What is Shambhala?
A review of different ideas about Shambhala/Śambhala and what it really is, from the Kalachakra to pop culture.
In central Asia, people have been telling stories about a kingdom called Shambhala for thousands of years. It has been alternately described as a hidden paradise, a sacred mountain, and the site of a messianic prophecy about a coming golden age. It isn’t always clear if the stories are about the same place, or even whether it is a physical place or a state of mind, but there are definite themes swirling in the old stories!
Sources: Viṣṇu Purāṇas on Wikipedia, Horace Hayman Wilson’s translation of the Viṣṇu Purāṇas at SacredTexts.com, The Realm of Shambhala: A Complete Vision for Humanity’s Perfection by Khentrul Jamphel Lodrö, Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior by Chögyam Trungpa
Further reading: Searching for Shambhala by James George
Shambhala In Vedic Tradition
The purāṇas are a set of very old Vedic texts that cover a wide variety of spiritual practices. There are a number of purāṇas about the principal god Viṣṇu which mention Shambhala, written शम्भल or Śambhala. In the Viṣṇu Purāṇas, it is prophesied that when Vedic practices no longer are practiced and Vedic law has almost disappeared, an avatar of Viṣṇu named Kalki will appear in the village of Shambhala. Kalki will then re-establish righteousness and enlighten those living at the end of the destructive Kali age. By enlightening everyone, Kalki/Viṣṇu will start the prosperous Krita or Satya age.
The purāṇic story probably made its way into Tibetan Buddhism, where བདེ་འབྱུང་ (bde ‘byung, dejung) or 香巴拉 (Xiāngbālā) and kalki are also mentioned. In this case, ‘kalki’ refers not to the single last ruler but all twenty-five last kings of the Kingdom of Shambhala, who are known as the Kalki or Rigden kings. In this version, the very last king named Rudrachakrin is the one to defeat materialism and establish a planet-wide golden age. This story is quite similar to how the future buddha Maitreya is foretold to pacify all confusion and leading all beings to enlightenment.
Shambhala as a Lost Mountain Kingdom
Many central Asian stories tell about a kingdom lost or nearly impossible to find, that only very select few can reach. Ancient nomadic Scythians had a legend of an enchanted paradise in the far north, protected from the bitter cold surrounding it.
In parts of Russia, there is the legend of the land of Belovodye (White Waters or White Mountains) somewhere in the Altai Mountains, that only one person out of a 300-person expedition was able to reach. This captivating idea has made its way into Western culture via James Hilton’s 1933 book Lost Horizon (as Shangri-La) and theosophy, both of which took the general idea and ran with it.
This garbled presentation of Shambhala was actually how I first encountered the idea of a hidden paradise in high mountains in central Asia, in an Uncle Scrooge comic about the utopia Tralla-La in which he tries to escape his suffering due to his greed, only to realize what it means that suffering is in the mind and not the external circumstances.
Shambhala is even a high-profile music festival in the British Columbia mountains with yoga, art, and workshops. It’s been running for over 20 years, attracts top DJs, and is perhaps a rave version of a hidden paradise in the mountains!
Shambhala in the Kālacakra Tantra
The Kālacakra Tantra is a summary of a much longer, now-lost higher yoga text from the 11th century CE. In the commentaries to the Kālacakra Tantra, Shambhala is described as a kingdom in which the kings were emanations of highly accomplished bodhisattvas. (Bodhisattvas have vowed to help everyone else achieve enlightenment, too.) Renowned Tibetan meditation master Mipham the Great says that it lay north of the river Sita and was divided by eight mountain ranges, with a circular mountain called Mount Kailasha in the middle.
Over time, these kind and wise kings were like magnets for those with strong propensities toward love and compassion. Shambhala flourished in both worldly and spiritual ways. The initial central settlement of Shambhala grew to 96 surrounding villages, which grew to cities with even more villages around them in the valleys between the mountain ranges.
People came from all the surrounding regions, bringing their cultures and languages, yet lived harmoniously together. This harmony is what gave rise to the prosperity. The governors of each region worked hard to create wise and fair laws. They created an environment the offered all Shambhalians both safety and the opportunity to maximize their potential. The kingdom and its people flourished.
At one time, the king was named Suchandra. He recognized that many Shambhalians were ready to receive the teachings on the definite nature of reality, but also that he himself would need to receive the teachings from a Buddha first in order to teach his citizens.
Suchandra and the ninety-six governors entered deep meditation and asked the Buddha to teach them how to realize the definite nature of reality in a single lifetime. The Buddha granted their request.
King Suchandra completely understood the teachings when he heard them and became instantly completely and fully enlightened. When the king and his governors came out of meditation, King Suchandra immediately wrote down what they had been taught, which became the Kālacakra Root Tantra.
King Suchandra built a temple in the beautiful park in front of his giant imperial palace devoted to Kālacakra. He then gave the first Kālacakra initiation there. Kālacakra practice rapidly gained a reputation for being very effective. By the first century BCE, Kālacakra practice was well established in Shambhala under the five kings following Suchandra. (These five kings are often called the Dharma Kings, the Dharmarajas.)
The sixth king showed the non-Buddhist citizens that the wisdom of the Kālacakra Tantra would also refine their belief system as well as those of Buddhists. This led to that the citizens developed a truly unbiased philosophy together, out of all of their original spiritual traditions. From the sixth king on, the kings of Shambhala were therefore known as the Family (Rigden) Kings, because they presided over a united family of spiritual practitioners.
As their understanding became more and more refined, the story goes, Shambhala could no longer be experienced by ordinary humans. Shambhala still exists, it is said, but has disappeared into a higher realms. It is from this higher realm from which the last Rigden King will return to bring about a new Golden Age.
Many of these stories are captivating in their own right. But like many spiritual stories, they are symbolic myths. In Tibetan Buddhist lineages, Shambhala is one of many ways of describing the ground or root of wakefulness and sanity that exists as a potential within every human being.
Khentrul Jamphel Lodrö defines Shambhala as the perfection of peace and harmony, peace being our personal state of genuine happiness free from all suffering, and harmony being a state of a complete absence of conflict, spontaneously free from contradiction and separation.
Both he and Chögyam Trungpa use the analogy of the sun peeking out from behind the clouds for the glimpses we get of this state as we go about our lives. The sun is always shining; it is merely the passing clouds in the sky that prevent us from basking in its warmth and light all the time. We start with always having cloudy weather, only seeing little glimpses of the sun. With the right methods, we can clear the clouds, until our experience is the bright sun in a clear blue sky all the time and we have arrived in Shambhala.
I have to admit that the idea of an expedition deep into the Himalayas to discover a hidden paradise is very exciting. I understand why actual expeditions were launched to look! But if you think about it, the story of a society in which everyone sorts out their disagreements peacefully and respectfully, are full of love and kindness, develop material and spiritual abundance, and then get more and more enlightened together is also very exciting in a different way. This archetype of a naturally harmonious society from the Kālacakra tradition is mostly what I refer to when I talk about Shambhala here.
Although, I have to say, that music festival sounds pretty amazing.
