Who am I? Who is my Sangha?

“Who am I?”-- the fundamental question underlying our Zen practice, is inseparably connected

with the question “Who is my Sangha?” On the first level, we tend to think that “my Sangha”

consists of the members the community with whom I practice Zen together. Looking more

deeply, we come to realize that “my Sangha” consists of everyone and everything who make me

who I am, beginning with my parents, siblings, relatives, circle of friends, teachers and mentors,

and more--- in short, all of those in the company of whom I live my life and upon whom my life

depends. Sangha is the circle of all those with whom I belong, and who also belong to me, and

where and with whom I am at home.

In his book Awakening Through Love, (Wisdom, 2007), John Makransky, an American-born

Tibetan Buddhist Lama, invites us to recall, one by one, all those persons from whom we have

been receiving love, beginning with parents, immediate family, into the wider and wider circle of

all being, to realize who we really are. When we come down to it, there is literally no one in this

whole wide world, who does not belong in this circle of My Sangha. Everyone, and everything,

belongs to this boundless circle of those from whom I receive love, in various degrees, from the

beginning until the end of time. We all belong to one another. We are all Sangha to one another.

Zen Master Dōgen in 13th century Japan wrote in his chapter Genjōkōan (The Matter at

Hand), that that which is at the innermost core of our being, Kokoro in Japanese, or Shin in

Chinese, translated in standard texts as Mind, which points to the most intimate answer to the

question of “Who am I?”—is “no other than mountains and rivers, the great wide Earth, the sun,

the moon, the stars!” Seeing it with the awakened eyes of Dōgen, we see not just every human

who has ever lived and will live on this earth in the future, but also every tree, every flower,

every bee, every pebble, every cloud, nothing short of everything and everyone that exists and

has ever existed, as what constitutes Who I Am. To realize who I am is to find my True Sangha.

As we look at the current state of Earth, our home, we see mountains crumbling, trees being

felled for lumber, glaciers melting, the entire ecosystem deteriorating due to our thoughtless

human ways of living and behaving. We see our fellow Sangha members inflicting violence and

killing one another in needless ways. We see so much pain and suffering perpetrated among

ourselves. All this pain and suffering of my fellow sangha members is felt as my very own. All

this moves me to want to realign my life in a way that can make even a small difference in

alleviating this pain and suffering, in being of help in healing the deep wounds of this Earth

sangha of ours. How may be of help? This is the question that jumps out from realizing our

sangha, our true home, realizing to whom I belong, realizing and awakening to who I really am.

Ruben L.F. Habito,

MKZC Guiding Teacher Emeritus