I've always thought that the chant to start the dharma talk is a little daunting with an unsurpassed penetrating perfect dharma. Maybe a little bit too much to ask so good morning. As has been mentioned by many people before Buddhism is a practice with a lot of lists. And I've always thought that was odd because sort of the foundational principles of Buddhism are the ideas of non-self and emptiness or the concepts that everything is interconnected without a permanent self. That we're neither separate now nor will our concept of unchanging self last forever or even until the next moment. And lists on the other hand by their very nature divide things into separate categories and seem to give them a self or codify them into something permanent. And oddly, when you start looking into the lists in Buddhism, they you realize that they often seem to circle back and and hit another topic on another list. And that makes me wonder why they weren't on that list in the first place. And so that's you know we've been studying the paramitas and that's another list and most sources mention that they aren't separate and that they're empty and infinitely interrelated. Usually they do it after they've separated them into into six separate categories and covered them each separately. And I'd like to ruminate on the fact that they're all interconnected today rather than just one specific paramita. And I'll use examples that work for me, but perhaps over the next few days as you're going through and looking at the paramitas in your practice, contemplate how they interconnect for you. I also wanted to reiterate something that Kanho Chris said in her talk a couple of weeks ago. I have a real problem with the translation of the word paramita to perfection. Because I think that makes it really hard and in a couple of the sources that I have on the on this both in the heart of the Buddhist teaching which is a book by Thich Nhat Hanh he points out that the Chinese character for paramita actually means crossing to the other shore which is a famous Buddhist metaphor for attaining enlightenment or nirvana. And Norman Fisher in his book The World Could Be Otherwise breaks it down as param meaning the other side and ita meaning gone. So gone to the other side. And I like this concept better because it redefines paramita practice as a process rather than a goal of being perfect. And it's the process of crossing from the shore of suffering, anger, and depression to the shore of peace, non-fear, and liberation. So, I just I find it it's interesting how frequently translation is something we run into in a practice that has gone through so many different countries to get to where we are. I sometimes think of the way that we I respond to the paramitas. It's sort of like those popup psychological quizzes you get on Instagram where you take a quiz and they give you a bar graph or a pie chart that tells you what your personality type is supposed to be. And I sort of when when we do separate them, I have a different level of acceptance and difficulty for each of the parameters. And just using Dana paramita as the first example, I have a real problem with this one because I'm a miser. My parents were part of the silent generation, which is the generation that came before the greatest generation. And their formative years were during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
And that experience literally informed their behavior for their entire life. And consequently, that imprinted on mine. When we when my father passed and we moved my mother from the house where I grew up into a smaller condominium, we were, you know, helped her pack up her stuff and in a drawer in the kitchen, there was every single rubber band. Yeah. every single rubber band that had had come on every issue of the Seattle Post intelligence or newspaper for 30 years. And my mother was just incapable of throwing anything away that might be useful later that she would have to buy. And I should note that this happened well before she started to suffer from dementia. So this wasn't some weird thing that happened as her brain was going. And I have to remind myself to be generous. And in order to do so, I actually set a budget every year for charitable giving. And that's not to limit me. It's to make me give that much. I have to reach the budget. Because otherwise I absolutely wouldn't do it. And that in its nature is sila paramita. Okay. it that is the precepts I make a rule that I must follow the precept that the disciple of Buddha is generous and it makes it easier for me to live dana paramita I start to remind myself to tip more there was there's no way on on this green earth that my parents would tip for counter service and you know I it's a daily thing that I have to remind myself but using the the being upright and following the precepts paramita helps me to be more generous maybe in a rigid way but it works. Now Talus last week pointed out that dana paramita isn't just a money thing. It it also is a generosity of heart and in the way that we see and interpret the actions of other people. But I find that if you are upright uptight with your money, you're frequently very uptight with your interpretations of other people's intentions. They sort of go together. I mean, you know, the the thought that I can't give money to that homeless guy because he's only use it for drugs and alcohol. Okay, I'm being neither generous with my money or with my interpretations of that man's intentions. So the two go hand in hand. Now that I'm on sila paramita, there's another problem. One of my lifeline partners has been OCD and I keep lists of everything. I have a daily checklist on my phone that I try to finish every day with little check boxes that when you touch it, it makes a check mark. And if I and one of one of those boxes is a box that's labeled sit. So I mean I wouldn't meditate daily if it didn't mean checking the box off my list. so So for me sila paramita plays into my natural rule-bound personality disorder and doing so leads to competition with others and judgmental behavior about others not living up to the rules as well as I do or as well as I think that they should. And in this one I need to blend in a little Kṣānti paramita to be patient with others and to be patient with and to be persistent in my own efforts to be tolerant. And I also need prajna paramita to have the wisdom to know how and when to imply to apply the rules that I that I apply to myself and to and I need the prajna to realize that sila paramita is really about how I affect others. And understanding that the boundaries aren't as distinct as they appear to be. And Thich Nhat Hanh wrote that the practice of the precepts is a form of love and a form of giving and it assures the good health and protection of our family and society. So in looking at it that way, following the precepts is giving the giving your family and giving society in general the stability and care that it needs. Now, when we get to Kṣānti, Tim knows that's the name of my sailboat. And this is where I've sort of found my groove. It this isn't the tallest bar on that personality graph I was talking about. I mean, I'm not the most patient person by any means, but I have managed to develop patience and tolerance after years of impatience, high demands, and tolerance and anger. And I like working on it. I like working on patience, tolerance, and persistence. And I think I've found some tolerant, having found tolerance for my own shortcomings, I can better see my way through giving others the grace for being as screwed up as I am. And and so, how did I get here was becoming more tolerant just becoming lazier with age and if the political opinions of my aging friends and relatives are any indication age doesn't lead to tolerance. So, I'd have to say that I think this if I think about it, this likely comes down to Dhyāna paramita or meditation practice and vera paramita and I've actually made a joyful effort that Norman Fischer talks about in The World Could Be Otherwise to practice patience because I like practicing patience and the practice of meditation has allowed that to sort of fertilize and irrigate and take hold. And just going through them when I get to Virya paramita I mean joyful energy is sometimes in short supply there are times where I really don't want to be a good Zen Buddhist I am by nature prone to anger and occasionally laziness and sometimes I just don't want to sit and sometimes I just rather scream at my television. At the point I have to go back can revisit patience and both with my own frailties and with the failings of other people that make me want to scream at the television. And I have to go back to ethical conduct to remind myself to cherish and polish the three treasures and to remind myself that a disciple of Buddha does not indulge in anger. So again they they start to blend and when we get to meditation meditation Dhyāna paramitas as Talus was talking about last week this can be a text a technical exercise the way he was talking about and correct sitting posture and concentration and you know how you sit on your cushion and we just did Fukanzazengi this morning about Dogen's suggestions for how you're supposed to meditate. And it's pretty technical. Sit with your, you know, with your nose in line with your naval and your tongue on the front roof of your mouth. Keep your eyes open. That it you can look at Dhyāna paramita as that. But for me, this one really comes down to trying to the other thing that Dogen talks about, which is meditation. Zazen isn't just on the cushion. It's everything. And it comes to trying to live mindfully all the time, not during zazen only. And I do love to sail. And one of the reasons I love to do that is that when there's a good wind, I have to devote myself utterly to the action of sailing. I have to feel the wind, trim the sails, watch for other boats, floating debris, rocks, hopefully getting to spot some eagles, porpoises, and whales along the way. And when I'm sailing in a brisk wind, I'm not doing sailing. I am sailing.
And excuse me. This applies as well to long bike rides. I have the same thing happen to me. And oddly enough, folding the laundry for some reason. And I'm trying to extend this into driving, shopping for food, and every other activity. Not always successfully and doing this requires the joyful energy Vīrya paramita and patience to be patient with the many many times rather than being the activity I just rather get it over with and develop the generosity to believe that the idiot who just cut me off in traffic or can't seem to get their shopping cart out of the center of the aisle in Costco or who just hit my boat with a giant wake as they passed. Didn't do it on purpose.
Because we all know as George Carlin loved to point out that is if you drive faster than me, you're a maniac and if you drive slower than me, you're an idiot. That may be the first time George Carlin has ever been referenced in a Dharma talk. Now you get to prajna paramita of course and that's the ultimate uniter and it's necessary for all the others both in terms of the wisdom of how to apply them inner wisdom that all things are one and connected as well. So it's it's sort of two things is how do you do this and the fact that the whole exercise is to show how everything is empty of of of self. And in the words of Thích Nhất Hạnh again this comes from his book The Heart of the Buddhist Teaching is perfect understanding is present in all the other perfections. Perfect understanding is like a container. If the container is not baked well in the kiln, there will be cracks and the liquid in it will flow out. Without right understanding, none of the other paramitas can go very far. So that's for me when I was sitting down and thinking about how these are all interrelated. That's what with my own psychopathology and my own weirdnesses in my own life. But it's an interesting exercise to go through to try to look at it how it affects you. The next thing is to look at it from a slightly different angle. And that is that they aren't just interconnected. Okay? They're not interconnected because they just support one another. They're actually the same thing. Okay? And what each of what the six paramitas are describing is actually different ways of looking at the same thing and one way of crossing over to the other shore. And in this view, dana isn't generosity. It's the ethical thing to do it with patience and vigor and complete presence of mind and the wisdom to see that you and the recipient of your generosity actually inter are to use another word from tigan and sila the practice of ethical conduct is the practice of Thích Nhất Hạnh and treating others ethically you're giving them the knowledge that you will treat them with respect and care. The process involves patience for both yourself, them and the process of giving. And it's done with joyful effort and a careful embodiment of the actions. So, and with wisdom that your actions affect others as well as yourself because we're all in this together. So, you can go through the exercise. I won't do it for all six this time, but you can go through the exercise and realize that each of the of them is each of the rest of them. And the list as many Buddhist lists do collapses into itself when you look at it hard enough. And just to bring this to sum it up there a final quote from Thích Nhất Hạnh is that the heart of the in his book the heart of the Buddhist teaching he writes that the these are the practices of the six paramitas offered by the Buddha each of the six contains the other five understanding is giving meditation is giving continued practice is giving and mindfulness training is giving. If you practice giving deeply, you are also practicing understanding, meditation and so on. In the same light, we see that giving is mindfulness training. Understanding is mindfulness training. And inclusiveness, which is how he translates patience, is mindfulness training. If you practice one paramita deeply, you practice all six. When there is understanding and insight, meditation be true meditation. Continued practice will be will be true continued practice. Inclusiveness will be true inclusiveness. Mindfulness training will be true mindfulness training and giving will be true giving. Understanding increases the quality of the other five practices. So when we were given the assignment of of looking at a paramita that that resonates, if I had to do that, I would pick Kṣānti paramita. But I think the interesting thing is that by picking one, you pick them all. So go off and chew on that for a while. I was going to divide us up into small groups, but we are a small group. So, what I'm going to suggest is that we just have a a group discussion, but I'm interested in for each of us if you had to pick if you did the if you did the Instagram version of the paramitas, which wedge on the pie graph would be the big one for you? And then how would that how if you look at that, how was that actually the rest of them? And just give everybody a few minutes to think that over and then we'll then we'll share.
Oh, they knew they heard the whole thing. So, and now she she's actually giving me a test to see if I remember. So giving dana paramita sila paramita is the is following the precepts. So being ethical. Kṣānti paramea is patience. Then we have virya paramita which is effort, joyful effort or vigor. A lot of the words kind of sort of end up sounding like vigor and verility right. Then we have which one am I forgetting? Oh we no prajna is that I'm only up to five. Oh yeah prajna paramita Dhyāna is zen meditation. Okay and then we have yeah that's mindfulness training is Dhyāna. Yeah. And then and which literally is Zen as it gets translated through the ages and and then there's prjna which is wisdom. That's the last of the one that sort of unites everything
