Hi all,
On a typical bookstore, where there are shelves and shelves of all sorts of self-helping manuals and texts, Buddhism is often delegated to the status of a "religion" or "philosophy", and, as such, might be off-putting to someone looking for a better way to deal with everyday issues, and tired of reading all sorts of books that only have one purpose in mind: making their author a bit richer at the expense of hordes of unhappy human beings desperately looking for a way to deal with their problems.
Buddhism "done right" might look too exotic. Because at the core of Buddhism is its lineage — a succession of accomplished teachers, who followed Siddhartha's method to reach a state of awakening, and which they experienced the intended result — and this lineage has come unbroken to us through different schools, the problem is that sometimes the methods (and the language!) might sound suspiciously like any other "religion". No wonder: through the many cultures that Buddhism was transmitted to us, a highly ritualised environment will almost always look like "religion", because in our Western minds, we associate "religion" with incomprehensible practices and rites. Even when these are properly explained, we still frown upon them, specially if we have strong aversion to any "institutionalised religion".
So, for example, the Buddhist practice of starting a meditation session with a ritualised form of raising the proper motivation, and ending with the strong aspiration that whatever we've learned through that meditation session might benefit other sentient beings, sound, to lay people, suspiciously like "prayers". They're not, in the strictest sense of the word; instead, they're merely reminders of what we're practicing and why we're practicing. But it's hard to understand that unless we had a good teacher who can make us look beyond the strangely-sounding words in a foreign language.
Because of that, the West has introduced the highly debatable concept of "Consensual Buddhism". Under Consensual Buddhism, the idea is that Buddhism can be "stripped down" from everything that looks or feels like "religion", and go straight to the "core" without any rituals. While the Consensual Buddhism movement has lots of supporters, and tends to "contaminate" even more classical schools — for example, Zen meditation, as taught in the West, is strongly contaminated by the philosophy of Consensual Buddhism! — there is an important point to be made: there is not a single enlightened being who achieved full awakening while following a method according to Consensual Buddhism. At the very least, that should make us a bit more wary. Perhaps those "rituals" are more important than they seem to our skeptical, closed minds.
The richness of the Buddhism teachings, however, are not to be discarded. There is, indeed, at least one school that has discarded many of those "rituals", and, as such, might be more palatable to those who wish to avoid "the trap of religion" while still benefitting from Buddhist techniques.
This is the Shambhala tradition, which allegedly is centuries old, and has its roots in the Himalayan countries. "Shambhala" is a reference to a mythical kingdom of warriors who adopted a Buddhist mind-training technique that allowed them to become enlightened, without the need of practices that "look like religion". Instead, their methods and techniques are secular and not "religious", and, as such, they might be more appealing to those who absolutely hate religion.
While there are many references to the Shambhala tradition in Tibetan folklore and myth, and the origin of its myths predates Buddhism but was quickly assimilated by it in India, in the mid-nineteenth century a few texts started to explain what exactly the method to accomplish the ideal of the Shambhala warrior is, by also minimizing the notion of Shambhala as a physical place, but rather as an embodiment of the accomplishment of a practitioner in that tradition. Nevertheless, scholars still think that the idea of a mythical kingdom in the Himalayas inspired the concept of "Shangri-La", invented by British author James Hilton in 1933 for his novel
Lost Horizon.
Whatever the sources, the Shambhala training was popularised by the accomplished Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, allegedly one of the first persons teaching the highest Vajrayana teachings in the West to lay people (until then, these were usually reserved to monks). Chögyam Trungpa was highly controversial and unconventional as a teacher — definitely not "fitting" in the pop culture's idea of a Tibetan teacher: he dressed as a Westerner, smoked, drunk quite a lot, used drugs, slept with students, threw loud parties, and so forth — but allegedly was very tough with his students, constantly challenging them to discard their attachments to misconceptions about spirituality. Whatever his methods were, they seemed to have brought good results: not only Trungpa Rinpoche was recognised as having attained the highest level of Vajrayana training (becoming a mahasiddha), but many of his students definitely showed extraordinary realisation.
Close to the end of his natural life, he presented a thorough method of Buddhist mind-training which was secular and completely different from the "ritualistic" esoteric Buddhist teachings, a presentation of the Shambhala Way of the Warrior. Although he used many "military" terms, the "warrior" in his teachings is completely non-aggressive and totally open to all sentient beings; the "bravery" associated with the "warrior" is mostly in the sense of defeating the habitual tendencies that cloud our perceptions and prevent us to let our basic goodness — Mahayana Buddhists would say "Buddha nature" — shine through. So, in a sense, one could say that Trungpa Rinpoche just used different words, expressions, and imagery to present precisely the same way or method transmitted by Siddhartha, but both the method and the result are precisely the same. The difference is that some of his terminology and the method, by discarding common "philosophical" Buddhist words, and avoiding "rituals" associated to "religion", would be more useful for those (specially in the West) who had been so "burned" by institutionalised religion that might welcome a fresh approach to Buddhist mind-training.
It's not immediately obvious for a lay person who was never in touch with Buddhist philosophy and methods that Chögyam Trungpa was actually presenting the highest form of Mahamudra and Dzogchen teachings, neatly wrapped in a different package and presented in a non-traditional way. As such, a highly accomplished Shambhala practitioner will certainly achieve the same results as more traditional Mahamudra/Dzogchen practitioners; and Trungpa himself definitely reached that degree of accomplishment using his method.
If this sounds too far-fetched to you, I can suggest you to read at least his small book,
Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior. It's quite easy to read and covers the basics of the Shambhala training, and, while the language might sound very unconventional, rest assured that it is definitely Buddhism, just using different words. Interestingly enough, it will make most sense to those who never encountered Buddhist philosophy and practice before, as well as to Vajrayana Buddhism students, which will immediately recognise what Trungpa is talking about, while it will sound very strange to practitioners of other Buddhist schools, since the approach is so unconventional and unusual!
I just mention this because someone might be reading these threads in the forums and think, "oh, well, Buddhism is possibly very nice, but I'm not looking for a new religion, just a way to become a bit more calmer and be able to deal with my problems better — I have no patience for rituals, strange chanting, prayers, and institutions." Well, now you can enter a Buddhist practice which has given results in the recent past and which is "stripped down" from rituals, chanting, or prayers, but nevertheless presents a complete method to attain high levels of realisation.
Personally, I cannot say much more, since I never attended any Shambhala teachings. My own teacher, however, is a great fan of Chögyam Trungpa, and while he's a traditionalist, he also often employs some explanations by Trungpa Rinpoche to make some difficult concepts more clear and straightforward, specially on audiences that have little patience with rituals, but nevertheless have the desire to learn how to train their minds to become calmer, more functional, and deal better with their problems.
