What Is the Sangha?: The Nature of Spiritual Community by Sangharakshita

Author:Sangharakshita
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Windhorse Publications
Published: 2013-09-26T22:00:00+00:00

PART 3

The Network of Personal Relationships

INTRODUCTION

SOME VERSES I once composed for the dedication of a Buddhist shrine-room include the aspiration: ‘May our communication with one another be Sangha.’71 This reflects the very great importance that has always been given in Buddhism to the quality of communication both between members of the sangha and in the context of all the relationships an individual Buddhist has with other people. The Buddha had a great deal to say about communication – about the importance of truthful, kindly, meaningful, and harmonious speech, and about the necessity to pay attention to one's relationships in general, making sure that one is relating in ways that accord with one's Buddhist principles.

The reasons for this are quite obvious. To be human is to be related to other human beings. We cannot live our lives in isolation; whatever efforts we make to develop as individuals are continually tested in the fires of our relationships with other people. However calm, kind, and wise we may feel in the privacy of our own hearts or shrine-rooms, the true test of how fully we have developed these qualities comes when we are faced with the realities of life as represented by the challenges ‘other people’ represent.

The first human being to whom we are related is of course our mother. That relationship is very intimate, and it affects us for the whole of our lives. After that, our father comes into view, and perhaps brothers and sisters as well, together with grandparents, if we are fortunate. A little later we may also become aware of aunts, uncles, and cousins. This is usually the extent of our family circle. But then there are neighbours – next door, up the street, over the way – and from the age of four or five there are teachers, school fellows, and friends. Later, there may be a husband or wife, and perhaps children. On top of these relationships we will probably have connections with employers and work-mates, perhaps even employees. And we will also, sooner or later, have to have relationships of a kind with government officials, bureaucrats, even rulers, whether in our own country or abroad. By the time we reach maturity, we will find ourselves in the midst of a whole network of relationships with scores, perhaps hundreds, of people, and connected indirectly or distantly to very many more.

This network of relationships is the subject-matter of a Buddhist text known as the Sigālaka Sutta, which is to be found in the Dīgha-Nikāya, the ‘Collection of Long Discourses’, in the Pāli Canon.72 It is a comparatively early text, the substance of which, we can be reasonably certain, goes back to the Buddha himself. It is called the Sigālaka Sutta because it is a discourse given by the Buddha to a young man called Sigālaka. One translator describes the sutta as ‘Advice to Lay People’. In it the Buddha lays down a pattern for different kinds of relationships, explaining how each should be conducted. All this is

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