I've been meaning to write a post for a while, and an email Dante sent me today made me realize that I should probably just do it. There are a few things I've been meaning to address.
The idea of Sangha has been on my mind a lot for the past month or two. Sangha is a Pali/Sanskrit word that describes one of the Three Refuges (a.k.a. the Three Jewels) that make up manifestation along with Dharma and Buddha. This triumvirate has some conceptual parallels. For Buddha: first person manifestation (I), art/aesthetic value, Plato's "the Beautiful"; for Sangha: second person manifestation (We), moral/cultural (shared) values, Plato's "the Good"; for Dharma: third person manifestation (It), science/objective truth (facts), Plato's "the True." In Buddhist practice, the Sangha is the group of people who practice Buddhism, i.e. the community of shared support that everyone can rely on (but the concept can obviously extend beyond that narrow definition and into any community of similarly intentioned people).
One of the questions Dante asked me in his email was what I do to improve and grow. Some of this is painfully obvious: I make very intentional decisions about what I eat and how I exercise, decisions that have paid off many times over so far in my life in regards to health and wellbeing. Also, not so obviously, for about the past five years I've cultivated the ability for compassionate introspection, which allows me to investigate whatever's going on in my life with curiosity and compassion. This really started with non-violent communication, which focuses on identifying feelings and their stimuli as the first steps toward honest resolution and acceptance of emotions. This by itself has gotten me a long way as well, and the first-person practice allows an easy transition into second- and third-person compassion, i.e. empathy. At a certain point I realized that this could only take me so far, and I started using HoloSync (which I've had conversations about with some people; basically, meditation tapes that stimulate brain wave patterns typical of experienced meditators. The results are pretty much identical to those of classical mediation) this past summer and just this past month started a daily meditation practice after a waning in HoloSync use. There is a unifying thread here: everything I practice on a daily basis I make non-negotiable (within reason) and pursue with the clearest intention and joy possible.
The problem, however, that I started to come to terms with in the past month or two is a serious lack of Sangha in my life. Pretty much everything I'm passionate about and practice and pursue regularly I do almost exclusively by myself, with a few exceptions here and there. I've been used to this for years, however, and I think I started to forget how powerful it is to have a community in which to pursue what you love. This blog is certainly a Sangha, but there are clear limits of distance that stop it from being as effective as it could be. When I hear about everyone else having conversations and hanging out I'm overjoyed sort of vicariously, but it tends to remind me how far away I am from the people that understand me the most. (Incidentally, once I started to investigate those feelings they started to resolve and I'm feeling better about the situation now than I did a few weeks ago; but still, the distance remains.) I remind myself, however, that there is a payoff at the end of this separation: the big Sangha in the sky (that sounds trite, but it won't in a minute).
Last week my friend Colin had a friend in town from the Bay area, a girl named Chloe who I'd met briefly this summer. The three of us were hanging out, and conversation turned to spiritual practice (she's a practicing Buddhist), intention, and community. Long story short, we had a conversation that I'd needed to have for a long time, and it brings me to my next point: a challenge to all of us.
Years ago, when we would spend ungodly numbers of hours in cars and on farms with nothing else to talk about, conversation would turn, generally speaking, to the multitude of ways in which society could collapse. So we tried to figure out the best way to deal with the possibility of apocalypse, and the general conclusion was: buy land. Build a community. Make it sustainable. Stock up. There were a lot of these conversations (I know Tevon and I spent a week straight talking about that shit when we were on our farm in New Zealand), and they haven't stopped since. But at a certain point (probably a series of points) I (and I think I can safely assume We) started to realize that there is a "better" way to live, one that can maximize human, cultural, and ecological (Buddha, Sangha, Dharma, anyone?) potential, and that this is actually the same thing as preparing a life based around the coming apocalypse. What a happy coincidence! But it's hard to maintain vision when lives move quickly and passions and motivations change even quicker. With that as a given,
Fuck That.
We have a tremendous, unavoidable responsibility to ourselves and to the world to design our lives and our lifestyles from the ground up exactly as we would have them. Why? Because we can. Because there's absolutely no reason not to. Because we have an exceedingly talented and creative group of people that have the capacity for truly transformative personal and cultural change. We are obligated to settle for nothing less than an idyllic, life-affirming vision of the future that radiates compassion and love in its every action and movement, that strives for perfection, however unattainable, every day of every year. So ask yourself: what did I do today that moved me closer to my highest potential? What did I do today to move someone else closer to theirs? And what am I doing that will have a lasting, building, cumulative impact on the manifestation of a brighter future? Are you honest with yourself about your short and long term commitments? Is it really that hard to get off of the computer and spend twenty minutes engaging in contemplative practice? Is it worth getting angry and upset and living with daily dissatisfaction? Is it worth giving less than everything for what you believe in?
I've asked myself this again and again for the past few months, and the answers have become less disappointing the more I ask and the more I organize my life in a way that cultivates compassion, intention, and love. I haven't been this happy and certain about and open to my future for a long time. So look inside, and be honest with yourself. There is no better time than right now, and there never will be. We have the opportunity to create a beautiful life, and a beautiful Sangha, but it will take vision and commitment. It's time to stop compromising our intentions and our future, and reaffirm out commitment to the future that we all know is possible.
