The Shambhala Warrior
As we finally close the books on an extremely challenging year together, on the eve of the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I have been reflecting on the role that women leaders will and must play in the next several decades to turn all of the breakdowns that we have experienced into break throughs. I keep turning to the wisdom of Joanna Macy, the environmental activist, author, scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She tells the story, from a Tibetan legend, of the Shambhala Warrior. Here is an edited excerpt…
"There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger and the future of all beings hangs by the frailest of threads, that the kingdom of Shambhala emerges.
"You cannot go there, for it is not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors. But you cannot recognize a Shambhala warrior by sight and there are no barricades from which to threaten the enemy, for the Shambhala warriors have no land of their own. Always they move on the terrain of the barbarians themselves.
"Now comes the time when great courage is required of the Shambhala warriors for they must go into the very heart of the barbarian power and dismantle the weapons by going into the corridors of power where the decisions are made.
They do this with their own powerful weapons - compassion and insight. Compassion provides the fuel and the heat to act on behalf of other beings. But by itself it can burn us out. So Shambala Warriors need insight into the dependent co-arising of all things. To see that the battle is not between good people and bad people, for the line between good and evil runs through every human heart. The Shambala Warrior knows that we are interconnected, as in a web, and that each act with pure motivation affects the entire web, bringing consequences we cannot measure or even see. (https://www.awakin.org/read/view.php?tid=236)
Compassion and Insight. Think about that. These are the tools of heart-based leaders who are fully in their power, on purpose, and imbued with a sense of destiny to do their part to heal the world. Compassion and insight do not live in the realm of “doing” but rather in the field of “active being”. Shambhala warriors deploy these tools by listening to their deep knowing and listening for what is longing to happen.
For me, the Decade Game is a roadmap for the Shambhala Warrior. She suspends disbelief of “the way things are” in order to hold an epic belief of what is being called for from the future. Inspired by compassion for humanity, she starts with compassion for herself and others for the journey so far. Then, armed with insight of the work to be done at home, at work and in the world, she creates a life by design, not default. She knows that each act, however small, is a “tiny mighty” that will make a difference in our interconnected web of being. Even if she can’t measure or see it in her lifetime.
It is my experience that the world itself has a role to play in our liberation. Its very pressures, pains, and risks can wake us up -- release us from the bonds of ego and guide us home to our vast, true nature. For some of us, our love of the world is so passionate that we cannot ask it to wait until we are enlightened.”
― Joanna Macy, World as Lover, World as Self