Shambhala - Western Receptions

Western Receptions

Westerners have often been fascinated with the idea of Shambhala, often based on fragmented accounts from the Kalachakra tradition. Tibet was largely closed to Westerners until the twentieth century, and so what information was available about the tradition of Shambhala was haphazard at best.

The first information that reached western civilization about Shambhala came from the Portuguese Catholic missionary Estêvão Cacella, who had heard about Shambhala (which they transcribed as "Xembala"), and thought it was another name for Cathay or China. In 1627 they headed to Tashilhunpo, the seat of the Panchen Lama and, discovering their mistake, returned to India.

The Hungarian scholar Sándor Kőrösi Csoma, writing in 1833, provided the first geographic account of "a fabulous country in the north...situated between 45' and 50' north latitude". Interestingly enough, due north from India to between these latitudes is eastern Kazakhstan, which is characterized by green hills, low mountains, rivers, and lakes. This is in contrast to the landscape of the provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang in eastern China, which are high mountains and arid.

The concept of Shangri-La, as first described in James Hilton's 1933 novel Lost Horizon, is claimed to have been inspired by the Shambhala myth (as well as then-current National Geographic articles on Eastern Tibet Kham).

Shambala appears in several science fiction stories of the 1930s.

During the 19th century, Theosophical Society founder HP Blavatsky alluded to the Shambhala myth, giving it currency for Western occult enthusiasts. Madame Blavatsky, who claimed to be in contact with a Great White Lodge of Himalayan Adepts, mentions Shambhala in several places without giving it especially great emphasis. (The Mahatmas, we are told, are also active around Shigatse and Luxor.)

Later esoteric writers further emphasized and elaborated on the concept of a hidden land inhabited by a hidden mystic brotherhood whose members labor for the good of humanity. Alice A. Bailey claims Shamballa (her spelling) is an extra-dimensional or spiritual reality on the etheric plane, a spiritual centre where the governing deity of Earth, Sanat Kumara, dwells as the highest Avatar of the Planetary Logos of Earth, and is said to be an expression of the Will of God. Nicholas and Helena Roerich led a 1924-1928 expedition aimed at Shambhala.

Inspired by Theosophical lore and several visiting Mongol lamas, Gleb Bokii, the chief Bolshevik cryptographer and one of the bosses of the Soviet secret police, along with his writer friend Alexander Barchenko, embarked on a quest for Shambhala, in an attempt to merge Kalachakra-tantra and ideas of Communism in the 1920s. They contemplated a special expedition to Inner Asia to retrieve the wisdom of Shambhala - the project fell through as a result of intrigues within the Soviet intelligence service, as well as rival efforts of the Soviet Foreign Commissariat that sent its own expedition to Tibet in 1924.

French Buddhist Alexandra David-Néel associated Shambhala with Balkh in present day Afghanistan, also offering the Persian Sham-i-Bala, "elevated candle" as an etymology of its name. In a similar vein, the Gurdjieffian J. G. Bennett published speculation that Shambalha was Shams-i-Balkh, a Bactrian sun temple.

Among other things, in a secret laboratory affiliated with the secret police, Bokii and Barchenko also experimented with Buddhist spiritual techniques, trying to find a key to engineer perfect communist human beings Similarly, Heinrich Himmler and Rudolf Hess sent a German expedition to Tibet in 1930, and then again in 1934-35, and in 1938-39. Some later occultists, noting the Nazi link, view Shambhala (or the closely related underground realm of Aghartha) as a source of negative manipulation by an evil (or amoral) conspiracy.

Chögyam Trungpa, a Tibetan Buddhist lama, used the "Shambhala" name for certain of his teachings, practices, and organizations (e.g. Shambhala Training, Shambhala International, Shambhala Publications), referring to the root of human goodness and aspiration. In Trungpa's view, Shambhala has its own independent basis in human wisdom that does not belong to East or West, or to any one culture or religion.