Exile and Banishment – Sangha Building – Dharma Talk – September 17, 2019

Exile and Banishment – Sangha Building

These two words and the many synonyms of these words may seem to be contrary to some of my posts about Sangha Building.  In past posts I’ve written specifically about actions I believe the Sangha should embrace.  These two words and this post will address some of the complicated reasons which may impact and affect the nature of individuals who wish to approach the Sangha.

People are exiled and banished for a variety of reasons, often very complicated and not clear-cut.  Also, being exiled isn’t always visible.

I’m thinking here about the current #metoo people who have stood up and said that they had been victims of sexual assault.  By claiming #metoo they were stepping out and saying that they have been quietly in exile from being recognized as victims and trauma survivors which society had imposed upon them by not addressing the issue.  In a way they also had been banished.  And this all happens quietly and unseen.  Many people still remain uncomfortable with claiming their story, and society is most comfortable with their silence and so continues to enforce a silent banishment from self-healing, from societal-healing, from societal-growth.

I as a gay man was exiled and banished from many freedoms granted to others simply because of being gay, and as long as I hid my gayness, engaged in a silent exile, society was comfortable and happy banishing me.  My silence was required and the expense was born by me.  The cost of that silence was high. 

I also think of the very open yet uncomfortable conversation about how black in the US have consistently been banished from sharing in the benefits of an equal society.  There banishment inflicted untold cost and harm on a subset of humanity that deserved better.  Society was and is comfortable with their banishment.  As the exiles seek to be co-equal partners in this our Democracy, and assume their rights and equality, the society is uncomfortable with engaging in the deep work to address the bias that prevents the work being done.

There are many examples of quiet banishment, of being quietly and unobserved exiles.

So what does this mean to the function of the Sangha beyond merely saying we embrace all beings and respect them as Buddhas?

It means that sometimes people may wish to come to the Sangha and be unable to resolve or come to terms with the conditions they have lived under.

One idea that comes to my mind, something I have witnessed and experienced with people who have come to my temple is around religion.  The person who comes from a family where being a member of the family entails adherence to what the family’s religion is.  Perhaps that family is deeply Christian, Catholic, or even Muslim.  The individual faces banishment and living in one space of exile even as they seek to find refuge in another place.

In other words, seeking refuge is complicated by the risk of being banished by another group that is important to them.  This is a case where an individual might only be able to partially enter the Sangha.  I believe it is incumbent upon the Sangha to welcome the individual as they are and not as we may wish them to be.  We must be willing to welcome and embrace individuals as a complicated-Buddhas, as we all truly are. 

Seeking refuge to end ones exile and enter onto the Buddha path, is a complicated process for everyone.  Many people may need to exist in two worlds.  This multi world existence is not a measure of the desire they hold to want to change, it is an indication that the nature of Sangha is complicated by the need to embrace anyone who wishes to seek refuge.

Would we turn away a black person because they can not possibly become white.  Can we as practitioners of the Buddha Dharma of the Lotus Sutra even remotely justify this?  Can we as practitioners look at how our learned behaviors might need to change, that our ‘rightness’ may be biased and not so ‘right’ after all?  Can we welcome a victim of sexual assault who may be unprepared to speak about or address their assault?  Can we address any residual bias we may have about the victim asked for it or the assault was their fault because of the cloths they wear or wore?  Can we understand and welcome someone whose culture is so radically different that even the way they process emotions are foreign to us?  Can we welcome those with physical disabilities seen and unseen without any expectation that they will need to conform to our standards?  I am thinking here about those with various sorts of autism.  Is my model of encouraging everyone to participate during our meetings harmful or disrespectful of those with unseen disabilities who are unable to conform to what I believe should be the model of a Sangha? 

These are truly complex considerations for us to engage in.  The Lotus Sutra doesn’t directly address these issues directly with modern labels or instructions easily understood in modern terms.  Even the frequently used term ‘no self’ is a barrier to the construction and care of a modern Sangha.

How can we as a Sangha embrace the ‘self’ of others even as we manifest our own ‘self’?  What part of ‘self’ falls under the knife of ‘no self’?  We can’t ask a black person to abandon ‘self’, how is it possible to become not black?  And there blackness is not only the color of skin it is the culture and society in which they grew up in, radically different from my own white culture.  How can we ask an autistic person to embrace ‘no self’ which part of their ‘self’ are we asking them to give up?  How can we ask a person who is deeply rooted in one culture, one societal unit whether family, or political, or organizational, to completely abandon their valuable life lessons, the deeply interwoven nature of their learned cultural experience?

Yes, ‘self’ is not about skin color, or sexual orientation, or physical or mental disability, and yet ‘self’ is about those things, the influences they exerted on the individual on many levels. 

Shijo Kingo at no time was encouraged or instructed to give up his Samurai position, a position that fundamentally was about killing but was also about personality, training, culture, demeanor?  Nichiren welcomed and embraced him for more than his role or function.  I think this as well as many examples in the Lotus Sutra of individuals welcomed by the Buddha who did not need to change. 

In a way we are all living in some sort of exile and banishment.  How is it then that a Sangha should continue to employ the mechanism of banishment to enforce conformity?  Yes, we do that.  I’ve witnessed it, I’ve experienced it, and I’m guessing others have as well.  As I mentioned above I am also probably guilty of banishing people based upon my own biases, as uncomfortable as that is to admit.  Is my model of, often, strongly, encouraging everyone to speak and participate actively in our services a model that truly respects and offers refuge from the exile and banishment of a society that does as I do? 

Can we as a Sangha welcome the addict as they are and not as we think they should be?  Can we address the impact of behaviors and not the morality?  Can we understand and embrace how our own actions may be contributing factors in the continuation of what we consider to be undesirable behaviors? 

Can we as a Sangha help all of the various individuals do the work that we ourselves must also do?  Can we create a fertile ground from which not only our own lives can grow yet also be fertile to the growth of others who may be radically different than we are?

I can see how sometimes this difficult work may lead to a desire to facture of splinter.  I can see how sometimes the desire for comfortable circumstances  may lead to desires of division. 

I offer this caution in those situations. 

Is the division one of growth or of shrinking.  Shrinking would be a situation where individuals seek to isolate either themselves or others.  Shrinking would be a situation of some wanting to go back to what it used to be.  Shrinking would be a situation where exclusions are enforced to keep things simple.  Those forces would be harmful to the Jewel of Sangha.  Those situation would be the failure of individuals and Sangha to be willing to grow.

Uncomfortable places are not always meant to be avoided.  Sometimes uncomfortable places are an opportunity to grow.  An uncomfortable place however is dangerous when it remains so in order to protect the status quo.  An uncomfortable place that refuses to examine the situation not just from the perspective of majority, or conformity is contrary to our Buddhist teachings of ‘equality of all beings.’

‘Equality of all beings’ does not mean conformity of all beings.  Within each of our individual uniques ‘self’s’ is a Buddha unlike and yet equal to all the other Buddhas around us. We all will not look alike, we all will not think alike, we all may not manifest our faith the same, yet all of these manifestations of a type of ‘self’ are equally endowed with the life of Buddha.

This is what the Sangha must work towards.  It is hard work, it will require unrelenting effort.  The work of our own individual enlightenment is not devoid of the our work in the Sangha for the manifestation of a universal Buddha-land.

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