Fifteen Points for Harmony in the Sangha

This talk was given in 2002

Ever since Bhante Sangharakshita gave his first talk of fifteen points for Order members in 1988, it has become a little tradition to have fifteen point talks. I'm following that tradition here. These are my fifteen points for harmony in the Sangha. They are probably not exhaustive.

Before we go into the fifteen points let us try to be clear what is meant by harmony. Harmony does not mean everyone agreeing with everyone else. Harmony does not mean a total absence of conflict. Harmony is a movement, a process. It's a movement towards agreement, towards accord, towards congruence, towards a coincidence of wills. A movement towards unity.

When there is disagreement, dialogue is the harmonising factor.

When there is angry conflict, taking responsibility for one's own mental states is the harmonising factor.

Harmony isn't something fixed, a final state in which we all exist, like some dream of paradise. Harmony is the movement towards unity and that movement requires constant effort, constant direction, a constant exercise of will. When all of us are moving towards a unity of consciousness, through an effort of will, then there is a coincidence of wills, there is harmony. So for harmony to exist, there needs to be a common goal or common ideal. The co-operative movement of many individuals towards that ideal or goal is harmony.

Underlying all of my fifteen points is Right View and Faith. The points I am making are pointless unless one has Right View (Samyak Dristi) and Faith (Shraddha). By Right View here I mean that one accepts that there are higher states of consciousness, that insight into the true nature of things is possible, that the Buddha had that Insight and that the Dharma is the way to attain that Insight. Shraddha is the aspiration, the urge to attain higher states of consciousness, to become more compassionate and wise, to gain knowledge and vision of things as they are. Right View and Shraddha are so fundamentally essential to the spiritual life and to harmony in the Sangha that I have not enumerated them as separate points.

Harmony as a practice is only necessary among egoistic individuals. When one reaches the state of being what Bhante Sangharakshita calls a non-egoistic stream of energy, then one doesn't need to practice harmony, one just is harmonious.

1. Love yourself and develop confidence.

If you do not love yourself, you will never believe that anyone else cares for you and if you don't believe that others care for you then you will assume the worst about their words and actions. This could lead you to accuse them of all sorts of things against you and then you have disharmony.

If you have an attitude of loving and caring towards yourself, you will easily accept that others are also well disposed towards you and that will lead to harmony.

How do you love yourself? It is a matter of appreciation and a matter of being to some extent objective. There are very, very few people who have absolutely no good qualities and even if there are some, they were probably lovable to their mothers.

If necessary make a list of your good qualities and your efforts and remind yourself often of them. If others rejoice in your merits, pay careful attention to what they say, write it down, read it over, reflect on it, take it on board. Affirm yourself. Tell yourself that you are basically okay. Many people seem to believe that at the core they are rotten. Tell yourself – I am basically okay. I surely have faults and weaknesses, but I am basically okay. Don't let yourself get away with being miserable and self-pitying. That is far too cosy and comfortable a habit and it puts the onus on the rest of the world to make everything alright – which will never happen. Never.

Don't believe in your own fragility. It's only a distorted view. Believe in your strength and wisdom. If you have decided to live a spiritual life, you are wise. If you have practised for a while, you are strong. Believe in experience, and the promise of the Dharma, don't believe in emotional habits. Experience shows you can change, the Dharma says everyone can change and shows you how. Have confidence in that.

2. Be ethical.

This is where confidence really grows from and this is the primary dharma practice for most of us. To be ethical is to act in accordance with the Reality of the law of conditionality. If you act in accordance with reality, you are guaranteed to prosper spiritually. If you feel you are not progressing enough spiritually, you are probably not observing the precepts sufficiently.

I think all mitras who have requested ordination should familiarise themselves with the ten precepts and endeavour to practice them thoroughly. This as I said is the road to sure success and it also promotes harmony in the Sangha. Observing the precepts involves taking responsibility for our own mental states, it involves a willingness to apologise, it involves a willingness to forgive and it involves a willingness to confess.

For your own sake and for the sake of the Sangha I would urge you to take ethical practice very seriously. I would urge you to form a habit of thinking in terms of the precepts and of applying the precepts to your daily life.

This is what we could call ethical psychology. Pathological psychology is concerned with problems. Epistemological psychology is concerned with description. Ethical psychology is concerned with identifying skilful and unskilful. The psychologies of pathology and epistemology have their uses , but it is ethical psychology which is necessary to spiritual progress. Bhante Sangharakshita's book 'Know your mind' is a handbook of ethical psychology. Also 'Mind in Harmony' by Subhuti.

And just to be absolutely clear – being ethical involves scrutinising your own actions, speech and thoughts – it is not a matter of passing judgement on the actions, speech or thoughts of others.

3. Meditate every day.

The Sangha is bonded together by spiritual aspiration and the effort to make that aspiration ever more of a reality. The most direct way we have of knowing our minds in all their depth and subtlety is meditation. Meditation is the primary tool of Buddhism. It is the method by which we develop awareness of ourselves and others. It is also the method by which we we gain numerous insights into the human condition.

Through meditation our consciousness expands and that expanding consciousness coming into contact with the the similarly expanding consciousness of others creates Sangha. The overlapping of our expanding consciousnesses gives rise to harmony, as we move out from our tight egocentricity towards a more fluid sense of identity.

As we come to know ourselves more thoroughly and to love ourselves – we also come to know others and love them. We come to realise the common human sensitivity that unites us. This leads to harmony.

Meditation is a cumulative process. It is a mistake to think of each sitting practice in isolation – even to think of it as a meditation. Each time we sit it is part of our meditation practice – our life long transformation of ourselves. If we sit frequently then we have a very continuous meditation practice which is likely to be more effective. If we sit infrequently then there will be big gaps on our meditation practice and perhaps the gaps will become more significant than the sits.

To maintain the continuity and effectiveness of meditation we need to sit regularly – at least once a day. If we maintain a continuous meditation practice by sitting every day then we will experience the cumulative effects. And as we experience the transforming effects of our efforts we will grow out from our narrow consciousness into greater harmony with others in the Sangha.

4. Develop friendship.

This may seem too obvious to mention. Unfortunately I still hear people talking about friendship as if it is something that should happen to them. They've joined the Triratna Buddhist Community, friendship is spoken of as important within Triratna, so why is it not happening to them? Friendship doesn't happen to anyone, it has to be worked at and developed over time and constantly kept in good repair – there is no room for complacency; even after ten or fifteen years, an effort has to be made.

This is one mistake that people can make in relation to friendship – that it should happen to them. Another mistake is to think of shared interests as friendship. Shared interests can be the beginnings of friendship and it can be an element of friendship, but communication has to go deeper from time to time. If your communication is restricted to, say, computers or football or clothing or films then you need to take things further and get a bit more personal.

Another mistake is to see friendship in romantic terms, where you are always concerned with the nuances of each others emotions and with the relationship itself as a thing in itself. Again you need to move beyond the realms of personal psychology and emotional fascination and bring in elements that pertain to the common spiritual aspiration, elements such as ethics, meditation, confession, renunciation, inspiration and so on.

So when we take the initiative to befriend people and take an interest in them and share our spiritual struggles and successes with them, then we are very directly contributing to the harmony of the Sangha. Indeed we are creating Sangha.

But friendship is a practice – it is something you do - not something that happens to you.

5. Rejoice in merits.

Rejoicing in merits is the essence of harmonising speech. Harmonising speech is a means of unification of the Sangha. This is one of the most direct and effective means of creating harmony on the Sangha. If we could all remember to rejoice in the merits of others at every opportunity we would create an incredibly positive atmosphere. We can rejoice in what people do, in what they say, in their presence, in their potential. We can rejoice by telling them and we can rejoice by telling others. We can pass on rejoicings. If you hear one person rejoicing in another in their absence then pass it on. To rejoice in people when they are not present is a very potent practice. And to tell people that you have overheard others rejoicing in them is also a powerful practice and these sorts of practices are very effective in enhancing the harmony of the Sangha.

6. Confess faults.

A Buddhist is not someone who is perfect, that is a Buddha. We all have faults and weaknesses, which lead us into being unskilful from time to time. If we think we should be perfect we will be reluctant to admit that we have faults or that we have been unskilful. If we cannot admit to having faults then it becomes very difficult for us to change. We end up in a contradiction, we want to change but there is nothing that needs to be changed.

The first step to transforming ourselves is acknowledging our unskilfulness, to ourselves initially and then to others. Confession of faults is a lifelong practice. It liberates us from the tyranny of needing to be perfect, it liberates us from the burden of a heavy conscience, it liberates us from isolation, it liberates us from the need to constantly rationalise our behaviour.

And confession enables communication to flow more freely and gives others the opportunity to forgive. In this way it leads to great harmony in the Sangha.

During our Triratna ordination courses, there is a strong emphasis on confession and I would suggest that it is a practice that could usefully be taken up between friends. So rather than always talking about your emotional ups and downs and your difficulties with life, you could start to develop the habit of confession, the habit of ethical psychology. As I said it is a liberating practice and it leads to harmony.

7. Be generous and express gratitude.

How many times have you heard this? Again I'm making an obvious point. However, such is the nature of our egoistic psyches that it takes a long long time for the message to get through.

So why be generous? Because suffering is caused by self-centredness and our insistence on dwelling within the limitations of self-centredness. Generosity moves us out beyond these limitations and takes us into relationship with others in a very positive way. Generosity accords with the nature of Reality – it is an acceptance of our essential interconnectedness and interdependence and because it aligns us with the nature of Reality it is a source of positive emotion for us.

Generosity is the antidote to loneliness and isolation. It is the antidote to self-pity and persecution mentality. To be genuinely generous we have to think of others and we have to think of others without regard to what we can get from them. If we give with the expectation of receiving something in return we are not being generous – we are entering into a bargain. Do not be generous for the sake of approval or so that you'll be popular or so people will be generous to you. Don't be generous because it's spiritual or because Ratnaghosha says it's good to be generous. Just be generous. Just let go of what you consider to be yours and turn around and walk away and forget about it. If you can give without too much fuss, just because there is an opportunity to give, - or even when there isn't,- then you will be happier for it, because you will be dwelling in a more spacious realm – in expansive mental states. If you are generous it encourages generosity in others and the Sangha is a collective of generosity. The spirit of generosity is at the heart of the Sangha. Generosity is how love manifests in the world.

The other side of the coin of generosity is gratitude – when we benefit from others in any way we should express gratitude. Gratitude is a natural outflowing of positive emotion towards those who benefit us in any way. If we are too proud to be grateful, we are probably very insecure and need to really work at developing some more positive self-esteem. Bhante Sangharakshita has given a talk on the theme gratitude so I won't go into it here, but I would recommend listening to that talk . ( Looking at the Bodhi Tree at www.freebuddhistaudio.com/audio/details?num=192 or an edited version in Sangharakshita, Complete Works , Vol. 3, p 595.)

8. Give the Benefit of the Doubt.

We often assume things. We assume that other people think certain things or think in a certain way. We make assumptions about people's motivations. We make assumptions about how people will behave in the future. We make assumptions about what they will say to us. And so on.

This is natural enough – our minds are trying to make sense of a multiplicity of impressions and it's to be expected that the unknown elements will be filled in with assumptions.

The problem arises when we start to believe that our assumptions are facts – that what we assume is true. To believe that what we assume is the objective truth is a mistake, even a big mistake, and it can cause a lot of difficulty for us. And when we assume the worst about others, it can completely block the possibility of communication.

So we need to be aware that our presumptions or perhaps more correctly assumptions are subjective (the first is based on probability the second is based on nothing). They are the product of our particular psyche, the product of our conditioning or temperament. And more often than not our assumptions about other people are a product of our attitude to ourselves. If we don't like ourselves we may assume that others don't like us either and proceed to interpret their words and actions in that light. Or if we think very highly of ourselves we may assume that others think very highly of us too. We may be right in either case – but probably only accidentally right.

To arrive at a more objective truth we have to test our assumptions in dialogue and be prepared to be wrong. It is very difficult for us to be certain even about our own motivations – how much more difficult to have any certainty about someone else's motivations.

We need to give others the benefit of the doubt, so that the harmony of the Sangha is not disrupted by our negative assumptions.

9. Encourage others

We all need encouragement. That means that we should all give encouragement. And it is possible for all of us to be encouraging. We can give praise where praise is due. We can acknowledge the effort of others. We can remind others of their good qualities and good actions.

Apart from verbally encouraging others we can encourage others by taking our own practice seriously, by meditating, studying, being ethical. If we take our own spiritual aspiration seriously, that is an encouragement to others to take their spiritual aspiration seriously. We encourage by sharing with others the benefits we have received from practice. This means we need to reflect on and be aware of how we have benefited. If we know that we have benefited from spiritual practice and how we have benefited – that is encouraging to ourselves and to others. Encouragement is essential, we all need encouragement .

10. Don't be afraid of conflict.

One of the biggest causes of conflict in the Sangha is the fear of conflict. Sometimes people go to great lengths to avoid conflict and in the process build up resentment and bitterness and feelings of impotence, that eventually explode into a greater conflict.

Murder is extremely rare in the Sangha, to get beaten up is extremely rare. Usually the worst that happens is someone gets angry with us. Why are we so terrified of someone being angry with us? We are terrified of anger because it upsets us, we find it painful. Why do we find it painful? Because it feels as if love has gone out of the world – the flame of love has been extinguished and we are precipitated into a cold and dark place or we experience the fire of our own anger and hatred which burns us. So anger is the antithesis of love and we want to dwell in a world of love. But if we compromise too much, if we don't speak up when we ought to, if we put up with too much we will feel that we are out of communication; to be out of communication is to be isolated and also out of the realm of love and if we let that lack of communication continue we will feel more and more isolated and unloved.

So it is better to go through the short-lived fire of conflict, which can lead to resolution, understanding and the the warmth of mutual understanding rather than remain in the icy region of lack of communication and isolation. It is better to risk conflict than remain silent. By risking conflict, we progress, because we are facing our fear and because we are coming into communication. Facing our fear is one of the main ways to overcome egotism and grow into a confident and expansive individual. Coming into communication, even at the risk of conflict, contributes to the creation of Sangha and harmony of the Sangha and it helps us to overcome fear.

11. Take responsibility for negative mental states.

Victor Frankl, the famous Jewish psychologist who spent time in a Nazi concentration camp, once said that one always has a moral choice.Those who held to moral freedom survived the best. He said “Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

(www.azquotes.com/author/5121-Viktor_E_Frankl)

Buddhism would agree. We have the freedom to be ethical, to act or speak or think skilfully or unskilfully. We have moral freedom and that is why our mental states are our own productions. Our mental states are how we respond to the world. And by bringing awareness to our mental states, by acknowledging them as our own, we give ourselves the opportunity to grow and change. If we continually or habitually have the attitude that our mental states are something that happen to us, something beyond our ability to affect, then we become impotent spiritually speaking. Unless we can step into the stream of our own mental life and intervene in the flow of emotions and thoughts we cannot grow spiritually. To step into the stream if our emotions and thoughts means to become aware of them, to acknowledge them as ours, to make judgements about them and to make choices – moral choices.

We need to be able to judge what is skilful and what is unskilful and we need to feel able and free to make the choice to move towards the skilful. The spiritual life could be seen as a constant returning to the skilful, a constant re-dedication to the skilful. We will fail, of course we will fail, and then we need to acknowledge our failure, take responsibility for our failure, confess our failure and move on to a renewal of our intention to be skilful. This is spiritual practice. Taking responsibility for negative mental states, for unskilfulness, is not about undermining oneself. It is about taking the initiative to change. It is about exercising our basic freedom to be moral. If we don't do this we can go round and round in circles and feel very persecuted and victimised by the world. And of course if we fail to take responsibility for our negative mental states we may try to push that responsibility on to others and this will cause disharmony and distress.

We all have an effect on others and on the atmosphere of the situations we find ourselves in. If we refuse to take moral responsibility and make ethical choices out of self-pity or fear, we tend to have a deadening or blocking effect. This is not to our own benefit or to anyone else's benefit. So even in the cause of simple self interest, it is better for us to take responsibility for our own mental states. But it is also in the interests of others, of the Sangha and the harmony of the Sangha.

12. Don't let disharmony fester into bitterness.

There are some people who allow disharmony or conflict to fester and rot, until bitterness becomes part of their character. They become bitter people. This is a great tragedy. It is as if they are slowly poisoning themselves, slowly destroying their spiritual faculties and it is a great waste. A waste of potential, a waste of energy, a waste of life.

Forgiveness is difficult, even extremely difficult at times. Our sense of justice can be so outraged and our pride can be so impenetrable that we cannot see the possibility of forgiveness at all. We cannot see the sense of it. It can seem that to forgive is to capitulate, to admit to the world that we are less than we are. It can seem that to forgive is to condone injustice. Forgiveness can be extremely difficult , but forgiveness is completely essential. Not to forgive is to condemn ourselves to a mental state of low level hatred,of festering bitterness, which can last months and years and even a whole lifetime.

So it's best to forgive as quickly as possible. To forgive is to expand our consciousness beyond our own hurt and to encompass the suffering of those who have offended us. It is to accept the humanity of those who dislike us, even hate us, and understand that we share that humanity – we share the propensity to be offensive, to be hateful, to be clumsy in communication, to make mistakes. Not to forgive is to erect a defence around our sense of hurt and remain in isolation behind that barrier emotionally withering and dying for the want of the human warmth which we cannot receive.

If we don't forgive, we remain out of communication, out of harmony, and disharmony between any members of the Sangha is disruptive to the life of the Sangha and potentially divisive on a larger scale. So let's not allow our conflicts with each other to fester into the poison of bitterness, which can be so fatal to the life of the Sangha.

13. Remember you have an effect.

Everybody has an effect all the time. We can't help having an effect on each other. Earlier I spoke about the deadening and blocking effect we can have on others and on situations when we are in negative mental states such as self-pity or despondency. But it is also worth remembering that we have an effect when we are in positive mental states. Positive mental states are expansive by nature and can have an uplifting, inspiring and invigorating effect on others.

So the main point here is that we are always affecting each other and that we have the choice to tend towards having an uplifting effect or a deadening effect. If we are lazy and slump into having a deadening effect, people probably won't want to be around us very much and we will feel lonely and isolated. It's not just self pity and despondency that have this deadening and blocking effect. Anger and irritability also block communication if it's a self-centred self pitying sort of anger and again it will have the effect of isolating us from human warmth that we all need.

In the Sangha it is important that we realise that we have an effect on each other. This is the basic ethical attitude. You realise that you have an effect and you take responsibility for that. Whether it is positive or negative.

If we realise that we have an effect on others and act accordingly then we will be contributing to the harmony of the Sangha and to our own well-being.

14. Share what you've learned with those who are newer

We have learned everything from somebody else and ultimately the Dharma is a communication from the Buddha. We are part of a lineage of knowledge and experience and it is our duty to share what knowledge and experience we have with each other.

Sometimes when we become a bit more experienced we can start to feel a bit superior to newer people and even a bit unsympathetic. This means that our knowledge and experience has not yet become imbued with the spirit of the Dharma. The spirit of the Dharma is the spirit of sharing, the altruistic spirit, the generous spirit. It's important that we develop the spirit of sharing, that we cultivate a generous attitude. And that attitude of sharing and generosity should inform our communication with others and especially with those who are less experienced, who have less understanding of the principles of the Dharma. This kind of sharing or generosity is a form of Kalyana Mitrata and it is the highest form of generosity. The gift of the Dharma is the greatest gift you can give. Anyone who is endeavouring to Go for Refuge more effectively should be seeking out opportunities to share the Dharma. You can support courses and classes. You can just attend classes, you can support weekend retreats and so on. This is also why it is good to study. If you study you will gain clarity and be able to communicate the Dharma more effectively to more people. Not everyone relates to the Dharma in the same way and we need to be able to communicate in different ways and engage with different types and temperaments. If we study we can be more effective in helping those less experienced and it also means that we can engage with our peers more easily - with an understanding of difference. This enhances the harmony of the Sangha by bringing new people into contact and clarifying communication between existing members.

15. Harmony is communication not collusion.

Often friendships develop on the basis of common interests or temperamental compatibility and this is fine. However sometimes there comes a point in our friendships where we need to take the communication further. We may even need to risk getting into conflict, even risk the friendship. The temptation is to keep things light and superficial and jolly rather than address issues of ethical or spiritual significance. However if a friendship is to be part of the conditions conducing to spiritual progress then risks in communication will have to to be taken again and again.

There are four main kinds of risk that will need to be taken.

1. the risk of openness and self revelation
2. the risk of criticism
3. the risk of confession
4. the risk of love

The risk of openness or self revelation differs from the risk of confession in that it may have no ethical significance. It is just a matter of being open with your friend, letting them into secret areas of your life. The openness is about us being less secretive, overcoming your embarrassment and sharing your life more. Often we can be secretive about sex and perhaps it's appropriate to keep some things to ourselves, (not necessarily going into all the details), but there may be something that weighs on our mind and it would be better if we shared it with someone. Money is another area where we can be very reticent – about our attitudes and how much we actually have – so this another area worth exploring with close friends.

The risk of criticism is about risking getting into conflict, because we give voice to something we don't like about our friend or their behaviour. There is also the risk of not being liked or al least the fear that that might happen. We might feel that or friend had been unskilful or insensitive or harsh or that their habit of being always late or of teasing people or whatever was not very good for them or others and we might feel reluctant to go into it, but for the sake of taking the friendship further we take the risk.

The risk of confession is about revealing our own unskilfulness.We are risking our pride and even risking being criticised. And we are risking having to do something about our breach of ethics. So there can be quite a struggle of conscience before we have the courage to confess. But if we do we will feel better and our friendships will deepen.

The risk of love is about having the courage to express our affection and tenderness towards our friend, it's about telling them that we care, that we are fond of them and so on. Usually what is at risk is our conditioning of reserve and the discomfort of going beyond it.

Collusion is just going along with our friend and never taking the communication deeper because we're afraid that we might be rejected. Collusion is not friendship and it is not conducive to harmony in the Sangha. Communication takes things further, it takes risks and it leads to a deeper and stronger friendship. Friendship is what Sangha is all about. The Sangha is a network of friendships, a network of communication.

Conclusion

As I said at the beginning Right View and Shraddha are fundamental and need to be in place for any of these points to make sense and be meaningful. To ensure that we are developing Right View it is essential that we study. Study is also a source of inspiration. When we study the Dharma, our minds encounter a vast perspective and we can be drawn up and out of our ego-centred concerns, into the expansiveness of the Buddha's vision.

I hope these fifteen points are helpful and that you will try to practice at least some of them.