Sangha--A Community without Boundaries

“We practice for others.”—Anh Huong

Sangha is the sanskrit word for community of practice; it is the third of the Three Jewels of Buddhist tradition (along with Buddha and Dharma). According to this tradition, a Dharma practitioner is advised not to go it alone, but to practice within a community, preferably under the guidance of a teacher, in order to sustain his or her resolve and to avoid the pitfalls and distractions along the path toward enlightenment. Accordingly, the first Sanghas were monastic institutions, in which practitioners took vows of poverty and chastity, meditated, chanted together, and lived by begging food in exchange for teaching the Dharma.

But as Buddhism evolved, and ramified into the various branches (Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana), and then finally as it has migrated to the west in recent years from its roots in Asiatic cultural traditions, so the concept of Sangha has evolved and ramified as well, so that today, we have Sanghas of every size, shape, and variety—some monastic, some lay, some a combination of the two; some living together in their own communities, largely isolated from the outer world; others meeting weekly or bimonthly in cities and towns, or on college campuses. The rules or guidelines governing these diverse Sanghas are likewise various—ranging from the strict and austere discipline of Zen or Tibetan monasteries to laid back, anything-goes “California-style” Sanghas or “mindfulness communities” springing up all over Europe and North America today.

But Sangha, since the time of the Buddha, has had a deeper meaning as well—a meaning, rooted in a clear understanding of the Dharma, that sharply differentiates the Sangha from any other form of human organization, religious or otherwise. A Sangha is a community without boundaries.
The three Dharma Seals—the litmus test, according to the Buddha, for authentic Dharma teachings—are Impermanence, Interbeing, and Nirvana. While the first is obvious to any honest observer—that everything changes and nothing lasts forever, the second Dharma Seal is more difficult to grasp, and the third is the hardest of all to understand, much less actualize. But this unique character of the Sangha, a community without boundaries, springs logically and directly from an understanding of the Second and Third Dharma Seal.

Interbeing—a term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh as a substitute for the more difficult-to-grasp concept of nonself or anatman—refers to the concept of Codependent Origination (prattita samutpada)—summed up by the phrase “This is because that is” (and vice versa). That is, nothing in the universe of our perceptions could exist without everything else. A tree, for example, is brought into being by its interaction in space with air, water, topsoil, sunshine, and other trees, animals, plants, and bacteria, and by its dependence in time upon the seed produced by its parent tree. And so on, throughout all space and time. Nothing can exist independently from everything else.

Nirvana is frequently misunderstood as a place, like heaven, blissfully free of suffering, to which the enlightened soul sojourns after death. But Nirvana in fact means “extinction;” that is, extinction of the illusions by which we differentiate this from that. The Buddha did not “go to” Nirvana when he died; he was already there. Because “there” (Nirvana) and “here”(Samsara) are actually two different views—one accurate, the other illusory, of the same Reality—the only Reality there is. If the sentence “This is because that is” epitomizes the second Dharma Seal, the third—Nirvana—is epitomized by the familiar refrain from the Upanishads: “That art thou” (Tat tvam asi). In other words, to the awakened consciousness, there is no difference between subject and object; between knower and known; between you and everybody and everything else.

From these second two Dharma Seals, then, springs the unique character of the Sangha as a community without boundaries. Like a Moebius strip, the boundaries of a Sangha include what is inside and outside simultaneously. If your Buddhist friend Jane is in your Sangha, so is your Catholic friend Jerome. And your Jewish friend Daniel. And your Arabic friend Amir. And your cat or dog, your difficult mother-in-law, the truck driver who bears down on you from behind in your morning commute, the birds flying overhead, your boss, your students, your clients, the homeless man crouched against the wall, Bill Gates, Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, Michael Jordan, and the complete strangers you encounter every day. The operating rule for a Sangha is succinctly summaried by Lao Tzu: “Take care of everyone and abandon no one. Take care of everything and abandon nothing."

This understanding of Sangha as a community without boundaries is implicit in the recorded activities of all the great Dharma teachers. The Buddha and his original Sangha did not practice entirely in isolation; they traveled from one community to the next, teaching the Dharma to anyone who would listen in return for food, using skillful means to mediate in political conflicts, taking care of the poor and needy, inducting anyone of any caste from Brahman to Untouchable who desired to join into their order, and allowing women as well as men to practice. Similarly, Jesus and his disciples traveled the countryside healing the sick, feeding the hungry, and not discriminating between the wealthy tax collectors and the desperately poor, nor between Jews and Gentiles, in their ministry—in short, taking care of everyone and abandoning no one. Ditto for other great Dharma teachers of the various traditions—Guru Nanak, St. Francis, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, and Thich Nhat Hanh, to name a few.

A Sangha, properly understood, is thus the polar opposite of a cult. A cult strives to maintain its identity by exclusion and recruitment only. They draw a clear ideological boundary between Us and Them—between the Saved and the Damned, the Chosen and the Gentiles, the Believers and the Infidels, Christian and Pagan, Catholic and Protestant, God’s People and the Enemies of God. Even Buddhist or quasi-Buddhist fringe groups occasionally manifest this cultic ideology of Us vs. Them, sometimes with horrific consequences (e.g. the Japanese cult that released poison gas in the Tokyo subways considered themselves “Buddhists.”)

The politics of a true sangha must therefore reflect this unique, Dharma-based characteristic of a community without boundaries. While strong and inspired leadership, ritual, strict discipline, and isolation can be useful to practitioners in making rapid progress in meditation, it can diverge all too easily into a kind of authoritarianism, which can trigger the downward slide of a sangha toward dogmatism, cultic self-isolation, hostility toward other sects, indifference to the outside world, and Guru-worship. Conversely, if there is no authority or leadership, and the principles of organization and rules of conduct governing a sangha are too laid back, people soon lose interest, and it degenerates into a casual social gathering, lacking any serious commitment to Dharma practice, and subject to endless bickering over group process and goals.
In this matter, as in all others, the middle way is best. Regardless of its structure, lineage, or source of authority, a healthy sangha should ideally have the following characteristics:

--COMMITMENT to authentic Dharma Practice, based on the core teachings—the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the Three Dharma Seals—and the ongoing pursuit and practice of both wisdom and compassion, toward each other and toward everybody else.

--OPENNESS to the insights from diverse points of view and practices, and openness also to anyone who wishes to participate.

--STRUCTURE: an agreed-upon protocol for periodic meetings. Ideally, the protocol should be simple and clear enough to be easily remembered, and—of course—acceptable to all in attendance. For example, one such structure, currently practiced by the Sangha with whom I practice biweekly, generally consists of (1) viewing a Dharma Talk or Dharma Discussion on DVD, followed by a brief discussion; (2) sitting meditation (30-40 minutes); (3) walking meditation in our leader's beautiful garden; and (3) open Dharma discussion (based on our experience of meditation) and/or Recitation of a Sutra. This minimal structure is sufficient to keep the Sangha intact, yet allow for people from a diversity of backgrounds and levels of exposure to Buddhism to participate.

--ATTITUDE: a Sangha should make a consistent effort, from its outset, to practice what it preaches. This means, above all, cultivating what Thich Nhat Hanh calls “deep listening and loving speech.” This means listening carefully and openly to everything people say, whether you agree or not, before answering them or contradicting them, and keeping a mindful watch on your own intentions and language, to make sure that nothing you say will offend anyone to whom you are speaking. For this reason, it may be best to postpone Dharma discussions until after meditation sessions, so that practitioners can directly experience, enjoy, and implement the fruits of meditation in respectful and compassionate dialogue. Thich Nhat Hanh’s “Fourteen Precepts of Interbeing” can be a useful tool in developing the repertoire of attitudes that can strengthen a Sangha.

--ENGAGEMENT: Finally, as a Sangha evolves and coheres, they should make efforts to make the “boundaryless” character of a true Sangha real, by extending the fruits of practice outward toward the larger Sangha—the community and the planet—in a specific and concrete way, whether (1) organizing days of mindfulness or other meditation retreats for the community; (2) volunteering for social service agencies to serve the poor and needy; (3) political or environmental activism; (4) teaching meditation classes at local prisons, retirement homes, or mental hospitals; (5) respectful dialogue and collaboration with other sanghas, churches, synagogues; and (6) educational outreach to schools, colleges, and universities—etc.

As one of my teachers (and Thich Nhat Hanh’s student) Anh Huong has said on numerous occasions, “We practice for others.” This, to me, is the essence of a clear understanding of Sangha.