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Title: The Anarchist Sangha Author: flow Date: June 18 2020 Language: en Topics: Buddhism
When looking at the setup and present organization of the Buddhist
sangha (community) I think it’s important to consider the historical
context of the sangha and the milieu in which it was established, a
patriarchal and feudal time when The Buddha was just beginning to
establish a new religion. If you look at the origin stories for many of
the monastic rules (The Vinaya) many of them (important to note, not
all) have to do with complaints from lay people. Given that monastics
are absolutely dependent upon lay people for survival, maintaining a
good relationship and image to the lay community was and is vital for
the survival of the monastic community.
One way in which the monastic community made itself both approachable by
supportive powers, as in the state, (see: Ashoka) was by maintaining a
hierarchy within the monastic community. While this is not necessarily a
facet of the monastic community per-se it is effectively how most
Buddhist organizations function. Senior monks have more control over
more novice monks. Because we do not live in a society that functions on
needs-based justice, leaving the monastic order effectively has the
potential to endanger those who leave when they do not have a family or
community which can support them in the transition back to lay-life,
especially for orders which prohibit the holding of money. Is this the
reality? I don’t know.
In Ajahn Lee’s biography he talks about this relationship he had with
one of his teachers, one of utter servitude. There was a clear hierarchy
between himself and the master. He’d list at the wall after cleaning up
his master’s dwelling place, gauging each noise the master would make
and changing his behavior in terms of cleaning to further please his
master. He frames this as effective training in observation. While it
may help one in becoming more observant and careful, the whole things
comes off to me as stupid. It’s not a relationship founded on mutual
aid, it’s one person begging at the feet of another.
Relationships like this are ultimately ineffective in training for most
people. Most people don’t want to act like a servant or a slave. I’m
proposing that the teaching dynamic between student and teacher be one
of mutual aid, cooperation and voluntary contract. Likewise the
relationship between laity is often similarly servile. The reasoning for
this, as I understand it, is to honor the great courage and effort that
goes into monastic life. It’s no small feat to be a monastic, at least
one which follows the rules and practices. That kind of effort deserves
a kind of respect and that respect can in turn motivate the monastics
themselves to live up to it. I imagine great guilt can be felt when you
don’t measure up to the image in which people see you. Similarly, that
reverence given to monastics gives a sense of weight and prestige to the
teachings themselves.
Yet I’m going to contend that a greater connection to the teachings and
greater benefit can be had if this dynamic of respect is made less
worshippy or reverential. If the relationship were one more of
friendship and community, mutual aid, where lay is supporting monastic
out of compassion, with the love that someone is able to live a monastic
lifestyle of practice and teaching, there could be more benefit for both
parties. Less alienation between the two parts of the community. More
openness for questions and engagement, less fear.
The organizational framework of both monastic and lay community could
also institute consensus decision making, where each voice in the
community is made equal.
There’s a part of Mae Chee Kaew’s biography where it talks about how
once someone is in one of the hells, it’s a lot harder to work your way
up to a birth with more favorable circumstances. Essentially pointing
out how the circumstances into which we are born do actually make it
harder to practice. When your entire life is horrifying suffering as a
screaming ghost, or more close to home, constant insecurity in respect
to food, medicine and shelter, it’s hard to keep a reign on feelings of
anger and despair, it’s hard to concentrate the mind, it’s hard to be
generous, it’s hard to be forgiving.
There’s practice of generosity in creating living communities which
reduce or eliminate these painful circumstances and allow people the
context in which to grow as practitioners. Communes, basically. In those
communes we can utilize a horizontal organization founded on mutual aid,
needs based justice and Dhamma. In stark contrast to the existing
worldly institutions of the state and capitalism, as Emma Goodman says:
an organization without discipline, fear, or punishment, and without the
pressure of poverty: a new social organism which will make an end to the
terrible struggle for the means of existence, — the savage struggle
which undermines the finest qualities in man, and ever widens the social
abyss.
Emma Goodman, Anarchism: What It Really Stands For
Teaching relationships between monastics and laity can be founded on
mutual aid and cooperation, the reciprocation of dhamma and material
support. Less worship of monastics, more cooperation and communion.