https://www.reddit.com/r/ShambhalaBuddhism/comments/la7hb7/origins_of_the_mythology_of_shambhala_buddhism/
Origins of the Mythology of Shambhala Buddhism
They have made available the transcripts of a series of seminars that Chogyam Trungpa gave to a select group of students between 1978 and 1984. I haven't had time to go through them thoroughly yet, but they're interesting because they throw light on several themes that get discussed now and then on this sub.
There's Trungpa's vision for the establishment of an actual, geographical Kingdom of Shambhala, which he intended to plant in the soil of Nova Scotia, Canada, which he regarded as virgin territory, populated by simpletons who would be easy to conquer.
His insecurity and paranoia come through at times. His need to bolster his ideas by denigrating others-- specifically the "setting sun" world (which includes pretty much everyone except him and the people he deemed worthy). Calling down supernatural punishment on students who did not keep his secrets.
His fascination with authoritarian regimes, and some pretty harsh (but fairly simplistic and uninformed) criticism of representative democracy. Inculcating in his students his notions of "natural hierarchy", and ensuring they understood their place in it as unquestioning servants. Quite a lot about his uniforms, and the many awards, medals, and honors he bestowed on himself... or rather, which he fancied supernatural beings bestowed upon him.
He also speaks quite a bit about his hallucinated conversations with voices he identifies as "rigdens", powerful beings who inhabit the celestial realm of Kalapa. In general he is very interested in portraying himself as a powerful person, and making sure everyone understands that his power is derived from divine sources, and is therefore unquestionable.
A lot of this is "old hat"-- as we know, his Nova Scotia invasion project failed, his attempts to establish a hereditary monarchy failed, much of his prodigal behavior was fueled by cocaine and other substance abuse, and his brand is more or less in retreat. However, I think it gives a valuable portrait of Trungpa's megalomania, and provides a useful counterweight to his public persona as some kind of sage, poet, or statesman.
Have a look.
EDIT:
It appears the Shambhala messaging police have gotten wind of this post, because Emily Sell of Kalapa Media (one of Shambhala's propaganda organs) has been desperately trying to get me or Reddit to take these files down. I guess she does not understand that the files do not reside on Reddit, and I have no control over them. I am merely sharing the link that someone else created.
I can understand why the powers that be wish to keep these texts hidden-- it's not a copyright issue at all, but one of message control. You see, you can purchase these transcripts directly from Kalapa Media, but only if you can demonstrate that you have taken an oath that you will never discuss them with anyone outside of the cult, upon pain of eternal damnation. It's a pat little system, isn't it? They really don't want Trungpa's least attractive ravings to see the light of day, because they know how much that exposure would damage their brand.
Unfortunately for them, the genie is out of the bottle. I hope the journalists and cult researchers who received the link to these files will appreciate the importance of what they are holding.
I know from people who helped care for him in the later years that a lot of his hallucinations were caused by alcoholic hallucinosis and/or delirium tremens. As someone who has experienced psychosis myself from alcohol withdrawal, I know how convincing they can be; I had a long conversation with Bob Barker about opening a chain of franchise hospice facilities one time when I was in Boulder Community Hospital with DTs.
Fortunately I have no plans to found a cult based on Bob Barker.
Reminiscent of my adventures on henbane in my youth. I dreamed my girlfriend and I had to clean up all the garbage on planet earth. Fortunately, also an erroneous impression.
That really made me laugh about the garbage. The thought of it and believing it as well. :-)
On the good side, I had my girlfriend, but otherwise, it was a baad trip. This was the Franco dictatorship era, and being a hippie was outre. I forgot to speak Spanish to my foreign exchange sponsors, and got kicked out. Slept rough one night, then Eurailed to Amsterdam.
Thanks to that experience, when the sutras say delusion is like a thornapple intoxication, I know just what they mean. Complete reality shift.
I'm really enjoying reading this stuff. It reminds me quite clearly why we were all hanging out with Tibetan gurus in those days. They knew how to set up shop in a foreign land, lay out the psychic wares, and pull together a posse. It was magnetic, irresistible, a home for the lovelorn, the burned out, the still hopeful, and the utterly naive.
It maybe sad but I just can't do the Kalapa stuff now. Too many narcissists maybe hanging in on in there. The environment attracts some people I just don't want to spend time with anymore. I don't see the point as there is an interesting world out there that has got the lot in it anyway.
Oh yeah yeah yeah, the time for grooving on that s*** is long past. But I can see why we did it at the time. I fell like a penny into a wishing well.
I appreciate your clarity and honesty. Many of us (all) fell like a penny into the wishing well. CTR built is magic sandcastle in space and a cosmic storm came along and blew it down.
Yes, and like every conman, wittingly or unwittingly, he sowed the wind, and left his followers to reap the Whirlwind.
Are you guys still accepting applications over at AB? I submitted one a couple of weeks ago.
Oh, thanks for asking. I actually gave up accepting posters, since I'd let folks in, but they didn't post. But if you're interested, sure. Can I ask you to email me at chascarreon at gmail, and I will send you a UN and PW.
Wow. Thanks for the link. Can't believe this was so easily available; Kalapa assembly was not open to everyone . There is much prep (grooming) to be done before hearing this stuff. Have read only 1978. More reading seems like wasting time. I feel like I just walked in off the street and hear some insistent guy talking about - what? power? how to dehumanizing ? the value of monarchy? the awfulness of democracy ? I never saw him in person; he was very ill when I started but maybe if I had I would have skipped the whole thing.
I really appreciate when people provide info like this but it makes me kind of sick to read it.
I must admit myself to feeling sick trying to read that stuff. Much appreciating the generosity of the link though, but its' kind of gone stale on some of us.
The lure of secret helpful great wisdom pulled me along for years. Finally getting to see behind each of these Let's Make a Deal's doors #1,2,3 is such an embarrassment in each case. There was never a winning choice, except not to play. Pretentious and overlong. Meandering and self important. Grooming to harmful subservience. No wonder they're held secret until the "supplicant" is numb enough to accept such word salad pablum.
Numb enough = great expression. All those hours of meditation to shut us up! Numb them down for brainwashing - anything becomes interesting, which is great, but sorry...abusing boundaries, as what happened within, as said nicely above, the entrance of Disney monarchs' kingdom.
British Kings and Queens up until, maybe, 1st world war or earlier thought that they were connected to the god head and therefore had power from god directly to dictate politics and war. The First World War is significant, as after that disaster with Austria and Wilhelm 11 Kaisa, authority was taken from them so that they could never influence war again because of a Royal family feud. Tibet being 500 years behind and dreadfully stuck in feudalism, the British didn't quite buy into it as big as Chogyam Trungpa may have wished along with other reasons for him to leave to America.
Maybe he thought that in a country where the image of monarchy is largely romanticised by Disney princess movies you still could sell this thing? I had history at school. Monarchy on earth? No, thank you.
Trungpa died before the "Disney princess" thing was a thing.
Aside from Disney's Snow White (1937), Cinderella (1950) and Sleeping Beauty (1959) ;-)
Yeah, those are not the movies the created the whole Disney princess phenomenon. It is the 90's movies(and after) that created it.
Alladin,Mulan, Pocahontas, Little Mermaid, B&B, Frozen, etc. etc. etc. is what created the "princess" thing as it is known today.
I'm not going to bother to read this, read it all long ago. This was all a big secret, people actually moved to NS with their spouses and never told them the real plot.
I downloaded them out of interest and what caught my eye first while skimming over the first one is that this is not about taking refuge to the buddha in some form or shape, it's not about liberation from samsara, it's not about compassion for all beings or bodhicitta. This isn't buddha-dharma. It's about a worldly absolutist kingdom with a shamanistic religious agenda.
Plus, he warns of arrogance. Now he sees the problem. How can he think that an enlightened kingdom is going to work with that much arrogance around???????????? He should have observed the students and concluded, with those folks, a pure land like situation can not be accomplished. I mean, he clearly sees and names the reason why the experiment is doomed from the beginning.
It sure looks as genuine as Hitler's handwritten diaries. I love the 1979 one where he tells everybody in the room they're in NS, but they're actually in Montana! Or is it the other way round? And the last talk took place a day after the program ended! Best of all, I love how CT is so far into the future he coins "echo chamber" way before the internet when back then "echo tech" was referred to as "tape loops". Pure genius as to how CT knew how to pander to the internet generation yet to come! Pure genius! And hilarious ;-)
If you think this is fake, wait'll you get a gander at "The Memoirs of Sir Nyima Sangpo, W.O.D.S." by The Mukpopa, Esquire-- Trungpa's unintentionally humorous attempt to write a national epic of Shambhala. There's no way you'll believe that's real, LOL!
Probably ghost written by Major John Perps
Hm, interesting theory, but I don't think so. The Memoirs has a dry, plodding, almost hypnotic style that is reminiscent of the so-called termas themselves, which makes me think it is as close to Trungpa's own voice as possible-- not heavily edited like much of his published work. According to what he himself says (ka-1982.pdf, page 28) he received this text from the rigdens while on retreat in 1984 and dictated it to Carolyn Gimian. I think Perks had been ejected from the inner circle by that time, and the Gimians' star was rising.
Perks has a lively style which comes through in the much earlier Court Vision document, which I'm sure he had a big hand in ghost-writing. I hope all these texts get to see the light of day soon, so that we can compare and contrast the various styles.
FYI: Echo chambers, as an actual physical acoustic space used in music, have been around since at least medieval times. They became famous in the 60’s when they were used in the making of popular records, Abbey Road most famously. But most major studios had one by the end of the still-analog 60’s, and they were used in popular discourse as a metaphor for self-reinforcing group think since at least the 70’s. It’s at a whole new level with the internet certainly, but it wasnt born with the internet. So no, CTR's use of the phrase "echo chamber" isn't an anachronism here or proof that these transcripts are faked. I wish it were so.
https://bobbyowsinskiblog.com/2020/01/07/abbey-road-echo-chambers/
Umm... Abbey Road is a good case in point, having pioneered terms such as "flanging" and the use of tape loops etc. The tape provided the echo, the room the reverb to soften it (ambience). But the parlance was change the tape speed not change the chamber size.
In this instance, Sun used his secretary's office. https://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/music/a22237/sam-phillips-sun-studio/
But it's the context! I come from a family of the generations of professional musicians. External chatter = echo chamber? That notion is modern, like the patch names on your digital tech and plugins that came out by the 90s and the subsequent rise of internet. Language is always hip to what the most people had access to. And tape speeds and feedback loops was the common usage from the copycat onwards, way past the 70's until digital came along.
Sounds like a fun family. But the fact remains that the term "echo chamber" was used to describe a self-reinforcing closed system far before the modern internet. A ten-second internet search turns up its use in a Pulitzer prize winning article from January 1990, far before the internet silos we know today.
The McMartin preschool trial coverage was criticized by David Shaw in his 1990 Pulitzer Prize winning articles, "None of these charges was ultimately proved, but the media largely acted in a pack, as it so often does on big events, and reporters' stories, in print and on the air, fed on one another, creating an echo chamber of horrors."[26] Shaw stated that this case "exposed basic flaws" in news organizations such as "Laziness. Superficiality. Cozy relationships" and "a frantic search to be first with the latest shocking allegation". His regard to mention "Reporters and editors often abandoned" journalistic principles of "fairness and skepticism." And "frequently plunged into hysteria, sensationalism and what one editor calls 'a lynch mob syndrome'" further supports the echo chamber effect and how it alters the coverage of specific types of media.
That's just one example. Anyways, you seem to be saying that the transcripts from the OP are fake, because nobody talked about echo chambers back in the 80's, which simply isn't true.
Context is everything old versus modern - https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/echo-chamber
Example "Business channels have created a giant echo chamber that reinforces whatever the prevailing stock market trends happen to be." is not 1979. Clue is "Business channels*".*
Google Ngrams tracks the usage of words in publications from 1850 to the present. Even at the height of its usage (1974), "tape loop" was used less frequently than "echo chamber." I checked Ngrams because I was starting to wonder, "am I actually right about this?" I don't mind being wrong about a thing, but it looks like I'm correct in this case. Also, I just love Ngrams it's pretty interesting. You can look up anything! It becomes really obvious when a certain concept is trending, and also when the heyday has passed.
Google Ngrams wouldn't have overhead conversational usage back then, they would be referring to use in publications. Of course in the world of recording tech journals, studio adverts and so forth, but that context is not shown.
Remember, the echo chamber was not a chamber you used by being inside (if you happened to work in the industry). It was off limits, just as the plate reverb room (same principle). So you wouldn't talk about echo chambers as a way of disseminating and amplifying back in 1979.
The modern context is definitely post internet, as this wiki clearly shows - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_(media)
Here's Ngrams data on Tannoy, a company name that became synonymous with PA (Public Address). Note the two periods of term usage in the 1800s? Yet Tannoy didn't come into existence until 1926. So the context is key...
Sorry for being cynical. Last I heard cynicism and questioning is healthy, which is why it gets put down by cultists. Seems people are swinging by the sub and down voting my cynicism and are thereby defending magical thinking inherent in the docs in question. The magical thinking that's required to give the docs any context that can be squared with any form of 'reality'.
Well, they should be taken down, ethically speaking if they are fake. I, personally, wasn't magnetised into them, but I have stopped being magnetised anyway into that sprig on the twig. Big mistakes were made by the organisation and that is the point of these discussions, as you know. No disrespect meant either.
The Allies used fake document 'invasion' plans and then 'leaked' them. One could define such a document is both authentic and a fake.
Btw there's a whole section on getting jabbed, syringes in the 1979 one (pg 24-27).
It's almost like he's talking about our present day Covid jab situation. Bet you some magically minded would call it prescience or auspicious coincidence that this is published at this time.
I'll have a look - thanks. However, the proof is really about eating the pudding and that ended up poisoning an awful lot of sangha in one way or another.
I have now read what you pointed out and with great respect for you the use of syringe in this case that DD is using is metaphor and nothing to do with Covid 19 or future predictions. The only thing that suggests karmic consequences is the discussion between DD and VROT is about polyester, which is plausible. If one comes from a place such as Tibet which never saw polyester then one must see a problem with that stuff, I would have thought. Bringing together the heaven and earth principle and using a saddle as a metaphor and the syringe, I personally find useful. The third Reich is mentioned at the end of the student / DD discussion and that sadly echos concerns for the Kingdom's down fall. Thanks for pointing it out, I may have missed it otherwise. I really liked the discussion about the constitution and the historical references to belonging and historical wisdom, capitalism etc. Useful.
I didn't mean that he was referring to covid, but rather the syringe analogy is rather prescient with our current situation, and forms a lens with which to view the texts. Like you, from there I was drawn in to read further. There's definitely some very interesting discussions there, again relevant to the present day. Useful indeed!
Seems a little stirring going on over here. Wtaf? https://www.reddit.com/r/discordian/comments/lahttk/hail_eris/glp723i?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
That is amazing. As though someone would take the time to attempt to fake a bunch of talks in order to throw shade at Trungpa.
How does someone who believes that shit actually exist?
Nothing to do with $75 a pop? Total Streisand effect! I note a few here appreciating some of the themes. Emily Sell should appreciate there might be hordes of new students looking for the mystical as a result!
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete