Noble Company

This dharma talk was offered at a women’s retreat Marcy led at Dhamma Dena Meditation Center in Joshua Tree, California in December 2019. The talk is centered on the conversations ascribed to the historical Buddha and Ananda, one of the ten great disciples and a devout attendant of the Buddha, concerning the central role of spiritual companions on the awakening path.

Transcript

And traditionally,

In meditation centers and meditation retreats they call it a Dharma talk,

So Dharma just means reality,

Just means the nature of things.

So I guess somewhere along the lines of modern days they decided reality talk didn't sound as good,

So they would go with Dharma talk.

But it's not fundamentally different than what you already know.

Daily life is reality too,

And our aches and pains and errands and everything we do.

It's just that there's more also,

And that's a lot of what we're here to explore.

What else makes up reality?

Is there more?

So something I love about meditation traditions is that they don't see any conflict in all these different ways of talking about reality.

This is not real,

And that is real,

So this is all one thing,

Sometimes messy,

Often confusing,

Sometimes beautiful and transcendent.

So I recently heard a Rinzai monk give a Dharma talk,

And I loved that he said,

It's just talking about practice from a place of practice.

And I loved how simple that was,

And it seemed a lot less intimidating,

It's like oh that's what I do almost all the time.

Just talk about practice.

But that doesn't sound so important,

So like you have to be somebody to talk about practice with friends,

With other people in practice.

And what would the reason for that be?

And you know when I think about my own friends,

Or when I think about my teachers going to retreats and listening,

You know what I hope for is I hope for an opening,

I hope for some encouragement or inspiration.

You know something that maybe at its root,

Maybe I just,

I want to hear,

You're on the right track,

And I want to believe it.

And a lot of people have done that for me,

And still do.

And so you know in addition to strategies or techniques,

Things I've learned that are pretty technical,

Anybody can learn that.

And the other thing that I have to offer is just my deep trust in the practice,

That it's a path that I trust,

That I like to talk about,

I like to share,

And my hope is that that's a little bit contagious.

And that you might feel that I believe so strongly that you're okay.

That you might also believe that you're okay.

And just keep walking together,

Just keep walking home together.

So it's been really beautiful talking to everyone between yesterday and today,

I've met with everyone privately now.

I already had an idea before that I might want to talk about this kind of company because it's a topic I just love,

That I'm really passionate about.

And then sure enough it just kept coming up over and over in different ways,

Talking to people where I feel truly that all I want to do is reflect what you already know,

What you're already doing,

What you already see.

And it doesn't have to be a teacher to do that,

I think a lot of people who want a meditation practice sometimes spend a lot of time looking for the right teacher.

I know I did spend a lot of time with a lot of teacher shopping,

And that's fine,

I learned a lot from it.

So I went to huge meetings and saw famous teachers and I drove out to the middle of nowhere by myself to see obscure teachers.

And just hoped that when something was right that it would resonate,

Because I didn't know what else to do.

I just had to,

If there's one thing I've done it's just keep knocking and knock on every door that I could find and everybody who said,

Do you want to go to this talk?

I said,

Yes,

Of course I want to go to that talk.

Let's go check it out.

And whenever I talk to people,

You know,

Try to find out,

Can you share this interest with me?

Usually no.

No?

But man,

Every once in a while,

Yes.

And that makes it all worth it.

Some things take a tremendous amount of courage and for me,

For whatever reason,

Just sticking a toe in the water,

Just checking,

Do you share this with me?

You might find that one doesn't take as much courage as you thought.

It's not that hard just to kind of check and never know what wonderful companions you can add to your life.

So the great benefit that I've found in this is,

And so clarifying,

It really,

For me,

Has sped up the process of being able to tell the difference between chatter and confusion and pressures that I learned or heard somewhere versus what I know to be true that doesn't need any outside validation.

And a really weird thing is,

It seems that almost no one can do that totally alone,

That we really benefit profoundly from first finding people that we can find out,

I feel safer when I'm with you.

Not necessarily having fun,

It can be fun,

But the thing we're really looking for is,

I feel like I don't have to look for anything right now when I'm with you.

I feel like I'm okay right now.

I feel like the next indicated step is going to happen.

So I did finally find a teacher I could settle down with just enough because it was somebody that was very rational and for me and for a lot of other people that made us feel safe.

So there was nothing that seemed too magical or mystical that we had to believe to learn techniques and just do things.

But then a funny thing happened that probably a lot of you will relate to.

As soon as I found a place after years of searching and went,

Here it is,

I'm going to let my guard down.

It's not like you can do that purposefully,

But you notice that it's like,

Oh,

That feels so good.

I'm safe here.

My guard's coming down.

And then who knows what happens next.

When your guard comes down,

All hell breaks loose.

That's common too.

And then there's fear.

There's like,

What did I get myself into?

What's happening to me?

Can I just go back to before before?

I heard about this stuff.

Like we said,

Friday night,

What was it?

Saturday.

Well,

We said in the beginning of Friday night,

It's not the easier way.

It's not easy,

But it's deep and it's holistic.

And it's something,

This path that grows over time to be better and better.

So then what if you find a place where you have a little bit of trust,

Then you let your guard down and then everything goes crazy because then all the stuff comes up.

Then you might have,

Who am I,

And grief and terror and now the teacher can't be one-on-one for everyone completely.

And so for me intuitively,

Well,

I'll tell you frankly,

Where I learned it was in recovery because I've been in recovery for many years.

I had learned and integrated that I had to get in the middle and ask for help.

So that was what I was trained to do and what I did was just talk to everybody and volunteer.

And when things went crazy,

I just reached out more than ever,

Knocking on those doors.

Do you relate to this?

Do you know where to go from here?

And most of the time,

No.

But a couple of times,

Yes.

And there's a lot of different phrases for this.

A lot of Buddhist traditions call it the Sangha,

Satsang,

Noble Company,

Spiritual Companionship.

And so what I felt strongly about for the last few years is that it's so readily overlooked,

Seen as something that's more social or fun instead of vital.

In fact,

I've had one teacher who years ago used to say from his dias,

Because he said to him,

I'm tired,

That it was one of the most important things.

I mean,

Stop saying that.

I was so heartened because I'm actually,

You know,

Everything that I say I've learned from other people in the last several years,

So I was never a religious scholar.

I don't know,

Suttas and all of these things,

I've just gone to lots and lots of retreats and sat with a lot of good teachers.

So sometimes,

You know,

I hear something or read something that is so wonderful because it's what I guess I need to be true,

But I don't really know until it's reflected in some way.

So it's so validating.

And so it's so funny to me that there's a classic story of the Buddha and his disciple Ananda,

Who is very famous in that tradition.

And I've actually never heard it spoken about publicly,

Which really surprises me.

I mean,

Because I've been to,

I don't know,

Hundreds of Dharma talks.

But it's really simple,

And it's about this companionship.

So the Buddha and Ananda hung out a lot,

They were really close.

And they were walking along,

And she got just so inspired,

She was feeling really happy and buoyed by the community that they had together.

And she turned to him and said,

This spiritual companionship,

This spiritual connection,

This spiritual friendship,

It's half of the entire path.

And he reprimanded her.

It's like,

Ananda,

Don't ever say that.

Don't ever say that.

It's spiritual companionship is the entire path.

And whatever,

I mean,

I came into this weekend with solid,

Really solid,

How much more clear,

How much more inspired I couldn't have imagined what I've gotten from all of you this weekend from this noble company of being with you.

And it's what I wish for all of you,

Because I do this in my life,

I talk to people every single day,

And that's what keeps me going.

It keeps me inspired,

And when I get freaked out,

It keeps me stabilized.

And noise recedes pretty easily to the background.

And what's true comes pretty clearly into the foreground in a way that just several years ago I couldn't have imagined.

So the practice has been necessary,

And to practice,

To sit,

To have some effort,

To listen to things.

But none of this would be possible without my friends,

My friends on the path.

So I don't say friends lightly.

You know,

When I say friends,

I mean you guys.

This is friends.

So just in case it hasn't occurred to anyone,

You all have this.

You all have each other.

Several of you met each other because of getting ready for this retreat.

Now you know people who are local to you,

Who are on the path,

And this is the most important thing in my opinion.

The 12th century poet Rumi talks about this a lot too.

He says,

Friends,

Stay with each other where you're leading and asking about how you're doing and telling each other how you're doing.

Stay together.

So you all have each other and you all have me.

I thank you so much for coming this weekend.