KP Duty Sangha Building
For those of you who have served in the military you know what KP is. For those who have not, KP stands for Kitchen Patrol, so KP Duty is Kitchen Patrol Duty. I’m not sure if things are the same now, I suspect they are, however during the course of every service members time on duty they will at least once have served on KP or else some other activity such as cleaning the barracks or the grounds of the base. When I was on active duty every year you were required to serve 2-4 weeks of such labor.
My first KP Duty was while I was in boot camp, basic training. One of the things that was a constant on KP was peeling potatoes. I don’t think they still do that because of the use of instant potatoes. When I was in boot camp we would be several hundred pounds of potatoes a day to supply the daily need for mashed potatoes.
The peeling was done by hand for the most part. Then somewhere about half-way through my time on KP a new machine was introduced which would peel the potatoes much faster than we could by hand.
We would take a large fifty pound bag of white potatoes and dump the entire bag into a tumbler. Then the machine would slowly spin the potatoes around and the potatoes would bounce and rub against each other. After a while we would stop the machine and remove the perfectly peeled potatoes. The rubbing action had removed all of the skin without the inherent waste that mechanical peeling produced.
Building a Sangha is just like this. Various people, with a variety of understanding, with unique life experiences, with competing ideas, with a mixture of personalities, and an assortment of needs come together into a group to practice the Dharma together as a Sangha.
Now, if they remain committed to the Sangha and practicing with each other to build and celebrate one of the Three Jewels of Buddhism then they each will change, grow, learn, and influence each other. It isn’t that they lose their basic self, their humanity remains just as the basic potato remains after it is peeled.
The self, those things for which we cling to as uniquely ours and only ours, begin to be rubbed against the things which others cling to as theirs. Over time, if they continue to remain committed to the Third Jewel of Sangha, and practice the Jewels of Dharma, and seek guidance from the Jewel of Buddha, the differences of each individual begin to change.
It isn’t so much that they vanish, rather that they begin to be smoothed. They are less ruff, less harmful, less unconstructive, less intolerable, less significant to use as judgement, and more important to use as compassion, to use as gifts to others, to use as assets to building and creating, to use as a bridge to understanding, and to provide a basis for welcoming others who can see a part of themselves in you.
All of self, all of the things we think make us so unique and important, are in fact important and unique. They are not however things we can benefit from if we hold them up as barriers, or a weapons against others, or standards for judgement. That is the self that wants to remain isolated and separate from others. I believe that ‘no-self’ means that we recognize our selves as different on many levels from other, yet realize that those differences can be a tool for helping others and that those things can be subject to change.
As the tumbler of the Sangha spins us around and makes us rub against others seemingly unlike us we begin to peel away those minor differences, we begin to reveal our deeper potato which lies at the core of our ‘self’ and is our most important substance which we can then mash up…ok, the analogy doesn’t always work out for everything. You get the idea, I hope.
The Sangha, while not always a peaceful harmonious place is a perfect place to learn and grow as Bodhisattvas. The discord, the unsettled nature we experience or even we cause, can be turned into a beautiful experience and growing opportunity for not only ourselves, it can offer a space unlike any space in society, a place where others can come and seek refuge just as we have before.
I hope you will consider this. The Sangha will not always look like you, it will not always think like you, it will not always go the way you think or want, yet it always offers you and others a chance to practice the Dharma in an environment which is truly dedicated to your enlightenment. So go out, tumble yourself, and make mashed potatoes. Sangha building is like KP duty for your enlightenment.
