Editing Shambhala Training (section)

== Antecedents ==
=== Windhorse ===

[[File:2007 0806collectionBertsch0012.JPG|thumb|left|Tibetan bronze statue of a windhorse, probably 19th century]]
In Tibet, a distinction was made between Buddhism (''Lha-cho'', wylie: ''lha chos,'' literally "religion of the gods") and folk religion (''Mi-cho'', wylie: ''mi chos'', literally "religion of humans").<ref>Davidson, Ronald M. ''Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture'' Columbia University Press: 2005. {{ISBN|0-231-13470-3}}. pg 76</ref> Windhorse (wylie: ''rlung ta'') was predominately a feature of the folk culture, a "mundane notion of the layman rather than a Buddhist religious ideal," as Tibetan scholar Samten G. Karmay explains.<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 415">Karmay, Samten G. ''The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet.'' Mandala Publishing: 1998 pg. 415</ref> However, while  "the original concept of ''rlung ta'' bears no relation to Buddhism," over the centuries it became more common for Buddhist elements to be incorporated.<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 415"/> Windhorse has several meanings in the Tibetan context.

As Karmay notes, "the word <nowiki>[</nowiki>windhorse<nowiki>]</nowiki> is still and often mistakenly taken to mean only the actual flag planted on the roof of a house or on a high place near a village. In fact, it is a symbol of the idea of well-being or good fortune. This idea is clear in such expressions as ''rlung rta dar ba,'' the 'increase of the windhorse,' when things go well with someone; ''rlung rta rgud pa'', the 'decline of windhorse,' when the opposite happens. The colloquial equivalent for this is ''lam ’gro,'' which also means luck."<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 415"/>

In his 1998 study ''The Arrow and the Spindle,'' Karmay traces several antecedents for the windhorse tradition in Tibet. First, he notes that there has long been confusion over the spelling because the sound produced by the word can be spelt either ''klung rta'' (river horse) or ''rlung rta'' (wind horse)--the first letter is silent in both cases. In the early twentieth century the great scholar [[Ju Mipham]] felt compelled to clarify that in his view ''rlung rta'' was preferable to ''klung rta'', indicating that some degree of ambiguity must have persisted at least up to his time.<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 413-15">Karmay, Samten G. ''The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet.'' Mandala Publishing: 1998 pg. 413-15</ref> Karmay suggests that "river horse" (''klung rta'') was actually the original concept, as found in the Tibetan ''nag rtsis'' system of astrology imported from China. The ''nag rtsis'' system has four basic elements: ''srog'' (vital force), ''lu'' (wylie: ''lus,'' body), ''wangtang'' (wylie: ''dbang thang'', "field of power"), and ''lungta'' (wylie: ''klung rta,'' river horse). Karmey suggests that ''klung rta'' in turn derives from the Chinese idea of the ''lung ma,'' "dragon horse," because in Chinese mythology dragons often arise out of rivers (although ''druk'' is the Tibetan for dragon, in some cases they would render the Chinese ''lung'' phonetically). Thus, in his proposed etymology the Chinese ''lung ma'' became ''klung rta'' which in turn became ''rlung rta.'' Samtay further reasons that the drift in understanding from "river horse" to "wind horse" would have been reinforced by associations in Tibet of the "ideal horse" (''rta chogs'') with swiftness and wind.<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 413-15"/>

===The Four Dignities, Drala and the Lhasang ritual===

On prayer flags and paper prints, windhorses usually appear in the company of the four animals of the cardinal directions, which are "an integral part of the ''rlung ta'' composition": [[garuda]] or ''kyung'', and [[Azure Dragon|dragon]] in the upper corners, and [[White Tiger (Chinese constellation)|tiger]] and [[snow lion]] in the lower corners.<ref>Karmay, Samten G. ''The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet.'' Mandala Publishing: 1998 pg. 416</ref> In this context, the wind horse is typically shown without wings, but carries the [[Three Jewels]], or the [[Cintamani|wish fulfilling jewel]]. Its appearance is supposed to bring peace, wealth, and harmony. The ritual invocation of the wind horse usually happens in the morning and during the growing moon. The flags themselves are commonly known as windhorse. They flutter in the wind, and carry the prayers to heaven like the horse flying in the wind.

The garuda and the dragon have their origin in [[Hindu mythology|Indian]] and [[Chinese mythology]], respectively. However, regarding the origin of the animals as a tetrad, "neither written nor oral explanations exist anywhere" with the exception of a thirteenth-century manuscript called "The Appearance of the Little Black-Headed Man" (''dBu nag mi'u dra chag''), and in that case a yak is substituted for the snow lion, which had not yet emerged as the national symbol of Tibet.<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 420">Karmay, Samten G. ''The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet.'' Mandala Publishing: 1998 pg. 420</ref> In the text, a ''nyen'' (wylie: ''gNyan,'' mountain spirit<ref>de Nebesky-Wojkowitz, René. ''Oracles and Demons of Tibet'', pg 287-289</ref>) kills his son-in-law, Khri-to, who is the primeval human man, in a misguided attempt to avenge his daughter. The nyen then is made to see his mistake by a mediator and compensates Khri-to's six sons with the gift of the tiger, yak, garuda, dragon, goat, and dog. The first four brothers then launch an exhibition to kill robbers who were also involved with their mother's death, and each of their four animals then becomes a personal ''drala'' (wylie: ''dgra bla'', "protective warrior spirit") to one of the four brothers.<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 420"/> The brothers who received the goat and dog choose not to participate, and their animals therefore do not become drala.<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 420"/> Each of the brothers represents one of the six primitive Tibetan clans (''bod mi'u gdung drug''), with which their respective animals also become associated.

The four animals (with the snow lion replacing the yak) also recur frequently in the [[Epic of Gesar|Gesar epic]], and sometimes Gesar and his horse are depicted with the dignities in place of the windhorse. In this context the snow lion, garuda and dragon represent the Ling (wylie: ''Gling'') community from which Gesar comes, while the tiger represents the family of the Tagrong (wylie: ''sTag rong''), Gesar's paternal uncle.<ref>Karmay, Samten G. ''The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet.'' Mandala Publishing: 1998 pg. 421</ref>

The windhorse ceremonies are usually conducted in conjunction with the ''lhasang'' (wylie: ''lha bsang'', literally "smoke offering to the gods") ritual,<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 417">Karmay, Samten G. ''The Arrow and the Spindle: Studies in History, Myths, Rituals and Beliefs in Tibet.'' Mandala Publishing: 1998 pg. 417</ref> in which juniper branches are burned to create thick and fragrant smoke. This is believed to increase the strength in the supplicator of the four ''nag rtsis'' elements mentioned above. Often the ritual is called the ''risang lungta'', (wylie: ''ri bsang rlung ta''), the "fumigation offering and (the throwing into the wind or planting) of the ''rlung ta'' high in the mountains."<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 417"/> The ritual is traditionally "primarily a secular ritual" and "requires no presence of any special officiant whether public or private."<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 417"/> The layperson entreats a mountain deity to "increase his fortune like the galloping of a horse and expand his prosperity like the boiling over of milk (''rlung ta ta rgyug/ kha rje 'o ma 'phyur 'phyur/'').<ref name="Karmay, Samten G. pg. 417"/>

Namkhai Norbu Rinpoche elaborates on the traditional understanding and etymology of ''drala'':

<blockquote>In many ancient Bön texts the name 'Drala' is spelt ''sgra bla'', which literally means '''la'' of sound', where ''la'' (soul or vitality) stands for a type of individual energy that is also endowed with a protective function. In more recent texts, notably those of the Buddhist tradition, we find the spelling ''dgra lha,'' 'deity of the enemy', a term which has been interpreted to mean a warrior deity whose task is to fight one's enemies. [...] Other authors, interpreting the term in the sense of 'deity that conquers the enemy's la' have instead spelt it ''dgra bla,'' 'enemy's la'.</blockquote>

<blockquote>[...] The spelling ''sgra bla'' ('la of sound') found in the ancient texts as a matter of fact is based on a very deep principle characteristic of the most authentic Bön tradition. Sound, albeit not visible, can be perceived through the sense of hearing and used as a means of communication, and is in fact linked to the ''cha'' (the individual's positive force, the base of prosperity), ''wang tang'' (ascendancy-capacity), and all the other aspects of a person's energy, aspects that are directly related with the protective deities and entities that every person has from birth. Moreover, sound is considered the foremost connection between the individual himself and his ''la''. From all this we can easily understand the deep meaning of the word ''sgra bla''.<ref>Namkhai Norbu, Drung De'u and Bön, translated by Adriano Clemente, Library of Tibetan Works and Archives, 1995 pp.61-62</ref></blockquote>

=== The Syncretism of Rime and Jamgon Ju Mipham Gyatso ===

The nineteenth century lamas of the [[Rime movement|Rime]] movement, particularly the great scholar [[Ju Mipham]], began to "create a systematic interweaving of native shamanism, oral epic, and Buddhist tantra, alchemical Taoism, Dzogchen, and the strange, vast ''Kalachakra tantra'',"<ref>Kornman, Robin. "The Influence of the Epic of King Gesar on Chögyam Trungpa," in ''Recalling Chögyam Trungpa'', edit. Fabrice Midal. pgs 369-370</ref> and the folk traditions were increasingly given Buddhist connotations and used in Buddhist contexts.
Mipham's edition of the ''Epic of Gesar'', which Robin Kornman, a Tibetan Buddhist scholar and student of Chögyam Trungpa, saw as the cornerstone of Trungpa's Shambhala teachings, "was a hybrid of Buddhist and local idea. He made sure it would be read this manner by writing a parallel set of Gesar chants that mix religions in the same way."<ref>Kornman, Robin. "The Influence of the Epic of King Gesar on Chögyam Trungpa," in ''Recalling Chögyam Trungpa'', edit. Fabrice Midal. pgs 365</ref> As Kornman writes, one such typical chant is "a careful combination of Buddhism according to the Nyingma sect with local religion."<ref>Kornman, Robin. "The Influence of the Epic of King Gesar on Chögyam Trungpa," in ''Recalling Chögyam Trungpa'', edit. Fabrice Midal. pgs 366</ref> According to Kornman, "In the Na volume of Mipham's collected works one finds numerous very short supplications to Gesar ...Trungpa Rinpoche lifted the above supplications from Mipham's Gesar cycle and gave them to his advanced students to chant."<ref>Kornman, Robin. "The Influence of the Epic of King Gesar on Chögyam Trungpa," in ''Recalling Chögyam Trungpa'', edit. Fabrice Midal. pgs 367</ref>

Kornman asserts that Trungpa "wrote his ''Epic of Lha'' <nowiki>[</nowiki>his first Shambhala tradition text<nowiki>]</nowiki> within this tradition, conscious of the synthesis his gurus had effected. He became in effect the chief spokesman in the West for this syncretic system."<ref>Kornman, Robin. "The Influence of the Epic of King Gesar on Chögyam Trungpa," in ''Recalling Chögyam Trungpa'', edit. Fabrice Midal. pgs 370</ref> The Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche, a younger colleague of Trungpa Rinpoche, notes that Trungpa "introduced many Tibetan cultural practices through the Shambhala teachings, such as the lhasang (purification ceremony), along with practices associated with drala and werma (deities)."<ref>Genuine Water," in ''Recalling Chögyam Trungpa'', edit. Fabrice Midal. pg 14</ref>

Kornman summaries Trungpa's use of antecedent traditions in the creation of his Shambhala teachings as follows:

<blockquote>The philosopher king and the political leadership of his idealized society were people who ruled by virtue of private mystical realizations. The one who sees the phenomenal world as mere appearance and reality as a transcendent other, rules the country and introduces the citizens to his private mystical world. To use tantric terminology, the leader expands the boundaries of the mandala, the private society of his personal students who share the initiatory mysteries, to the entire nation.</blockquote>
<blockquote>This was the theory of the relationship between religion and society that Trungpa Rinpoche elaborated in the West. Its metaphysics was based on the philosophical syncretism of the Eclectic <nowiki>[</nowiki>Rime<nowiki>]</nowiki> movement, which evolved an almost Neoplatonic emanational version of Buddhist mysticism. The mythological machinery, the cosmology of his system, was based on the most complex of all of the Buddhist tantras, the Kalachakra (Wheel of Time) Tantra. But textually it was based on the Tibetan oral epic of King Gesar of Ling, which deployed a non-Buddhist divine machinery based on native Inner Asian shamanistic and animistic religion. The “back text” of Trungpa’s socioreligious system was the Gesar epic. This meant that his model for the relationship between religion and society was what he saw in his region of Tibet, the Sino-Tibetan marches of Kham (Eastern Tibet) and Amdo/Qinghai. In particular, he pointed to the Goloks, nomadic pastoralist warriors, who made the mystery religion of Dzogchen, the great perfection, their public religion through, among other things, the propagation of the oral epic.<ref>Kornman, Robin. "The Influence of the Epic of King Gesar on Chögyam Trungpa," in ''Recalling Chögyam Trungpa'', edit. Fabrice Midal. pg 355</ref></blockquote>

=== The Kalachakra tantra ===
As Kornman notes, the Shambhala tradition was not particularly textually based on the [[Kalachakra]] tantra. However, as he noted, it does rely on it for some of its "mythological machinery"—in particular, the name and concept of "Shambhala" itself, and the personage of the Rigden (Tib.; wylie: ''rigs ldan'', Sanskrit: ''Kalki''). The Shambhala tradition of Chögyam Trungpa also derives an ethos of syncretism and ecumenicism from the Kalachakra tradition. As John Newman, one of the world's leading Kalachakra scholars, explains:

<blockquote>The Kalachakra, or "Wheel of Time," was the last major product of Indian Vajrayana Buddhism. All late Vajrayana Buddhism is syncretic - it takes elements from non-Buddhist religious traditions and assimilates them to a Buddhist context. However, in the Kalachakra tantra syncretism is unusually obvious and is even self-conscious&mdash;the tantra makes little effort to disguise its borrowings from the Śaiva, Vaisnava, and Jaina traditions. The basic structure of the Kalachakra system is itself non-Buddhist: the Kalachakra uses the ancient idea of the homology of the macrocosm and the microcosm as the foundation of its soteriology.<ref>"Islam in the Kalachakra Tantra" by John Newman. The Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies. Vol 21:2 pg 313</ref></blockquote>