So I'd like to start out by reading a verse from the Dhammapada.
The Dhammapada are sayings or teachings directly attributed to the Buddha.
If you find a wise person who points out your faults and corrects you,
You should follow such a sage as you would a reveler of treasures.
It is better,
Never worse,
To follow such a sage.
So today I want to talk about community,
Spiritual community.
In the Pali language,
The language of the Buddha,
It's known as Sangha.
And it's said that on one occasion,
The Buddha's attendant,
Ananda,
Came to the Buddha and said that in his view,
Half of the spiritual life revolves around spiritual friendship.
And the Buddha immediately corrected him and said,
Do not say this Ananda,
Spiritual friendship is not half the spiritual life.
It's the entire spiritual life.
So we're mirrors for each other.
Part of the function of meditation is to calm ourselves down enough so that we can discover in some way the way in which we're connected to each other.
And we're connected to each other in profound ways as human beings.
Community,
Spiritual community is a very important part of practice.
One teacher who really emphasizes the importance of community is Thich Nhat Hanh,
Who once said that the Buddha,
The next Buddha will be the Sangha.
The next Buddha will be the community.
And so perhaps it's time for us to wake up as a community.
As much as,
You know,
It's important to wake up individually.
I feel like our Zoom community is so beautiful and intimate.
I'm astonished weekly by the love and connection that we have through these little boxes.
I didn't think it was possible when I first started offering Zoom teachings,
But it has,
For me,
It's been a really rich part of my life and my practice.
This community.
So what I'd like to emphasize today is the value of practicing in community and the value of spiritual friendship.
One analogy that is sometimes used is that if you want to make a fire,
It's hard to have a fire with just one log.
But if you have lots of logs kind of piled up together,
Then you can build a really great fire.
So in some ways,
It's harder to practice completely alone.
You may have noticed this.
Maybe you don't practice on the days that we don't meet.
You need to have people.
Most people need a fair amount of support from others so they can really get their practice going.
That's certainly been my case.
In some ways,
That's why I created Roaring Fork Insight.
Because community,
Sangha,
Is all of practice.
Now,
If you're living alone individually,
There's no one who's going to give you feedback on what's important in practice.
The Buddha said that if someone gives you feedback that's useful,
You should treat them as a treasure.
They're so valuable to you.
There is,
However,
A certain kind of discomfort from receiving feedback.
You may have also noticed that.
You can see a lot about yourself when someone offers you feedback.
It can be humbling,
It can cause some irritation,
And it can help you develop and to grow in your practice.
I've received a lot of feedback from others over the years of practice.
It's not always comfortable,
But it's always,
Always useful.
The teacher Bhikkhu Bodhi makes a distinction between two types of spiritual friendship.
Today we'll talk about the first one,
Which he calls the horizontal type,
And Thursday we'll talk about the second one,
Which he calls the vertical type.
So the horizontal spiritual friendship is a friendship between people who are roughly the same level in following the path.
So this is a friendship based on kind of a partnership.
And what unites this type of friendship is there's a common dedication to following this path of practice.
This is most of us on the Zoom call that show up twice a week.
And the defining characteristic of spiritual friendship is really the dedication to these common teachings and principles.
In this case,
It's the Buddhist teaching,
It's the precepts,
The Eightfold Path,
The Four Noble Truths,
What we do here.
So we're united with this kind of common thread.
And having companions on the path can strengthen and uplift the effects of our own practice.
When we practice alone,
Sometimes it can feel like just sort of like walking through the desert,
You know,
That analogy in the Christian mythology.
It can be lonesome,
The landscape around us is kind of barren.
We have no inspiration from others to replenish our energy,
You know,
When we're on this on our own.
And without effort,
We may stop altogether.
But when we unite with other people in spiritual friendship,
Kind of based on this aspiration of freedom,
Of entering into and remembering our inner nobility,
It can reinforce our energies.
You know,
When we walk a common path and engage in this practice,
We gain encouragement and strength from the practice of others.
I certainly,
In hearing the sharing that goes on in our Sangha,
Just delight in the unfolding of the practice as it meets our community.
And when we develop spiritual friendship,
It also has an impact on the very nature of our friendships across our lives.
If our,
You know,
In our worldly life,
In our lives with people that are outside of the practice,
Our friendships are very closely connected with personal attachment,
Which are kind of rooted in sort of this egocentric need.
So even when we think we love the other person,
Often we really love that person because the relationship in some way satisfies a deep need within ourselves.
And when the other person fails to satisfy this deep need within ourselves,
We quickly become bitter or embittered a bit.
And also that love can turn into resentment when the person fails to satisfy this deep need within us.
But when we enter into a spiritual friendship,
But when we enter into a spiritual friendship,
So the folks that show up on Zoom,
You know,
Based on this dedication to a common goal,
This friendship helps us transform our attachments and our kind of our egocentric relationship.
Spiritual friendship is not about satisfying my personal needs.
Or even satisfying the other person's personal needs.
It's about each of us contributing as best we can to uplifting each other and bringing each other closer to these ideals and these principles of the Dharma that we're practicing.
In spiritual friendship,
We're not concerned with the other person.
Or we are concerned about the other person,
But not because of the way the person satisfies us.
You know,
Our concern is because we want to see the other person grow and develop in the direction of greater wisdom and greater understanding.
We want this other person's wholesome qualities to kind of attain maturity so that so they can bring forth the qualities,
These wholesome qualities that will benefit others.
This is the essence of spiritual friendship.
And we're also not invested in them changing.
We're not invested in them changing.
This is very important.
So I want to stop here and open it up to thoughts and questions.
So I want to stop here and open it up to thoughts and questions.
And I would like to invite those who generally step forward and speak first to step back.
And to actively listen.
And those who generally stay quiet to step forward and to speak first on this inquiry in spiritual friendship.
