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Dear friends,
This week Annie will facilitate.
Our evening format will include silent sitting meditation, walking meditation, a short guided meditation, reading together and dharma sharing.
In December, I spent two weeks in the hospital in a lot of pain. One of the first things I reminded myself was that pain and difficulty is the nature of human life, and that I have a spiritual practice strong enough to support me and I had sangha siblings who are there to support me.
While I was still in the hospital, Valerie Brown and Mitchell Ratner, two of my dharma siblings, together with Opening Heart Mindfulness Community, offered a Monday evening healing ceremony which was very nourishing for me. Having the sangha hold me within the container of the practice supported me quite a bit and reminded me that I had all the conditions for happiness even during a very difficult period.
Because I am now on chemotherapy, I am much more tired than in the past and have less energy for engaging in sangha-building. What nourishes me most right now is sitting and walking with sangha siblings who are practicing deeply to be lovingly present and to transform their own challenges. Sitting and walking in silence with practitioners (including Roger and Woody, my four-legged sangha siblings) reminds me of my bodhisattva aspirations and refills my empty gas tank.
On Monday, we will read together Thay's words (from Cultivating the Mind of Love) on the Fertile Soil of the Sangha and consider both how our sangha might support our practice and how our own practice can bolster the sangha container that allows us to support each other in love.
Some questions we might consider are:
Do you feel that our sangha understands and supports you enough? How does it nourish you?
Do you feel you can provide nourishment to the sangha through your practice of mindful sitting, walking, speaking and acting?
How can we nourish sibling-hood in our sangha at this moment in time?
I have bolded some of the sentences that most resonate with me at this time.
The Fertile Soil of Sangha
(From Cultivating the Mind of Love, © 2008 by Thich Nhat Hanh.)
Two thousand five hundred years ago, Shakyamuni Buddha proclaimed that the next Buddha will be named Maitreya, the “Buddha of Love.” I think Maitreya Buddha may be a community and not just an individual. A good community is needed to help us resist the unwholesome ways of our time. Mindful living protects us and helps us go in the direction of peace. With the support of friends in the practice, peace has a chance.
If you have a supportive sangha, it’s easy to nourish your bodhicitta, the seeds of enlightenment. If you don’t have anyone who understands you, who encourages you in the practice of the living dharma, your desire to practice may wither. Your sangha—family, friends, and copractitioners—is the soil, and you are the seed. No matter how vigorous the seed is, if the soil does not provide nourishment, your seed will die. A good sangha is crucial for the practice. Please find a good sangha or help create one.
Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are three precious jewels in Buddhism, and the most important of these is Sangha. The Sangha contains the Buddha and the Dharma. A good teacher is important, but sisters and brothers [siblings] in the practice are the main ingredient for success. You cannot achieve enlightenment by locking yourself in your room. Transformation is possible only when you are in touch.
When you touch the ground, you can feel the stability of the earth and feel confident. When you observe the steadiness of the sunshine, the air, and the trees, you know that you can count on the sun to rise each day and the air and the trees to be there. When you build a house, you build it on solid ground. You need to choose friends in the practice who are stable, on whom you can rely.
Taking refuge in the sangha means putting your trust in a community of solid members who practice mindfulness together. You do not have to practice intensively—just being in a sangha where people are happy, living deeply the moments of their days, is enough. Each person’s way of sitting, walking, eating, working, and smiling is a source of inspiration; and transformation takes place without effort. If someone who is troubled is placed in a good sangha, just being there is enough to bring about a transformation.
I hope communities of practice in the West will organize themselves as families. In Asian sanghas, we address each other as Dharma Brother, Dharma Sister, [Dharma Sibling] Dharma Aunt, or Dharma Uncle, and we call our teacher Dharma Father or Dharma Mother. A practice community needs that kind of familial brotherhood to nourish practice.
If you have a sangha that is joyful, animated by the desire to practice and help, you will mature as a bodhisattva. I always tell the monks, nuns, and lay practitioners at Plum Village that if they want to succeed in the practice, they have to find ways to live in harmony with one another, even with those who are difficult. If they can’t succeed in the sangha, how can they succeed outside of it? Becoming a monk or a nun is not just between student and teacher. It involves everyone. Getting a “yes” from everyone in the sangha is a true dharma seal.