Body as Sangha Body

I'm returning to a primary practice of body awareness. Realizing that I have an auto-immune disorder or two has gotten my attention, and so my intention is to tune in to this body.

Sitting with awareness of the body was the first meditation practice I ever learned when I sat with Julie Wester at a weekend women's retreat -- my very first meditation retreat evah. I had no idea who she was at the time, and no idea that her root teacher was Ruth Denison*, or the significance of that to a feminist looking at what appeared to be just another patriarchal religion.

Anyway, when I first started going to Sanzen, Hogen Roshi suggested I focus my meditation on the practice of body scan. I did this as a primary practice for a few years. It feels very powerful to return to it again.

It is a bit like that movie -- Fantastic Voyage. In this movie, a crew of scientists gets shunken down in a wee little submarine, and they explore inside someone's body, and well, hilarity ensues, or something. Body scan consists of paying attention to each part of the body, each particle of the body, and shining the light of awareness on it.


And yet...

As the Shusso, when sitting with the community, my role is to monitor the Zendo. To be the one who responds when someone walks in late and needs assistance. To be the one who makes sure the evening's service positions are filled, so that things run smoothly. To be the one people can go to with their questions. All of the Shusso's actions are taken with the purpose of holding the container of practice, and cultivating harmony in the Zendo and in the Sangha.


It is different to broaden my attention in this way, but recently I've begun to look at it as a similar kind of body practice -- awareness of the Sangha body.

Sanghakaya

Ven Thich Nhat Hanh writes eloquently about the Sangha body - the Sanghakaya. He likens each individual to a cell or tissue in the larger body of the Sangha, using the metaphors of nature:

The Sangha is our body. It is like the beehive is the body of the bee, the anthill is the body of the ant. And when we are able to live in that spirit, considering the Sangha as our body, most of our suffering will vanish. Taking refuge in the Sangha is not an expression of faith, it is a practice.

Joko Beck has described that in the West, we don't have the Three Jewels (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha), as much as we have "two jewels and a rock." Sitting alone in our houses, reading Dharma books, Chozen Bays refers to this kind of practice as "take the Dharma and run."

Sangha practice-- even just talking about Sangha practice -- certainly stirs people up. I have noticed extremes of romanticizing or scorning practice with a physical community. Certainly practicing with people can be incredibly supportive as well as incredibly frustrating. It usually does not run smoothly or work out according to our ideas of how it should. But it runs, and mostly in spite of ourselves.

The body metaphor continues to be apt:

“Herein, Bhikkhus & Friends, the Bhikkhu contemplates the body from the soles of the feet upward, and from the top of the hair downward: This filthy frame with skin stretched over it, which is filled with many impurities consists of:

Head-hairs, body-hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, vomit, diaphragm, spleen, lungs, intestine, membrane, stomach, excrement, brain, bile, lymph, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, skin, tallow, spit, snot, joint-fluid, and urine.

Just as if a man with good sight would examine a sack with openings at both ends, filled with various kinds of grain; paddy, beans, sesame, on opening it would recognize its contents thus: That is paddy, this is beans, that is sesame, this is husked rice: Exactly so does the Bhikkhu investigate this body.”

When we investigate what the Sangha body is made of, it can be downright ugly, and yet, is a nothing short of a miracle.

But like Jon Kabat-Zinn has been saying to the people referred to his MBSR classes, some of whom with multiple diagnoses and many layers of suffering: "There is more right with you than there is wrong with you."

The Sangha body is impermanent and precious. It is interconnected and interpenetrating. Whole. Applying these insights in the other direction -- to the reality of this physical body -- helps me see this body in a different, larger perspective.



*Ruth Denison is a first generation female Vipassana teacher pioneered not only leading all-women retreats, but also practicing with movement and dance. Her biography, Dancing in the Dharma is a riveting story of many life chapters, including her growing up in Nazi Germany, her harrowing journey across Poland after the war, ending up in the epicenter of the counterculture in California, training with U Ba Khin, and at one point, using her training in body awareness to help Timothy Leary come down off a bad trip.