I wrote the piece for the Austin Shambhala blog, which I manage, but I didn’t publish it because I wasn’t sure how much I can reveal about the training programs. There’s a legacy culture of secrecy that has grown up around the training path of Shambhala. This is changing – wants to change, is approved to change – and I play my small part in its changing here in Austin.

I will write increasingly more about Shambhala. As I progress along its training path I become more qualified to speak of my own experience in it, and I understand more of the whole path. And I trust my own wisdom more to say only the right things and not the wrong.

Meanwhile, here’s the piece on Level Five.

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August 19, 2008

Shambhala Training’s Level V weekend intensive is coming in September, long and eagerly awaited and trained for by a number of people whom I’ve seen go through the Levels over the last year or so. A small group has managed to stay together through them all, which is always a special bond. And others that I knew from the year before who missed a Level are now catching this wave too, which makes me very glad. And there will be others taking the class again, and coming in from below my radar – I hope to know them all by the end of the weekend, it will be my profound satisfaction to volunteer as staff this time around.

Steve Vosper is coming down again from Boulder to teach the class. It was a very small class last year, and he was fresh out of a three-month retreat, so we had a great sense of depth to the program. I have no idea what was unique to that event and what is standard for the Level V class, so this one will be fresh in every sense.

To me the experience of Level V was a culmination beyond all expectation of the five levels. Ever since that class I’ve gone around telling everyone: they should call it the Five Levels of Shambhala you know, the way they speak of the Four Foundations, or any other numbered list in Buddhism. I’ve wanted to show that taking just one of them is only part of the experience.

Fortunately perhaps, no one is ever swayed by my enthusiasm for this, and nothing ever changes, but at least here in this very personal opinion – sponsored by no one – I get to present my observation that there are five Levels because there are five important things to teach, each of them showing us a part of our experience. The totality of this is not apparent, until the fifth teaching takes the first four teachings and shows the unity of all five practices in one great burst of freedom.

This is why I call it generous. I was astonished to discover what Level V had to show me about my mind and the reality it perceives. To realize that this is always here, that this has always been my experience, waiting to be perceived, if someone would simply be kind enough and skilled enough to show this to me, at the perfect time.

I didn’t know what pointing out instruction was when I took the class but during my particular weekend in my interview an Assistant Director sat before me and showed me my mind experience. I was thoroughly impressed. I felt very skilled. I felt very happy to get a tiny glimpse of the reality we live in. It took over a year I’m sure for what I learned to soak into the bedrock of my practice.

I was joyous to have traveled so far, and not moved an inch, and to be such a beginner still, and yet to learn that I never have to journey to find my enlightened nature, but need only stay right here, and keep practicing.

I know of no greater gift.

Something is happening at these beginner levels, it seems to me: secret master practitioners are infiltrating, or else the world is simply becoming more profound.

Level I is supposed to introduce the practitioner to the basic technique of mindfulness meditation, the practice of going out with the breath, letting go of our attachment to thoughts by allowing them to fade away as we return our focus to the breath, again and again.

This is usually such a wearying experience, as I well recall, for meditators to sit endlessly all day and face up to just how much hard work it is to return one’s focus of attention to something so ever-present and simple as one’s own breathing.

But not in this class. This weekend was buzzing with active pursuit of the moment itself, nature of mind, nature of thought, and ways and means to get down and meditate.

On Saturday morning, barely into the first trial run at the experience, one participant wanted to know why we can’t hold the moment, when we can hold all the other junk we call our thoughts. She talked about dotting the “i” of the moment, and learned of course that the dot is moving, the “i” is moving, and it’s all moving.

And I think in amazement, it wasn’t like this at my Level One – who are these people, to have such brilliant experiences first time with Shamatha meditation, to see mind, and play with the moment, and ask innocent questions from such skillful experience?

There was a time – is what I’m trying to say – when it would have been a major coup simply to experience the moment, let alone to get specific about its impermanence, and to monitor its vapor trails.

I think: wait a minute, Level V is when you’re supposed to experience the moment, not Level I. Ah, how useful to be humbled in these beginner classes. This is when I realize how poorly still I’ve mastered the practice technique, how poorly maybe I’ve even heard the instruction yet.

Thankfully for these realizations, the core teaching of all five Levels in Shambhala Training is gentleness, being kind to oneself.

George Hasty, also the Center director, was the teacher for the program. He explained things I’ve never heard in a Level I before, and I know it gets subjective when you hear a program again later on, with a broader general understanding of things. But even so.

The participants themselves were the best part of the program. I expected them to be squirming and rebellious after a time, but we all remarked how seasoned they seemed. They sat very still, all weekend, and practiced what they were being taught.

The very best part for me was explaining to one of the participants that George really meant it when he said it was an honor for him and all of us to work with the students. I said that it was their weekend, and their experience, and we were all striving to help make that experience as comfortable and as useful for them as we could.

Now that I’ve seen the work that goes into organizing and staffing a weekend program, feeding people breakfast, lunch, and tea-break, escorting individuals to the private interviews, the reception at the end on Sunday – now that I know what’s involved I’m very appreciative of my own experiences when the sangha took care of me, and created the container for the class to occur in.

Level I is particularly my constituency – the relative newcomers. These are the people I want to write this blog for. People who’ve been around the Center or the Dharma for a year or two can find their own way to the programs and the teachers. The newcomers could use some signposts – or so I believe.

I remember how shocked many people were when I did Level I. Some people had never really sat before, and they went straight into an intensive weekend. There’s a school of thought among many of the more veteran practitioners that this kind of shock is beneficial somehow. I don’t believe this for one moment.

I find it careless of us not to warn people in advance that they’ll be sitting for most of the weekend, that their backs will ache and their minds will be crawling with craziness by Sunday afternoon. There are other ways to train. The Sunday morning public sit is the perfect way to get better at meditation. And the “Training the Mind” one-day classes are great for deepening one’s hold on the practice.

More to come soon.