The Principles and Pitfalls of Community

{Principles and Pitfalls of Community

The community is created, not when people come together in the name 

of religion, but when they come together bringing honesty, respect, and 

kindness to support the awakening of the sacred.

Jack Kornfield

Cited in Mystical Hours

Brother Wayne Teasdale gives us a more extended understanding of these guiding ideals as a principle for a community that chooses to align itself with a spiritual path…

“As a founding teacher of the wonderful Spirit Rock Meditation Center, Buddhist teacher and author Jack Kornfield knows the demands of community. While common orientation and commitment to a particular religion can be helpful, something more is required: The mature qualities of honesty, mutual respect, and kindness. That is what make a community happen- [those values] become the glue of daily life. They also allow for a space to emerge where members can awaken to or realize the presence of the sacred.

 A community can have a solid commitment to a religious tradition, a teacher, and a spiritual practice, but much of what we are seeking in the spiritual process is honesty, mutual respect and kindness, compassion, and sensitivity to one another. Tension and disagreement naturally arise in any community. To overcome them requires uncommon courage and flexibility, which are hallmarks of those following a true spiritual path.”

Over the decades of my spiritual search and participation in religions, East and West, (and enhanced by my experiences and training in spiritual formation at Shalem), I have come to understand how there are many levels of clarity, many stages of personal, religious, and spiritual development. From those experiences and insights, I can see how it is positive and possible for many groups to foster a genuine sense of awakening and realization. However, it is also acutely possible and some would say probable, that there are spiritual groups where there are many pretenders, charlatans, and grifters who also occupy the spiritual domain.

Briefly, taking a section from a following reading in Mystical Hours, Wayne Teasdale offers us these words of wisdom and caution taken from one of the foundational contemporary Buddhist teaching books by Chogam Trumpa entitled “Cutting through Spiritual Materialism.”

( I would also add books by John Welwood, and Gerald May that also offer the critical eye and the wide awake approach to spiritual guidance…)

“Spiritual materialism is described as a condition “when the ego latches on to spiritual practice as another method of aggrandizement.” … “Ironically, if we are not careful, spirituality can actually bolster the ego, rather than annihilate it. Be vigilant!”