Available from the Windhorse online store, £9.99

Read the life story and spiritual teachings of Dipa Ma, a major figure in contemporary Buddhism. She was the teacher of such well-respected western Buddhists as Jack Kornfield, Sharon Salzberg, Joseph Goldstein, Alice Walker and Sylvia Boorstein, among others.

An accomplished yogi, she was an inspired teacher and a devoted mother and grandmother. A woman who found great freedom through profound levels of insight and one who exemplified in her every action immense kindness, generosity, and mindfulness.

Through this unique account of a remarkable woman, together with the reminiscences of her students, many more aspiring practitioners will be inspired by her life and legacy.

This quote from Sangharakshita’s What is the Sangha? expresses its central message. But what does it mean to be an individual? And how are we to sustain, indeed develop, our individuality, and at the same time live in cooperation and harmony with others? Here I explore these questions, with Sangharakshita as our guide.

Sangharakshita begins his discussion of the Sangha by stating that a spiritual community is not a group. But what differentiates a group from a spiritual community? According to Sangharakshita’s understanding, a group is what happens when non-individuals organize themselves together. Groups are powerful organizations which fear individuality and always tend to discourage it. In contrast, Sangharakshita explains, ‘The spiritual community encourages freedom of thought. But this is not all. The defining principle of the spiritual community, as opposed to the group’s insistence on conformity, is more than simply freedom of thought, important as that freedom may be. It is freedom to grow.’

In order to understand what the Sangha really means, we must therefore first understand what it means to be an individual, and one aspect of Sangharakshita’s definition of the individual is someone who is prepared to grow and change; someone who is willing to let go of any fixed idea of themselves. A true individual, in Sangharakshita’s view, is someone who commits themselves wholeheartedly to the process of individual development.

So what does the process of individual development involve? Firstly, we must leave the group. We may, like the Buddha, do this quite literally and physically walk away from the family home, the society in which we were born. Or we may cut our ties with the group more metaphorically and refuse to be pressured into conformity through our behaviour. An individual, Sangharakshita explains, is by nature spontaneous and free. ‘You do not require the approval of the group for your own piece of mind. You don’t mind differing from other people. You are autonomous, you make your own choices.’

However, the project of individual development does not happen in isolation from others. ‘The final characteristic of the individual’, Sangharakshita claims, ‘is that you encourage others to be individuals in their own way’. This means being in personal, regular, and substantial contact with others who are trying to develop as individuals; ‘It means being able to enjoy, and seeking out, not just the psychological warmth of the herd, but the challenge of real communication, genuine spiritual exchange.’

The Sangha is essential to the Buddhist path, then, because personal relationships are essential for human development. To be human is to be related to other human beings and ‘the Buddhist life can only be fully lived in the light of the realization of our interconnectedness with all life, and the commitment to act with compassion and vigour on that basis.’

Notice Sangharakshita’s emphasis on our connection, not only with those in our immediate Sangha or our local Buddhist community but with all life. The Sangha is not a self-serving institution but one which must consistently engage with the outside world to ensure that the conditions in which we all live are conducive to the development of our own individual (and infinite) potential. What is the Sangha? touches on many aspects of spiritual community – its place in human history, the traditional Sangha in Buddhist Asia, how to be a Buddhist parent, the place of the teacher – but it is the theme of self-development in association with others that Sangharakshita keeps returning to. Ultimately, ‘this is what the Sangha is really for’, Sangharakshita writes; ‘this is what the Sangha really is’.

Sangharaksita’s ‘What is the Sangha?’ is available to purchase at your local Triratna bookshop and from the Windhorse online store.

‘What is the Sangha?’ This is the question that we’re asking ourselves here at Windhorse Publications for the last few months of the year. We’re going to be discussing the question in relation to some of our books, and ask our authors for their insights and views. We’d like to know what you, our readers, think too. What does the Sangha mean to you? Is it your local Buddhist centre, your friends, your family, your colleagues?

The Sangha is traditionally one of the three highest ideals of Buddhism, alongside the Buddha and the Dharma. But why? We’re used to seeing images of the Buddha seated alone, deep in meditation. We’re used to thinking of him as a heroic individual who disassociated himself from his social group, his parents, his wife and even his child in search for truth and freedom. In this context, it can be quite a surprise to find that Buddhism gives great importance to the Sangha.

So why are human relationships so essential to the Buddhist path? We’re going to start by using Sangharakshita’s What is the Sangha? as our guide. In What is the Sangha: The Nature of Spiritual Community, Sangharakshita puts forward the idea that spiritual community is not about unthinking conformity or belonging to a comfortable group. Rather, it is the free association of developing individuals choosing to help each other along the path. So to explore the nature of the spiritual community is also to examine what makes us true individuals, what it means to be truly human.

A large section of What is the Sangha? therefore discusses the nature of the individual and considers the individual’s relationship to others – friends, family, fellow workers and spiritual teachers – and the way the Buddhist community is connected to the world as a whole. The Sangha, Sangharakshita suggests, is all about relationships.

Throughout the book Sangharakshita demonstrates his passionate commitment to the ideal of the Sangha, in principle and in practice. How can we help each other, and the world, towards a more enlightened way of living? How can we be good friends to one another? Sangharakshita’s vision shapes and enlivens this book, transforming Sangha from an idea to an inspiring and practical ideal.

We’re left with some food for thought: What benefits can our spiritual community offer to the wider world? Does the Triratna community in its current state come close to Sangharakshita’s ideal Sangha, or are there areas that we need to work on if we are to be called a Sangha in the true sense of the word?

Sangharaksita’s ‘What is the Sangha?’ is available to purchase at your local Triratna bookshop and from the Windhorse online store.

Have you read ‘Who is the Buddha?’ and ‘What is the Dharma?’, the other two books in Sangharakshita’s triology?

“To live the Buddhist life, to become like the Buddha, we must imagine the Buddha”

        - Sangharakshita

Unless we can truly imagine the Buddha in our own minds, we cannot go for refuge to him. So what does the Buddha look like to you? How can we bring the image of the Buddha alive in the modern world?

For the first half of this year, we’re going to explore the themes of the Buddha and the imagination in preparation for the Triratna International Retreat in June, which also has as its theme ‘Imagining the Buddha’. We will be discussing these topics in relation to a number of our books, and asking our authors for their insights and views. We would be very interested to hear your thoughts too, so please offer your own opinions and feedback.

Later in the year, we will branch our exploration out to include the Dharma and the Sangha, and think about how we can begin to fulfill the task given to us by Sangharakshita:

“Our task is to create together a new imaginative culture by taking our imaginations seriously and working to unfold them more and more fully… We will discover creative depths within our own culture from which new works will arise expressive of the Dharma’s timeless spirit. And we will find the Buddha, appearing to us in a form that is deeply familiar yet resonant of an infinite mystery that one day we may understand”.

         - Sangharakshita, ‘Re-Imagining the Buddha’, November 2010

You can read the rest of Sangharakshita’s article on the Buddha and the Imagination here: http://www.sangharakshita.org/pdfs/imagining-the-buddha.pdf

Or engage with his thoughts in greater depth by reading one of his books, available on our website: http://www.windhorsepublications.com/