Shrine of the Times
Part 6. An Introduction to the Secret Teachings of Shambhala
The Secrets Behind the Secret Teachings
…I need a footnote to this footnote to explain the “paintbrush” reference. — from Part 5 in this series, in the footnotes.
The paintbrush I was referring to is used in a secret teaching of Shambhala that I promised never to reveal to anyone uninitiated with the teachings of said secret under penalty of Buddhist law. Seriously. The law is unspoken, a vow, a special incantation to make you remember: a loyalty oath.
Sorry, I am so pissed off about this all, and I am so out of the purview of any poorly written, non-enforceable Buddhist NDA that I don’t give a crap; if you want to know the secrets, leave me a comment below. They are all yours. Have fun.
The Ashe and the Asshole
What I am about to reveal and the commentary about to follow will piss off many and amuse just a few. That can’t be helped.
Children’s lives are on the line. Women’s innermost feelings of well-being are at risk, and men’s sense of duty and devotion is being twisted and turned. That may sound sexist and out-of-date to you. Still, in the Buddhist Army, like all other armies on the planet, men and women are not treated the same and don’t even think about being transgender within the ranks of Kasung, for a 5-starred General of the Terma, 1 a Holder of the Secret Teachings, a Master Puppeteer of Weekend Participants, the dead man who hardly could walk when alive, Trungpa.
I first practiced the “stroke of the ashe” in a quasi-military boot camp for the Kasung troop assigned to Trungpa. The Kasung ranks resemble the Secret Service ranks serving the United States President. But, with a much lower budget, crumpled odd-fitting boy scout uniforms, no black SUVs with the windows tinted out - well, maybe one, but not bullet-proof like the SS-issued vehicles, flags, poles, and other weekend-warrior fittings and fixtures, yet no guns, but one.2
Back to basic training, well, you had yer marching drills and yer marching jingles of future glory in battles against darkness, and your focus on precision and discipline and, of course, your agility to obey orders from on high, no matter what. I am a vet and understood all this without needing words, texts, or any new liturgy.
But then, a new practice3 was rolled out, and I felt like we were the guinea pigs for a new hair-brained idea that would lead to enlightenment. This was called the secret teachings of the Ashe—the stroke of the enlightened warrior. The paintbrush to save the world and the teachings. Terma uncovered from under a rock—something like that.
It is best to show you one first to see and feel what such a magic stroke looks like; this one was made not with a magic paintbrush on parchment paper but with a tattoo artist’s needle on my chest. Ouch:
Now, Trungpa was a genius at designing logos, if nothing else. This one is unforgettable, as any good brand should be, but that is because that brand is forever burned in my mind and on my skin; there is no erasing that brush stroke from my brain. I see it in my sleep, and it’s in the mirror every time I shave.
So what is an Ashe, how is this painted, and what does all of that practice painting get you… well, that’s the perfect question to ask.
One way to find answers is to look up your nearest Shambhala center, book a cushion for about $250 a weekend, and attend at least 5 in sequence. Then, you will be given the secret lessons you can use for life if you graduate from this sitting meditation course with some honor left. Those are the levels. There are more levels above 5, which are always about $250, plus many that are up to 2,500 or more, and these higher levels (of payment) are endless in number as far as I can tell.
Another way to understand Ashe is to believe me…
You start with a brush and a pot of ink. There is a ritual to this, as in any martial art. You approach the paper, handle the brush a certain way, venerate the ink, hold the pen like a dagger, and then plunge the pencil’s wet, dripping blob down into a single dot on the page. That’s the dot—a dot of wisdom and place. Your heart is home, on paper.
Then begins a perfectly choreographed and programmed movement; you “stroke” quickly up and down from that primordial dot out, and then with a tailfin in the wind, u move onto the emptiness of space (and sometimes the edge of the paper if not careful). It is a violent movement, but everyone has their way of executing, even with the instruction to strive for some uniformity. But the finished stroke represents your mind and is unique every time. And inspected each time by “the master.”
Now, synchronized stroking within a group is far less graceful than synchronized swimming, but it is fun to watch regardless of the awkwardness of it all. As a gate-guard Kasung lower-class, I got to watch a lot of this, just like I watched a lot of paint dry on Germany's East / West barbed wire barriers back in the day.
Here is a short story on this secret practice (more practices can be revealed, but only on request, so please use the comment box below). The perfect stroke sends you to Buddhist heaven (enlightened as all get out), while the imperfect execution reflects the imperfections in your mind. Again, recorded by the Guru.
Classic cult stuff, like the magic meter4 the Scientologists use to test loyalty (and find out what initiates know and think, all periodically checked by masters within that cult). So here with Shambhala, we have another same tool but from a different father.
And I got good at stroking my Ashe. My Ashe shined in my teachers’s eyes. I was a good little stroker. Maybe the best at stoking up any teacher’s ass.
Oh, by the way, on the title of this episode, Ashe or Asshole, well, who do you think is the asshole antagonist here? Trungpa?
No, me.
There is more in Part 7 of this simpleton’s saga, a lot more, or you could just read another chapter of 1984 and be done with my poor writing ability. As they say here in Nepal, both are the same-same.
Footnotes
Terma is hidden teachings seeded by the Buddhas to help other reborn Buddhist masters have something to work with, some words to impart to eager students, and folks can be found searching for such words literally under the mythical rock or two. Terma can be found in the physical world, as in a cave somewhere in the Himalayas -or- in the minds of an unrecognized master or a recognized meditation master who just made something up; either can be be Dharma.
No guns, but the one in the photo here; that’s the only one I ever saw, and I never heard one shot or was allowed to touch or clean any weaponry other than real Samurai swords and toy target-shooting bows & arrows.
Practice. Have I explained double-speak yet? Practicing in Buddhism means you take some words as instructions to heart and physically repetitively apply them, like practicing the violin. Practice makes perfect, as we all know from kindergarten. Or does it?
I say magic meter, but the correct Scientology label for this tech is E-meter, originally known as the electropsychometer.
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