Quote from Awakening Together

Awakening Together: The Spiritual Practice of Inclusivity and Community

by Larry Yang

Wisdom Publications, Somerville, Massachusetts, 2017          251 pages

The Buddha was always precise in his guidance, and he elevated community as one of the most important aspects of our spiritual life in the teachings on the Three Refuges. He did not do this just to pay obligatory lip service to the collective aspect of our spiritual journey. He was inviting us to explore, as deeply as meditation itself, what it means to awaken together in community. He was inviting us to explore community itself as a practice of meditation or cultivation.

The more interdependently we feel, practice and offer these teachings, the broader the reach and impact these teachings will have in our contemporary world. . . .

The Buddha’s path is not a spiritual practice that encourages practitioners to go into a cave and escape the world, somehow becoming enlightened by the separation from others. Rather, the Buddha is inviting us into a practice of awakening using the full energies of our ever-evolving collective experience—of community. This is awakening together. (pp. 48-49)

There is tremendous injustice and unfairness in our cultures, our society, and nation, and our world—and there is freedom. This freedom is not dependent on life being fair or just. True freedom does not require we be in a place where there is no problem, struggle, or oppression. True freedom means being in the midst of any or all of those things and still having clarity in our minds, tenderness in our hearts, and integrity in our actions. True freedom allows us to move through even our most difficult struggles for the benefit of us all without re-creating cycles of suffering or abuse for others. True freedom brings true happiness. This is the kind of happiness and freedom that we seek together. (p. 220)

-- quote submitted by Camilla B.

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