Choose your illusion
So last night in the Hinayana class, I think I got carried away. A new student was gushing about how awesome taking refuge vows would be as having a sangha is just such a nice, cozy concept to rest in. How super duper it is to have dharma brothers and sisters to walk the path with hand in hand, discovering more about the world and each other.
I bristled.
I thought back to my refuge vows and how I admitted to the preceptor that I was cool with taking refuge in the dharma and had no problems with taking refuge in the Buddha but hooo ha, the sangha was another story.
Not to put you people down…you’re my digital sangha
but…
the false expectations of hoping people behave as I wish has perpetually bitten me in the arse.
The mistaken ideal that gurus should be pristine, proper and mystical ( I guess this is how I like my gurus?)
The belief that love is forever, eternal and long lasting and that ‘I love you. Trust me’, means you won’t leave, you won’t crush me, you’ve got my back and you will always stay the way I want you to be. Only this way. Never change.
Keep this moment, this energy, this now. Don’t go.
Gone. This moment is gone.
Gone. The expectation of permanence is gone.
Gone. The belief that my way of thinking is the only valid, sane way for this world to exist.
So I may have burst someone’s bubble in telling them that the sangha might not turn out to be the holy panacea that would cure her ills. That we couldn’t promise to help her. Save her. Heal her.
We’re all learning to be Buddhists. We’re all learning to be Bodhisattvas. We make mistakes. We hurt people. Perhaps in my unskillful way of alerting her to this, there might have been a smidgen of wisdom?
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