My academic background is in organizational sociology, the study of group form and function. A group is two or more interactors. Sometimes referred to as couplet or pair, the key is they are relating beyond each individual needs and wants. As the number of interactors increase various small groups from 2-9 can build dynamic forms that propel our “being” through space
We are coupling and uncoupling through each day as we interact with a cashier in economic exchanges giving and receiving of words, goods and services and with partner, children and friends. Some folks are more social than others meaning they interact in more dyads, or two or more coupling, than others.
It is this small group behavior I’ve come to believe feeds our potential. Watching a two year old play one can see how smoothly they glide from one person to another in conversation and interactions. How we learn to engage, maintain, leave and grow relationships is the Dharma of Sangha.
Duality means that either/or is constructed for comparisons. All comparisons are perspectives and sharing perspectives is our life’s meaning. How one relates is through their perspectives. In this field or arena much is played-out. One such effort is good and evil. One of my favorite book titles is Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. This phrase is a koan or a pointing finger. When the book and movie came out there were midnight excursions/tours of this Savannah cemetery offering tourists an “experience.” The question is what do we make of that experience
For MLK, the foundation of his Beloved Community is agapē: a universal, unconditional love that extends even to those who oppose us: “Agapē does not begin by discriminating between worthy and unworthy people… It is love seeking to preserve and create community.” I suggest we are always at midnight in the garden of good and evil…the settings just change.
MLK was a keen student and found Gandhi’s experiences a working model for many of his ideas about interconnectivity, non-violence and The Beloved Community. MLK was influenced by Buddhist ideas through his study of Gandhi’s satyagraha (nonviolent resistance). Gandhi’s nonviolence was rooted partly in Jain and Buddhist principles.
Both Dogen and Thich Nhat Hanh echo the inter-areness of Gandhi and MLK. Here we can see the sangha as a community and a community as a sangha. In “Zenspeak” we often extrapolate and magnify variations enabling us to experience degrees of awareness that can benefit the movement toward reducing suffering and illusion as a “set.” A set of actions and of ideas emerging from daily practice. A community practices itself as does a sangha, a relationship, a family or the universe.
Midnight in the Garden of America is a catchy phrase. We see a person who from personal accounts is the antithesis of the teachings offered above. Make America Great Again is the opposite of The Beloved Community on any one’s comparative scorecard when it comes to: “For whom,” meaning of great verse beloved, “America”, compared to what, harmony, greed, and/or delusion.
Zen and Buddhism, the now and the way, are built from within and is reconstructive while demolition is a process being played out in America and in Gaza rests on total extermination.
FSZS existing in the Falmouth community has been a fifteen year construction process. We are benefiting from a place, an expereince, refuge, smiles, tears and laughter…may we continue to do so.
Sangaku