Upholding the Sangha Treasure

I'm pretty excited these days about a new project at the Zen Center I have decided to call:

Upholding the Sangha Treasure.

As Buddhists, we vow to take refuge in the three treasures, or the three jewels. Here is my humble understanding of this vow. The three jewels are:

• Buddha -- Finding a teacher -- someone who is connected through the lineage to the historic Buddha himself. Also the Buddha within -- my direct experience of life.
  
• Dharma -- the teachings of the Buddha
  
• Sangha -- the people with whom we practice -- others on the Path. The Sangha is the equivalent to a congregation.

We vow to lean into them and apply and express them wholeheartedly. Part of taking the precepts in our tradition includes writing about our understanding of them. Here is a little bit of my writing from almost a year ago about the three treasures:

Taking Refuge in the Buddha

...when I take refuge in the Buddha, it is the Buddha within me – my senses, by ability to perceive and experience the physicality of this moment. My fingertips on the computer keys, my belly digesting lunch, the air going in and out of my nose, the skin all over my body, feeling the air and clothes and temperature. All this touching of the earth, and interfacing and being stirred into the whole universe. When I awaken to this, it certainly feels like taking refuge. It certainly feels like resting, and simplifying, even as I open to countless millions of things happening, it is still calmer and less busy than all that thinking.

Taking Refuge in the Dharma

Taking refuge in the teachings. Listening to them, applying them, experimenting, trying them on for myself. Asking, “Is that so?” I was not much of a reader of the Dharma prior to coming to practice, which, from what I understand can be a good thing. I notice that when I am listening to Dharma talks in my car, or after a Dharma talk, weekend retreat, etc, I am usually able to immediately practice what the teachings suggest. Whether I do so gracefully is another thing, but the Teachings I find to be completely practical, and applicable to everything real in my life, and again, I find a calmness, a comfort when I do take refuge in them.

Taking Refuge in the Sangha

BTW: This awesome photo was taken at Great Vow Zen Monastery just after a week-long retreat focusing on the koan of "Mu" during which the whole group often yelled it sang it growled it ate it breathed it throughout the sitting periods!

I am usually very comfortable on the giving and sharing end of things, but taking refuge suggests allowing the Sangha to help me, too. And the ways that this has happened most for me has been in meditation instruction, the classes, the very container of practice when sitting – others’ practice strengthens my own. New people coming to practice, and being asked to welcome them, or teach meditation instruction has given my own practice great energy and focus. Making mistakes as the chant leader in front of the Sangha has helped me to observe my own Inner Critic and see myself with the kind of compassion I receive from the Sangha. I am amazed that the Buddha was able to do all of this on his own, and it makes me so very glad that I don’t have to.

~ ~ ~

And this is as lovely and concise (two & a half pages) a dharma talk about Sangha, by none other than Chozen Bays. She references the fact that the Sangha Treasure often gets short shrift. This tendency is sometimes referred to as two jewels and a rock.

So why this focus on Sangha?

Our Zen group is currently limited by the amount of days available for rent at
the Portland Dharma Center 2514 SE Madison Currently we sit here

Thursday and Sunday nights at 7:30.
Monday mornings from 6-7 am, and
Tuesday nights start July 1 at 7:30.

So we are working towards acquiring a Portland building of our own, which means fundraising and organization as well as commitment to stepping up and being the ones who are there to make more teachings available. We are not ready to purchase anything at the moment, BUT we are getting ready.

One way to get ready is to see if we can't grow a little more before making such a big move. We are planning more programs, weekend workshops, etc. for the coming year. We are also looking at what a transition from a smallish membership to a larger membership would entail. Apparently this can sometimes be a difficult transition to make, and there can be losses along the way. So in a big change like this, it is important to focus on membership, and to be more conscious and awake about what we are doing. Thankfully, this wheel has already been invented.

I volunteered to digest and then gather some folks to learn about a spiritual / congregational roadmap of sorts from the Alban Institute. The Alban Institute is a Christian organization that has done a lot of research into these kinds of topics, and it publishes materials for congregations who are going through growth, transitions, etc. The Zen Community of Oregon had gone through a similar process with these materials many years ago, and found it to be enormously helpful.

My plan is to focus on this workbook, and work through it with some older and some newer practitioners. Together we will figure out how it translates into Zen. My friend Robin will be helping -- she has a near allergic sensitivity to proselytizing, having graduated from an evangelical Christian college, and will be my sniff tester for Zen-zealotry, or Zevangelicalism.


I have a lot of energy for this. I am very excited about it. It feels foundational. It feels important, it feels like a good fit for my skills, a contribution I can make, but most importantly, it feels like practice. Practice that's not sitting alone with myself and my roller derby mind, practice that's not reading about Zen, but practice with the Sangha treasure -- that can be grittier and scarier, but no less important.