| | I've read a lot of discussion about people's relationships to the dharma community outside of the Interwebs. There are obviously a lot of different groups that are more or less formal, lay or monastic led, denominational or not, and so on. For your typical 'householder' as opposed to someone who lives in a spiritual community or is a monastic, there are diverse approaches to involvement, from 'shopping around', to attending multiple groups, to being strongly identified with the approach and community of a single one.
An opinion that I've read on both DhO and KFD has been that, while such community groups have much to offer in terms of teaching, support, social enjoyment, opportunities for devotional practice and generosity and more, the poster has not quite found what they were looking for. There have been various reasons for this, including issues of identity, lifestyle, dogma, one's own ego, the mushroom factor, and others.
Discussion on DhO has taught me to give and take what I can when engaging with people in terms of the dharma, rather than to expect to either be the teacher or the student - but I still haven't yet found a real-life sitting group that is openly non-denominational, mutually supportive, goal-oriented, map-conscious and the like. In short, there isn't a pragmatic dharma group in my area, that I'm aware of anyway. Given the lack of activity in this forum compared to the others, I suspect this is the case in most places.
So, I'm interested in opening up the discussion about this. Is there a place/desire/demand for real-life pragmatic dharma groups? Do people find the medium of the internet more conducive to hardcore practice? What are the pros and cons of a real life group that has the ethos of the DhO? Is it better to go to traditional groups? Is keeping discussion to the internet alienating, especially for those in the Dark Night, or does it provide a space for thoughtful discussion, given it's all about one's own effort? Are dharma friends best kept separate from one's 'non-dharma' friends? Would it be good for pragmatic dharma to get on the radar more?
It's quite obvious that I'd be interested in meeting up with pragmatic dharma types IRL, perhaps as part of an informal group, so the responses to this thread will inform what I do about that *grins*
EDIT: extra questions for consideration: how have people found any informal or formal pragmatic dharma style meetups? The Buddhist Geeks conference, for instance? |