Questions for personal inquiry: Do you experience most interpersonal relationships as growth opportunities or troubling? Do you make space in your life for others? Do you frequently feel isolated and lonely? How much of the isolation comes from assumptions about self and other? Do you make the effort to attend gatherings of like-minded people? Reflection: What was your life like before you knew the existence of "a Path"? What is different now? How does the sangha support that Path and your growth on it? Would the Path be the same without the sangha? What efforts do you make to build cohesion in the sangha? Exercise: Become active in your support of like-minded people. Befriend someone from the sangha, volunteer for a community activity, join a like-minded group or become socially engaged in meaningful action. The sangha like the dharma takes each one of us to make it complete.
Metta is a powerful tool in the journey of awakening. The practice makes the heart more responsive and also offers purification, concentration, connection to all of life, and happiness.
There is great power and strength in the capacity to connect within our self and to others. Directly, clearly, patiently and fearlessly with a heart/mind that is free of ill-will and rooted in lovingkindness and mindfulness.
An inner wealth of generosity is powerful medicine. An antidote to the anguish and confusion that's generated through the training to accumulate and fixate upon and cling to our accumulations, generosity a seamless circle - giving and receiving. It feeds and grows itself.
The Buddha instructed us to see events as "not me, not mine, not who I am." When the body, choices, personal history and the narrator are seen in this way, the happiness of peace becomes possible.
