Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
relying on agreement
genkaku
Northampton, Mass. U.S.A. Veteran
A question that has been rattling around in my mind is this: To what extent do you feel that the need for agreement is necessary to your Buddhist practice? Anyone who is a member of a local sangha might say that the group implicitly agrees to an activity and probably a set of beliefs or values. But to what extent do you feel the need to agree? What would happen if that agreement were missing or collapsed?
The question is a bit vacuous, I admit, since agreement can take so many forms... just like disagreement.
But I wonder if anyone else has thought about agreement and the role it plays -- for better or worse -- in their practice.
My own experience has been a mixed bag ... too much agreement or reliance on others (people, texts, temples, teachers) and you walk into a brick wall; too little agreement and nothing gets done.
What's your take?
The question is a bit vacuous, I admit, since agreement can take so many forms... just like disagreement.
But I wonder if anyone else has thought about agreement and the role it plays -- for better or worse -- in their practice.
My own experience has been a mixed bag ... too much agreement or reliance on others (people, texts, temples, teachers) and you walk into a brick wall; too little agreement and nothing gets done.
What's your take?
1
Comments
New Age Dharma, cults, superficial and 'enlightened' personality worship Buddhism would probably not be part of the Buddhas dharma or do you agree with a wider school? Ah the famous Middle Way I have heard so much about . . .
Usually what I pay attention to is not agreement or disagreement but helpful differences--different enough that you can see things from a new perspective. Even if I don't see it in the same way, or agree with it, at least I'm exposed to it--it's still worth considering. It's all good, we're all different people with different experiences. Even when we do disagree.
How is what you are saying helpful?
Your experience is outside of my experience @Jeffrey
How is what you are saying helpful?
Your experience is outside of my experience @Jeffrey
Voices happen too fast to have any theories. You just need confidence and patience.
so
One can look for a commonality to share with a Sangha but be mindful that the soothing sense of community that it brings, doesn't become it's own blinding attachment. Be sure that ones tendency to conform doesn't compromise the precepts/ 4NT & 8 FP.
Remember that taking refuge in the Sangha only means to honor those who take refuge in the Buddha & Dharma. It does not mean becoming cheerleaders.
I have not yet met a Sangha who's fractiousness harmed their practise nearly as much as attachments to comfort and conformity did.
I have however come across many examples of people who thought that they were as free and independent as the fabled Rhino, and who were in fact wandering in circles in the absence of Sangha.
Ajahn Munindo's remark bears repeating
" Show me a man who claims 20 years practice without instruction and I might show you a man who has had one years experience 20 times "
One of the 'tells' of the wanderer in circles in their apparent need to tell the world compulsively that they do not need Sangha.................
Surely the truly independent would realise that its different strokes for different folks.
And different strokes at different times in the life of an individual.
I just don't know what or how to question such voices. My own internal dialogue does not have the component of reception and credence you describe. Hearing voices is extraordinary, two people that it happened to after practice were Aliester Crowley and Muhammad. Muhammad at least had the humility to realize he might have mental health problems. Crowley of course was too drug addled to realise anything.
I just wonder how agreement or peace with difficult or dangerous voices is possible . . . The spiritual teacher person who I know of who openly has mental health issues is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llewellyn_Vaughan-Lee
Brilliant dream therapist, very impressed with his insight into others dreams when I attended.
. . . so that means some 'spiritual' teachers are just secret head cases. That is why we have to keep our wits about us. Use medication, any treatment available etc. . . .
. . . Oh Ekhart Tolle overcame his depression . . .
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckhart_Tolle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_and_psychology
Someone who claims no need for instruction, is not something I've run into and if I did, I think I'd be seeing someone who has felt betrayed by a specific teacher. Those who say they need no Sangha, just have a specifically narrow view of what Sangha is.
Personally, I don't know how a practitioner could go a day without instruction. Are not the Buddha's teachings everywhere for the practitioner who is open to seeing them and if one doesn't look, then I'd suggest they've miss labelled themselves.
Practitioners can walk in circles, whether within Sangha's or not, whether with a personal teacher or not.
Claiming to be independent really just defines yourself in contrast to others and is in itself a state of dependence and an attachement to self.
Most teachers and formal Sanghas who make claims of the nessesity of belonging to them or a concept of them, sound compromised to me
just as
much of such a discussion really depends on how narrow or wide, ones defines what constitutes a teacher or a Sangha for you..
Sorry Genkaku.
Yes, It was meant as a response to Citta's post.
So we have to come to our own conclusions on the Dhamma. If we don't have certain conclusions yet, it's not wise to follow someone else's - we'd just be copying them. We have no real understanding. We should be honest to ourselves that we just don't know.
Other way around, the things we do know won't change even if the entire world changes their view. If we start to doubt, that'd just mean we didn't really know. We weren't yet confident.
The Buddha said, be an island for yourself. Of course, it's equally silly to try and be an island for yourself when you are not ready, but needing some 'agreement' is also not wise, in my humble opinion.
In my experience, the support from a sangha is thus not the agreement in views, but the support in practice. If you have good spiritual friends, it doesn't really matter if you agree or disagree on things. Everyone wants to be happy and we all need to find the way for ourselves.
With metta,
Sabre
In other words, if I am required to be in agreement with an accepted doctrine of Buddhism, I'm out. Just sayin'
Where you see folks "out buddhisting each other", I just see different facets of a Dharma gem being pointed out.
It is these differing views of this gem that help me become less myopic with my own understanding.
Well, there have to be some common bases/shared beliefs, and the Pali canon is a pretty good source for that.
Yes, we should find a way to make Buddhism applicable into ours own daily lives, and if certain teachings or ideas aren't jiving with us, then maybe we can set them aside for awhile and focus on other things. But to discard them wholesale just because we want the Dhamma to fit conveniently for us is problematic in my opinion. It's feeding our egos and desires. I'm not saying we should accept things blindly, but I think a little bit of letting go and having faith in the Dhamma is required, whether ex-Christians like it or not.
IMHO, agreement is no more valuable to a well grounded practise than disagreement but what trumped all of that was seeing my participation in a Sangha as a possible manifestation of selflessness in a pretty self oriented world.
The most unanswerable question of the value of agreement within a Sangha has little to do with the individual and has everything to do with whether or not this form of an agreeing Sangha has been the inertia for why the Buddha's teachings survived till today and is this still the best chance for it to last into the future.
I place more faith in the power of the experience of meditative truth but considering how difficult that can be to come by, perhaps an agreeing Sangha is the more realistic vehicle to carry forth that possibility for future beings to discover.
And, simultaneously, I think that an "agreeing sangha" has the very real potential of smothering what is alive and dancing in Buddhism ... of creating another Sunday-go-to-meetin' social gathering that may serve delicious cake and a scrumptious mythology but sidesteps the upsetting uncertainties that can dog an individual life.
But, as you suggest, people gotta start somewhere.
This would give you full marks for a devotional view but a disagreement can be a differing of views or a breaking of precepts. According to your logic, there is no possibility of disagreeing without that being an attachment.
When you talk to students who explain that this was the reasoning that has protected some teachers who repeatedly commited some pretty horrendous acts for years with the full consent of the Sangha, it opens your eyes to other possibilities.