Dāna - supporting our community

There is no community of practice without the community! The vitality of the Sangha Body is the sum of our aspirations and of our actions. When a few of us gather for a Morning Chant, the Morning Chant is there; when a few gather to share their practice and the challenges of their lives, then Dharma Sharing is born, together with its value. When one of us prepares to enter our “meditation hall” on line, and does so secure in the knowledge that others will also be present, then a living, breathing Sangha is smiling and present.

Dwelling in the refuge of sangha
Shining light that supports me
Keeping my practice free from obstruction.

This kind of contribution is effortless, asking only for the energy of attention and commitment. It is like arriving, like coming home, where you can take a deep and nourishing breath, relax, and smile.

There are a number of ways we care for our living Sangha. Some of us, when listening deeply, recognize a little suffering – something that perhaps he or she as an individual, or we as a community, can address with more mindful action. Others might remember or discover a favorite practice, and bring it to the attention of the community, so that we might incorporate some elements in our daily or weekly activities.

Sometimes, the words or actions of a members or a partner can stir up complex and strong emotions in one or more of us. When those emotions become attached to another member, it can be helpful to have accompaniment to clear the obstruction.

We also have normal entries and exits from the community. Sometimes, those who have been close to us find their lives and their activities moving in another direction. Or perhaps, a major personal event takes place, and one is not able to continue practicing for a period of time.

We listen carefully to the sound of the path underfoot and, if we hear rough road, we may wish to invite action in the community to smooth our travel. The Lighting the Path group is dedicated to this listening for the community, as the community. Composed of a few long-term members they meet once a month (or as needed) to help maintain the health of the community. This group asks for the energy of time and compassion, and for the “wisdom of the circle”.

We are chiefly an online Sangha, and so we depend on our internet home for our regular schedule, guidance in our practices (based on the Monastic activities in the Plum Village tradition), and easy access to materials such as our song list, guided meditations, and regular chants and reading.

A website has a few recurring costs: registration and maintenance of the internet domain FallingRain.org and the hosting service that is the address on the web for our website are both billed annually. The cost is not high.

Our website also has intangible costs in its design, development and maintenance. These efforts have always been a “labor of love”, which means that there has been plenty of labor, while the result of that labor brings great satisfaction and joy. In the same way new life is carried by a mother for months, is brought to the world through labor and birth, and becomes its own beautiful reason for being.

If one contracted a company for web development, the cost would be pretty high, and the results disappointing. There would be little love.

There is also ongoing content management. To support our changing and deepening practices, we add new materials from existing texts or new writing. These are formatted for the web site and published. We also update our own information and materials when the source material from our Root Sangha of Plum Village changes.

Finally, while we practice in “international” English, the Sangha website is available for translation and use by those speaking Castilian Spanish or Catalan. If there is a call for our main pages and navigation to appear in other languages, this can be done by skilled translators.

Much of the energy needed here is either technical in nature – where those with related experience might pitch in – or is supported by the greater community with small donations.

We are a global community, and we are visible wherever the internet takes us. We have an email account receiving queries from the website or other request for information. We also are using Google Groups for simple mailing list management. The email account has a recurring monthly cost, while the distribution groups are free (but cost a little in privacy).

The fabric of our community rests in the practices we share via inline meetings. We have our own Zoom account, which has an annual license fee. This is a little more expensive for one person to pay, but with a community dividing the cost of meeting, the cost is only a few euros per month.

The foundation of a community is shared practice, and we keep a calendar up-to-date so that our members can always connect at the right time, while new friends can easily find us. We might include special events like A Bite of Cake, or new regular events as they arise. The calendar is stored in a web standard called iCal, and is managed using free web tools.

We also revisit scheduling as seasons and needs change. We use a free polling software called When2Meet, that allows us to specify a day or range of days, and times within those days, to identify practice schedules that can meet the needs of the majority of participants.

While the tools are all free, the effort to write, poll, report and publish changes in schedule takes time and a but of administrative energy,