While we each must walk the Path on our own, to fully embody spiritual growth, it takes a village.
In many Buddhist books, there is the recommendation to go to an isolated mountain retreat – in other words, to leave everyone and everything and focus only on practice. It’s true, we do need time alone on the meditation cushion. We need time alone to come to terms with all that arises within our mind. By removing ourselves from all distractions, if we are properly prepared, we have deep and profound realizations on our own.
Preparing ourselves for these realizations and then stabilizing the realizations requires help. In fact, we need an entire village to sustain our spiritual growth. Even the ancient master Milarepa who was determined to practice alone often had visitors find him in his mountain cave. It was these visitors who got him to verbalize his profound teachings.
Our American culture is one of rugged individualism – the “I can do it myself!” that my mother told me I used to often yell when I was a toddler. We like to pretend that we don’t need anyone else. This insistence on self-reliance gives us a sense of control. But it also keeps us trapped in an infantile state.
As we embark on the spiritual path, we typically first admit we need a teacher. Whether that is in the form of books or an actual living teacher, we crack open and allow someone to help us develop beyond our current state. In this relationship, the teacher provides a model for us to follow. They clear a pathway for us to explore. We still need to do the work ourselves; we still need time by ourselves to face the infinitude of our mind.
At some point, we discover the teacher alone is not enough. We may remain enamored with the teacher, seeing them as our everything. But if we are honest, we see solely relying on a teacher causes us to become stuck in an imbalanced power dynamic. Due to the nature of that type of relationship, the teacher appears to be always above, and we always below, striving to reach their height. There’s no way out. Or is there?
The way out is to recognize that the individual we call teacher is not our only teacher. This releases us and the teacher from the power imbalance as we open beyond the narrow relationship. We live in a society of people with a variety of viewpoints and levels of awareness. If we are fortunate, we belong to a sangha, a group of practitioners who are traveling deeper into awareness along with us. We begin to see that everyone, whether on a formal path or not, is exploring and learning together. All of these people create a village that provides a mirror of who we are at any particular moment.
This instant feedback from the village surrounding us tests our realizations more accurately than any individual teacher can. This both spurs our spiritual growth and helps stabilize our realizations. Sometimes the responses we get from those around us are rewarding; other times it is not so pleasant. Regardless, if we take an honest look in the village mirror we have the opportunity to refine our practice.
Our main teacher serves as a role model who reminds us we have the same Buddha nature as them. They encourage us to trust ourselves and to remain focused on Awakening. The others in the village – those in our sangha and in our general world – show us what it feels like to live the practice in the real world. Together, this rich village pushes us to keep moving, to keep going deeper into Awareness.
Each one of us must take responsibility for walking the Path, but we grow by interacting with the village.
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