter. The word translates a Tibetan term for one who is brave, and the bravery is in facing yourself without deception.

Concepts

• Basic goodness. Human nature is taken to be sound at the root, so the work is uncovering something already present rather than repairing a defect.
• The cocoon. The familiar shell of habits and avoidances, built for safety, which keeps out the fresh air along with the threat. Stepping outside it is the first act.
• Fearlessness comes through fear. Not the absence of fear, but the state reached by going into it and looking at it directly.
• The genuine heart of sadness. A tenderness that arrives with real openness, and a sign of it rather than a failure of it.
• Sacredness in ordinary conduct. How you dress, eat and hold a room is treated as the practice, not as a preliminary to it.