Dharma Talk, August 18, 2014: Six Paramitas, pt. 2

Today is August 18, 2014 our regular Monday night class. I welcome all of you here and I welcome all who are listening by way of the Internet. Today is a continuation of The Six Paramitas last week and we continue on with it today.
As I mentioned the last time, this is not an in-depth and detailed examination or exploration of the Paramitas. This is more a way of measuring where we’re at with our practice, what we've been doing, our understanding of the way and more than trying to go into great detail and kind of using it in a way of a refresher, just like when we use at the beginning the class, the Four Great Vows. The Paramitas are there to keep us on course. These Paramitas, these perfections, when done in a proper way work to provide the transcendent wisdom - that one would be able to gain insight into the self-nature of mind.
But along the way, one is on the path and little by little, the mind changes. Yesterday, I was talking to one of my students. He is a very intelligent person, a very avid reader, and a good practitioner, but it's difficult for him to let go of the idea of the self in terms of getting this insight. One day it's going to happen to him because he’s going to be able to put all that down. All that effort that he's been doing to try to look into this and all the questions, will one day shatter to him. I'm very patient with him in terms of answering his questions, but when his questions turn to be intellectual, then I'm not patient. I have no need for that, but to guide him in the way in which to fine-tune him in terms of being able to do it, then it's very helpful.
And then he asked me, “How will I know? How will I know when that happens?” And I said, “You will not know!” And he just looked at me; and I said, “You won't be there!” And he didn't understand because he was operating in this realm of relative comparison versus this absolute truth. In the absolute truth, the self is not there. One may recognize vestiges of their self, but no longer see it as their self as much as they’re clearly oriented that their self-nature of the mind goes on. At any given moment it is what you're using to listen right now, is the true-nature of the mind in spite of that self that keeps popping up. When we begin to see things in this way and we begin to putting them into practice, then that's when it begins to pay off because at that point, you are putting everything, consuming the self in that present moment. So the Six Paramitas, in terms of our Mahayana approach, are very, very critical in terms of the practice.
It’s very interesting because I was looking at this information today about the Paramitas and the historians believed that they were developed by the Mahasamghikas, which was a sub-sect at that time of Buddhism, and in particular there was the Caitikas, which were a sub-sect of the sub-sect of the Mahasamghikas. This particular group was from the Andhra region of India at that time by what is called Krisna River, which is down on the coast on the North East side of India. In that time, that area was quite a bit of a hotbed of progressive thoughts in terms of Buddhism and working towards the development of what they called Mahaprajnaparamita.
Before there wasn't as much of an emphasis that’s been given by the Mahasamghikas in terms of this Prajnaparamita. Again, this Prajna, the term means wisdom; and Maha is the highest wisdom. As you will recall, when they refer to Mahayanas, what they’re saying is that this is the highest vehicle in comparison to at the time which is not derogatory, Hinayanas, who we’re looking at it as a lesser vehicle, a vehicle to obtain Nirvana. The emphasis with Mahayana was the delivery of all sentient beings and that was a result of the compassion that comes from the wisdom of the practice.
But as they were looking at this and during that time period, they were saying that some of the teachings were taught to merchants. Others were taught to a different level and only the highest level was taught to those with the potentiality of a Bodhisattva. When I say the potentiality of a Bodhisattva, I mean we’re all Bodhisattvas but we have to listen. We have to use this effort that we have. When I see this class and I see there are many of you that come every week and you're making the effort to do something. Every week you're developing a Sangha. If people stop coming, then other people stop coming. If people keep coming on a regular basis and you get to know the people, you start working towards something. This is the effort of a Bodhisattva.
So the emphasis there was changing based on the product of compassion that came out of this wisdom. That compassion, how they saw that was if one uses these practices of the Paramitas and perfected them, really, really perfected them, that they were able to transcend the idea of the individual self. And that this transcendence was not necessarily that of let’s say a worm turning into a cocoon into a butterfly, but that one realizing that they were always a butterfly and the transcendence is, “Walla, there it is!” But we are unable to do that because of the idea of the clinging to the self.
So this is what the Paramitas stand for in terms of working on it. These Paramitas show up in the early Mahayana texts and one of them is called the Large Sutra on Perfection of Wisdom, the Aṣṭasāhasrikā Prajñāpāramitā Sūtra. They just recently have found a copy of this dating back to around 75 C.E. or A.D. as some people refer to it still. They found another copy of it from this one great translator of Buddhist text, Lokakema  at around 179 C.E., about 100 years later. So they're able to look at this and see it and it was kind of let’s say the cornerstone of the practice, in terms of how one gets to this transcendent wisdom. So that's kind of a little bit of the background that I didn’t talk about last week.
Last week, I think we only got to the first Paramita which is the Dana Paramita: Perfection of Generosity, of giving, and how we give. We talked about how we give and sometimes, why we don't give. That is an important aspect because ultimately, the giving aspect of the practice is governed by wisdom, but it is also the idea that when we give, we give up our “self;” we give a little bit of our “self.” So when we do that, the idea is that we are essentially transcending the idea of “I need this; why should I share this with you?” type of a way. But when you do this in the proper way, you find out that it becomes a lot easier for you to give up the self because it’s one less than one has.
There’s a story of Master Sheng Yen where his family would come to him and they would say “We need money! Now you’re a leader of this big group; you have the big university; you have all these things. You have temples, you fly all over the place and people give you money all the time, you know. Can you give us some money?”
And he said, “I don't have any money.”
They go, “How is that possible?”
He goes, “I don't have any money!”
And truly, he didn't have any money. When I saw him, the robe he wore were the same robes that I’ve seen on him in the very beginning. He really was kind of like that pastoral monk. Of course he has those ornamental ones that he wears, but he really made a habit of not having anything or keeping anything. He lived a very austere and simple life. Not bad; he didn't have to worry about losing his money. How many of us have that thought about losing our money?
So his practice was perfected with that. It’s very amazing in terms of being able to do it. But gave like you cannot believe; he gave this time, he gave his entire life to this practice, and that was the major giving that one could do is giving up their time. And as you look at it and you see it, then you realize that this is the way - by giving. It is not even about the material possessions anymore because once one discards that or loses the emphasis on it, it's just giving. One gives freely of their time, freely to help other people. And you do your best to do that and you’ll find that there's time that you can spend doing helping others. Or you can do things where you might be able to do something else, but when you measure that, you find that that is better and more productive than the other. That’s wisdom. That's wisdom to say “Yes, I think that this is better than watching the Simpson reruns on TV” and you look at it and say “Yes, that's what I should do.”
Okay we next get to the Sila Paramita: Perfection of Morality. Sila is a very interesting thing because it is based on precepts. Precepts meaning something that says that these are guidelines that we should do, like the Five Precepts: no killing, no lying, no alcohol or drugs, no stealing, and no sexual misconduct. When we practice them, we practice them in accordance with our ability. It doesn't mean, and people get all frightened up because when they are making these vows to do this, they're going, “Well, what about in a little bit of alcohol, or of a little bit of pot, or that little lie, or whatever it is?”
But again, what we're doing is we're setting ourselves into motion on certain conduct that enables us to put down the self. Do we need that alcohol? Do we need that high, or to be relieved from the lie, and all these things that come into being? All of these things are things that are centered around the self. As one begins to practice, one begins to have a generosity and concentration and wisdom arising. They all benefit the other Paramitas and all 10 to perfect the others and support the proper practice. So this idea of this morality is very important because if we do not have the right morality when we practice, it's difficult for us to practice because our mind will be beguiled by all of these other thoughts of sensuous pleasures, or whatever it is, or things surrounding the idea of the self.
Why do people lie? There are many reasons why people lie. People lie because they want to hurt somebody; they want to make themselves look better or more important. They want to escape the accusations of what somebody is putting on them, and so they get into a pattern of lying. And as you begin to do that, you’ll find out that it's easy to lie. You can lie about everything and as you begin to lie, that becomes your habit energy. You no longer have an idea that this is harmful. It's harmful not just to you, but to the people around you. And if you accuse somebody else because of something that you did (not that anybody would do that here), but those things happen. They can be very egregious. It can be something of “who killed who” or “who ate the last cookie.” I don’t think any of you ever lied about that, right? (laughs…)  In any case, but it makes lying the next time around easier; it makes it easier for you to get that last cookie.
So the idea is that we are taking the time to work on this, so that little by little, what happens is it becomes easier. It can be one way or the other, but it's our choice. We choose to do it but if we choose in the right way and we choose in the proper morality, then it makes it easier for us to live our life, and the proper choices to be easier to do. It's very difficult for us sometimes when we are accused of something or we want to make ourselves look more important to [kind of what the Chinese say], and I love this saying, is “Blow the Cow.” What they mean by “blow the cow” is like just imagine this cow that they keep inflating and inflating and inflating until it gets to be the biggest cow; this whole story that becomes so big because of them embellishing what the story was. We don't need to do that; we just try to use our humility as much as we can so that we don't present ourselves in a false lie or present other people.
This morality is a very important thing because it's based on self. When you look at things and you make your choices in this life, understand that you don't have to appease the self. It's a very interesting thing that if you were the last person on earth, how would you act? It’s interesting; would you act differently than you act now? Who would you lie to? Who would you steal from? You wouldn't have to worry about anything. You wouldn’t have to lie, you wouldn't have to steal; you’re by yourself. You don't even have anybody to tell the story about how great it was when you got high, or to drink to escape problems.
It's interesting when we take a look at it in that way, because when we look at it, it's actually kind of the reverse. When we see it and we have no-self, and there's all these other people, we don't need to do anything in terms of the types of conducts because they're not driven by the nature of wisdom. We use compassion; we illuminate the world around us so we see things very clearly, and we see that our life is made of choices, so we make the right choices of what we do.
That's why the precepts are there, but they're not admonitions of a higher entity that says, “If you don't do this, you're going to hell. If you don't do this, I'm not going to be happy with you.” They are rather our own work; our self-work to look into the self-nature mind rather than the selfish aspect when they come up that we take to be the self-nature of mind. And as we begin to use our wisdom in this way, we find out that we don't have to engage in this kind of conduct. We don't need that. It's easy for us to say “I need a drink” after a hard day or whatever it is. You put that down and you do see it very, very clearly. So you understand that this morality that we do, it benefits others. It benefits others by us taking the “self” out of the equation. There's much more that we can do; we become more productive and it's a matter of choice.
Let me read something that master Sheng Yen said about the precepts. He said; “Precepts means conducting one’s self according to the Buddhist precepts. All precepts are encompassed by the Three Cumulative Precepts: refraining from all harm, cultivating all that is beneficial, and benefiting all sentient beings.”
Truly, this is a Mahayana practice. What he's saying is that these three cumulative precepts that are incorporating in anything that we do is refraining from all harm. What harm is there? There is harm in lies; there's harm in damaging the body and the conduct that comes from using drugs or alcohol, and cultivating that which is beneficial.
So cultivating on that which is beneficial means that we work on the things that are helpful; what are helpful to us, and what are helpful to others.
So we begin to cultivate in this way, and even in that part where he’s saying cumulative, that also incorporates the Four Perfections (from the Thirty-seven Aides to Enlightenment), which is continuing things that are beneficial and fostering, bringing up in the mind things that are beneficial; taking things out that are not beneficial, and not letting non-beneficial things arise in the mind.
All of these things are all working perfectly with this idea of morality. And when you begin to see morality from a different viewpoint, it's not the morality of somebody [like I mentioned before] who wants to put a fig leaf on a marble statue; like, “Oh no, we can't show that!” It's the morality of what is beneficial; what is there; what is clearly there, and ultimately the benefiting of all sentient beings. This comes from the transcendent wisdom of utilizing the Six Paramitas, of this vow to deliver others before one’s self. That is the very powerful vow that came from the Mahayana practice and there it is right there with the morality. Not bad!
Then we get to the next practice and this is an interesting one, which is Ksanti Paramita: Perfection of Patience. Patience is kind of an interesting one because you might think “Well, not all that important,” but it is in certain ways because the word Ksanti means to be able to withstand. It's a little bit more powerful than just simply being patient. To be able to withstand - have patience to the person that was my intellectual student who wants it now. He can’t see it through the intellectual side; he has to utilize patience. So I keep telling him, “Be patient, be patient. It will come; it's money in the bank; keeps studying.” And with that patience comes the faith that it's going to happen and the ability to withstand. What do we withstand? There are a few things: one, we withstand others, right? And people they really can bug you.
I read a quote about John Paul Sartre; he said “Hell is other people.” But he got it wrong; hell is the self which is worse than trying to put up with other people. If you don't have the self, you don't have to worry about putting up with other people. Hell is driven by the self; if there's no self there to suffer, one will not get attracted to the things that would bring us to that kind of situation.
There was a story of the Samurai and he had gone to this one master and he said, “I heard you are a great Zen Master. I want to ask you something.”

And he said, “Okay.”

“There's talk that there's a hell and there is a heaven; is there such a thing?”

The master said to him, “If your sword is as dull as your wit, I doubt if you could cut anyone with it.”

The Samurai got upset from what he said because he insulted him, and so he began to draw his sword.

The master, he just bent his head down like saying, “If you want to, take it!” and he said, “Therein lie the gates of hell.”

When the Samurai realized what he was doing and it was a lesson, he put the sword back into the sheath. And the master said, “Therein lie the gates of heaven.”
 In our life, we have to have patience to see things as they really are to be able to endure. In this way, the master was telling him that every moment can be heaven or hell depending on how you see it. It is you that creates that outcome by how you think. So when you're doing things and you want to fight with people, you're creating a hell. But if you have patience to endure, then you are creating a Pureland. Even if the other person is in hell, you’re not pulled into it. Little by little that person will embrace the Pureland that’s around. It may take a long time but little by little, at least you are not creating the karma that will cause subsequent actions there.
The Chinese they have a term in terms of Kung-fu and I heard this term too when I was practicing Chi-gong; the term is “Eat Bitter.” The idea is that if you really want something, you have to eat bitter, just like the idea that if you want to get well, you have to take the bitter medicine. The Chinese medicine is very, very bitter; very bad tasting, but if it doesn't kill you, it will make you better. That's the idea of eating bitter in anything; whether you want to practice Kung-fu, you have to do the things that are necessary to practice.
Once I asked to learn from this one master and I had been practicing for a long time. He had me for months just doing standing and static breathing positions. I was able to eat bitter because the positions I was in were very, very difficult to hold, but it transformed my body. All of a sudden, I went from when I was showing him my movements, he goes, “Just put that away, I don’t even want to see that” to, “Let me get a video camera; I want to put this on video” because all a sudden the movements change. But it was because of my ability to eat bitter to go through the whole Muscle Tendon Changing exercises to be able to get to the point where I could do that.
 When we do this, it's the same thing as in practicing the Paramitas. Rather than Muscle Tendon Changing exercises, we’re doing self-illumination to transcendent wisdom that changes it. Because I practiced with Kung-fu and I have faith with the master, I was able to you utilize those methods to transcend my body. Here, we have faith in the Paramitas that this is the way to go, that little by little one uses this as transcendent wisdom. It doesn't mean that I got all of it there; I’m a practitioner and you just continue to use these, and use these, and use these, and perfect the Paramitas. Not bad! The byproduct is that you're a better person and people will like to be around you, and you can find the solution to the problems a lot easier without the self being present.
So the idea of patience is this ability to withstand; to have the patience to be able to really practice. Sometimes, I would teach people, if they wanted to learn Kung-fu, and they wanted to hit me. So as soon as they understood that they had to learn defense and that I was going to hit them, they left because it wasn't any fun to get hit. But that's what Kung-fu is about; the truth of it is if you’re going to hit somebody, they are going to hit you back, and that's the first lesson they should learn.
Here, it's a very interesting thing because in the practice of the Paramitas, what we learned is this absolute truth, and permeating all of the Paramitas is suffering. The Four Noble Truths are evident in these Paramitas; in this Paramitas is the idea of suffering that's coming from the self. When we understand that it comes from that way, then we start realizing “Ah, here's a clue; here's the key; that the more I hold on to the self in this life, the more I suffer. So I can suffer very greatly because of this.”
Shifu says, “Patience means understanding and empathy. We can be patient with those who harm us, the environment, which includes our body, our mental habits, and aging, and cultivating the Dharma.” That’s important because again, this is using the wisdom to say that I was once your age. I still remember it, and you will be my age. When I was very small, much smaller than you, I remember being around people that were old and wondering why their skin was so wrinkly. It looked kind of strange to me because being so young like you, you have such a smooth face and smooth arms, and so how old are you? Eight, okay I thought you are nine but you’re younger. Oh, he’s almost nine, okay.
So we look at the world in a different way. It was very interesting; I’ll give you a clue. When I was your age, I would wake up every day, and specially in the summertime, and I would say, “Today I'm young and I'm going to play quite a bit today because there's going to be a day I’m not going to be able to play, and I'm going to have to go to work. I’m going to make the best of this day.” I didn't even waste my days as a youth. I used them right so enjoy your time playing. Don't be too much of a hurry to grow up. I was kind of a strange kid. (laughs…)
I remember once when one of the practice that I would do is my mom would wash the window screens, and on a hot summer day, I would just stand in front of the window screen on the inside as she was watering them,  and noticing that there was little drops of water between the little squares on the screen, and I would just sit there watching drop by drop evaporate. I could sit there for many, many minutes just watching, just watching; doing nothing but thinking. I was just thinking of not thinking; of this direct contemplation of the screen. Yeah, I was a different kid. I don’t know where I got the patience to do that. Later on, I lost that kind of patience and little by little, I’ve been able to pick it back up in my life. But as a 20-year-old, I was not a very patient person.
So now we get to Virya Paramita: Perfection of Energy. We talked about this before. Remember we mentioned the term virile; virile comes from the term meaning hero. The idea of hero is somebody who can withstand the 10,000 enemies. He can just keep going and going and going, and has the energy to do that. And you say “How does this have to do with the practice?” As I was coming here today and I was reading this, I thought about this. Let me see what Shifu said about this; it’s kind of interesting; “Diligence is maintaining mindfulness of practice as best we can moment to moment, and thinking about how we can benefit others. The Dharma does not work itself, but we have to work the Dharma - making constant gentle effort.”
 The part that got to me is how he said “how we can benefit to others” and I thought, “Yesterday I taught a class; a two-hour class, and the whole week I've been studying for that class. And today I thought “I'm tired and I thought it would be easy for me a call Rick, and Rick would have been up here passing on the Dharma” but I thought, “No, it's better for me to go and finish up this lecture on the Paramitas.” That's Virya; I use it because to me it kind of hit home and it's what one does; one has that energy to do that. That energy could be “Well, I’d rather go home and take a rest” but the Virya of the practice of benefiting and realizing there's only a certain amount of time to practice is critical; it's important. It brings a person to want to pass that Dharma on just like Shifu had said “The Dharma doesn't teach itself; somebody has to expose others to it.”
So the idea of Virya is keeping that practice; keeping the motor running and incorporating the other perfections in your life; keeping them there; remembering them; have the memory that you’re a practitioner; the memory that you have a choice in what you do, and that you have patience. You have patience with others, but you have patience with the practice that little by little, you will give up the self. It's not easy to give up the self. So when we have so many things to titillate our senses and to do things and you could be there and watching something on TV and somebody tells you take out the trash, right? So you have to take it out. That’s more important; does that happen to you? No? It will. (laughs…)
Student: As soon as the other one moves out.

Gilbert: As soon as the other one moves out then you got the slot. (laughs…) So Virya is very, very important because is this zeal. It's not just the energy but there's a zeal - I vow to deliver innumerable sentient beings; the vow to deliver others before one’s self is the initial generation of the Bodhi-heart of a Bodhisattva. That is that zeal that keeps us moving; it keeps us going, and it keeps the self from coming up because if the self couldn’t do that, maybe it becomes much easier for me to do it. So when there's days that I miss you, believe me I need that rest. In any case, the zeal, the effort to come to classes is important too.
Dhyana Paramita: Perfection of Meditation is very interesting because it's not just the idea of meditation but the perfection of meditation. In our perfection of meditation, it's not enough just to cross our legs and sit there. We have to know what we’re doing; we have to know the method in which we do that. So when we do that, the method has to have Samatha, the concentration; and it also has to have the Vipassana side of it, the insight or the silent part. We talked about Silent Illumination; the silent part is Samadhi, the illumination is the illumination of the mind. That is where the wisdom comes from. It's not just simply enough that we have concentration because even an assassin can have concentration. He concentrates very carefully on his target, but there's no insight there. Insight has to be there. It can be very easy to concentrate and to allow the mind to just become blank.
I once knew one Chi-gong Master; his master had trained him and in order for him to pass, he had to sit for one week without standing up. He was very accomplished but there was no insight in his practice; there was no wisdom in his practice. We had some go-around where he would say, “Chi-gong is more than Chan!” And I would say to him, “No, Chi-gong is part of Chan.” Chan is this practice that we need [referring to Silent Illumination]. Then he went to China and evidently, he bumped into somebody over there, and when he came back he said to me, “You're right!” (laughs…) So that was good; I was very happy for him.
He had Virya; he had the ability to “eat bitter.” Did he do what you could do? No, the only thing was up until that point, he had not run into a well-knowing advisor. Once he did, it was money in the bank for him because he had already put in the effort. So by knowing how to eat bitter, he was able to convert that and obtain wisdom. I was very, very happy for him that that was able to happen.
So we use the right meditation, the right methods to be able to come to a point where from this meditation will derive this insight wisdom, this transcendent wisdom. With this transcendent wisdom, will come that compassion. Why, because all of a sudden we realize the world was upside-down and driven by the self. When it’s no longer driven by the self, the heart incredibly opens.
It's difficult to use an example of how the heart opens, but when you see people with open-heart, you will see how it works. It is just amazing how it opens and how unselfish the world can be when that heart is open. There's nothing more to demonstrate to that person or anything more to say they’re special or anything. Everything is just simply ordinary and mundane. It is seen in that way; it's seeing exactly everything that's they are precisely in its place, not different. Very amazing.
Let’s see what master Sheng-yen said about that. He said:
“Meditation is the cultivating of calm, clear, concentrated mind that is in the present moment. When the mind is scattered and excited, the mind is weak and it is difficult to resist habits and see clearly in order to benefit others. When the mind is scattered, we make mistakes and create suffering. When the mind is clear and concentrated, one has energy and clarity to see the mind and remember and apply Dharma. Meditation does not mean just sitting meditation; it includes all activities when done with the concentrated mind.”
I'm glad I read that part because he just reminded me of something I wanted to say; “It's not just sitting on a cushion; it is when you’re up off the cushion, do you have a clear mind? It's more than just Metta - this loving-kindness. It’s seeing clearly everything that's around you and the more you see things in this way, very calm, a concentrated mind, very clear, then you will be able to pick up minute details of information all around that you miss. They come through so easily and sometimes, it’s almost intuitive that it comes through, but the mind is calm so it can pick that up.

Which gets us to the last one which one would say is the payoff, which is Prajna Paramita: Perfection of Wisdom. But on the other hand, wisdom begets wisdom. We have to have that wisdom there. We have to know what this wisdom is in, let’s say, a relative reality, but that wisdom ultimately becomes transcendent. In the Eightfold Path, the transcendent wisdom is the ninth of the Eightfold path, with the tenth being the enlightenment. With the eighth being wisdom, we see that that this wisdom is transcendent; it changes.

Shifu said, “Wisdom is seeing the emptiness of all things. This wisdom recognizing that suffering is inherent in the world and seeing self and others as one. The practice of the Paramitas must be embodied in wisdom. Wisdom can be brought into our practice in two ways: study, practice, contemplation, and the second, meditation.

One of them is called “by principle” and the other “by practice.” Practice is the meditation; but the principle is studying, practicing every moment, and the contemplation. Contemplation, every day I ask myself “What is mind?” so I will remember that I’m a practitioner and that I don't have the answer, nor will I ever get it. But I remind myself of that so that I remind myself that I'm a practitioner.

That's what Shifu was talking about was that we have to remember this and that we understand that each of the Paramitas is wisdom; each of them is used with wisdom, and so they are self-reflecting. And what do they reflect? They reflect the emptiness of all things. That is why they call this the higher teachings because they went beyond just simply some kind of a study guide and a practice guide. They were meant to be or designed for transcendent wisdom.