The Buddha’s social teachings

Buddhist practice is a social project, done in cooperation with others. Most of us in the west see it otherwise, but then we are unrepentant individualists. As an example, Siddhartha, Hermann Hesse’s hero, and his friend Govida goes off together as young men on a spiritual quest, but part ways after encountering the Buddha. Whereas Govinda joins the Buddha’s Sangha, the disciplined community of monks, Siddhartha follows a path of his own making. When the two meet once again as elderly men, Siddhartha has succeeded in his quest where Govinda has failed.

Individual practice depends on society. Still, we must acknowledge that our practice has a social context. Something or someone inspired us to begin this practice, something or someone provided the tools, the instruction, the readings, the examples that allowed us to begin and sustain this practice.
He did not just arise spontaneously! He needed a lot of help; a social context can provide the conditions in which Noble Ones are likely to arise, the initial inspiration, the role models, the admirable friendship, the communication of extremely sophisticated and fragile teachings, the teachers, the patient encouragement and the time. These are the elements at play in a culture of Awakening. This is the cultural context that will also best absorb his civilizing influence in turn.

Practice is pro-social.
Live in a social matrix, like fish in water. Evolution has designed us for cooperation.
Virtuoso pianist: long hours of lonely practice, but with the the context of musical tradition and training, inspired by brilliant performers and composers. Perform for an audience. Similarly for arahants. Perfection of virtue: become sublimely pro-social, lose the self-centered qualities.
We are a social species; we live in relationship to others, occupy social roles and obligations and are in constant negotiation with one another. But our interpersonal and communal lives are all too often marked by discord, ruffled feathers, infighting, argument, insult, exploitation, violence, and war.
At the same time, it is substantially within the realm of interpersonal and communal relations that the practices of generosity, harmlessness and purity of mind that we have discussed in previous chapters play out. As we perfect our generosity, our harmlessness and our purity, our relationship with our fellow social beings improves. We treat them with more kindness and compassion, we take care not to step on their toes nor harm nor insult them, and we do what we can to help them rather than to exploit them. Imagine what the world would be like if everyone developed in this way!

The monastic Sangha
In fact, the Buddha did start a religion, if what we mean by that is an institutional basis for propagating and protecting his teachings. He was very much concerned to define the precise social conditions necessary to do all of the above and codified his results particularly in the Vinaya, the complement of the Dharma. In doing so, he set the Buddha-Sasana in motion, Buddhism as it is lived in its social and historical dimensions, that which has thrived, spread, suffered setbacks, and persists to this day. In fact, the Buddha was as wildly successful in this endeavor as in many of his other undertakings, producing not only the first world religion, but what is now possibly the oldest institution on the planet, the Sangha that has carried the flame of the Dharma to light one hundred generations of Buddhism.
The fundamental purpose of this institution is to produce Noble Ones, saints, the finest in admirable friends, now and in the years to come. Its founding charter provides the optimal training conditions for the practice that produces Noble Ones, it also sustains a wholesome and inspiring influence on the broader Buddhist community, and, as we will see, it ensures the future authenticity of the Sasana.
The Sangha has striking parallels with science as an institution, the disciplined community of scientists organized largely within universities and research institutions. Each, the monastic community and the scientific community, is a complex system responsible for many things: for training its members, for authorizing its teachers, for maintaining the integrity of its tradition against many misguided and popular notions, for upholding pure standards whereby its results can be assessed, for encouraging the growth, prosperity and longevity of its functions, for rewarding patience where results are not immediately forthcoming, for maintaining harmony among its members, for nurturing a positive perception in the public eye. Just as scientific discipline is intrinsic to the practice and perpetuation of science, and science as we know it would collapse without it, Vinaya is intrinsic to the practice and perpetuation of the Buddha-Sasana, and Buddhism in all its depth would collapse without it. Both institutions are conservative, exhibiting relatively little change over the centuries. From these parallels I will draw helpful analogies to better understand the function of the Sangha in terms of the (presumably, for most readers) more familiar scientific institution.
It is not often enough stated that the founding of the Sangha was a truly monumental achievement. Although there were ascetics in India before the Buddha, “… among all of the bodies of renouncers it was only the Buddhists who invented monastic life,” that is who provided an organized institution capable of sustaining its teachings. Consider this observation:
The Buddhist Sangha is likely the world’s oldest human organization in continual existence on the planet!
What is more, the Sangha is still entirely recognizable in terms of attire, life-style, practice and function after 100 generations! It was there as great empires, the Roman, Mongolian, Arab, Lithuanian, Mayan and British, arose and grew. It was still there as each of those empires collapsed. From India it extended its civilizing reach to Ceylon and Southeast Asia and into Indonesia, into Central Asia where it followed the Silk Road eastward into China and East Asia and westward as far as the Mediterranean. In modern times it has begun to board airplanes and to sprinkle down on North America, Europe, Australia, South America and even Africa. Buddhism has never penetrated new lands nor established itself without the Sangha.
Yet in spite of its robustness the Sangha is delicate. Without any centralized authority or substantial hierarchy, its governance is based on the consensus of local communities (sanghas) of monks and nuns, its regulations are enforced through an honor system and its support is completely entrusted to the good-will of others. The Buddha could have set up a hierarchy, with something like Pope and bishops and a range of severe punishments for transgressing authority, but he did not. Who would have thought it would last? This amazing institution is the product of one genius, who cobbled it together from diverse elements present and observed among the ascetics of his time, clearly articulated for it a mission and a charter and released it into the world. And this genius is the very same person who revealed the Dharma, among the most sophisticated and skillfully expounded products of the human mind, and the very same person who attained complete Awakening without a teacher to light the way, the threefold genius we call the Buddha.
The Vinaya is fundamentally about community and about the monastic life style, the life in accord with the Dharma and thereby the most direct path to higher attainments. The Vinaya is addressed indeed to monks and nuns, but throughout it emphasizes their responsibility to the Buddhist lay community. The Buddha’s teachings on community provide the mechanism through which the light of the Buddha’s teachings burns brightly, through which it spreads to attract new adherents and through which it retains its integrity as it is passed on to new generations.