The Sangha

What is the Sangha?

There’s the Sangha in your home temple. There’s the city-wide Sangha. The state or province-wide Sangha, and on-and-on.

The word Sangha is a Pali and Sanskrit word meaning “assembly,” “company,” or “community.”

That original company or Sangha was a democratic assembly. There was a time when many of the ancient states in what is now India and Nepal where republics.

The Buddha borrowed the word Sangha for his community of monks and nuns. Over the centuries, through usage, this word has come to also include laymen and laywomen. And today we understand the word Sangha refers to those people who are practicing the Buddha’s teaching.

It’s very important we remember the word began as a description of a democratic meeting.

We know, nearing the end of the Buddha’s life his disciples were concerned about who he would name as his successor.

Three months before he died, the Buddha addressed his disciples. We remember what he said. We remember he told those around him to look to his teachings as his successor. His teachings would guide his students.

He told those gathered around him, “…be a lamp and refuge unto yourselves. Look for no other refuge. Let the truth be your lamp and your refuge. Seek no refuge elsewhere.”

A year after the Buddha’s death, his disciples and students meet in council. Through democratic means they agreed upon the future of the Order and the form the record of the his teachings would take.

Each person at the council spoke and shared remembrances.

Everyday in Buddhist temples around the world, the Three Refuges, sometimes called the Three Jewels, are recited.

The Buddha is our Teacher not our god, the Dharma is the Teaching to help us guide ourselves not a dogma to be blindly followed, and the Sangha, us, are those following that Teaching.

Many Westerners started out as book-Buddhists. We started reading about the Practice long before we started practicing it.

Or so we think.

Almost everyone I’ve talked with about their path to Buddhism have said something along the lines of, “I saw this teaching was something I’ve always known deep inside of me. Something I’ve always known to be true. Something I‘ve always tried to do.”

Once we realized the basic common sense and justice of the Practice we went looking for others. We began looking for a Sangha.

Ananda, the Buddha’s cousin and faithful attendant, once said to the Compassionate Teacher, "This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie."

The Buddha answered, "Don't say that, Ananda. Don't say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life.”

This is the holiness of the Sangha. We teach, we guide, we help one another.

Within the Tibetan tradition vigorous debate among Sangha members is a greatly honored practice.

Remember that. We need to discuss and debate and keep renewing the guiding principles the Buddha left us.

I doubt anyone ever asked the Buddha about marriage equality. But that doesn’t matter. We have the Teaching. The Compassion and the Wisdom the Buddha asked us to use to guide our lives will help us formulate an answer.

The same with any question we face as a Sangha or as an individual.

We should always remember what the Buddha told the Kalamas, “…after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conductive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it.”

And he also said the opposite. If it does not, after analysis, agree with reason and is not conductive to the good of one and all, then let it go.

We are the third jewel in Buddhist Practice. There is the Teacher. There is the Teaching. And there is Us.