CHAPTER 4 LEADING FOR CHANGE, DIALOGUE FOR OPENNESS Feminine Principle Teachings For Leaders J. SIMMER-BROWN Judith Simmer-Brown According to Tibetan legends, the great Indian spiritual adept Padmasambhava (considered to be the master who brought Buddhism to Tibet in the eighth century) underwent enormous hardships while seeking the teachings that would complete his spiritual realization. Upon hearing of the renowned female guru called Secret Wisdom, the Queen of Dakinis, he traveled to the gates of her palace. With tremendous urgency, he Inner Peace—Global Impact: Tibetan Buddhism, Leadership, and Work, pp. 47–66 Copyright © 2012 by Information Age Publishing All rights of reproduction in any form reserved. 47 48 J. SIMMER-BROWN attempted to send a request to the queen through her beautiful young maidservant, Kumari. The girl ignored him and continued to carry enormous brass jugs of water suspended from a heavy yoke across her shoulders. When he pressed his request, Kumari continued her labors, remaining silent. The great master became impatient, and through his yogic powers magically nailed the heavy jugs to the floor. No matter how hard Kumari struggled, she could not lift them. Removing the yoke and ropes from her shoulders, she stepped before Padmasambhava, exclaiming, “I see that you have developed great yogic powers. What of my powers, great one?” Her sparkling smile revealed shining fangs, and she drew a crystal knife from the girdle at her waist. Her three eyes flashed, and she sliced open her heart center, revealing the vivid and vast interior space of her body. There was displayed the entire sacred mandala of the universe, a beautiful symbolic representation in brilliant colors. Abashed that he had not realized with whom he was dealing, Padmasambhava bowed before her and humbly renewed his request for teachings. In response, she offered him her respect as well, adding, “I am only a maidservant,” and ushered him in to meet the Queen Secret Wisdom.1 This simple maidservant is a messenger of her genre, the dakini in Tibetan Buddhism. As can be seen from her name Kumari, “beautiful young girl, the crown princess,” she may be humble in demeanor but she is regal and commanding in her understanding of the nature of reality. Her fangs show that her beauty is not merely conventional, but terrifying, and her three eyes stare into limitless space. Like many dakinis, she teaches directly not through words but through actions. Specifically, she teaches with her body, cutting open her very heart to reveal her wisdom. In her heart is revealed the ultimate nature of reality, empty and vast. And within its vastness are all phenomena, all sense perceptions, emotions, thoughts, and cognitions as a sacred diagram of the entire world, the mandala.2 One of the most distinctive and remarkable bodies of Tibetan Buddhist teachings to consider when contemplating contributions to leadership and organizations is that known as the feminine principle, or dakini, teachings. These are teachings that developed in the yogic traditions of Tibet and India, applying less to the monastery and government and more to lay and yogic practice communities associated with the oral Nyingma and Kagyu lineages, especially in East Tibet. These teachings relate especially to leadership for change. The dakini is a female goddess figure who represents the wisdom cultivated in Tibetan Buddhist meditation and yoga. The lore of the oral tradition reveals dakinis as magical, visionary beings who appear in legends, visions and dreams, demonstrating true nature of reality through various Leading for Change 49 skillful means. Practices that enact this view are central to Tibetan Buddhist meditation. The renowned Tibetan Buddhist master, Chogyam Trungpa,3 relied on these teachings in the founding of his North American organizations, and he structured their leadership and governance on this principle.4 As a longtime Shambhala practitioner and professor of Buddhism from one of his organizations, Naropa University, I initially learned aspects of this tradition from him. This motif of Tibetan tantric Buddhism became the subject of my practice and scholarly work, and serves as the basis for the material in this chapter. The dakini teachings have been influential in the esoteric yogic traditions of Tibet and India since the eighth century, and are still powerful influences in especially the Kagyu and Nyingma practice traditions of Buddhism. The word dakini is a Sanskrit word with ambiguous etymology; the Tibetan equivalent, khandro means “she who flies,” referring to the female deity who lives in limitless vastness.5 Dakinis may appear to practitioners as embodiments of core truths of the tradition, the impermanent, nonsubstantial and dynamic nature of reality. Their powers are revered, for they particularly have the ability to evoke profound wisdom in the practitioner. Over the centuries, oral Tibetan traditions developed a more nuanced, multileveled understanding of the dakini, becoming a central Au: The prefix symbol of yogic practice. multi does not A disclaimer is necessary. I am not an expert in or scholar of leadership require hyphen in APA. training; I am a religious studies professor specializing in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism. This chapter does not relate to Tibetan organizations, such as the Tibetan government or monastic institutions, that have their own organizing principles and traditions, both inside and outside of Tibet.6 It is not based on a scholarly study of the lives of Tibetan women, or of their role in organizational life either in Tibet or in exile.7 The chapter is not a particularly feminist read of the dakini lore, and often violates the tenets of feminism, as it is not intended to make statements about the female gender, but about the feminine as an organizing principle in life, which is something quite distinct from the gender.8 My challenge here is to accurately present the Tibetan tradition on these teachings as I have received them, and to suggest resonances for the field of leadership. Still, when I look back at my 35 years as a professor at Naropa University, I realize that I have been a leader who has played many different roles in the life of a fledgling, and then fully accredited University. I have been a dean, for decades a department chair, and I have served on multiple committees, task forces, and governance groups. I have been at turns an innovator and a reactionary, an advocate and entrenched conservative. Most leadership skills I have learned the hard way, by trying to lead from a position of arrogance, personal vision, and ambition—and these methods have understandably backfired. Only in the last decade or so have I 50 J. SIMMER-BROWN realized that I must lead from a different stance, one shaped by my decades of contemplative training and practice. I learn more about this every day. When Chogyam Trungpa, Rinpoche, a senior incarnation and treasurediscoverer9 of the Kagyu and Nyingma schools, came to the west, he felt that acknowledgement of and respect for the “feminine principle” teachings were woefully lacking in Western culture. In our patriarchal environment, leadership roles have been consistently occupied by men, or by women who are culturally rewarded for embodying stereotypic masculine styles. Rinpoche saw that this created issues in communities and organizations, producing an imbalance that accentuated certain kinds of knowledge, skills, and communication styles associated with the masculine, at the expense of the feminine. Recovering the lost feminine was very much a priority in his work, but as we discovered, Tibetan notions of feminine were not like Western ones. Drawing from his own tradition, he taught that the feminine was especially associated with nonconceptual wisdom of the nature of reality, especially the impermanent and insubstantial qualities we experience. During his first decade of teaching in the United States (19711981), he emphasized these teachings to rebalance the cultural deficiencies he discovered here. Those of us who studied with him and worked in his organizations benefited enormously from these unconventional teachings, as they gave a refreshing perspective on chaos, unpredictability, relationships between women and men, and leadership styles. Selected themes from those teachings are explicated in this chapter. OVERCOMING IMMUNITY TO CHANGE: THE GREAT MOTHER We all know that change is hard, but we don’t know enough about why it is so hard and what we can do about it…. [T]he change challenges today’s leaders and their subordinates face are not, for the most part, a problem of will. The problem is the inability to close the gap between what we genuinely, even passionately, want and what we are actually able to do. Closing this gap is a central learning problem of the twenty-first century.10 The Harvard University Change Leadership Group has identified strengthening organizations’ capacities for change as one of the most pressing contemporary issues in leadership training.11 Most leadership training has focused on management skills that remain “inside the box” of previous paradigms. Typically, it has not addressed organizations’ and individuals’ “immunity to change”12 that has made it difficult for leaders to develop the necessary flexibility, vision, and collaboration to succeed in challenging times like these. Everyone feels anxious about change, not just leaders or organizations, and yet change is probably the only reliable Leading for Change 51 thing in our lives. It is important to develop literature that prepares leaders and their organizations to adapt to the inevitable changes they will always face. Collaborators on leadership for change, such as Robert Kegan, Lisa Laskow Lahey, and Ronald A. Heifetz and his colleagues, are producing work that helps individuals and organizations train for change in a variety of refreshing new ways. As Heifetz and his colleagues affirm, adaptive models of “leadership for change demand [s] inspiration and perspiration.”13 Immunity to change refers to hidden internal maps that we develop in ourselves and in our organizations in order to succeed, and these maps are essentially stress-management systems. This immunity resides not in rational thought but in emotions, especially in the form of attempting to manage anxiety.14 Anxiety about change is not the episodic kind, but pervades all of our experience and is common to all humans. Effective leaders often develop immunity to change in order to remain highly functioning, focused, and effective in their activities, but this kind of immunity operates at a tremendous personal cost. Inevitably, they create blind spots, prevent new learning, and constantly constrain action in some aspects of our living. These costs show up when we are unable to deliver on some genuinely desired change, the realization of which would bring us to a new, higher level of functioning in ways we truly want to attain.15 We can replace the immunity to change that is currently constricting us with a more expansive way of seeing our world, enabling us to become more responsive, creative, and effective in leadership, in organizations, and in our lives in general. The writings coming out of this conversation provide a compelling view of change, but the real challenge is not developing the view (itself radical and revolutionary), but the presence or absence of methods for how to overcome immunity to change and how to enact flexibility, adaptability, and skill. As Kegan and Lahey write, “for most people greater insight, however exhilarating, is insufficient to bring about lasting change.”16 How does a leader prepare herself, her organization, and her colleagues and employees for genuine change? How can leadership become a practice, to use Heifetz’s term, “as a verb, not a job. Authority, power, and influence are critical tools, but they do not define leadership.”17 This perspective about change has ancient roots. Tibetan Buddhism has long relied on a profound understanding of change as the true wisdom of the way things really are. Buddha Shakyamuni in the sixth century B.C.E. taught about impermanence as one of the foundational discoveries of enlightenment. “Whatever arises also ceases,” he taught in one of the 52 J. SIMMER-BROWN earliest texts,18 and he reminded his first students in innumerable ways that nothing lasts. Later in his career, he taught that nothing has substantial, permanent existence, and that misunderstanding this is what leads to all human suffering. These teachings formed the foundational view of Buddhism throughout the world. However, as we saw above, having insights is not enough. How can these insights influence how we actually conduct ourselves in our lives and in the workplace? Tibetan Buddhism is known especially for its many skillful methods of accelerating the necessary transformations about which the Buddha spoke. Drawing from the Indian tradition, ingenious methods of meditation practice were developed that demonstrated something more than a merely intellectual understanding of the profundity of the Buddha’s realization. The teachings and practices that cultivate understanding and manifest the capacity to change are especially embodied in teachings known as the “feminine principle,” otherwise known as the dakini wisdom teachings. In Tibetan Buddhism, wisdom (prajna, or sherap) refers to the special intuitive knowing cultivated in meditation, a kind of wisdom that transcends concept, limit, or boundary of any kind. The teaching is subtle. Humans are conventionally ensnared by a conceptual approach, and these concepts blind us to the unfettered, brilliant qualities of our actual experience. It is unimaginable to move beyond these concepts, for they condition every moment of our lives and shape our sense of identity, our relationships, our emotions, our sense perceptions, our very dreams. Most attempts to point out the binding nature of our conceptual landscape merely intensify our concepts as we grope to fit even spiritual teachings into our previously devised categories. It is our concepts that make us resistant to or immune to change. Organizations, like people, fall into habits about how things work, about who is in charge, what the mission is, what procedures are, how decision-making should take place, and what the products should be. In these economic times, however, the old ways of doing business are not working any more, and the companies that are ready to “morph” into fresh thinking, new products, streamlined management, and so forth, are the ones that will succeed. This means that learning how to adapt quickly and drop habitual ways of thinking and doing is essential to survival. And this means changing the mind of the leader first. The Buddhist tradition speaks of the qualities of an adaptable and open mind: the clearest description is a mind that is not trapped in concepts and ideas. Concepts are our most damaging blinders; while they are useful for awhile, they quickly expire. They have a limited shelf life. As leaders, we need to cultivate awareness, freshness, flexibility of mind in ourselves and the members of our organization; ideas are useful tools, but Leading for Change 53 they are not the end we seek. We seek the creative, unbounded, embodied space of our experience—what is called the Great Mother (yum chenmo) in Tibetan Buddhism. While it is difficult to break free from conceptuality, Tibetan meditation provides various skillful methods to aid practitioners in opening themelves. Mindfulness-awareness meditation relaxes the mind and reveals the contrast between thoughts and the nature of mind itself. Devotional practices submerge concepts in love and longing for the unconditioned, thereby allowing a glimpse of vastness. Analytic meditation points out the limitations of logic that may demonstrate validity but can never find the truth. Visualization practices show that all our experience is dreamlike, devoid of permanence and solidity. All of these methods fall under the purview of the personalized form of the Great Mother, the nonexistent queen of all impermanence, emptiness, and space, the compassionate midwife of the practitioners’ awakening. Above all, the feminine principle is about the dawn of nonconceptuality in personal experience, supported by one of these practices. The Great Mother tradition is one of the oldest in Buddhism, and it became a strong theme in Tibet. It developed from the renowned Prajnaparamita (literally, “wisdom-gone-beyond”) tradition of India, in which nonconceptual wisdom was personified as feminine, though in “her” essence, nothing whatever can be represented. Eventually the Great Mother was portrayed as a dancing goddess figure with unsettling appearance, like that of Kumari described above. Visions of a powerful dakini would appear to the practitioner as a reminder of the certainty of change, insubstantiality, and vastness at key points in spiritual development. The dakini reigns over a world that is luminous, brilliant and insubstantial, available to us more through observation via our sense perceptions than through our concepts. What is required is that we open to this vast brilliance with the support of practices of presence, mindfulness and awareness, and wonder. This requires the discipline of opening to vastness in some daily way. That is what the myriad practices of Tibetan Buddhism present to us. Such insight is very helpful in our organizational life. The “leadership for change” literature seems full of suggestions for how leaders can be “change agents,” rather than spokespersons for the change that is already afoot in our world. There are wonderful suggestions in this literature about how to prepare our employees, colleagues, and organizations for change, but how do we prepare ourselves for change? Leaders are subject to the realm of the Mother as much as anyone else, perhaps more. Leaders often labor under the delusion that they are (or should be) in control of all factors in the workplace. We feel that order and predictability are our friends, and chaos is our enemy—in short, we are “immune to 54 J. SIMMER-BROWN change.”19 When things do not work out as we had envisioned, we become frustrated and more controlling, or we deflate into hopelessness and a sense of failure. From a Tibetan perspective, this is hubris for a leader, for it breeds brittleness and frustrates effectiveness and success. Clarity about the true nature of reality means that we see the wisdom in chaos, and impermanence permeates all aspects of the workplace. The effective leader overcomes her immunity to change. Reliance on the Great Mother supports this. From the larger perspective of how things really work, our attempts to control and order the world are delusional if we think that we are ultimately in charge. Trungpa Rinpoche described our attempts to regulate and control as a kind of futile administration that is an “overground,” while the genuine nature of reality is functioning at a more “black-market” level. The overground level is the artificial structure that we use to organize the world; the underlayer is the way things really are. The underlayer is the level of the Great Mother. The overlay of the reality is unable to detect the underlayer of the reality anymore. The surface may go quite nonchalantly, it usually does, but the undercurrent is extraordinarily powerful, that it begins to manufacture a world of its own, in the feminine principle of potentiality, and embryonic, and resourceful, and glamorous at the same time.20 From this perspective, we as leaders do not need to be change agents as much as we need to acknowledge the certainty of change, no matter what, and prepare ourselves to facilitate a more realistic and flexible relationship with change in ourselves, our organizations, and the individuals within those organizations. In some of my more difficult years at Naropa University, this perspective has been meaningful to me. Over 10 years ago, I playfully founded a small secret society of longtime employees, both staff and faculty, that I called “Black Market of the Mother,” referring to the “underlayer” described above. The society has no meetings, no secret handshakes, no membership cards, and no manifesto. It is merely a loose association of members who are ready to embrace the vital, powerful, dynamic, and “glamorous” qualities of change that constantly sweep our small university. I electronically send to its members, as a kind of induction, a brief quote by Naropa’s founder on the certainty of change, including the quote above. We affirm that whatever new managers or executives we may have, whatever department chairs or deans, whatever academic plan or accreditation requirement, the underlying genuineness of inspiration at our contemplative university relies on impermanence, nonsubstantiality, and chaos. We are all subject to it, and openness to this protects the heritage of the university from long-term effects of manipulation and control from any quarter, including our own. Leading for Change 55 CONTAINER AND DIALOGUE: THE MANDALA PRINCIPLE It is certainly not enough just to embrace change, nonsubstantiality, and chaos in an organization. How is one to understand the dynamics of an ever-changing world? How does one lead, participating effectively in the reality of how things work this way? The servant girl Kumari gave clues to how to understand change. Beneath the reality of impermanence, there are predictable dynamics for how things work, in the Tibetan view. This dynamic is described as a mandala, a representation of the complete functioning of the universe as it is, physically, psychologically, and spiritually. This manifestation is naturally sacred and brilliant in its wholeness, even within the dynamics of impermanence. As a symbol, the mandala also expresses a method transforming a confused, conceptual understanding into a view that is based on impermanence, emptiness, and luminosity. Such a view, according to Tibetan tantra, is completely clear because it is based upon understanding things as they are, ultimately empty of inherent existence and full of the qualities of wholeness and wakefulness.21 In the narrative above, the dakini Kumari revealed the sacred mandala in the limitless vastness of the interior of her body by cutting open her heart center. Dakinis have the power to awaken this vision, if we can embrace the realm of impermanence and luminosity; we then have the ability to see our world as inherently whole and sacred. Traditionally speaking, mandalas are iconographically represented as two-dimensional diagrams or three-dimensional reproductions of a prescribed universe, represented by a palace, throne, or pedestal in the midst of an environment of dramatic beauty. The features of the mandala (in Tibetan, kyil-khor) are based on a central focal point (kyil) surrounded by (khor) boundary walls, perimeters, or realms. The center and perimeter are seen as interdependent, and that is the key to the power of the form. In the sacred mandala, the dynamic between center and fringe is not based on struggle or competition. The central deity of the Tibetan tantric mandala is not a supreme being or an existent being of any kind, for that matter. The perimeter boundaries are as important and powerful as the center, and they are not existent either. Instead, the mandala is an expression of the dynamics of the world, once the profound understanding of space, of emptiness, is realized. With no supreme being or god of any kind, everything in the world is a transparent emanation, a play of empty space. From this perspective, the haunting qualities of the unseen lend a kind of magic to experience. In a broader context, the mandala is a paradigm through which we can understand the natural functioning of any occurrence. Mandalas are like Tibetan “systems theory”22 and from this view every situation operates on the dynamic of the mandala principle. If we look at examples like cities, 56 J. SIMMER-BROWN we see that an individual city like Washington DC has developed its own way of working like a living organism with a center of power and activity and support systems. Geographically, we can see that Washington has a central business district and suburbs, linked with expressways and beltways. This systems approach can be found in many instances in our everyday world. The atom has a nucleus and revolving electrons that emit energy that holds the whole configuration together. Communication networks have a common vision and organizing principles. Swarms of bees decide collectively about the suitability of new sites for hives. The workplace has intricate patterns of activity and communication, with interconnecting roles. When one understands the dynamic relationships in these naturally existing mandalas, it is possible to glimpse the view of sacredness as presented in Tibetan Buddhism. When we embrace change, we begin to discover a more inherent, lively way that systems work, patterned as mandalas. Within organizations, power may not be held by the boss, but by other figures within the leadership, and power is found in many different styles in different corners of the organization. The effective leader can begin to read how the naturally existing mandala is at work in an organization, and through this insight can bring into harmony and communication these pockets of power, so that an organization can move forward and adapt to new circumstances. This requires identifying the mandala at work, and cultivating the underlying way that power works in that mandala, bringing it to the surface. The conventional way in which naturally existing mandalas work is that they cannot acknowledge that they are mandalas or systems with their own dynamics and parameters. It is especially difficult for mandalas to acknowledge the natural power radiated between the center and the perimeter boundary. The center would like to manipulate its boundary, or the perimeter would like to overthrow the center. From a conventional point of view, the mandala may be a dictatorship, in which the central figure does not acknowledge or respect the perimeter, and so it imposes its tyranny. Or, conversely, the perimeter does not acknowledge or respect the central power, and so it undermines, conspires and overthrows the center, creating rebellion, chaos, or anarchy. When this happens, everything is reduced to the lowest common denominator, and sacred world is impossible to discover. Pain, paranoia, and self-serving preoccupation overtake the power dynamic, and it is impossible for anyone to thrive. We see this dynamic at work in organizations, flowing between the extreme of too much power centralized in one or two people who serve as the leaders, to the extreme of no centralized leadership, in which the organization languishes or experiences outbreaks of power struggles between factions. When we do not see the mandala principle at work, we constantly reject, grasp or attempt to manipulate the world around us to make it into Leading for Change 57 something other than what it is. It is difficult to feel ourselves empowered to be in our own environment and to experience its richness. When this happens, we cannot experience our jobs or communities in a sacred way. It feels that everyone at work acts independently since power and survival are the only issues, we are able to act only from power and survival instincts. We indulge in hope that perhaps in a different time, like next year, everything will be going more smoothly—the dean will be less demanding, the office more efficient and peaceful, our faculty colleagues less preoccupied and overwhelmed. Then we will be able to experience career fulfillment! When we relate to things in this way, there is no empowered center or perimeter in my world. We feel we are dispensable parts of the workplace, and have no power to affect the environment there. Or we feel completely in control in the workplace, but no one else is helping and supporting us and we feel overwhelmed. This brings an experience of constant pain, and when we reject even this pain, we make our personal situations hopeless. The only transformative choice that remains, according to Tibetan Buddhism, is to take our seats in whatever world we find ourselves in, and acknowledge it as a sacred mandala, as the completely perfect environment in which to live and work. This means settling in to our jobs, our marriages, our communities, and commit to all of the difficult parts of them. Our lives can only be seen in this way if we include everything, all the positive qualities as well as all that we would like to ignore, reject, or distance ourselves from, everything in ourselves and everything in situations around us.23 While Tibetan Buddhism has developed skillful practices for revealing the structure of the mandala, there are current practices in leadership that are also tremendously effective for realizing the mandala. The best example can be found in the leadership literature on dialogue, or the “art of thinking together,” a method by which the “architecture of the invisible” can be surfaced in our organizations.24 Dialogue, derived from dialogos, refers to the “flow of meaning” in conversation that developed in civil society from the time of the Greeks. Physicist David Bohm revitalized this practice, extrapolating from his discoveries in physics that there is an underlying “implicate order” in organisms that has more to do with the whole than with particles. Bohm considered all the conventionally-perceived phenomena to be momentary abstractions of a more fundamental flow of wholeness that underlies them. On this stream, one may see an ever-changing pattern of vortices, ripples, waves, splashes, etc., which evidently have no independent existence as such. Rather, they are abstracted from the flowing movement, arising and vanishing in the total process of the flow. Such transitory subsistence as may 58 J. SIMMER-BROWN be possessed by these abstracted forms implies only a relative independence or autonomy of behavior, rather than absolutely independent existence as ultimate substances.25 His views challenged the fundamental of physics, and became part of the entire movement of quantum physics. At a key point in his career, Bohm’s friendship with the iconoclastic Hindu philosopher, Jiddu Krishnamurti, opened his eyes to the dynamics of the human mind beyond thought that revolutionized his view.26 Later in life, he began to experiment with organizations and groups, launching a practice of communication that has less to do with individual insights and more to do with the wisdom that is found in the communications of the whole group.27 Bohm’s protégés, such as William Isaacs, Chris Harris, and Peter Senge, along with other social scientists like Margaret Wheatley and Juanita Brown, have developed practices of dialogue in organizations as ways to foster and strengthen the implicate order, a notion that parallels the Tibetan mandala principle in contemporary settings.28 This practice highlights the importance of communication “beyond thought,” in which members of a group are able to transcend the habit of individual thought and to think with others.29 The training methods of William Isaacs, Bohm’s most direct protégé and member of the MIT Dialogue Project, build skills that reverse our customary approaches. Usually, we think alone and then adhere unreasonably to our conclusions, defending them, promoting them, and adhering to them in spite of any evidence to the contrary. This leads us to a stance of debate in our relationships with others. Isaacs suggests that such approaches reinforce the four experiences of fragmentation, idolatry, certainty and violence that cause organizations and groups to be dysfunctional.30 The implicate order is submerged and invisible when this happens, and we are held hostage to the limited nature of individual intelligence. The practice of dialogue directly counteracts this tendency, and builds the ability of groups to discover their own natural dynamics and intelligence. Practicing the four skills of listening, respecting, suspending, and voicing counteract the four experiences of fragmentation, idolatry, certainty and violence.31 Deep listening acknowledges our connection with others, and overcomes the fragmentizing tendency to see ourselves as isolated beings. Respecting counteracts the idolatry of considering our own ideas as superior to others, and opens us to genuinely considering issues anew. Suspending is the opposite of defending, which is the habit driven by the hubris of certainty when we think alone. Voicing allows us to express our resonance to the wisdom of others, quite different from the violence we express when we defend our own ideas to the end.32 Altogether, these are the core practices associated with changing our habits of Leading for Change 59 relying excessively on thoughts, especially our own, a reliance that cripples the potential of our organizations, communities, and societies. None of this can work, however, unless these practices take place within a safe space, what has been called a container.33 A container is an environment with definite boundaries in which human energy can be held so that “it can be transformative rather than destructive.”34 Isaacs speaks of the container as holding human intensity, like a cauldron that has energy, possibility, and safety. In such a defined field, dialogue can take place.35 These are key practices for uncovering the natural system of intelligence and wholeness at the heart of our communities—understood in Tibetan Buddhism as the mandala. It is fascinating to me that luminaries within the MIT organizational development world use this term “container. When Trungpa Rinpoche first came to America in 1971, he found ingenious ways of articulating the core teachings of Tibetan Buddhism. His colloquial, everyday word for mandala principle was “container.” Whenever we did practice programs or whenever he gave teachings, he paid special attention to the container, and asked that we guard the boundaries around it, follow the disciplines within it, and treasure the special opportunities we had to be within it. His use of the word seems identical to that of Senge, Scharmer, Isaacs and others. It is likely that this terminology came into their work from students of Rinpoche’s such as Francisco Varela and Eleanor Rosch who were themselves involved in dialogue with colleagues at MIT.36 The very evolution of the dialogue movement has part of its impetus from Indian philosophy in Krishnamurti’s work, and from Tibetan Buddhism in the work of Chogyam Trungpa. Containers or mandalas are sacred realms in which nonconceptual wisdom can be accessed and understood. We could speak of this wisdom as magical, for it blooms between individuals, and it dawns in the wholeness of the environment. Once we open to our situations, step into them, and accept them as they are, inescapably, we take our seats in the center of our mandalas and establish boundaries. To establish boundaries, we identify the natural limits for this particular system and create a container, both physical and mental, in which this system can operate. Then it is possible to work with the situation, and a sense of totality begins to emerge. The mandala view—or the container—allows us to experience the natural goodness and inherent workability. It is this view that is called in Tibetan Buddhism sacred outlook (daknang). From this view, the world is seen as sacred in a self-existing way. In groups that have developed dialogue relationships, people develop a sense of community that is radically different. After one of David Bohm’s dialogue experiments in 1984, he reflected on what happened: 60 J. SIMMER-BROWN In the beginning, people were expressing fixed positions, which they were tending to defend, but later it became clear that to maintain the feeling of friendship in the group was much more important than to hold any position…. A new kind of mind thus begins to come into being which is based on the development of an common meaning that is constantly transforming in the process of the dialogue. People are no longer primarily in opposition, nor can they be said to be interacting; rather, they are participating in this pool of common meaning which is capable of constant development and change.37 Dialogue creates an environment that is fluid and responsive to change while inviting its members to yield their personal territory to the benefit of the whole. In this way, the mandala principle, or the implicate order, provides dynamic structure that lends itself to the certainty of change that pervades our organizations. It also builds confidence in the organization without tying it to the ideas or plans of a specific leader or manager. How does the leader manifest in an impermanent, brilliant world? For this perspective, we return to the dakini, the anthropomorphic representation of the Great Mother. Dakinis relate to mandalas in several important ways. First, dakinis are important inhabitants of mandalas in classical Tibetan iconography. Sometimes a dakini may inhabit the central seat as a meditational deity, either alone or with her consort, and sometimes she appears in a retinue representing aspects of her complete, enlightened wisdom. Second, dakinis are also the protectors of the boundaries of the mandala, fiercely guarding the sacredness that is discovered there. In this manifestation, dakinis are wrathful and threatening. Third, dakinis are emblems or symbols of the nonconceptual wisdom that can be discovered within the mandala. This is the most important way dakinis are tied to the mandala. For the leader, this means that leaders need to see themselves as inhabitants of the mandala or container as well, part of the implicate order of how the organization, community, or group works. Setting ourselves apart limits our effectiveness, but to lead, we must become skillful as conveners or facilitators to ensure that the implicate order is expressed. Secondly, in order to effectively lead, the leader must also have skill in protecting the boundaries of the container. Isaacs describes this as a “way to sustain and deepen the sense of safety that people feel.”38 This is done by attending to the physical environment, the group agreements, and protocols for communication. Most of all, the leader must hold a view of sacredness of what occurs within the mandala, willing to accommodate even that which she would normally reject. That includes painful, chaotic, or threatening dimensions that would unseat a leader interested only in control. Nonconceptual wisdom can come sometimes in painful or threatening guises. Leading for Change 61 Iconography of the wisdom-dakini is very specific, and diverges from forms in western religious traditions, in that it often uses cemetery symbols of impermanence, death, and destruction, consistent with the Mother aspect described above. She is depicted as naked like the true nature of reality, wearing jewelry fashioned of bone fragments, ornamented with skulls and jewels, constantly juxtaposing motifs of impermanence and splendor. Sometimes she wears necklaces of symbolic severed heads and carries a drinking cup made from a human skull, representing the Mother aspects of the dakini. She is always a messenger of impermanence, the certainty of death, the lack of solid existence, and the pervasiveness of chaos throughout our lives.39 She represents seemingly irreconcilable paradoxes of our experience, and demonstrates that genuine wisdom is found within those paradoxes. As leaders, we must be willing to celebrate impermanence in this way and to appreciate the constantly-changing dynamic of our organizations. From this perspective, we could see ourselves dancing nakedly, as the dakini dances. She dances freely, hair flying, and with a graceful sweep of her limbs, she exudes a captivating but very direct presence, symbolizing the mind resting in the true nature of reality. Her dance displays the vast and dynamic quality of the space of the mandala. While the dakini dances within the themes of life and death, there is no tragedy or sadness in her dance. The naked and dancing dakini represents the wisdom, joy and freedom from attachment, if self-cherishing has been abandoned. Rather than arousing only revulsion and disgust in others, she joins the quality of the sensuous and vibrant womanliness with the reminders of impermanence and death. She sees all the realities of life and death, youth and ageing, attraction and revulsion, without being seduced into duality. In the face of the dakini, we see guidance for how to regard her. She gazes into unfathomable space, and her body itself is luminous, empty of solidity. At the same time, her face is not blank; she smiles with passion and intensity, fully engaged in the extremes of life. This seeming contradiction between engagement and vast vision captures her contradictions. She refuses to accept the logic of life versus death, gain versus loss, and pain versus pleasure. This is the power and joy of the dancing dakini. BRINGING THE DAKINI INTO OUR ORGANIZATIONS While lessons for leadership and organizations from the dakini lore are very much in accord with recent literature on leadership, it is not enough to theoretically understand the importance of adaptability to change. We are not really psychologically or physically ready to change—or even conceptually, for that matter. Change is difficult and threatening, and it is 62 J. SIMMER-BROWN challenging to really prepare ourselves for the groundlessness and fear that change brings. We need the constant reminders that change affects us all, and it is helpful to have a meditation practice that introduces this awareness and gives us the skills to “lean into” change. The dakini practices of Tibetan Buddhism are all about this. These practices include contemplation of what are called “the four reminders,” four simple statements that bring certainty about impermanence into our daily lives. They are reminders that (1) we have a very precious life and a special opportunity to awaken to the truth of existence; (2) everything in our life is pervaded by impermanence; (3) it is certain that we will all die at some point; and finally, (4) worldly concerns are trivial in the face of these reminders.40 All Tibetan Buddhist practice is grounded in these reminders, and symbols of them are prominent in all the dakini practices. They are recited aloud daily at the beginning of one’s meditation practice session. When we practice these contemplations, we experience heartbreak that our ideas about how things work are not really true. It is difficult to let go of our fantasies of long-term, durable success. We cannot accept that growth is not an endless upward progression, and that the market or the success of our organization is not guaranteed. For this reason, contemplating the four reminders is difficult and painful. The Tibetan Buddhist tradition tells us that, over time, these contemplations bring certainty about change that is accompanied by joy and freedom. As the great yogi, Padampa Sangye, taught, At first, to be fully convinced of impermanence makes you take up [the path of meditation]; in the middle it whips up your diligence; and in the end it brings you to the radiant dharmakaya (wisdom of the Buddha).41 This is the journey symbolized by the dakini. The heartbreak of the realization of impermanence blossoms into a heartfelt diligence. This second stage involves the recognition that we and others have perpetuated our own suffering by indulging in unrealistic expectations, and that effective leadership is a compassionate path of cultivating awareness of how things really are. Only then can we dance with the dakini in the fields of impermanence, tapping into the freedom and joy of awakening. While saying this, I have observed that many Buddhists began their practice because of personal experiences of impermanence that changed the trajectories of their lives. These losses opened them, softened them, and made them wise. After many years of practice, however, these same practitioners develop conviction that everything will change except their Buddhist teachers or organizations, demonstrating that they have merely transferred their expectations of permanence to a new object. When our Leading for Change 63 teacher, Chogyam Trunpga, Rinpoche, died in 1987, our organizations went into tailspins that still continue for some practitioners after all these years. The journey of relating to impermanence is lifelong, challenging, and deeply personal, and no one of us has completed that journey. Once we develop more flexible minds, greater abilities to adapt, and stronger commitments to work with the whole of our lives and our organizations, we can begin to enhance the dynamic energies of the mandala principle wherever we are. Beginning this journey is frightening, because we do not know where it will lead; however, trusting the implicate order of our organizations and engaging in dialogue practice together, we find fresh directions and confidence that we could never have conceived. This requires a greater understanding of differing styles of power and wisdom, and appreciation for the basic goodness within the organization and its members, yearning to express their gifts. An effective leader for change commits to highlighting the inherent wisdom that is already present within the organization, and endeavors to harmonize that wisdom through dialogue, communication and empathy. Leadership for change is a tremendously challenging field for organizations, and the Tibetan Buddhism tradition has unique perspectives that can shape our journeys as leaders. Especially, the ancient yogic wisdom of the dakini tradition has definite lessons for the leader, helping her to understand the perilous, fresh, and always transformative path of dancing within change. NOTES 1. 2. 3. Adapted from Kenneth Douglas and Gwendolyn Bays, tr., The Life and Liberation of Padmasambhava, Padma bKa’i Thang, as recorded by Yeshe Tsogyal, Le Dict de Padma, translated into French by Gustave-Charles Toussaint (Berkeley: Dharma Publishing, 1978), 218-220. The material for this chapter derives from a sustained study of the dakini that can be found in my book, Dakini’s Warm Breath: The Feminine Principle in Tibetan Buddhism (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2001). Some sections have been adapted directly from my book. Here, 1-2. (Hereafter cited as Dakini’s Warm Breath.) Chogyam Trungpa (1939-1987) was a major teacher of the Kagyu lineage who was supreme abbot of Surmang Monastery and governor of Surmang District from a young age. Under Chinese oppression, he fled Tibet in 1959 along with hundreds of other tulkus and their followers, both monastic and lay. In 1963, he began academic study at Oxford University, and founded a retreat center in Scotland. In 1971, he and his British wife emigrated to the United States, one of the first Tibetan Buddhist teachers in America. His is the author of numerous books on Tibetan Buddhism and 64 J. SIMMER-BROWN 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. meditation. He is best known for his secular teachings in Shambhala: The Sacred Path of the Warrior (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 1985). For more information, see Fabrice Midal, Trungpa: His Life and Times; Fabrice Midal, Recalling Chogyam Trungpa; Jeremy Hayward, Warrior-King of Shambhala: Remembering Chogyam Trungpa. Trungpa Rinpoche founded an international network of meditation centers, now known as Shambhala, located throughout North America, Europe, Latin and South America, and Asia. This network has its headquarters in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He also founded the Nalanda Translation Committee, Gampo Abbey, The Shambhala Sun and its derivative Buddhadharma Magazine. In 1974, he founded the fully accredited college and graduate school, Naropa University, in Boulder, Colorado. Simmer-Brown, Dakini’s Warm Breath, 45-53. Rebecca Redwood French, The Golden Yoke: The Legal Cosmology of Buddhist Tibet (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publication, 2002); Helen Boyd, The Future of Tibet: The Government-in-Exile Meets the Challenge of Democratization (Peter Lang, 2005). Janet Gyatso and Hanna Havnevik, eds., Women in Tibet, Past and Present; Janice D. Willis, Feminine Ground: Essays on Women and Tibet (Ithaca: Snow Lion, 1987); Hannah Havnevik, Tibetan Buddhist Nuns: Cultural Norms and Social Reality (Oslo: Norwegian University Press, 1990). Hermann-Pfandt, Dakinis: Zur Stellung und Sybolik des Weiblichen in tantrischen Buddhismus (Bonn: Inica et Tibetaica Verlag, 1990). Rinpoche was a tulku, or incarnate lama, who became enlightened in a previous life centuries ago, and who chose rebirth in a lineage of teachers, carrying on the compassionate and beneficial activities of his realization. This is also spoken of sociologically as a way of holding continuity of power over time, an effective way of structuring Buddhist institutions in Tibet. He was also a terton, a visionary revealer of fresh new texts and teachings (called terma, or treasures), an innovation that continually refreshes tulku lineages in Tibet. See Geoffrey Samuels, Civilized Shamans: Buddhism in Tibetan Societies, and Franz Michael, Rule by Incarnation: Tibetan Buddhism and the Role of Society and State. Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization (Boston: Harvard Business Press, 2009), 1-2. Tony Wagner, “Leading for Change,” Education Week, August 15, 2007, www.edweek.org/login.html?source=http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/ 2007/08/15/45wagner.h26.html&destination=http://www.edweek.org/ew/ articles/2007/08/15/45wagner.h26.html&levelId=2100 Kegan and Lahey, Immunity to Change. Ronald A. Heifetz, Marty Linsky, and Alexander Grashow, The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and World (Cambridge: Harvard Business Press, 2009). Kegan and Lahey, Immunity to Change, 48-49. Ibid., 48. Ibid., xii. Leading for Change 65 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. Heifetz et. al., The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. Buddha Gotama, Majjhima Nikaya: The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (USA: Theravda Tipitaka Press, 2010), 56. Kegan and Lahey, Immunity to Change. Chogyam Trungpa, Glimpses of Space (Halifax: Vajradhatu Publications, 1999). This section of the chapter is adapted from Simmer-Brown, Dakini’s Warm Breath (see chap. 4). Here I refer to systems theory from the scientific world of cybernetics that involved a paradigm shift in many related fields. The word in popular use is also applied to the fields of family therapy, organizational development, and business and industry. Altogether, this work began in science and was pioneered by Von Bertalanffy in the 1950s. This is not to say, of course, that there is no room for change or political action. From a Tibetan tantric perspective, change can only be facilitated from a perspective of commitment to the mandala. Then the strategies and skillful actions are suitable to the totality of the situation, rather than being based on impulsiveness or rejection of what we do not like. This kind of engaged activity requires taking the long view and a contemplative perspective. William Isaacs, Dialogue and The Art of Thinking Together (New York: Doubleday, 1999), 30-31. (Hereafter cited as Thinking Together.) David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order (Boston: Routledge, 1980), 48. Ibid., 25-33. David Bohm, On Dialogue (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2004), 1-54. Ibid.; Chris Harris, Hyperinnovation: Multidimensional Enterprise in the Connected Economy (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002); Peter Senge, The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization (New York: Doubleday, 1990); Margaret Wheatley, Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future (San Francisco: Berrett Koehler Publishers, 2002/2009), Foreword for Dialogue Education at Work: A Casebook, by Jane Vella and Associates (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 2003) and portions of Leadership and the New Science: Discovering Order in a Chaotic World (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 1992 / Third Edition 2006); Juanita Brown and David Isaacs, The World Café: Shaping Our Futures through Conversations that Matter (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2005). Isaacs, Thinking Together, 92-93. Ibid., 49-69. Ibid., 79-81. Isaacs, Thinking Together, 83-176. Peter Senge, C. Otto Scharmer, Joseph Jaworski, and Betty Sue Flowers, Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 34-36. (Hereafter cited as Presence.) Ibid., 35. Isaacs, Thinking Together, 242-244. 66 J. SIMMER-BROWN 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. Presence; see also Francisco Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Mind and the Human Experience (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1992). Quoted in Isaacs, Thinking Together, 40. Isaacs, Thinking Together, 250. Dakini’s Warm Breath,127-144. Patrul Rinpoche, Words of My Perfect Teacher (Boston: Shambhala Publications, Revised Edition, 1998), Part One; Khandro Rinpoche, This Precious Life: Tibetan Buddhist Teachings on the Path to Enlightenment (Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2003). Patrul, Words of My Perfect Teacher, 57.