What Happens in Dharma Groups?
What does a Buddhist Dharma group do? How does this differ from a non-Buddhist meditation group?
The Buddha, like many spiritual leaders, responded to the dilemma of the human condition. We are born, we live and then we die… and within the living part of this process there is much suffering. The Buddha committed himself to working with this dilemma until he was free from the problems and sufferings that appears inherent to the human condition.
He gave a template of his discovery which is now known as the Four Noble Truths, which includes the Eight Fold Path. For some practitioners this seems simple and prescriptive. However he was clear that the path is neither. As you commit to the practice you inevitably uncover great complexity. You also may discover that a great deal is not as it seems. We are led away from following prescriptions or inflexible instructions. We are led away even from obedience to a teacher. We are led to exploring our own lives… our experience as it is.
“Yet it is just within this fathom-long body, with its perception & intellect, that I declare that there is the world, the origination of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of the world."
The Buddha Rohitassa Sutta AN 4.45
This… what we have here, now…this is what we work with.
Essentially, the Buddha states that we are ignorant of the way things really are. Cognitively we are deluded into seeing, knowing and perceiving our experience incorrectly. We assume things are unchanging and solid. We assume we are existing entities, independent of the rest of the world. The assumptions behind many of our ways of operating cause our problems and suffering. We are going against the stream.
So a large part of the Buddha’s teachings are focussed on encouraging us to see things as they really are… to see, know and understand. This is not so easy when we have habits, attachments, aversions and delusions. It also doesn’t help if we are surrounded by people who are not committed to a path of change.
This leads us to look at what we are doing here in our dharma group. We are taking the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path as a practise, to try to know and understand our experience. We work with various aspects of ethics, meditation and wisdom/understanding to bring about the cessation of ignorance that the Buddha was speaking of. We sit here quietly still and observant, curiously noticing, as much as we can, what is occurring. Afterwards we think back on it and see what we can remember in order to gain insight about our experience. We ask questions. What is going on here? What supports it? What am I missing? Etc. If we don’t explore and gain more clarity, our ignorance and pain continues.
In our dharma groups we discuss our daily life together… our world, in order to see into our experience, our mistakes, our dilemmas. Our world is the content of our meditations…and our meditations consist of our daily life and our world.
The fact that meditation and our daily life are not separate becomes obvious as we journal, recollect, consider and articulate what is happening.
In our dharma groups we read texts or books written by wise people in order to help us see into our experience and to inspire us to continue. We support each other in this project through discussions and through listening to the experiences of others. His example, his teachings and our community are what the Buddha encouraged us to use, as support or ‘refuge’.
Through fostering our practice in this way, our life and the life of others become less difficult and more open and free.
Anna Markey
The Buddha, like many spiritual leaders, responded to the dilemma of the human condition. We are born, we live and then we die… and within the living part of this process there is much suffering. The Buddha committed himself to working with this dilemma until he was free from the problems and sufferings that appears inherent to the human condition.
He gave a template of his discovery which is now known as the Four Noble Truths, which includes the Eight Fold Path. For some practitioners this seems simple and prescriptive. However he was clear that the path is neither. As you commit to the practice you inevitably uncover great complexity. You also may discover that a great deal is not as it seems. We are led away from following prescriptions or inflexible instructions. We are led away even from obedience to a teacher. We are led to exploring our own lives… our experience as it is.
“Yet it is just within this fathom-long body, with its perception & intellect, that I declare that there is the world, the origination of the world, the cessation of the world, and the path of practice leading to the cessation of the world."
The Buddha Rohitassa Sutta AN 4.45
This… what we have here, now…this is what we work with.
Essentially, the Buddha states that we are ignorant of the way things really are. Cognitively we are deluded into seeing, knowing and perceiving our experience incorrectly. We assume things are unchanging and solid. We assume we are existing entities, independent of the rest of the world. The assumptions behind many of our ways of operating cause our problems and suffering. We are going against the stream.
So a large part of the Buddha’s teachings are focussed on encouraging us to see things as they really are… to see, know and understand. This is not so easy when we have habits, attachments, aversions and delusions. It also doesn’t help if we are surrounded by people who are not committed to a path of change.
This leads us to look at what we are doing here in our dharma group. We are taking the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path as a practise, to try to know and understand our experience. We work with various aspects of ethics, meditation and wisdom/understanding to bring about the cessation of ignorance that the Buddha was speaking of. We sit here quietly still and observant, curiously noticing, as much as we can, what is occurring. Afterwards we think back on it and see what we can remember in order to gain insight about our experience. We ask questions. What is going on here? What supports it? What am I missing? Etc. If we don’t explore and gain more clarity, our ignorance and pain continues.
In our dharma groups we discuss our daily life together… our world, in order to see into our experience, our mistakes, our dilemmas. Our world is the content of our meditations…and our meditations consist of our daily life and our world.
The fact that meditation and our daily life are not separate becomes obvious as we journal, recollect, consider and articulate what is happening.
In our dharma groups we read texts or books written by wise people in order to help us see into our experience and to inspire us to continue. We support each other in this project through discussions and through listening to the experiences of others. His example, his teachings and our community are what the Buddha encouraged us to use, as support or ‘refuge’.
Through fostering our practice in this way, our life and the life of others become less difficult and more open and free.
Anna Markey