Transcript of Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche’s Shambhala Day address
19 February, 2015
Year of the Wood Sheep
Halifax, Nova Scotia
Click here to view the video recording of the address
Click here to see the annual roll call video
Click here to read the complete transcript of the Sakyong’s Address
Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche: “Today is the beginning of a year, and the basic message is that Shambhala is about life. It is about the energy rising. This is not ignoring that we have birth, aging, sickness, and death, in a cyclical existence. There’s a quality of looking at whether we are really engaged in life, if we are living life fully, and what is our notion of living.”
“… The most brilliant people have tried to communicate the nature of reality. In our tradition, the nature of reality is having the strength to appreciate and connect to the sadness, the joy, the strength, and the fragility of our experience. This is demonstrated today. Everybody had to make their way here. Everybody had to put energy into being here, and somehow it came together. From this we can launch into the New Year, which is an excellent way to follow the Horse, in terms of stabilization and bringing it into our personal experience.
As we are hooked up globally, on this particular Shambhala Day I ask you to join me in making an aspiration for what this next year will be. If you feel good about that, I would like you to extend your mind and say what the next twenty years would be. What is our vision? Shambhala Day is an excellent time to release the last year and in that space of not knowing, to raise our energy and project it into the future.”