Community and the Taste of Liberation

“A sangha is a community of friends practicing the dharma together in order to bring about and to maintain awareness. The essence of a sangha is awareness, understanding, acceptance, harmony and love… The Buddha said that the water in the four oceans has only one taste, the taste of salt, just as his teaching has only one taste, the taste of liberation. Therefore the elements of sangha are the taste of life, the taste of liberation.”

- Zen Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh

Today I want to share with you some reflections on the power and necessity of community for growth on our life path.

These days, there are countless opportunities to join communities across the world. Online only, place-based or a hybrid of the two. Every one of them has an intention or purpose.

I’ve had the good fortune to be a member of several formal Buddhist sanghas in my life, and I now lead one in the Eon Zen Center. Our sangha has over 50 active members, and many ways to engage, practice and learn with each other.

I am very intentional about the purpose of our sangha, which is well-expressed by Thich Nhat Hanh: we are practicing together to raise our awareness and infuse life with the truth and taste of liberation.

Not everyone wants to join a Zen Buddhist group. Not everyone is into the dharma, or even looking for liberation.

But everyone needs a community.

Have you found yours?

In my recent Episode of the Game of Zen podcast, I shared a dialogue with Scott Berman on sangha, called “Zen Connections: The Role of Community in Spiritual and Professional Growth.”

he pod is available on Spotify, YouTube, Apple and other places. I would love to hear your thoughts!

Before I go, I want to share a few more powerful teachings from Thich Nhat Hanh on sangha. Each one is worthy of your reflection.

My deepest wish is that you find the communities that share your deepest aspirations for yourself and the world. A community with strong intention, sound practices, reliable leaders, and safe structures that allow everyone to be vulnerable.

• Paul

If we look into the present situation in ourselves and our society, we can see much suffering. We need to call it by its true names—loneliness, the feeling of being cut off, alienation, division, the disintegration of the family, the disintegration of society.

Our civilization, our culture, has been characterized by individualism. The individual wants to be free from the society, from the family. The individual does not think he or she needs to take refuge in the family or in the society, and thinks that he or she can be happy without a sangha. That is why we do not have solidity, we do not have harmony, we do not have the communication that we so need.

In a society where everyone is rushing, everyone is being carried away by their habit energies, practice is very difficult. That is why the sangha is our salvation. The sangha where everyone is practicing mindful walking, mindful speaking, mindful eating seems to be the only chance for us to succeed in ending the vicious cycle.

If we lived in a sangha where everyone was perfect, everyone was a bodhisattva or a buddha, that would be very difficult for us. 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 weakness in a brother or a 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.

(All passages from?Friends on the Path: Living Spiritual Communities?(2002) by Thich Nhat Hanh with permission of Parallax Press, Berkeley, California,?www.parallax.org. and reprinted in Lion’s Roar: https://www.lionsroar.com/the-practice-of-sangha/)