and two to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tatakata's words. Good morning. Today it's my pleasure to introduce our speaker, Mary Duryea. Mary's Dharma name is Hankyo Joshu. Josu, original home, stable center. She came through the gate at Berkeley Zen Center in 1995, and she received lay ordination in 2004 and was Jusso in 2017. She had a rather long career as a psychologist and a court mediator. and she's a lover of nature, a great cook, and has led many whitewater rafting trips in her spare time.

[01:37]

So thank you, Mary, for speaking with us today. Thank you, Karen. Good morning. How's that? Is it better? Okay, let me know. It needs to be changed. It's been three years since I've been in this, you know, in this end together with you all. This is really wonderful. So happy Labor Day. Thank you for being here in spite of it being a long weekend and you could be at the beach. You know, gratitude to all those whose labor makes our life possible, and gratitude to all those who made it possible to have a weekend in a week. You know, it wasn't always so. I believe we have several new people here today, so special welcome to them.

[02:46]

Thank you for being here. and feel free to find your way around and ask people what's what make yourself at home so so i'd like to talk about sangha practice today it's been on my mind for quite a while um and my intention and my hope is that it is the start of a conversation because I have more questions than I have answers, and the answers I have are just mine. And I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of other views besides mine about this. You know, Ananda, the Buddhist sidekick, I think he was a peasant maybe, said to Buddha, isn't it true that half of the holy life is

[03:49]

spiritual friendship. And Buddha said, no, Ananda, that's not true. It's the whole of holy life. And Thich Nhat Hanh said that the next incarnation of the Buddha would not be Maitre, but would be the Sangha. So I've been pondering this. And the first question that comes up for me about it is, where do we find Buddha in Sangha? I mean, it might be just my concrete way of thinking, but where can we point? What visceral experiences do we have that are ineffable, that are mysterious, are feelings of being one with or having the self merge with something larger than oneself, those kinds of experiences. I mean, how do we take this in?

[04:52]

How do we take this idea of Thich Nhat Hanh's in? And in thinking about it, I cast back in my life about those moments that I could identify as having those elements. And the first thing that came to me was singing in a choir in high school. We had a very charismatic director and he wrestled this diverse, large group of 15, 16, 17 year olds into pretty good shape and he had ambitions and so we rehearsed five days a week and we did a couple of dozen concerts in a year and raised money and toured Europe and it was a fabulous experience for what I was then, which was a 17-year-old. And once we were in tune with each other, once we had practiced and rehearsed, there were these moments that were pretty regular, and I kind of think that this is probably true for musicians in general, that when you are in tune with the group that you're with, there is a moment when, I don't want to say the self falls away, more it,

[06:13]

it becomes part of this bigger thing, this larger, more complex voice that one could never have done on one's own and is bigger than any of the individual people in it. And that is a surprisingly pleasurable and relieving experience. We had a couple of other things happen that are hard to recall. I mean, that is relatively easy to explain, I think. But one of the things that happened, we have this piece by Randall Thompson called, Have Ye Not Known? It's a quote from Isaiah. And it's very dramatic. It's a cappella. And it starts with the tenors all coming in at the same time going, have ye not known? And then the next line is, have ye not heard? And the bass is coming on that. And then everybody comes in, have you not understood from the beginnings of time?

[07:13]

And then it blends into this melodic, you shall have a song. This beautiful piece of work. And the choir director, you know, how they set the pace. Somebody cues the tone. And then his hand hits the air, and that's when you're supposed to come in. And it started happening that all of the tenors, I don't know what they did. I think they took a big breath. Whatever they did, there was a palpable, significant beat between this and when they came in. And when they came in, it was completely in unison. I've since learned, I think there's, I don't, there's probably a fancy word for this, but it what i know it is is a delayed entrance sometimes you do it on purpose but this was not planned and the first time it happened it was terrifying and the second and third time it happened it was thrilling because it was a real manifestation of being one you know it was you know something

[08:22]

I've since read that the Swedish—who ever thought of this idea of making a study? But they hooked up all the choir members to electrocardiograms, and they found that when you sing together, your heartbeats synchronize together. They come into synchronicity together. Mary, I'm sorry to interrupt. We've got—people are asking for the sound to be raised just a little bit. Okay. Is that on my end? Do I do something? It's on the computer end. Not the microphone, I don't think. Maybe the microphone. How's that? Keep talking. Okay, so testing and check, [...] check. How's that? Lots of thumbs up. Okay. Thumbs up. All right. All right. Great. Perfect. So, I mean, I have other examples, but I want to just say, what are these, what might be, I ask what's in common about these, you know, experiences.

[09:36]

I had several of those kinds of experiences, remember running, but it's not, I don't want to spend time talking about all that. Well, one of them is how much we practice together, how we were united around something, a principle or something. and how we debriefed and debriefed and debriefed, and so we knew each other. So then I ask, and this is just my list, so I invite you to have your list, where do we find traces of this ineffability or ineffableness in our practice? Here's a possibility when we notice the difference between sitting alone and together. Why is that? Can we even explain that? When you feel the energy in the Zenda shift, deepen.

[10:39]

One time ago, I remember a talk by Doug Greiner who said, he pointed to the You know, when someone in the zendo during zazen shifts into shikantaza and the whole room follows him for her, which was kind of a remarkable idea for me at the time. When you see radiance in a Sangha member's countenance, someone said to me once when I was noticing how radiance everyone was after a long sushim. She said to me, that's your Buddha nature recognizing itself in the other. Which still knows me actually. So Thich Nhat Hanh, I've been returning to Thich Nhat Hanh quite a bit. He has a lot to say about Sangha practice.

[11:44]

And this is one intriguing thing. He says, we allow the collective energy of the Sangha to penetrate into our body. And if you know how to use that energy of mindfulness in order to receive the collective energy of the Sangha, you will have a powerful source of energy for your transformation and healing. And we all know that Sangha practice is not all Buddha. It can be messy. And I'm proposing that the messiness is actually not that easy to talk about. We had an all-sangha open discussion last month, and in that short period of time, it's not know time enough to develop kind of the harder topics but every single comment was positive which was terrific i mean i enjoyed that but then i got engaged in conversation with people afterwards where people came forward and said yeah but that's not the whole story right but there's something risky about talking about the the what do we call it shadow side and certainly i

[13:06]

I have a little bit of, I've been having a little bit of fear about even bringing it up in this talk. So here's one thing that one person said. Sangha can be a lonely place. It can feel like being a stranger at a party where there's a core group of very close friends. The hosts seem to pay attention to these folks who seem to pay most attention to each other. Another person said, remembering what it was like to have ambivalent feelings about Sangha, life that at times included jealousy, envy, lack of connection, self-doubt, even hurt. And when I heard those, I recognized them as things that all of those things that I have at one point or another felt. I'm not one of those people who walked into this place and immediately felt at home.

[14:09]

I probably as a child, I would have been called what they now call a slow to warm up child. So an introvert of sorts. But I don't think that's the only thing that this is about. I think there's a conundrum, which is how to say something, especially something that might be considered as critical. to the Sangha when Sangha relationships are so important. And saying something might jeopardize those relationships. I mean, that's the nub, I think, of the conundrum. And night before last, I had a dream. I think about this point. I considered it a nightmare when I woke up. And as I worked with it a little bit, it felt a bit like a gift because it put me right in the middle of these kind of feelings. In my dream, a whole range of friends of mine from childhood on were in the dream.

[15:15]

I don't know what we were doing. We were doing some activity. And some handful of friendships from my very young age joined together and said to me something about, I don't remember exactly the languages, but sort of pointing to what a jerk I had been. about something. And they were very insistent about it. And actually, I sort of recognized the behavior that they were pointing to. So they were right, really. And I tried to apologize in the dream. And it didn't land, it didn't go anywhere. And I tried to say, You know, it's 60 something years later, I'm different now. I'm not that person anymore. And that didn't land and they walked away. So that's the fear, right? That our messy selves will not find reconciliation with others.

[16:24]

And certainly, I've heard other people say this from this spot, that I have had feelings that, boy, I think I have to leave this place. I think it's not the place for me. I had that feeling in what was a very difficult period of time for this place, 2017. And in the middle of the stuff that was happening, I went to a meeting. which went completely off the rails, which is actually pretty unusual for this place. But this one, it went really off the rails. And I left sewing, I got to get out of here. And I was in the process of plotting my exit. So I didn't act on it. I came, I think it was even the next day, I came here and sad saws in. in the courtyard, Sojin pulled me aside and said, I want you to be Shuso this year.

[17:32]

And the first thought I had, and forgive me, Sue Oh, if you're on, I can't see if you're on, but forgive me for outing you. The first thing I said was, no, it shouldn't be me, it should be Sue Oh. And he said, I already asked her. And she's not able to do it this year. I still think of 217 as her year. And certainly the very first time I met her 20 years ago, I thought she was a senior student. So anyway, the second thought I had was that the universe had a really diabolical sense of humor, which is that I was plotting my escape and then I'm being invited to go deeper. So what am I gonna do? And I didn't answer right away. You don't have to answer right away. You have to go away and think about whether you can make this work in your life. And I did that. And the story kept coming to me about Suzuki Roshi, which I love.

[18:36]

And I have a sort of mental picture of it, even though it wasn't there. The story is that he was walking through the zendo when zazen was happening, and it was in a long zoshin. And I picture him turning to the group who's Everybody's facing the wall. And he says, it doesn't get better later. And I was thinking about the stories about the Buddha's Sangha and what a messy, I mean, he had a cousin who tried to kill him three times and he had a moment when 500 monks walked off the place and went somewhere else. I mean, things happened, which were way more dramatic than anything that's ever happened here. So that led me to the sort of mantra that I have. The first is that the most important thing to me is the Sangha, and that's what kept me here.

[19:41]

And the second thing is, it's not better somewhere else. You know? We, messiness is, are us, everywhere. This is Thich Nhat Hanh on that. You don't need a perfect Sangha, which is, that's good. A family or a community doesn't have to be perfect in order to be helpful. In fact, the Sangha at the time of Buddha was not perfect. But it was enough for people to take refuge in. Because there were enough people who had enough compassion solidity and insight to embrace others who did not have as much compassion, solidity and insight. And Thich Nhat Hanh said, I also have difficulties with my saga, but I'm very happy because everyone tries to practice. And then he goes on and I think this is sort of amping it up a bit.

[20:45]

If we lived in a Sangha where everyone was perfect, everyone was a bodhisattva, that would be very difficult for us, contrary to our imagination. Weakness in the other person is very important, and weakness within yourself is also very important. Anger is in us. Jealousy is in us. Arrogance is in us. These kinds of things are very human. It is thanks to the presence of weakness in you and weaknesses in a brother or sister that you learn how to practice. To practice is to have an opportunity to transform. So it is through our shortcomings that we learn to practice. This is a particular learning I have heard over and over again, but I also have to learn it over and over again, that my problems are my opportunity to practice. So that leads me to the question, what is the work of a Sangha practice?

[22:01]

What are we aiming for? I guess that was my first question under this umbrella. Well, so in my dream, my hope was to be allowed to change and to reconcile and to make amends that people wouldn't walk away And the way I envision it in my personal relationships and my sangha relationships, I mean, my family situations, is that safety and trust in relationship is not based on not having things go awry. It's based on a confidence that you can work things out when they do. You know, I've heard it said by some psychiatrists that it's not, in parenting, it's not the fact that you lose it with your kid because you will lose it with your kid. It's the repair.

[23:04]

It's all in the repair. And that umbrella, that feels like an umbrella container or something that amounts to a kind of, I don't know what, agreement maybe, a social contract that we won't walk. on each other. And maybe to add to that, that people will be kind and curious and wanting to understand, wanting to listen to the apology and wanting to understand how I've changed or want to change. The metaphor that I have developed in my own mind and work with people, when I was working, is that there are difficult conversations and confrontations that have the structure of confrontation, of people facing each other. And one person says, you did this.

[24:06]

And the other person says, no, but you did that first. And then the other person says, yeah, but this is the way it is. And the other person says, no, it's not, it's this way. And that's a kind of a self-other construction of that conversation. And then there's another possibility, which is there's a shoulder-to-shoulder conversation that can happen when the two people are looking at what has happened to them. And the conversation is, when that happened, what was going on with you? What were you thinking and feeling? And having that curiosity. And then the answer comes going oh i didn't know that wow when when that happened but first of all i didn't think it happened that way i think it happened this way so that's what i was responding to and then i was thinking and so the conversation is a completely different conversation and it's joined together while you're talking about the thing that has come between us

[25:09]

There is a kind of human thing where we are so tuned to what the impact of the other person's actions and behavior are on us that we fail actually to realize how powerful an impact we have on other people. We underestimate our own impact and really read the other person's impact. And when you see people in this kind of confrontational conversation, there is a feeling that each has that all they're doing is reacting to the other person they didn't start it and the other person has that same feeling that they didn't start it that what they're doing is just reacting so it's like the other person is the cause and what i'm doing is the effect but then there's something magical that happens as soon as i open my mouth and say something my effect the effect on me has become the cause of the next thing for the other person. And if you ask people who started it, you can go back in time and you'll never find the answer to that I'm proposing.

[26:20]

But transforming the conversation from this to this, I think involves a lot of skill and a lot of steps. One of them is to be able to interrupt the, you did this and you did that, to be able to pause and stop that reactivity. There's a wonderful metaphor that mediation trainers have used, fellows by the name of Fisher and Yuri at Harvard wrote this book called Getting to Yes. And the metaphor they use is, when you're in that situation with someone, go to the balcony. And the idea is, to get some part of yourself out of the mix of feeling and into a place where you can see a bigger picture and even entertain the idea of what, be curious about what is going on, what's the other person's position here. They use it as a kind of strategy, but I think we could also, if you can figure out the other person's position, you can come up with a solution they might like.

[27:35]

the mediation strategy. But for us, it could be the beginning of saying, how did our karmic entanglements catch each other? How can we unpack this? Certainly that's a muscle that's stopping and pausing is a muscle that is developed in zazen, right? To not act on what is coming up, but to just see you to go to the balcony if you will um it does presume that and i think that there is no gain from going to a blame or shame position that finding a way of taking that out of the equation is really important and figuring out how to bring some kindness in to the whole thing for oneself and for the other person

[28:35]

There's a whole other way of talking about this wonderful story of the five blind people and the elephant, which is actually a Buddhist story. And the first time it appears is in a sutta around the time of Buddha, 500 BCE. So person number one says, this is a hose. Person number two says, oh, it's a big flat leaf or a fan. Person number three says it's a tree trunk. Person number four says, no, it's a barrel. Person number five says it's a rope. And then you can imagine that you fall to the obvious place where you argue about what's real, right? And we can sort of laugh at this and say, because we can visualize the elephant, but isn't this what we do? We have a perception, we have an interpretation of the perception, and then we say that's what reality is, and that's our point of view.

[29:44]

And we come at each other with our points of view. So what's the alternative? The alternative is if we assume If we agree to assume that every person is touching some truth, that every person's perception has some truth in it, and no one has the whole truth. So if we start with those two premises, then what is the... conversation that happens then one thing i have is if if those five people drop their interpretation which in mediation would be their position it's it's a rope it's a hose it's a it's a barrel it's a fan it's a tree trunk if you drop that and go to the underlying experience the visceral observation

[30:55]

Then you could have a different conversation. Then you can have a conversation about what's similar about what people are. I mean, certainly the skin quality of each person's perception would be a commonality of sorts, wouldn't it? But you still might not get the whole picture of the elephant. There still is the kind of feeling like you have to get to a high enough balcony to actually get the big picture. When I was doing mediation with people, people would come in with positions, and they were usually self-canceling. I mean, other canceling positions. Like, if this person got what they wanted, it would be impossible for this person to get what they wanted. And that is in the nature of positions. It's a rope, it's a pose, and so forth. These are the final conclusions based on our underlying needs, wants, feelings, perceptions.

[31:56]

we come to, well, this is what I need, then I have to have that. If you stand back from those positions and say, well, what? What is it that I'm feeling? And what is it that is needed in this situation? And unpack it on that level. There are three or four or five solutions that may be able to answer both people's needs. In fact, what I should say to people is the universe is big enough for you both to get what you need here. If we can figure out what the underlying conversation is that needs to happen. Karen and I spent some time at Dharma Reign Zen Center in Portland in May doing a training and it was a great experience and there they talk about Sangha, and they use the metaphor of mandala.

[32:57]

And they talk about Sangha as mandala. And for them, well, first of all, their organizational chart is a circular mandala, which is interesting. I wrote to Jiko Sally Deesdale and said, you know, what is the backstory of mandala? And she said, mandalas are balanced. No one is a part. Nothing is extra. It's a teaching about belonging and also about this balance where everyone matters and has a purpose. And when someone feels alienated or sort of out of sorts, then the way they talk about it is helping that person find their place in the mandala, that there is a place for everyone in the mandala. And their positioning, regardless of their authority or their rank, is one of equality. every voice is equal and important in the mandala.

[34:02]

And that goes with, you know, everyone's voice is important. And it also goes with, having said that, no one gets their way 100% of the time. But each voice shifts the conversation or shifts the direction of the super tanker, if you will, a degree or two, and becomes, or when it's really feeling like the ineffable, it becomes a choir, becomes one voice. So another way of talking about it is a paradigm shift, which is very Buddhist, but it's also the fundamental of systems thinking, which was really the big rage when I was coming up and learning about all this. And one of the foremost voices of this was Gregory Bateson, who was a Buddhist also, but he was also, I think he was a sociologist, is that right? Anybody know?

[35:03]

But he was also a philosopher. And what? Anthropologist. Anthropologist, thank you. Thank you. He said, a system after all is any unit containing feedback structure and therefore competent to process information. There are ecological systems, social systems, I'm putting in here sanghas, and the individual organism, plus the environment in which all of that exists. And then he goes on to say this wonderful thing, which is wisdom is the intelligence of the system as a whole. Who said that? wisdom is the intelligence of the system as a whole and i this fits with me because i i have a deep faith in the wisdom of the sangha as a collective i think when voices are all heard there is i have seen wisdom that i that is a faith i have

[36:14]

Dan Siegel, who's a psychiatrist at UCLA, maybe borrowing from Bateson, maybe not, maybe, you know, independently coming up with this in his work group, defines mind as a process that regulates the flow of energy and information. So what's radical about that is, did you hear the word brain in there anywhere? No. It's not embodied. He's not talking about something embodied. He could be talking about mycelium, right? Mycelium, which is the roots of fungi, and fungi being mushrooms, and mushrooms being the fruit of this plant that is underlying forests, fits this definition of being a source of flow of energy, regulating energy and information. A family therapist of some repute, I mean, both Bates and Whitaker, this is called Whitaker, are gone now, but, or at least not in embodied form.

[37:29]

Carl Whitaker would say provocative things like, there's no such thing as an individual, only fragments of families. And we could say the same thing, couldn't we? There's no such thing as an individual, only fragments of sangha. I mean, that's a way sort of getting the paradigm shift kind of, again, a jolting our way of thinking about it. So we're about to embark on a study of the Eightfold Path in our aspects. Next Saturday is the opening of Sashin. And I admit that I have often, maybe always before, seeing the Eightfold Path as a personal path that I'm walking. But it occurred to me while I was thinking about all of this that actually, what if we see the Eightfold Path as one that our whole sangha walks together?

[38:32]

And that there is a body of thought that says people who, and it's in the adult educational model called community of practice that when people learn together, something different happens than when those same people go off and learn the same thing, but by themselves. I don't know what that is. That's the inevitable. But so I'm proposing what if what if we think about the Eightfold Path as something that we we walk and learn about together in this Same idea. So I think I'm going to stop there and ask you, what is your vision of Sangha practice? And how do we tend Sangha?

[39:33]

I guess all those questions I had. Where do you see Buddha in the Sangha? And any other question or response you have? And I'm assuming that the tech host will let me know, or maybe I can watch for hands for people online. And yes, Hanko. Thank you, Mary. As everybody here knows, or many people know, I might ask questions about my trouble with Sangha, but I'm going to pass on that, and you can all read the book. But what I am going to point out, or what I felt today, when you said that at certain points, the being of togetherness raises, like you said, somebody went into Shikantaza and everybody follows. Now I'd like to ask everyone who was here for the first sitting today, I'm sorry, for the sitting where we sat down and faced out.

[40:38]

As we faced out, there was a depth of quiet here. And in the first five or 10 minutes, it was retained significantly. Did anyone notice that show of hands? And did anybody feel like I did? What Mary said was, and I felt it there before you mentioned it was, we're all doing something together and it's happening together. Anybody, anybody at all? Some people sense that and it was a beautiful thing and a truth that I cling to. And that's why I come. We're bringing that up. Thank you. Yes. Thank you very, very much for this talk. It really touched me something that you said. It doesn't get better elsewhere. You know, I think that that can be such a pivotal question in one's life because it distracts one from being able to do the work, which is always here.

[41:51]

It always says, oh, it's going to be better over there. The focus is gone as to where one needs to be really working. It really just touched me. I was like, oh my God, I'm excited about that. And after the fact, that had been quite costly emotionally and elsewhere, then I had been able to look at and see, oh my god, there was a lot that could have been done differently. And I had been looking here rather than using that as a way to get out of a situation that was difficult. Right. Right. I mean, yes, I have tried geographical solutions, and they've not worked very well in my own life. And, you know, being at Dharma Rain, where it's the same Dharma underlying, and we felt like we were taken in like family, and yet the forms are just a little bit different, like you have to be on your toes, that that newness was really energizing for me.

[43:08]

And my zazen got very deep and I realized that part of it being deep was because, this is a confession, because I didn't have my karmic entanglements with everybody around me. I didn't know anybody around me, right? But I realized I just have to be there for a month and it'll be the same, right? Everywhere I go, there I am, right? Yeah, yeah, Laurie. This is just a riff on what you said, kind of, you know, one of the greatest, I was thinking, one of the greatest joys of Samba Life for me is watching someone when they take a new position and then they sort of grow into it. And there's some, there's like anxiety evolution involved. Like, of course, the person's anxious at first and you want to be supportive and calming, but then as they, as they learn it you find you're leaning i'm leaning on them then you know what i mean like there's this interchange of anxiety and confidence and leaning on each other and i guess my point is just that the mandala is something that's always evolving and your place in it is it keeps changing yes right yes that's one of the really amazing things that's hard to talk about but to experience yeah yes yes and it's it's

[44:37]

very painful when one doesn't have that feeling of a place in the mandala. I mean, I had that experience for a while, not completely, it was my only experience, it was part of my experience of Sojin's funeral at Green Gulch, is that there were so many people there, many people I didn't know, and I couldn't find my place in the mandala. I mean, where do I, and when I, and I, That all kind of calmed down when I was able to put words to what the distress was. I went, oh, okay, well, I can work with that. You know, I got to figure that out. Yeah. Jeanne. Thank you, Mary. That was stunning. Just... the subject that you chose and it just felt so complex and complete, the angles that you chose to, the lenses that you use.

[45:50]

One thing I've experienced in the last few years during the pandemic is that the Sangha is not localized or embodied. It's beyond that. I left Berkeley and Berkeley Zen Center in 1983, moved to L.A. I'm still in Southern California, but soon will be with you. And so I had a teacher here and I, when she transitioned, practiced alone for 10 years. And it wasn't until the pandemic and Zoom and actually Sojin's stepping down ceremony that I found that I could reconnect over Zoom. And my feeling when I did, and I remember writing to an old friend from Berklee Zen Center saying, the sangha seems now incredibly much stronger than when I left. And here I am virtually connecting, and I feel like I connected much more intensely than when I was there in person.

[46:57]

And, of course, it has to do with a lot of things, the development of the sangha, my own. But, you know, it's maybe when you said that about Dan Siegel and talking about the mind, I felt like, yeah, it's not in the brain. And the sangha is much larger than in the embodied configuration. And thank you for all of your thoughts so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Dean. Thank you, Mary. I'm not sure how clear this will be, but I would like you to talk a little bit more about, you referred to Sangha practice. And ever since I started coming here, I was always a little bit caught off when people would talk about the separate parts of practice. It's sort of like people would talk about inside the gate as opposed to outside the gate.

[48:00]

And I thought, I don't think there's a, I mean, there's a difference because we have to talk about things in the scribal. But I would like to hear you say a little bit more because it feels like that there's something different or separate about Sangha practice. And I'd like to hear more about within the context of our practice in general as a whole. Yeah, thank you. It sort of points to something that I meant to say at the beginning, which, you know, we take refuge. I take refuge in Buddha. I take refuge in Dharma. I take refuge in Sangha. That's actually how Dharma Rain starts their talks. They do Sunday talks instead of Saturday. But instead of bowing, we bow, and I'm sort of thinking like each bow is a refuge.

[49:01]

When Thich Nhat Hanh is saying that the next Buddha is Sangha, there is a feeling that I have that Sangha practice is not the best way of saying this, but it's where the rubber meets the road on Dharma and Buddha. It's where we work out what we understand to be Dharma and how we we learn Dharma and how we experience Buddha is in relationship. It is the way the relative meets the absolute, if you will. And there's work there in the relative, right? There is work in terms of leaning in to what's difficult, leaning into what we don't want to feel and letting ourselves feel it anyway and then not acting on it. That kind of work is the work in the relative and how we learn to talk to each other even when we are upset and still be kind.

[50:12]

That's how we manifest something about Dharma. That's how we walk the walk. I mean, that's Sangha practice, I guess. It's walking the walk and talking the talk. And how we work it out in the nitty gritty. of daily life and in the midst of that something else happens some other doors I don't know if that's even the right way to say it but some other radiance happens I guess I'm trying to figure out how that is separate than practice in general because I don't I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out. Practice is practice. I think it goes back to the idea of systems where the basic idea is the sum, the whole, is greater than the sum of parts.

[51:13]

That is something that happens when we join together with a united effort that is different from what we can each do individually. there is something qualitatively different about the study that happens, about the practice that happens together in relationship than when we go off and think we're only just walking the walk by ourselves. Our practice is not that separation, our practice is all of it though, right? Sure. Is it okay if I... Yeah, please. I think the simplest way I would put it is there's an intentionality of what we are doing here that we come into and we implicitly or explicitly agree to that gives us a field that creates a system that we can, within which we can learn. That's not any different than what happens in the world, but we don't necessarily have that

[52:23]

Intentional agreement. It's not necessarily shared, whereas presumably it is shared here. That's the way I see it. But it's shared with our practice. I mean, isn't it foundational in our practice? Yes, absolutely. So yesterday, for example, I was sitting on the porch playing guitar. Two people walked by that I didn't know. One of them had a guitar. He looked at me. He came over. We made a connection. He sat down. I asked him to play a song. We talked for 45 minutes. So we were entering something together because we were agreeing. We were curious about each other. Ideally, that's how we should live. But we don't always live that way. It's not just what our intention is, it's also what another person's intention is. This is just a field. This is a laboratory.

[53:26]

Some of it is a laboratory. It is a system within which we learn how to be with each other. And that we apply in every relationship. That's my understanding of it. I'm gonna call on Katie O'Kenn and then Yoni. Go ahead. Thanks so much, Mary. One of my experiences in Sangha practice is that the practice of meeting others with kindness and compassion develops an attitude that benefits myself. we we're in conversations with ourselves all the time and we are not always kind to ourselves in our conversations and when we're forced to engage with others and to be kind to others when we may not feel that kindness it cultivates a an attitude of practice that can benefit ourselves well it's really not

[54:44]

We're sangha, too. That's right. In a real way, we learn how to treat ourselves by how we are treated by other people. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. Yoni. Thank you for your talk. My experience of sangha here has, for the last year or so, been very focused on the residential sangha. Through living here, I've sort of interfaced a little bit with other groups. Well, living here, there's a focus on trying to take care of the place. And through that activity, we sort of bond and we feel like we're part of Sangha. And I wonder, I know that there's, for example, the board, there's practice committee, and I wonder if you could talk about how your experiences of those sort of Sanghas within Sanghas in body practice or how practice went in those spaces for you?

[55:53]

I don't think we have enough time. Talk about petri dishes. They are the ultimate petri dishes. Maybe that's the easiest way. When you're working on a project, here's a great example. I know of two people who are working on a project here. I'm going to make this up because I know they were, let's say, painting a building. And they were arguing about the right way to paint the building pretty much all day long. And then finally, one of them stood in front of the other and put his hands on the other person's shoulder and said, you think we're painting a building. We're actually building a relationship. That literally happened? Yes.

[56:53]

Not with painting a building. Yes. Where is this? Here. Where was this? Here. [...] But that's, that's true. of all of those activities. We think we're minding the budget, but we're tending a relationship. Okay. Things are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable.

[57:58]

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