Sangha
is about creating connections with other people who want to grow and
develop through Buddhist practices – meditation, puja,
communication, study, mindfulness, ethics.
Today we are celebrating Sangha. We are
celebrating the existence, value, necessity and beauty of the Sangha,
of all people who have attained insight into Reality – the Arya
Sangha and we are celebrating the existence, value, necessity and
beauty of all the people who are striving to change and grow through
the practice of the Dharma – the Maha Sangha.
We
are celebrating the Sangha which we go for refuge to – the Arya
Sangha and we are celebrating the Sangha which we go for refuge with
– the Maha Sangha.
The
Arya Sangha is represented for us by the great Buddhist teachers –
Marpa, Milarepa, Padmasambhava, Dogen, Hui Neng and so on and by the
archetypal Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. This is the Sangha which is our
refuge – this is the Sangha which guarantees the Dharma, which
preserves the treasure. This is the Sangha we can rely on totally.
These are the 'powerful protectors' whom we bow to in 'entreaty and
supplication', asking for teachings to guide us and lighten the
burden of our suffering. This is the Sangha we go for refuge to when
we recite the formula Sangham Saranam Gacchami.
The
Maha Sangha is the Sangha we go for refuge with. For us the Maha
Sangha is the people we are in contact and communication with as we
tread the Path of Ethics, Meditation, Mindfulness and so on. This is
the Sangha that we need to connect with. We need to connect with each
other. Out of our collective practice and communication we can create
the ideal conditions for Insight to arise. In other words we can
create the ideal conditions for the Arya Sangha to arise. By putting
effort and energy into the creation of the Maha Sangha, we will also
be helping to create the Arya Sangha.
What
this means is friendship. By being friendly, in an ordinary way, we
create the context and culture in which spiritual
friendship kalyana mitrata) can
arise and flourish. And spiritual friendship is Sangha. Our
communication with one another is Sangha.
So,
ideally, the way for us to create Sangha is to live together and to
work together. That is the advice of the wise. That if we live
together and work together as Buddhists, communicating and practising
ethics, then we will create Sangha, we will build spiritual
friendship. We will create the conditions for the manifestation of
Insight, for the manifestation of the Sangha Refuge.
So
the question to be considered is – does this work in practice? Is
it the case that Buddhists living and working together creates
spiritual friendship, create Sangha? Before this question could be
answered we have to consider more fundamental issues such as – what
is a Buddhist and what exactly is meant by living and working
together?
So
very briefly and very simply, a Buddhist is someone who is
effectively Going for Refuge to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. What
does it mean to be effectively Going for Refuge to the Buddha, Dharma
and Sangha?.
Again
briefly – to Go for Refuge effectively means to be willing to
take responsibility for ones life and
ones mental states and to take all necessary steps to change in a
positive direction – to take all necessary steps as advised by the
Buddha and in our case by Bhante Sangharakshita, to change in the
direction of greater skilfulness, greater compassion and greater
wisdom. So if we want to be Buddhists we have to be willing to take
responsibility for ourselves and for our mental states. All too often
we feel or think if
only that other person was different or if only circumstances were
different – then we would be happy, or then we could have different
mental states, then we could be more positive. This if only attitude
is not taking responsibility. This is not effective going for refuge.
This is ineffective, passive.
This is being a victim and it is not the sort of attitude that will
create Sangha. It is not helpful either to ourselves or others.
We
need to actively take responsibility for ourselves. If I am unhappy
or lonely or isolated or angry, then I must do something about it. If
I say to myself that it is the fault of other people or the fault of
circumstances, then I put myself in a position where I cannot act, I
cannot change – I have to wait for others to change or try to
change them. We have the ability, the power to change ourselves. We
cannot change others – they must do that for themselves. So we need
to actively take responsibility for our lives, for our mental states
and we need to take whatever steps necessary to change, to grow away
from the unskilful towards the skilful. If we do this we will be
effectively Going for Refuge – we will be Buddhists. Of course, we
also need to take responsibility for our positive states of mind and
acknowledge them and bring awareness
to how they arise.
Living
and working together as Buddhists is the ideal method to create
Sangha. So having looked briefly at what it means to be a Buddhist,
let us now consider what this living and working together consists
of.
Living
together as Buddhists does not mean simply sharing a house for
economic, ecological, political or social reasons. Living together as
Buddhists in order to create Sangha, spiritual community, means first
and foremost entering into communication with each other on the basis
of our common ideal and helping each other to change and grow.
Everything else is secondary, everything else is a means to that end.
In
order to enter into deeper communication with each other we need two
things. Firstly
we need to access our depths through meditation and study – we need
to have some depth of experience, of feeling, of thought, for there
to be deeper communication. Secondly we
need to spend time together. The more time we spend with someone the
more likely we are to go beyond the superficialities of personality
and enter into more real communication. So living together as
Buddhists involves a deliberate, conscious practice of communication
based on our ideals and facilitated by meditation, study and spending
time together.
Working
together as Buddhists again is not simply about turning up at the
same workplace to get a job done. It is about using work as a
spiritual practice to help us develop ethical sensitivity, to help us
to take responsibility, to help us go beyond our limitations and to
help us learn to co-operate. So working together as Buddhists can be
one of the most intense spiritual practices we could engage in and
consequently one of the most effective ways of bringing about change
and growth in us.
The
challenge of working with other people, trying to co-operate on a
common project and at the same time maintain skilful mental states is
very great. It is a constant challenge to go beyond limits of
communication and limits of compassion, and move out into the unknown
territory of trust and co-operation.
I
worked for five years as part of Buddhist team running a health food
store and found it to be a challenging, effective and invigorating
spiritual practice. It was not easy, changing habits is not easy but
the rewards are so tangible and so worthwhile that I always found it
difficult to understand why everybody didn't want want to work in
that way. It is the most powerful spiritual practice I know and
brings about changes in people quite dramatically. I gained a great
deal from my time there. I learned discipline which is absolutely
necessary for spiritual progress. I learned confidence, friendship
and work satisfaction. I had an outlet for my energy. I believe that
working together as Buddhists can be one of the most intense and
powerful spiritual practices available and I wholeheartedly recommend
it.
I
said earlier that the best way to create Sangha was for Buddhists to
live and work together. And I've given a brief explanation of what it
means to be a Buddhist and to live and work together as Buddhists. In
practice of course we often fall short of effective Going for Refuge;
we all have our lapses from skilfulness, our lapses from taking
responsibility for ourselves, our lapses into superficiality and
selfishness. Also in practice, for some people it is just not
possible to live and work with other Buddhists due to circumstances.
However, that is still the most ideal situation in which to change.
Those are the most ideal conditions for making our Going for Refuge
more and more effective. Of course, having ideal conditions is just a
starting point. Just as having a studio doesn't make an artist or
having a pen doesn't make a writer. We have to make use of the
opportunity.
But
bearing in mind our limitations, our fears, our circumstances, it may
be that for many of us we need to try to create Sangha and develop
communication in less ideal conditions. There are some practical
steps that all of us can undertake whether we live and work with
other Buddhists and aspiring Buddhists or not.
I'm
going to talk about four things in particular – two of which are
concerned with ourselves and two of which are concerned with our
relationship to others. These are..
- positive emotion
- taking responsibility
- spending time together
- generosity
Positive
Emotion
It
is absolutely vital that we develop positive emotion for our Dharma
practice to be effective. An effective Dharma practice is one which
changes us so that we move from being concerned primarily with
ourselves, our needs, our suffering, to being equally concerned with
others, with their needs, their suffering. This is not easy.
In
a family or in a sexual relationship there are natural and biological
ties that move us beyond our concern with ourselves alone – but in
the context of the Sangha, the spiritual community, it is only human
empathy that draws us out of complete selfishness.
In
order to be able to respond to the needs of others we need to have a
basis of positive emotion. We need to feel an abundance within us in
order to be able to give willingly and freely. In a previous talk I
quoted Bhante Sangharakshita as saying that in order to be able to
effectively meet the needs of other people there is one need of our
own which needs to be fulfilled and that is the need
to appreciate our own worth and know that it is appreciated by
others, to love ourselves and feel that we are loved by others. ( see
Wisdom beyond Words, p.83) This is profoundly and fundamentally
important. This is the wellspring of altruism, the source of
generosity, the origin of the
Bodhisattva Ideal. Until we fulfil this basic need – the need to
appreciate our own worth, to love ourselves and know that we are
loved by others – know that our worth is appreciated by others –
until we get this established in our lives we will find it very
difficult to be effective in our attempts to change, to Go for
Refuge.
It
is important that we don't ignore this. We need to take steps to
develop this means of richness and abundance, this appreciation of
our worth. We need to practice the Metta Bhavana consistently and
imaginatively, we need to focus on what is good in our lives. One
idea I came across in a book called “Feel The Fear And Do It
Anyway” by Susan Jeffers which seems a good idea to me. She
suggests keeping what she calls a book of Abundance. She says:
“Buy
yourself a beautiful notebook, as expensive as you can afford. Start
filling it by listing as many positive things in your life – past
and present – as you can think of. Don’t stop until you reach
150. Some of you will find more. When you feel you can’t think of
any more, you can. Just keep focusing on all the blessings in your
life. No matter how small they seem, include them in your book. Each
day make entries in your book. Instead of a traditional diary –
which for many is comprised of doom and gloom, wish and want –
create this book, which in effect simply states ‘I have!’ Note
every positive thing, large or small, that happens – a compliment
from a friend, a cheerful hello from the postman, a beautiful sky, a
chance to contribute, a haircut, a new suit, nourishing food. Notice
everything good that happens to you. Look for blessings, and you will
notice them all over the place. They will envelop you. There is so
much you are not seeing that is already there. There is no need to
feel scarcity, when there is such abundance.”
The
point here is focussing on what is good and positive in your life –
focussing on what you have, appreciating what you have and from this
grows the ability to give.
You
can develop positive emotion through communication with your friends
too – when you are out of touch with what is positive in your life,
ask someone to remind you – ask someone to appreciate you, to
rejoice in your merits. It might seem artificial but that doesn't
matter, what matters is that it works.
Take
Responsibility
The
next thing I want to look at is taking responsibility for ourselves.
This ties in with the attitude of appreciating our own worth. If we
appreciate our own worth, we also appreciate our ability to take
responsibility for ourselves. Not taking responsibility for ourselves
means to go through life feeling like a victim and wallowing in
self-pity, blaming other people, moaning and complaining, being
passive and staying stuck in the mud of misery. So how can we take
responsibility for ourselves?
Well
first of all we can stop blaming others for what we feel, what we do
and what we are. Just that, stop blaming others. They do not make us
respond in a particular way. We have a choice. As
Victor Frankl put it:
“Forces beyond
your control can take away everything you possess except one thing,
your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation.”
And
having spent time in a Nazi concentration camp, he knew what he was
talking about.
Now
for some people the immediate response to not blaming others would be
to start blaming themselves. So a
second step in taking responsibility for ourselves is to get rid of
irrational guilt. It is part of being
an ordinary human being to experience greed, hatred and delusion in
some form or other. That's why we need to practice ethics and make
efforts to transform ourselves. Irrational guilt or blaming ourselves
for not being perfect is of absolutely no use to us. Getting rid of
irrational guilt isn't easy. We need to become aware of its presence
in our lives first; aware of how it manifests in our lives – we may
need the help of others to discover this. And then having become
aware of it we need to counteract it through developing positive
emotion as mentioned previously or in particularly difficult cases by
therapeutic blasphemy. As Sangharakshita says in his essay on
Buddhism and Blasphemy, an essay exploring the blasphemy laws in the
UK:
“ The
individual has a right to blaspheme. He has a right to commit
rational blasphemy because he has the right to freedom of speech,
i.e. to the full and frank expression of his opinions, and he has a
right to commit therapeutic blasphemy because he has the right to
grow, i.e. to develop his human potential to the utttermost. One who
was brought up under the oppressive and coercive influence of
theological monarchism – and who as a result of that influence is
tormented by irrational feelings of fear and guilt, has the right to
rid himself of those feelings by openly expressing his resentment
against the Power that bears the ultimate responsibility for their
being instilled into him, i.e. by committing blasphemy. Christianity
is not the only form of theological monarchism, of course. Judaism
and Islam are also forms of theological monarchism and those who are
brought up under their influence often suffer in the same way as
those brought up under the influence of Christianity and have,
therefore, the same right to blaspheme.” (The
Priceless Jewel, p.111)
Perhaps
there are other systems of thought – -isms and -ologies that we
need to blaspheme against too – to free ourselves from the chains
of irrational guilt. Indeed these days it is probably more likely to
be other ideology that keeps us in bondage
Carrying
on with the theme of taking responsibility for ourselves – having
given up blaming others, counteracted feelings of irrational guilt,
we need to start changing
habits of complaining and moaning about things. Just like we might
make an effort to give up
habits like over-eating or smoking, we need to make an effort to give
up complaining and moaning. It's just as bad for our health. And just
as with smoking or over-eating we need to take one step at a time. We
need to try not complaining or criticising for one day or if you're a
really bad case, for one hour, and then for one week. Sometimes we
have a habit of complaining which is just the normal way we speak ( a
verbal habit). It hasn't crossed our minds that it's particularly
negative – it's just a habit of speech – it's just our way of
saying hello. We can take responsibility for ourselves and the sort
of atmosphere we create around us by giving up habits of criticising
and complaining.
Then
we can look at why we want to be miserable. What comfort do we gain
from being miserable?. Self-pity can be a very cosy feeling – very
safe. When we say to ourselves “I'm unhappy and it's their fault,
nobody cares about me”, we are indulging ourselves in the comfort
of being incapable. The end result of this will be that we stay
unhappy but also that we never feel we have to do anything to change.
If
we find ourselves playing this game we need to do all we can to shake
ourselves out of it and start living our lives. Not living our lives
is a waste. If we find ourselves in the grip of self-pity we need to
do something,
almost do anything, we need to act, take
action to get out of it – take control of our lives, take
responsibility for ourselves. We could ask ourselves Does it work?
Does self-pity help us to achieve whatever it is we are trying to
achieve – does it work?
This
leads to something else we need to do in order to take responsibility
for ourselves. We need to clarify what we want in life, where we're
going and then act on it. We may not have a very definitive picture
of what we want to do with our lives, but we can all probably be
clear about what is most important to us, what is central and most
meaningful in our lives and therefore what we need to do to live our
lives more fully.
The
final thing I want to say about taking responsibility is that we need
to try to be
aware of choice in our lives. Sometimes we can bumble along in life
as if there was no choice – we
are doing what we do and being how we are because that's just the way
things are. This is just lack of awareness – we are making
unconscious choices and what we need to do is become more conscious
in our decision making and more conscious that there are in fact
decisions to make, and choices to take. There
is no pre-ordained destiny, just actions and their consequences.
Spending
Time Together
Friendship
is the essence of Sangha and friendship takes time. Falling in love
can happen instantaneously but friendship takes time and effort. So I
just want to focus on this one aspect of friendship – spending time
together. If you want to build a friendship with someone, you need to
spend time together. The best way to do this I said earlier is to
live and work together but failing that, spending time together
regularly is essential for building friendship.
I
would encourage you to spend time together if you want to build
strong lasting, trusting friendships. In doing so you will be
creating the Sangha in the most tangible way possible. The Buddha and
Ananda spent more or less all of their time together – we may not
be able to manage that, but we should be able to spend 2 hours a week
with someone.
Generosity
As
Buddhists generosity should be as much a daily practice as
meditation. Through meditation we lay the foundations for Wisdom to
arise, through generosity we lay the foundations for Compassion to
arise. We need to take seriously the practice of generosity and think
every day about how we can be generous that day and perhaps at the
end of each day review how we have been generous. generosity is the
key to happiness in life, or as Susan Jeffers puts it “the trick in
life is not figuring out what you can get, but what you can give”.
The
spirit of generosity is the spirit of the Sangha, it is the spirit of
mutual helpfulness. Through generosity we overcome the barriers of
separation between us and begin to live
our ideals. Through generosity, egotism and selfishness begins to
dissolve into altruism, love and compassion. Altruism,love and
compassion are characteristic of the Sangha. The spirit of generosity
and acts of generosity is how the Sangha manifests in the world. A
Sangha that does not manifest in the world through acts of generosity
is not a Sangha, it's a theory.
Now
I'd like to look at what might be a hindrance to us in our endeavours
to create Sangha. Put simply, selfishness is the greatest obstacle to
be overcome if we want to create Sangha. There is one particular
manifestation of selfishness that I'd like to focus on today because
I think it is a major hindrance to the development of Sangha and
indeed to Buddhist practice generally.
This
form of selfishness is variously referred to as low self-esteem, lack
of confidence, self-hatred and so on. This low self-esteem really
gets in the way of making spiritual progress and it can play havoc
with communication by bringing all sorts of assumptions into play.
Assumptions about what the the other person is thinking or feeling
which have no objective basis but are necessary for keeping the low
self-esteem in place. Low self-esteem or lack of confidence is a bad
habit. There are probably all sorts of reasons why it has become a
habit – to do with upbringing, so-called religious conditioning,
fear and so on and if it is so bad that it has become pathological we
may need professional therapeutic or counselling help. However for
most of us it is a bad habit that we need to to bring awareness to in
the present and take steps to deal with.
Sometimes
we need to ask ourselves whether in fact we do want to change,
whether we want to leave low self-esteem behind us or whether in fact
it is too much of a comfort for us to part with. In order to change
this habitual mental state we need to act,
to take up a challenge. We
need to do things. If we wait to become confident before acting we
won't become confident. Confidence comes to us as a consequence of
what we do. If we act, in spite of lack of confidence we will gain
confidence. This is the law of Karma. Karma means action.
In
one of his talks, Subhuti said this about Karma:
“One
of the reasons I think why we become obsessed with our own feelings
is that we have little conviction in the efficacy of action. We don't
actually believe that acting can in the end change the way we feel.
Therefore we look for techniques and remedies – professional help,
the stars, needles, whatever it is – in order to change us because
we have no faith in the principle of karma. And this is pretty
fundamental. As Buddhists, in Going for Refuge to the Dharma, this is
one of the major principles that we take on. We take on the
perspective that the universe is fundamentally moral, that morality,
that ethics, is part of the nature of things. It is not something
adventitious or added on or sort of made up or invented by man. It is
not something that we can choose to have or not to have. The universe
is, as it were,moral in its very nature. Skilful action always brings
about the appropriate responses, the appropriate effects within the
universe and within our own minds. It is not haphazard or random. The
universe does not play dice with us. The principle of karma does not
play dice with us. The effects that we get from our actions are part
of the nature of things; it is the way things actually are. This is
part of the meaning of Dharma, that in a sense you could say that our
effort is rewarded. This is something that we can have complete
confidence in.” (Subhuti,
Padmaloka Books, Are Their Ethics in the Order,p.10)
Karma
means that we can change. Karma means that we will change if we act
skilfully. We need to act in the face of our fears and our actions
will have the beneficial effect of changing us into more mature,
confident, adult people with a capacity to live life more fully. Of
course friendship also has the effect of combatting our low
self-esteem. When somebody cares for us persistently it can breach
the barriers of self-hatred and allow the light of metta to shine for
us.
In
order to create Sangha, to build connections with other Buddhists on
the basis of our common ideals, we need to take action – we
especially need to develop positive emotion and take responsibility
for ourselves. We need to spend time together with our friends and we
need to act on our generous impulses. If we act like this then the
law of Karma guarantees that there will be a positive, beneficial
outcome for ourselves and others.
Perhaps
there is still one fundamental question I haven't dealt with in
connection with creating Sangha and that is, why bother? Why bother
creating a Sangha, why bother making connections with people, why
bother building friendships?
Well
it may be that there are all sorts of reasons which are pretty
obvious to you, but I'll just mention one. One central reason why we
should bother to create Sangha by building friendships, is because
the interconnectedness of human beings is an aspect of Reality. We
are not in reality separate independent units of consciousness with
no connection to each other. In Reality we are interdependent and
interconnected. We are inextricably bound up with each other and
indeed with all sentient life. To create Sangha, to build friendships
is to be in tune with Reality. It is to be in line with how things
really are, how the world, the universe really is. And to be in tune
with Reality is the way to overcome suffering. To be out of tune with
Reality is to be in the realm of suffering. A good reason then to
bother about taking responsibility for ourselves and creating the
friendships which are the building bricks of Sangha is that it leads
to a decrease in suffering and an increase in positivity and joy for
both ourselves and others.
In
the Gandhavyuha Sutra the boy Srisambhava and the girl Srimala praise
spiritual friendship at length emphasising that we should put
consistent effort in developing friendship. spiritual friendship
helps the Bodhisattva in various ways – the Sutra puts it like
this:
“Oh
son of a noble family, kept back by friends in the good life the
Bodhisattvas do not fall into the pits of woeful existences;
surrounded by friends in the good life the Bodhisattvas do not turn
away from the Great Career (Mahayana); exhorted by friends in the
good life the Bodhisattvas do not forsake the teachings of the
Bodhisattvas; guarded by friends in the good life the Bodhisattvas do
not come under the power of bad friends; protected by friends in the
good life the Bodhisattvas do not lose the essential qualities of
Bodhisattvas; directed by friends in the good life the Bodhisattvas
go beyond the world of ordinary men; taught by friends in the good
life the Bodhisatvas do not lower themselves to the level of Sravakas
and Pratyeka-buddhas; shielded by friends in the good life the
Bodhisattvas have risen above the world; tended by friends in the
good life the Bodhisattvas are not defiled by worldly things; guarded
by friends in the good life the Bodhisattvas are irreproachable as to
their behaviour in all walks of life; uplifted by friends in the good
life the Bodhisattvas do not leave (unfinished) whatever (task) they
have begun; taught and guarded by friends in the good life the
Bodhisattvas cannot be attacked by the defilements of selfish
actions; having gained their strength from friends in the good life
the Bodhisattvas are invincible by all the armies of Mara; relying on
friends in the good life the Bodhisattvas increase in the
characteristics of Enlightenment.” (quoted
in Sangharakshita, The Eternal Legacy, p 227)
That
is a good place to end.
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