This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video The Gift of Dharma Companions ~ Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Good evening. Welcome.
So if we come to a dharma center and we see this guy here, the Buddha, these statues, he’s usually depicted as sitting by himself with his eyes closed. And we just finished doing a sit. We’re about to do a dharma talk. We sat in community, but with our eyes closed, not talking to one another. So there’s a way in which you might think this whole meditation thing, this whole Buddhist practice thing, is all about just being by yourself and getting that willpower and striving and making things happen.
And to be sure, there’s some element of that, of some effort. But let’s be honest, if a practice was just about sitting quietly with our eyes closed, any of us who did nap time when we were in kindergarten probably would already be awakened, right?
So, of course, there’s a lot more to Buddhist practice. And from the very beginning, the Buddha recognized the importance of other people, the community. So even though we’re sitting by ourselves and not talking and don’t have our eyes open and aren’t engaging, this practice really is about being in the world in such a way that we’re not causing harm to others, not causing harm to ourselves, and that we can bring more goodness into the world. There are so many different ways we can interpret that word “goodness.”
Classically, in the early Buddhist teachings, many of you will be familiar with this idea that we take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha1. This is a formal ceremony. It used to be that every other year at IMC we would do this, where there would be classes offered and then there’d be a formal ceremony. It’s been a number of years since it was last done. But for those of you who sit residential retreats, we do a short version of this ceremony at the beginning of the retreat.
This idea of taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha is just orienting our life towards what provides safety and well-being. The Buddha stands for our potential. He was a human just like we are, and he became awakened just like we can. So we take refuge in our potential. The Dharma can be interpreted in many different ways. One is the teachings that the Buddha left behind. I’m giving a dharma talk inspired by the teachings that the Buddha gave, and I’ll even throw in some quotes here from the suttas. And then the last one is Sangha. Taking refuge in Sangha, taking refuge in community, recognizing the role that other people have in our practice.
Sangha and community can be understood in lots of different ways. Some of it could just be the Monday night at IMC community. Maybe you don’t necessarily talk to one another a lot here, but it would be different if it was just me and you here. Or if you were here by yourself and I wasn’t even here and Jim wasn’t here. If you were just here by yourself, it’d be so different, right? During the pandemic, I did come here and sit in this room all by myself and talk to a camera all by myself. It was different. I like it when you guys are here. I like it when we’re practicing together.
This idea that practicing in community is part of what supports our practice. Classically, we take refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, but not only that. Many of you will be familiar with the Eightfold Path. These eight elements lead towards awakening, and they can be abbreviated as Sila, Samadhi, Panna2. The first one is Sila, which we can interpret as ethical behavior—not causing harm to others or to ourselves. The Buddha put this at the beginning of the path. When Buddhism came to the West, that part kind of didn’t get put at the beginning so much. Instead, meditation practice got put at the beginning, and it’s what we often emphasize.
Gil Fronsdal, the founder of the center here, is starting a class, “The Equivalence of Ethics and Enlightenment.” I think it starts in a few weeks. I taught this with Gil here at IMC once or twice, and we taught a version of it at the university a couple of times. It’s such a rich, fascinating, and fun topic—this whole idea of ethics, which normally doesn’t sound interesting. But it turns out to be really about how we can show up in the world not causing harm, and how we can interpret the teachings of the Buddha in modern times and make them relevant and a support for our practice. So, a small little plug if you’re interested.
This is the Buddha pointing to the importance of how we treat one another, how we are in the world. Ethics doesn’t really make so much sense if you’re only concerned about yourself. He put this at the beginning of the practice because it’s about how we can be in community. Some versions of the training towards awakening also add generosity at the beginning of practice. So even before meditation, there’s this idea of how we are showing up in the world and how we are treating other people. Generosity, if it’s done in a way that is supportive of practice, creates a relationship between people. It’s a way of demonstrating care and this recognition of others, and a way of allowing ourselves to feel inspired and to have some actions that come out of this inspiration and appreciation.
So in some of these ways, we could say that traditionally, being with community has always been at the forefront of practice. The version that we inherited here in the West doesn’t always show up there, but it’s definitely an integral part of practice.
I have a story that I reflect on often. It’s amazing when I think about this. I was a new practitioner. I was trained as a scientist and was working in corporate America, which is a different type of culture than it is here, let’s just say that. I wanted to go to a meditation center. I had been to some dharma talks, but a friend later called me a “dharma bolter” because as soon as the talk was finished, I was out the door. I would bolt. It’s true. I didn’t talk to anybody; I just showed up and left.
But I thought I would stretch myself a little bit on one of these days when there was an extended sit-walk-sit-walk type of thing, and then there would be lunch. On this particular event, it was a brown bag lunch. We would bring our lunch, but we were no longer in silence, so we would talk. I didn’t know anybody, and it felt kind of awkward. I was a little bit shy and introverted. I just ended up having this lovely conversation with these people over lunch. It was fun and interesting.
At the end of this, as we were packing up to go, this woman turned to me and said, “Remind me again, what is your name?” She said it in this way like, “It was nice talking with you, and what is your name?” Just that small little gesture made me feel like, “Oh, maybe I could belong to a place like this. Maybe I could come back.” This was a stretch for me to talk to people that were meditators.
This woman and I ended up becoming good friends, and I met other people and we became good friends. Soon, we would meet for coffee at Peet’s Coffee sometimes after dharma talks and talk about what we had heard and what was going on. And then some of the people said, “Oh, we’re going to go to a residential retreat.” I’m like, “I don’t really want to go on a residential retreat.” But there was a certain amount of peer pressure. Okay, I’m going to do this. I had been on one already and it was really hard for me. But I ended up going on another retreat.
Fast forward maybe a couple of decades, and here I am, a dharma teacher. But what an impact it had. Just this woman saying, “Oh, it was nice talking with you. And what was your name again?” Just this small thing, this small connection, made it easier to come back. It made me more willing to come to more meditation events and connect with other people in a way that just made it so much easier than if I were leaving the talks and kind of scratching my head sometimes, like, “I’m not sure what that was about.”
It had such a big impact on me, and I want to believe that the Buddha recognized what a difference it makes if we have a connection with people. Not just in dharma practice, not just meditation, but in anything we do. There’s a reason why there are all these meetup groups and social media has enabled some groups to get together that have similar interests.
Specifically, community can support our practice by supporting wholesome qualities. One part of the reason that happened in my early years when I was starting to meet other meditators—I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, and it’s only years later I can look back and see why I kept coming back and why it felt so important for me. One reason was I felt safe in a way that I hadn’t before. And part of it was this commitment to not gossiping. There’s something that just feels good when people are not sitting around saying mean things about other people who aren’t there. Just this warm-heartedness. It just felt like, “Oh, okay, I could relax. These people aren’t going to be talking about me as soon as I leave the room.” This is a subtle thing, but it ended up having a big impact on me.
So when we’re with other people that are practicing in a wholesome way as best that they can, it really supports us to practice or to show up in a wholesome way as best as we can. Not hearing other people gossip helps us to not feel like we want to gossip, or tell lies, or be divisive in our language. Or maybe we see other people speaking kindly about others. Or maybe we see people being generous with their resources, with their time, with giving the benefit of the doubt, and it makes it more likely that we’re going to be generous or behave ethically.
To hang around with people that are showing up as best as they can at that moment—nobody’s perfect, and that’s not what’s being asked of us. What’s being asked of us is to make this an orientation, a direction of our life, something that we want to be a part of our life, and for us to show up as best we can.
Not only are they demonstrating to us some ways of behavior, but there’s also a way in which we can find encouragement. There is no way I could have sat still for 45 minutes in the beginning. No way. 30 minutes? No way. I couldn’t do it. But I would come, and there would be people that would be sitting still, and I would be inspired by them. I would sit on the floor as long as I could and then just mindfully adjust my posture, just recognizing, “Oh, okay, apparently some humans can do this. Maybe I’ll be one of those humans someday.” And I am. It just happened. It’s not like I set out with a training program to be able to sit on the floor. It’s just from coming to meditation; it just happened.
So we can find encouragement, and also there’s this way in which we can find some appreciative joy. This is one of the Brahma Viharas3—to celebrate people’s whatever there is to celebrate. We can take joy when they are joyful. It’s beautiful when people share good things that are happening in their life. Maybe they got a job that they wanted, or they got some good news from the doctor, or they’re signing up and got into a retreat they’ve been trying to get into for a long time. I remember a lot of people, when I did a lot of retreat practice, were saying, “Oh, I have so much mudita, appreciative joy, for you.” And I couldn’t really understand what they were talking about. But now I know. It makes me happy when people are saying, “Oh, I’m going to go on retreat,” and they feel happy.
There’s also a way that being with other people, being with community, can also highlight maybe some of the rough edges or some of the unhelpful qualities we might have. Maybe we won’t recognize envy so much until it shows up when somebody’s saying, “Oh, I’m going on this retreat. I’m so happy. I can’t wait to go.” And then we kind of feel like our life situation doesn’t allow it. There can be some disappointment or envy. Or maybe we find that we only want to hear people’s views that support exactly our own, and we discover that we get irritated when we hear something that we don’t want to hear. We have this idea of how the world should be, or we just want to be praised all the time and affirmed in everything that we do. And maybe we hear something that doesn’t affirm things that we do. Is there a way that we can not be angry or push back, but maybe open up our views and say, “Hm, that doesn’t make sense to me right now, but maybe there’s a time it might be,” instead of just being completely dismissive? We don’t have to adopt everything. You’re welcome to take what’s helpful and to leave behind the rest. But is there a way that the leaving behind is with this sense of, “Yeah, right now that just doesn’t resonate with me,” recognizing maybe for some other people or some other time it might be appropriate and helpful.
Another advantage of practicing in community is that if we practice only on our phone—and it’s easy to do, with so many dharma books, apps, and thousands of dharma talks available—we can get stuck in extremes. You could just be sitting at home listening to dharma talks all the time. Nothing wrong with that; I do it myself. But if we never talk to anybody, there can be this perception of, “I got it together. I got it all figured out and I know exactly what to do and I don’t need anybody else,” or, “I’m so terrible. I can’t do anything right.” We can have either of these two extremes if we’re not practicing with others.
Often when we talk with others, our experiences start to be normalized, and we see the struggles that other people have. We realize, “Oh right, this is a training. This is a practice.” It’s not that anybody has it perfectly right all the time.
When we first started to do retreats online, we started having group practice discussions. People would be in a group of five to seven people with a teacher, and each individual would share a little bit about how their practice is going. These are very confidential. But I have heard so many people share, “Wow, that was so helpful just to hear that other people experience the same thing I do.” Or maybe something that the teacher said to somebody else ends up being actually more helpful than what the teacher said to them directly. There’s this way in which just to be in community sharing how our practice is going and hearing guidance from a teacher can be really helpful and supportive.
So, I’m talking about community and how classically it started with the Buddha talking about refuge in the Sangha and the importance of Sila and generosity. But here’s also a quote from the Anguttara Nikaya4 where the Buddha says, “I do not see a single thing that causes wholesome qualities to arise as much as good friendship.” I guess it would be technically, as any of you who know Pali, kalyana mitta5 friendship. Nothing causes wholesome qualities to arise as much as good friends.
Parents know this when they want to keep their kids away from bad influences. We are very permeable. What we are thinking and feeling kind of leaks out of us in our body language, and how other people behave affects us. We all know this. If you spend a lot of time with people who do a lot of complaining, it’s so much easier to just join in and complain and then leave and keep on complaining. Or if you spend a lot of time with people who are laughing and having a good time and appreciating one another, there’s just this uplift that happens, and you feel happy and maybe feel better about yourself and humanity in general. Of course, the company we keep has a big impact on us.
If we visually see people behaving in a way that’s wholesome and supportive, it inspires us, and we’re more apt to do it ourselves. We hear about this a lot on residential retreats or even daylongs here at IMC. When you see somebody walking very mindfully, you think, “Oh right, I’m supposed to be mindful walking.” Just seeing somebody is a big support. So we shouldn’t underestimate how important the people that we surround ourselves with and the community are.
There’s this story of the Buddha’s attendant before Ananda. This attendant was a person named Meghiya, and Meghiya was a relatively new meditator. Earlier in the day during alms rounds, he had seen this beautiful mango grove where he wanted to go meditate. So after alms, he asked the Buddha, “You know, I was thinking I was going to go meditate for most of the day in this mango grove over there.” And the Buddha said, “Well, no, no, wait. You’re my attendant, and I need you to be here.” Meghiya says, “Oh, come on, I really want to go meditate.” And the Buddha says, “Just can you wait until maybe somebody else is here and can be the attendant?” Meghiya asks a third time, and the Buddha says, “Okay.” This is a theme that we see. If you ask a Buddha something three times, often they will do it.
So, Meghiya goes to the mango grove and he sits down to meditate. Finally, right? He gets to go meditate. I love mangoes, so for me, I’m just imagining maybe it smells like mangoes there. I’ve never been in a mango grove, but I’m just imagining that it’s delightful there. And he sits down to meditate. And he discovers that his mind is filled with cruelty, aversion, and desire. He’s very unsettled and just has all these unwholesome, unhelpful thoughts. He spends the whole day battling with them.
He goes back to the Buddha and says, “You know, I went to meditate, but I spent the whole time filled with thoughts of cruelty, ill will, and sensual desire.” And the Buddha says to him, “Meghiya, when liberation has not fully ripened, there are five things which are conducive to full ripening. One, good spiritual friends, companions, associates.” I appreciate he used three words: friends, companions, associates. I’m interpreting these three words as different levels of intimacy. Maybe just being in a room with other people you don’t know is helpful. But maybe friends are people that you talk more about the dharma with, or talk more about your practice with.
So the Buddha says, first, “good spiritual friends, companions, associates.” Good spiritual friends is this word kalyana mitta again. Two, ethical behavior. Three, supportive conversations, and these are what you would have with these spiritual friends. Four, effort, and five, wisdom. And then the Buddha continues and he says, “Because when one has good spiritual friends, companions, and associates, it can be expected of them that they will have ethical behavior, that they will have supportive conversations, that they will have effort for practice, and that they will have wisdom.” So the Buddha is saying this is at the foundation that helps with all these other practices and can be a support for coming towards awakening.
Okay. So I’m talking about companions. Kalyana mitta, we often say this, good spiritual friend. Some of you know this word kalyana can also be translated as beautiful. Beautiful friend.
It’s not easy. It’s not easy to make friends as adults. How do we do it? I wish I could tell you, “Oh, just do ABC. Boom. You’ll be done.” It’s not like that. It requires maybe stretching our comfort zone. It takes patience, it takes deliberate effort, it takes having warmth, being warm-hearted, being friendly, smiling. It takes honesty, sincerity, authenticity, and it takes being a good listener. These are the things that are required in order to establish relationships that can be a support for your spiritual practice.
There’s this way that maybe not trying to be too spiritual can be helpful. Sometimes that can be stultifying, it can put a damper on things. It’s not that we’re not spiritual, but sometimes you’ve met people that are trying to be spiritual and it just feels a little bit clunky or awkward. So just show up as you are.
Here’s how it can be beneficial for your life: have a willingness to learn from and be supported by others. Sometimes this is hard. Can we be teachable? Not that friends are going to teach us, as much as can we be willing to learn something? Like, “Huh, I hadn’t thought of that. Let me think about that. Oh, that’s a good idea. Wow, I never thought of it that way.” Instead of this being an opportunity for us to just expound on the teachings of what we’ve learned, “Well, so-and-so dharma teacher said this and so-and-so book said that.” It’s not about that. It’s about showing up, being willing to listen, being willing to learn.
Can we be inspired by others? Maybe they’re in a different place in their spiritual practice, and maybe we’re inspired by them. Maybe they’ve had opportunities to practice that we haven’t. Can we not be jealous or wish that things be different? Just this recognition that other people’s lives unfold differently than our life. Of course they do. Your life is unfolding exactly as it should be unfolding because that’s how it’s unfolding.
And can we receive feedback? Sometimes this feedback is indirect. We can kind of see people shut down when we start to get up on our soapbox. “Well, you know, such and such a dharma teacher said this or that, or dependent origination really has these 12 steps that starts with this one.” You know, it’s not about that.
It’s also about maybe opening up, letting go of some of our views about things, or being willing to learn from somebody who maybe is different than us, has had a different life path, has had a different focus. Maybe there’s a way in which their different focus has something to share with us or to show us that maybe we hadn’t seen.
So this idea of community, of good spiritual friends as part of our practice, is an integral and important part. It has been so important for me.
So, I’m going to close with a poem by Rosemary Wahtola Trommer. It’s called “After Peeling the Beets.”
I resist peeling beets. Hate wearing their red tint on my hands. But today the thought of sweet roasted beets was enough to make me overcome my reticence. Later I noticed it is impossible to feel separate and alone when my hands wear the evidence of what they have touched. I find myself wishing everyone could see on my skin how life has been marked by you. However we touched, I wear this stain of love.
This idea that we’re touched by others. Rosemary, she’s talking about her hands. It doesn’t have to be hands. We’re touched by others. We’re influenced by others. Of course, we are.
So, I’ll close there and open it up to see if there are some comments or questions. Thank you.
Questioner: You mentioned that there was going to be a course. Could you give us more information about that, please?
Diana Clark: It’s on the IMC website. I’m imagining it’s called “The Equivalence of Ethics and Enlightenment.” It’s probably under “What’s New” when you first land on the page. If not, it’s under “Special Programs.” It usually meets once a month, and there are readings and writings that you can submit. The beauty is you get no feedback on your writing. It’s so great. [Laughter] Just send it in. A number of people in this room have taken some of these courses. It’s often talks, guided meditation, and small groups, so people really get to know one another. It happens both in person and online, and I think it’s freely offered. So I can recommend it.
Questioner: Also, you mentioned about retreats. How would we find out about that and sign up for that?
Diana Clark: So we have daylongs here at IMC at least once a month. Also on the insightmeditationcenter.org website, in the upper right, you’ll see “Insight Retreat Center.” We have a residential retreat center as well as this meditation center. Just click on that and you’ll see the schedule.
Buddha, Dharma, Sangha: The “Three Jewels” or “Three Refuges” in Buddhism. The Buddha refers to the historical Buddha and the potential for awakening within all beings. The Dharma refers to the teachings of the Buddha. The Sangha refers to the community of practitioners. ↩
Sila, Samadhi, Panna: A three-fold summary of the Noble Eightfold Path. Sila is ethical conduct. Samadhi is concentration or mental discipline. Panna is wisdom or insight. ↩
Brahma Viharas: The four “sublime states” or “divine abodes” in Buddhism: Metta (loving-kindness), Karuna (compassion), Mudita (appreciative or sympathetic joy), and Upekkha (equanimity). ↩
Anguttara Nikaya: A collection of the Buddha’s discourses in the Pali Canon, organized by numerical content. ↩
Kalyana mitta: A Pali term meaning “good spiritual friend” or “admirable friend.” It refers to a companion who supports one’s practice of the Dharma. ↩