This is an edited transcript of closing remarks I gave at the Kalapa Governance Gathering at Karmê Chöling in the autumn. People have told me they found them helpful and I would like to share this as an opening and invitation to this new column:

The 10th anniversary of 9/11 took place while we have been gathered here together for the Kalapa Governance Gathering. There is a way of looking at that horror and all that followed it as being entirely about humanity’s drama of inclusion and exclusion. If that’s part of what we are being asked by our lineage to address, using the enlightened teachings have come forth in this dark age, then we ourselves have to become much more expert on this issue of inclusion and exclusion. Otherwise we will have little to preach to others.

The issue of inclusion and exclusion comes up whenever we experience change. The whole spectrum of human emotions arises throughout our community. There are zealots. There are those who are dismissive, those who are ignoring, those who are deeply anxious. How do we relate to people who feel disenfranchised? People who don’t feel at home in our shrine rooms? Who don’t want to come to a Kalapa Governance Gathering? Who say, “No, we aren’t building a culture of kindness in Shambhala. We are experiencing a climate of fear.” Those who are afraid to express dissent. For goodness sake, how can we let that happen in a community which prides itself on offering teachings on fearlessness and open heart!

I feel that we all have a personal responsibility to examine this. To try to understand these issues very deeply. Oddly enough, this as a gift. Here is a possibility — at the very time that we are going to be talking increasingly about enlightened society — to look at the sharp edges in our very own society.

Mercifully, unlike other places on planet earth, we aren’t bombing each other. We don’t have generations and generations of people who have been living in poverty and exclusion. Instead, we are a karmically connected community of practitioners who share a common sense of devotion. A community of people who are as loyal to their understanding of these teachings as any group of people could be. So we ought, friends, to have the best possible conditions to examine and work on these issues.

I really think this is absolutely indispensable for us as leaders and for our groups and our centres. I feel that the tools we have been given are perfect for this. Let’s go to those difficult places and listen and inquire [an exercise practiced repeatedly over the four days of each of these gatherings]. Let’s create these kinds of listening environments. I think our experience of doing this, when we do it as Shastri Sable showed us, is that meaning gets co-created and shared in a mutual space of genuine interaction. Personally, I would really like to ask you to try doing this when you go back home to your communities.

Two things are coming together right now that give us a tremendous possibility for this. First, the Sakyong is simplifying our practices and our liturgy so that we can be much more inviting to many more people. For some people that is a very welcome development. For others, the process is very, very painful.

Second, there is the focus on basic goodness. If you like this approach, then what the Sakyong is doing is wonderful. There are people all over our mandala who burst into tears when the Sakyong talks about this. They have been longing for that. But this isn’t the experience of everybody. We have other, long-standing forms and practices — and not everybody wants two more vows! (laughter)

So that’s the tremendous opportunity we have as practitioners The point is not: “What’s wrong with those people?” but: “What’s that all about?” That’s what I felt Shastri David Sable was saying so eloquently in his presentation on Listening and Inquiring: we can actually go to a place of fearless and compassionate inquiry and ask someone who has a different point of view to our own : “How did you come to feel this way ?”

That openness and that inquiry is really indispensable to the practice of kindness.

Oh, if ever there was a group of people who had a chance of pulling together, that’s us! But it can only be done if we have the aspiration to do it.

The last thing I want to mention is something about dissent. As I’ve spent most of time in the field of human rights work, some of you may think I see dissent as a human rights issue. Forget it! It’s actually an issue of love. When people in our mandala disagree, it is rooted in something very, very deep. They love this mandala. They love these teachings. They love their teacher, and they love what Shambhala is all about. As we travel the bodhisattva path, it is said that we gradually become capable of distinguishing between what is coming towards us (like aggression) and where that is actually coming from (such as the person’s pain or longing). If you reflect on it, a great amount of human atrocity has occurred as a result of the failure to practice this discernment. Instead of reacting to what’s in our face, we need the discernment to understand the ground from whence it is arising.

I take a great deal of encouragement from these days we have spent together. This is hugely worth it. This is boot training for an incredibly powerful mission. My heart aspiration for everybody here is that these practices and the time we’ve spent here are something you’ll remember and be inspired by as we go forward together.

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