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Surrender to the Sangha to Dissolve your Suffering

Taking Refuge in the Sangha

Thich Nhat Hanh · June 8, 2002 · New Hamlet, Plum Village, France Reviewed

Thay explores how the practice of mindfulness, concentration, and insight is crucial to produce the element of holiness in a Sangha. If we cultivate these three qualities within us, we will be able to touch the element of holiness that is present in each and everyone of us. Thay further elaborates that the Sangha is composed of four pairs and eight kinds of holy people that collectively nurture mindfulness, concentration, and insight. Practicing mindfulness transforms our suffering, supported by the Sangha’s collective energy.

Thay comments that at the moment humanity is not a Sangha yet because we don’t have enough mindfulness, concentration, and insight. We are too dispersed and therefore we are not able to embrace and transform the suffering of the world. People are concerned with their own interests, their own cravings, and pay little attention to the suffering of the Middle East, for example. Thay ends by exploring Chapter 15 and Chapter 24 of the Lotus Sutra, which can help us realize that we are all in a family—we are all children of the Earth and we should take care of each other and our environment, concluding that this is possible with a Sangha that practices the six togetherness. This is the way to preserve the Earth and our happiness.

This is the fifth talk in a series of thirteen given during The Hands of the Buddha, twenty-one-day retreat in the year 2002. Thay offered this talk at the New Hamlet, Plum Village, France.

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Previous Talk June 7, 2002

"Interconnectedness and Compassion: Lessons from the Lotus Sutra and Vietnamese Traditions"

Next Talk June 9, 2002

The practice of compassion

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Surrender to the Sangha to Dissolve your Suffering

From "Taking Refuge in the Sangha" • June 8, 2002

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Let the Sangha Embrace your Pain

00:33:11

You choose to be just a victim of your delusion, of your pain, or you choose to generate the Holy Spirit, to generate mindfulness in order to recognize and embrace tenderly your pain and your delusions. In the second case, you are a practitioner. And you can be supported by brothers and sisters in your Sangha. You can be supported by your teacher, because mindfulness is the kind of energy that can recognize the pain, the suffering in you, the difficulties in you. And if you know how to embrace tenderly the pain and suffering, if you know how to generate that energy of mindfulness and make it powerful, then you'll be able, it will be able to recognize, embrace the pain, the suffering, the difficulty in you. And if you do it long enough, there will be a relief and there will be a transformation. When you plant something in the soil, when you plant a seed of sunflower in the soil, The soil embraces the seed. The soil continues to embrace the seed day and night. And because of that, the seed can sprout and become a tiny plant.

00:35:16

The energy of mindfulness and concentration, it is like the earth. If you allow that energy, which is holy, to recognize and to embrace tenderly your delusion, your suffering, your pain, and then something will happen. Understanding of suffering and transformation of suffering will become possible. That is on the personal level. But you are encouraged to practice with the Sangha, not only as an individual, because the energy of the Sangha is formidable, is powerful. Why don't allow the collective energy of the Sangha to embrace your pain? You do have your personal energy of mindfulness and concentration.

00:36:26

But you can very well profit from the powerful, the wonderful collective energy of the Sangha. And the Sangha is there, ready to embrace your pain, to recognize your pain. And you will see, the Sangha will be like a boat; if you allow the Sangha to embrace you, to transport you, if you allow the Sangha to embrace your pain, you will not sink into the river of suffering anymore. You float, you survive very easily if you surrender to the Sangha. "Dear Sangha, this is my pain, this is my difficulty. Please be aware of that. Please embrace it. I need my Sangha."

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