BUDDHIST SANGHA OF
MEETING AT
FRIENDS ,
C/O
JAMES REIS,
Meditation every Monday evening
at 7 PM, Thursday mornings from 6 to 7 AM
Discussion
-The Three Refuges, cont. –
February 23, after Meditation 8 to 9 PM Please
bring snacks to share
On
Saturday, February 21 join a
fun day of peaceful activities at Yardley Friends , hosted by the Buddhist
Sangha of Buck County, in association with the Yardley Quaker Meeting of
Yardley. 1:30 to 3:30 PM at the Yardley Friends Meetinghouse,
Activities
will include talks on the homeless in Bucks County and what our community can do
to help, “Limiting Small Arms”, Turning Enemies into Friends”, and
workshops on Parenting Wisdom. Jonathan Sprout will lead a musical
celebration and compose songs of Peace. Children’s programs include art
work and Worm Composting ( fun for adults too ) and beneficial bugs for a
Green Planet.
Sponsored by the Coalition for Peace Action, the Interfaith Community for Middle
East Peace, and the
Hosted
by the Buddhist Sangha of
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Socks
for the Salvation Army
. Last year we collected shoes and our drive was very successful and
appreciated by the recipients. This year we are requesting sock donations.
Please consider donating new pairs of socks to the Lower Bucks Salvation Army,
we will be collecting them in the lobby of Friends. You may leave them in the
food donation box or give them directly to Marilyn Piciotti.
Thanks to
those who have been supplying teas and snacks . We are a bit low right now on
Herbal teas, we need some that contain no Green Tea. Also, we will be
supplying refreshments for the Day of Peaceful Activities on Feb 21, so any
extra snacks you can provide will not go to waste!
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Continuing
call for submissions for the March issue of Reflections. The topic is The Three
Refuges. What are your experiences with the concept and practice of refuge in
your life? Can you see your dedication and trust in the practice growing? Does
this prayerful dedication fit with your current life or with your faith of
origin? It may be prayer or not, but it is a commitment; what are your
attitudes toward commitments? Do we confuse commitment with blind faith? Share
your thoughts, poems, or excerpts from teachings that are meaningful to you.
Deadline for submissions is Feb 28th. Please email to
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Discussion
-The Three Refuges, cont. –
Taking Refuge: The Decision to Become a Buddhist,
cont.
By Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
Taking Refuge in the
Buddha
submitted by
You take
refuge in the Buddha not as a savior—not with the feeling that you have found
something to make you secure—but as an example, as someone you can emulate. He
is an example of an ordinary human being who saw through the deceptions of life,
both on the ordinary and spiritual
levels.
The Buddha
found the awakened state of mind by relating with the situations that existed
around him: the confusion, chaos and insanity. He was able to look at those
situations very clearly and precisely. He disciplined himself by working on his
own mind, which was the source of all the chaos and confusion. Instead of
becoming an anarchist and blaming society, he worked on himself and he attained
what is known as bodhi, or
enlightenment. The final and ultimate breakthrough took place, and he was able
to teach and work with sentient beings without any
inhibition.
The
example of the Buddha's life is applicable because he started out in basically
the same kind of life that we lead, with the same confusion. But he renounced
that life in order to find the truth. He went through a lot of religious
"trips." He tried to work with the theistic world of the Hinduism of the time,
and he realized there were a lot of problems with that. Then, instead of looking
for an outside solution, he began working on himself. He began pulling up his
own socks, so to speak, and he became a buddha. Until he did that, he was just a
wishy-washy spiritual tripper. So taking refuge in the Buddha as an example is
realizing that our case history is in fact completely comparable with his, and
then deciding that we are going to follow his example and do what he
did.
One of the big steps in
the Buddha's development was his realization that there is no reason we should
believe in or expect anything greater than the basic inspiration that exists in
us already. This is a nontheistic tradition: the Buddha gave up relying on any
kind of divine principle that would descend on him and solve his problems. So
taking refuge in the Buddha in no way means regarding him as a god. He was
simply a person who practiced, worked, studied, and experienced things
personally. With that in mind, taking refuge in the Buddha amounts to renouncing
misconceptions about divine existence. Since we possess what is known as Buddha
nature, enlightened intelligence, we don't have to borrow somebody else's glory.
We are not all that helpless. We have our own resources already. A hierarchy of
divine principles is irrelevant. It is very much up to us. Our individuality has
produced our own world. The whole situation is very personal.
Taking Refuge in the
Dharma
Then
we take refuge in the teachings of the Buddha, the dharma. We take refuge in the
dharma as path. In this way we find that everything in our life situation is a
constant process of learning and discovery. We do not regard some things as
secular and some things as sacred, but everything is regarded as truth—which is
the definition of dharma. Dharma is also passionlessness, which in this case
means not grasping, holding on, or trying to possess—it means
non-aggression.
Usually, the basic thread that runs through our experience is our desire to have
a purely goal-oriented process: everything, we feel, should be done in relation
to our ambition, our competitiveness, our one-upmanship. That is what usually
drives us to become greater professors, greater mechanics, greater carpenters,
greater poets. Dharma—passionlessness—cuts through this small, goal-oriented
vision, so that everything becomes purely a learning process. This permits us to
relate with our lives fully and properly. So, taking refuge in the dharma as
path, we develop the sense that it is worthwhile to walk on this earth. Nothing
is regarded as just a waste of time; nothing is seen as a punishment or as a
cause of resentment and
complaint.
This aspect
of taking refuge is particularly applicable in
That passionless quality of dharma is an expression of nirvana—freedom, or
openness. And once we have that approach, then any spiritual practice we might
go through becomes a part of the learning situation, rather than merely
ritualistic or spiritual, or a matter of religious obligation. The whole process
becomes integral and
natural.
This approach involves a quality of directness and absence of deception—or we
might even say absence of politeness. It means that we actually face the facts
of life directly, personally. We do not have to come up with any padding of
politeness or ordinary cheapness, but we actually experience life. And it is
very ordinary life: pain is pain and pleasure is pleasure. We don't have to use
another word or innuendo. Pain and pleasure and confusion—everything takes place
very nakedly. We are simply ordinary. With our friends, with our relatives, in
everything that goes on, we can afford to be very simple and direct and
personal.
Taking Refuge in the
Sangha
Having taken refuge in the Buddha as an example and the dharma as path, then we
take refuge in the sangha as companionship. That means that we have a lot of
friends, fellow refugees, who are also confused, and who are working with the
same guidelines as we are. Everybody is simultaneously struggling with their own
discipline. As the members of the sangha experience a sense of dignity, and
their sense of taking refuge in the Buddha, dharma, and sangha begins to evolve,
they are able to act as a reminder and to provide feedback for each other. Your
friends in the sangha provide a continual reference point which creates a
continual learning process. They act as mirror reflections to remind you or warn
you in living situations. That is the kind of companionship that is meant by
sangha. We are all in the same boat; we share a sense of trust and a sense of
larger-scale, organic
friendship.
So taking refuge
in the sangha means being willing to work with your fellow students—your
brothers and sisters in the dharma—while being independent at the same time.
Nobody imposes his or her heavy notions on the rest of the sangha. Instead, each
member of the sangha is an individual who is on the path in a different way from
all the others. It is because of that that you get constant feedback of all
kinds: negative and positive, encouraging and discouraging. These very rich
resources become available to you when you take refuge in the sangha, the
fellowship of students. The sangha is the community of people who have the
perfect right to cut through your trips and feed you with their wisdom, as well
as the perfect right to demonstrate their own neurosis and be seen through by
you. The companionship within the sangha is a kind of clean friendship—without
expectation, without demand, but at the same time,
fulfilling.
So we no longer
regard ourselves as lone wolves who have such a good thing going on the side
that we don't have to relate with anybody at all. At the same rime we must nor
simply go along with the crowd. Either extreme is too secure. The idea is one of
constantly opening, giving up completely. There is a lot of need for giving
up.
The discipline of taking
refuge in the buddha, the dharma and the sangha is something more than a
doctrinal or ritual thing: you are being physically infected with commitment to
the buddhadharma; Buddhism is transmitted into your system. At that particular
point, the energy, the power, and the blessing of basic sanity that has existed
in the lineage for twenty-five hundred years, in an unbroken tradition and
discipline from the time of Buddha, enters your system, and you finally become a
full-fledged follower of buddhadharma. You are a living future buddha at that
point.
Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche
(1940-1987) was author of such classics as Cutting Through Spiritual
Materialism, The Myth of Freedom, Born in
How
you can help your Sangha
Donate your
used books on Buddhism to the Sangha Library
Bring
goodies to eat to the Monday night discussions
Make a tax
deductible donations to the Sangha , we are a non profit 501 ( c ) 3
organization
Donate food
items to the food bank, use the cardboard box located in the foyer
Send
articles or items of interest to share via email to BSBC19067@yahoo.com
Are you a Member of the Sangha? Membership,
although not required, it is available to deepen your commitment to the Sangha .
Forms are available from James Reis on any Monday night, or email us at BSBC19067@yahoo.com
and we can send a membership form out to you.
Buddhist Sangha of Bucks County 2009
Board of
Directors:
President, Jim
Hild – jhild@csc.com
Vice-president,
James Reis – james237@comcast.net
Secretary,
Edna Telep – e_telep@yahoo.com
Treasurer,
Jim Hild -- jhild@csc.com
Marilyn
Picciotti -- marilynnpicciotti@comcast.net
Publicist,
Susan Harrison – saharrison@comcast.net
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