May 6, 2012 Sunday, Deep Spring Sangha Meeting- Aaron's talk

Aaron: I am Aaron. My blessings and love to you, and thank you for including me here in your sangha meeting. What is sangha? To answer, let us regard the Triple Gem.

Buddha, the awakened nature is the essence of each of you. Dhamma, this beautiful truth of how things are. Not how you believe them to be, not your views, but what you know from your own experience. The historical Buddha talked about impermanence, emptiness of self, and suffering. Everything in the conditioned realm is arising out of conditions, impermanent and not self. And if you believe it to be otherwise, you will suffer. It's as simple as that. If you cling to its being otherwise, you will suffer. But when you see deeply into these truths of impermanence and emptiness, then suffering, if not completely ceasing, at least lightens up.

This is not a doctrine that we preach. We invite people to go into their meditation practice and ask, is there anything you can find in the conditioned realm that has a solid permanence to it, that's not changing? Is there any conditioned aspect of self that you can find that's permanent? If what you are is not to be found in the conditioned realm, then break through into the unconditioned and experience the truth of what you are, which is the Buddha, Buddha nature, awakened nature.

The sangha is the beautiful container for this inquiry. If you are angry at somebody and you go to the bar, and the person on the next stool listens to your woes and says, “Go out and punch him!”, that may be what you feel like you'd like to do, but it's really not going to help you evolve as a human being.

If you call somebody in your sangha and say, “I'm really troubled by this. Could I talk to you?”, and you pour out your story, that person listens and says, “Can you have more compassion for yourself and for the other person?” They help to bring you back to your true nature, to remind you of what you are aspiring to, to live from the loving heart, the wisdom heart. This is the container of sangha, and it's truly sacred.

There is a real sangha at Deep Spring. People talk about you as being “the compassionate sangha.” Many people, who come to retreats for the first time, share the experience of finding so much kindness, so much compassion. But I also see that a lot of you are confused about what you are as a sangha and what holds you together, which is, of course, your dedication to living your lives with love. It's as simple as that. If you search for places where you have the same beliefs, interests, identical paths, you won't find them. If you direct attention to your highest purposes, you will find what brings you together, this path of loving kindness.  

What can you do, each of you, to support the integrity of the sangha, to help hold it together and make it a living vessel that can best support each of you in your spiritual practice and to give out that loving kindness to the world? And what do you need from the sangha to help you do your spiritual work and live with kindness?

I hope you will have a deep discussion of this. The Buddha and Dharma are alive and well at Deep Spring, and I think the Sangha is alive and well too, but it sometimes feels a little bit unstable. It really is alive and awake and flourishing. I don't' think it's really unstable to you. I think there's a fear that it's unstable based on the fact that so many of you don't know each other. So ask, what is the sangha? Is it the people in my class? Is it only the person who sits next to me in class because I've never talked to the other people in my class? Is it the Sunday sitting group? The Board, the teachers? What is it?

How do we bring it all together more fully? How do we vitalize it? I think your social committee and social plans are an important part of it. Playing together. Just a picnic or any form of activity that offers time spent together getting to know each other. The activity at the beginning of the session here was beautiful. People were talking to each other, who did not know each other. That's a wonderful start.

My blessings and love to you all. When I first came to Barbara, I said to her, I am your guide but I am happy to teach anybody. I am happy to share the dhamma with anybody with a sincere interest to live their lives more fully grounded in the loving heart. So many of you have come forth and have grown so much through these 10, even 20 years. It deeply inspires me to see the inner work you are doing to live your lives with so much love and presence.

Thank you. I will release the body to Barbara.

(recording ends)

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