What Might Be Next for Integral: Tibetan Buddhist Contemplations to Go Further

Exploring What Might Be Next for Integral:
Tibetan Buddhist Contemplations on How to Integrate Even Further
(and Avoid Integral Fundamentalism)

As a living lineage ecology of study and practice over 2,600 years old, Tibetan Buddhism is an extraordinary example of an Integral system that has lasted for centuries and is now taking root globally. In my view, Vajrayana is actually post-Integral. The Nine Vehicle approach of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism demonstrates this with incredible directness, clarity, and comprehensiveness: it’s an overarching ecology of inter-nested sub-ecologies of knowing, being, and becoming (epistemologies, ontologies, and methodologies) that seamlessly cohere into larger enactive wholes without contradiction. According to Vajrayana approaches of world-shaping and attunement, one learns to more comprehensively and flexibly align with the living dynamics of what’s helpful in a given context in order to uplift the natural intelligence of that world to relax into its own greater freedom and fullness.

If you’re willing to consider that this might be true, Tibetan Buddhism would give us a preview into how various emerging Integral ecologies might also take root and flourish locally and globally. Accomplishing this is one of the urgent questions of our time.

Here are some key points we'll consider:

· What are some essential differences between worldview and world, approach and ecology? In Vajrayana, every path, or vehicle to awakening, is composed of view, meditation, behavior, and result. Taken altogether, these components cohere as a world, as well as how to understand and navigate that world in order to achieve enlightenment for all beings.

· In this way, assuming a worldview is significantly different than elegantly living with(in) the world that corresponds to that particular view. Describing and designing the way of the bodhisattva is tremendously different than the messy, complex details of actually living the way of the bodhisattva, where your heart-mind is constantly aligning to resonate with others for mutual benefit. Learning Buddhist techniques is only one part of participating in living cosmologies of sacred worlding. Multiple world attunement becomes the lowest common denominator for actually living Integrally.

In Wiberian Integral terms, I relate this to the early Integral yellow/teal approach of mapping and describing wholeness, compared with maturing turquoise Integral approaches of living in natural responsiveness to the worlds we’re a part of. Opening through teal Integral into maturing turquoise Integral is urgently needed to overcome some of the limitations of teal—most importantly, to lovingly, freshly tune into the incredible power of fuller Spiral dynamics without locking up that enhanced synthesizing power into any one part of the Spiral: namely, my power. Hijacking 2nd tier power for 1st tier warfare is exactly what the bodhisattva vow prevents. Flowing within and between Kosmic addresses as a result of fuller spiral attunement is the way of the bodhisattva.

· This leads me to contemplate the difference between creating worlds and attuning with and through them; engineering enlightenment compared with dissolving into sacred worlds that are already happening. How do we unite these approaches, which Vajrayana calls visualization creation stage meditation and dissolution completion stage meditation? How might this affect our Integral approach if maturing turquoise Integral isn’t so much a world to create but an atmosphere to vividly be in whatever worlds we happen to be a part of?

Lama Pema Dragpa has been a resident Dharma teacher at Padma Samye Ling since 2004. PSL is the main monastery & retreat center of the Padmasambhava Buddhist Center founded by the Nyingma Dzogchen masters Ven. Khenchen Palden Sherab Rinpoche & Ven. Khenpo Tsewang Dongyal Rinpoche. Ordained as a lama by Rinpoches, Dragpa graduated with honors in philosophy & religious studies from NYU in 2002, and is a senior editor of over 25 books on Buddhist philosophy & meditation. He has studied Ken Wilber's work since 1999. He is the author of An Integral View of Tibetan Buddhism: Preserving Lineage Wisdom in the 21st Century.