Being Grateful to Communities

  I decided to take a walk to the English study group tonight, which is based on Master Sheng Yen's book Chan and Enlightenment. During these walks, I will typically orient myself on some reflection related to Master Sheng Yen, or perhaps to a Chan Buddhist concept that helps me. Actually, I really don't have a method at all! I just allow the thoughts to come to me, but I try to have this sincere intention, as though I am asking the deepest wisdom buried within me to summarize an experience of life. And because it's a Friday and I am somewhat more relaxed and less pressed for time, a relaxed thought came to me. That thought is: even though I often feel busy or pressed for time, I have much for which to feel grateful. It's not that I am a being who is endlessly 'giving' but there is a kind of symbiotic relationship between things, where energy transfers across different things without being lost. In fact, I should never have to feel that I am giving up anything, or am some isolated giver. Rather, there is always a symbiosis involved in my exchanges with others, where we share something together.
   The other thought that came to mind: I have often tended to think of community as an instrument of the self. It's not hard to see why. When I stop to think about all the ways I am served (in restaurants, government offices, banks, etc.) it's no wonder that sometimes one is mistaken to think they are being served by the community. The converse of this is to think of community as something one serves, until one retires or passes into the next life. In both cases, community is always conceived as something separate from the self. Sometimes, I have even caught myself believing that the society is only the means to some destiny that only the soul knows about. The problematic part of this view is that it approaches the self as though it were monolithic and unchanging. If I look at a tree, I can respect the fact that it has things that are unique to its design and birth as an acorn..but then I can also see that no two trees are alike in shape and form. They are subject to all manner of changes and influences, based on their position, soil, sunlight, nutrition, and so on. One can only imagine how much more complicated this picture becomes when we start to look at people and their lives.
    An alternate view of community is that the self arises co-dependently with it. This is close to the Buddhist concept of dependent co-arising or pattica samutpada. According to this view, I can't imagine myself as ever separate from my education, or the fellowship of others. If I am not able to fully separate from the influence of others, then it makes less and less sense to try to portion off the self as a separate 'giver' or 'receiver'. To do so is to overlook the inevitable interplay of giving and receiving that happens every moment in life. But when I see myself as either 'giver' or 'receiver', I inevitably distort my relationships with others in some way. A teenager who is always told that he or she is a 'parasite' who doesn't benefit others in any way will be conditioned to believe that she or he is inherently bad, or is unable to give at all. This leads to a lot of needless suffering and even alienation. On the other hand, someone who is always fashioning her or himself to be a 'martyr' or an endless giver, is often plagued with an inability to let others be givers in a relationship. In addition, the martyr believe prevents this person from letting go of their fixed role, and might even lead to resentment and comparison with others who may seem to give less of their time and energy to things.
    Both views are somewhat distorted, because they overlook the contributions that are often made just by non-doing or non-engagement. Sometimes, in not doing so many things or taking on so many roles, I am giving others the opportunity to also breathe a bit easier and feel less pressured to give back in return, or even contribute more. I believe that it's often in non-deliberate, open 'being with' others that one can most be in an engaged relationship, because there isn't the idea that each person in the relationship is a role.