Playing our part
I started the month on a big gathering for women who belong to the same order as me, the Triratna Buddhist Order. I’d not been to one of these for years and had mixed feelings about going.
There were 140 of us there for the weekend, including people I’ve known and been knocking around with for over 30 years, people I’ve lived with, worked with, and people I’ve never met.
Here’s what I discovered:
I make a difference. You do too. My being somewhere makes a difference to others. It’s impossible to know or measure, but I realised we all make more of a difference that we often think we do.
Doing nothing in particular, we each bring to the collective situation whatever it is we stand for. We have our own set of values, priorities, and ethos that we live our lives by. We quietly embody that and it’s powerful.
Even tenuous connections between us can be strong. The memory of a shared experience lasts a long time and is easily revived. Not all relationships have to be maintained. Some can simply lie dormant but come alive again when the conditions are right.
When you are not there, you are missed. Since that event, so many people who were not there have come to my mind. Your absence is a manifest thing.
“The growth of the bhikkhus is to be expected, not their decline, bhikkhus, so long as they assemble frequently and in large numbers; meet and disperse peacefully and attend to the affairs of the Sangha in concord..”
- the Maha-parinibbana Sutta.
