Thunder and Ocean: Shambhala and Buddhism in Nova Scotia

Henry G. MacLeod teaches sociology at both Trent University and the
University of Waterloo.

Thunder and Ocean tells the fascinating story of Chogyam Trungpa—the
former supreme abbot of the Surmang group of monasteries in Tibet—and
how Halifax became the world headquarters for his Tibetan Buddhist
organization, Vajradhatu International. Trungpa Rinpoche, an honorific
title, was the founder of Shambhala Training, a secular form of Buddhist
meditation. The current leader, his son Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, renamed
the organization Shambhala International in 1992.

When China seized control of Tibet in 1959, the Dalai Lama, Trungpa,
and leading monks from several other branches within Tibetan Buddhism
fled to India. The author provides a short but interesting biography of
Chogyam Trungpa (1939–1987), focusing on his winter escape over the
Himalayas with his followers, his time in England and the United States,
and his puzzling decision to move his organization to Halifax in 1979.

Swick’s treatment of Trungpa’s approach and his development of
Shambhala Training is disappointingly perfunctory. More specifically, he
writes that “[when Trungpa initiated] a secular, public program of
meditation, to which he gave the name Shambhala Training ... in 1978,
there was a great deal of dissension. The Shambhala teachings were
widely seen as watered-down Buddhism.” This separation of Buddhism
into a spiritual and a secular discipline is not explored or critically
assessed. Swick, a journalist, merely reports how Trungpa adapted
Tibetan Buddhism to Western culture.

Although this book provides only a basic overview of its subject, Swick
achieves his goal of convincing readers that Buddhism is an ancient
spiritual tradition and not a cult.