An Integrated Spiritual Practice
What is the balance between one’s inner spiritual practice and engaging in the world around you? This is the question put to Ayya Yeshe in a recent podcast interview, and following is part of her reply.
“Happiness isn’t just a personal matter, and that’s why just focusing on your own practice, while the world falls apart, is not very viable.”
“I think Westerners have this misunderstanding of what Buddhist community is, and they underestimate the value of community. A monastery in Asia is more than just a place where you go and sit alone and find liberation from the world, separate from the world. A monastery is a is a community. It is a place that if you lose your job, you'll probably go and volunteer to get some food. It's a place where elderly people come for a sense of meaning and support in their practice; and community connection, something to do. It's a place where orphans would go to get an education. And it's a place where people go for blessings, refuge, solace, even to find a good husband or wife. Because if you want to find a good person, they're going to be hanging out at the monastery, right?
So, monasteries are communal hubs in Asia; they are not just places for individuals who are disconnected from society. And a lot of the problems we're having now in the West are because we are disconnected from community, we are disconnected from the planet. We don't have a sense of our place in the world; we're just completely obsessed with individual identity - if you're a person who doesn't fit into the mainstream, and your identity is under threat, eg: a trans person, that's a very different thing – but someone who is just part of this cult of the individual, this narcissistic overemphasis; for example, social media, always taking selfies, it actually is quite negative for mental health.
Individual freedom and identity and the search for your own truth can be a wonderful thing. But I feel like we've taken it to the ‘nth’ degree. It's a bit unbalanced now, because to rest in peace, to have a spiritual practice, is to understand your sacred interbeing with all of life. It’s to understand that you have non-self elements. Your non-self elements are your parents, your culture, your teachers who gave you an education. Everything you have comes from others: food, shelter, clothes. Your survival is dependent upon others, and therefore, spiritual practice and happiness are not just a personal matter, they're a communal one. If we live in a society where there is so much misery and uncertainty, and no safety, it will impact our capacity to reach our full potential.
If you look, for example, at a plant, and you see the plant is not thriving, it's not growing well, you don't blame the seed! You look at the soil, the potting mix, the compost, the pot, the garden bed, and you fix it. Each one of us is a result of social, gender, spiritual, economic conditions. If we rehabilitate those conditions, the individual can also be rehabilitated, so to speak. So, happiness isn't just a personal matter. And that is why just focusing on your own practice, while the world falls apart, is not very viable.”