Trust in Sangha

I want to post today, but I need to make it short and quick. I am a writer by profession as well as avocation and temperament, and today I have a deadline to meet. Revision as practice -- now that is an idea worth exploring. (Or, procrastination as practice, maybe?) But not today, not here.

So I am posting one of my favorite passages from Thay, about the role of Sangha. Thay has said that of the three jewels, the most important is Sangha. His is truly the bodhisatva vision -- I am within you, and you are within me. We go nowhere alone.

When we are in a Sangha,
we are like a drop of water in a river.
We allow the Sangha to hold us and transport us.
Don’t be like a drop of oil in the river,
not mixing with the other drops of water --
that way you arrive nowhere.
Allow yourself to be transported by the Sangha
so that your pain, sorrow, and suffering
are recognized and embraced.

You have to trust the Sangha.
Imagine you are a drop of water
that would like to go to the ocean.
If you go alone, you might evaporate,
but if you allow yourself to be
embraced and transported by the Sangha,
then you will get there.
You suffer only when you are a separate drop of water.

Please remember this.

 painting: River Run by Devon Featherstone

Devon Featherstone is an award-winning, self-taught artist based in British Columbia. Click here to contact her about works available for purchase. 

[Quotation from Peace Begins Here. The line breaks are mine.]

Why practice?

Why practice mindfulness? Why step, stride, stumble along this path marked out by Siddhārtha Gautama 2,500 years ago?

Different traditions seem to have different answers. Different individuals have different answers. Presumably, they are really all the same answer.

Why practice?

• To wake up. (I thought Suzuki Roshi might say this.)
  
• To develop Compassion. (I thought the Dalai Lama might say this.)
• To grasp ultimate reality. (Robert Thurman?)
• To live with ease. (Sharon Salzberg?)
• To become enlightened. (Whatever that means.)
• To become lighter.
• To be reborn in a happier form.
• To cease to be reborn.
• To suffer less from the slings and arrows of one's own arsenal.
• To suffer less from slings and arrows period.
• To be directed.
• To be free.
• To escape.
• To return.
• To crave less.
• To crave but react less.
  
• To relax.
• To sleep better.
• To sleep when one is asleep, to be awake when one is awake.
• To become a buddha.
• To be a buddha.
• To become a bodhisatva.
• To be a bodhisatva.

And why do I practice? All of the above.

But that answer is too easy. Sometimes I don't really know why I practice. But I think that Thay is on to something when he says, "Because I like it." Because it brings well-being. And that is the sum of the Buddha's way: if something increases well-being in you, keep doing it. If it increases ill-being in you, stop doing it (or at least do it less).

From a dharma talk given on June 11, 2009:

Why [do] you practice sitting meditation? The best answer is: Because I like it. Why do you practice walking meditation? Because I like it. . . . The practices of mindful walking, mindful breathing, smiling, bring well-being, happiness.

I like this. (Tee hee.) I guess in this instance, it is okay to have a preference. But this would be a deeply considered preference, not a conditioned preference. I guess.

Fodder for a future post ...

Poetry Friday: Three Haiku

Thanks to the storm formerly known as Hurricane Ida, we've had a very blustery day. I was out in it, riding to and from tai chi class. I watched the trees grow more bare with every gust. It was haiku, that is, bittersweet, to know that when the color and cover of the leaves are gone, they won't return for a long while.

Issa would know what I mean.





















Of his 9,300 poems, here are three.

blowing from the east
west south north...
autumn gale

vast sky
vast earth
autumn passes too

behind me
the autumn wind blows
me home

The translator, David G. Lanoue, suggests that on one level, "home" in the last poem means death, our final destination. Tradition probably supports that interpretation. But at the same time, having just been out in the wind and having it behind me only half of my journey, I think that "home" might indeed mean home -- the sense that having fought one's way to whatever errand one needed to run, one is now happy to be hurried home, no matter how humble "home" may be.

Then there is Thay's sense of "home." The autumn wind nudging us, pushing us, back home, to the present moment. If you're not paying attention, you'll fall down.

Translations by David G. Lanoue. Visit his website to search through them all.