In society, much of our suffering comes from feeling disconnected from one another. We often don’t feel a real connection even with people we live close to, our neighbours, our coworkers, and even our family members. Each person lives separately, cut off from support of the community.
Practising Mindfulness, we begin to see our connection with other human beings and realise that to flourish in our own practice and to support others, we need a community or a Sangha . We can make our families, our workplace, and even our neighbourhood into a Sangha. Being with a Sangha can heal these feelings of isolation and separation.
The Sangha is like a garden, full of a wide variety of trees and flowers. When we look at ourselves and at others as beautiful, unique flowers and trees, we can truly grow to understand and love one another. One flower may bloom early in the spring, and another may bloom in late summer. One tree may bear many fruits, and another tree may offer cool shade. No one plant is greater or lesser or the same as any other plant in the garden. Each member of the Sangha also has unique gifts to offer to the community. We each have areas that need attention. When we can appreciate each member’s contribution and see our weaknesses as potential for growth, we can learn to live together harmoniously. Our practice is to see that we are a flower or a tree, and we are the whole garden as well, all interconnected.
To be really means to inter-be .Just as a flower relies on the sunshine, on the cloud, on the earth to be, so it is with all of us.
None of us can be by ourselves alone. Interbeing is the teaching of the Buddha that everything is made by and made up of everything else. If we return sunshine to the sun, water to earth, soil to earth, then there can no longer be any flower.
Similarly, looking at any person, we should be able to see the whole cosmos and all our ancestors. In each person, if we can see the nature of interbeing, then we will suffer much less and we will understand why it is important to be a community.
As a community, our practice of mindfulness becomes more joyful, relaxed and steady. We are bells of mindfulness for each other, supporting and reminding each other along the path of practice. With the support of the community, we can practice cultivating peace and joy within and around us, as a gift for all those we love and care for. We can cultivate our solidity and freedom – solid in our deepest aspiration and free from our fears, misunderstandings and suffering.
Excerpted from Happiness – Essential Mindfulness Practices. Ahimsa Trust is organising a series of events led by Br Phap Huu,
Dharmacharya Shantum Seth, and other monastics from Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village tradition. For details, visit ahimsatrust.org/events
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Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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