The Message of Dhardo Rimpoche — part 3
And we should live united. Obviously people do live united in a sense. Without unity social life itself would not be possible at all. But what constitutes that unity which people usually do experience? What are its underlying factors? There are a number of these. Language, a common language, is a unifying factor. Nationality, common nationality, or citizenship, is a unifying factor. Race is a unifying factor, and then of course there’s culture, also religion. But these are unifying factors for certain groups of people. They bind those people together. They contribute, as we say, to the unity of the group.
But when Rimpoche exhorts us to live united, it’s not this kind of unity he has in mind. After all, we’re already living united more or less, in that sort of mundane way. We’re already bound together with other people by language, nationality and so on. So we don’t need any exhortation in this respect. So what kind of unity does Rimpoche have in mind? We mustn’t forget here that Rimpoche’s exhortation is addressed to potential real Buddhists. It’s addressed to us. So what constitutes our unity? What are the unifying factors in our collective existence? What is it that binds us together as Buddhists? What is it that contributes to, that in fact constitutes, the unity of the spiritual community, the Sangha?
Obviously, the principal unifying factors are the three jewels themselves. We’re united primarily by virtue of the fact that we all go for refuge to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. We’re all united by the fact that we observe the same precepts, practice the same meditations, perform the same pujas, study the same sutras and shastras and so on. These are the things that in principle unite us. But do we in fact live united? Do we put that unity into practice? Is it actually effective in our actual relations with one another? That is only too often another matter. So what is Rimpoche actually saying when he says Live united.
He is saying, You are united as Buddhists in principle, but you must also be united in practice.
So we may ask, we may wonder, what prevents us from being united in practice? What prevents us from living united, what prevents us from being a spiritual community in the fullest sense? Well, I am afraid there are quite a number of things. Things like personal conflict — that is to say, conflict with other members of one and the same spiritual community. And then, competitiveness, jealousy, factionalism, the cherishing of ill-will, the harbouring of grudges, unwillingness to forgive, reluctance to clear up misunderstandings: all these things prevent us as a spiritual community from living united, prevent us from putting into practice our unity in principle.
In a word, we may say, that what prevents us from living united is egotism, or if you dislike the old-fashioned word egotism, what prevents us from living united is our individualism. Only too often we think that we are acting as individuals when we are really only being individualistic. So when Rimpoche says, Live united
, he is also saying, on a deeper level, in a deeper sense, Live egolessly. Live in a non-individualistic manner.
He is saying, Realize that there is in the ultimate sense no separate self, no separate unchanging self, to defend or to assert.
He is saying, Realize nairatmyata, realize sunyata.
That is what he is really saying.