Respecting Our Differences
Sangha starts to occur as sort of a group field in the sense of these things we have in common. Things we have in common, things we don’t have in common. Things we have in common is this kind of aspiration…
The aspiration body is not self, it’s beneath, beyond or behind our personalities so that kind of lives on. Then there is this other thing called person or personality. It’s not so easy to handle one of these. They are about individuation. Aspiration can be about what we have in common. Our individuality is unique. How do you get a group of individuals, who are individuals, who are separate, who are just what they are, to somehow resonate, bond and to…why, why bother?
Because it’s when we, in that sense of the individuals, seeing within each other the universal aspirations (everybody’s got their own window on it, you might say through that window, everybody’s perceiving the same room) because of that then we have a sense of commonality and individuality and some sort of commitment as to how we can operate around that.
That’s where the whole sense of the rules or boundaries or markers come in. It’s what’s going to help everyone of us maintain that sense of individuality as expression or as a window into this universal dharma, so that the individuality is respected, it’s understood, it’s known, it has a space, but it’s not going to run the show. There’s the balance.
Ajahn Sucitto (Theravadan Buddhist Monk)