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Transforming Family into Sangha: Learning No-Self from Bees, Cells, and Neurons
Learn to build a Sangha by living in harmony and the spirit of non-self. You can transform your family into a Sangha—using plain, secular language instead of Buddhist terminology—by practising mindful living, offering care and appreciation (as the nuns do for their elders) not out of duty but out of love. Happiness arises when you make another happy, seeing your mother, father, or teacher as yourself.
Observe how nature and your body embody no-self and interbeing without a director:
- Cells renew and nourish each other.
- Bees dance to share information in perfect team work.
- Termites build and ventilate their colony by mutual signaling.
- Neurons fire electrical impulses (400 km/h) in harmony, moment to moment.
Our century has been marked by individualism, private desire, and the cult of self, leading to family breakdown, mental illness, and environmental destruction. As we approach the twenty-first century, practise “looking deeply” each day—examining our lives, our century, and what we must stop and start—to open a new direction. Building the Sangha is our most noble task and refuge; it requires unblocking ourselves so that communication and understanding flow freely among us.
