Our FBA Podcast today, “People of Loving Kindness,” is a lovely talk from Padmavajra, given to celebrate Sangha Day in Birmingham. And who better to conjure the spirit of loving kindness as it permeates a community practising together and supporting each other in their great, shared endeavour.
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People of Loving Kindness
(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. - Thank you very much, sorry her, for that very generous introduction. And I must say that I'm very, very glad to be here with you at the Birmingham Buddhist Center to celebrate a little bit of Sangaday with you. Sorry her didn't have to do very much arm twisting when he asked me to come up. He did dangle a few things in front of me, like taking me out for a curry last night. But I'm always pleased to be asked to give a Dharma talk. And it's been a very long time since I last gave a Dharma talk in Birmingham. So I was very, very glad that he asked me to come to, yes, be part of your Sangaday celebrations. A day which we put aside, put aside the whole day to really joyously contemplate Sangah. That's what a Buddhist festival day, really any festival day should be about. A joyous contemplation of what we regard as most important in human life. That's what a festival day really is. They are days that interrupt routine. I know sometimes when we've been planning festival days, people say, you know, but it's getting in the way of the routine because that's the whole point. That's a whole point of a festival day. You're not working, you're not shopping. You're not doing the usual kind of relaxing. It's a different kind of day. Even after how many years is it of having our Buddhist movement? What is it? Over 30 years. We're still learning how to do our festival days in a way they don't come easily. Our forefathers, our ancestors, many, many centuries ago, festival days were part of the calendar. People would know what to do. We're still learning how to do them. But they are a very great importance to interrupt our routine, to joyously contemplate what is most important to us. A day when our values, our ideals, our visions of what is possible can just rise up brilliantly. And we can just contemplate them, enjoy them so that they can enrich our beings, so that those values, those ideals, can just flow into the rest of our lives. So today I hope you are joyously contemplating sangha, the spiritual community. And you all probably know that the sangha is the third of the three jewels. The three most precious, most valuable, most cherished things in Buddhism, Buddhism's if you like holy of holies. And I just want to ask just a reminder of these three great jewels. First of course, there's the Buddha jewel, the jewel of the enlightened one, the awakened one. And of course, the Buddha isn't simply the historical, shark community who was the first to attain the state of enlightenment. But for Buddhists, the Buddha is the most profound embodiment of the most profound spiritual principle and spiritual ideal. The Buddha represents the fullness of wisdom and compassion. Seeing things as they are, as they really are, conjoined with love and compassion for all beings. So a Buddhist is someone who is committed to realizing in their own lives this enlightenment principle, this ideal of enlightenment. Constantly, there's somebody constantly moving towards that ideal of enlightenment. And this of course is a natural ideal, this is important. It's not an artificial or an oppressive ideal, kind of added on rather arbitrarily to human life. It's natural to human life because we all have the potential for wisdom and compassion. That's the Buddha's vision, that's the Buddhist vision. It's, we all have that potential, that's the deepest in us. And that longs to be brought forth, longs to be brought forth, longs to find full expression in enlightenment. So that's the Buddha jewel. Then there's the jewel of the dharma, which is first of all, the truth. Reality itself, things as they are, which of course is very, very profound. It would be embodied in such teachings as the laxioners, the impermanent, in substantial and unsatisfactory nature of things. So it would be embodied in such teachings as shunyata and so on. It's the truth, the way things are. But then the dharma is the teaching and the path of practices that are derived that are the expression of that truth. The Buddha himself articulated his enlightenment, his attainment of enlightenment. He put it into words. He gave teachings, practical teachings, that we can actually use and employ in our lives to realize the truth, to attain enlightenment. And Buddhism is extraordinarily rich in these practices and trainings, extraordinarily rich. In one place in the ancient scriptures, the Buddha likens the dharma to the great and mighty ocean, the great and mighty ocean. The dharma, the Buddha's teaching is as vast as that, filled with all sorts of teachings and trainings and practices. And these, of course, have developed over the centuries. It's as Buddhism has entered different times and different cultures. It's modified, changed its approaches. But in principle, the dharma as the truth, the way things are, never changes. And the dharma as practice is whatever you use, whatever you employ at any given time to realize that truth, you could say that whatever congeuses to turning away from craving, hatred, and delusion, and whatever promotes contentment, loving kindness, and wisdom, that is the dharma. That is dharma practice. So a Buddhist is someone committed to attaining the truth, reality directly, as well as one who is committed to following the Buddhist path towards that realization. So then there's the Sangha, the jewel that we're celebrating today. From a certain point of view, the Sangha jewel is the most frequently misunderstood of the three jewels. In the Buddhist East, frequently the Sangha is identified with the monastic order, the order of monks, and revering the Sangha, revering the Sangha jewel means revering the monks, making offerings to the monks. Another view might have it that all Buddhists are the Sangha. So anybody who thinks of themselves as a Buddhist, even if they're a very notional Buddhist, if they're a thief, a soldier, a tyrant, that they're all in the Sangha, so to speak. Even in the West, you get misunderstandings about the Sangha, even in our own Buddhist community. There are misunderstandings in the Sangha. I hear this most frequently. When I hear people say, I feel really let down by the Sangha. I feel really disappointed in the Sangha. Something has happened. Things didn't go to plan with other Buddhists, above the Buddhists with all the members, with mitterers, with friends in the Sangha, and their feelings of disappointment, there's something wrong with the Sangha. But really this expresses a misunderstanding, even a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the Sangha jewel. It's as if the Sangha is being thought of as the sort of collective name for a group of Buddhists. You have a flock of sheep. You have a pride of lions. You have a Sangha of Buddhists, just a group of Buddhists. Like the Buddha and the Dharma, a Sangha is first and foremost a profound spiritual ideal, spiritual principle. It is a precious jewel that we need to continually contemplate. Just something about, we're just reflecting a little bit, that these ideals of Buddhism, they're not cool, traditionally three ideals or three principles, they're called three jewels. Because like jewels, these three great ideals are fascinating, enchanting, beautiful. And of course, in traditional society, jewels are objects very often of magical power. So the fact that Buddhist ideals are spoken of as jewels, as gems, means that we need to meditate on them continually to see their profundity. But first, let's come back to the Sangha. So the Sangha is first and foremost, what's known as the Aurya Sangha. Aurya can be translated as holy or noble, but are probably a better understanding of it, it means something like transcendent. Because Aurya really refers to reality, to profound realization, to profound realization of the nature of things. So first and foremost, the Sangha is the Sangha of the Auryas. It's the spiritual community, the community of all those who've directly realized, who have attained the transcendental path. At least the beginnings of the transcendental path right through to the transcendental path and its fullness. So that the real Sangha, the Aurya Sangha, is made up of stream entrance, those who are irreversible from enlightenment. They can't turn back. They've got that all-important, one-way ticket to near Farana. The Aurya Sangha is made up of those who are even beyond stream entry. The Aurya Sangha is made up of alahats, those who've attained enlightenment. The Aurya Sangha, in another context, is made up of the Bodhisattvas, those in whom the bodhicitta, the urge, the will to enlightenment, has arisen and who are just only dedicated to gaining enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. That is what they're completely dedicated to. So this is first and foremost the Aurya Sangha. First and foremost, it's not just our Buddhist friends, even. It's this community of great spiritual beings. And of course, the lives of these beings are a tremendous source of inspiration for us, especially if we look at the really ancient texts, the Pali texts. We see ordinary people, people very much like ourselves. Sometimes people who start with very unpromising equipment, if you like, human equipment. And they gain realization. They gain stream entry. So the Sangha in this sense show what is possible. The Sangha in this sense shows that substantial spiritual progress is possible in this life. And the ancient Buddhist texts are extraordinarily rich in describing this. It's full of stories, of ordinary people. And even people in quite a bad way, people like you and me making substantial spiritual progress. But more than that, the Aurya Sangha is a vision of what is possible in a human community among human beings. So the Aurya Sangha represents embodies the ideal of human community. It's if you like the principle of human community. It gives us a vision of what is possible between us. So in the ancient text, you get visions of this real Sangha, really wonderful visions of real Sangha. There's the famous Sita, famous Buddhist texts describing three monks, or by the name of Anilrata, who lived in a grove of trees, a grove of soul trees, with their beautiful pink blossoms, these tall and elegant trees. And these three were in retreat, getting on with their spiritual practice, their life of meditation and contemplation. And one day the Buddha turns up, and an interesting little detail, the caretaker of the grove of trees, who's sort of looking after the monks, making sure they're OK. He won't let the Buddha in. He doesn't know that he's the Buddha. This is an interesting detail, so you can't go in there. There are three men in there, and they're really practicing. You can't go in to disturb them. I find that really great that the Buddha is kind of anonymous. He's kind of unknown, and he's created a Sangha that's independent of him. He's not the big I am all the time. The Sangha is flourishing very well without him, and he's kind of unknown by some people. I think that's really wonderful. But the monks see what's going on. They say, no, it's OK. He's our teacher, so let him come. And of course, they're very pleased to see the Buddha, and he's very pleased to see them. They greet each other. They sit down. There's courteous talk about how things are. And then the Buddha starts to ask them very good, direct questions. He is, after all, their teacher. And what's his first question? His first question is, are you dwelling in harmony? Are you dwelling in harmony, like milk and water blended? This is, I think, very telling. The first question that the Buddha asks is, are you dwelling in harmony? It tells its own story, I think, I think. Are you dwelling together with ease and pleasure with one another? The Buddha is sometimes described as being a passionately fond of harmony. And the reply of those monks is, yes, we are dwelling in harmony. We are dwelling, like milk and water blended. So the Buddha doesn't just leave it at that. He says, well, how are you living like that? He wants to know the details. He wants them to expound to him. He wants to really know what they're doing. And they said, well, first of all, we've realized how good it is to be together. We feel it's real benefit just to be with each other. So they don't take each other for granted. They have a sort of sense of gratitude that there they are together, practicing. And then they describe their practice of metta, their practice of loving kindness to one another, through bodily action. They just help each other. They don't even have to ask for help. If they see that the water pot needs filling, they don't call a council meeting about it. They just, one of whoever sees it, fills the pot, whoever sees that the place needs sweeping, they just sweep it. They don't have a rotor. They just get on with it. They say, if we do need a hand, we just make a gesture. We don't call out. We make a gesture. And the others are alert to that. They talk about how they kind of surrender to each other. They've sort of given up their own sort of sense of their own sort of just doing it for themselves. And they say that they do it through speech. They try to keep silent most of the time, but they say, they said, well, we meet every so often to talk dhamma, to explore the dhamma together. We engage in dhamma katar, as it's called, which is this wonderful, this is what a study group is really all about. This is this deep searching exploration of dhamma together in great clarity and honesty and sensitivity to one another, to really bring out the truth between one another. So that's how they express their matter, their loving kindness in speech. And they say, we do it in mind. We bury each other in mind with meta, with loving kindness. So they say, we have a mind, a heart of loving kindness for one another, meta, chitta. And then they come up with this incredible saying and they're describing how they have loving kindness for one another. Assuredly, Lord, we have three bodies, but only one mind. Three bodies, but only one mind, a really extraordinary expression, one mind, ekkachitta, one mind. So profound is the meta that they have for one another, the harmony that they dwell in with one another. Later Buddhism, of course, uses this kind of language to describe wisdom itself. Wisdom is the removal of the distinction between self and other. Well, you don't have to go to later Buddhism. It's there in the ancient scriptures. We have three bodies, but only one mind. And that's the mind of loving kindness for one another. And the Buddha questioned them further. He asked the monks to describe their practice, their meditation, their insight into the way things are. He even gets them to describe their different attainments. In other words, they describe their practice of enlightenment. And later on, after the Buddha goes, a local Yaksha is a kind of powerful nature spirit. These figures pop up now and then in the Buddhist scriptures, the Buddha and his disciples were dwelling in that kind of world inhabited by these kinds of beings. A local Yaksha pops up and says, what a powerful effect these monks are having on the local surroundings, just by living like this, a kind of magical effect, that their mutual loving kindness, this living vibrating harmony that they have with one another, touches the world, touches others. It's as if it's a great magical, beneficent force. So this then is a vision of the Ariasanga, of the transcendental spiritual community. Now, just in case you're a bit concerned about that phrase, we have only three bodies, but only one mind. Just you're a bit concerned that maybe that sounds like you're-- that will involve the suppression of uniqueness and individuality. The very next text in the collection that this text comes in describes a knight, a beautiful full moon knight in the soulwood, and dwelling in the soulwood, a different enlightened disciples of the Buddha. And one of them says, looking at this beautiful knight, the moon is full. The soul trees are in full boom with their pink blossoms, and maybe they have a lovely scent as well. What kind of monk would adorn the beauty of this place? And he goes to other monks and asks them this question. And they all give a different description of what kind of monk would adorn the beauty of this scene. They describe, actually, their own unique qualities. So they describe somebody who's full of faith and devotion, who's heard much dhamma from the Buddha. One describes, well, it would be a monk who has profound meditation experience. So another says, no, it will be-- well, it doesn't say no. He just says, yes, it will be a monk who has magical powers. And another one says it will be a monk who is full of wisdom. And finally, the Buddha describes the state of utter liberation, his own enlightenment. So again, you have a very beautiful vision of people dwelling in profound harmony, but they're all different. They're all different. They're all unique. There are other visions you find in the ancient texts. You find descriptions frequently of 1,250-- he's usually 1,250 for some reason-- 1,250 disciples dwelling with the Buddha. Throughout the night, they're just sitting in silence around him. They're all meditating, sitting in complete silence all night long from dusk until dawn. Dwelling in what's known as the Aryan silence, the silence, which isn't simply the silence of the tongue, but the silence of the mind, so that the Aryan silence begins with the second dhyana, the second meditative absorption. Because in that meditative absorption, there are no discursive thoughts whatsoever. There's just pure presence, pure silence, but they're there, dwelling there together in perfect harmony, all those people. So to be committed to Sangha, to go for refuge to the Sangha, as we put it, means, first of all, having a response to the visions of Sangha, perhaps the sorts of visions that I've described. There's something in us that senses, this is the way human beings can come together in a profound and vibrant harmony in which all of our unique qualities can brightly shine. We're in harmony, and yet we're all enhanced with our own uniqueness. So to go for refuge to the Sangha, to be involved in the Sangha, means that we see this as a possibility, and that we're doing all that we can to bring it into being. And I would imagine that's why you're all here today. You have a sense that such a community, such a Sangha, is possible. You're here with these people, those people who come to the Birmingham Buddhist Center. You're operating within the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order, and perhaps you've even had glimpses of that Sangha, that Sangha in that deeper sense, when you've been together with people here, perhaps in Pooja, perhaps on retreat, perhaps when you've been working together to create something in the center. Perhaps on your own, you've had a sudden sense of interconnectedness with others in the Sangha, with others. And perhaps you've also had a glimpse of what a Sangha could do for the world, how important a harmonious community is in this terribly divided world of ours. It's so important that some human beings do come together in profound harmony for the benefit of the world. But as we all know, visions are all very well. They're important. They're inspiring. They're moving. We can have a real response to them. But we need more than that. We're not, as far as I know, all of us here, on the transcendental path, as far as I know. We're not stream entrants. So we've probably had the experience of things going wrong with our fellow Buddhists. If not wrong, if you don't like the word wrong, not going to smoothly, let's say. You might have experienced misunderstandings, differences, personality clashes, arguments, tensions, all that stuff. It happens. It happens often. It doesn't all go along smoothly. I'm sorry if some of you might be a bit new here to disappoint you if you were hoping for that. But that is really not like that. Sometimes people really worry about that when we have a bit of a tiff in our sangha. There's something terribly wrong. It couldn't have happened around the Buddha in the Buddha's day. And with him there, surely, the big Buddha, we're kind of uniquely flawed modern Buddhists. And if only we had an incredible enlightened teacher in our midst and everything would be all right. And you think, oh, give up on this lot. Or I'll just stay on my own. I'll be a private introverted Buddhist. I'm introverted anyway. So I shouldn't be seeing people, et cetera. Well, it's not so easy as that. There are plenty of stories in the ancient texts of tremendous disputes in the sangha, which can I find reassuring? Where you have real, deep-seated disharmony between people. With the Buddha present, there's the famous quarrel at Kasambhi. Sometimes this particular story is told in conjunction with the Buddha meeting the three monks in the soul that I described a bit back, as if there's a kind of contrast that's being brought out. Yes, monks were in tremendous dispute at Kasambhi. Not over the teachings, not over the nature of impermanence and how to do the metabarva properly and all that sort of thing, but no, over a water pot in a latrine and where it was placed and how it was used. I can't honestly remember the details, but a massive realm developed over this and factions developed within the sangha. As the text put it, that they fired verbal arrows at each other. They struck each other with verbal arrows. I mean, really, you can imagine the stuff, the recriminations. A real, really bad scene in the sangha. At a certain time, the Buddha came along and he just asked them repeatedly to put it down. You know, just to let it go, let it go, move on, pull back. And there's a lovely moment where somebody comes to him and says, from one of the factions, he said, Lord, you don't understand, just go and be at ease. I mean, it's extraordinary, isn't it? I mean, you think, you know, it's the Buddha, of course. They don't think of him like we think of the Buddha. They just think of him as their teacher and doesn't understand, doesn't understand. Just go away. And the Buddha does go away, just, you know, more or less saying, well, it's a waste of time trying to get through to these people. Interestingly enough, it was only when the laity said that they would stop supporting the monks. Did they actually give up the dispute immediately? So, you know, when their stomachs were threatened, you know, then they changed. They sorted it out very quickly. Of course, we're not like this. We wouldn't get into these sort of scraps and disputes and so on, you know, when we read these stories, don't we? You know, we always side with the Buddha, don't we? You know, we always think we're the Buddha. We're not those monks, and we have to do that work of identifying with the people who've got it wrong. It's much more where we are, and that's where I am, anyway. Often we take our stand on extraordinarily petty things. Things that we think are matters of principle. Might be worth doing a little exercise sometime. Just go away and reflecting. Those things that you think are matters of principle. Are they really matters of principle? Actually, are they? Or are they really you're out to do with your own likes and dislikes, you know, what you want, how you want things to be? It's very interesting, especially when you have an experience of, you know, something like bereavement or something like that, you start to look at life so differently, and the things that you thought were so incredibly important, you realize they're not important at all. But anyway, this sort of thing happens. These sorts of disputes and conflicts happen. We're human beings, after all. We're all very different, perhaps we're all a bit similar, actually, which we'd rather not, you know, don't want to admit that. But nonetheless, we come together because we're committed to practicing Buddhism. That's how we've come together. And inevitably, we're thrown together with people we would often, you know, in the normal course of events, we would have avoided. We would rather avoid. You know, there we are. We're sort of stuck with one another. We don't want to leave because we find it important. We can really can't hardly ask them to leave. Well, look, I don't like you. You know, we're not suited to one another. I might really care if you're committed to Buddhism. But I think you should go. Well, I mean, nobody's going to-- well, maybe people have tried it, but I mean, I don't think it's a very good idea. I remember a friend of mine saying once that, you know, in the old days, when he employed people, it was very easy if he didn't like somebody. He just sat them. And he said the difficulty with this angle was that you just could not do that. You were there with the people. So what you have to do is to go into your spiritual practice, to take on the task of spiritual transformation. Open up to a deeper spiritual harmony. We're left then with Sangha as a practice. So what I want to do is to explore Sangha as practice. And there's two parts to this. First of all, I'm going to talk about initiation into Sangha. And secondly, I'm going to mention some Sangha presets. So first of all, initiation into Sangha. And I have to admit that by the phrase initiation into Sangha, I'm trying to describe something, get it something, that might be described in better ways. By initiation, I'm not talking about our different ceremonies. Our Mitra ceremonies. I gather you're having some Mitra ceremonies later. I'm not talking about our ordination ceremonies, our sort of rites of passages it were. Although what I describe might actually be intrinsic to those ceremonies. By the word initiation, I have in mind the effect of what's often described by in traditional initiation rituals around the world. When you undergo an initiation, what's going on is that your view of your life and events in life now have a completely different significance from what it had before. You get this just in traditional tribal cultures. The initiation takes you through something. And now you look at the world differently. And events, which you had a particular take on before, have a completely different significance. You have a completely different attitude to them. You've undergone a shift in world view. You've got new responsibilities. Perhaps you could use and serve initiation a term like conversion. Providing that's understood as a complete turning around in consciousness, a revolution in consciousness. In later Yoga Chara Buddhism, they talk about the revolution in the basis, the revolution at the root of being, at the root of consciousness. So sometimes talked about as the turning about in the deepest seat of consciousness. To create Sangha, to be in Sangha, there needs to be at least the beginnings of a revolution in consciousness. You have to undergo a sort of initiation. So what is this revolution? Well, I think it's most succinctly described in probably the most famous, something most popular of all Buddhist texts in the Dhammapada. Right at the beginning, in the very first verses of the Dhammapada, in the verses of the pairs, the paired verses. So the first verses of this most popular of Buddhist scriptures goes like this. Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind and produced by mind. If one speaks or acts with an impure mind, suffering follows, even as the cartwheel follows the hoop of the ox drawing the cart. Experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind, and produced by mind. If one speaks or acts with a pure mind, happiness follows, like a shadow that never departs. So this is the essential inner revolution, the essential initiation into Buddhism, if you like. Understanding that your mind is absolutely central to your experience. By mind, of course, the Buddha doesn't simply mean intellect. Thoughts, he means heart, emotion, feeling, imagination, all of that. It's your mind, it's my mind, that in the end is the primary condition. The primary condition for happiness, well-being, meaning, satisfaction, it's the primary condition for suffering, misery, dissatisfaction, meaninglessness, and so on. Some people sometimes they like to go kind of metaphysical about these first verses, about mind, that it's all mind, wow, cosmic. But I don't think the Buddha is being metaphysical here at all. He's being intensely practical. He's pointing to us and saying that we are responsible. We are responsible for our happiness. We are responsible for our misery. We are responsible for our lives. He's pointing to the essential driving force in ourselves, our minds, our hearts, all happiness, all misery, is generated in the minds of individual men and women. All the tyranny, all the prejudice, all the war that exists in this world comes from the minds of people, the minds of human beings. And similarly, all the love, all the goodness that exists in this world comes from our minds. Now, this realization is tremendously liberating. It certainly was for me when I discovered Buddhism, not in these two verses. It was in other texts, but this sense that everything in the end is down to me. There's a tremendous feeling of excitement to discover that life had not been ordained by a creator God, that it wasn't either reducible to utterly physical and material forces. Neither did I have to follow the tracks that others had laid down for me-- my family, my class, my nationality, my education, or lack of it. It was open. It was open. I could really do what I wanted with this, with my life. There was this mind, this heart, this chitter that was not fixed in any way, but alive, full of potential, capable of open-ended transformation, endless adventure. I think that's really what it came down to when I started to read Buddhist literature and started to get into Buddhism, this sense of endless adventure. And it was down to me whether I wanted to participate in it. So it's very important to recall these feelings, to remember these feelings if you've had them. And I'm sure you have. You wouldn't be here, I think, without that sense. It's this kind of essential Buddhist realization. The Dharma is an individual path. It's you owning your own mind, working on your own mind, alert and responsive to your own mind, responsible for the content of your mind. And it's, of course, why meditation is so central. Meditation is you with your mind, you with yourself, alone with yourself. It doesn't even matter if other people are in the room. You are there alone with yourself, working with yourself. So to be in the Sangha paradoxically, you need to realize that essential aloneness. The Sangha are the alone together to wake up to the fact that it's really down to our own individual spiritual transformation. And it's interesting to see where the Buddha goes with his sayings in the Dhammapada after these verses on mind. He goes straight to relations with others. This is really, I think, extraordinarily significant. He doesn't push on into metaphysical speculation. He goes straight to our relations with others. So after those two verses on mind, you get this. Those who entertain such thoughts, as he abused me, he beat me, he conquered me, he robbed me, will not steal their hatred. Those who do not entertain such thoughts, as he abused me, he beat me, he conquered me, he robbed me, will steal their hatred. This is if the Buddha is saying here, well, the first thing you need to attend to, if you've realized the centrality of mind, the first thing you need to attend to is blame. Is blaming others? Is retaliation in relation to others? Is resentment towards others? And the ill will that follows with all that, from all that. If you've seen how central your mind is to a meaningful life, if you want to see that, then you have to pay attention to things like blame, grudge, and resentment. What keeps you apart from others? To whatever degree they're there, it means that you haven't really got hold of the fact that life is in your own hands. There's an element of blaming others. You've not really undergone that revolution in consciousness. It hasn't gone far enough. It's so easy to blame. He, she, made me like this. They did this to me, the government, then. This is the disease that afflicts life, particularly modern life. We seem to be in a culture of blame. You hear it pouring out of the radio, if you ever have the misfortune to listen to radio five lives sometimes, some of the sort of phoneme programs. I mean, 606, I think, that's a football phoneme, by the way. It's one of the very worst. I am unfulfilled. I am unhappy because of you. Even, nobody says this, but I think sometimes it amounts this, I'm unenlightened because of you. Some people get completely stuck in blame. And it's very hard to make any real spiritual progress while that is there. You can't even see the sangha when it's staring you in the face when you are in blame. There's a saying of the great Naropa, which I meditate on pretty frequently. Sanghsara is the tendency to find fault with others. Sanghsara is the tendency to find fault with others. Fault-fighting creates Sanghsara. It creates the wheel of life. Could there be an opposite? Nirvana is the tendency to find quality in others. Sometimes, of course, sometimes someone really does hurt you, even very badly. Sometimes you really are on the end of injustice. What then? What then? Well, the Buddha in the Buddhist tradition remains absolutely clear. The same applies. Those who entertain such thoughts, as he abused me, he beat me, he conquered me, he robbed me, will not steal their hatred. Those who do not entertain such thoughts, as he abused me, he beat me, he conquered me, he robbed me, will steal their hatred. The same applies. You cannot deal with this sort of thing, with even terrible injustices done to you, even actual palm being done to you through vengeance, through grudge, through payback. This goes, I know, right against the grain. It's powerful, challenging teaching. It's radical teaching this. This isn't easy dharma. Buddhism is not an easy tradition in which to practice, because it's saying that under no circumstances is it skillful to indulge in resentment and grudge and wanting to get at people when you feel, when you think, when they have got at you. I heard a wonderful story recently about a Tibetan monk, somebody met a Tibetan monk who was incarcerated in a labor camp under the Chinese. And the people asking, were you afraid when you were in the camp? And he said, yes, I was afraid. I was afraid at times. I was afraid that I would lose bodicitta. I was afraid that I would lose the heart of wisdom and compassion. Not I was afraid of dying. Not that I was afraid of pain. I was afraid of losing that heart of loving kindness. That's what he was afraid of. That's an extraordinary thing to say. So to enter the sangha, to truly enter the sangha, means there needs to be commitment to the great power of loving kindness. And the renunciation, the giving up of that eye for an eye tooth for a tooth, morality, so-called morality. The next verse in the Dhammapada is one of the most famous. Not by hatreds or hatreds ever pacified here. They are pacified by love. This is the eternal law. Not by hatreds or hatreds ever pacified here. They are pacified by love. This is the eternal law. This puts it so succinctly. A Buddhist is one who lives by this law. He knows they know this law. So a sangha are a people who live by this, live by this law of loving kindness. So they are a people of loving kindness. People who cherish life, cherish all life, who cherish one another, who are fully aware and alert to the fragility of life, as well as the sanctity of life. So the next verse in the Dhammapada goes, others do not realize that we are all heading for death. Those who do realize it will compose their quarrels. Others do not realize that we are all heading for death. Those who do realize it will compose their quarrels. Perhaps we could put it more positively. Others do not realize that we're all heading for death. Those who do realize it will create a vibrant living harmony. So I hope from these verses you've got some idea of what I mean by initiation into sangha. A sangha is not simply a friendly Buddhist group. It's people, individuals who've woken up to themselves, woken up to the centrality of mind, who have a sense of personal responsibility, expressed as radical loving kindness, and as radical forgiveness of others, who have a sense of the sanctity and fragility, of life. And so they treat it always with respect and reverence. So what I want to do now is turn to what I'm calling some sangha presets, things that we can do in the sangha so that it will remain a sangha, become even a true sangha, a better sangha. So I'm going to talk about seven presets. And these are the first seven of what are known as the conditions for the stability of the sangha. There's over 40 of them. But I'm just going to go into the first seven. I'll be a bit briefer here, just to give you a bit of a taste of them. Let's look at my notes. So these seven conditions crop up in the beginning of a sita, a teaching of the Buddha, a discourse of the Buddha, called the Maha Paranirvana sita, which describes the Buddha's last days. It's a very long sita. But it opens in a very interesting way. The Buddha is seated with his attendant, Ananda, at Rajgree here at the vultures peak. I think I'm not quite sure. But certainly at Rajgree here. And along comes the chief minister of the Kingdom of Magadha, named Vasakara. And Vasakara says to the Buddha, an most extraordinary inquirer, he said, "The King Ajata Sattu is thinking of invading the Vaji Republic. He's thinking of completely destroying them so that they are completely wiped out. What do you think?" So, I mean, you might be a bit shocked that the Buddha got asked this sort of thing, but you have to remember the Buddha was an Indian holy man, so to speak. So he would get asked all sorts of questions. Very, very skillful in his reply. He just kept asking Ananda a set of questions about the Vaji Republic and what they were, these different questions, about how the Vajis came together, how the Vajis were a confederation of different tribes. And he just keeps saying to Ananda, "Have you heard that they meet together in frequent assemblies, in harmony with one another?" And Ananda said, "Yes, I have heard that, I have heard that." So they went through it. And Vasakara says, "Oh, well, there's no chance that we can wipe them out. They're two together, only if we can turn them against one another can we destroy them." Which, later on, apparently did happen. And the Kingdom of Magadha expanded. That's another story. But after Vasakara had gone, the Buddha kind of seemed to dwell on this for a bit. And he said to Ananda, "Call all the monks, call all the monks in the area." He was going to give a teaching. It was if this little event had kind of sparked him off in a particular way. And he said to the assembled monks, "I will teach you seven things, seven dummas." That's the word often translated as things. You could translate it as conditions or even trainings. Seven dummas, which lead to the stability of the order. But whereby the sander will prosper. So I'm going to go through these seven things. There's just an interesting little detail about this. One scholar thinks it's very significant that the Buddha gives this teaching on the stability of the sanga to his monks after this meeting with this chief minister. Because this is everybody would have known that the Kingdom of Magadha would have destroyed this confederation. Which was a much more sort of democratic arrangement from these big kingdoms arising in northern India. In this particular scholar is of the view that they would have known that. And as if the Buddha is saying, "Look, you as a sanga really have to carry on this as it were more democratic tradition." That's not the word that would have been used. But something far more, much less centralized monarchy. Very interesting that, but that's another story. So the first of them, "As long as you hold regular and frequent assemblies, you may be expected to prosper and not decline." Prosper, of course, here doesn't mean prospering in terms of material things. It's spiritual prospering. So as long as you hold regular and frequent assemblies, you may be expected to prosper and not decline. So this means for the prospering of the sanga, you come together. You meet regularly and frequently in different groups and groupings, sometimes altogether. You give physical expression to your spiritual connection. You don't say, "Yeah, well, I'm with you in my mind." You actually do it. You actually come together. We're embodied minds. We're not disembodied spaced out minds. We're actually embodied. So we actually have to do it embodied. We have to come together. And of course, coming together in the sanga is extraordinary beneficial. It's in these contexts that Dharma teachings are given. There's instruction. There can even be inspiration if people are in touch with inspiration. There's sharing of experience. It's so good to be able to share your experience with others and hear their experience. And of course, it's tremendously supportive. You can find it just very, very supportive being with your friends in the sanga, just being in the sanga. I know how I do. But its life is very demanding. We've already seen that. It's very challenging. It's so easy to lose one's way. So the sanga can support you, can remind you of what it is you're actually doing. People don't realize, I've actually underlined this in my notes for some reason. People don't realize that their spiritual life is dependent on supportive conditions. People don't realize that their spiritual life is dependent on supportive conditions. It's only when you're a stream entrant, which is sometimes described as being independent of the teacher in the dispensation. That you've made realization absolutely a part of you. So it doesn't matter what's going on. It will never go away. It's only then that you don't need supportive conditions. We need supportive conditions. And so often, I live at a retreat center. And so often friends of mine turn up on retreat. And a day in, two days in, they say, oh, I'm just remembering one Buddhist. They've actually forgotten why they were a Buddhist. Oh, you know, it's because they just-- and I said, you know, you always ask them the question, when was the last time you were on retreat? Oh, about two years ago. So there's your answer. So we come together, come together with other Buddhists to meditate, study, perform pooja, and so on. They're just being together. The second condition is, as long as you meet in harmony, part in harmony, and carry on your business in harmony, you may be expected to prosper and not decline. So I really like this. You take great care at the beginning, at the middle, and at the end, in a sangha gathering. You take great care to be in harmony. Your harmony is at the beginning. You're friendly and courteous and welcoming when you meet up. I mean, there's nothing worse is there when you kind of go in. You're looking forward to the gathering. And somebody says, oh, hi. You know, and it seems they're not pleased to see you. It gets you off on the wrong foot. You know, have I done something wrong? You know, what have I done? You don't know. You have to make it clear. I'm really pleased to see you. It's good to be together. And in the middle, maybe when you're together sometimes, maybe some tricky things go on. Maybe you have to talk about some tricky things. It does happen, tricky things, you know, come up as we know. Well, take great care about how you speak. Take great care about how you look. Really don't do anything to feed or to create any disharmony. And at the end, when you park, this is especially important. Make the last words, the last deeds harmonious. Don't part on a bad note. It's really-- it's not a good idea to part on a bad note, you know, to make sure you get that last word in, that final telling point to win the argument. You could just create a sourness which will go on for years. Might not even see them again. Remember about that business of others do not realize we're all heading for death, et cetera. You know, make sure that the last point of contact is really harmonious. And to keep this harmony, to prevent disharmony, a lot of this is down to mindfulness. I think a lot of disharmony that I come across, it's not malicious, it's not nasty. It's not that people are trying to really stab each other in the back, it's just unthinking. Kind of casual words and deeds, but just as unwittingly are upsetting people, well, you've got to take responsibility for that. You've got to be aware of that effect. And more importantly, or just as well, you have to have a feeling for what harmony is. I mean, I don't think, you know, harmony sounds as though practicing harmony sounds like a really kind of heavy moral point. But it's not really. I think having a feeling for harmony is almost like an aesthetic appreciation. You know, you have a feeling for what's appropriate to generate harmony. There's a smoothness to being in harmony. A courtesy, a consideration. Thirdly, as long as you do not authorize, what has not been authorized, but proceed according to what has been authorized by the rules of training, you may be expected to prosper and not decline. It all sounds rather heavy, doesn't it? This sort of language authorized. Even legalistic, even sounds really rather conservative. You know, it means, oh, gosh, can't change anything. But what's being got out here is being faithful to the tradition, to the lineage of teaching, if you like, to what is essential to the Sangha's training, to what's essential to the Dharma. For us in the Western Buddhist order, the tradition comes down to, in the end, to going for refuge to the Buddha Dharma and Sangha, and that finding expression in the practice of the precepts, as it's been transmitted to us and expounded to us by our founder, Urghy and Sangha Rachta, Banti Sangha Rachta. That's the essence of it, which is actually extraordinarily broad. There's an enormous amount of room there for all sorts of different expressions. But there really is something sort of central to what we do. So we need to check that what we do really is an expression of our going for refuge and to the observance of the precepts. Sometimes people use these terms vaguely, yeah, yeah, I'm doing this, you know, I'm eating meat at the moment. I'm kind of exploring my going for refuge in a different way. So I'm going clubbing, trying out drugs, because I want to kind of explore my going for refuge in a different way. Well, you know, I'm taking extreme examples. In fact, it's simply something they want to do. They feel like doing. No, you have to look into the meaning of the teaching. It's not really a prohibition that the Buddha's bringing up here. It's really a call to really understand the tradition that you're engaged in, to look into it, to go into it deeply. Do you actually know what it is, deeply? Keep going into it deeply. One should aspire to be always in a state of being a beginner, I think, when you were a Buddhist practitioner. So often I think we get into difficulties because we assume that we know that we know what the Dharma is. And very often we haven't looked into it very deeply at all. So, fourthly, as long as you honor, respect, revere and salute, the elders of long standing who are long ordained fathers, mothers, he doesn't say that in the text, but I'm saying it, and leaders of the order. They may be expected to prosper and not decline. So here the Buddha is saying that there is such a thing as spiritual hierarchy. There are those in the Sangha, men and women, with greater experience than ourselves, who have a deeper understanding of the Dharma than ourselves. And it's worthwhile looking to them for teaching and inspiration. In the text, the Buddha, of course, is operating within a very different society from ours. He's operating in a very traditional society. So it's quite natural for him to use words like honor, respect, revere and salute and so on. It's not like that for us, I don't think. And it's very important that any feelings of respect that we might have for those of greater experience come naturally. They shouldn't be forced and they certainly shouldn't be imposed. They should not be artificial. Neither will those with greater experience feel any need to announce their greater experience. Hello, everybody, I have got greater experience. And far less still make any kind of claims to spiritual attainment. Spiritual hierarchy is not a power hierarchy. It's not about establishing fixed positions to feel safe and secure. I'm here, you're there, I'm here, you're there, that sort of thing. It's not about control. If we practice the Dharma, if we're focusing on enlightenment, if we're revereing the Buddha, quite naturally, quite happily, we will discover those of greater experience than ourselves. And we'll want to listen to them. We'll want to learn from them. And if such people are around, if we're in a dynamic relationship with them, we'll find that there's a continual deepening and flourishing of the Sangha. Fifthly, as long as you do not fall prey to craving which arises in you and leads to rebirth, you may be expected to prosper and not decline. So here the Buddha is describing what the spiritual life is lived for. It's lived for the removal of the ending of craving. For a Sangha to spiritually prosper, we need all to be working on the ending of craving. Now, craving isn't simply a sort of moral issue, you know, very often if you're having discussions of craving in study group, it will sort of center around what do you do when you pass the bakers and there's a cream bun in the window and all that sort of thing. Though for some of us, that might be the main issue. But anyway, the Buddha's insight into craving is much deeper than that. We don't just crave sense experience. That would be easy to deal with, it was just a matter of sense experience. We bring so much to that with other kinds of craving. We crave the Buddha says fixed being, bother. We want things to stay the same. We want security. So we deny the reality, the truth of impermanence and insubstantiality. We crave sometimes not being. We crave a kind of annihilation. We just want everything to go away. So we just want to kind of go to sleep, just to kind of dull ourselves. Which of course, things don't go away. Doesn't work like that. So a Sangha, if it really is a Sangha, we're working on this craving. There's tendency to try and fix everything, to try and make it just stay like that or to make it go away. So a Sangha, if it's a true Sangha, needs to be, will be ever changing. It will be always alive and we need to delight in this and actually enjoy this. It's not something fixed for all time. It's not a sort of safe Buddhist group. If it becomes that, it means that the individuals within it are not transforming themselves. So to practice Sangha, we need a keen awareness of change. A keen awareness of the change going on in life. Continually exploring the Dharma together. In that context, delighting even in the ever-changing ground. Delighting in the fact that there's really no ground. I mean, it can be really freaky sometimes when somebody who's kind of really irritated you because there's been a certain way. Then they change. And actually, you could kind of realise you don't want them to have changed. It was kind of convenient when they were like that because you could blame them. But no, we need to be delighting in the ever-changing ground. So this leads to the sixth of the conditions, the sixth precept. As long as you are devoted to forest dwellings, you may be expected to prosper and not decline. So forest dwellings means that the monks would delight in going off on retreat, going into solitary retreat, going into meditation retreat. Well, maybe we can't. Maybe some of us have gone into solitary retreat, some of us might not be ready to do that. But what it's really pointing to is the importance of meditation. The importance of keeping alive our individual spiritual practice, of being really devoted to our individual spiritual practice and really working for spiritual realisation, for enlightenment, of really enjoying that aloneness, being devoted to that experience of aloneness, even when you're in the midst of others. And of course, when you go off alone on a retreat, well, you really experience that very powerfully. Interesting point, I just want to throw in here. You find in another text a very interesting thing which they call the call of the Sangha. And this just underlines how important the Sangha is in the ancient Buddhist tradition. It's said, even if you were about to attain our hat ship in retreat, enlightenment, if the Sangha called you, you would go and find this really very interesting. Of course, it raises all sorts of interesting issues, but the Sangha is that important. Seventhly, as long as you continue to establish yourself in the mindfulness of this attitude, let good friends in the Dharma life come here in the future and let those who are here live happily. You may be expected to prosper and not decline. So this means keeping alive an attitude, a deep appreciation of the Sangha, of those in the Sangha now, having met her for the Sangha in our own order every month, we have an order met above now. Will we dwell in metta for all other order members throughout the world? All the members engage in this. But you can have other metta-barvness. You can have a community metta-barvness. If you live in a community, center metta-barvness where you're concentrating on metta for everybody who comes to the Sangha, to the Sangha, the whole Sangha around the center. Extraordinarily important, I think, to do that. So that you really appreciate who's here, who's around, and at the same time, you want others to come. It's not an exclusive, cliquey group. You're always in a mood of invitation, of inviting others to come. So a true Sangha needs to always be opening out to others wanting to share with others. And this last point is a very, very great importance. Often we don't appreciate what we have, even what we are. If we stand back, it's a remarkable thing that we can come together in this way, that people can come together as a Sangha, where there's this commitment to radical loving kindness. Not to do this occasionally, but doing it year after year and really working at it. Well, that's a really remarkable thing, and we really need to value that. It's a very rare thing in this world. Of course, we're not the only people doing this, but it doesn't matter. We are people doing it. There's so much division in the world, so much violent division. It's a wonderful thing when people come together with a commitment to this deep, radical loving kindness and harmony. We may be very small as a Sangha. We may be very imperfect as a Sangha, but nonetheless, we are attempting to be a Sangha. And with this comes a great responsibility, the responsibility to create and to maintain a deeply harmonious community, not only for ourselves to enjoy with one another, but for the benefit of others. Harmony, that deep, vibrant harmony, where we're all uniquely ourselves, is very, very attractive to others. It's very attractive to people. Seeing this so many times, I can remember one time leaving a retreat with a group of friends on a retreat, and we kind of took over a couple of tables in a carriage on a train, and we were just enjoying one another. We were, you know, we weren't rowdy or anything like that, but we were really enjoying one another. We were having a bit of a laugh, you know, skillfully. But it was very warm, and I noticed out of the corner of my eye the people that in the nearby table, they were kind of looking at us. They tried not to because they were English, but they could not, and in the end they say, they just said, "Who are you? "Who are you?" And we told them, and they said, "Oh, well, that explains it. "You seem to be enjoying each other so much "in such a pleasant way." You know, you've probably experienced this at talks and classes. You know, you might even experienced it yourself when you came along, that what really attracted you was the fact that people got on so well together. So it seemed to be so happy together. You know, it embodied the Dharma for you. You start thinking, "Well, what are they on?" Whatever it is, I want some. So this is really, this, this, the Sangha is one of the most powerful ways you can teach the Dharma. It's one of the most powerful ways you can keep the Dharma alive. Not just for your own sakes, but for the benefit of everybody. So we have a great responsibility in our Sangha. I remember many, many years ago, I hadn't been ordained very long, maybe a year or two. I was on an order convention. It was my first order convention, so this was a gathering of all order members. You know, people came from all over not just this country, but from other countries as well. It was down in Sussex. And at that time, Sangha Ache de Bonti gave a series of really important talks, talks which, you know, really, well, we still run on, if you like, within our Sangha. And one of them was a talk which people don't often listen to. It was called A Vision of History. And I've never forgotten that talk because his vision of history was a vision of, if you like, the conflict, even the war, between the group, if you like, forces of oppression in one way or another, and the Sangha, the spiritual community, the community of individuals leading a spiritual life together. He talked about not just Buddhist spiritual communities. He mentioned even some manifestations of the early church, the early Christian church as being examples of spiritual communities. I think he even mentioned Sufi, spiritual communities. He certainly mentioned Manikism. Manikism as a spiritual community. Manikism, well, people don't know really what it is because it was more or less obliterated by a combination of Zoroastrianism and Islam in different parts of the world. It flourished in Central Asia, in Persia, in China. Money was an artist. They were radically non-violent, vegetarian. But he described them as a Sangha. And one of the points he wanted to make when he mentioned Manikism was that the Sangha, the spiritual community, does not have the same rules as the group. Our rules are the rules of radical, loving kindness. The rules of the group involve violence and oppression. And he was more or less saying, you are part of a much bigger tradition. A much bigger tradition. Yes, a Buddhist tradition of spiritual community, but a human tradition of spiritual community, of people coming together as individuals to develop, to unfold, in complete harmony. And he was saying, well, this is what you have to carry on. This is what you have to keep as it were fighting for in your own way, not in the manner of the group. So this, I found that a very, very powerful lecture that we're part of this much bigger tradition. And I'm going to end my talk in perhaps rather unusual way for a Buddhist Sangha day. With a poem, a poem from a Sufi tradition, which is actually the title of my talk. It's called "The People of Loving Kindness." And it's written by a contemporary Persian Sufi teacher by the name of Javadna Bunch. And when I read this some years ago, I was very, very struck by his vision of Sangha. There's a fair bit of Sufi terminology in this, and you might not, that might pass you by. But I think you'll get the sense of a people of loving kindness, of a spiritual community. We are the people of loving kindness, guides of one another through the purity of love steps, all helpers of one another. Though embodied in different bodies, we are a single spirit, heart and soul, possesses of the hearts of one another. We are one people, with no you and I, only we, all equals in love, all beloveds of one another. Only we may pass through the veil of the royal pavilion, all of us inextricably linked, all sympathizers with one another. (upbeat music) We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freeputus.io.com/donate. And thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [ Silence ]