Practice With Others
the importance of sangha
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
With palms together,
Good Morning All,
This morning I got up and replied on a blog or two, noticed it was getting late and slipped into my running shorts. Tuesday mornings are speed-work days with Katie. We've missed each other for a couple of weeks and it is, I noticed, much harder to stay on the training plan without a partner.
When we lived at Rocky Top Refuge I didn't have a training partner, but there I had long mountain runs through beautiful country and my dogs off-leash shared in the joy of running. Here in the city, its a whole different thing and a human running partner can be a real help.
Zen practice is a lot like that. We can sit alone and sometimes, as in all spiritual traditions, a time in the mountains or out in the desert alone, can be an avenue toward a closer relationship with the Truth. Yet, we cannot always live on a mountain or alone in a desert. We live in a society and our society has tremendous warps and woofs in its fabric. These act as currents taking us this way, pushing us that way and if we are not very careful, we are at the end of our road having not been too awfully aware of any particular step.
Practice with others, sangha, is crucial to our life. Whether we call this sangha a congregation or a circle or a church, it is an essential treasure in our lives. Sangha practice allows us to learn to work together, it offers community, fellowship, and many opportunities for practicing each aspect of the Eightfold Noble Path: True Understanding, True Thinking, True Action, True Speech, True Livelihood, True Effort, True Mindfulness, and True Meditation. (In each case, "True" should be taken as balanced or straight, not true as opposed to false. This is a Clear Mind understanding.)
Yet, by far the most important aspect of practice with others is that is assists us in actually practicing. When we make a commitment to join our friends at a Zen Center, Church, Synagogue, Mosque, or Ashram we are making a commitment to practice and drawing strength from each other in that practice.
Many of us who come to Zen see ourselves as solitary individualists. Nothing wrong with this other than it is unrealistic and unsupportable. We need each other, we are intimately connected with each other. And in this connection, we establish our humanity.
Be well.
Good Morning All,
This morning I got up and replied on a blog or two, noticed it was getting late and slipped into my running shorts. Tuesday mornings are speed-work days with Katie. We've missed each other for a couple of weeks and it is, I noticed, much harder to stay on the training plan without a partner.
When we lived at Rocky Top Refuge I didn't have a training partner, but there I had long mountain runs through beautiful country and my dogs off-leash shared in the joy of running. Here in the city, its a whole different thing and a human running partner can be a real help.
Zen practice is a lot like that. We can sit alone and sometimes, as in all spiritual traditions, a time in the mountains or out in the desert alone, can be an avenue toward a closer relationship with the Truth. Yet, we cannot always live on a mountain or alone in a desert. We live in a society and our society has tremendous warps and woofs in its fabric. These act as currents taking us this way, pushing us that way and if we are not very careful, we are at the end of our road having not been too awfully aware of any particular step.
Practice with others, sangha, is crucial to our life. Whether we call this sangha a congregation or a circle or a church, it is an essential treasure in our lives. Sangha practice allows us to learn to work together, it offers community, fellowship, and many opportunities for practicing each aspect of the Eightfold Noble Path: True Understanding, True Thinking, True Action, True Speech, True Livelihood, True Effort, True Mindfulness, and True Meditation. (In each case, "True" should be taken as balanced or straight, not true as opposed to false. This is a Clear Mind understanding.)
Yet, by far the most important aspect of practice with others is that is assists us in actually practicing. When we make a commitment to join our friends at a Zen Center, Church, Synagogue, Mosque, or Ashram we are making a commitment to practice and drawing strength from each other in that practice.
Many of us who come to Zen see ourselves as solitary individualists. Nothing wrong with this other than it is unrealistic and unsupportable. We need each other, we are intimately connected with each other. And in this connection, we establish our humanity.
Be well.