The Four Dignities: Path of a Spiritual Warrior (Bodhisattva)
I Ka Pono Community Garden in Kamuela, Hawaii, 1997
Some years ago, I did a series of four paintings on what are known in the Shambhala tradition as “the four dignities”. This lineage which was developed by one of my teachers, Chogyam Trungpa, used these rich metaphors to represent the path of a spiritual warrior (bodhisattva). I am writing this blog to share these paintings and some of the teachings the accompany them.
We live in times that challenge us on so many levels. And we are often misled by our old manachanian habits of dichotomizing every thing into good and bad, black and white, left and right. Modernity has planted deep habits of reductionism in our culture that lead to much suffering and unintendended consequences. It has planted mechnical models within our ways of thinking that preceive time as chronological and sequencial completely divorced from context. This legacy of the industrial revolution has infected and corrupted our ways of being, of relating and thinking about our world. A contextual appreciation of time, slows us down because it’s always relational.
The photograph at the top is an aerial view of a community garden our Zen Center of Hawaii created in the late 90’s on the Big Island of Hawaii. I came to this project after attending an Interfaith Bearing Witness Retreat at Auschwitz with the ZenPeacemakers. When the retreat ended, Bernie Roshi asked us this question, “What are you going to do now?” I had no answer. So, June and I flew home to Hawaii and I puzzled over this questions for many months, until I found the answer which was to grow food. Our Zen Center started this project, this community garden and called it “I Ka Pono” which means “cultivate the good”. We did bio-intensive farming with the conscious intention of learning and practicing sustainable agriculture. I learned so much and I learned that nature has it’s own rhythms by which seeds need to be planted and you can’t rush how complex systems work.
All this is a round-about-way of introducing the four dignities which I have worked with much of my life, as a buddhist practitioner in both Vajrayana and Zen traditions, and as an artist who eventually painted these four images which I will share with you through this series of blog articles. These teachings are deeply ecological and reflect an awareness of the nature of complexity and our intimate inter-relationship with nature and mother earth.
FOUR DIGNITIES
In the Buddhist tradition, the path of the Bodhisattva is well laid out. In the Shambhala teachings Chogyam Trungpa spoke of this as the path of a spiritual warrior. Part of this practice uses four metaphors known as the Four Dignities. These are the Tiger of Meekness, the Snow Lion of Perkiness, the Garuda of Outrageousness and the Dragon of Inscrutability.
In Mahayana Buddhism the traditional qualities and practices of a Bodhisattva are known as the six paramitas of generosity, discipline, patience, exertion, meditation and wisdom. These resonate and interweave with the teachings on the Four Dignities.
While a common stereotype of the Bodhisattva might be a person who is peaceful and kind, which is certainly true, we could also re-imagine such a person standing their ground, able to stand up to situations that might require active non-violent resistance or advocating for saner policies that contribute to the earth’s wellness or work to increase social justice.
In these times of uncertainty, fear, and disruption we need these teachings more than ever. They are advanced Buddhist teachings. They require that the practitioner see through the illusion of ego. And it goes without saying that appreciating one’s unconditional worthiness and a steady diet of meditation are foundational.
I will address each of these Four Dignities with a separate article for each accompanied by a painting I have done for each.
Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse is the Abbot of the Zen Life & Meditation Center. He has been teaching for over 30 years and practicing for 50 years. He is also an artist and painter. He’s been doing digital paintings on his computer for the last 10 years. You can view his work at his site for Robert Althouse Fine Arts at www.althouseart.com.