"As human beings we have a basic nature in us known as goodness. Every one of you has that basic nature of goodness — general goodness, which is undiluted, unconfused. We all have our own styles of life, of course, our own ways of handling our business and our work. That's fine. But at the same time we have this basic quality of general goodness, absolute goodness, which is spotless, fantastic. We do have that. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be here. There would be no Christ, no Buddha, no Muhammad — there would be nobody. Those religious figures proclaimed that goodness was discovered purely by religious means, spiritual means. Maybe that's true, in some sense. But quite possibly there's some other way by which we could actually discover ourselves directly — directly and very personally and perfectly. That's what Shambhala Training is all about: to realize and understand that we all inherit and do have some fundamental goodness.
"What is the nature of that goodness? That goodness possesses tremendous gentleness. Why is it gentle? Because, as human beings we can make love. We can stroke somebody with a gentle touch; we can kiss somebody with gentle understanding. We can appreciate somebody's beauty. We can actually appreciate the best of everything. We can appreciate the yellowness of yellow, the redness of red, the greenness of green, the purpleness of purple — we appreciate everything, and we appreciate our world, in spite of all the sidetracks that we might resent — which is something else. But, in spite of that, we do appreciate what we have. We actually know that sweet is sweet and sour is sour. And we do appreciate that yellow is yellow and red is red. We actually do enjoy.
"Nevertheless, some people don't want to admit it, because of their depression. That is very tricky and very wicked, because we actually do experience that there is some kind of beauty and glamour and fantastic celebration taking place. Everything is real. When yellow is yellow, can we say it's red, if we don't like the yellowness of it? We can't, because we actually would be contradicting reality.
"The reality of our goodness allows us to experience beauty and richness. That doesn't mean one has to become a millionaire or become an artist. We actually do experience that sunshine is sunshine. The other day we had good weather in Boulder — can you actually reject that? I doubt anybody can say that. We had brilliant sunshine and wonderful snowfall, and we appreciate it. We appreciate the good weather we had. There is always that kind of actual basicness of the whole thing. When we appreciate reality in its fullest level, we do really appreciate so thoroughly. It is so good, so great. And actually it works on us; it cheers us up. You might have a hangover in the morning from drinking too much the previous evening, but when you look out the window, it cures your hangover. Actually we can cure ourselves of any and all of our depressive situations and all the tricks and problems that have been laid on us by our missing the point all along.
"So, ladies and gentlemen, let us think clearly and properly that the world we have is good. It is not just a fact that the world we have is good, just because it happens to be so. But it is good because we experience that it is good. We experience our world as healthy and straightforward, direct and real, because our basic nature is to go along with that kind of situation. Our human possibility of intelligence and dignity is actually in tune with that kind of situation where we experience that the bright blue sky is wonderful, and the green field is good, and the trees and mountains and so forth. So we have some sense of actual connection that makes us feel basically, fundamentally good. Shambhala Training is precisely going along with this way to wake ourselves up and actually experience ourselves and experience that goodness does really happen to us. It's happening already."
