This talk was given in 2001
The word “Sangha” means “association” or “society” and in this context it is the association or fellowship of all those who follow the teaching of the Buddha. This includes people living very different lifestyles. It includes men and women and it includes people of all ages.
Initially there were two kind of people in the Sangha. Those who left home and took up a life of homelessness, wandering from place to place,begging their food and telling people about the Buddha's teaching. And there were those who had a strong positive response to the Buddha and his teaching but didn't leave home. They carried on with their family life and the business of making a livelihood. The early Buddhist Sangha consisted of wandering mendicants, who were initially all men, but later joined by women and ordinary householders. All of them took refuge in the Buddha and followed his teaching. The wandering mendicants came to be known as bhikkhus or bhikshus. This word comes from the root “bhiks”which means to “share” or “partake” and referred to the fact that the wanderers shared in the food of the wider community. This word Bhikkhu or bhikshu is often translated as “monk”. “Monk” comes form the Greek word “monos” meaning “alone”. It's perhaps not a bad translation if understood in this way. Many early Christian monks were wanderers or hermits too. These Buddhist wanderers in Northern India, 2500 years ago were forced to stop wandering every year when the monsoon rains came. They would gather together on the outskirts of a settlement and meditate and discuss and recite the teachings and mend their robes (and probably exchange travellers stories about how to cope with tigers etc).
As time went by, some of them decided not to wander on at the end of the monsoon season and in this way there gradually came into being a community of settled bhikkhus as well as wanderers. Now there were three kinds of people in the Sangha. Those who were still householders living their ordinary lives, those who left home for a life of wandering homelessness and those who left home and settled in one place. This was still very much alive in Thailand right up until the 1950s when the forests began to be cut down. In the book”Forest Recollections”, there are many descriptions of the lives of the wanderers whose lifestyle was modelled directly on the way of life of the early Buddhists 2500 years earlier. “Thudong monks valued wandering as an ascetic practice, as a means of training the mind to face hardship and the unpredictable. Whenever they wandered far from the relative comfort and security of the monastic life, they had to contend with fear, pain, fatigue, hunger, frustration, and distress; and sometimes they risked death. The areas in which they wandered were not confined by the political boundaries of Siam/Thailand. They often walked across national borders to the Shan states, Burma, Laos, and Cambodia. In Man's time a monk could wander freely into neighbouring countries, and thudong monks willingly did so. Unlike academic and bureaucratic monks in the Sangha heirarchy, they had a keen interest in faraway places and thought nothing of walking great distances to reach them.
The wandering monks' journeys were uncharted. They had no maps, no guides, and often no specific idea of where they were going. It did not matter how long it took to get from one place to another. It was the going, the wandering, that counted. Wandering into unfamiliar terrain forced a monk to be constantly alert and aware. He never knew where he would spend the night, where the next meal was coming from, or what difficulties he would encounter. He learned to live with insecurities and discomforts – life's inevitable dukkha.” (Kamala Tiyavanich, Forest Recollections, p.143)
Incidentally the lives of some of the hill tribes in Thailand in the early 20th century was also little different from ancient India. “Once Waen and Teu, exhausted and hungry after walking through the forest in Meuang Phrae, entered a Yao settlement hoping to find alms. But the houses were empty, the inhabitants having left for the fields. As they approached the very last hut, a man stuck his head out. “Friend, we have nothing to eat,” Waen said. “Please give us some rice.” “I have only a small supply of rice,” said the man. “I have cooked rice, but it's for us to eat. The uncooked rice is for sale.” Then he looked straight at Waen's empty alms bowl and offered to buy it; he wanted to use it as a pot for cooking rice. “Almost laughed at this,” Waen recalls, “and for a moment forgot how starved we were.” Waen, like many thudong monks, was accepting of local diversity and did not pass judgment. “the Yao man was straightforward and honest. He had no pretensions; he spoke what was on his mind. He wasn't intending to hurt anyone's feelings or displease anyone. He was sincere.”
But, seeing that it was hopeless to get alms, Waen and Teu pushed on. Along the way they encountered a Yao woman. Determined to get some food this time, Waen was more direct. “Friend, we are starving. We have no rice to eat. Please give us some.” The woman asked the monks to wait, then she went into the hut and came back with a container full of rice, which she then emptied in to the monks' bowls. Having found a good place to sit and eat, the monks poured some water into their bowls, mixed it with the rice, and ate.” (Forest Recollections, p148-150)
This description of Thailand in the early 20th century reads almost like a passage from the Pali Canon. Also in Thailand there were many settled monks whose main practice was study and scholarly work. These would be seen as the direct descendants of the first monks who began to settle down in residential communities. Those who settled preserved the teaching through meditation and discussion and eventually after some four or five centuries the teachings of the Buddha were committed to writing. Down through the centuries it has been the settled bhikkhus, those who preserved the letter of the teaching whether orally or in writing, who have had the greatest influence on how the the Buddhist spiritual life is understood. They set the standards as it were and determined what was to be considered the norm. This could still be seen in Thailand in the 20th century where the wandering monks were heavily criticised by the settled monks and not considered to be real monks at all.
Right form the very earliest days of the Buddhist Sangha there were these different kinds of people, different trends in practice and different lifestyles. The householders practised generosity and ethics and a little meditation. The wanderers were full-time meditators who occasionally came together for discussion or visited teachers for instructions and the settled monks were the scholars, the preservers of the letter of the teachings. And these different lifestyles and practices led to a certain amount of tension which could be creative tension or could be destructive. How creative the tension was depended on the spiritual insight of the members of the Sangha. In theory those who led the lifestyle of wanderers and engaged in more full-time meditation would be expected to be the more spiritually developed, but real life is never so neat. There may be a hierarchy of conditions which are more and less conducive to spiritual practice and there may be a hierarchy of persons who are more and less spiritually mature but the two hierarchies don't necessarily fit neatly together. As Reginald Ray says in his Buddhist Saints in India: “Not only may saints be found in monasteries and lay life, but – obviously – rogues may be found in the forest. A three-tiered model, with forest renunciants at the top, might suggest that individuals attain value based on their place within the scheme rather than that the scheme attains its value based on what individuals reflecting one or another place in the scheme actually accomplish. It is realized people who are of supreme value rather than the particular lifestyles by which they become realized or in which, once realized, they are found. Any model of Buddhist types must remain to some extent relative and open, for no one can ever know how much, from a spiritual point of view, any individual can or will attain in one situation as opposed to another.” (p.438)
Traditionally the Sangha is spoken of in terms of an Arya Sangha, a Bhikkhu S and a MahaSangha. The MahaSangha or Great Sangha includes all Buddhists, regardless of lifestyle or level of commitment or attainment. The Bhikkhu Sangha is the Sangha of full-timers; not necessarily monks in the Christian sense of the term, i.e. those who live in monasteries. This Sangha is distinguished by the fact that they observe certain rules. It is Sangha as organisation. The Arya Sangha is the “noble” or holy Sangha and this is the spiritual community of all those who have experienced some insight into the nature of Reality. This is the Sangha of those who have reached a stage in their spiritual life which means that they can never fall back from the Path. They have seen into the nature of Reality and what has become clear to them can never become unclear again. This is known as the point of no return, or the point of Stream Entry.
A Stream Entrant is a spiritual practitioner who has seen through fixed self-view, has seen through doubt and indecision, and has seen through any tendency to go through the motions of spiritual practice. Bhante Sangharakshita talks about a Stream Entrant in positive terms as someone who has transcended habit, vagueness and superficiality and attained creativity, clarity and commitment. Stream entry occurs when we break through these three fetters of Self View, doubt and going through the motions of practice. Or as Bhante puts it the fetters of habit, vagueness and superficiality.
The first fetter is the habit of being a particular kind of person. We act as if we have always been and will always be a particular kind of person, with particular abilities and shortcomings. Consciously or unconsciously we tell ourselves stories about who we are and what we can or cannot do and we keep on telling ourselves the same stories, constantly reinforcing a particular version of “Me” with a capital M. A Stream Entrant is someone who breaks through this and has a much more creative view of themselves and others. A Stream Entrant is always aware of the greater potential that has yet to unfold; the Buddha nature yet to be unveiled.
The second fetter is doubt and indecision or a constant lack of clarity. This is not an honest questioning in order to get to the truth. This is a more emotionally based avoidance of clarity, avoidance of the truth. Throwing up obstacles constantly to deliberately obscure the truth about ourselves and about life. This kind of doubt and indecision is a resistance to going deeper into things. A resistance to clarifying what the dharma is all about, a resistance to the implications of practice. It is closely related to the first fetter because this resistance is all about preserving a fixed self-view. Doubt and indecision of this type leads to an inability to truly value the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and therefore an inability to Go for Refuge or make a commitment to the Buddhist spiritual path. A Stream Entrant is completely free of doubt about the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha and it is therefore no great effort for a Stream Entrant to place trust in the Three Jewels. For a Stream Entrant it would be very difficult indeed, or even impossible, to not Go for Refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.
The third fetter is the tendency to go through the motions of practice or, as it is usually put, reliance on rites and rituals as ends in themselves. When we have been practising for a while we can lose sight of the purpose of practice and then our practice of mediation, puja, study and even ethics becomes empty, empty of deeper meaning. We may forget about the spiritual goal of becoming more aware, and more compassionate. We may forget that we are trying to undermine selfishness and harshness and gain more wisdom and equanimity. We may meditate in order to have good meditations or to have strong experiences. We may do puja in order to feel good and get a bit of a buzz, we may study simply to acquire knowledge and we may practice ethics to be a good Buddhist. But we have forgotten the higher Ideal, we have forgotten about Insight and Enlightenment and we are satisfied with being a little bit happier. This is the fetter of superficiality as Sangharakshita calls it. It keeps us on the surface of our own experience and keeps us immunised against the reality of dissatisfaction, impermanence and insubstantiality. It means we have lost creativity in our practice, we no longer have a cutting edge in our spiritual life. We are a bit lost and in need of re-orientation and re-inspiring. A Stream Entrant is constantly aware of the reason for practice, constantly on the path of compassion and awareness.
A Stream Entrant is someone who has broken through these fetters of fixed self-view, doubt and indecision, and superficiality and has insight into the true nature of reality and the real reason for spiritual practice. Stream Entrants and all those who are even more advanced than Stream Entrants make up the Arya Sangha, the Noble Sangha. This is the Sangha we refer to when we talk about the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. This is the Sangha we Go for Refuge to. This is the Sangha we can rely on. This Sangha, the Arya Sangha, is the living, breathing Dharma. This is where the teachings of the Buddha leave off being concepts or images and take on human form. The teachings live in the Arya Sangha and it is because the teachings have stayed alive in this way that it is still possible for us to encounter the essential spirit of Buddhism even now 2500 years after the Buddha's lifetime.
According to one sutta in the Pali Canon you can recognise a Stream Entrant by four characteristics: unwavering confidence in the Buddha, unwavering confidence in the Dharma, unwavering confidence in the Sangha and as the text says, being “possessed of morality dear to the Noble Ones, unbroken, without defect, unspotted, without inconsistency, liberating, praised by the wise, uncorrupted, and conducive to concentration.” (Digha Nikaya 33)
If you are concerned about someone's spiritual development, whether they are the real thing or not, you need to observe whether they are free from doubt in the Three Jewels and whether they are skilful. Elsewhere it says that a Stream Entrant will confess any breaches of precepts immediately. (Majjhima Nikaya 48.11). However it is not easy to tell whether another person is spiritually developed or not. Externals such as behaviour and speech can tell you something but not everything. There is a sutta in the Anguttara Nikaya entitled “How to judge a person's character” and here it says, “Four facts about a person, O monks, can be known from four circumstances. What are these four?
By living together with a person his virtue can be known, and this too only after a long time, not casually; by close attention, not without attention; by one who is wise, not by one who is stupid.
By having dealings with a person his integrity can be known, and this too only after a long time, not casually; by close attention, not without attention; by one who is wise, not by one who is stupid.
In misfortune a person's fortitude can be known, and this too only after a long time, not casually; by close attention, not without attention; by one who is wise, not by one who is stupid.
By
conversation a person's wisdom
can be known, and this too only after a long time, not casually; by
close attention, not without attention; by one who is wise, not by
one who is stupid.” (Anguttara Nikaya, 4.192)
If you really want to tell whether someone is a Stream Entrant, you have to develop attentiveness and wisdom and then you need to live with them, work with them (have dealings with), be around them at times when things are going badly and be in communication/conversation with them. It is not an easy matter to judge another person's character or the nature of their spiritual development. You need to have substantial experience of them (as this sutta points out) and I would say you need to bring intuition and reason into play as well. But perhaps more importantly you need to know yourself too, so that your view of someone else isn't just a projection of the unconscious contents of your own mind. This is what I think is meant by a wise person and an attentive person.
I've spent quite a lot of time talking about the Arya Sangha because this is such an important level of Sangha, this, as I said, is where the Dharma is embodied, where the Dharma is kept alive in its essential spirit. And this is the Sangha that we go for refuge to. Now it is probably too difficult for us to work out whether particular people we know are Stream Entrants, or even beyond that, but fortunately it is not necessary to do this. In fact it is not only not necessary but not even useful. All we need to know is that there are some people whom we feel confident are sincerely and effectively Going for Refuge and are more experienced on the Path than we are. If we can have contact with such people then we will be either directly or indirectly in contact with the spirit of the Dharma, because we can be sure that they are to some degree saturated with the spirit of the Dharma themselves, the spirit of awareness, generosity and loving kindness. If we are intent on finding Stream Entrants or realised Gurus or great spiritual beings, we are probably engaged in the business of looking for a saviour. But Buddhism is the wrong place to look for saviours. The Buddha never claimed to be a saviour, only one who points out the path. The Arya Sangha can do no more. If we put people up on pedestals and worship them and try to turn them into saviours, we will only be disappointed. Nobody can save us. Nobody can live our life for us. The Sangha, our spiritual friends, are part of the conditions which help us to make an effort with spiritual practice, but the effort is all our own. We can draw inspiration from the lives of others, past and present, but we have to act from that inspiration.
As well as the Maha Sangha and the Arya Sangha, traditionally there is the Bhikkhu Sangha and in some places a Bhikkhuni Sangha. This is the Sangha of monks and nuns, or to put it another way, the full-timers. What distinguishes monks and nuns from the rest of the Buddhist populace is the rules they live by . There are many different Orders of monks and nuns spanning many schools of Buddhism and several different countries. The history of the development of the Bhikkhu Sangha is very complex and not something I can go into here. If you want to find out more, then look in “A Concise History of Buddhism” by Andrew Skelton, which has a very clear and readable account of the whole history of the monastic Sangha.
In contemporary Buddhism sometimes the Bhikkhu Sangha is spoken of as if it were the only Sangha. But this is either an error of terminology or an error in understanding. The monastic Sangha, whether Theravadin or Mahayana, Vietnamese or Korean, is simply those members of the Sangha who have adopted a lifestyle based on the rules of the Vinaya. Sangha or Spiritual Community is not an organisation, not even an ecclesiastical organisation. It is a common response to the Ideal; a shared response and a shared practice. It is being on the same wavelength. It is something dynamic, something that happens, something that people do. It is not a fixed thing. We can have labels, such as Bhikkhu or Lama or Master or Mitra or Order Member – but those are just labels. Spiritual Community transcends labels. Spiritual Community is the actual experience of a coincidence of wills; an experience of resonance with the spiritual aspirations and spiritual endeavours of others.
I think it best to think of Spiritual Community or Sangha as a practice rather than as an institution that you become a member of. It is something you do rather than something you belong to. And it is something you practice “both in public and in private”. You come across this phrase in the Pali Canon in relation to harmony between monks. Harmony is maintained and lost because of what they do and say and think “both in public and in private”.
Here is what the Sangiti Sutta says about the the practice of spiritual community, “Six things are conducive to communal living: As long as monks both in public and in private show loving kindness to their fellows in acts of body, speech and thought,..share with their virtuous fellows whatever they receive as rightful gift, including the contents of their alms-bowls, which they do not keep to themselves,...keep consistently, unbroken and unaltered those rules of conduct that are spotless, leading to liberation, praised by the wise, unstained and conducive to concentration, and persist therein with their fellows both in public and in private, ….continue in that noble view that leads to liberation, to the utter destruction of suffering, remaining in such awareness with their fellows both in public and in private” (Digha Nikaya, Sutta 33, similar list in Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta 48)
There is this interesting repetition of the phrase “in public and in private”, which reinforces the idea that spiritual community is a practice. In this case it is a practice of loving kindness, generosity, ethics, and right view. The text goes on to say how problems arise in the spiritual community and by implication tells us what we need to avoid. “Six roots of contention: Here, (a) a monk is angry and bears ill-will, he is disrespectful and discourteous to the Teacher, the Dharma and the Sangha, and does not finish his training. He stirs up contention within the Sangha, which brings woe and sorrow to many, with evil consequences, misfortune and sorrow for devas and humans. If, friends, you should discover such a root of contention among yourselves or among others, you should strive to get rid of just that root of contention. If you find no such root of contention...then you should work to prevent its overcoming you in future. Or (b) a monk is deceitful and malicious...,(c) a monk is envious and mean...(d) a monk is cunning and deceitful...(e) a monk is full of evil desires and wrong views...(f) a monk Is opinionated, obstinate and tenacious. If, friends, you should discover such a roof of contention among yourselves or among others, you should strive to get rid of just that root of contention. If you find no such root of contention..., then you should work to prevent it overcoming you in future.” (ibid)
The practice of spiritual community involves avoiding these things. Firstly avoiding anger, resentment, being disrespectful and discourteous to the Three Jewels. Avoiding stirring up contention and argument. Then there is avoiding deceit and malice, avoiding envy and meanness, avoiding slyness, avoiding wrong views, avoiding being opinionated and stubborn. This points again to the sort of practice that we need to undertake if we want to create the spirit of Sangha among ourselves. To put it more positively, we need to cultivate goodwill and be respectful to the Three Jewels and to our teachers. We need to be honest and kindly. We need to rejoice in others and give freely. We need to be open in our dealings with each other. We need to study and discuss so that we develop right views about the nature of existence. We need to hold our opinions lightly and be less attached to them.
The practice of spiritual community is nothing onerous, not something heavy and difficult. It is a joyful, delightful practice of kindness and openness and generosity. It is the practice of relating to the best in each other and living in harmony with each other and the practice of continually cultivating positive mental states. It's a very attractive practice and one that brings great rewards. But it must be emphasised it is a practice and therefore something you have to do for yourself. The spiritual community is mutually helpful, mutually supportive but each and every one of us has to play our part for this fragile network of conditions to flourish. There is no room for complaining that we have no friends or that others are not taking sufficient interest in us. We have to act and befriend people and take an interest in others and as we act in this way we begin to enter into the spirit of Sangha and become part of the “free association of individuals” who experience a mutual spiritual resonance and a mutual delight in each others' very existence.
