Join Charlie, a non-binary sci-fi fantasy writer and practicing Druid, alongside their husband Brian, as they explore the concept of the Wind Horse from Shambala teachings. Delving into mindfulness, basic goodness, and the transformative power of the five poisons into the five powers, they draw parallels with Druidic practices and other spiritual traditions. This episode encourages a thought experiment on riding the Wind Horse, aiming to harness the intrinsic energy of the universe for personal and spiritual growth. Practical mindfulness exercises and an in-depth discussion on faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom are included.
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Transcript:
[00:00:00] Charlie- New: When we were talking about what we wanted to do in this season of Lúnasa, We got to talking about the races. That used to happen. The chariot races, the horse races, the foot races. Brian asks, is there anyway, we can incorporate that into what we're talking about. My mind immediately went to an idea. From the Shambala teachings. The idea of the wind horse. Let's talk about that a little bit today. On Creation's Paths.
Intro
hello everyone. My name is Charlie. I'm a non-binary sci-fi fantasy writer. I'm also a practicing. Druid and priest a Bridget. I am joined today by my very silly husband, Brian.
[00:00:51] Brian - New: Hello.
[00:00:52] Charlie- New: Today we're going to be talking about the Lungta or the wind horse. I've really been trying to see if I could find a Celtic equivalent. Of this or something from the Irish or Welsh. Scottish. Myths that would. Fit, this kind of story. I'm struggling for that. So if you know of anything, do let me know.
My experience with this idea comes from. Chögyam trungpa Rinpoche's Shambala. Of the ideas that are presented in that book. And so I don't have the strong cultural connection to it. That others would with this appearing on various net national flags. And whatnot. So I want to kind of say state this up front that from my practice of Shambala. That's where this is coming from. I mean, nothing but respect. To all of the communities that have a much deeper. Tied to this imagery. Then perhaps I do.
In shambala. The Lungta or wind horse. Is defined as an expression of the basic goodness of the universe, the basic energy of the universe. In druidry it straddles the line between what we would call Arwin and Nwyfre. Between that creative breath. That is blowing through the world. And that energy that we can tap into. It might be right to say that the wind horse in the Shambala teachings is an expression of Nwyfre. It is an expression of how you connect to that basic goodness. And learn to ride it. And learn to harness it and. Bring that energy into your life. To help it to flow through all things and through practice. The wonderful magic that is discussed in the Shambala. System.
We were told that. The element of wind. Reminds us of just how strong. And exuberant. This basic goodness of the world is. If you've not encountered this idea before you. It's also present in Buddhism.
Stop for a minute. Unless you're driving. If you're driving, pull over to the side of the road or do this part of the exercise when you get home. Or to, to a parking lot somewhere , don't do this while driving.
I want you to close your eyes for a minute. And just slowly. Breathe in.
And breathe out.
Breathe in. And breathe out. And just focus on your breathing anytime, a thought or feeling. Tries to distract you from. Your breath. Just. Go back to the breath. No struggle. No fight. Just go back to your breath. And then there was something happening inside of you. Yeah, this is the beginning of a mindfulness meditation. This is how we start learning mindfulness.
But do you notice something else? There's an ease. There's a. Sensation that a lot of people feel. When they enter this mindful state. It might take you a bit to. Dig down into it. You might not be instant. Let's just breathe in. And breathe.
Slowly at first until you. Been able to. Gather that focus on your breathing. Then let your breathing. Become more natural. Let it flow in and out. And you'll feel something.
There are a lot of words for this. Basic joy. Basic calm basic goodness. All manner of words for you. Feeling. It's very. Present.
That's the heart and the root of mindfulness. That's basic. Goodness.
Now I, from a druidic perspective. Would tell you. That you were touching the very edges of. Oh,
This is like when you're a kid in the car and you stick your fingers out. Not the full window, like the whole window hasn't opened the windows kind of cracked. You kind of stick your fingers out and feel the wind. Brushing against the tips of your fingers. Where you're standing by the edge of a stream and you just gonna dip your fingers in and you feel the water. Flowing by.
That's what you're feeling. In this moment. That basic goodness. That gentle flow. Of the Awen.
This isn't like when the wind hits us and we're raptured away into this creative. Fury.
The other one isn't there just then. It's always there.
Everyone has a different name for it. Everyone has a different way of talking about it. And here in the Buddhist and. Shambala tradition. It's basic goodness.
Because everything's okay. That moment in meditation that you get to where you just feel everything's all right.
Now. Imagine being able to. Ride that feeling.
That's the image in Shambala. That's the image of the wind horse. It's been able to get into that. Place of basic goodness. And ride that current. To ride it forward. And to stay on it and to harness that. Intrinsic power of the universe. That basic goodness. For better.
Is that a powerful image? Is that an image that moves you? It moves me.
That's how. We can start getting into the Awen.
That's how we can start getting into basic goodness. And that's. And what we mean when we say riding the wind horse in the title. Yeah. It comes from this basic image.
What. Would it mean if we could actually do that?
Let's just think about this for a minute. Let's have a thought experiment.
The whole idea of the Shambala practices. We're trying to bring that realm of all the enlightened beings to Shambala here. To earth.
The idea in Christianity is we're trying to bring the kingdom of God here. May your will be done on heaven. And on earth as it is in heaven.
In. Kabbalah, You are. Restoring the world. So that it will be made perfect in the world to come. A lot of us have this. Idea. We're trying to perfect them.
a, Bodhisattva takes the vow so that they will not enter their final Nirvana. They're very Nirvana. Until all beings are enlightenment. You're here for the long haul. They're going to be here until the end until this golden age.
In the Shambala teachings. We're told that. Learning. This practice. I'll be able to ride that basic goodness. That's how we get there.
Now in Druidry, we don't have that. Per se. We can talk about. tir na nog getting. The land of youth, the land of the living.
That other world. It really is. Um, other world we're not trying to bring tir na nog here. I think you can experience. Glimpses. Of the other world here.
We're not actually going to enter the other world until we enter the other world.
We are trying to bring that inspiration. That Awen. Into the world. We're trying to find. The Mabin. The child of light. That's been stolen from the divine mother. So that. Life can be restored to the land.
Then so doing the story. We travel around to the four oldest creatures trying to find. Where the Mabin has been hidden. Whereas the child. Where did you hide? Where's he hidden where. Where is it?
But even that's not an eschatological idea, right? It's there's no end of the world.
We don't know if there wasn't an end of the world. There so little that has survived of Irish Welsh. Scottish Manx Cornish. Mythology. We don't know if they ever had. An idealized state or. Uh, cyclical universe kind of like what happens after Ragnar rock, where. The old gods are dead. And the three gods, the three sons of. Oden survive and recreate the world.
I don't know. We don't even know if that's how that story originally ended. It's the version that we have was written by a Christian. And they could have just Christianized. So we, we don't know.
I like to think. When we look at the stories. We can see this. Balance. This ideal of balance. Between our world and the other world. The spirit in the material world. We're not always working for the, either the spiritual or the material work. Trying to bring the best of both together. That would involve writing the wind horse.
[00:09:20] Brian - New: In addition to that, I'm thinking about writing. The wind horse. I found myself thinking about. The word. and how it breaks down. Too. Lung being space. Of the five elements. ta meaning horse. Horse being that transformation. Of purifying of taking something. Bad and making it. Good.
After thinking about it for a while. It dawned on me that. In this practice. When I am riding the wind horse, when I'm actively doing this. It is the act of. Being mindful of the five poisons. Transforming them. Into the five powers.
When I'm in a journey throughout my daily life, I tried to be mindful of. That. When I'm really engaging in that, I'm. Engaging in that transformative power.
The five poisons. are doubt. Which we. Experience often. even right now, I'm facing doubt. laziness. Lisa, this is something that, you know, He constantly wrestled against it's okay to rest. But laziness is that overindulgence. heedlessness. Not paying attention to where you're going or what you're doing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Recklessly charging forth. Distraction. as one of the ADHD community members. Uh, Yeah, distraction. Definitely a poisoning challenge. And ignorance.
Through lungta, through riding the wind horse, the exercise. I look towards faith. because faith removes doubt.
[00:10:57] Charlie- New: The faith that we're talking about here in the Buddhist context. Is what I would consider true faith. And that's trust. It's I have faith in my friends.
It's I have learned to rely on this, that this is reliable. It is an earned. Trust it is not necessarily wish fulfilling trust. No. The important thing is that it is built from one. You start with a, I'm going to test this and see if it works. But you only keep that faith. Once you've learned that it is trustworthy.
[00:11:30] Brian - New: It's proving all things holding fast to that, which is true. It is also that trust. That comes from. The hope that. Things will happen. But knowing that it might not happen in the way that you expect it to, or the manner in which you expect it to. You do the effort along with that hope it's hope plus effort, which is the second power. Which is the second power. Energy. Energy and effort. Very, uh, very, uh, yeah. That effort. That's what controls laziness.
When getting into the five powers, the five poisons you'll realize one tends to lead to the other. Effort. That'll control that laziness. So it's, okay to rest. We all need to take time to rest, to rejuvenate, to heal. Two. Build our energy, our power back up. But that is different from. Overindulging in. Too much,
[00:12:26] Charlie- New: I would say it's differently. As somebody who has a lot of chronic pain. Issues. In my life. I don't like this idea of. Overindulgence being the phrasing there for me. I look at laziness as. This inattentive use of energy. It's a wild. The broken power line.
That's just sparking around and not. Really doing anything. It's not allowing your energy to flow where it can flow. Whatever little bits of energy you may have.
[00:12:59] Brian - New: Yeah. It can also be obstructed or poorly applied energy. Or poorly applied effort, which. Flows right into the next one. That heedlessness as the poison or mindfulness. as the power. in those moments, when you're being heedless, when you're your energy is just randomly zapping out. And you are. Electrocuting people around you. So to speak. that's when you want to give pause. And be mindful. Just being aware. Of where your energy is, how it is flowing. It is in a way that meditation, Charlie. Having us do earlier. Just a simple breathing. Is a mindfulness and an awareness that we're all on the wind horse. We're on it, no matter whether we want to or not, it's called the journey of life in its present moment. It's being in a present moment. Were there.
Which. Then it leads us to the next power is concentration. Where the poison is distraction. When you're finding yourself in those moments of distraction. Mindfulness can help lead you back into concentration. So you take that pause. Like when I have that. Ooh, what's that? It's okay to take that moment, whatever, but I then have to be mindful and bring myself back. Into focus back into concentrating. On where my energy needs to be, what I am actually doing, choosing to do. Yep. Not reacting, but choosing to do. In that moment. Which leads us. To the fifth power that's wisdom. Which helps to control ignorance.
[00:14:37] Charlie- New: I think ignorance is one of the most important things in the world right now. Because. I feel like so many of our problems. Our people refusing to admit what they're ignorant about.
Very true, because we've turned ignorance into a vice ignorance is an advice it's a poison. And it's one that's in the water.
It's all around us, all around us. It's in the water. It's in the air. We're all ignorant of so many things. We're ignorant to so many things. We have no idea how many things we're ignorant of.
[00:15:03] Brian - New: The headlessness in distractions in our lives. This leads us to our ignorance. Yes. We're distracted by clicking on this and clicking on that and watching this, watching that and not being mindful and not. Concentrating. On what we need to know or knowing that we don't know a lot of what we need to know.
[00:15:23] Charlie- New: Or thinking that we know a lot more than we actually do. Yeah. That. Really is. In so many ways, the opposite of wisdom, like with wisdom. Starts by knowing that you don't know.
I forgot who said it but admitting that you don't know is the beginning of wisdom. It really is. You have to start from the place of, I don't know.
[00:15:43] Brian - New: Yeah. This is where they flow back into each other. Because faith allows you to go, I don't know. But I know I have faith. That I could still do things. I could still be active in my life and in my community. And have the energy to move forward. And with mindfulness and concentration, I can get more wisdom. So that I can be wiser, but also at the same time have that faith that I can step out there and maybe be wrong. Which is okay. That's part of learning. That's part of gaining wisdom. In being wrong and then admitting and being aware that you are wrong. Once you're made aware. You can then learn and grow and gain that wisdom.
[00:16:27] Charlie- New: We're going to be talking about the five powers a lot. Because. They are the engine. That spirituality runs off. It's important for us to have a very active understanding of how our spirituality works. All too often. We just pick up ideas and we put them down and we don't really know what we're doing with them.
And this model of understanding. Really helps us to get to the root of it. We picked something up and that's faith. Does this work? Let's try this. When somebody tells you do mindfulness meditation, that'll help you out. Like I did earlier. In this episode. Well, if you have just a little bit of faith of, okay, I'll try it.
So you put in the effort.
Which will hopefully bring you mindfulness literally in this case. Well, you become aware of what is going on. Which allows you to concentrate and focus in. And then a little, little bit of wisdom. Oh, I did calm down. My mind did come down. I did get a small taste of that basic goodness, that basic reality. That is. Under all things.
And that gives you trust. Which is faith. And the cycle continues again and again, and again. don't believe that you can lose your faith. I hear people say this a lot. It's a very common. Phrase in English. I lost my faith in, I lost my faith in. Uh, you can have your faith betrayed. You can. Realize you had never really had faith in something to begin with, but you can't really lose it. Unless trust is betrayed. It doesn't really go away.
I know many institutions once had my faith and trust. And then betrayed my faith and trust, and I no longer have faith in those institutions. I didn't lose my faith in. Those institutions. That's that's internalizing that feeling way too much. Those institutions betrayed my faith. They betrayed my trust. And so they no longer have it. And have a lot that they would have to do to earn it back.
These five powers. Which are the engine. That runs. All spirituality, whether people are Mo. Mindful of it or not. It really does.
Help you get in touch with that basic good does. And learning to operate this machine.
That is what riding the lungta is. It's something to operate this machine. It's learning.
To tap into that basic. River that basic flow.
Of goodness of life. Whatever you want to call it. Yep. That is running through all things.
I hope that this episode has helped you out in some way.
If nothing else, maybe give you something to think about. We are going to be talking about the five powers a lot. It comes up. And a lot of what I talk about and write. , I have an article up over on https://wisdomscry.com . And on https://www.creationspaths.com/ about the great work inviting people to join me. In that. And one of the. Sections of that is talking about how this actually functions. Within us and in our faith. And links out to other articles that I've written about the various aspects of the five. Power. So definitely go check that out. If this is something that interests you.
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Thank you so much for listening. May you tap into that basic goodness and learn how to ride it. A better world. Amen. Amen.
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