I vow to chase the truths of the Paramitas' words. Morning. Morning. This morning I want to talk about the Paramitas. I was asked to review a new book by Ekin Roshi on the Paramitas. So this is on my mind and I thought I would discuss that. There are ten paramitas. Paramita in this case means perfection. And we say prajna paramita. Prajna is wisdom. And prajna is one of the paramitas.

[01:00]

All of the paramitas interact with each other and are aspects of prajna. But I'll talk about that when I come to that particular paramita. So these paramitas are kind of Mahayana teaching. like the precepts and like the Eightfold Path, a series of aspects of attention, what we should, in order to practice, what we should be aware of and what we should be practicing. The early Buddhists around the first century liked to use lists of ten things. because they were intrigued with the decimal at that time.

[02:07]

But we usually talk about six paramitas, even though there are ten. But in Eken Roshi's book, he talks about the ten equally. So we usually say there are six paramitas and then there are four more. But it's hard to talk about ten things because you get a little bit weary. So maybe that's the main reason why we only talk about six, the first six. But all ten are important. So first I'll let you know what the ten paramitas are, most of you know anyway, right? And then I'll talk about each one.

[03:10]

I probably won't get past six. So the first one is giving or generosity. And the second one is sometimes called morality or conduct. I like conduct. It has to do with precepts, mostly, and behavior. And the third one is called forbearance or patience, self-control, restraint. And the fourth one is, he says, he likes to use the word zeal. Sometimes it's energy. Usually it's translated as energy. Or, I like enthusiastic effort. And then the fifth one is dana, or I mean dhyana, or meditation.

[04:19]

of one kind or another. For us, you could say Zazen, although Dogen Zenji says Zazen is not one of the many meditations. But I'll talk about that. And the sixth one, of course, is Prajna or wisdom. And then the seventh one is skillful means. knowing how to do something in an appropriate way. He calls it compassionate means, papaya. And the eighth one is aspiration. The ninth one is spiritual power, which is very tricky.

[05:24]

And the tenth one is knowledge, as distinct from wisdom. So the first one is dana, dana paramita. Dana means to give, to be generous and to not withhold. The eighth precept is don't withhold spiritual or material goods. Don't keep something close to yourself, but always keep giving with a spirit of generosity. That's one aspect. The other aspect is not withholding yourself. And not withholding yourself is actually the basis for any kind of giving, any kind of generosity.

[06:32]

First of all, we give ourself, and then whatever it is that we give is the vehicle for giving ourself. We can give ourselves through charity or material goods or we can give teaching or some kind of help to people. So the non-dual aspect or the prajna aspect of giving, of course, is without expectation. So it's easy to be generous. If you have a lot of money, you can be generous. If you have a lot of goods, you can be generous. If you have knowledge, you can be generous. But what makes it prajna, or what makes our generosity wisdom, is the non-dual aspect of giving.

[07:41]

Prajna itself means with the wisdom of non-duality or the wisdom of non-self-centeredness. This is prajna. It means without self, doing something without self. So we say, just to give and forget. And someone who is practicing Buddhism should be able to just continually be giving. So giving is one aspect. Giving up is another. So relinquishing is another aspect of dana. We relinquish everything for the sake of all beings.

[08:46]

We give up our self-centeredness. And we give ourself to the practice of helping all beings. So this is a feeling of dana. So, when you have a practice center, you ask the members or other people for money, you know, and that's considered dana. And dana is, we say, it gives people the opportunity to give. It sounds a little self-serving, so I don't usually like to use that. We give you the opportunity to give us some money so we can improve our center and support our priests.

[09:51]

That's the feeling in the East a lot. And people do understand it. But it's easy to pervert. Very easy. So I don't usually like to use that term. And it's good for you. for your parents to give, but believe me, it is. So, not withholding, you know, relinquishing ourself. Renunciation is a kind of giving, actually, a kind of donna. go in distributing the goods for the sake of distributing the goods without any motive, no ulterior motives, no expectations, and not expecting some return.

[11:05]

But, of course, when we give, there's always some return. But if you do it with a mind of expectation, then it's not real, Donna. Matter of fact, the more we unload, the more it actually fills our hands. And so we have to have that kind of trust. Often, you know, we hang on to stuff because we feel if we don't let it go, We don't have anything to feel secure with. So, risking our security, we let go, relinquish. And Suzuki Roshi, I remember, talked about money. He said, people think money is bad or dirty. Because money is not dirty.

[12:07]

The necessary thing with money is to put it into circulation. When money is circulating evenly throughout the society, then everybody feels harmonious and society works. So money is necessary for society to work. But when it gets all piled up in one corner, then the body suffers. So, to be able to put into circulation, to give and to receive. Receiving is also a necessary part of dana, because if everybody's only giving and nobody's receiving, then it doesn't go anywhere. So to be able to receive with one hand and give with the other and pass the goods around. I guess it's socialism.

[13:14]

If somebody will accuse me of socialism. I really have to laugh when people say, what you're saying in the government, what you're saying is socialism. Is that there's something wrong with that? But we immediately get defensive. social programs. That's just pork. Anyway. The second paramita is morality. Doing something according to our agreements with society. Acting in accordance with our agreements with society. Morality changes. Sometimes what's moral today is not acceptably moral tomorrow. Or what was acceptably moral yesterday is not acceptably moral today.

[14:17]

And morality does change. But we have to come to terms with it. And in this process, we keep creating stability for society. And it's very tough. There's a lot of tough issues. But right conduct is important for anyone who's practicing. So we have 16 presets, which include the three gems, Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. How to be Buddha. and how to promote the Dharma and to promote the Sangha, our friends.

[15:19]

And then there are the three pure precepts to avoid all evil, to promote good, and to not live just for your own benefit, but for the benefit of everyone, to actually allow your life to benefit people. And then there are the ten prohibitory precepts, or clear mind precepts, or specific precepts, not to kill, not to steal, not to use sexual misconduct, and not to lie, and not to indulge in intoxicants, and not to praise yourself at the expense of others, and not to put other people down and raise yourself up, and not to harbor ill will,

[16:34]

and so forth. So these are important guidelines for our practice. And this paramita also has to have as its foundation the non-duality of prajna, of wisdom, which means that precepts have a literal aspect. Don't kill. Don't steal. That's literal. But it's also dualistic. The other side is you can't actually kill life. You can't actually steal anything. This is absolute reality. So between the relative aspect And the absolute aspect lies our actual behavior.

[17:40]

So, presets are a big koan. Not so simple. You can have all the rules you want, but they don't necessarily help, unless we understand the reality of our life. So one aspect of the reality of our life is that things are just the way they are. And the other aspect is that as human beings, we need rules of behavior in order to create harmony for ourselves and society. And as much as possible, we try to bring the two together. and act in accordance with the understanding of both sides. And this is Bodhisattva's way of practicing precepts.

[18:44]

Every moment you have to decide what's the correct thing to do. You can't just bring out your list. It won't work. But the list is the guidelines. The precepts are the guidelines which we should study. and try to understand what is true behavior. Not so simple. And then the third one is usually called patience, shanti, but forbearance, which Forbearance is a kind of restraint, self-discipline, or before you act, to think first, or to take a moment, or when you see that you really want to do something, but it's inappropriate, you don't do it.

[19:57]

It keeps us from being impulsive. But patience means usually to wait for something. I have great patience to wait for something. But kshanti is more like allowing yourself to be present without anxiety about the future or the next moment. And we practice Great kshanti in zazen or in sasheen, if you start thinking ahead, you're lost. You can't do it. So it's the ability to just be where you are with the circumstances that are present, totally and completely, on this moment.

[21:02]

So it induces calmness of mind and equanimity. All these wonderful qualities. Settleness. Being able to settle on each moment. Totally and completely on that moment. And completely open and ready for the next moment. And being able to act without anxiety or without some kind of predisposition. So this moment's calmness determines the next moment's calmness. So

[22:11]

It means they're always able to take a deep breath, take a deep breath and settle into this moment's activity, whatever it is, and be ready for the next moment. So this is a very important aspect of Zen practice, Buddhist practice. Even though we have things to worry about, They don't dominate our mind. We always can find our freedom within the calmness of our mind, no matter what's happening. So this is like shanti, or patience, forbearance. It's also sometimes called long-suffering. I remember Kanagiri Roshi used to say, when you're a Zen student, you have to bear the unbearable.

[23:14]

And I remember my first few years of Sesshin, I agreed completely with him. And the fourth one is, I think in Roshi called zeal. That's a Jewish word. I like to call it enthusiastic effort. Zeal may be a little too much. If we get too zealous about our practice, it's easy to be critical. those who aren't, or go, be obsessive, actually. But in order to practice, you really have to have enthusiasm.

[24:23]

I think enthusiasm is just really fundamental. It's easy to get into a kind of everyday, because practice is everyday, and because it's very repetitive, it's easy for certain types of people to feel comfortable in a kind of repetitive, everyday same kind of activity over and over, and just do it in a kind of mechanical way. So the moment practice becomes mechanical, you should be careful. That's a sign that there's something lacking in your practice. So initially, when we start to practice, we do have enthusiasm. It's always great to watch the enthusiasm of a new practitioner who doesn't know anything about practice.

[25:30]

And every time you meet something new, it's interesting. And then you have to start investigating more deeply. So there's always something to investigate. There's always a way to, you know, if you continue to investigate, you will find, oh, there's a passage and then you go into that and pretty soon that opens up into a whole new area of enthusiasm. So this has been my experience in practice. that whenever I feel that things are either mechanical or dry, I'll find a little crack somewhere and go into that crack and it opens up into a whole other world. So in this practice, there are many ways to find

[26:36]

a whole new area of study or investigation and way to practice with yourself and with others. It's endless. If it wasn't endless, I think it would have died out. So these first four paramitas are concerned with conduct. And I might say that the aspect of prajna in this enthusiastic practice is that you just do the practice for its own sake. You don't do it to get ahead or to become famous. or to make money.

[27:40]

You just do it for its own sake. This is the wisdom aspect. And then the fifth one is Dhyana Paramita, which he calls settled, focused meditation. That's nice. I like that. But he doesn't call it mindfulness. It's often called mindfulness. He uses the term recollection. Recollection is distinct from mindfulness. Mindfulness is the ability to really look at what you're doing very carefully. And it also has the aspect of recollection in it. But recollection means to always know where you are.

[28:46]

And as you wander, to bring yourself back, bring the practice back to yourself over and over again. And it's just like in Zazen, as your mind wanders continuously, you continuously wake up and bring your attention back to what you're doing. And this is called the practice of recollection. which is very important. It means that you continually come back to where you are, continually returning to this, just this moment. And this is the practice of meditation. This is the practice of Zazen, to continually keep returning to this moment out of this place and time.

[29:51]

And it's called the practice of waking up moment after moment. Staying awake. Which is very hard to do. It's almost impossible to stay awake continuously. I mean, I don't mean this, but in our waking dreams, to actually realize the difference between being awake and being in the dream. And then, wisdom or prajna. As I said, prajna means non-duality. The understanding that comes from non-duality and from non-self-centeredness.

[31:02]

Non-self-centeredness and non-duality, same thing. When we say no self, it means no dual self. No dual self means that everything is myself, not this person as distinct from all the rest, even though there is this person. So the koan of this person is, what is this? The koan of this person is the same koan that we encounter in every aspect of our life. In dharma, in giving, in conduct, in aspiration.

[32:11]

So, also, to be able to see everything just as it really is. Suzuki Roshi used to talk about things as it is. As it is, do we ever really see things as it is? Or do we see things from our partial point of view? Mostly it's from our partial point of view. So when we give up partiality, then our mind flows back into one and becomes non-discriminating. So, all of these paramitas, what makes them really work is when they're done with a non-discriminating mind, a non-partial mind, and completely wholeheartedly.

[34:10]

without holding back. Sometimes you find people who have a very good mind, a very sharp way of discriminating mind, actually. And it's easy if we have a very sharp discriminating mind to keep ourselves from actually plunging into true practice, because it's so easy for us to talk ourselves out of it. Better, you know, to just jump into the hole, jump into the deep black hole of practice and scramble out. In the scrambling, of losing yourself, you find yourself.

[35:15]

But if you never jump in and always use your discriminating mind to figure a way out, So we always admire the person who lets go of everything and just plunges in and see what happens. Because when you lose everything or when you find yourself in unfamiliar circumstances and have to scramble and have to really work hard, then practice comes alive. And your life comes alive. So, you know, most of us are pretty smart, actually.

[36:21]

And we use our intelligence to protect ourselves. If you look at what goes on in the world and how it works, everyone's trying to protect themselves. Not everyone, but, you know, one way or another. Fear is self-protection. So, our discriminating mind is pretty good and works hard all the time, but We can't get anywhere. We can only go so far with it. At some point we just have to give up and plunge into the unknown and find our way in the dark. But these are the first six paramitas.

[37:39]

Do you have any questions? Yes? You said stealing wasn't really stealing. I couldn't quite hear you. Stealing doesn't count because stealing doesn't necessarily mean stealing. Oh, stealing? When I was talking about the precepts? Yes. Oh, yeah. Right. You see, everything already belongs to us. So there's various aspects of stealing, right? One is, this, you know, this is mine. And you can't have it. And if you take it, that's stealing. But on the other hand, it really doesn't belong to me. And Everything belongs to everybody, frankly speaking. But if you come over and try to take something that I think is mine, it's stealing.

[38:47]

So stealing is strictly in the human realm. It's something that we don't like to... It's a social problem. It's not a problem in the realm of ultimate reality. In the realm of ultimate reality, everything disappears. Everything comes into being and disappears. Nothing belongs to anybody. So, in that sense, there's nothing that can be stolen. And, you know, like the example of Ryokan, who is this a very eccentric Japanese priest, poet. And someone came into his room, you know, and stole something from him. And he said, gosh, you know, if only, if only I'd been here, I would have given him some more.

[39:51]

So a lot of it has to do with attitude also. Yes. Susanna? What is sexual misconduct? Ho, ho. Well, I think... I think this is the most difficult thing to talk about. Yeah. Well, in Buddhism, I think you have to start from the point of view of a monk's practice and the point of view of a lay person's practice. So from the point of view of a monk's practice, traditionally, in order to become a monk, the monks would give up all sexual activity.

[40:54]

That was the criterion for becoming a monk, to give up all sexual activity. So you don't have to be concerned with that anymore. You don't have to be preoccupied with it, even though when you give it up, you can easily be preoccupied with it. You know, of course. But also, it's possible not to be preoccupied with it. It's possible to give it up and not be preoccupied with it. And that's the, you know. And so, you know, in the course of thousands of years, all kinds of aspects of that have been problems. So that's one problem. But it's also not meant to be a problem. It's meant to be a way of sublimating energy, sublimating sexual energy for spiritual energy or whatever. So that's one side. The other side was the lay person's practice.

[41:58]

And lay people should be faithful in relationships. So when people become married, they should be faithful in relationships. That's basic to any society. There are deviations, but basically all societies are like this. And for most societies, you don't have sex before you're married. America is very different than most other societies, I must say, because traditionally, with some exceptions, that's the way it's always been in most societies. So it makes it difficult, you know, because when you're growing up you want sex, you know, and there's nothing you can do about it. So it's a very hard, very hard thing.

[43:02]

And so, but this is a hard practice. Sex is a hard practice. And in order to know how to deal with it, everyone's different, you know. Everyone has different needs. Even though everybody has the same needs, everyone has different needs. They're completely different. And how to work that out has to be done, I think, with each... Everyone has to work it out for themselves. And we go in many different directions in order to find satisfactions. So, I don't think you can put judgment on it. You know? Whatever... To me, whatever people work out, in their sexual lives is what they work out. And I can't, I really have a hard time putting any judgment on it because it's a very difficult thing to deal with, you know, and you go various ways depending on the difficulties you have or the ease you have.

[44:12]

So, although there are guidelines for sexual conduct, They're not rules. The guideline is to help you find what works for people. Some people can easily be celibate. Some people need to be promiscuous for some reason or another. I don't think it'll ever be solved as to what everybody should do. But there are the guidelines, you know, in order to keep society stable, there are these guidelines. Yeah. How would you discuss prostitution in relationship to that society and youth prisoners?

[45:19]

Prosecution? Prostitution. Oh, prostitution. Well, prostitution, is selling yourself, or renting yourself, actually. There can be love there, but it's not the ideal of what we would like people to do. But it's an outlet for certain people. It's a certain kind of outlet for people. And the reason it exists is because there's a need for it. So this need creates this activity. So prostitution is actually, it looks like the women's thing, but it's actually the men's thing. Because men create prostitutes.

[46:22]

Unless it goes the other way around. That's not so common. But it is there too. There are male prostitutes. So, you know, you can judge it, but actually things are the way they are because people have their needs. You know? So it's equal on both sides, actually. Difficult. We like everyone. So we start from the point of view of virtues. These are the virtues. This is the way to live a virtuous life. That's very ideal. And then from that virtuous ideal, there are all these deviations. And that's just life.

[47:26]

Hard to judge, but we still make some effort to work toward that ideal without making judgments. We really get into being judgmental about deviations. And that way it makes it more difficult to actually make things move. Andrea? Well, I was curious if you can recall some way that you observed Suzuki Moshi having fears or being self-protective. And I was wondering also, like, why What would life be like if we didn't have this urge to self-protect, or what is it we're protecting ourselves from? What are we protecting ourselves from? Exactly. What is that out there? Right.

[48:28]

What are we protecting ourselves from? We do need a certain amount of protection, you know. I mean, we live in houses that protect us from the weather, you know. And then there's people prowling around, but how do you deal with that? I think that first of all, we have to, when you get to the point where you have indiscriminate love, another unconditioned love, you know, when you can just not hate people and not be suspicious you open up. And when you open up, you don't have basic fears. So, I think the more open we can allow ourselves to be by not discriminating and not judging and not

[49:46]

having anything to possess, when you don't have anything to possess, your fears go away, basically. Well, why do you want our fears to go away? Oh, well, if you don't want them to go away, no problem. As long as you like it, it's okay. And we do. Listen, we do. There's a certain kind of person that loves anxiety. And I won't say who that person is, because... Or who those people are, because people say I'm discriminating. But there's a whole class of people who love anxiety. And unless they have that anxiety in their life, they don't feel like they're alive.

[50:47]

So, you know, you can't really cure everything. It's impossible to cure everything. So when I, you know, if you want, if you don't want to have these kinds of fears, then you do this kind of thing. But if you want to have, you know, anxiety and excitement and, you know, this is the kind of excitement of anxiety and then the anxiety builds up and then it You know, something satisfies it. It's a lot like sex, you know. Something satisfies it, and then you feel okay, and then you look around for something else because you need another anxiety to make you alive, you know, and then you have all these things that you think about during that time. Gives you some purpose in life, but you have to, if you, you can have a purpose in life without having anxiety. You know, you can see when people first sit Zazen, they say, well, there's nothing to do.

[51:56]

How can we stand this? So that's why things go the way they go. You know, the world is that way because And what interests one person doesn't interest another. And some people need violence in order to keep interested. And some people need a lot of possessions in order to keep interested, you know, to keep their interest in life up. You have to have a lot of possessions, you have to have money, you have to have this and you have to have that. And not very many people who can feel a satisfied life without a lot of stuff and without a lot of anxiety. Not very many people can do that, actually. One thing that strikes me in what you're saying is the challenge of the middle between all these... Yeah, the challenge of the middle way.

[53:03]

That's right. Because when you talk about all the needs, I felt like you could slide easily into self-justification for anything I want to do and the hedonism that seems to be have been dominant for the past 30 or 40 years. So it comes down to the stillness within activity and the activity within stillness.

[54:08]

And that's where our goal on it always is, moment to moment. Just this one. What? Just this one. Just, yes. Yes.

[54:46]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ