Part Three: Communication with Our Inner Sangha | Dr. Larry Ward

Dear Thay, dear sangha.

Welcome to session three

in our short journey in

what we can discover

about our inner sangha, our inner

community to aid

us in our practice.

So today

we are going to spend a few moments

talking about

what communications have we received

from our inner sangha recently.

How has our inner sangha been going

to change as our circumstances

and our practice has changed?

Maybe and maybe not.

But it's important to review

our inner life in this way.

I kind of do it every year in

the month of my birth,

January. I take a look back at the

past year and ask myself

many things, but one of the things I

ask myself is how

has my inner life changed?

How has my inner

dialog

with my memories and messages

that I have received from

the land ancestors within me

and the blood ancestors within me,

from the spiritual ancestors within

me and from the society in

which I am living

and having my being.

This whole series

is a practice of

selective watering.

As Thay has told us over

and over again, the

quality of the seeds in

our storehouse of consciousness

determines the quality of our

life experience within.

And without.

And so we want to not

ignore the fact

that we have community inside of us.

Our families are inside of us, our

mother, our fathers, our cousins,

our aunts and uncles are inside of

us.

Our neighborhoods, our villages that

we grew up in are inside of us.

Our school systems, our education,

the societies we have lived in,

in war and in peace.

All are inside of us.

And so to be tender

in our recognition

and naming of just

a few of the energies

of people that are inside

of us is a very

important practice.

But it's important to be tender

as we do it with ourselves.

First session was overview.

Second session was on naming

and recognizing.

And I hope you continue to add to

the list of

who you might name and who you might

recognize as we go through

this entire journey.

Today is about discovering our

communication.

Another way of saying that in more

familiar terms might be

what transmissions have we received

from these members of our

inner community.

Wholesome transmissions,

inspiring communications, precious

memories that

aid us in our practice

nourishing the good

within us.

Thay,

in my view, had a remarkable

inner community.

I was just reflecting on my own

experience of

this in conversations over

the years I've had with him in

different parts of the world where

we... and I had the good fortune

to be together with

with the sangha and with Thay.

I remember that

he often talked about Martin Luther

King as a friend.

And certainly Martin Luther King

was a part of Thay's inner

community.

When I first had a conversation

with Thay many years ago about

beginning, people of color

retreat in the Plum Village

tradition,

he asked me...

He said, Of course.

And then he asked me,

Did I know about Dr. Ambedkar

from India?

Who was an untouchable.

And I did know about Dr. Ambedkar

because I lived for

two years in India and

worked in villages quite near

in the state of Maharashtra, where

he lived and worked

and transmitted the precepts

to the untouchable community

in spite of the resistance from

the established Buddhist community

of the time.

And so again, Dr. Ambedkar

is a part of Thay's

inner community.

But so is the Hermit and the

Well, a powerful

part of Thay's inner

community. And I could go on.

And so as I speak again be thinking

about your own inner

community.

Your hermit in the well,

your Martin Luther King.

This is key for me,

I've already mentioned my mother,

but I want to mention also

my first influential

Christian teacher,

Joe Matthews, Dr. Joseph

Wesley Matthews, a methodist

minister and leader

of a religious community I was a

part of for over 20 years.

And

his messages for me which keep

reoccurring

is to

manifest three kinds of love.

Love of witnessing

to the good, to the true and the

beautiful, and what's possible for

us in our healing and

transformational journey

of self and society...

Pay attention to your messages

that's just one of his many.

For me, that still resounds,

still resonate in

my memory capsules

in my positive memory capsules

and my motivating

memory capsules.

Of course, Thay is there.

I have a whole list of

members, so to speak,

of my inner community of people.

Now in our inner life, we have

multiple kinds of researchers,

people and memories of people are

just want.

But it's important to remember in

the earliest days of

the Buddha tradition,

remembering the Buddha was a very

important practice.

And so we want to use

our memory skillfully of

those who have

contributed positively

to our growth and development

as a practitioner.

One other story about Thay

that I know it was a strong part

of this internal community

was this story of seeing his first

picture of the Buddha,

being calm on the magazine

cover and how that

catalyzed his aspiration

to be that peaceful, to

be that calm.

What has done this for you?

Who has done this for you?

So I'm talking specifically

about people, but there are also

other resources of community.

But there are also places that are

resources.

There are also activities

that resource us, that sustain

us, that nurture our goodness,

water our positive natures.

And there's also memories.

So we're combining, in

this case, memories and people.

So since we are not live

and together, and this is recorded,

I'm going to outline what

the steps are that I use

and you can use these steps

in a process for yourself,

or you can invent your own steps.

But what's important

is to

understand what you received.

And how what you received

from your inner community has

influenced you.

I know my grandmother,

who's in my inner community

all the time, has something

to say.

And she did not,

how to put this,

she did not appreciate

the theology that

didn't make sense.

And so she

and I, when I was with her at our

Big Baptist Church,

we'd have a guest minister every

night and we'd be there for ten, 15

minutes in the sermon.

And she said, okay, we can leave

now, he's an idiot.

And so

what that does

in my...

how that has impacted me

is to

be a critical thinker,

at the same time to keep my mind

open.

So you want to now jot

down any key messages.

If you've added some more

members to your inner community

list, how

has your list changed in the last

year?

Our external situations and

conditions always stimulate

our body mind system

to adapt and to change.

And so too with our inner life

is a flow,

it's not permanent

in the sense of being some kind of

entity.

When did any

person on your list most recently

arise in your mind,

spontaneously coming

to your consciousness?

And what was their message?

What did they communicate to you?

What did they help you remember?

What advice did they

have? What caution may

they have offered?

In our own embodiment of the ethics

of the way.

So our

inner conversations,

our profound influences

on our external behavior,

when the children who were involved

in one of the tragedies

of a school shooting that occurred

in the U.S., I

won't mention the location,

but they were interviewed later

after they were stopped from

their killing spree.

And the question was, how did this

happen?

And they said, well, it came out.

I was thinking about it.

I had a conversation with myself

and I told my friends the

conversation I had with myself.

They had a similar conversation.

We had a conversation together and

decided to do it.

So our conversations matter.

Within ourselves and between

ourselves. And the more skillful

we can become at recognizing

the messages, the imprints

that we receive from the external

world and know how to practice

with them so they don't increase our

suffering.

But can lead

us more clearly in the path of

liberation is why

we practice

continuously.

So review your list.

Add any new members that have

appeared.

One of mine, just to mention this

one, is the

Greenwood community

here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, is now

part of my inter-community

awareness because

of its history and because I lived

near by.

And I know the history of what's

happened there, and that both

inspires my compassion

and my action.

So what is that in society

for you, not just

an individual inspiration.

We can have social inspiration,

which is the

point of Engaged Buddhism and

Applied Buddhism.

So take a look at your list.

Write a keyword by

4 or 5 people

indicating the messages you received

or advice they often give.

The communication often.

Another one from my grandmother's

messages

is so simple when I ask

myself everyday or comes up every

day, Are you being good?

This is simple,

but that's stayed with

me since my childhood.

Are you being a good person?

That nurses every fiber of

my being.

So I'm asking you to reflect,

hear not only

the person you've identified,

but what has been their impact on

you

reflected in the messages or

communications you received or

reminders or advice

that has come up in

your storehouse

and to your

mind consciousness space.

Another message important

to me, Martin

Luther King is a part of my internal

community and

his constant message, I remember,

and there were many, but

recently it's been

I'm going to stay with love,

because hate is too hard to bear.

It's important to remember that in

these times we're

in.

In the world,

in our communities, in our cities,

in our villages.

Thank you.