Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Sharing Without Reservation and#8221; is an inspiring short talk by Sue Susnik, a mitra in the Triratna Buddhist Community. This was given on a New Society Weekend 2011 from members in the Young Buddhistand#8217;s Sangha.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
Sharing Without Reservation
[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. [music] So I'm talking about Dharma, or as it was called this morning in Badger Grupter's talk, sharing without reservation. Now earlier this year, I made a set of promises, and that included the line, "All that I am, and all that I have, I share with you." And that's a promise that I made to my husband when we got married. Now when we went to see the register, to agree our promises, to agree the wording for the ceremony, that was one of the lines that I changed. Because originally, it said, "All that I am, I give to you, and all that I have, I share with you." And I thought, "I really can't say that because all that I am, I want to share with you. You here, you in the movement." And if I give all of that to youngers, my husband, then literally speaking, I can't give that to you, so I couldn't make that promise to him. But he was quite happy with the promises that we did make, and all his work. [laughter] So we have this ideal of common ownership, of shared ownership, of sharing without reservation. And that's the ideal, and Donna is the practice that leads us along the path to get to that ideal. As much as meditation is the practice that can take us into the higher states, which can take us through to stream entry and through to enlightenment, Donna is the practice that takes us into that state of sharing, sharing without reservation. And Donna is incredibly important for us to practice, particularly in our society here. And why it's important is because it serves as the antidote to some of the key aspects of suffering in our society. So one of these aspects was mentioned this morning of consumerism. And Donna goes completely in the face of consumerism. It goes completely against the "I want, I need, I have to have, I have to do, I have to get hold of." It goes completely against all of that and just says, "Here, I'm sharing." So as well as the antidote to consumerism, it's the antidote to individualism. The "I, I, I" that comes through the "me", the "mine", the "my". It's the antidote to that because it just somehow, Donna helps us to make that disappear. It no longer becomes an issue of "I do this, and you do that, and this is my GT, and these are your GTs, and these are my things, and those are your things." It just becomes stuff, things, doing, being, it becomes anger. And in that, Donna is the antidote to aloneness. It's the antidote to the lack of connection, which we might all experience in our lives, in our buildings, in our houses, our flats, our office cubicles. Donna is the antidote to that, it helps us come out of ourselves. It brings us out of what we're doing in our little world. And it's this connection back and forth, because with Donna there is an outflowing, and there's an inflowing. And you have to get used to the inflowing bit, to be any good at the outflowing bit. You have to learn how to receive and how to let things go. So Donna helps with that as well, it helps break down that boundary, helps break down the directionality. So sharing without reservation, perhaps means less of a question of how can I get the best for myself in my life, in my world? And more so, it means how best can I use my resources, in service to the Buddha, to the Dharma, and to the Sangha. Now a few years ago somebody said to me, "Your greatest resource, what's your greatest resource?" And so I'll probably my degree, maybe I speak a language or two that's not English. I said, "No, your greatest resource is you, the whole of you." All these extra things, they're kind of add-ons that you can just accumulate as and when you need them. So your greatest resource, the greatest thing that you can bring in, in service to the three tools is you, in whatever way that manifests in your life. And that means your mind, it means your body, it means your skills, it means your possessions, it means your learning. Whatever, just bring it in. When I was seeing my PhD, somebody asked me, "If you had to give up doing your PhD in training for ordination, what would you give up?" I said, "My PhD." I think that was the right answer. I finished my PhD, so you can do both. And later on in my PhD, somebody asked me, "Why are you doing it?" Because by this point, I'd sort of become much more in line with the movement and I had this real passion to serve the movement. I really wanted to put myself, to give myself, share myself with the movement as fully as I could. So why was I doing this PhD on environmental impact, studying things in a laboratory, pouring things out, washing up my glasses afterwards, spending a lot of time being a bit bored? And the answer was that actually, through doing a PhD, I was honing my mind. I was honing my intellect. I was honing my study faculties. I was sort of rubbing up against all the other academic minds and sharpening. And that's what I realised I was doing in the PhD for. It was so that I could apply that mind in service of the Dharma. I went to one thing and I asked them, "What should somebody with a reasonable intellect do to the sort of best serve the Dharma or serve the Buddha?" He said, "Study the Dharma." But that was kind of obvious. Sorry, won't you? Study the Dharma and use it to perceive and get rid of wrong view. Now let me get back to Dharma because it's here somewhere on my sheet. So yeah, sharing with our reservation in Dharma, the good side of that are one of the positive benefits of it, as well as just all the selfless stuff and all the back which is a bit beyond words in a way. The Dharma opens itself to reducing the benefits that kind of our stuff, my stuff, can do you for other people. So it's like, "Well my hundredth grade might sit in the bank account and do something, you know, get like about one pence of interest for me." Or I could go and put that into a project somewhere and it'll do something far more. And then I can rejoice in that and I can enjoy that and I can think, "Yes, we're really doing something here, we're doing something together." And even though I might not be able or I might not choose to take part in some things, I can support them. I can give what I've got or what I have or what I am to help support that however best I can. So we can practice Dharma, practice sharing by actually getting on with it, getting involved with stuff and doing things. And a lot of the institutions, the ideas of the new society are all to do with that. You can get involved with communities, we can get involved with team-based right livelihood, we can get involved with centers, we can get involved in retreats and all sorts of things. But if we choose not to get involved because we're choosing to do other things, we can firmly put ourselves behind it. Not just emotionally, "Oh yeah, I think that's a good thing to do." And not just sort of encouragingly, but practically put ourselves behind it. We can put our money into projects elsewhere. We can put whatever resources we've got available, if that's a bit of space, maybe a bit of garden land to make an allotment, some office space somewhere. Maybe someone amongst us has actually got a spare freehold premises or leasehold premises to chat for charity shopping so somebody else could come along and use that space. And we can really share what we have amongst us to help one another to do that. Somewhere, Bantu has written in his conversation with Sidi Samper a couple of years ago, he said that what is the use of emotionally supporting somebody if you're not practically supporting somebody? How can you emotionally support somebody if you're not practically behind them as well? I think that's a very interesting and strong challenge to us, to get behind things practically as well as getting behind things emotionally. So through doing these things, creating the new society between us, we can open up all our resources, all of ourselves, to the service of the Buddha, to the service of the Dharma, and to the service of the Sangha, through our tree we're at the community, which is a fantastic movement and resource in this world today. And sometimes, maybe we don't recognise all the time, we've got this precious opportunity to practice the Dharma, but also we've got this amazing opportunity to practice it in the tree we're at in the community, which is pretty good. So in practicing the Dharma, we're of the best service, as best as we can, through the three jewels. And that's what I have to say today about Dharma, about sharing that participation. So I have that promise, all that I am and all that I have, I share with you. And that's my aspiration in this community as well. Thank you. We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this screen. 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