Zazen and Peace
I have been attending a dharma discussion group that is reading Shohaku Okumura’s Living by Vow (2012). There is a chapter in that book on the Buddhist “three refuges” of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Reading the chapter occasioned in me some thoughts about sangha.
A Buddhist sangha is the community of people following the Buddha way within a particular Zen monastery or neighborhood Zen Center. I have been a member of four sanghas: the San Francisco Zen Center at Green Gulch Farm in California, the San Francisco Zen Center at Tassajara also in California, the Houston Zen Center, and the Daifukuji Zen Center in Hawaii.
A feeling of comradeship naturally develops within a sangha. Interpersonal quarreling does occur, however, if personal interests clash. Quarreling is resolved when the parties eventually come around to following Chogyam Trungpa’s expression of bodhisattva behavior. He says, “The bodhisattva vow is the commitment to put others before oneself.”[1] In other words, quarreling stops when ego is put aside.
In a broad definition of sangha, a community that follows the same religious path, there are Hindu sanghas, Christian sanghas, and Muslim sanghas. In an even broader definition, a sangha is a community pursuing the same goal. It could be said that this is the entire human community. All people aim for happiness and contentment, even if some in misguided ways.
If that very broad community of human beings is going to get along, the same thing is required as with narrower communities. To use Chogyam Trungpa’s words, “the commitment to put others before oneself,” or a certain degree of egolessness, is required.
Here is where zazen practitioners can do their part in fostering a peaceful world. Chogyam Trungpa says, “… Meditation brings a growing sense of egolessness.”[2] Just continuing to practice is a contribution to peace.
Footnotes
- Chogyam Trungpa, The Heart of the Buddha, Shambhala, Boston & London, 2010, p. 87.
- Ibid., p. 90.