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How can one fulfil Sangha?
I basically live in the middle of nowhere, and it's really far for me to go to a Buddhist temple to receive teachings and such. How can I take refuge in Sangha, as these opportunities are not manageable at this moment?
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- all practitioners
- only the ordained practitioners (monks/nuns)
- (partial) enlightened practitioners (lay or ordained)
Taking refuge in the sangha for me means to have faith that there are still enlightened people around today, so I mainly take refuge in the third.
If you see it like this as well, there is no real need for a local group for this. Still, it would be useful of course, but you have to do with what you've got. I also don't see Buddhist people very often.
Metta!
Finding a Buddhist sangha is nice. But more than nice, it is informative and inspiring. Ditto finding an actual-factual, two-arms-two-legs teacher. That's the way it happens in books and videos and lectures and other informative material. And within this context, anybody starting out might long to hit a homer before s/he'd even gotten up to bat ... i.e. do it all the 'right' way, the 'Buddhist' way, the way supported by a long and inspiring history.
Most of us are not that lucky and the fact is that our unluckiness is really pretty lucky. If Buddhism were smooth sailing, how useful could it be? But Buddhism takes some courage and some patience and some doubt. It takes some determination.
If a literal sangha is available, wonderful ... go practice with them. If a literal sangha is not available, wonderful ... practice anyway. The danger of practicing alone is pride. The danger of practicing with a group is laziness. Dangers are part and parcel of a Buddhist practice. And yet, despite the dangers, we practice anyway.
And in that day-by-day, week-by-week, year-by-year practice, a little at a time, what is called "sangha" makes itself known. Not overnight, not with some imagined home run ... it just kind of seeps in. You can't grab it and you can't define it, but a little at a time, you know it.
Take your time. Be patient. Be determined.
And good luck.
Practice and learn, but don't close your mind or your eyes thinking "nothing like that will ever happen here." The man who runs our Sangha here, has been studying Buddhism for 30 years, and he longed for a Sangha for a long time, even after traveling worldwide to meet teachers and monks during his practice. He took it on himself to start what he sought, and now we have a wonderful group of people that I never even knew existed, and I've lived in this town my whole life! You never know who you have things in common with, or when they'll find you. Just be ready to find them at any point, anywhere!
Or to reverse the question, why would anyone with a serious interest in Buddhism not want to spend time with other Buddhists?
That might sound mean or whatever but it's totally true. They all pretend to be super peaceful and super happy and it freaks me out. And they're always trying to give you advice because they think they have the answers to everything and really they're just full of it. You can't have a normal conversation with most of them. I'm just super uncomfortable around that kind of person, they drive me mad.
So I tend to avoid meeting other people with similar interests.
Maybe I'll give a Buddhist group a shot - there are plenty of them where I live - but most of the ones I've found just look like total baloney. I'm pretty choosy about who I spend my time with, and there are loads of ways to tell if a group is just full of airheads or not (I use meetup.com) and the majority of them are.
Ideally I'd find a group (there will always be some weirdos and I accept that) comprised of people way further along the path than I am so I can actually learn from them, but so far, I'm just finding people who pretend to be really far along. It would be really nice to meet some decent folk, but I jest feel like they're few and far between.
I'll give an exclusively Buddhist group a try though, that's been my experience with more vaguely "spiritual" groups. I'd really like to be wrong and I think it would be really cool to meet some nice people with the same interests.
For me, I enjoy the time I can get meeting up with other like-minded people, though I try to be careful of not limiting myself to like-minded people. I really enjoy our Sangha, both our smaller local one and the larger one we are based on. But, my choices are extremely limited. I am grateful even to have the chance to participate in the way I can, considering we have exactly 2 buddhist groups within 300 miles of where I live (one of them being the one I belong to). Because I have a young family and several high maintenance pets, traveling the 300 miles for a weekend just isn't doable more than once a year or so.
Some of them are just annoying (you make a joke about something in your life and they swoop in with some nonsensical advice and "I'm more spiritual than you" attitudes under the guise of compassion). But either way, pretty nuts.
And maybe you're right about meetup, but I don't have any Buddhist friends to ask, so I feel a bit stumped if I'm not using the Internet.
That sounds nice! What do you do there?
I had an online teacher once, the relationship didn't really end well so I'm not too comfortable going down that route again, but thanks for the recommendation.
I've had scary experiences using meetup.com for other things, so I can see what you mean about truly crazy people. It's hard to know how to deal with them, especially when they can't see kindness and compassion for what they are. I have a cousin who is a paranoid schizophrenic. He's also hypoglycemic. If he's on his meds and has eaten, then he's alright. If he stops taking them, or hasn't eaten, he's very difficult to deal with. His paranoia is extreme and you cannot talk logically or rationally to him at all.
I'm sorry to hear about your cousin. Unfortunately I've seen schizophrenics remain unmedicated because they're told by their communities that it's a "sign" of something supernatural. I've also seen people call serious physical medical conditions (one woman I swear had pretty serious DVT, possibly pulmonary embolism) "signs" and so they don't see doctors. It's pretty scary. I have no idea what happened to that woman, hopefully she's ok. Her leg was all swollen and she had chest pains and she couldn't breathe properly and she was coughing up blood, and people were telling her that it's a sign of "ascension", or that maybe the sun is throwing off her "energies". Crackpot stuff. And bloody dangerous.
And no, you can't talk to them rationally because they're so unwell. It upset me for a while that these communities were encouraging sickness like that, but because there's no reasoning with them there's nothing you can do. I just try and avoid them.
Typically, what people do is arrive at the house at around 10:30 or so with food for the monks. Around 11 or so the monks will be fed, and then after they eat the lay people will share food and chat.
Or, you could simply arrive at that time with a nice basket of fruit for the monks and see what happens.