It's a real special pleasure to have Norm Fisher sitting sashimi with us. I was thinking this morning about how this Just as in a long line of Sashimis sat here at the Berkley Zen Center for quite a long time and Norman should well understand knows many of us and was doing this activity here for years and years and now is at Green Gulch So it's really nice to have you back. I'm fine.

[02:01]

How are you? I'm alright. I have to give a lecture now. Morning. I really enjoy going to Zen lectures a lot. They're pastimes. Today when I came in, I was all feeling the way I usually do, going to a Zen talk, but then I came in and I realized that Presumably, I would have to give the talk, which is not my usual job. So, I think it'll be just as enjoyable, but I don't have a system of how to plan a talk or how to give one. But my theory is that You get the talk.

[03:02]

You'll tell me something or I'll feel something. And I'll be able to say something. So it feels just about the same, giving the talk or listening to it. So as Pat mentioned, I live at Green Gulch Farm over in Sausalito. And my job over there is Eno. which I think is roughly the same job that you do here, in charge of ceremonies and keeping the Zen Do together. And I also have the additional job of guest student manager. So I'm pretty busy over there, cleaning the Zen Do Tomorrow is Buddha's birthday, to figure out what we're going to do now that it looks like it's going to be wet.

[04:06]

Get everything nicely planned for outdoor ceremony. Mel asked me to talk a little bit this morning about the six paramitas. because he said that this is the beginning of the study period for you and that the subject matter of the study period would be the six paramitas. So maybe this is a brief introduction to a topic that you'll be covering for some time now. And the six paramitas are a basic bodhisattva practice. Basically that's what we're doing in Zen. practicing the six paramitas, which are somewhat different from the older schools, which had very complicated systems of following the path, stages, and so forth.

[05:14]

But in the Mahayana, it was simplified to be just the six paramitas. And I think there was a lot of influence from lay people to produce this change. In the old path, mostly it was teaching for monks and it had the details of monk's life and monk's practice quite a deal included. So the stress in the Mahayana on giving and morality, the first two paramitas, came in because there were so many laymen at that point practicing. So I think it's important here, particularly, almost everybody I believe works somewhere else besides right here in Zen Center, to contemplate the six paramitas and actually make them your own practice in your own life very closely.

[06:20]

So in a talk that's pretty short, like this morning's is, maybe I can almost just barely list the six paramitas. That's about all I can do. And maybe try to say something about the first one. Because actually you could give one week's talks on each paramita pretty easily and all the implications of them. So, first one is in Sanskrit, dana, which means giving or charity. And second paramita is shila, which means discipline or morality. Third is kshanti, which means patience. Fourth is virya, meaning vigor or energy. And fifth is jhana, which means meditation.

[07:24]

And sixth is the most famous one, Prajna, which means wisdom. So, you know, these are just nice words, actually, if you first hear about them or even think about them for a long time. It's not too different from ordinary understanding of whatever your background may be, your Western philosophy or religion. pretty much talks about those things too. So it's kind of hard to get a toe in about what they are specifically in our practice. And I think you spend a long time sort of glancing at them or thinking about them before they actually come into focus in your life. Scholastically, this list of parmitas was scrutinized from various points of view.

[08:32]

The most popular point of view was to say that wisdom was the turning point. Wisdom was the motor that drove all the other five Paramitas. So that until you developed Prajnaparamita, you didn't really understand the other five. And Prajnaparamita was the supreme entrance into the Paramitas. And incidentally, paramita, the word paramita means, some people trace the derivation back to some Sanskrit words that suggest it means gone across to the other shore. But then other people say, no, no, that's completely wrong. There are many fanciful etymologies in Buddhism, and I myself don't know, I don't have any way of knowing which is the right one. Some people say, oh no, that's nonsense, and other people say, No, this is the right one. So, it's hard to know, and sometimes the right one may be the wrong one, if you know what I mean.

[09:34]

One that maybe was used for 500 years, just somebody made it up out of the blue. Maybe it's wrong etymologically, but since it's been used as a teaching vehicle for a long time, it may actually be the right one. So I always thought it was pretty good, you know. For instance, wisdom. Gone to the other shore of wisdom. Dropping wisdom. some other kind of wisdom beyond wisdom, or giving, dropping giving, some other kind of giving beyond giving. I always thought that was a pretty good explanation of the Paramitas. But some etymologists say, no, no, that's not it. So they say, Paramita just means the highest or the perfection of. So that's almost the same thing, perfecting, giving. So that seems, very curious idea. You give something, and you give it, and that's that. How can you perfect giving?

[10:36]

How can you perfect patience? Well, I suppose you can work on your patience, increase it a little bit more. But to actually perfect it, what does that mean? So, another way, another aspect of looking at the Paramitas is taking one, pardon me, and applying it to all the others. For instance, the patience of wisdom, or the patience of giving, the patience of meditation, or you take energy, the energy of giving. So if you give, you practice giving, you say, I'm going to practice the patience of giving, and give three days only patiently giving. Then you say, now I'm going to practice energetic giving, three days, giving with energy, that's a different way of giving. So there's infinite, I guess maybe six times six, something like that, thirty-six or a hundred and fifty million ways of rearranging the paramedias.

[11:43]

And you use them. I'm suggesting that you actually practice them. You actually say, now I'm going to practice giving energetically. I'm going to practice wisdom by way of meditation, a wisdom by way of giving, and so forth. So that this kind of... And, you know, the Indian mentality is so Baroque that these were all listed and codified and vast, and you can memorize them, all the different possibilities, and recite them. If you had nothing else to do, you know, we all have many other things to do, so we don't have to memorize all those big lists, but that was done that way, and it was very interesting. Anyway, various ways of looking at this teaching were stressed. But in thinking a little bit about coming over here, my feeling for this place, and also I think now my feeling for what I'm doing and what we're doing, practicing together now, I feel like giving is the most important paramita and is actually the entrance to the paramitas.

[12:56]

done a paramita. And maybe you could look at the list of paramitas from one to six and say, well, each one is more, the first one is the most fundamental, the next one, once you can develop the first one, then you can, if you know how to give, then maybe you can begin to penetrate into discipline, how to manage your consciousness moment after moment, once you know how to give. If you can begin to work on managing your consciousness moment after moment, then maybe you can work on being patient with yourself and with other people. And if you can open that up, maybe you can stop being lazy and have more energy to practice the previous Paramitas and all the next ones. And then when you do that, maybe you can actually begin to do zazen. Maybe all this time we've been sort of fooling around. Maybe you can actually sit one minute, a real zazen.

[14:00]

And then, when you do that, I think then wisdom spontaneously appears. So you could look at the list of paramitas that way, that each one, like blocks, you know, builds the next one. Or each one, giving, includes each one. Maybe they're all just reduced to giving. Maybe the only paramita actually is giving, and the only practice is giving. So, I don't know if you read Lotus Sutra here in service, but at Green Gulch we do. And we have a curious way of reading it. We open up the book, and we all start reading at the same time, different, wherever, just open it up at random, and you just start reading wherever it happens to be. So everybody's reading a different part at the same time. It's a kind of sweet cacophony. So the other day I was reading it, and it talks about bodhisattva practice.

[15:07]

It talks about giving, and it says, how do you give? Because after all, you don't know how to give. I don't know how to give. It's a mystery. It seems simple, but if you sit zazen, clarify your mind a little bit, you can see that it's really a big problem. Because you notice that when you give something, you have a very, you have ulterior motives, no matter how subtle they may be, you see them. And you can't be satisfied anymore once you penetrate zazen with this kind of phony, impure giving that you may have been practicing before. So you have to say, now what is this giving? How can I actually give something to someone? So the Lotus Sutra gives the answer to that question, and it says Shariputra stands up. Shariputra in the Lotus Sutra is the representative of old-fashioned practice. He was the master of all the complicated states of mind and different meditation practices of the old schools.

[16:14]

So in the Diamond Sutra, he's a bit of a buffoon. He's always saying, gee, Buddha, I did all these practices, but I actually don't know what you're talking about here, could you please explain it to me?" So he's always asking a question, a very pure question, like, how should a Bodhisattva give a gift? And the Buddha says, a Bodhisattva should give a gift unsupported by sights, sounds, smells, touchables or mind objects, unsupported by anything, without even the notion of a sign. That's how the Bodhisattva should give a gift. So now I give you that. And if you pick that up, probably you feel how I do, which is, what does that mean exactly? What is he talking about and how do you do that? Can't be done.

[17:15]

Is it double talk? First time someone reads the Lotus Sutra, I think they think it's double talk. Doesn't make too much sense. So, the way I say would be, maybe a translation of that statement in the Diamond Sutra, would be, if you give a gift and you think, now I'm giving a gift, that's called theft. But if you give a gift with no thought of the giver or the gift, or the recipient, that's called true giving. If you give a gift and you think, now I'm giving you a gift, that's called theft.

[18:19]

But if you give a gift with no thought of the gift or the giver, or the recipient, that's true giving. So this is not philosophy, this is actual practice of doing something, and it's an actual state of mind. So when I say that, you'll either understand that right away or you won't. And if you don't, there's no way that you can understand until you do. So what is it?

[19:24]

How do you work with it? Maybe you should give up immediately. But don't give up. I don't think so. Give up. Because One thing I discovered, I think, is that these six paramitas, I don't think that they're something you can do right away. And I don't think you can actually work out a way of practicing them

[20:27]

I think they arise spontaneously in your practice. Suddenly they appear. And I don't mean that... When you think of the paramitas, you shouldn't think of them mechanistically, as though there were six different things that were there. Actually, in a moment of consciousness, all the paramitas are present. So maybe zazen is like excavation. There are maybe these whatever columns, let's say there are columns, six columns in a ruined temple covered with lots of vines and old shards, animal carcasses. And someone says to you, there are the six parameters. You say, I see nothing. I see only flat. place.

[21:30]

No, no, the six parameters are right there. You're looking right at them. They're right there, but you can't see them. And no matter what you do, you won't see them. And even when you start digging, this is the way you say, okay, I'm practicing the six parameters, I'm digging, but you still don't see them. They're still not there. It's just a bunch of debris. And maybe that's the first part of first stage or first years of practicing is all the debris. There's more and more debris. in your life becomes apparent to you. Then at some point you uncover the six paramitas, and there they are. And you can notice, well, there it is. Maybe I haven't actually found a way of making this practice totally conscious. in my life all the time, but it's there. I see that it's actually, it's not just something I read in a book or something that I'm told, but there it is, actual giving is there. There is patience, possibility of patience.

[22:35]

So I think, to me, rather than thinking of the six paramitas as practice, I think of it as total goal, of practice. Because if you practice for a long time, I think more than getting anything out of it, you lose a lot of things, untangle a lot, untie a lot of knots. But then what? I mean, that's not so wonderful, actually. It's rather boring. All the knots are quite interesting. Then what? six paramitas come into view and you have something to look at, something to think about, something to work with. And most fundamental paramita is giving. So I thought of different, maybe I could think of four anyway, different ways of giving.

[23:48]

The most obvious one, of course, is giving some physical thing, some material thing. And I was once told that in Tibetan schools, people who have trouble with giving are given the practice of taking some object and giving it, putting it in their right hand and giving it to their left hand. Like that. Simple, right? And then just repeating that a whole lot until they got used to the idea that they could give something from the right hand to the left hand. Then, if they could master that, they could give it to their teacher and practice doing that, give the gift to their teacher. And if they could get with that, then they could give it to somebody else, you know, with actual feeling of going out to someone or something and giving. And it's a state of mind, you know, to be able to give something and actually open up your consciousness and go out toward something or someone is a skillful practice to be developed.

[25:00]

So you begin simply just giving something, perhaps mechanically, and then finally you can actually free yourself in the act of giving. So that's a material, some material thing. Then another kind of giving would be emotional or psychological giving, supporting someone. So, you may not give anything at all, but you might give kind words or talk to someone, give some emotional support. And this is a very important kind of giving also. And again, the same thing applies. One can be quite skillful in knowing what to say or knowing the ins and outs problems people get into, and you can say, well, you feel that way, it's probably because so-and-so, and so if you do this and that, you'll feel better, and that will help a person.

[26:02]

But that's not the perfection of giving emotionally. The perfection of giving emotionally would be to actually look at your mind and be able to, as though your body were a gate, be able to open the gate of your body and let yourself come out to the person. And that's a little different. even though you may actually use the same words to comfort a person, it's different. So that's a second kind of giving. And a third kind of giving that you can practice is giving your mere presence. Mere presence. And for a practicing person, working with Zazen, This is a very fundamental kind of giving because you may not be engaging yourself with anyone. For instance, you may be in a crowd or at a party and no one's asking you for psychological advice and you're not giving any presence to anybody, but by your presence at the event, that in itself is a gift because you're constantly purifying, working on your presence there, open to everything and everyone.

[27:18]

physically opening the gate of your body and going out, so that you're actually saving all sentient beings by your presence. And then naturally, other things, if you give somebody a gift, emotional or material gift, it's actually a detail. because this kind of, just by your presence, this kind of emotional, excuse me, this kind of consciousness is most fundamental. And so much of Zen literature, koans, are talking about, please notice that there is such a thing. Well, usually we don't notice that there is such a thing. Please notice that there is such a thing. And now try to develop it. Bring it into view and try to develop it. And then the last kind of giving that I thought of was, Dogen Zenji talks about giving the flowers on the mountainside.

[28:27]

So the next most profound, the most profound kind of giving is not giving that isn't even involving yourself, but involving far away mountain, Mount Everest, you know. Snow on Mount Everest. In other words, developing your body and mind to the point where leaving that snow alone on Mount Everest is your act, your deepest act. So then, it's no longer a question of going out to anybody, but just a question of leaving everything alone, including yourself, totally just zero, not bothering anything. Then you give with the whole world. And after you die, you're giving still. Before you're born, you're giving. And I think in the deep stillness of Sashin, 100-year Sashin, 1000-year Sashin, we can encounter that kind of deepest level of giving in which all the teachings of Buddhism are included.

[29:43]

than are just the details, just because people seem to talk so that details are given. And so it's a kind of a funny situation, I think, because most of us come to practice because we want to be given a gift. We feel like we need some kind of gift because times are hard and life is rough. So we want to deepen our life and maybe straighten it out and maybe understand our death. So we begin sitting zazen.

[30:46]

But we're tricked because if we start sitting zazen and we actually penetrate into zazen, we find out that we have to give. We have to turn it around and actually serve and dedicate ourselves to saving all sentient beings. whether or not we improve or whether or not we get what we wanted in the first place becomes a detail, which you may not even notice. Oh yeah, well, I had this problem and I don't have it anymore, but so what? I'm practicing six parameters and I don't see any beginning to it. I forget how I got here and I can't remember where I'm going next. If you give a gift, and you think, now I'm giving you a gift, call that theft.

[32:30]

But if you can give a gift without thinking, or seeing any gift, any giver or any recipient, that's actual giving. And giving, as I'm trying to suggest, is a yogic practice, esoteric practice. esoteric means, not available to us by ordinary means, but only available by zazen, by yogic practice, to uncover what giving is. And in Sashin, we have the opportunity of a very brief

[33:48]

time in our life to practice giving. In zazen we practice giving. Zazen is actually dana paramita because I think you all realize that when you have an idea I am sitting zazen. You might have an idea that it hurts to sit zazen or that it's difficult or unpleasant or boring or wonderful. But if you don't think that there's a person sitting zazen there, if you just give that person away, give away a pain, give away thinking, Give away breathing.

[34:52]

Give away heartbeat. Give away digestive tract. Give away hearing, seeing, smelling. Give away Zen practice. Then it's a very relaxing sitting machine and it goes by in one thirty second of a second. Last one thirty second of a second. And if you can just... I'm not talking about doing that, you know?

[36:16]

I don't mean to do that, because that's too coarse an idea. That's a misunderstanding. What I mean is, decide to do that. Make a resolution to do. And I'm not talking about anything, you know. I'm not talking about something specific. But I think you know what I mean. Some kind of true giving. Make a resolution to do that. And then see what your zazen is like. And see if doing that doesn't give you a changed feeling about other people and see if some people having that changed feeling about each other doesn't have a profound effect on the whole world.

[37:29]

We didn't plan it this way, but that's how it works out. so you Probably none of us ever suspected that we'd be sitting... When we were small children, you know, we probably never suspected that we'd be sitting so chained today.

[40:04]

Thank you very much for inviting me over. It's nice to come over here always. If I said any unfortunately misleading things that would tend to make your practice more difficult or wrong, please forget them. Don't tell Mel. Erase the tape. Maybe there's a magnetic charge in the air or something. Take out those parts. Anyway, the rain should wash it away. Thank you.

[40:59]

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