Don Season: Clearing the way for Tibetan New Year/Shambhala Day

(pronounced dun)

Edited by L. Dragone from the original by Russ Rogers

In the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, there is a period before the Tibetan New Year on Friday Feb 12th in the late winter/early spring when accumulated karma comes to fruition and societal obstacles arise. This year, between Monday February 1st and Wednesday February 10th we will do “Mamo Practice” to purify obstacles of the old year. The practice acknowledges difficulties of the past year, thus creating a demarcation between the past and the future. We do this so that on Shambhala Day, we can psychologically start afresh.

This time of obstacles is known as “Don” season. Dons are negative forces that arise out of the environment and cause humans to do things that are self-destructive and mindless. Dons produce sudden, unexpected neurotic upheavals, taking the form of sudden fits of anger or madness causing us to make bad decisions that will lead to misfortune. Car problems, colds or flu could be considered Dons. On a personal level, the best protection against dons is increasing one’s mindfulness. Therefore, it’s an especially good time for meditation practice.

Feminine Principle and Protection

“Mamos” are another source of obstacles during this period. They are symbolized in the form of deities called dakinis. Mamos are unenlightened aspects of the feminine principle. In Tibetan Buddhism the insight or prajna possessed by both men and women is seen as an aspect of the feminine principle. Mamos become enraged when people lose touch with their own intelligence, and therefore with reality. Mamos cause large-scale problems: fighting and discord, famines, plagues, and environmental calamities. In the mamo chant, it says they incite cosmic warfare.

They are associated with the karmic consequences of degraded personal or societal actions. Their enraged response might be in proportion to the karma accumulated, but it could also be unpredictable and completely out of proportion. Similarly, we know that there have been many cases where small provocations have produced great wars.

In the tantric view mamos and dharma protectors are the “root of action”. When we supplicate them through the chants, we are turning towards the dynamic, changing quality of reality in all its groundless unpredictability. This “turning toward” changes the relationship. For instance, when people are interested in the opposite sex, there is a higher probability that relationship will happen. Some business people tune into the flow of money, and it naturally comes their way. In this practice, it is the dynamic flow of reality that we are tuning in to. Our actions are guided by the way the world speaks to us.

There is a second way that protector practice helps us. Often we feel victimized by bad luck. Viewing misfortune as the action of the protectors is a more positive view, and therefore somewhat pacifying. In the mamo practice we are led to the recognition that, underneath the sense that the world is filled with evil, there is a kind of wisdom in the way that things naturally play out.

Sacredness

In the Vajrayana , the world is regarded as sacred in its own right, not because an external deity declared it to be so. In our ordinary lives we might have some sense of what it means when we contemplate the purity of a newborn child. Sometimes death has the effect of making us aware of the sacredness of life. For some people, certain places in nature provoke a sense of sacredness. In my area of British Columbia, logging companies often clear-cut the forests, sometimes in very large blocks. People felt the sacredness of the land had been violated. Just like us, mamos respond when sacredness is violated, sometimes all out of proportion to the offence.

Since the dharma is what introduces us to sacredness, they are also bound to protect the dharma.

What does that mean in the west now? In tantric Buddhism, obstacles arise when we lose insight, and those very obstacles, in the form of dons and mamos, remind us to increase our mindfulness and awareness.

…not separate from our mind

If we are able to remember and invoke pure vision with respect to obstacles, the wrathful activity of the mamos becomes tames as part of the path. It helps to know that mamos and dons are actually inseparable from our own minds – which is what makes the taming possible. Giving them names and personalities just enables us to tune into their energy.

A Three Step Practice and Ritual

In our community, we do intensive practice similar to the tradition of Tibet, including the mamo practice, during the ten-day don season. Neutral day, the day before Shambhala Day, is when we do our yearly deep cleaning at our Centre, and in our homes. On Shambhala Day itself, we have a worldwide live broadcast, this year via Zoom. Celebrations usually follow throughout the day. This year we will have to find our own private means to celebrate due to COVID restrictions.

The three steps of the practice during the ten-day don season begins with chanting the Seven Line Supplication to Padmasambhava (provided via Zoom). Tibetans called him the “Second Buddha”. We ask him to approach and grant his blessing. We do this to establish a sense of presence of Padmasmbhava’s ability to see through what may look like “bad energy”. Following the logic of sacred view, even “bad energy” is just a confused attempt to re-establish basic goodness and wholeness. Following this, we do some Protector Chants. Protectors symbolize feedback from reality, the constant arising of coincidental events that shape our lives.

Why?

Why do we do such practice? In our culture we may occasionally feel “hounded” by misfortune, but we do not, except perhaps jokingly, attribute it to agents like mamos, gremlins, or dons. These concepts are foreign. Let’s digress to talk about what we are being “hounded by and why we might do this practice in the first place.

As always, with protectors, dons and mamos, and other deities, one can see them as external to oneself, or as aspects of one’s own mind. If you contemplate for a few minutes, you will realize that both the sense of self and the sense of an external “other” are interpretations in the mind. As you read these words, the paper or the computer screen probably seem to exist outside , but are actually images in your mind. You may think these objects are faithfully assembles from electric impulses travelling down your optic nerves, but the idea of electric impulses and nerves is, again, a thought in your mind. So, not only do labels and interpretations of phenomena reside in our minds, but the actual experience of seeing an appearance does as well. So appearance and mind are the same. Obviously, this has implications for the sense of being “hounded”.

Doing Rituals

It also means that by doing rituals that are directed outward, toward mamos and dons, we are working on our own minds at the same time. As we pacify one, we pacify the other. In ritual like this, we practice awareness of the words as we say them, knowing that the words are just words. This is similar to the experience of thoughts vanishing into emptiness when we see them in meditation. At the same time, the words create a pathway for our mind to travel. They can take us to places where we might not otherwise go. Ideally in Buddhist rituals, at the end we rest in the wordless dimension of this meaning. This becomes our point of contact with reality.

Another function of ritual is to focus group mind. We start, on our individual cushions, experiencing the momentum of our personal lives. Then, as we chant together, and relax into the meaning of the chant, we begin to share a powerful common experience.

The Main Practice

After the protector chants we get into the heart of the mamo practice with the main chant of this practice, entitled “Pacifying The Turmoil Of The Mamos”. Here, we remember that the mamos become active when people, especially practitioners, forget the ground of basic goodness, the sacredness of all phenomena, and act in a degraded way. Enraged by this, the mamos express their legendary wrath. This wrath arises not from personal insult or violation, but from our own improper relationship with life. This improper relationship is what is reflected back to us.

The entire chanting session, perhaps a hour long or more, is a contemplation of cause and effect, and wrathful compassion and awareness. It’s also a contemplation of a kind of sacred outlook that restores balance in the world. Knowing that the mamos are not separate from our own minds enable us to lean into their message. That inseparability has an effect on bot us and our world. The entire chant ends with the Vajrasattva mantra of primordial purity.