Ancient Buddhist Prophecy Predicts a New Story

I just came across The Active Hope Show through an email from the New Story Hub.   Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy and medical doctor Chris Johnstone co-authored the book Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy in 2012.  The Active Hope Show is a series of short youtube videos that they have created. 

Chris Johnstone

In the first episode Chris Johnstone introduces the video by saying, "Our ability to respond is shaped by the stories woven into our view of reality.  If we want to be empowered and inspired, we need stories that are empowering and inspiring.”

Joanna Macy

Joanna Macy goes on to share an old Shambala Warrior Prophecy from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition.  Although the prophecy is 12 centuries old, it is surprisingly relevant to what we are experiencing today.  Macy and Johnstone find this story to be inspiring and empowering which is why they shared it.

Here is the summary of the story quoted from the New Story Hub but you can also listen to Macy tell it here. She invites you to listen to it as if it were about yourself.

 “There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger. At that time great powers have arisen, barbarian powers, and although they waste their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other, they have much in common. Among the things these barbarians have in common are weapons of unfathomable devastation and death and technologies that lay waste to the world. And it is just at this point in our history, when the future of all beings seems to hang by the frailest of threads, that the kingdom of Shambhala emerges. Now, you can’t go there because it is not a place. It exists in the hearts and minds of the Shambhala warriors….

“Now the time is coming when great courage is required of the Shambhala warriors: moral courage and physical courage, and that’s because they are going to go right into the heart of the barbarian powers to dismantle their weapons. They are going to go into the pits and citadels where the weapons are made and deployed. They are going to go into the corridors of power where the decisions are made, to dismantle the weapons in every sense of the word. The Shambahla warriors know that these weapons can be dismantled because they are made by the human mind. They can be unmade by the human mind. The dangers that face us are not brought upon us by some satanic deity, or some evil extra-terrestial force or some unchangeable preordained fate. They arise out of our relationships and habits, out of our priorities. They are made by the human mind; they can be unmade by the human mind.

“Now is the time the Shambhala warriors go into training. They train in the use of two implements. One is compassion and the other is insight into the radical interdependence of all phenomena. You need both. You need the compassion because that provides the fuel to move you out where you need to be to do what you need to do. That means not being afraid of the suffering of your world. When you’re not afraid to be with that pain, then nothing can stop you. You can be and do what you’re meant to.

“But by itself that implement is very hot – it can burn you out. So you need that other tool – you need the insight into the radical interconnectivity at the heart of existence, the web of live, our deep ecology. When you have that, then you know that this is not a battle between good guys and bad guys. You know that the line between good and evil runs through the landscape of every human heart. And you know that we are so interwoven in the web of life that even the smallest act, with clear intention, has repercussions through the whole web beyond your capacity to see. But that’s a little cool; maybe even a little abstract. You need the heat of the compassion – the interplay between compassion and wisdom.”

This ancient prophecy gives us clues about how we can go about solving the problems that face our world today and the solutions are not new.  Although we seem to have forgotten that everything is connected, we are being reminded by science, by extreme weather and by ancient cultures of this reality.  And being compassionate is within every person's reach.  But the story calls for a change in perspective.  Perhaps this ancient story can inspire and empower us to create a new story out of, to quote Chris Johnstone, "this mess."