Real Meeting

The word satsanga is normally translated as "good company". This is accurate (the dictionary definition is "intercourse or association with the good") but there is more to the phrase than that. Sat means "being", "existing", "occurring", "happening", "being present" - one might say "real". Sanga means literally "sticking, clinging to, touch or contact with", and is related to sangha, the name used for a community or gathering, especially in reference to the Buddhist community. The problem with the word "good", of course, is that it slides to easily into "them (bad) and us (good)". Then we stop asking ourselves the all-important questions about the actual quality of the meeting taking place.

I'd like to propose that we define satsanga more broadly as "real contact" or "real meeting". It could signify "making contact with what is real", or "really meeting", or it could be "a gathering to speak about the real". All of these have, it seems to me, wholly positive meanings, without the danger of complacency. What matters is the contact, and the reality.

How often does this really happen? This morning I met with two people in their seventies to study some of His Holiness' words together. This developed into a wide-ranging discussion of all kinds of topics, always coming back to the question of how to take care of students. In a memorable phrase, a School should rightly see itself as being responsible for the care of "the eternal souls" of its members. That might sound a bit messianic, or a bit religious, but try this with the next person you meet. Try to see them not just as a body or a personality or a relationship, but as a soul in eternity. That would create the possibility of the real meeting, because it is a loving seeing.

When that happens there can be no possibility of doing any harm to the dignity or person of the other. If there is harm or conflict on either side, that means nothing, except that the real meeting has not yet taken place. That is not the fault of any one: the immediate temptation is to blame the other, but that's a childish error. The right response to conflict of a philosophy School is to examine the existing structures and to discover whether there is anything that needs to be different in order to establish a safe environment for the real meeting. The right response as an individual is to ask whether one could have done more, whether there is anything to learn, and if so to do what it takes to put that right.

Creating the satsanga, the real meeting, is not just the work of philosophy, it's the work of life.