Nomon Tim gives a Dharma Talk on the Paramitas at Sansui-ji Mountains and Waters Temple, Red Cedar Zen Community's new home.
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Our tradition teaches that there are 6 core practices for bodhisattvas. These are the practices to both help bodhisattvas develop and towards Buddhahood and also the main ways they help beings. These are the famous Paramitas. I’ve been studying these anew and being reminded of their power and importance for us. If you look at that way, it’s clear that this temple is built on the Paramitas.
Tonight I want to focus on 4 of them, but it’s the usual thing with a set of practices where actually every one of the 6 is present in every other one.
To meet them if they’re new or review them if they are old friends, here’s the list:
1. Generosity - Dana Paramita
2. Ethics - Sila Paramita
3. Patience - Kshanti Paramita
4. Energy - Virya Paramita
5. Concentration - Dhyana Paramita
6. Wisdom - Prajna Paramita
There is a ton to explore with these 6 practices and my talk tonight is just a quick brush through them with the temple project in mind. I actually have an idea we might do an in depth study of these 6 next year. Really take our time with them.
The first one is pretty easy to relate to here. Generosity. Oh my goodness. This place arises from an astounding flood of generosity. Our generous donors. The almost unimaginable number of volunteer hours involved starting with the campaign committee in 2021 and continuing through the people who shared their morning painting the brown trim all around us. The generosity of many professionals and officials, who sure were on salary, but I can come up with a long list of examples of going above and beyond with so many.
The practice is not just called “generosity” though - Dana in Sanskrit - it’s called Dana Paramita. So what’s the Paramita bit. A literal translation might be “perfect” - perfect generosity. But that’s bad juju for perfectionists. A more useful translation might be “going beyond” - generosity that goes beyond generosity. Or goes deeper. Deep generosity. Wise generosity.
Conventional generosity has me over here with more resources than you over there so I give you some. Not a bad thing at all. Kind. But there’s also in there a division. A separation. Me and you. And that separation can be the fuel for all kinds of trouble can’t it? For judgements and projections of all kinds. Like if the giver doesn’t feel properly thanked we know that separation has done a little damage to the generosity. It’s okay, it’s human enough, but Buddhism is so incredibly aspirational. We can go beyond limited ways: to give fully, Dana paramita, is giving with no thought of separation. I’m giving to give, you’re receiving to receive, the gift is a flow of beautiful energy that weaves us together and helps to heal the separation that never was there in the first place.
Dana Paramita is generosity in Buddha’s world of deep harmony and non-separation. This practice encourages us to heal from the delusion of separation, the trauma of separation is not too strong as it’s a deep root of suffering. We give not just because there’s a need but to bridge the gaps between us and as we cross that bridge and look down we realize there was no separation there to start with.
Generosity as an expression of inter being, or interconnection. Dana paramita is inherently humble too, we recognize the fast movements of karma that led to the current situation of inequality where one has more than the other and we’re not fooled into thinking that’s just the way it goes, or that’s justified by my hard work or something like that. We see ourselves in the mandala of change and energy, of suffering and liberation, and we realize giving as a force for good so we give and we let go. We don’t expect bennies back and we’re as grateful to give as the receiver is grateful to receive. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing.
And us being us it gets tangled up sometimes too. And there’s pain. I didn’t want my gift to be used that way. I don’t like how that interaction went. I don’t feel heard or seen or appreciated. And then we’re so grateful for our shared commitment as once we do our work to get unstuck from the suffering we see that here’s the real work of generosity. Of healing and connection.
The second practice that’s so clearly in the structure of this building and everything that happened to make it so, and everything that will happen in here as we go along is the practice of patience. Kshanti Paramita.
As with Dana Paramita, the everyday meaning of patience is perfectly apt. It took a TON of patience pulling this off. We just passed the 3rd anniversary of buying this building and we’re just now at last able to practice here. And it’s still not QUITE done. I was pretty open about how I’ve found good old patience hard in these last few months. I’m so grateful we’re here and that impatient part of me is very much “finally! I wanted to be sitting here together months ago!”
The deep patience this points to is not just learning how to wait until things are the way you want them. This deeper patience invites us to look carefully at the causes and conditions within us that generate the experience we call impatience. Exasperation, grumpiness, the various should’s that come up about how it should have gone or how so and so should have done this or that.
Deep patience is deeply aligned with the 4 noble truths. It encourages us to do our own work about suffering and the causes of suffering. The taproot of which does always seem to be a desire for things to be other than the way they are.
And deep patience invites us to notice if we’re offloading that work on someone else: they should have been different so I wouldn’t have this suffering.
And, that said, it all gets complicated fast with a bunch of humans. Of course someone else could have made a mistake or broken an agreement about how we’re doing things here. And then we’re into right speech and patience as we try to figure out how/if/when to bring that up.
The area that I find trick in sangha life is right in these little messes. How much we emphasize the truth of doing your own work, releasing from preferences, deeply accepting how it went in a given situation. And how much do we emphasize interpersonal work or organizational change. We would definitely like to have fewer mess ups and issues so maybe we need new guidelines for how a committee works or a sangha wide agreement about a who does what.
But on the other hand if it’s only about repair or prevention and trying to avoid trouble there are a few big issues with that I think. One is the lost opportunity for transformational practice. Sometimes improving the system also has an element of trying to avoid the difficult experiences that happen that we can learn from. A kind of organizational spiritual bypassing.
And also we have to be careful about our expectations. That there are better ways to organize things, for sure, and we always have a lot of work to do.
And that there is absolutely no possible future where there’s a perfect organization with all things gracefully in place where everyone hums along in future harmony thanks to the brilliance of our organizational savvy.
A huge middle way kind of thing, but I think what I want to say and I’m saying this to myself too: do your work first. Always do your work first. If you’re impatient and upset with someone don’t hit send. Wait. Breathe. Do some journaling. Come to dokusan - come to dokusan with the other teacher if that’s what works. Let the temperature cool down before you try to discern is this a say something, work it out, maybe a difficult conversation situation; or if it’s a let it be, practice with your preferences or aversion kind of situation. Maybe sometimes it’s both.
I don’t know how many decisions we made in remodeling and setting up this temple. Hundreds at least. Not all of them are going to be the best decisions. Not all of them are going to please everyone. Maybe some of them where one person or a small committee made a decision it would have been wise and generous to ask for more input, that’s likely and I’m sorry about times that didn’t happen.
And it’s a complex thing with a complex interwoven timeline this construction project business. Sometimes someone just needs to make the call so it can all keep moving.
So patience, when we look outwards, seems like it’s being patient with something out there being delayed or not how we wanted. But the deep patience is to go inside and feel what we’re feeling, and practice discernment: where do I go with this? And is it really about the the thing or is about something else and the thing is a trigger?
Another important paramita here is the paramita of energy! Virya paramita. Norman’s book on the precepts calls it “enthusiastic energy” I think. Reb Anderson’s goes with “heroic effort.” It took a lot of drive and persistence from a LOT of people for this to exist. We had to dig deep sometimes and we’re still going. I think to get the place in the shape we’d like it to be we need to add yet another work party on Saturday morning. Then go take a break, get our potluck items together, and come back so that’ll also be a change in how it’s shown on the website. So many shifts and changes lately, it’s true.
A lot of what sustains the energy is a sense of greater purpose. We aren’t creating this temple just for ourselves, or just for the current group of regulars which is often what we call the “sangha” - we’re creating this temple for everyone. For the broader Whatcom County community. To strengthen the tapestry of Zen centers in America - how there’s one in Bellingham! And this is the part that can really energize us when we remember to take the long view: we created this temple for the people who come after us. Maybe there will be stories about us lingering for a while after we’re gone. For Berkeley Zen Center’s 50th anniversary they made a history book with lots of pictures in it. Maybe we’ll do that and future Zen students at Sansui-ji can leaf through it and read about us.
But long after that book has been misplaced somewhere we hope this temple will continue offering a place of practice, a place of peace, a place for transformation.
Energy works best when we aren’t totally distracted and tangled up of course. The next Paramita practice I’m thinking about is Concentration. This one’s interesting. The word used Dhyana Paramita is actually where the term “Chan” or “Zen” comes from, so there’s a strong connection to meditation with this paramita.
But it’s describing not a kind of narrow task-based kind of concentration but a stable mind. When the mind is steady we start to learn that it’s possible to have a broad open stable attention as well as a narrow focused attention. The concentration of Dhyana Paramita is steady, stable, balanced.
Maybe the best title for this paramita is Steady Concentration to stabilize the mind and be present. We sure needed that kind of mind. To stay steady during meeting after meeting. As a kind of balancer when there was disagreement and impatience arose. To even us out and allow us to be more receptive to new ideas.
And the direct connection to the term “Zen” is such a clear reminder that we are straight up full on training in steady concentration when we sit in meditation - when we sit zazen.
The other two paramitas are kind of foundational to all of these.
The second paramita is Sila Paramita - ethical living practice - that’s our precepts. We consider if we’re nurturing the life of the project, if we’re being honest and open, if we’re being fully respectful of everyone and everything. If we’re keeping it all oriented around the 3 treasures.
And the sixth paramita is Prajna Paramita - a very familiar term around here - showed up a couple of times in our chanting just now. This is wisdom.
The wisdom of a deep understanding of the flow of reality. The wisdom that’s sensing the open interpenetrated nature of everything. Prajna encourages us to explore each of the paramitas at it’s depth.
