The Prophecy and the Passing: Joanna Macy and the Shambhala Warriors

A lineage ends. A teaching remains. The training begins.

“The most radical thing any of us can do at this time is to be fully present to what is happening in the world.” — Joanna Macy

Hi, I’m John—thank you for being here.

What follows is personal. It’s part reflection, part transmission, and part offering—a way of honoring Joanna Macy, the teachings she carried, and the deep invitation I feel unfolding in this moment of unraveling.

This is not a call to despair, nor a prescription for hope. It’s a remembering. A turning toward what is sacred, possible, and still alive within us.

If parts of it stir grief, courage, or clarity—I trust they are doing their work.

---

When the Teacher Passes, the Teaching Lives On

This week, environmental activist, author, and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy entered hospice care. As I write this, I don’t know whether she has already passed—but I feel the weight of an approaching loss. It’s the grief that comes when you discover a teacher late in their life, just before their voice falls silent.

The first feeling was one of sorrow—and then, something like panic. This was the teacher I’d been waiting for. Joanna Macy was the one who gave me permission to hope in a different way—to hope while staying awake to grief, to dream while staring into the eye of collapse. And I’d only just found her.

After watching her speak about the Shambhala Warrior prophecy, my wife Bonnie and I sat with our grief.

“She’s the kind of teacher I’ve been looking for,” Bonnie said, “and I only just discovered her—right before her life ended.”

Her words pierced me. In them, I felt not only personal sorrow, but a cultural ache—the scarcity of real elders, the hunger for wisdom that lives outside the machinery we’re all embedded in. We are not just losing a person. We’re losing a living bridge between spiritual depth, ecological awareness, and moral courage.

And yet, maybe this timing isn’t tragic. Maybe it speaks to something else: ripeness, readiness, lineage. Maybe I found her now because now is when I’m meant to carry her work forward. I am so grateful to Joanna and the other elders—Francis Weller, Stephen Jenkinson, Nate Hagens, and more—who don’t just offer information or predictions, but transmit tools for becoming: grief work, resilience, reverence, hope, and a fierce love for this world.

Many of these voices are aging. Some have passed and others will die soon. And the burden, the torch, the invitation is becoming clear. I had hoped to be the one being led a little longer. But it’s time to step forward.

It’s time to begin the training.

The Sacred Transmission

In the Tibetan tradition, there is a prophecy that has taken on profound meaning for those of us navigating this time of unraveling.

The Shambhala Warrior prophecy, as shared by Joanna Macy, speaks of a time when the world is overcome by greed, fear, and devastation—when the very future of life hangs by a thread. In this time, ordinary people begin to awaken—not with banners or armor, but with two sacred weapons: compassion (karuṇā) and wisdom (prajñā).

Shambhala is not a place you can find on a map. As in Jesus’ words about the kingdom of heaven, it is within. It arises in the hearts of those courageous enough to face the suffering of the world with fierce love and lucid insight.

In the Shambhala Training lineage developed by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, this awakening is not metaphorical—it is a path of real practice: cultivating fearless presence, recognizing basic goodness, and living in service to the whole in a time of collapse.

The prophecy begins with a stark recognition:

“There comes a time when all life on Earth is in danger.”

That time, I believe, is now.

In recent months, I’ve become more concretely aware of the scale and speed of our predicament. The signs are everywhere: rising seas and rising temperatures, insect collapse, species extinction, ecological overshoot, and the dizzying acceleration of our growth-addicted systems. Earth Overshoot Day falls earlier each year—it’s now July 24th, a full week earlier than last year. We are consistently overdrawing the bank account of the living world.

And this unraveling is not limited to the biosphere. We are witnessing a planetary reckoning—ecological, political, spiritual. Across the world, democratic institutions are faltering. Compassion is waning. Autocracy and fascism are rising in places once thought immune. In the U.S., the Doomsday Clock now stands at 89 seconds to midnight—the closest it's ever been since it was created by scientists after the invention of the atomic bomb.

“In this time, great powers have arisen—barbarian powers…”

These powers, the prophecy says, “waste their wealth in preparations to annihilate each other.”

And so they do.

While climate systems crack and burn, investment pours into militarization. While communities falter, surveillance expands. While oceans rise, we double down on fossil fuels and build walls and camps instead of bridges and homes.

As Joanna Macy has written, we are in the grip of the Industrial Growth Society—a system fueled by the illusion of infinite expansion on a finite planet. Nate Hagens calls it The Carbon Pulse—a brief and frantic energy spike in geological time. The party is still going, but the walls are closing in.

“And it is just at this point, when the future of all beings hangs by the frailest of threads, that the kingdom of Shambhala emerges.”

That emergence is not dramatic. It is quiet. It is subtle.

It is a shift in being.

As Joanna recounts, Shambhala warriors wear no insignia. They carry no banners. They do not fight from barricades or hold ground. They move—always and only—through the terrain of the barbarian powers. They are invisible, ordinary, embedded. But they are awake. And they are in training.

“The Shambhala warriors know that these weapons can be dismantled because they are mano maya—mind-made.”

What has been constructed by the human mind—wars, weapons, systems of extraction—can be deconstructed by the human mind. This is not a naive hope. It is a sober recognition: that we are not powerless in the face of these crises, but responsible for them. And therefore, capable of choosing another way.

That choosing begins with training.

The Two Sacred Weapons

When Joanna Macy asked her teacher how the Shambhala warriors train, he lifted his hands—palms open, as in ritual dance—and named two weapons:

karuṇā (compassion) and prajñā (wisdom or insight into the interdependence of all phenomena).

These are not metaphorical weapons. They are practices. And they are powers.

Let us look more deeply at each.

---

1. Karuṇā – Compassion as Fuel and Fire

The Sanskrit word karuṇā is often translated as compassion, but its root "kar" means to do or to make. This is not a passive emotion—it is an active force. Karuṇā moves us. It stirs the body and heart into motion. It is the impulse to alleviate suffering, to protect life, to love the world back into wholeness even when it is breaking.

In Buddhist psychology, karuṇā is one of the four brahmavihāras, or “sublime states.” It arises naturally when we are willing to feel the pain of the world without shutting down. It is what allows us to stay close to sorrow without being swallowed by it. It is the heat of the warrior’s work—the very thing that gets us off the couch, into the streets, into the hospice room, into the hard conversation.

But karuṇā alone is not enough.

Joanna’s teacher warned that compassion, when untempered, can burn you out. It can overwhelm. It can become righteous, frantic, even violent in its insistence. The fire must be contained—not suppressed, but held—by something equally essential.

---

2. Prajñā – Wisdom as Clarity and Cooling Field

The second weapon is prajñā—a Sanskrit compound from pra- (“before, higher”) and jñā (“to know”). This is not knowledge in the conventional sense. It is gnosis—direct knowing. A seeing into the nature of things.

Joanna translated it as “insight into the radical interdependence of all phenomena.” In Buddhist philosophy, this insight is the fruit of deep meditation and clear perception: that all things arise together, condition one another, and are empty of independent selfhood. To see this is not just to understand it intellectually—it is to feel it in your bones: I am not separate. Nothing is. What I do to the earth, I do to myself. What I do to another, I do to the whole.

This insight is cooling. It quiets the flames of panic and self-righteousness. It deconstructs the illusion of “us versus them.” It reminds us that the battle is not between good people and bad people—it is within every heart, including our own.

Prajñā teaches humility, nuance, and spaciousness. It is the wide sky to karuṇā’s wildfire. It gives us orientation in the fog of complexity.

---

The Dance of Fire and Space

You need both weapons. One is not enough.

Compassion without wisdom can burn you out. Wisdom without compassion can cool into detachment or spiritual bypass. The Shambhala warrior must carry both—not perfectly, not always evenly, but in a living interplay.

Tibetan monks, during ceremonial practice, often perform mudras—symbolic hand gestures that embody this dance. Their fingers trace the relationship between karuṇā and prajñā, between fire and space, between doing and being. The gestures remind us that these are not ideas. They are embodied forces. They must be practiced, trained, and tempered.

To become a warrior in this time is to learn how to wield these weapons wisely. It is to know when to act and when to wait. When to speak and when to listen. When to burn with fierce love and when to rest in wide-seeing stillness.

This is the inner training. This is how the kingdom of Shambhala is built—not on land, but in the architecture of consciousness.

This inner training—this dance of fire and space—brings us to the most essential question of all: In this moment of planetary unraveling, who do I choose to be?

When It’s Your War: Choosing Who to Be

I’ve been sitting with this as a simple but piercing question:
What kind of person am I in this moment?

A few nights ago, after finishing a popular video game with the familiar narrative arc—hero faces darkness, overcomes despair, defeats evil, and restores balance—I found myself wondering what it would be like to live in such a world. One where the great battle had already been won. Where the future was safe. Where the darkness had been vanquished.

I imagined myself thirty years from now, looking back on a peaceful life in that kind of world. What would I do with my time? How would I show up? What kind of presence would I be, knowing the worst had already passed?

Then I imagined a second scenario—a progressive world in motion. A version of reality where Kamala Harris had won, where we remained committed to NATO, the Paris Climate Accord, and the fragile scaffolding of democratic values. Where the culture honored empathy and ecological wisdom. Where the work was not done, but it was possible.

Again, I asked myself: who would I be in that world? How would I live, what process would I follow, and from what identity would I emerge?

Finally, I turned toward the world we actually inhabit. A world where fascist tides are rising, where concentration camps are being built in my own country, where the climate clock ticks faster each day, and where even the notion of truth feels under siege.

And once again, I asked the same question: Who do I choose to be?

This, to me, is the heart of the Shambhala Warrior prophecy. That the identity must come first—not the outcome. That the conditions do not determine the self, but rather, the self determines the way we meet the conditions.

And when I look more closely, I see the great seductions beneath the surface of each imagined future.

In the first: the dream of safety.
In the second: the fantasy of control.
In the third: the paralysis of despair.

But the question beneath them all remains:
What process will I walk?
What identity will I inhabit—regardless of how the story turns out?

---

I think of the Greatest Generation—the men and women who fought in World War II. Not because I romanticize war, but because I remember watching Band of Brothers with Bonnie and feeling the sobering contrast between their moment and mine. They didn’t ask for certainty. They didn’t get to know the outcome. Their lives were cold, muddy, terrifying, and often short.

And still, they showed up.

Not because they knew they’d win—but because they chose to stand for something in a time that demanded it.

---

It’s easy to sit in my comfort and privilege and pretend this moment is somehow different. That collapse is not my war. That I am too sensitive, too busy, too small. But the truth is, the call is here now. The battlefield is spiritual, emotional, ecological, and relational—and the choice is before me each day.

Will I collapse in my war?

Or will I rise—unarmored but awake—as a Shambhala warrior?

Beyond Outcome: Becoming the Warrior

In my coaching practice, I often work with people gripped by a desire to know—to forecast the result before they’re willing to commit to the path.

“How will it turn out?”

But that’s not the question that changes us.
The real transformation begins when we shift focus:

From Outcome to Process.
From Process to Identity.

Instead of asking what will happen, we ask:

• What will I do—today?

• How will I do it?

• And who will I be in the doing?

This is the path I walk with clients in personal crises, and it’s the path I now find myself walking in the face of our planetary crisis.

And it is precisely the path of the Shambhala warrior.

Joanna Macy’s teacher was clear: do not ask how it turns out. Do not seek the prophecy’s ending. Instead, receive the gift of not knowing—the radical freedom that comes when we’re no longer waiting for certainty.

Because it is only in that not-knowing that we can truly choose—choose a path, choose a way, choose a Self.

The warrior path is not predicated on victory.
It’s predicated on vow.

You don’t wield compassion and insight because you know they’ll work. You wield them because you have become the kind of person who must.

You become the kind of person who, when faced with the unraveling of ecosystems, democracies, and myths, still picks up the thread of meaning and weaves anyway.

This is the third level of transformation:
Not just changing what you do.
Not just changing how you do it.
But changing who you are—and letting that identity inform the rest.

The Shambhala Warrior is not a metaphor. It is an identity available now, in the dark. It asks not for perfection or enlightenment, but for sincerity, courage, and the willingness to train.

To let go of the need for guarantees.
To live your vow, no matter the ending.

“The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them.”— Frances Weller

Moving Across the Terrain

Since waking up to the depth of the predicaments we face, I’ve been reckoning with my illusions—about certainty, progress, and salvation. I’ve let go of the fantasy that someone else might save us. I’ve stopped waiting for the return of normal. I no longer believe this unraveling is something we’ll outrun, outvote, or out-innovate.

Instead, I ask myself daily:
What is mine to carry? And how shall I carry it?

For me, the answer has been a kind of returning. Returning to stillness. Returning to the land. Returning to a slower rhythm. Returning to the body, to presence, to breath.

I’ve been listening more—to the earth, to my nervous system, to the grief I’d long deferred. I am practicing—not perfectly, but with sincerity—the art of becoming a Shambhala warrior. Not in grand gestures, but in subtle ways: learning to hold sorrow without shutting down. Choosing to speak gently in systems that reward performance. Tending relationships as sacred ground.

Too long I’ve been exiled from the natural world, and too long I’ve believed that awareness alone was enough. But awareness without embodiment is abstraction. And prophecy without practice is poetry. So I’m learning, slowly, to live what I’ve begun to see.

I am not here to win a war. I am here to witness, to love, to serve. I am here to carry the weapons of compassion and interbeing. I am here to remember the thread.

The terrain is brutal. The map is gone. But the training has begun.

You Are Not Alone in the Training

If you are reading this and feeling the weight of it all—grief, fear, confusion, or overwhelm—you are not alone. There is a growing community of us, waking up not just to the pain of the world, but to our profound capacity to respond.

We are not here to be perfect. We are not here to be certain.
We are here to remember. To love. To train.

The Shambhala Warrior prophecy isn’t a fantasy of triumph.
It’s a sacred invitation to meet this moment with fierce compassion and deep interbeing. To become the kind of person who must act—because they’ve remembered who they are.

We cannot know how it ends. But we can know who we choose to be.
Not-knowing is our great gift. It frees us to step out of the story of outcome, and into the practice of presence. It calls us to live from our vow, not our forecast.

It opens the space where greatness—quiet, ordinary, luminous—can happen.

The path ahead is uncertain.
But you do not walk it alone.

The training has already begun.

---

Thank you for reading The Sovereign Self. If this resonated, I invite you to share it with someone who might need this medicine. And if you're ready to go deeper into practices for navigating collapse and cultivating sovereignty, consider becoming a paid subscriber for weekly frameworks and coaching insights.