Practicing as Sangha & the Six Harmonies
June 3rd , 2000
Transcriber: Tenzin Namdrol
Edited by: Jim Roseberry
Sangha is an organism. It is a super organism and each of us is a tissue, a cell in the body of the Sangha. In the Christian Gospel we read, "whenever there are two or three of you gathered in my name..." so the numbers two and three were mentioned. In the Buddhist tradition the minimum number of individuals that can make up a Sangha is four; it is the strict minimum. Five is a comfortable number. So if you want to build a Sangha, begin with five. If it is less than five it is not a Sangha. With five members we can make decisions concerning the life of the Sangha and the practice of the Sangha. There is a procedure called Sanghakarman where everything is decided by a democratic procedure. The Sangha uses its Sangha eyes in order to make the decision. You have your insight and your experience. You combine your insight and experience with the insights and experiences of other members of the Sangha. When the Sangha makes a decision everyone has to follow.
Our retreat has the theme of the Buddha eyes but it is best to understand the Buddha eyes with the Sangha eyes. If we live in a Sangha body we usually have the Sangha eyes. The Sangha eyes are much brighter than the eyes of individuals in the Sangha. That is why you have to take refuge in the Sangha. We trust the insight of the Sangha which is the eye of the Sangha. We must learn to look at the Buddha eyes with the eyes of the Sangha. The Sangha has to meet regularly because there should be good communication within the Sangha. If there is no communication in the Sangha it is not a Sangha. The Sangha communicates in several ways. It is very important that you learn the practical and the concrete ways by which the Sangha communicates because each of us should be a Sangha builder.
There is a formula that you have to memorize. It is very simple. "Has the community assembled?" That is the question asked by a senior member of the Sangha. Another member will answer, "The Sangha has assembled." When I was a novice at the age of 16, I was very impressed by this Sanghakarman procedure. After the recitation of a gatha or a sutra the senior member of the Sangha will make a sound. There is an instrument made from a little piece of wood; we do not have an equivalent here. It may be this one and the sound is very sharp. (Sound) And everyone pays attention and then he asks, "Has the community assembled?" (Chanted in Vietnamese) "The community has assembled." The next question is asked; "Is there harmony in the Sangha?" And the other person replies (Vietnamese), "There is harmony." If the answer is negative, the meeting is canceled right away. And people have to practice Beginning Anew Reconciliation before the meeting is convened again.
I would like to repeat the first question; "Has the Sangha assembled?" The Sangha has assemble. "Is there harmony in the Sangha?" "Yes, there is harmony in the Sangha." The third question is posed; "Have those who have not received the precepts left the meeting?" And the answer is, "Yes, they have left." Only those who have received the precepts have the right of voting because you know that in the four-fold Sangha there are fully ordained monks and nuns and there are novices and lay people. And this is a Sanghakarman performed by fully ordained monks or nuns. That is why the third question is; "Have the ones who have not been fully ordained left?" And the answer should be positive. Anyone who has not been ordained as a bikshu or a fully ordained monk or nuns has left. So novices should not be there. The lay people should not be there. Only fully ordained monks or nuns may be present so the meeting can go on. The fourth question is asked; "What is the purpose of the Sangha meeting today?" The answer comes; "The purpose of the Sangha meeting today is... "to recite the precepts or to discuss about whether to accept such and such a person into the Sangha. Many items may be discussed as the purpose of the meeting of the Sangha.
We have to pay attention to the fact that only fully ordained monks can make the decision. If you are a committee of novices, then only those of you who have received the novice precepts should make the decision as far as the novice community is concerned. If you are a member of the Order of Interbeing who has received the Fourteen Precepts, before doing Sanghakarman you have to make sure that other people who have not received the fourteen precepts will not be there for the decision making to be legal. And if you are one of those who has received the Five Mindfulness Trainings and if you are to make a decision for the community of the Sangha of Five Mindfulness Trainings then you have to make sure that other people who have not received the Five Mindfulness Trainings are not be present before you vote. This is a democratic procedure invented during the time of the Buddha and it has lasted for more than two thousand six hundred years.
The Sangha of fully ordained monks and nuns is the center of the four-fold Sangha It is like the roots and there are six principles that serve as the foundation for the Sangha life. We call them the six togethernesses. To be a real Sangha you should have this kind of togetherness.
The first kind of togetherness is that your bodies should be together in a place. It means living together 24 hours a day in the same place. It is mentioned very concretely that this is the body, your physical body. Your physical body should be there living with other people which means you have to live under the same roof in the same center sharing everything in order for you to be a true Sangha. That is the first condition: the first togetherness. We live together in one place so that our bodies are present. Your spirit is not enough; your body should be there, too.
The second togetherness is the mindfulness training including mindful manners. The same kind of mindfulness trainings including mindful manners should be observed by everyone in the Sangha. If you are a Sangha of fully ordained monks you should observe all of the two-hundred fifty mindfulness trainings. The fully ordained monks have two hundred and fifty mindfulness trainings to learn and teach. And the fully ordained nuns have more for their protection. This is very important because this is the basic training of the members of the Sangha. You train by mindfulness trainings. If you lead a lay life and if you choose to train yourself in the teaching of the Buddha then you have to receive the Five Mindfulness trainings and you have to come together in order to practice the recitation of the Five Mindfulness Trainings. You have to come together in order to practice the Dharma discussion about the Five Trainings so that your application of the Five Trainings in daily life will deepen day by day. You may like to organize your Mindfulness Trainings recitation at the root temple where the root Sangha is. Because Sila or the Mindfulness Trainings are the most concrete expression of mindfulness practice you are aware of the suffering caused by unmindful thinking, action or speech. That is why you are determined to practice the Five Mindfulness trainings in order to avoid thinking that way, to avoid speaking that way and to avoid acting that way in so that you and the people living together with you are protected. So when you practice mindfulness trainings you protect yourself and you protect your Sangha at the same time. That is why everyone practices the same mindfulness trainings and that is very crucial for the well being and the happiness of the Sangha.
Without the second togetherness it is not a Sangha. It is a group of people but it is not a Sangha. When we come together in order to recite the mindfulness trainings we have to go through the Sanghakarman procedure. Using this procedure during the mindfulness training recitation you may discover that someone in the Sangha is not practicing well the trainings. That kind of situation can bring suffering to the community. Therefore the whole Sangha will support that individual to practice Beginning Anew in order for him or for her to be renewed. And the Sangha will meet in order to offer that individual the kind of practice that will help him or her to renew herself or himself. It may be seven days of probation or the practice of seclusion. It may be 50 days, three months or nine months. It depends on the Vinaya. The Vinaya is a monastic code that can provide you with information so that you can help an individual or a group renew himself or itself in order to be fully integrated into the Sangha life again.
Suppose you violated a rule. Suppose you have lied, performed an act or spoken in such a way that has caused division and hatred in the community. And during the recitation of the precepts you are asked whether you have practiced well that precept in the past two weeks and you remain silent. When you remain silent it means that you have practiced well the precept. And the question may be put fourth three times. "Dear Brothers or dear Sisters, this is the second mindfulness training; have you made an effort to learn, to study, to practice it during the past two weeks?" If you have made a mistake, you have caused suffering. You have violated the precepts and if you remain silent it means that you have committed another offense: you lied. If you continue to lie for six months and one day it is discovered by another member of the community, you might confess and the period of probation or seclusion will be six months. And during this period you practice beginning anew. After that a ceremony will be performed to reintegrate you into Sangha life making the Sangha whole again. And if you study the Vinaya or the monastic code, you will see that there are those of us who spend ten or twenty years studying the Vinaya, because the Sangha life is guided by the monastic code.
There are minor violations of the monastic code and you need only to kneel down and confess to a brother or sister in the community and then you are renewed. But there are more serious violations of the monastic code which require more time in order to be purified, in order to be reintegrated fully into the Sangha life. It is the Sangha who prescribes the course of practice. It is very subtle, with many details. In the Buddhist Sangha you have masters who are specialized in the Vinaya, in the mindfulness trainings, and the mindful manners.
The practice of the mindfulness trainings are the heart of the Sangha life. If it is a real Sangha and true Sangha, then you know that the practice of the mindfulness trainings is there in the heart of the Sangha.
(Vietnamese) Your insight, your understanding and your wisdom can be translated as insight, knowledge, understanding. Because the life of a Sangha member is to practice looking deeply, practicing mindfulness, practicing concentration, and practicing insight so that you can understand deeply what is there, whether it is a flower or a mental formation. Meditation is the act of looking deeply into the nature of things in order to understand. Your happiness, sorrow, fear, hope and your anger as well as a pebble or a cloud can be the object of your inquiry, your meditation. So, because mindfulness is there concentration is there. Every member of the Sangha is getting more and more insight, more and more information every day and that should be shared.
That is why the third togetherness of the Sangha is the sharing. Everything you acquire, or obtain in your life as a practitioner you are ready to share. Dharma discussion is one of the ways of sharing. Sitting in a circle you share your practice, your difficulties, your achievement and your insights with other members of the Sangha. You have the duty of sharing and other people in the Sangha have the duty of receiving. They will profit from your insights, understanding and experiences. The sharing should be permanent. Dharma discussion is a practice where you can use your language and notions. Mankind is endowed with language. We can share our insights and our experience through Dharma discussion. The secret of the success of Western science is that since the XVII century discoveries have been shared. If you have discovered something in the domain of science you can publish your insight in a science magazine so that other scientists will be aware of that and it will help them to make their own discoveries. This is the deepest cause of the success of science in the West.
The sharing is very crucial for the growth and the happiness, the stability and the liberation of members of the same Sangha; that is why sharing should be permanent. The technique of soliciting many modest contributions in the field of science contributes to the store of human knowledge. This has been the secret of the success of Western science and a scientist whose name is _______ has said this. The systematic publication of all fragments of scientific work may well have been the key event in the history of modern science. It has led to important inventions and innovations. We have to invent the means whereby the fragments of scientific work could be published. That would help tremendously. The sharing is very important. What makes a real Sangha is if the sharing is permanent, day and night. And we do not share only with our speech, with what you say. In a practicing Sangha we share in many other ways also.
Bell
In a Dharma talk we may learn that when another person hurts you, when the person says things that can be insolent or hurting, you should go back to your mindful breathing and be yourself. Mindful breathing can help you to be yourself and not to let you to be carried away by anger. Mindful breathing and deep looking can help you to understand and overcome your anger or prevent your anger from erupting. You may learn things like that and that is a kind of sharing. But sometimes you don't share only by a Dharma talk. Living in a Sangha we can share by other means. When you are provoked by a situation where you can get angry very easily because another person wrote you a very nasty letter or said something very nasty to you in the presence of many other people, you may remain calm, fresh and smiling: that is communication. That is real communication. Members of the Sangha witness that realization in you. They see your solidity. They see you can protect yourself. They see you are well protected by the practice and they marvel at your capacity to remain calm in such a situation. They say: "If you can do it like that, why not me?" And that is communication.
I do not communicate with my Sangha with my Dharma talks alone. I communicate with my way of walking, my way of looking, my way of acting and reacting, my way of sitting and my way of handling difficulties that arise in the Sangha. So in a true Sangha communication should be permanent so that insight, not only in terms of notions and ideas, but insight as reality is communicated. There are many young members of the Sangha but the way they move around is very peaceful, very pleasant and very happy. Their way of talking and their way of reacting are so wonderful! They do not actually give Dharma talks, but they are giving Dharma talks with their bodies, their own way of walking and sitting and smiling and that is part of the third togetherness. And in a Sangha there should be that element in order for the Sangha to be a real Sangha.
We know that humans have many ways to communicate with each other. We can accumulate information. The accumulation, processing and retrieval of information is what we do every day. And now we have the internet. We can share, store and download everything in order to enrich the treasure of information we have. But information is not enough because information is presented and preserved only in notions and speech. We need more information. We need information about how to live a happy life, how to be free and compassionate. All of these things are more difficult to communicate than notions and concepts.
We know that bees communicate ceaselessly. We know that ants and termites, communicate ceaselessly. There are many ways of communicating. We humans communicate but sometimes it is difficult. Very often we feel stuck and we should learn how to remove obstacles within ourselves and within other people so that communication will be possible again. These obstacles should be called by their true names: prejudice, jealousy, anger, arrogance and so on. In a Sangha everyone is motivated by the desire to remove these obstacles and to transform these obstacles so that information and communication are restored.
In the community of the sisters of the New Hamlet there is one nun who is very quiet. She does not talk a lot. She does not give spectacular Dharma talks. She does not propose spectacular ideas. She just lives her life as a nun in a community but she is very determined to practice as a nun. She is happy and solid. She is committed to her life as a nun and her stability, her joy and her happiness communicates a lot. Every monastic profits from her presence. It does not seem that she is trying to communicate at all because she speaks very little and yet she communicates very well. We would be very lucky to have many people in the Sangha like her because they contribute a lot of stability, freedom and happiness. That is why communication has to be understood on this level also: on the level of action, on the level of non action--namely on the level of being. That is the third togetherness: sharing. You are determined to go home and build a Sangha. You know that the six togethernesses are so crucial for the well being of a Sangha. The third one is communication and sharing on many levels.
The fourth is (Vietnamese) means speech. To practice loving speech you practice the fourth mindfulness training in such a way that there would be harmony in the community. You speak with calm and you try to speak with gentleness. In a community the happiness depends very much on the way we communicate with each other with words. When we are angry or overwhelmed by emotion or jealousy, we may say things that can cause the community to suffer and to break. That is why one of the four togethernesses is that all of us practice loving speech. Even if we have all the other factors for happiness, if you don't have this factor--loving speech--happiness still does not exist. Therefore, learning to speak in such a way that concord, happiness and peace are preserved in a community is very important and this needs training. When you feel that you are not peaceful enough to say something, don't say it yet. You still have time to say it. You have the right to tell him or to tell her what is in your heart, of course. But you have to say it in such a way that it will not disrupt the harmony and the peace of the community. So, wait until you are calm enough to write your thoughts down on a piece of paper. Wait until you are calm enough to say it with loving kindness.
The fifth one is (Vietnamese) and it means that material resources which should be shared equally. Everything should belong to the community. Members of the community will provide those in need with what they need in terms of food, clothes, shelter, medical treatments and so on. And a monk is supposed to have only three robes, one bowl and one water filter. When you are ordained as a monk or as a nun, you will receive three robes. Usually you need only one but in a time of cold you can use the three other robes as a blanket. In addition you need a bowl in order to go for the alms round to get something to eat in the morning and you need a water filter, too. If you don't have these things you cannot be ordained as a monk or as a nun. That dates back to the time of the Buddha.
When I was a novice it struck me very much that every time I drank a glass of water I had to breathe in and breathe out and visualize that there are many tiny living beings in a glass of water. Also I had to recite a mantra so that compassion would arise in me before I drank the water. I still remember (Vietnamese). When the Buddha looked into a glass of water, he recognized the existence of 84,000 tiny living beings. And if you do not practice this gatha to give rise to your compassion you are eating the flesh of living beings. The manual that novices use dates back to 400 years ago, long before the existence of Louis Pasteur. According to the eye of the Buddha there are so many living beings in a glass of water. If you practice concentration deeply enough you see things that other people cannot see. The Buddha did not use a microscope. He did not have scientific instruments but he saw very much the same thing. He saw tiny living beings living in the water and he advised his disciples to use a water filter although he knew that a water filter cannot filter all living beings, but it helps. I was very impressed when I saw that gatha in a book for novices. Holding the glass of water like this--breathing in and breathing out--you recognize that there are tiny living beings in there which means you have an opportunity to practice compassion in yourself. This is a very beautiful practice.
And the sixth one is (Vietnamese) it means happiness and joy. It is related to your ideas, and your notions because people have different ideas as how to achieve happiness and joy. The Sangha will have to do something but there are so many ideas about what it should do. People are inclined to do things in their own way and this is the art of combining ideas in order to make everyone happy. It is the synthesis of all ideas, and this is an art to practice in the Sangha. You have an idea and the other member of the Sangha may have another idea that looks like the opposite of your idea. That happens very often in a Sangha. Your idea is like black and her idea is like white. They cannot come together. But the art is to practice looking deeply in order to see the nature of the two ideas and very soon we can see that the two ideas can complement each other, can support each other and complete each other. From the thesis we have the antithesis and if you know how to do this then you have a synthesis. This is always true. So you are free to express your idea even if your idea is the opposite of his idea. The Sangha will find ways to combine the wisdom of the two ideas. Even if you have three ideas or five idea the Sangha will be able to combine them for the happiness of everyone. And this is an art of combining ideas and this is the sixth togetherness that we have to practice. This is a test prescribed by the Buddha himself. It is how to build a happy Sangha and you have the practice of the six togethernesses to do this.
The Sangha has to be built with the practice of the six togethernesses. You cannot build a Sangha by telephone. You cannot build a Sangha with email and letters. You cannot build a Sangha even with ordinations. The Sangha has to live together, practice together, share together and combine ideas together and when you have a Sangha like that many people can come and take refuge. You may belong to the extended Sangha. There is the root Sangha or core Sangha, and you may belong to that Sangha or your Sangha may be called the extended Sangha. Two Sanghas exist: the core Sangha and the extended Sangha. An extended Sangha does not have to stay twenty four hours a day with the core Sangha. Members of the extended Sangha can profit to the maximum by the presence of the core Sangha and that is why you make an effort to go back to the core Sangha as much as you can. You may like to organize the mindfulness trainings recitation where the core Sangha is. Suppose you have received the Fourteen Mindfulness Trainings and you can only meet with the members of your Sangha once a week or once every two weeks. During that time the hours you spend time together and practice together with your extended Sangha you are a real Sangha but when you go home the situation is not the same. That is why members of the extended Sangha have to find ways to go back as much as possible to the core Sangha.
A group of people communicating only by letters, electronic mail or the telephone cannot be called a Sangha. A real Sangha has to practice the six togethernesses and be a real refuge. That is why the setting up of permanent Sanghas is very crucial. You are very lucky if you have a permanent Sangha in your area. There is a core Sangha where people live together twenty four hours a day building a Sangha and this is a refuge. It is a refuge not only to the extended Sangha but for the society as a whole. Therefore, supporting the setting up of a permanent a Sangha in your area is very important. When we established the Green Mountain Dharma Center we sent twelve monks and twelve nuns to the Maple Forest Monastery. And this is a big gift that we gave to the state of Vermont because this is a real Sangha. There are monks, nuns and lay people who live together practicing the six togethernesses. And that is why setting up that kind of Sangha and supporting it is very crucial because people will feel very comfortable. They have a place to take refuge in: a live Sangha, a real Sangha, a living Sangha. An extended Sangha can be strong only with the presence of such a Sangha in their area.
Bell
It is very interesting to observe the life of the Sangha and to observe the life of a bee hive, an anthill or the life of termites. With the Dharma imbedded in the practice of the six togethernesses it is possible that we can do as much or more good as the bees. Yesterday I said that when we observe a solitary ant we don't see much of a thought. Only when we see thousands and thousands of ants in an anthill, blackening the soil will we see the organism, the real organism. Only then do we see the animal with all his intelligence. When you put four or five termites in a place where there is soil and pellets the termites just go around. They hold one pellet and put it down and go around and they just do that. But when you put more of them into the same place and when the termites reach the community size, intelligence begins to express itself. We have talked about Sangha and we know that the number five is the minimum that can make up a Sangha because only with five could we perform the Sanghakarman procedure of decision making.
When the termites reach community size they begin to operate as an organism. They begin to build columns like termites. They use the soil. They use pellets and they build a column and when the column reaches a certain height they stop. We ask: "Why do they stop?" They stop because they naturally know that it is high enough and it is inscribed in their experience. Then they begin to build another column. And when the other column reaches the same height they begin to build buttresses that link one column to another column. After they finish that they make a very beautiful, curving and very symmetric kind of artwork. After they finish one, they begin another and they continue to build very beautiful vaulted chambers like that. You know that in their home they have all kinds of comforts. They are capable of setting up an air conditioner and proper ventilation. They can farm inside. They can raise livestock. They can send whole armies into war and capture slaves. They do everything that humans do but they do not know how to sit at the conference table in order to make peace and that is why I said that we can do better.
With the six togethernesses we can become as good as the bees, the termites and the ants, but with the six togethernesses we can go much further, too. We can build peace not only for humankind but for other species as well. We can be protectors of the Earth and the whole environment. Who knows? One day the ants and the termites will learn from us how to practice the way of peace.
Bell
It is the organic function of the ant to build a hill and if we come to disrupt their hill they will begin again until they complete the work. In humans it seems that our biological function--our spiritual function-- is to build some kind of hill also for the well being of everyone, not only for humans but also for other living beings. We know that the compassion and the loving kindness of the Buddha is without limits. We know that Sangha is a hill, we have to build our Sangha because the Sangha is a refuge for so many of us. The Sangha is capable of making peace not only inside of it but outside of it. This is because the Sangha is always growing, not like the ant hill which tends to act only for the well being of its own Sangha, its own community and organism. But thanks to the practice of mindfulness, concentration and insight, we will be able to build not only the peace, joy and happiness of our own Sangha but also the peace, joy and happiness of society. As practitioners we know that we have a hill to build ourselves first: Sangha building is crucial to the success of this enterprise. We know that Sangha will be the refuge for many of us who have the impression of getting lost these days. Therefore, a Sangha that practices tolerance, stability, safety and joy is a refuge for all. Because the Sangha, when it is a true Sangha, always manifests the presence of the Buddha and he is the Dharma.
When I was a novice I was given a definition of the word Buddha. I learned that Buddha is someone who is awakened and who is working for the awakening of other living beings. When the career of enlightenment has been finished then he will be called a Buddha. It is very interesting. As a novice monk I already reflected deeply on that definition. The Buddha, first of all, is an enlightened person who is working for the enlightenment of others. When the work of self enlightenment and enlightenment of others has been finished he is called a Buddha. (Vietnamese) means self enlightenment (Vietnamese) enlightenment other people (Vietnamese) the fulfillment of the action of enlightening people. So when I saw that ________ I had the idea that the Buddha still continues his way of enlightenment. Enlightenment is a living thing! Enlightenment is a living reality and the Buddha is still practicing through you and me. The first function of a Buddha is to get enlightenment within. The second function of a Buddha is to help other living beings to get enlightenment. And we know that the world is still going on. Shakyamuni Buddha is still practicing. That is what I saw when I was a novice. I saw that Shakyamuni Buddha is practicing in you, in each one of us. We practice in order for co-enlightenment to manifest every day. We practice so that enlightenment can be born in the other person. Doing this we are continuing the work of the Buddha. The Buddha is still practicing in us, in every one of us and this will continue until the work of enlightenment is achieved, fully achieved. So do not think that the Buddha is now resting. The Buddha is very active and you are his/her continuation. You are working for your enlightenment and working for the enlightenment of other species. And that is a kind of hill we humans we are trying to build. We are building Sangha so that the Buddha can continue to practice through us.
You may think of Jesus in the same terms. Jesus is still working. That is why we call him the Living Jesus and my book "Living Buddha, Living Christ" expressed the same idea. It is the same insight: that the work of Jesus Christ still continues, the work of the Buddha still continues and we are the people who continue the work of the Buddha and of Jesus for more understanding, more enlightenment. And as I said the best way to look at the Buddha is through the Sangha. With the Sangha eyes we will be able to understand the Buddha eyes.
Bell
