WHILE THE ENERGY OF our thoughts, speech, and actions is powerful, this energy is infinitely more powerful when we join together with others. When we come together as a group, with a common purpose and commitment to mindful action, we produce an energy of collective concentration far superior to our own individual concentration. This energy further helps us to cultivate compassion and understanding. If we practice mindful sitting, walking, speaking, and listening together as a group, then everyone can feel the collective energy and everyone can receive nourishment and healing.
This collective energy can lead to collective insight and to a collective awakening.
Our collective compassion, mindfulness, and concentration nourishes us, but it also can help to reestablish the Earth’s equilibrium and restore balance. Together, we can bring about real transformation for ourselves and for the world.
When we offer our peaceful energy to others, we’re nourished by the peaceful energy they reflect back. The collective energy strengthens and nourishes us, helping us to continue on our path of awareness. This is why we need to create a community of practice. If we practice on our own, we won’t be able to generate sufficient collective energy or receive sufficient nourishment, thereby depriving ourselves not only of this essential spiritual food but also depriving others of our peaceful and compassionate energy.
If you can sit in meditation on your own, quietly and peacefully, that is wonderful. Even if nobody else knows you are meditating, the energy you produce is still beneficial. The beautiful, peaceful energy you create will go out into the world. But if you sit with others, if you walk and work with others, the energy you create is amplified, and you will have a lot more energy for your own healing and the healing of the world. It’s too much for one person to do alone! Don’t deprive the world of this essential spiritual food.
We need to gather regularly as a Sangha in order to practice together and support each other. A few dozen people practicing mindfulness together can create a very powerful collective energy. When a few hundred or even a thousand people or more come together to practice mindfulness and concentration, this can produce the powerful energies of joy and compassion, which can heal ourselves and the world.
Many thousands of us have participated in collective walking meditation and mass sitting meditation in some of the world’s busiest cities. We have walked mindfully and peacefully around the Hoan Kiem Lake in Hanoi. We have left footprints of peace and freedom on the ancient streets and piazzas of Rome. Thousands of us have sat in silence and stillness in London’s busy Trafalgar Square and in Zucotti Park in New York City. Everyone who participates and everyone who witnesses this collective practice has a chance to get in touch with the energy of peace, freedom, healing, and joy. The collective energy generated on such occasions is a gift that we can offer ourselves, one another, the city, and the world.
When we practice mindfulness we’re doing something for the whole of the Earth and all its inhabitants. We’re giving back to the Earth and providing it with necessary nourishment. Our collective awareness produces joy; and joy is a food that we need and that the Earth needs to survive.
We may think of joy as something that happens spontaneously. Few people realize that it needs to be cultivated and practiced in order to grow. When we sit in mindfulness with others, it’s easier to sit. When we walk mindfully with others, it’s easier to walk. The collective energy can help us when we’re tired or when our mind wanders. The collective energy can bring us back to ourselves. That’s why it’s so important to practice with others. At first we may worry that we aren’t doing sitting or walking meditation properly and we may hesitate to practice with others for fear of being judged. But we all know how to sit and how to breathe. That’s all we have to do. After only a few moments of concentrating on our breathing we can bring peace and calm to our body and mind and body. We only need to pay attention to our in-breath and out-breath. Focus on that. That’s all it takes to begin to calm the agitation in your mind and body. You only need to dwell peacefully in your in-breath and out-breath for a short while and you will begin to restore stability and peace within yourself. The concentration of those around you will also support you as you begin to practice. Do this a little bit each day, alone or with others. When you train like this, it becomes easier and easier to return to your mindful breathing. The more you train yourself, the more easily you touch the depths of your consciousness, and the more easily you can generate the energy of compassion. Each one of us can do this.
Joining or creating a like-minded community is very helpful for our practice. The practice of the group helps us maintain and strengthen our own practice. We can’t heal ourselves or heal the Earth on our own.
When we practice together as a community, our practice of mindfulness becomes more joyful, more relaxed, and steady. We are bells of mindfulness for each other, supporting and reminding each other along the path of practice. With the support of the community, we can cultivate peace and joy in ourselves, which we can then offer to those around us. We cultivate our solidity and freedom, our understanding and compassion. We practice looking deeply to gain the sort of insight that can free us from suffering, fear, discrimination, and misunderstanding.
We bring ourselves back to the present moment, to be in touch with Mother Earth, and to see that we already have enough conditions to be happy; happiness is possible right in the present moment. The encouragement and support of a Sangha, a community of practice, can help us enormously. When we practice together, mindfulness becomes easy and natural.
CITIZENS OF THE EARTH
We tend to think of human beings as falling into two groups: those who are similar to us and those who are different. We allow political boundaries to obscure our interconnectedness. What we often refer to as patriotism is actually a barrier that prevents us from seeing that we’re all children of the same mother. Every country calls its nation a motherland or a fatherland. Every country tries to show how it loves its mother. But in doing so, each country is contributing to the destruction of our larger mother, our collective mother, the Earth. In focusing on our human-made boundaries, we forget that we are co-responsible for the whole planet.
When we see that we are all children of the same mother, we will naturally want to cultivate and strengthen our sense of being part of one large family. When we speak of protecting our planet, we often speak of finding new technologies. But without real community, technology may be even more destructive than constructive. Real community, built with our practice of mindfulness, enables us to act together. When we can communicate with ourselves and with the Earth, we can communicate with others more easily.
Every one of us, regardless of nationality or religious faith, can experience a feeling of admiration and love when we see the beauty of the Earth and the beauty of the cosmos. This feeling of love and admiration has the power to unite the citizens of the Earth and remove all separation and discrimination. Caring about the environment is not an obligation, but a matter of personal and collective happiness and survival. We will survive and thrive together with our Mother Earth, or we will not survive at all.