Hello!
This is our first post. We have started a Sangha House in the Thich Nhat Hanh lineage in Echo Park, Los Angeles, California, and will use this Substack to share updates from our journey. Check out our (under construction) website here. What follows is our first post, an update on settling into the house by Garrett Allen. We hope you subscribe for more news from us.
We were sitting around the low table in the living room, boxes piled up around us, having one of our first informal meetings as a living and breathing Sangha house, when my eyes must have internally dilated and the nature of this transition began to dawn on me. After months of planning, coordinating, discussing, changing plans, postponing, withdrawing, hope and uncertainty, — we were finally sitting solidly in a Sangha house. Sean, Casiana and Taylor had moved in. The living room couches had been taken out to make space for a meditation hall in the living room. We were sitting together. We were a Sangha house.
Earlier in the week the three of us had our first shared call in a study group for the Order of Interbeing, an online group made up of Wake Uppers from Canada, New York, Texas, Germany, and across the world. During the call I, along with a few others, ceremonially took the five Mindfulness Trainings, the first formal step into the Order of Interbeing and the Plum Village tradition. Since our living room was still piled high with boxes, Casiana, Sean and I each dialed into the call individually from our bedrooms. I took my vows at the altar Liz had thoughtfully set up in my room, and when there was finally a break we ran down excitedly and met in the kitchen. Casiana hugged me, called me by name (“Radiant Refuge of the Source”) and welcomed me into the Sangha.
In some ways the Sangha house was then a reality. Sean and Casiana had paid rent, gotten keys, and moved in. We had eaten meals together. We had scheduled a first community event, a talk by our friend, the environmentalist activist Robin Greenfield. We were excited to host Robin in the first stop on his speaking tour after several months living in Griffith Park in an experiment in non-ownership. We were also excited to officially inaugurate our house with the support of friends and many members of our community. The living room which had become piled high with boxes during the move had even begun to empty out.
And yet in as many ways the Sangha house was not yet. Rachel, a founding member of the Sangha house, wasn’t actually going to move in until August, and one of my old housemates Nico would continue on with us in the meantime. What’s more, within the first 10 days of Casiana and Sean moving in we found out that we had bed bugs — a sublime realization that considerably diverted us from settling in. Instead of making our rooms, we tore them apart — bedsheets, box frames, dressers, closets. The piles of boxes in the living stopped shrinking and seemed to tower over us while we ate.
And yet how are we to judge where our progress is slowed and where it is sped up? Within 2 weeks of moving in we had a formidable challenge to face as a group. We had to deliberate, coordinate, chart a course, and show each other — and ourselves — compassion. You can ask yourself where the bed bugs came from, how long they’ve been here, and who’s responsible for them, but the bed bugs are there. Life is suffering. To adapt the classic story, the first bite is from the bug, but the second is from shame, guilt, judgement, and fear about the bug. Our settling into the space physically was slowed down but our settling into a cohesive, functional and resilient family unit was sped up. You decide if that is a blessing or a curse. And the eyes of insight seemed to show me that the bed bugs in our house were real, even unaccountable, even exquisite beings, worth our patience and understanding. The Sangha house is here, and these bed begs are a part of it.
While the Sangha house is in a state of transition, somewhere between being and non-being, the genesis of this community marks another transition for me at this house. For four years I knew this place as the Center for the Working Poor, and it incontestably changed my life. Paraphrasing global literature, Joseph Campbell said, “where you stumble, there’s your gold,” and boy did I stumble into this community four years ago. I was a stubborn, oversensitive, traumatized young man addicted to abstractions. I discovered sobriety, emotional vulnerability, the miracle of mindfulness, spiritual practice and spiritual community. These really are my gold, and the font and gateway to all of that was Paul Engler, the leader of the Center’s non-profit and intentional community who became my friend, mentor, and brother who moved to Wisconsin at the start of the month. Paul was a fixture here for nearly two decades. Strange it is now to witness this hatchling Sangha house coming into being, feeding on the shell it was born in with the brooding hen who laid it absent, absent.
And while the Sangha house is in its transition, and I am in mine, the Plum Village community is in its transition, which I am just beginning to understand. Thay died three years ago, and we (I imagine) must be in transition out of his leadership. Where are we without him? How do we relate to him in his absence? Founded in the heart of a war, in 1966 in Saigon, as an alternative and politically engaged community, what is the Order of Interbeing today? What movement are we a part of? What is the place of intentional community in it? I’ve come to understand that the Order of Interbeing community is aging. The North American Wake up OI Study Group me and my housemates are a part of — online, accessible, queer, under 40 — may serve to rejuvenate and reinvigorate the community. My hope is for this Sangha house to be a vessel for us to learn more about this conversation, and to contribute to it.