Community and Freedom 6 – April 30, 2019
(This is the 6th in a series. The first five parts can be found here – Community and Freedom, Community and Freedom 2, Community and Freedom 3, Community Freedom 4, Community and Freedom 5)
The Spiritual Journey and Community
Good afternoon,
Going back to the farthest reaches of recorded history, we humans have been social creatures. Trying to understand a single human in isolation is like capturing a bee and trying to understand its nature, behavior, and actions in isolation from its hive. We are embedded with others from birth; we are helpless and dependent in our early years to the point that we must receive care and sustenance from others or we will die. As time goes on, we begin to learn and think for ourselves, but we do so within a shared culture. We learn a language, and that language shapes our understanding. The sounds of a language do not have inherent meaning; rather, cultures give sounds their meaning. (What does the sound made by saying the word “angry” mean, separate from the culture in which it is used?) Reality is not lying around out there to be discovered by each person. It is given to us through a specific language and defined for us through the concepts of our culture.
In the final analysis, a great many of the things we consider central to being human are cultural. The great edifices of human civilization have been built layer upon layer through the eons, each layer using the accumulated contributions of previous eras. Art, music, writing, cities, farming, manufacturing, science, history, tools, ways of education, religions, highways (both automotive and cyber), all forms of transportation except perhaps walking, and so much more—all have grown out of a web of knowledge given by earlier cultures, and our ability to understand and function in any field of human activity is dependent upon communal wisdom.
Even becoming conscious is inseparable from community; the few children who have been found that were raised by animals did not seem to have consciousness as we know it. We become conscious by the sharing of thoughts and feelings with others; consciousness is stimulated and developed through exchange with others in a communal field of awareness. We are, as Jean Jacques Rousseau said, social beings, and draw from others the very sense that we exist. Individual awareness develops through continuous interactions with others in a human community. Rousseau advocated finding one’s individual nature, but he understood that doing so was not possible until one had first come to experience consciousness through interaction with others.
The great mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead said, in Science and the Modern World, that we humans are not isolated, individual objects, but we are processes that are constantly in motion – at each level of our being. Whitehead maintained that every object, whether atom, human being, or house, is an “occasion” within a larger process and that, “There are no … isolated occasions.” Everything is connected to everything else in some way. We are each a process within the moving stream and, “Each volume of space, or each lapse of time, includes in its essence aspects of all volumes of space, or of all lapses of time.” In the same vein, Albert Einstein said: “There is no sense in regarding matter and field as two qualities quite different from each other. We cannot imagine a definite surface separating distinctly field and matter.”
This infinite web of connection is one reason communities are essential; they are how we live our unavoidable entwinement with others. This is true for a spiritual journey as well, although the importance of community in this arena is often misunderstood or overlooked in favor of images of the heroic quest. We frequently read of an individual going off on a quest, a solitary journey to the mountains or the desert to find truth, freedom, enlightenment, or God. In India, countless sannyasins have renounced the world and hit the road; in China, Taoist and Zen monks have for thousands of years retreated to the mountains; Jesus went alone to the desert and countless Christian monks have followed his example; Mohammed went alone to his cave.
But here is the paradox. All the instances I know of someone going off on a solitary journey involve a person who has been involved with a group of people that helped inspire the quest. Interacting with a group, the seeker gained a sense of what there was to be sought and how they might find it. Only after they had learned from and been influenced by others did they go off alone. For every sojourner there is always an early stage in which he or she is inspired by the example of another person or the teachings of a community.
A good example of this comes from the life of the Buddha. He is known for finding his own way, for coming to a new understanding. But before he could do that: (1) he was molded by a culture, (2) he adopted a goal prevalent in his culture (finding an escape from rebirth and from suffering), and (3) he was inspired to leave home by seeing a renunciate who carried himself with dignity and peace. Thus, it was only at the age of 29, after many years of immersion in his culture and continuous interaction with others that he began the search to find his own way.
The Buddha then went on his individual quest, but he was doing exactly the same thing that thousands of others were doing in India at the time – there was a very strong communal belief that leaving home and seeking freedom from the wheel of rebirth was important. Then, on his journey, the Buddha studied with two of the great teachers of his time, lived in their communities, and learned much from them. When he left those teachers, he traveled with 5 other sannyasins who shared their journeys with each other. Finally, he broke some of their shared rules, went off on his own, and sat alone under the bodhi tree. There, culminating 6 years of intense striving, he found what he was seeking.
But here is the fascinating part in relation to community – after his awakening was complete, he immediately went in search of the 5 companions. When he found them, he shared what he had discovered, and although he had concluded that this world is an illusion, he spent the next 45 years in this illusory world interacting with people, living in community with them, traveling with them, and teaching whoever would listen. He had people around him all the time, and teaching other people clearly became his life purpose. The story of the Buddha is not the story of a loner, or of one who did not value community. No wonder, then, when Ananda asked him if the sangha was an important part of a holy life, he said: “No, Ananda, it is not a part. Good spiritual friends are the whole of the holy life. Find refuge in the sangha” (the community of seekers).
As for Jesus, we do not know his relationship to community before he went off to the desert. Some scholars say he was a member of the Essenes, others say he was part of a group gathered around John the Baptist, but both theories are controversial. What everyone accepts is that he was baptized by John the Baptist, so there must have been some relationship there, and John’s teaching clearly had an impact on Jesus. A central theme taught by John that Jesus picked up was the necessity of metanoia, a change of mind or change of consciousness (which is often poorly translated into English as repentance). And interestingly, it was soon after John the Baptist was arrested that Jesus went to the desert for 40 days. He was alone there, but when he came back, he immediately gathered a band of followers and spent the next 3 years almost continuously in their presence. He travelled around with these men and women, had his meals with them, sang with them, made camps with them at night – a group with whom he lived in intense community for the rest of his life. It is clear that sharing his message with this group of companions and all others who would listen, as well as healing the sick and wounded, became his life purpose.
And Mohammed. Mohammed spent many days alone in a mountain cave, praying, searching for direction and understanding. In that cave, at the age of 40, he had a powerful spiritual experience that changed his life, after which he quickly moved from being an uneducated caravan organizer to a world famous spiritual leader. And after his profound experience, what happened next? He gathered a group of people and started sharing his message. From that moment his ability as a leader grew so fast and impressively that a city in turmoil, Medina, which was riven with conflict between Christians, Jews, and followers of the old religions of the region, asked him to come and unite the city and lead them toward peace and prosperity. This he did, and so successfully that the rival city of Mecca felt threatened and started a war. Thus, as with Jesus and the Buddha, Mohammed spent the remainder of his long life deeply embedded in a community, and his life work was sharing his message with his community, as well as all others who would listen.
There are so many more examples. The Jewish tradition honors community as much or more than any of the other major traditions. The core teachings of Confucius are focused on the best ways to be with one’s family and community, on how to live in relation to other people. And Confucius, like Jesus and the Buddha, traveled around with a community of students who were learning from him. In fact, almost all of the well-known spiritual figures from every tradition and every age were part of a community, monastery, ashram, or sangha that they joined or founded. Even all of the non-dual teachers I have read about joined or created a group with whom they shared their understanding.
Or consider the best-selling poet in the United States in the last decade, Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, the 13th Century Persian spiritual teacher. Rumi led a community of followers until he met his own primary teacher, with whom he went off from the community many times for days and even weeks to experience deeper states of awareness and understanding. Then, when his teacher was no longer present, Rumi redoubled his focus on community and started sharing what he had learned with a larger and larger community. In his teaching, the experience of Sohbet is central, a practice in which a deep conversation arises between two people, or a small group, and gradually a subtle, vibrant communion emerges as minds and hearts harmonize with one another. Through this deepening communion, the student is gradually given a glimpse of the light the teacher has seen.
In a very different time and place, Henry David Thoreau, known for his solitary sojourn to Walden Pond, went to his pond only after spending several years learning form Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Transcendentalist community, and he went there to test some of the things he had learned from them. Further, after his stay at the pond, he interacted frequently with the Transcendentalist community the rest of his life.
All these examples suggest why Henry Miller would say that, “Spiritual growth is an individual affair, that is best pursued in groups,” and is the reason so many teachers have emphasized community in the journey to fulfillment, such as Plato: “Only after a long partnership in a common life devoted to this search does truth flash upon the soul, like a flame kindled by a leaping spark.”
Thus, each journey starts with community. Every spiritual seeker operates within the framework of a tradition that gave rise to the search, and every seeker starts with practices developed by those who travelled the path before. All who have made this journey were first saturated with a tradition. Then, having reached the edge of the map (this happens with every spiritual map), uncharted territory looms. At this critical juncture, one must either turn back or enter upon the hero’s or heroine’s journey (as described by Joseph Campbell), during which the seeker strikes out alone. In every such journey it is necessary at some point to step into the unknown, to leave the safety and security of the community and go forward by oneself. Helpers might appear, but this is a solitary path. Much of the work is now done in private, even in silence, yet the community is still there, in the background, informing the search. Finally, if the journey is successful, the victor brings back the boon – that which has been learned and understood – and shares it with the tribe or community.
Crucially, it is this sharing of the boon – a fresh insight or understanding – through which a stagnate community is renewed. If everyone followed the old ways repetitively and endlessly, change would never occur, and deadness and rigidity would replace aliveness in the group. As William James so aptly said: “The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of a community.” Thus, after a direct experience of the source or ground of being, the successful seeker comes back and is able to renew the community with fresh practices or ideas. Or perhaps, as was the case with Christianity and Buddhism, a new tradition is born.
In this ebb and flow of engagement and separation, each of us must find our own pace and rhythm. If we travel far enough along the solitary path into the unknown, we will come to a place where we feel we are out there on the edge all by ourselves. But then, perhaps without warning, we just might encounter the reversal that those who have gone before have experienced, and that Joseph Campbell articulates so well:
“We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known: We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”
Reflection: Consider for a moment all the messages you received throughout your life that became the framework for your journey. Also, think of the people who inspired you on your journey, and feel your connection to and appreciation for them.
Take care,
David