(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. - So, yeah, spiritual community. So we put a did often talk about the importance of spiritual community in many, many different ways. And what I'm going to do about tonight is just three verses from the Dharma product, very good. It doesn't quite talk about spiritual community, but by digging into it, we'll find out what his vision for spiritual community was. At the end of his life, he talked to his disciples about conditions for the stability of the spiritual community. Other occasions, he exhorted them to really look after each other, to look after each other, as if they were family. And the early on, after the first 60 disciples or so, he asked them to go out and spread the Dharma to pass on to others what they had learned, which was, of course, the spiritual community grew by the people passing on what they learned. So his vision for spiritual community, he could say, consists of three things. Firstly, it's a vision of people who are working on themselves to become more ethically skillful, to transform themselves, to become more aware, more compassionate, more alive. So that's the first thing. The next thing is people who are willing to take what they have learned and give it to others, to share what they've learned, to share what they gained from the teachings. And the third thing is supporting people who will support and help each other on the path. So three elements to spiritual community, anyways, it's that element of taking responsibility for our own states of mind and transforming ourselves, working on ourselves and doing that in relation to others in order to be mutually supportive and be willing to share what we gain from all of that. So you could say that spiritual community is, it's a condition for spiritual practice in order to be able to practice. And it's also a spiritual practice in itself. It's a spiritual practice in itself in the sense that we give, give it to others. It's a practice of giving of generosity. So in the Dhamma parta, this vision is, it's given in a very condensed form, you could say, in these verses that I'm looking at. So I'll just tell you what the three verses are. For those of you who like to know these things, we come from a chapter on happiness, the Sukkalaga, and verses 197, 198, and they go like this, happy indeed we live, friendly amid the haters. Among those who hate, we dwell free from hate. Happy indeed we live, healthy amid the sick. Among those who are sick, we dwell free from sickness. Happy indeed we live, content amid the greedy. Among those who are greedy, we dwell free from greed. So I'm going to look at those three verses in more doubt and try and draw out the relevance to us as a spiritual community. So all of these three verses speak about being happy, being happy in the midst of those who are greedy, sick, or given to hatred. So the ideal as we're being put forward there, it's not about complete withdrawal from the world, but being in the world, but on stained by it, on the solid by it. So it's the ideal of being in the world, but not worthy. So it's an ideal of remaining in positive, skillful states of mind, even when we're surrounded by those who are predominantly negative and who are unskilled for. I said even when, but that's all the time. And the reason for being in the world in this way is to spread the truth of the dogma out of compassion for the suffering caused by spiritual illness. So you could say a primary way of teaching the dogma is by living. And by living it, we spread it. This is what later came to be known as the Bodhisattva ideal. So that's the first thing to note about the spiritual community. To be an effective spiritual community, it's in the midst of the world and working for the welfare of everybody. That's the key part in the spiritual community. So right from the start, it's emphasizing on selfishness the opposite to egotism, basically. Which doesn't, of course, mean that everybody must be in the world all the time. Of course, we have to withdraw into a treat or whatever from time to time. It's only by doing that that we're able to attend to any kind of state of being happy among those who are negative and unskinful. So we need to withdraw into the treat quite frequently. So in order to be to attain to that kind of positivity, which then has a dozen factors on others. So each of these three verses begins with a phrase, "Happy indeed we live." And the word for "happy" here is "su-su-can." So "su-can" is the word for "happy" "su-can." You may have come across it if you've heard an answer, "sab-e, sa-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t," "sab-e, everybody, or may all these be happy." So, and then you've got the prefix "su," so "su-su-su-can." And "su" is an emphatic. It emphasizes it, raises it up to another level as well. It's very happy or supremely happy or extremely happy or happy indeed as it's translated here. So it intensifies the word "happy." So the idea is that "su-su-can" is not just ordinary happiness. It's not a good mood as a verb. It's a deep happiness. It's an intense happiness. And given this context, it's an unshakable happiness. It's a kind of equity, really. So this is a very high idea to attain to this kind of happiness. And not only individually, but collectively, per Europe, content and happy and so on. It's like a kind of river running through the individuals and the community. So it's not a happiness that's fleeting or ephemeral. So, as I say, it's this kind of deep river of positivity flowing right through our own being continuously. So for most of us, this is something yet to be achieved. This is what we're aiming at. But that doesn't mean that the verses have no relevance for us. The verses give us a sense of the direction we're going to be. We're aiming for this kind of deep, integrated happiness, su-soka, which enables us to become an effect of spiritual community. It is just to become a community that can actually be effective in the world, be effective in easing the suffering of the world, and also deepening our own wisdom or insights. So then the verses talk about what that looks like in practice. What it looks like in practice. Friendly amid the haters, healthy amid the sick and content amid the greedy. So this gives us an idea of how to practice, how to achieve that state of happiness. When we're happy in this sense, when we're happy in this sense, then we will be friendly amid the haters, healthy amid the sick and content amid the greedy. So in order to get to that state of happiness, this is what we have to practice. So I go into this a bit. It's the same principle for my practice in the precepts, that the precepts express in principle what the awakened mind is like, how it behaves in the world. So we practice in order to move towards that. So here we're going to be practicing friendliness, contentment, and we're going to all healthy means as well in this context. So how do we practice being friendly amid the haters? So then you consider various elements to friendliness, various levels you could say at friendliness. Some are very straightforward and simple. For instance, friendliness includes hospitality, just basic hospitality. It also includes being interested in other people, then listening to them, and of course being a friend, in the sense of befriending others. Beyond that it also includes meta, which we've just been doing, which expands out beyond even friends and even to enemies beyond beyond beyond. And this includes Karina, compassion, rutita, sympathetic yoga. And as with the metabolic, we can practice friendliness, of course, towards ourselves, towards friends, families, work colleagues, the hope of the community, the rest of the city, the rest of the country, the rest of the world, even other forms of life and so on. So then this first level of hospitality, well for us as Sanger members, you could say, it involves several things like making, making new people feel welcome. Just making them feel welcome. I think probably doubling the status is very good at that. I hope. So whether it's a visiting order member, or a mentor who's new to the center, or someone who's come in out of curiosity, or booked in a course, or just being hospitable, welcoming. You know, I think many people who come to Buddhist centers, I think somebody's worked this out, but a lot of us are introverts, and therefore shy and reserved, you know. So when we first came along, we needed an encouragement, you know. And so many of us will have a tendency to sit quietly and stay in the background. And then when we do get more involved, and we have our own set of friends that we like to see, and spend time with and chat with. But this being hospitable means that we have to go out with our comfort zones a bit and try to be aware of others, and friendly and welcome to those who are new, and feel so comfortable in this environment. So, yes. What we want to do is we want to start, if you're going to be friendly with the haters, we want to start by being friendly and made friendly. Because, you know, it's actually something we have to do with the point is that we have to be friendly, even with those who are not haters. And, you know, we just have to be friendly, and be friendly. And in the first instance, that's just being hospitable, welcoming, open people. And then, of course, it means being interested in others, and listening to others. Actually, often people do save on the country with incentives. Often people say a lot of fresh things that struck them, is that people listen to them, you know, but they will listen to them for the first time. They felt that somebody listened to them. That's quite an important thing, that we might take for granted sometimes, but it's really important because what it means is that you're giving somebody this gift of awareness. You're aware of them, and you're aware of them at quite a deep level. And we might take that for granted sometimes. You know, we've been meditating for a year, two years, three years, whatever it is. We may take for granted the level of awareness that we have. But to someone who's new to it, that may be a quite a striking feature of what we're giving to them. And of course, in the Sangha, we will have some friendships that are more intimate, where we share ourselves more fully. And that's important for our spiritual, and also our psychological welfare concept, that we have good friends. And of course, the only way to have good friends, false friends, intimate friends, is by befriending people. It's active. It's something we do rather than something that happens to us. So to work on this ideal of being friendly amid the haters, we need to make an effort to be friendly in whatever situation we find ourselves. It's interesting, maybe some of the situations are the ones that are closest to us, like the family, to try to be friendly with our family. We can try to be friendly with our work colleagues. And these are two arenas, you could say, that can often bring out the worst things, but not in your heads all around. [laughter] Sometimes we have to make a really special effort to maintain awareness of our aspirations and so on, in those contexts, to be happy and friendly in the midst of the world as well. Because that's where we meet the world, within those situations, yeah. Of course, these situations sometimes are difficult because people have rules, like in the family, people have no rules, they need the others. Husband, wife, mother, daughter, son, brother, sister. All those different kind of rules can get in the way. It can be a hindrance to just being a human being in relation to another human brain. So we have to make an effort. We have to make an effort to see our mothers, a person, to see our sons, a person, our sister, or whatever it is. And we have to sometimes make an effort to see them as another person, with a whole set of needs and desires and so forth, that we may not even be aware of. Yeah. So that's the sort of effort and awareness and friendliness that leads us in the direction of this ideal in friendly in the eighties as well. And then friendliness in relation to the wider community, I guess it's a matter of taking an interest and supporting positive initiatives that encourage values of kindness and generosity in words. Because there are lots of positive things happening in the world beyond buddhist centuries. Even if I was telling you about something similar for our refugees. So as a sander, it's good if we're aware of that, where are these things and where is possible, how do we cooperate and encourage what's positive in life enhancing in the world around us, where we can. But perhaps the very least we can do is at least just rejoice in what is well done. What's well done, whether it's been done by a local politician, a business person, or an artist, or whoever. And being friendly amid the haters, I think, above all, it means not taking science in disputes, and especially like acrimonious disputes, and where possible trying to calm troubled waters, even if possible, filled bridges. The next verse is a little more difficult to understand. It says it's exhausting us to be healthy among those who are sick. Now, I suppose you could take this literally because I think research has shown that those who are happy are generally healthier. And live longer than those who are not happy. And Buddha does speak about, in one place, he speaks about non-violence, which is not a way of talking about violence, as being beneficial to health. And also, there's somewhere else where he talks about the 11 positive results of practicing metabolic practice in loving canes, some of which would be very health-giving, such as sleeping while, or not having bad dreams. One of them was not being injured by weapons or poison. One thing else, one of them was having a serene complexion. And you're awfully confused when death approaches, so all of those are quite good for you. However, we can also take this verse about being healthy, and being on the sick in a more, I don't know, poetic or symbolic way. There's a sutta called the Magandiya sutta in the Magimani kind, where the Buddha meets a wanderer, a chap called Magandiya. The Magandiya does not like the Buddha. It doesn't like him. It doesn't approve of him. But as part of that discussion, the Buddha recites a little verse, and then he explains it. So the verse is, he says, "The greatest of all gains is health. Nibhana is the greatest bliss. The eightfold path is the best of paths, for it leads to the deathless." And then he goes on to explain what he means by sickness and health. He talks about clinging to the five scandas, and as the disease and the cessation of clinging as health. So clinging to the five scandas is another way of talking about clinging to a fixed self-view or clinging to ego, and being healthy among those who are sick then comes to being egoless among those who are equalistic, or more simply than being selfless among those who are selfish. So this verse of the Dhamma part is by overcoming the delusion, which binds us to selfishness through fear and ignorance and so on. So being deeply happy and therefore being able to let go of self-centredness becomes easier if we're able to realize on a deep level that we're constantly changing beings, but all around us are also constantly changing. So what that means is that we come to realize that trying to shore up our sense of insecurity by trying to fix things and control things will never work. So by grasping or clinging on to a sense of self or to our possessions or to our people, causes pain and suffering because it's like trying to grasp using the river in different ways, trying to grasp the water that's constantly flowing. You're never going to be able to grasp it. Now, if this might sound a bit abstract, but I've got a quote here from Bento Sengo Echstor, which I think gets to the heart of the matter in a more direct way. He says, "A common misapprehension," this is from his book, "Living with Kindles." A common misapprehension is to think of insight and egolessness in abstract or even metaphysical terms, rather than as comprising concretely lived attitudes and behavior. But realizing the truth of egolessness simply means being truly and deeply on selfish. To contemplate the principle of egolessness as some special principle that is somehow separate from our actual behavior will leave it as far away as ever. If we find it difficult to realize the ultimate emptiness of self, the solution is to try to be a little less selfish. The understanding comes after the experience, not before. So I think that's a great, really, down-to-earth way of talking about a very central Buddhist teaching. And it's worth noting that most of us, probably all of us, have some experience of being selfless. So it's not that we don't need to read something like that and think, "Oh, dear, I'm nowhere," or whatever. Most of us, all of us, probably have some experience of being selfless on occasion. And so we're not completely as aware as seeing when it comes to having some understanding of the truth of egolessness. It's simply that when we have that spontaneous impulse to own selfishness or to generosity, you can say. That's an expression of egolessness. So we can work back from that expression, that experience, to having an even deeper understanding of the time. But actually, the experience, the lived experience is more important than any conceptual understanding. So Bante mentions in that quote, "concretely lived attitudes and behavior." That need to be healthy, make the sick, or egoless, make the egotistical. Well, the first thing, actually, is a concretely lived attitude and behavior is to look after our health. Might seem very simple, but it's important to look after our physical health so that we can practice the drama and be of use to others. Yeah. It's been, there's another suit in part of the canon, where the Buddha says, "The first thing that enables someone to practice his own has been free from illness and affliction, because I've seen a good digestion." So eating nourishing food, taking exercise, they're a part of our spiritual practice. As well as helping ourselves, they can be a positive influence on others. Then we could think about concretely lived attitudes. We need to think, well, what would be, as I wrote, bad attitudes, which were my cold delusions for these Buddhist names. What are unhealthy delusions that we might be prone to? Because if we think, well, what kind of delusions might we have, that might enable us to see what it would be like to have healthy attitudes and behavior. So I came up with some things just off top of my head as well. Things that might be delusions that many of us hold. The delusion that we can have a perfect life. The delusion that anything will last forever. The delusion that material planes bring satisfaction, or at least lasting satisfaction. The delusions that others have to blame. The weird victims others have to blame for our dissatisfaction. The delusion that security is a matter of money and possessions. The delusion that we can control in the future. The delusion that we know what other people are thinking, especially about us. The delusion that we're not dependent on others. So if we're to have concretely lived attitudes and behaviors that lead us to being happy, happy and deep, healthy and in the sick, we need to try and let go of our delusions. Any more that I've mentioned, and maybe I haven't mentioned your favorite delusion. We need to work out. Concretely lived attitudes of course come up to our relationships with other people. So we could consider how we might be more wise and best deluded in our relationships with others. We would ask are we possessive in relation to partners or lovers? Do we allow them the freedom to live their own lives and be themselves or are we trying to mold and change them to suit our sons? Or in relation to parents? Do we expect them to take responsibility for us and always be there for us? What can we say to these individuals with their own lives as well? In relation to children? Do we feel that we own them? Or do we let them go at the appropriate time? Or in relation to friends? In relation to friends, do we treat them as supporters to lean on what a time or do we also provide them with the warmth of the sport? Or in relation to the wider Sangha? Do we think in terms of what we can get for ourselves? Or do we think about what we can contribute? Or even in relation to the local community or the country as of all, do we expect to be provided for without having to contribute? So these are just like questions, you probably come up with your own questions. Questions to try and look at where we might be in terms of our concretely lived attitudes of the area where we might actually be giving expression to delusion rather than wisdom. OK, so the third verse, the third verse we're looking at is happy, indeed, with the content and with the greeting. And the word used here for greed is busaka, which has a sense of restless longing to it. It's sometimes translated as restlessness. It's the same word that's used in the hindrances to meditation, restlessness and anxiety. So it has this sense of restless longing to it. So contentment then has this sense of not being restless. So you could say contentment manifests in non-attachment or more positively manifests in generosity or a sense of abundance. And contentment expresses itself in living a simple life. Maybe with few possessions and taking joy in ordinary things, ordinary beauty. Contentment allows us to be generous and to think about this. And I think to develop contentment, one of the ways to develop contentment is to find enjoyment and satisfaction in simple things. To find enjoyment, to find beauty and so on, in quite simple things. Because often that's what we're looking for when we go from more complex things when we're looking for satisfaction. We're looking for enjoyment or pleasure or whatever. But you can find enjoyment in one sort of place. I'm sure you will all do. The daffodils in the park, in the leaves, the colors in the leaves and the foam wound. Rain, pollen, puddles or a wrinkled face or a smile or whatever. You can find pleasure in one of these things. So we can even find pleasure in something that we all do all times. It's like walking, when you're walking down the street. It's actually, you know, it's a little miracle walking down the street. And we can find pleasure in the fact that we're able to do it. And pleasure in just the contact of the earth and so on. Or pleasure in the sound of a voice or something. I was once in Barcelona. I was in the head of a Dharma class above a bookshop on his little alleyway outside. And all the way through to, I was listening to a talk, and all the way through it, I could hear all the sounds from the street. And actually, I find something, I can't really describe it, but together, there's somebody giving this dog talk. And all these sounds can, you know, I wrote a poem about a laptop. I saw a spy book. So you can find enjoyment in all sorts of things. You know, that's maybe a good example, because you could equally irritate it if you're not by the sounds of mystery. You can also be enjoyment. And if we can relax into being present in the present, don't we get even greater enjoyment from almost anything we do? And if we're present with it, you know, chatting with friends or seeing a painting or listening to the wind or whatever. If we're really present with it, I'm sure you all know this. If you've been on the train, you all know that this kind of different kind of pleasure that comes from being present and aware. And that's contacting that. And contactment can be developed, you could say, cultivated by focusing on the positive in our lives and cultivating a sense of gratitude. A sense of gratitude for all we have, all that we have that is so fantastic, if we pay attention to it. So some people reflect at the end of each day on everything they've enjoyed that day. Everything is giving them pleasure and so on. And that's a really good practice, because it's one of those practices that has a cumulative effect. If you reflect on the things that give you pleasure or do they enjoy you today, then you notice more. The next day, you notice things and gradually over time, it's like that's what you see. You start to inhabit a world that is really enjoyable, because that's what you see. That's what you notice. Your mind is tuned in to being grateful for the small things as well. Another aspect of contentment is having a bigger perspective in our lives. They've got perspective on the events in our lives, the people we encounter and so on. There may be various ways of doing that. Meditation is one of those ways of getting a bigger perspective. One way that I've used them to pass is just by thinking about vast space and vast time. Putting the things that my life into that context. It really worked for me, because at the time I was working with being anxious at a lot of anxiety. The things I was anxious about, I would think of them in bigger and bigger periods of time. I realised gradually that in five years or ten years or certainly fifteen years they wouldn't do that in both. Similar issue for them in a bigger arena of space. If something is worrying in your life or in the Dublin Buddhist Centre, that's just a small bit of the universe. Having a bigger perspective or even creating a bigger perspective in our lives, using our minds to create a bigger perspective can actually use to be more content. So its contentment is the opposite to greed. It's the opposite to greed because there's the absence of that restless longing for more stimulation. If you're really present and happy with what's happening, you're not longing for more stimulation. Generosity is the natural activity of contentment. I need to explain that. Because contentment is not trying to hold on and cling to things, it's naturally expansive, it's naturally open. Generosity is a natural activity or expression of contentment. And acting generously can help to cultivate contentment. When you act generously, you do a bit of letting go, a bit of letting go. It might be visually letting go of a bit of money or something, but you're also letting go mentally. By retaining yourself and letting go mentally. And of course, there's lots and lots of opportunities for generosity. It's certainly around a good essential figure and lots of opportunities for generosity, giving money or helping out or whatever. People have all sorts of conditioning and emotions around giving, or particularly by giving money. It's an area where it is a great deal of attachment and delusion, we can say. And it's an area where we experience what we can learn a great deal about ourselves, I think, in relation to money or attitudes to money. It's been a great deal about ourselves and we can learn about our deepest motivations. I remember doing quite a bit of work on that many years ago, just with other people who sang it, we talked about money, relationships, money, or period of time, attitudes to money, and conditioning around money, and you're barely out to choose a company, it's all very kind of revealing and helpful. Because issues of security and identity are often experienced in our attitudes to money. So to make spiritual progress, it's actually quite useful to do a kind of thorough exploration of your relationship to money. It can be very helpful. And it can be especially helpful to do it in the context of this spiritual community with friends, who are people that you're close to. It's even worked well, I would say, getting together with some close friends, people that you trust in talking about money. Just make it a thing. And yes, because it can be one of those taboo areas in our lives. First, there's lots of energy in our lives. So there's lots of areas where we can be generous in terms of what is in terms of the Buddhist central and the world at large. One kind of very topical area, it's supposed to be an ecology and environment and so on. And I think ecological awareness is a matter of extending the meaning of the first precept. The precept about loving kindness of long binds to all aspects of our relationship to world around us. Because what it can help us to do is to realise that we are really not separate from our environment. We're intimately bound up with it. It's not the case that we have that humanity on one side in the natural environment on the other. We are an intrinsic part of the natural environment. To practice loving kindness towards ourselves. We need to practice loving kindness towards the natural environment. Okay, so I've been talking about these three verses. Happy and deep we live, friendly with the haters. Among those who hate, we drive free from hatred. Happy and deep we live, healthy and with the sick. Among those who are sick, we drive free from sickness. Happy and deep we live, content in the greedy. Among those who are greedy, we drive free from greed. And I've been talking about this as an expression of the Buddhist vision for the Sangha. So I said at the beginning that the Buddhist vision of the spiritual community was a vision of a community of people who work on themselves to develop positive mental states, to go beyond selfishness completely. The community of people who are willing to go out as a world into the world and share the Dharma with others. And well, for the welfare of the many as the world said. And the community of people who would befriend and support each other in their endeavors. So this is what the spiritual community is about in the Buddhist tradition and also in the tree-like Buddhist community. So the tree-like Buddhist community is a community of people who want to grow in awareness and kindness and the community of people who want to share that message of awareness and kindness with others. And the community of people who are willing to befriend and support each other in all of that. So, and we all know when we're all probably already doing all the things you need in order to make all of that happen. We want to grow in awareness and kindness, we need to meditate, go and retreat. Going on retreat is really important, actually, in all of this. It's probably, maybe it's the key thing in the way going on retreat because it takes you out of the world for a while to experience yourself more deeply, to experience what's possible in terms of better states of my entire state of consciousness. And that's what you bring back into your world. And if you keep doing that, gradually what you bring back is more and more of a positive influence. Being ethical, of course, is a part of this. If you're working on being more and more ethical, so the positive precepts, particularly the ten precepts, I think. If you're not an ordinary member, it doesn't mean that you should try and practice the ten precepts, of course you should. And then, of course, reflecting on the Dharma and communicating with our friends. There's a role part of the practices that create this kind of community. And we share the message of awareness and kindness, that message of the Dharma by living it, basically. Sometimes brought by teaching it, but not everyone needs to teach it. You're sharing it by living it, or even by helping those who live it and teach it more further. Yeah, so I'll finish off with this, that a spiritual community or a sign good that's effective in all these ways will definitely have a positive effect on the world. That's, yeah, that's just without question. It's like you could say it's a beacon of sanity in a diluted world. And we can be that community, we can be that sign good at a local level and on a much larger scale, because of course, in terms of the Dharma, the incentives part of something much, much larger. So, we can integrate with the wider thing. No, Dharma was all about the more worldwide aspect. It's a particular resource in the Dharma. Yes, and individually across, we're also like this beacon of sign good, we keep going, just think I'm going to just finish off by saying that personally, having practice like Slaya C says for a sort of 40 years, practicing the Dharma for over 40 years. And having struggled to practice having had things to struggle with and what was to it, and experiencing the results of practice. I can say that I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever about the effectiveness of practicing the Dharma and the positive influence as I am part of the world. And it's just so obvious and so much of my experience, my actual lived experience is all that I'm about to go. So, I hope that's encouraging to me. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at FreeBuddhist.io.com/donate. And thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)
