(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. - Yeah, it's very good to be back in Cardiff. The Cardiff Buddhist Center haven't been here for quite a few years actually. I don't think although I do have connections with a number of you that I see quite regularly. Kalyani being one of them in Monmouth, we usually meet in Monmouth for lunch. I was remembering the first time probably I came to Cardiff which might have been, I got to know Promoditor and Surina in the chairs meeting when they were both just set up the Cardiff Buddhist Center. I think I went and picked up Viveka who was doing a sultry in TP Valley and then we drove back down here and we hung out with Promoditor and Surina. I forget why we were doing that. We had some scheme. Me and Viveka slept on sofas in that lounge. And it seemed to be that it didn't matter what time of day it was, whenever I went upstairs, Surina was only ever wearing a towel. Is that true? He only seemed to wearing a towel around his waist the whole time. In fact, I remember once being in the shrine room and he was obviously running a bath. I was like, "Why are you doing that now?" When everybody can hear. He did, did he always do it? It all comes back to me when I come into this room. I think, "Oh, yeah, I remember this, yeah." And then I used to come and do days, mostly for women, like going for a few days or Mitra days here as well, but I haven't done that for a long time. So it's very nice to be here, really nice. And this talk, my goodness, this has been like, this has been hard labor, I tell you. I thought, I'll just be on a retreat to Addy Starner for a week. And then I'll be in the zone. I'll write the talk. It just really wasn't like that. I think, if you're trying to talk about something like the Sangha, your mind goes everywhere. It's like, there's so many things to say. And, anyways, last night when I was at Calián, this place, you know, I was sitting on the sofa and in front of the fire with the cat and my sheets. And she was sitting over here with her laptop. So she was typing emails and I was writing the talk. I had a few ideas, but it's a bit of a new talk, which is a shame, but there we go. But we've got a bit of an idea for where we're headed. I have at least one of us has. So I'm going to start with this little quote from Bante's life from his memoirs, which Naga Bola uses in his book, "Is It The Boy, The Man, The Monk?" 'Cause that's what it's called, yeah. And, anyway, I'll just start with that. And it's on your website, so you might be familiar with it. Here we go. He's just, is in India. He's probably about maybe an 18 or 19 years old and he's been invited in his army uniform to attend a relative's ball or something and he goes to it. So he says, "Out of politeness and a sense of obligation, "he accepted an invitation to join his relatives "at the annual government house ball. "Watching the proceedings from the sidelines, "he suddenly entered an altered state of consciousness. "The dancers became ghosts. "The ballroom vanished. "The music faded into the distance "and I was left alone in a great void "with a strong feeling of disgust and revulsion. "Unreal though it appeared. "It was not the phenomenal world itself "that disgusted me so much as a spectacle of an existence "so entirely devoid of meaning." - Yeah. And I wanted to start like this because I think we've all had those moments of vision. I mean, it doesn't sound like a division, does it? It's like this disgust and revulsion. You don't think, that's not a vision I really want myself. I thought it was gonna be a happy, glowy sort of vision. But sometimes there's something about the world that we know needs to change or we need to address and when it's a very strong vision, we will kind of put our shoulder against it and try and make a difference, yeah. And that's what he started to do. It was one aspect of the vision that kick started. Really his realization that Sango was needed. If you could say that this Sango and Cardiff or the Sango in general, Trie Ratner in general, is what he set in motion against that feeling of life devoid of meaning. Like, what does it take to create a context which allows people to experience meaning? When I was involved in that project last, well, I don't know when it was, I think it was last year or the year before, the Nature of Mind project, I have no idea when it was. And one of the interviews was with that guy, Paul Gilbert, yeah. And he talks about how he set in motion, that therapeutic style that he had, compassion based therapy. And he talks about seeing a documentary, a BBC for, BBC documentary on, I think it was on concentration counts from the war. And he just suddenly, he's so distraught and upset by the images that he saw. He thought this has to stop. This absolutely has to stop. And he thought, how can we reduce that kind of polarization in the world? And that's what motivated him to set in motion what he then developed himself, yeah. So we've got these outstanding people that individuals that take up a project because they've seen something that needs to be addressed, yeah. Yeah, so Vanthi's vision turned him towards the Buddha Dharma. And this was in India. And he'd already got a connection with the Buddha Dharma while he was in London when he was younger. And he set about developing eventually the Sangha and our Sangha, our community. People committed to a deeper and deeper sense of meaning in their lives through the ideals of Buddhism, through the ideals of awakening. And kind of putting your shoulder against the possibility of transformation, yeah. I think each one of us, I'm sure, can look at moments where we see something or we experience something and we think, I need to try and address this. And what do we set in motion? Not everybody has the kind of strength of personality to set in motion a Buddhist movement or, you know, Ambedkar to set in motion a massive Indian movement that he did in India. There's a very beautiful conclusion when I did an interview with Sangharachita of his poem about India. He then talks about Ambedkar at the end of it. And he says, it just shows the power of an individual and what an individual can do in the world. Not everybody is as talented as he was, but everybody can make a difference. It's very, very encouraging. Yeah, so for me, probably the kind of moments of vision was quite a mixture of things. One of it was just being at art school in London and experiencing just a lot of creativity in my life, meeting interesting people. They all looked a bit different. We all had different kind of hair. We all wore different, certain kind of clothes, all very particular. I remember going to art school in silvers stilettos that were like 1950s, silvers stilettos, and kind of very narrow trousers and things like that. That's what you did. It was very interesting because I was in a relationship with somebody who then started going to the Buddhist center in Glasgow and eventually I moved to Glasgow and started attending that Buddhist center. At the time I was in London, and I met these people who look like me now, which is more like conventional, domesticated, ordinary, nothing like the art school people I'd left. Although they were probably, the eldest was possibly 42 at that moment. But I could tell that they were more different than the art school people that I just moved away from. And their difference, now I would call individuality and authenticity, yeah? There was a quality in that that was different from just makeup, clothes, silvers stilettos and haircuts. It was very, very different. And that was thrilling for me, absolutely thrilling. And I also remember a very difficult sort of tree retreat that I went on where it was boring and complicated, all my thoughts about myself were playing out, well, they always played out, but they were playing out really strongly in the solitary retreat. I think I was there for maybe two or three weeks. And I thought, why am I here? Why am I really here? And I thought, well, what else is there? Well, that seemed a bit glib and sort of jargon. Didn't mean anything, so I thought, come on. I thought, well, the people are quite interesting. And if you meditate, you get to know interesting people. I thought, come on, it's very, it's very out, isn't it? It's like not really a good enough reason. It's sort of social, that's all right. But really, is that enough? And then, I used to remember the feeling of it. I just said this phrase. I said, this is the only thing that gives my life meaning. And I knew that was like rock bottom. It was like an answer that nobody taught me to say, this was my bedrock reference. And I thought, this is what gets me up in the morning. I don't know how other people get up in the morning without this quality of learning, transformation, and ability to engage in a more authentic way. Not, I mean, people are starving from that kind of communication actually out there in that wilderness out there. When you don't have mutual people to share your ideals with or to share that kind of intimacy with, people are starving from that, yeah. Yeah, so I've learned gradually that the Sangha is a place where a level of communication can be drawn out of me. And that became more and more transformative. I was probably somebody like Calliana Calliana was talking about me being quite sort of polished or speaking a certain way. But actually everything was highly edited. You know, you just, before you said anything, you always rehearsed it in your mind and then you said it. And I began to say things on edited. I still remember the first, I can't remember what I said, but I remember the moment where I thought, I didn't know I thought that before I spoke it. And it was like, some it was being freed up in me in my communication with other people in the Sangha, where I was beginning to show myself. And although I was always extroverted and friendly, that doesn't mean you show yourself. And I began to show who I was and people began to see me and relate to me in a way that was quite challenging at times. And I was very, at times, very, very vulnerable. Very vulnerable. I'm gonna just read your quote, beautiful quote from Sibouti's book on friendship. Let me see if I can find it. At its highest, self-disclosure becomes something more than revealing secrets or giving vent to moods. We need someone who can see and draw out who we are, or rather who we are becoming. Each of us has an inner world full of thoughts and feelings that are amorphous or embryonic. We can only give them their proper shape through communication. Whenever we succeed in communicating them, we are changed, becoming someone new. Our best friends are the ones who care about us and understand us deeply and our creative listeners, partners in our act of self-creation. They are not spectators at unveiling a statue, but midwives helping us to bring something, ourselves, in fact, into the world. This is why we may sometimes feel strangely lonely with those who love us. If their love affirms us in a general way, but misses the deeper dimensions of our being. One's parents, for example, usually care deeply for one's health and worldly success, but may see little of recognition of one's spiritual needs. Similar problems can occur with friends from earlier phases of one's life. They can understand who we used to be, but cannot help us deliver the new self that is trying to be born. We need friends with whom we can achieve a measure of self-actualization. So lovely expressions, isn't it? The best kind of friend is therefore someone who is, to coin a phrase, helps you to unravel yourself to yourself. The most important kind of unraveling is to do with your understanding of life and what matters most in it. An exploration that is, in a sense, more philosophical than psychological. This is the deepest part of what one is missing when one feels lonely, a recognition of oneself as an individual with unique and unfolding mind. A friend who gives us such recognition is precious indeed. Sadly, many people never experience this kind of friendship. Yeah, so sadly, very few people meet people that can really relate to themselves like that. And you see how undernourished people become through that lack of drawing out, I suppose. And also a sense of, well, that kind of, a sense of lack of creativity in their lives where they can become somebody new through the tools of Buddhism, but then through the communication with the Sangha, where self-actualization can take place with you and another person. I mean, I remember very significant conversations where I would get pins and needles down my arms because it's like releasing the kind of tension that you don't even realise you have here. I've been very lucky in that respect to have very good friends. So traditionally, the Sangha is simply the community of śravakas. And this word means 'hearers'. So those that hear the Buddha Dharma, or those that are listening to the words of the Buddha, the teaching of the Buddha, to be a hearer is an interesting metaphor. Sometimes we hear a conversation, but we're not really listening. Or we can listen, but we don't really understand the significance. And that maybe doesn't come till much, much later. You could say that to become a real hearer is to develop quite a high level of awareness, so that you can hear things on many different levels. So in this respect, receptivity and wisdom go together, like the stronger quality of receptivity we have, the more we can hear what's actually going on. And then the greater wisdom that we will get from life. So just from hearing information, say about the Buddha, about the Dharma, gives us some information. But to really begin to understand it, we've got to take it further. We've got to allow its meaning to sort of percolate us and bring it into our lives. And a lot of the time, we cannot do this. We're not very receptive. We're not very open to what's really going on. We're not very open to life. There's things that happen on the street that could tell us really significant things about life, and we miss it over and over again. There's these images in Buddhism of a cup, and what we do with a cup. So if you're just an empty cup, you're ready to be filled. You're ready to be filled with the Dharma. It's like a vessel for the mind, an image of the mind. If the mind is made clear and ready to take the Dharma, then you receive it strongly. Same in the life. You know, when you're very opened up, like sometimes we're on a journey, we're very opened up, a bit more opened up in our experience, and then we see things and we know the significance of them. But sometimes the cup is already full. Yeah. It's already full of its own thoughts, its own pride, its own views about everything. You get these Zen stories where, you know, the Zen monk invites one of his monks to come in, and the monk comes in and sits down, and the monk says that the abbot or the teacher says, "Do you want a cup of tea?" And the guy says, "Yeah, that would be great." And he pours the cup of tea, and he pours, and he pours, and he pours until there's just tea everywhere. And the monk, the younger monk says, "Stop, the full cups fall," he said, "Exactly. "How do you expect me to teach you anything, "your cup so full already?" He get this sort of stuff. You also get the idea of the cup being upside down, turned upside down, closed to anything new or anything challenging. Or maybe we've got a cup that leaks, you hear the Dharma, it makes sense to us, but it leaks away through just distraction, through entertainment, through a certain kind of superficiality, it just leaks away, doesn't go anywhere. Or maybe it's full of poison, like it's filled with a kind of negativity that is difficult to penetrate, or just hears the Dharma through that filter of negativity. So it's our work really to create a mind that can receive the Dharma. So ready to hear the Dharma. And we'll just hear life, take in life, yeah? And the sangha, our sangha, will be characterized by this sort of seriousness of intention. We're trying to hear something important. There's this lovely line from a poem that I really love called "The Art of Disappearing." And she's writing about what it's like to be a poet, Naomi, she have nai, writing about what it's like to be a poet. And she says, "I don't do this. "I don't do that because I'm still trying to hear "what's really, really important." And I love that expression. We're trying to hear something important in a poetic sensibility. And we can move through the world with that kind of quality to us. Recently I called to train to London a few months ago, I called to train to London, and there was an incident that happened on the train where I got stuck in the doors. You know, the doors closed. I was in mid-conversation with somebody on the train, this woman, and later we both got off at London, and she said to me, "Are you working in London?" I said, "No, I'm just visiting a friend." She said, "And she said, "Do you live in London?" I said, "No, I live in Herrificia in a retreat center." I always say it's in a retreat center, 'cause it just spreads the word, doesn't it? There's something other than just normal life. There's a retreat center. And she said, "Toriloka." I said, "No, but funny enough, I did live at Toriloka for 20 years." And she said, "I now live in a place called Adistana." She said, "My mum goes to Adistana, my mum goes there in a few weeks." Which was interesting, I did eventually meet her mother. And she said, "I knew something was different about you." And all that happened was I got caught in the doors. But I didn't do what other people normally did. And sometimes it's that we don't do something, that people see there's something different about that person, yeah. In fact, I remember a friend saying to me once, "Do you think you might be ready for ordination?" And I said, "This was before I was ordained." She said, "And I said, "Why?" Is it something I've said? She said, "No, it's all the things you're not saying anymore." So sometimes our ability to sort of see and hear the significance of things means that an aspect of ourselves that makes a lot of noise generally goes quiet. And we look different, we are different in the world. Yeah, so go on solitary retreats, that's where you really hear yourself. Get to know yourself. You join the Sangha by getting to know yourself. I'm an extrovert, I did not join the Sangha just because I extrovert everything and make the tea. I joined the Sangha because I went all very, very significant solitary retreats. And I began to relate more and more strongly to who I was. And that became part of what I bought then to the Sangha. That's how you join the Sangha through awareness, not through making the tea, although that is very handy. There's this lovely word that describes a mind that is open to the Dharma. That's the Kalachita, which some people might know at T. Ratloka, there's a woman called Kalyachita. And that's the Sanskrit version. So this is a mind made ready to receive the Dharma. So the Kalachita is a mind that is prepared to receive the Dharma. And it's sometimes used as like a piece of cloth that's completely clean. And then it takes the stain of the Dharma. So that's what we're trying to achieve. We're trying to achieve a mind that will take the stain of the Dharma. There's this phrase, isn't there, when the Buddha gets enlightened, where he thinks, you know, he's asked to teach and he thinks, oh, I've looked to the people in front of me. I think there's no way I'm going to teach these people. And he says, it's going to be really hard work to teach these people. And all he sees is his mind's stained with the stain of the dye of craving. And then he's, and then they say, but there will be people with a bit less stain in their mind, teach them. And then that will start something. So our mind is often stained, not with the Dharma. Yeah, so to what extent do we experience ourselves trying to activate the Dharma in us? Do we live our lives with this intention at the forefront of our experience? That we're trying to create a mind that will receive the Dharma. That's what we should all be doing. That is a shared project. We're all trying to help each other as a sangha to create a mind that will take the dye of the Dharma. So Sibhita's description of how friendship and communication can to help self-actualize is a very creative process that he's describing. Who's going to help us unravel ourselves to ourselves? And I've had many, many good friends and very significant friends that have helped me do that. This kind of communication requires a certain amount of contact and it requires receptivity on both sides. I remember a conversation where I went, I went and saw a very good friend in Glasgow, I was living in Glasgow. And I was about to go to a newcomer's class, which is what a class I supported every week as a Mitra. And I visited her to have supper with her and she was probably my best friend as it were. And we always had supper together and then I went to the class. But I knew that how to say something to her that was going to be very difficult, which was that I was feeling more and more frightened of her. And I remember stepping into her kitchen and saying to her, "I feel really frightened of you at times." And she said, "But why? I love you." And I said, "I know, I know that's true "and I feel frightened of you." And we started a conversation, which we started a conversation with lasted 45 minutes. Then I went to the class, attended it, supported the class until the tea break and then I went back to house and we finished the conversation. And we just looked at moments where I felt that fear and moments where the conversation felt difficult. And more and more we began to see that she had views about who I was and I'd outgrown them. And I was coming up against a ceiling in my communication with her about who I was and this was frightening me. It's actually, it is a bit of an act of violence when you kind of contain people and put a ceiling on people like that. And she was able to really go there with me. And because I loved her and she loved me, we weren't trying to just work out who was right or who was wrong. We were trying to work out what was going on. And it was this beautiful moment when we saw it. I described a conversation and I said, "This is what I was doing." And she said, "Oh, I assumed you weren't aware "and you were even more aware of me than I was of you." And then she began to realize the views that were in place. So I just say this because it is a very, very dynamic conversation. And our friendship was strong enough and the trust was strong enough for us to have it. Yeah. And I'm just like, just a wistering my notes here. And it taught me that views that we have of each other are very, what's the word? Well, we have self-limiting views of ourself and we have self-limiting views of others. And sometimes the views we have of others reinforces a certain kind of reassurance of self. I've seen this loads in my life that often I have an idea about who somebody is or what they don't do well. And it's usually because I'm trying to tell myself something about me. She does that over there, but I don't do it. That's the sort of thing that goes on. So just notice the views that you have about each other and then see what it tells you about yourself. And also notice how you bring those, that those views into relationship. It's views like that pollute the atmosphere of the Sangha. I sometimes think of the Sangha as being like a coral reef. It's created by beings, but it's very susceptible to pollution. Just know whether you're helping to develop the Sangha or are you polluting it with certain ideas? All of us are a mixture, yeah. And hopefully the Sangha is strong enough to bear with us. Yeah, so we have a lot of views. We have a lot of papancia thoughts, proliferation of thoughts. And they often are built on very little information. You start with, oh, cardipity center feels a bit cold. And then you go to an unpleasant sensation. I feel a bit cold. And then you think, why don't they ever put the heating on before the class? Nobody thinks it ahead. Then you think, they don't really respect people here sometimes. And then you think, I'm always taken for granted and I'm not really, you know, I'm not appreciated. And then before you know it, everything that happens at the card if Putty Center reinforces that idea about what they think of you and who you are. Like, a tea ran out just before you got there. Suddenly, it's the self-use, alive, you know. We're all doing this stuff, okay. Yeah, so it's for all of us to just sort of try not to perpetuate those views for each other. Another thing that can sort of pollute if you like to use expression, the sangha is passivity. Don't think so much in terms of what can I get from this situation. Think more in terms of what can I contribute? 'Cause that's where the real creativity is. What gift can you bring? I don't mean a present. It's like you've all got gifts. What can you bring to the sangha and offer that and offer it? Be creative in that. Somebody once said to me, it seemed like a strange question. They said, "Did you always know you were going to be "chair at Adistana?" I had this vision of me at three going, "You know what I'm going to be doing when I grow up?" I was like, "No." I realized probably what they were trying to say was, was it something that a group of people planned several years in advance and eventually it happened? But that's probably what they meant. But in that moment, I thought, "No." And then maybe they said, "Well, maybe I thought, "Well, how did it happen? "Maybe they said to me, how did it happen?" I said, "Well, one day, it was really obvious "that the tea cups needed washing up in the Glasgow Police Centre." And then another day, because I'd been through an art school education, they said, "Would you design a poster?" And then I began to see there was no dollar charities in Glasgow. There were very few women mitterers. I began to think, "Well, if I'm not at attending classes, "that it'll only just be blokes there all the time." And they were gorgeous blokes. But actually, it's great to have a woman sometimes in the mix. And then eventually they say, "And will you be chair of Aristotle next?" And that's what you do. That's what lands in your bowl, to put in that expression. OK. So, going back to... I'm trying to round it off. Going back to Bante, a sanger-ratchet of watching those dancers at the Government of Houseball, and him thinking, "It's not the phenomenal world itself "that disgusted me, so much as a spectacle of an existence, "so entirely devoid of meaning." Yeah, so an experience of this, an experience like this, makes us want to change something. And his response was to create a sanger, which is meaningful, and to base it on meaningful communication. I've got here, read the poem. I wonder what that... Oh, yeah, right, I've got it. OK, good. Yes. Yeah, no, I'll just read the poem. So, I mean, maybe I will just say, the sanger is probably sanger-ratchet as bodhisattva vowel. That's it. We're living out a vowel of somebody that tries to change the world in his own particular way. And he was once asked by... Oh, come my bad name, Tibetan teacher, North Wales. Shampen Hoekum. Yes, Shampen Hoekum. Who knew him. They knew each other in London, you know, before he'd even set up tree-ratchet, I think, or she came along very early on. And when she met him just before he died, she said, "I'm trying to create a sanger in North Wales." A heart-sanger, I think, is. And how do you go about doing that? And he said, "Creating a sanger, you wouldn't wish you "on your worst enemy." Yeah. And I think it cost him something, yeah. In the same way that, actually, the guy is running the Cardiff Buddhist Centre. You know, everyone running the Buddhist Centre, it costs them something. It requires so much generosity. And just pitch in, you know, serve that the generosity that you see other people are giving. And all of us have got gifts that we can bring to him. So I'll read you Sanger Righteous Poem, the four gifts. And then you can hear me interviewing him about this poem on the Free Buddhist Audio. And also, it's been the whole, all these interviews that I did with him with his poems have been transcribed, and now they're in the complete works. So, this is the poem. "I come to you with four gifts. "The first gift is a lotus flower. "Do you understand? "My second gift is a golden net. "Can you recognise it? "My third gift is a shepherd's round dance. "Do your feet know how to dance? "My fourth gift is a garden planted in a wilderness. "Could you work there? "I come to you with four gifts, dare you accept them." So I say to him, after I've read this poem to him, I say to him, "This is a poem that you wrote in 1975, "when the order and the movement was still quite young." And he replies, "When the order was six years old." I thought I would have a sabbatical. It turned out to be a six month sabbatical, but not a whole year, which is what he originally hoped. I think it was, I wrote that poem. I think it was in a connection with that, the fact that I was going away, because this was the legacy that I was leaving to people as I left my sabbatical. "These four gifts, that's my legacy." So I ask him, "When you're saying the first line, "I come to you with four gifts. "You're the eye in that line." And then he says, "And by you, I mean old members "and mitterers and friends coming along to the centre. "It's to them I'm offering these gifts. "It could be understood in a wider sense "as being addressed to people in general, "whoever is able to accept these gifts." And then I go through the gifts, yeah? The gifts of the Lotus Flower, which is to do with self-development, yeah. And he says here, "I say, do you understand, when I hold up the Lotus Flower, "so do you understand? "It's not just for amusement. "It's not just entertainment. "It's about personal development. "You don't come to one of our centres to socialise. "You come to do serious things. "You don't, you come to learn to meditate, "to understand the Dharma, "and this is ultimately in the interest "of your personal development. "Do you understand this? "Not everybody does it first. "Some people, like the people at the centre, "want to see more of them. "They think more in terms of friendship "in the ordinary sense and a bit more social life. "But this isn't what it's all about. "It's about personal development "in the very best and most positive sense." Then we go into the next line. My second gift is a golden net. Can we recognise it? Here he talks about philosophy of Buddhism. It's like he's offering something that's all the teachings interconnected, and it captures you. He's saying, "Do you recognise it as something "that can captivate you and capture you "in the most positive way?" People are crying out for some sort of understanding of how this all works. Why do people suffer? Why do wars happen? They want to know what is the meaning of all this, how are we supposed to face it here? He says, "We need to have a kind of quality of vision, "a real quality of vision of philosophy "that will hold us in the world "and allow us to live our lives well within it." Then he said, "The third gift, the third gift that he brings, "is a shepherd's round dance." He's a strange man at times. And he says, "Do your feet know how to dance?" And then I draw him out a bit and say, "I think it's the order." Or maybe it's just the Sangha. It's about people dancing together. It's quite interesting thinking of what we're trying to create between us as a dance. And Vantis says, "Sangha Rachael says, "I think dance is an important symbol "because it suggests something we enjoy." "I'm not quite sure what a round dance is," he says. But it's clearly something people do together. And he talks about how important it is to just enjoy it, enjoy coming together, enjoy sharing this project, enjoy sharing the project, creating the Sangha. He says, "I think enjoyment is the key note to this line." And then later he says, "I think a round dance "is something that returns to itself. "It goes through certain motions again and again, "perhaps with other people joining in. "The dance goes on, but the people dancing change." It's quite interesting. "In some dances, you change partners. "And if you have different partners in the dance, "that whitens your experience." But then I asked the question, "Do your feet know how to dance?" He says, "I don't ask, do you know how to dance?" I say, "Do your feet know how to dance?" In other words, it's as though dancing is instinctive. It's a natural thing. And then the fourth gift. "My fourth gift is a garden planted in a wilderness. "Could you work there?" So this is quite a lot. It's like an allotment, it's this shrine room. It's a long narrow sort of allotment thing, yeah. It's a garden in the wilderness of her Cardiff. And Banti says, "I suppose the wilderness "is of the wilderness of the world. "It's Samsara, our ordinary social life, "our domestic life, our work life, and so on." So yes, the wilderness is the world. I think nowadays we're very much aware of this world as a wilderness. From all the news reports, we get out of things happening. In this and that part of the world. And within it, we're trying to create a garden or something beautiful and inspiring. And he says, "Also, the garden is a process of creation. "We start off with a few seeds, a little patch of ground, "and we plant those seeds. "But gardeners are needed. "Rather than waiting for it to be completed by others, "could you be one that helps the garden grow? "See, this is working against the passivity. "Don't just come here and think you're just going to receive. "Contribute, yeah." In other words, in a spiritual movement like Tree Ratner, you don't just go along to the centre or other activities and passively take things in. It's part of the growing process to get involved, to dig the garden, to plant the seeds. You become a fellow gardener. And later he also says, "But we have to see the wilderness "as the wilderness, which is that vision in the way of the ball. "He sees the wilderness in that ball, "and he knows a garden needs to be planted somewhere." So he says, "Accepting these gifts has implications. "It makes a demand upon you. "Do you understand that you're an individual "who can grow and develop? "Do you see the Dharma or the different aspects "of the Buddha's teaching are all interconnected "and give you a whole philosophy of life? "Do you see that involvement with the Dharma "is something that you can enjoy? "You have to enjoy. "And do you see that the movement is like a garden "where we can cultivate ourselves "and help others to cultivate themselves? "And where we need to work on the garden, "which means also working on ourselves?" So I say to him, "So when you say I come to you with four gifts, "it's not so much you but us. "Where we are coming to other people with these four gifts?" And he says, "Yes, the four gifts are being passed on. "We don't create the garden "just so that we can play in it ourselves. "But so other people can come and enjoy it too "and eventually work there too." So how different would it be for all of us to see the Sangha as a gift? Just to accept that gift and see it as something beautiful that needs developing? A gift to us individually and also a gift to Cardiff or to the world? A garden in the wilderness? It means seeing it as precious, something rare, something that has been created between us, something that is a whole context for our lives that we can trust. Now how do we bring it into being a context like that that is trustworthy, loving and meaningful? That is a question for all of us to answer, yeah? Individually and collectively and to know that most and to know it, creating Sangha to know that as one of the most rewarding projects you can be involved with. You will be creating something beautiful, precious and rare and people are dying for the lack of it in this world, yeah. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
