Latest / Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks / The Paramitas: Generosity and Ethical Living - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher

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The Paramitas: Generosity and Ethical Living - Jomon Martin, Zen Teacher · Zen Community of Oregon Dharma Talks

• 0:00
  Jomon: Hello and welcome. This is the Zen Community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddhadharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
• 0:25
  Jomon: So it's this very interesting time of year of still winter, and yet there's just so much happening that's looking towards spring, and all the birds know it, and all the flowers and trees are starting to all this life is starting to emerge, and this change from winter into spring, which is so beautiful. And so, in some of the Buddhist traditions in Japan, the vernal and the autumnal equinox is a time to focus on the paramitas, the paramitas. And in the Zen tradition there are six, in the Theravadan tradition I believe they have a list of 10, and I will just list those here and then we'll go into a little more of a conversation about some of them. We'll talk about the origin of the words and just get an overview and then go a little more specifically. But I love to when we started sitting here, which was in January or something, we had a few weeks sort of just getting to know each other and then we took a good six or eight weeks to focus on the Paramitas and then it culminated right around the vernal equinox.
• 2:04
  So I'd like to just maybe start that tradition or something or just feels like a wonderful time to focus on these qualities, these virtues. So the Paramitas, the six Paramitas are generosity or benevolent generosity, ethical discipline or ethical behavior, patience or forbearance, forbearing patience. They all have a little slightly different translation. Joyous perseverance or joyful effort. I like joyful effort.
• 2:42
  That's my favorite way of looking at it meditation or meditative absorption and discerning wisdom understanding. Those are the six. So the word paramita has a couple of different meanings actually, has also a couple of different root words, maybe they're homonyms or something in Pali or in Sanskrit or both, but it means the perfection. It means the perfection of these virtues. That's one way we think about the word Paramita, but paramita also means the other shore, that you have arrived at the other shore, which is where you are actually, can't be somewhere else.
• 3:40
  So it has this double root, a double meaning. The word parama is the root meaning most excellent, superlative or supreme parama. And in Sanskrit and Pali the word para means something like far or farther or farthest in both space and time. So like beyond, ultimate or final. So the word para is applied to both crossing a river to the opposite shore and to that shore itself, the shore that we're on.
• 4:15
  And that's an image that's really widely used in terms of describing, realizing
• 4:23
  Jomon: awakening.
• 4:27
  Jomon: Crossing over the flood of suffering to reach the safety of the other shore. So the word parami is abstracted from parama with the meaning of completeness or the highest state possible or perfection and that perfection is applied to the qualities that we need to practice, that we need to cultivate to really be in such a way, to embody the Buddha way. So this cultivation can be fueled by bodhichitta, that's another great word, bodhichitta. This is the motivation to awaken for the sake of all beings. The Bodhisattva Vow is the vow to awaken for the sake of all beings.
• 5:25
  It's an altruistic fuel and it springs from loving kindness and it springs from compassion This wish to be in wise service, in wise service to the world. I think it was Trungpa Rinpoche who used to refer to idiot compassion. It's that sort of unwise or unskillful. Though there is some wish to be helpful, it ends up actually making everything worse. But a wise compassion is what we're going for.
• 6:11
  So the bodhisattva vows that we chant at the end, is always so amazing to me that we chant this, that people will walk in the door and then chant this impossible vow together. It's really kind of a it's interesting and I guess yeah, I think it's just once you step into a Zen group, maybe this just maybe you don't stay or maybe you don't practice in this particular way, but I have to I kind of feel like this does something anyway. So those vows and they're articulated in slightly different ways in different communities but the way we say them is beings are numberless, I vow to free them. Beings are numberless, I vow to free them. Delusions are inexhaustible.
• 7:14
  I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. The Buddha way is unsurpassable. I vow to embody it.
• 7:26
  Here we are making these impossible vows. They're unattainable. Why would we do that? Why would we do that? And I really have experienced them as they're about to keep going.
• 7:49
  They're just about to keep going. They always just they help us orient in this direction no matter whether there seems to be any progress. That's what this is about in many ways. It's about a lot of things but our practice is immeasurable. And so how could we possibly measure progress?
• 8:17
  Or if we did, then would that matter? Would we stop? Would we be like, you know, I think I've saved enough beings now. I'm pretty good with it. I'm good.
• 8:26
  That's enough beings. I think I've ended enough delusions. You know, I think I'm going to keep a few. But if we're just going to keep going and is independent of any outcome, what then? What then?
• 8:59
  We just keep going. There's no need for how am I doing? Or yeah. But how do we sustain this? What kind of heart can do this?
• 9:19
  Once we engage this path and we've kind of decided or the path has engaged us, maybe is what happens. This path of realizing our true nature, really asking this question, we can encourage this. We can encourage this growth or this clarity by practicing with the Paramitas. These are qualities, these are virtues that an awakened being would naturally engage: benevolent generosity, ethical discipline, forbearing patience, joyous perseverance, joyful effort, meditative absorption and discerning wisdom. It is said that these are in order of easiest to hardest.
• 10:15
  And I wonder I wonder if that I think that might be true. They say that generosity is possible for all of us to do even on a small scale. But even that, like that's a judgment, that's a sort of evaluative kind of a realm, isn't it? I like to share the story of a time that I worked in community mental health in Southern Illinois, and I worked with the folks who were in day treatment, the serious and persistent mental illness, and so much of their small income checks were spent on cigarettes because that actually is a real they found a chemical physiological comfort to people with certain illnesses and it's incredibly addictive. Being around a bunch of people smoking and we'd just kind of play cards and just let people be who they were and got to know a lot of the folks and just be with them every day.
• 11:21
  And our agency was sort of beleaguered as many community mental health centers have been for all space and time And there was a cash flow problem and there was this one point at which there was no more soap in the bathroom and they couldn't quite get the purchase order to refill the soap thing and it just was going on and then one of the this little lady, you know, the most gravelly voice you've ever heard and she was just really sweet and she one morning came in and she had gone to the dollar store and bought some bars of like Irish Spring or something and just put them in the bathrooms. Like she did that. She did not have money to spend on that. She did not. And yet, here's this person who was clearer than I was about what needed to happen and how to affect generosity in exactly the moment it was needed.
• 12:30
  So when we can be inspired by something like that, that helps. And then there's also just a sweetness and a natural generosity of heart. Sometimes see well certainly children can be, you know, mine, mine, mine, but they can also be pretty generous too and that's really sweet when we see that natural generosity and we can know that it really is that's who we really are. That's who we really are. So I'd like to we have maybe I would like to take at least three weeks to talk about the Paramitas, so I figured I'd take two at a time.
• 13:14
  Generosity and ethics tonight, if that's okay. So just to go a little further into the generosity paramita, the Sanskrit word for this is dana, D A N A, and I learned that the syllable da of dana is related to the Sanskrit term daraidra, daraidria, which means misery or poverty or difficulty. And so the term not is a negation. So the term means to eradicate poverty, to eliminate poverty. And since this generosity is associated with loving kindness and compassion and with wisdom, it is this truly benevolent and not, you know, sympathy kind of like, oh, I feel so bad for you.
• 14:06
  Let me just help you out of a sense of superiority. It's a real just, natural benevolence, wishing for well-being. So it's not just the action of giving, it's the state of mind that has that benevolent intention to respond to a situation, to to be of benefit. So it is the contrary of greed or stinginess. I found a couple of great quotes on this from some older elder Dharma teachers of our time.
• 14:48
  Gil Fronstall says, Being generous creates instant karma. We can immediately see and feel the results of being generous. And I suspect that's true of all of us that we could probably it wouldn't take much to hearken back to a time maybe when you were generous and it felt really good and it was just really a wonderful thing to be able to do. And then Joseph Goldstein says, there is happiness in planning the generous act, happiness in the actual giving, and happiness in reflecting later on your generosity. So he's really encouraging us to acknowledge the enjoyment and the pleasure of being generous, of expressing this aspect of our awakened nature.
• 15:45
  So if you'd like to even just close your eyes or just take a moment to reflect for a moment on the ways that you are generous or the ways that you practice generosity and they don't have to be measured. We could call them large or small but what ways have you been generous? Do you tend to be generous? What's kind of easy? Is it with your time?
• 16:23
  Is it with your listening? Do you give the benefit of
• 16:31
  Jomon: the
• 16:31
  Jomon: doubt or assume the best about someone? With money, with life energy, with expertise? So just tapping into that for a moment. So that's one way to practice, that's one way to acknowledge what's already in us and to water that seed of generosity. There are these traditional expressions of generosity from the teachings of the Buddha, excuse me, There's the generosity of material gifts, giving to people who are in need, giving them things that they need, food, clothing, helping that way.
• 17:40
  There's the generosity of protection, when someone's in danger, saving someone from danger or to be free from whatever difficulty they're in. That's a form of generosity, giving protection or aid or assistance. And then the third kind is considered extremely beneficial form of generosity, which is the generosity of instructions or teachings or teaching the dharma. That it's that old saying, you know, you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. You teach him how to fish, he'll eat forever.
• 18:15
  It's how can we really help people to take care of themselves and really meet the instability of this life in such a way that we can be meeting it with equanimity, meeting it with kindness. So I also want to share probably one of the most famous tales of the Buddha's lives as a Buddha in training, also known as a Bodhisattva, which we are all Bodhisattvas. We're on our way, right, to becoming a Buddha. And it's a little bit of a, in a way, a disturbing tale, but I wanted to just share it anyway. It's called The Hungry Tigress or The Starving Tiger.
• 19:15
  And I found a, there's a Zen teacher named Rafe Martin who has done a lot of teaching on the Chautauqua tales and they're parables, know, stories, they're metaphors, they're able to embed some of these virtues or values or aspects of the Buddha's teachings in a story about animals and I heard at some point, I don't know if it was from Rafe Martin or someone else, but that telling stories about humans was kind of fraught in India in the Buddhist time because caste was so clearly embedded in everything that you would be probably offending somebody if you talked about you know, you had to say where they were located in terms of their class so if you told stories about animals that just kind of like evened the playing field a little bit. So this is the starving tiger. This is a shorter version of the story but there's some nice longer ones. So born in a past life, Buddha was born as a Brahmin in a wealthy family. As a Bodhisattva, the Buddha chose to renounce a life of privilege.
• 20:34
  He became a beloved teacher living a simple life in a forest retreat. One day he was walking with a disciple up a mountain path to find a suitable place to practice. As they passed a ravine, they heard an anguished roar of a tiger. Far below they saw a weak and starving mother tiger who had just given birth. Crazed with hunger, she was eyeing her tiny cubs as food.
• 21:02
  Her desperate hunger was about to overcome her natural care for her offspring. Quickly the bodhisattva sent his student off in search of something to feed the tiger, but the wise one knew that the food was scarce and that feeding the flesh of one helpless animal to another would only prolong the cycle of suffering. Instead he acknowledged the benefit of using his own body to prevent the tiger from devouring her young ones. With that thought he cast himself off the cliff into the ravine below. He said, Two things alone cause people to ignore the suffering of others: attachment to pleasure and the inability to give aid.
• 21:43
  But if I cannot feel pleasure while offering while another being suffers and if I have the power to help how can I ignore them? So that story is a little extreme, maybe a little disturbing. You should know though, if you go to the Portland Japanese Garden, the rock garden with the gravel and the stones is a depiction of that story, sometimes called the Buddha and the Seven Tigers. It maybe is a depiction that there's seven cubs or six cubs and the tall representation of the Buddha. So this is not an admonition that you should harm yourself for the sake of others, that's not the moral of the story, that would be a misunderstanding of the story, but it is an invitation to look a little more deeply about our assumptions about ourself and what generosity looks like when we can see through our construction of ourself what we who we think we are, what we think we need.
• 23:03
  And I think it may also be important to add here some additional teachings from the Pali Canon, the Buddhist teachings. He talks about how a person of integrity can express generosity. How does a person of integrity express generosity? And there are five ways. These five are a person of integrity's gifts.
• 23:21
  Which five? A person of integrity gives a gift with a sense of conviction. A person of integrity gives a gift attentively. They pay attention to what the person what might be needed. A person of integrity gives a gift in season at the right time.
• 23:39
  A person of integrity gives a gift with an empathetic heart. And a person of integrity gives a gift without adversely affecting himself or others. So there you go. So I am I would like to draw attention to the fact that Soten and Chenay are here visiting from Bells Mountain and Doka and Khan too also live there. And I wasn't sure which one of you would be in here but I'm gonna like put you on the spot a little bit if that's okay.
• 24:12
  Soten and Chenay are some of the most generous people I know and I'm recalling their walk down to Central South America and this was all you know on Instagram and we would follow them on Instagram during that pilgrimage and at one point you gave your coat to someone who was bless them, coming north and that whole process was perhaps in some ways a great training and generosity, not just of giving but of receiving too, which is an important aspect of generosity. So they are also, so to mention, great recipients of generosity and the Bells Mountain land and they have a powerful vision to offer the teachings which as we just learned is the most generous thing you can offer is offering the teachings. The most generous thing they can do with the lives that they have led which has enabled them to be in this position. So would someone grab the walk around microphone and Soten would you speak a little bit to your path of generous experience giving, receiving and such just for a moment.
• 25:34
  Jomon: This is the cutest microphone.
• 25:36
  Jomon: Isn't it cute? It's got a little bunny tail, yep.
• 25:40
  Jomon: Willem Sur was the name of that young man.
• 25:43
  Jomon: Willem Sur?
• 25:44
  Jomon: Yeah, he was from Guatemala and we were walking on a railroad track in Southern Mexico that was a northbound highway for Central American immigrants that were on their way to The US and we were hidden in the grass at camp when this young man walked by and he had walked 40 miles that day, had not eaten anything, had just been beaten and mugged and had diarrhea from the river water that he was drinking. The area was right outside of a garbage dump, so the water was very, very polluted, he didn't have any money and he spent the night with us. We gave him some money and a coat in the morning. Shanae actually sewed money into his backpack so that if he were to get mugged again, he potentially would still have that cash and because we had a cell phone, we got his mother's contact information and called his mother as soon as we got service and let her know that he was still alive and well as far as we knew. He made it as far as the Mexico US border and was never able to cross last we heard from him.
• 27:15
  Jomon: You
• 27:20
  Jomon: know, one aspect of generosity is just exposure. So like this interaction that we had with this one person on that one day and other people that we met along that immigrant highway really ended up affecting our lives a lot because it opened our hearts and minds to the realities of people who are trying to come into The United States and what that path is like and what motivates that path and what challenges there are and you know it was not something that we were we weren't we weren't like seeking to be of benefit to people. You know, we were just seeking to like see more. Mhmm. But in seeing more then we became exposed to additional layers of reality that before we were ignorant to and then had more opportunity to help.
• 28:44
  I don't know where I heard it, but in one of the lists of generosity, generosity, one of them is like living without fear or something like that. Living without fear is a form of generosity. Yeah, so I'm really grateful that we were then able to we're now able to be generous in ways that we wouldn't have been able to conceive before. Really just because we had a seed inspiration and didn't think too hard about why we should or shouldn't do it, but just kind
• 29:26
  Jomon: of did it. Yeah, Yeah, thank you.
• 29:30
  Jomon: Thank you.
• 29:35
  Jomon: Yeah, I like that part too of just not thinking too hard. We can't that we can't measure it. It's not like that. It's not in that category. And so maybe you can kind of see a little bit perhaps that generosity and ethics, they intertwine.
• 29:51
  That when we encounter suffering we of course want to alleviate that and that is an ethical thing to do. Also how cultivating these paramedas encourages us to see past any boundaries, encourages us to live in that way. So the second parameda is sila or she la. The word she la means in Sanskrit coolness. It comes from a word which means sort of coolness, that comfort or soothingness, something that is a state that is soothing.
• 30:28
  So the idea here is that ethical discipline will enable us to create well-being even within all of the things that are happening. So this is a term that designates the result or the consequence of the practice that there's a soothing quality as a result of behaving ethically, the practice in itself non harming. So soothing, cooling, not inflamed. You may have noticed that this world is quite inflamed, quite inflamed. Divisions, hostility, war, violence, killing, lying, abuse And people are in despair.
• 31:14
  People are experiencing sometimes a sense of hopelessness or helplessness or powerlessness. That observation even, the behavior or the tenor of the world events or ones even closer to homes, the things that are happening, they do have an impact on us. So that in a way it proves that what we do matters. If that's impactful then enacting ethical behavior is impactful. It stands to reason that what we do matters.
• 31:56
  There's not a news program for the celebration of ethical behavior in the world unfortunately, maybe there should be. But it does feel like and I'm doing a class in the five precepts, ethical precepts right now it feels like a life raft for people right now. So I just want to say a little bit about the precepts and just kind of again this is a little bit of an overview but in terms of ethical behavior these are these are part of our precepts. We start by taking refuge which is how we started this talk. We take refuge in this acknowledgement of the inflamed experience of a world that is pulled around by greed, anger and ignorance and we and we can see the result of that and what is the alternative?
• 32:53
  How do we take shelter from from from that tendency? Taking refuge in the Buddha, taking refuge in the Dharma, taking refuge in the Sangha. And we can take our time and kind of figuring out what that means to each of us too. When we sort of officially become a Buddhist, We have taken the 16 bodhisattva precepts, so a rakkusu and receive a dharma name but it's not necessary. You can still practice the precepts, you can still explore what it means to take refuge.
• 33:51
  And then there's the three pure precepts sometimes articulated, I vow not to do evil, I vow to do good, I vow to do good for others. And then there's the 10 grave precepts. So that's 16. So you would think, I vow not to do evil, I vow to do good, I vow to do good for others. You think that would just like cover it.
• 34:17
  Like that's shouldn't that be enough? Why do we need 10 whole other specific precepts? Well, things are complicated. This is human nature. If you look at any medical or mental health, these are the ethical codes I'm familiar with, the social worker ethical code, you know, physicians code of ethics.
• 34:37
  They are it's basically a compendium of all the things that people have done wrong and like we learned because of that, oh man, that's not good to do. That actually let's write that one down. The same is true for the Buddhas, all the the Vinaya is all the stuff that even the people that were the actual Buddha's students got up to some stuff and then he's like, okay, well now I guess we gotta write that down too. That's just people. So I want to share a little bit also of these pure precepts.
• 35:19
  Another way of looking at them which I really appreciate is through the Zen Peacemaker's Order. This was founded by Bernie Glassman and that is Chosen Roshi's dharma brother. So maybe we can call him Uncle Bernie although it has a different connotation. All of Maizumi Roshi's heirs were so different. They were so different.
• 35:42
  Each one prioritized some different aspect of Dharma. Each one used their own richness of being to deliver the Dharma in their own way. And Uncle Bernie was a brilliant scientist and an activist. He led retreats on the streets of New York helping people bear witness to homelessness very much like you know opening our eyes to some reality that we were ignorant to before. He also led retreats at Auschwitz bearing witness to the depths of human atrocity.
• 36:12
  So the way that the peacemakers articulate these three are enter with not knowing, put aside assumptions, and be open to what is. That's number one. Number two is bear witness, listen deeply to the people and places most impacted. And number three, take action. Do something.
• 36:39
  Allow your action to be informed by not knowing and bearing witness. It's like the exhale that follows the inhale. And so to expand on the first one, we talk about this a lot in here, not knowing, not knowing is most intimate in light of, especially in light of our deeply polarized nation and world. It may be clear that a more deeply entrenched position of righteousness will probably not get us out of this mess. I have certainly found that to be true in my relationships that that want seem to incline to polarization.
• 37:33
  So I think this is a Bernie quote. It should be said that the not favoring of viewpoints that arises when one practices not knowing, so not favoring of viewpoints, not knowing it arises when we're practicing not knowing, it does not demonstrate a lack of caring. I think that's a fear that we have. Like if I blur out my sense of right and wrong, right, that's so strong right now, will I just become a passive being. But rather not favoring any one thing or another allows you to center yourself within a boundless net of interconnection and to expand your circle of caring.
• 38:25
  It's deeply inclusive. It's deeply inclusive practice. In this way the practice of not knowing can align you with the ever changing interconnected reality called life. Practicing not knowing may seem impossible to do yet when you realize that life itself excludes nothing, life itself excludes nothing. Practicing not knowing over time will enable you to become more aware of what you choose to let in and open to what you had previously excluded.
• 38:59
  This opening and broadening our perspective can seem dangerous but there is the tenet about taking action too and this one, you know, it informs whatever action may arise, allows it to emerge from boundless wisdom and compassion, the boundlessness of not knowing. That's where we that's where our action comes from, not because I'm right and you're wrong. And taking action may be just repeating the first two tenets, not knowing and bearing witness. What else? What else?
• 39:37
  What else? Until a truly beneficial action is clear. So maybe it's after having chatted about this a little bit, how these two Paramitas, generosity and ethical conduct, that they're so intertwined, aren't they? They're really quite part of each other in many ways. But all the paramitas interrelate and are embedded with each other as hopefully we'll see in the coming weeks.
• 40:15
  So one of the practices of our precepts class is to take a just recite the precepts morning and night. You don't have to do that, but you could just take a mental inventory when the day is done, just recalling anything you did that was perhaps less than skillful. This isn't to beat yourself up about it, it's really more like Groundhog Day, you know, like maybe I'll get another chance tomorrow to refine my behavior a little bit. Better luck next time. Know, if it is a habit that we have, we will get another chance.
• 40:57
  So you know, be ready. But also don't forget to recall the times when you have been helpful, the times when you maybe were skillful, the times when you maybe were generous. It's apparently, I don't know, they say our minds are biologically predisposed to being velcro for negative things and Teflon for positive things and that stands to reason as sort of like a survival mechanism or there's this reticence to acknowledge our own kindness or beneficence because it's like, oh I'll get a big head or something or I'll you know that's too you know, being stuck on myself or something. But it's just, you know, how else are we gonna cultivate? Just how else are we gonna grow a a behavior, a skillful behavior if we don't sort of notice it, give it attention, everything grows with attention.
• 42:03
  Or even when you nearly caused harm but stopped yourself, you could even include that. Well thank you everybody for your kind attention. Are there any comments or questions or reflections that anybody would like to share into the room? Genzo.
• 42:30
  Jomon: Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast, and thank you for your practice. New episodes air every week. Please consider making a donation at zendust.org. Your support supports us.