What is This Project About?
Intention and People Behind This Mirror
“Society is like a giant being whose heart beats with ever-present, all-seeing goodness. How this being feels about itself creates power and energy in human relationships. Thus, to create a strong society, self-reflection must occur.”
The Shambhala Sadhana, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche
Why is this project happening?
This initiative aims to help both Shambhala leadership and the Shambhala membership reflect on who we are and how we are doing as a community and as an organization. We adopted the framework of wellbeing as a way to look across activity areas in Shambhala and to connect our view to our principles of functioning as a good human society, in accord with the Shambhala teachings.
This initiative is led by a working group that comprises Shambhala Board Members, Process Team Members, and Shambhala Global Services Team Members. Regarding the initiative, the Shambhala Board stated (March 2021):
We need to develop greater societal self-awareness that is built on accurate data and not assumptions. In this way we can understand the health of the various aspects of the mandala as well as the whole. This includes Shambhala Global Services, all Shambhala Centres and Groups, the wellbeing of their current members and the participants of programs within Shambhala. We will make a public dashboard available with all findings, which supports the decision making of leaders at all levels, raises awareness and promotes a sense of belonging within the community, and will also support the values of inclusion, transparency, and accountability within Shambhala.
What is the Societal Mirror Project seeking to measure?
To gain a full picture, the project considers wellbeing from the perspective of members and friends of our international Shambhala community and the leaders of centres and groups. Indicators gauging wellbeing across five activity areas in Shambhala are included:
- Paths, Teachings, Practices, Programs & Studies
- Governance, Leadership, Communications & Interconnections
- Economy, Resources & Assets
- Care and Conduct & Protection
- Culture & Community Wellbeing
In addition, we present trends in membership and program enrollment in Shambhala across the time period of 2016 through 2021. This covers a period of dramatic change for our organization, and examining these trends gives us the opportunity to contemplate together the impact of these changes.
What are the sources of data for the Societal Mirror?
The Shambhala Societal Mirror summarizes data from four sources.
- A survey of Shambhala community members and friends.
- A survey of Shambhala community leaders (as per the Shambhala Database).
- The Shambhala Database.
What is the future of the Societal Mirror Initiative?
This project was initiated in March 2021 as a pilot to explore the feasibility and value of creating a publicly available dashboard that would both identify what the Shambhala community understands to indicate wellbeing and regularly track these features of wellbeing in Shambhala over time. The data presented in the first year of this Societal Mirror Initiative were all collected before the conclusion in February 2022 of the mediation process engaged in by the Boards of Shambhala and the Sakyong Potrang.
The conclusion of that mediation process marked the beginning of a new era for Shambhala, as the two Boards now operate independently. Many changes in organizational forms, resource allocations, activities and attitudes are likely to flow from these structural changes. The data presented in this first year of the Societal Mirror initiative will provide a baseline from which the impact of these changes can be observed. We anticipated that the data collection approaches used in the initial year will be repeated annually, so that we can continue to self-reflect and thus strengthen our Shambhala society.
Who Are the Contributors to this Project?
On one level, everyone who completed the various surveys and everyone who participated in the extensive conversations during the Summer of 2021 has contributed to this project. Nevertheless, the following group of people have been involved most intensively.
| Author | Personal statement |
|---|---|
| Janet Bronstein, Process Team | I encountered Shambhala as a doctoral student in anthropology and have continued to relate Shambhala teachings to my career as a public health researcher and teacher. I have always been drawn to the vision of an awake society with social practices that echo our individual commitment to think beyond ourselves, and to identify and then step past our habitual patterns. I am excited by the potential of the Societal Mirror Initiative to use empirical data and thoughtful analysis to support our capacity to see clearly, so that we can make choices for action that reflect our values. |
| Faradee Rudy, Shambhala Director of Development | As a member of Shambhala Global Services, I am responsible for overseeing the operational aspects of the areas of Practice & Education, Shambhala Online, Development, and Communications. I am also the liaison for Shambhala Land Centres and have been the Project Manager of the Societal Mirror since its inception. I have held high-level leadership positions in not-for-profit organizations over the last 20 years, including the position of Executive Director for the Center for Living Peace in Irvine, California. I was also the Development Director for Shambhala Mountain Center and lived there from 2004-2008. I live on the Isle of Wight in the United Kingdom. |
| John David Smith, SGS-IT Team Lead, Process Team Data Group member, Portland Center Director | After more than 20 years as an institutional researcher and technologist at the University of Colorado, I have focused on organizational and social learning in multiple settings. I have studied, facilitated, written about, and participated in communities of practice for the last few decades. (Especially how they shape, use, and depend on technologies.) I see Shambhala as a large community of practice (or an agglomeration of many communities of practice) that can support the learning, practice, and identity of its members. | | |
| Peter Nowak, Shambhala Board Member | The third part, on society, in the Shambhala Sadhana was always my favourite - such a wonderful expression and deep understanding of society being the strong background and force behind all our paths. Societal self-reflection and communicating about our insights and intentions to further what we call enlightened society is essential in my view. Being myself a social scientist and working on a national level with the Austrian health care system, I can see how important it is to build health policies on a good foundation of data and processes of citizen involvement. All too often experts and policy makers base their decisions on unreflected opinions, fixed views and biased data. This Shambhala Societal mirror will help us to open our minds, deepen our understanding of the Shambhala community and start conversations that can reflect and bridge different views. Who are we as a Shambhala Sangha embedded in an interdependent world and global human society? |
| Susanne Vincent, Process Team, Auckland, NZ Centre Director | Since the early 90s, in leadership and in organisational, development and environmental work, I’ve learned that there is a formula. First, assess the ‘ground’ - the context and the issues, the opportunities and resources and the priorities and challenges. Then take action according to what you see, monitor the results and repeat the cycle. One big catalyst for making progress is to get everyone involved. I think the Societal Mirror initiative provides the opportunity for us to do this in Shambhala, whoever and wherever we are. |
| Zinnia Maravell, Process Team | I graduated from Bryn Mawr College in economics and have an MBA in marketing from the University of Chicago. I worked for 27 years as a policy analyst in the US Government Office of Personnel Management. When I retired I started a new career in Chinese Medicine, acupuncture and herbs. My contribution to the team has been to bring in an interested outsider’s point of view. I began in Shambhala Training, was volunteer coordinator and later Comptroller at the DC center. I entered the Scorpion Seal in 2012. I reside in Santiago de Compostela, Northwest Spain. |