In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Why Have a Sangha?and#8221; Sangharakshita explores the nature of spiritual friendship and why it is so essential to spiritual life. From the talk and#8220;The Spiritual Communityand#8221; given in 1966 as part of the series and#8220;Introducing Buddhism.and#8221;
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Why Have a Sangha?
(upbeat music) Dharma Bites 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. But now we come to the why of the spiritual community, the why of the Sangha. Why do we have a Sangha at all? Especially why do we have it in the more mundane sense? Why should there be a spiritual community at all? Now, it's quite easy to see in a sense. Why there should be a third Jewell? Why should have, say, a community of people at different levels, the social ecclesiastical monastic, high spiritual and so on? It's not so easy to see why all these should constitute not just a third Jewell, but also a third refuge. Now, what do we mean by this? We take refuge in the Buddha because the Buddha represents the spiritual ideal of a nice and humanity that we want to attain. We take refuge in the Dharma because that represents the path we want to follow and both of these are necessary to the spiritual life. You must have an ideal. You must have a path to the realization of that ideal. This rather reminds me of something I heard many years ago from a very famous South Indian teacher called Swami Ram Das. He has many, I would say, tens of thousands of followers in India. He died only a couple of years ago. And once he was asked the question, how is it that so many who take up the spiritual life don't make any real progress yet after you, they seem to be just standing still. So he said it's quite simple, two reasons. They don't make any spiritual progress because in the first place, they've no clearly defined ultimate object towards which they want to work. And secondly, they've no clearly defined where of getting there, this is the reason. So Swarasbuddhi's misconcent are clearly defined ultimate goal to which we want to get his Buddha hood represented by the Buddha. And our way of getting here is the Dharma, the teaching of the Buddha. Now these were not only necessary, they appear to be sufficient. Why should one have to take refuge in a spiritual community, a Sangha? Why not just have two refugees? The Buddha and the Dharma? Why have the third? Why have the Sangha? How does going for refuge to a Sangha help us? How does going for refuge to a spiritual community at whatsoever level help us? Now we mustn't be misled by words. This is what usually happens. We're usually very much misled by words. And usually we're misled by words in the form of especially the abstract noun. I read not so long ago a very amusing statement. We said that the whole of history of Buddhist philosophy could be described as a battle between Buddhism and the abstract noun. The abstract noun is perhaps our biggest enemy in Buddhism. So we mustn't forget that when we think of a spiritual community, there's no such thing as spiritual community existing up there in the air, detached as it were from person, people, communities where the Buddhist or otherwise consists of persons, consists of people. So membership of a community really means relationship with persons, people within that community. In other words, a relationship between one individual and another. So we can put our question in another way. We can ask, how is it? The entering into relationship with other people with a common ideal following a common path help us in our spiritual life. That's really the question behind this question of well, why have this third refuge going for the summary of the spiritual community? We can really formulate it in this way. How does entering into relationship with other people who also take refuge in the Buddha and the Dharma help us in our spiritual life? Now according to Buddhism, it does very definitely help. Shorty before he passed away, the Buddha spoke to the Vajis and he taught them various conditions of welfare, the Vajis were a tripe round by five charlias, some of you may know. So one of the points the Buddha stressed was that so long as the Vajis continue to meet regularly in full and frequent as employees, so long they were prosper. And he went on to apply this to his sangha, to his followers. He said, so long as you continue to meet together regularly in full and frequent as employees, to conduct your business in harmony and departing harmony is so long you will prosper. Then again, there's another very important passage where the Buddha is talking with Ananda. Ananda said to the Buddha, he said, Lord, I think that half the holy life is what is called in Sangha and Ali Kalyanamitylata, that means association with the right sort of people to put it rather crudely. So right sort of even the spiritual sense of course. So the Buddha said to Ananda, Ananda, don't talk like that. He said, association with the right sort of people, Kalyanamitylata, is not half of the holy life. He said, it's the whole of it. Birds were feather flocked together. Tell me who your friends are and I'll tell you who you are. We know it quite well, this sort of principle in this country. But here we find it applied at the highest spiritual level. Association with the right sort of people, spiritually right sort of people, is the Buddha says, with absolute touch with exaggeration, with not much the whole of the holy life. But why is it regarded as so important? What's the reason? Obviously there is an aspect of say learning from those who are more experienced than we are. And in the case of the monastic order, there is the question of gaining for oneself a more suitable environment for leaving the spiritual life. But all of these are comparatively superficial. So why then is this association with the right sort of people, this joining a spiritual community, this taking refuge in the Sangha? Why is it so important? Or why is this individual to individual contact so important? Now we can say that the answer would seem to lie in a quite simple psychological fact. And that is that we really know ourselves, only in relationship with other people. If you're living alone on a desert island, even if you do have a hundred discs with you, you'll never really know yourself. Because your self comes out in contact with, in relationship with other selves. So you can know yourself only in relationship with other people. And this is true spiritually also, in the case of spiritual relationships. Unless we know ourselves spiritually, of course there's no progress. Because the knowledge is the progress we can say. So we can verify all this quite easily from our own experience. We all know, we all have the experience, that sometimes our ideas are clarified by discussion. You get talking with someone, maybe someone asks you about Buddhism. And perhaps I'm willingly at first, you're driven or cajoled into saying something about Buddhism, you're understanding of it with many apologies, of course, lots of pummings and hines, which they will, this is what I understand about Buddhism. And sometimes it so happens, that as you get talking, as you explain, and as especially the person you're talking to, shows more and more interest, all sorts of things come out. When you haven't really realized what they're within you, this is a new aspect of yourself emerged. And you know that aspect therefore, only the result of that contact with that other person, who asks you the question about Buddhism. And sometimes you're rather surprised, as rather pleased with yourself. You think, well, I've done well, I didn't realize I knew so much, or sometimes the opposite thing happens. But let's assume that it does sometimes happen, we know from our experience that we do think, well, I hadn't realized I knew so much, or that I understood Buddhism so well. So it says though, the process of communication, or having to communicate with another person, activates and understanding already there. Not all we go on reading, listening to lectures, year after year, so it's something after all is being accumulated. We may not always be aware of it, but something is being deposited, something is being as you were built up. It really comes to a sort of crisis, when we're asked a question, or we've all that could draw upon, but it doesn't necessarily become conscious, it doesn't become aware, it doesn't really become part of ourselves, until we have to meet that challenge. So really, it's in this sort of contact with communication with other people that we get to know ourselves better, and unless we know ourselves, of course, all of us think, that can't be, as I've said, any spiritual progress. Now, something of this sort happens in the spiritual life, in spiritual communication, not only with regard to this whole question of knowing, but also with regard to the question of being. You've got only to be with some people for certain aspects of yourself to be vaccinated. You know this very well. I'm sure you've all had experiences of this sort, you're just with a certain person, or a certain type, certain character. What happens? The worst in you comes out. You hadn't realized, you hadn't realized before, how bad you really were. You're really shocked, you're really starting. You think, I could have said that, you think I could have done that? Well, what has happened? It was in you all the time, but it needed that person to activate you. That person's being, in proximity to yours, just touched that little raw spot and then it happened. I remember someone told me, I'm not going to mention any names, they're only the other day, they're very amusing, and they struck your little story of this sort. He said, he all started with his wanting to go to the summer school. So this particular person is employed somewhere, and he taught his employers, well, the head of time. He said, for one's time, I want that week off. I'm going to the Buddhist summer school. So here's a person who's a very good, very sincere Buddhist, who practices a lot of meditation. So what happened? The day before he was due to go on holiday, his employer asked him to do something, and obviously it was going to take much longer than one day. So he just reminded his employer that, well, tomorrow I go on holiday. So the employer apparently lost his temper and said, well, something about the summer school quite uncomfortably, and in general blew up. So this friend of mine said, well, he also blew up all over the summer school minds, all learning about Buddhism and he himself sets two minutes. And before he realized what had happened, there was a ding-dong battle of words almost of blows. But it was afterwards he realized he said to himself, well, I never. I'm meditating all these years, studying Buddhism all these years. I want the holiday hour to go to the summer school to learn about Buddhism and what's happened. That man got aimed with me, and that once activated the anger in me with all the time, I haven't overcome it. So he knew himself better. Now, this happens not only in this negative sort of way, it happens in a positive sort of way. There are some people here, again, you almost know examples from your own experience. If you're with them, they do not say anything, they need not do anything, but you feel better. You may feel happier, you may feel lighter, may feel more cheerful, more optimistic, or just better when you're with them. They're activating by their presence, something which is in you, but of which you're not usually aware. There are some people with whom you never misbehaved, they're so nice as it were, that you can't be anything else with them. They're so decent, you have to be decent with them. Their niceness, their decency, activates those very things in you. So we find this. We find it not just in this ordinary social ethical sense, but also spiritually. If you're with people who are themselves deeply spiritual, or at least who are committed spiritually, something which is in you, but an operative, will be activated. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this screen. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. And thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]