Talk Notes:
Well it's nice to be back. Raizelah and I have two week Zen "vacations" in Oregon - we actually did different things for most of that time and then converged for some family visiting in Southern Oregon. I'll talk a bit about what I learned in visiting 7 different Zen Centers and temples at Wednesday night's talk.
First off this morning, I want to make sure you've heard that we decided that Sunday Program deserves a summer vacation - or maybe that we all deserve a bit lighter practice schedule in the summer. I do know that there a few folks who find Sunday morning the most convenient so I'm sorry about that if that's true for you. It's just making overall energetic sense to give this so-far smaller program a pause - including for me and the Practice Leaders to have fewer talks to prepare.
And it's summer: just a wonderful time to prioritize being outside in our beautiful Mountains and Waters country. Wednesday evening Dharma Seminar will continue steadily along. Talks in June will be by me, going back into the chants in the chant book. Then talks in July into August will be a wonderful series of talks by Kanho Chris and Hannah on a seminal Zen text called the Platform Sutra which tells the biggest of all Zen stories - the story of the brilliant and illiterate 6th Chinese ancestor, Huineng.
And then with the first week of September we'll start the Fall Practice Period. Full details are on the website now and will be announced in the June newsletter too. Our shuso this year is a remote student I hope you've met called Juriki Samuel Senerchia. Juriki Sam will be exploring the intersection of Dharma and the powerful 12-step approach to working with addictive patterns in our lives.
Oh and the 7am weekday sit will continue on Zoom...and it might be we'll start seeing some in person options for that too before long.
So with this talk and next week's talk by Joden Bob we'll wrap up Sunday until September. We were going to take two Sundays off for our annual week long sesshin at Samish Island and then decided looking at the overall situation with our first summer at the temple to go ahead and let Sunday program rest until Fall.
Oh and whether or not you come to Samish for sesshin - and I hope you will, registration is still open, there are scholarships available and if you're newer to sesshin coming to the first half is a great option. Anyway whether you come or not you are welcome to come down to our zendo there on 10:30am each morning that we're there, June 13-19, for Kanho and my Dharma talks. We'll be exploring Zen Master Dōgen's teachings.
As you likely know the topic we're wrapping up this week and next are the powerful and wise teachings of the Six Paramitas - the six ways of going beyond our small selves into the joyful and engaged life of Buddha. We've talked at some length about the first five on the list: generosity, ethical living, patience, joyful effort, and meditation/concentration. This morning I'd like to explore the 6th a little: Prajna Paramita, wisdom beyond wisdom, understanding beyond understanding.
Prajna - wisdom - is what deepens and activates the transformation power of all of the paramitas.
For example to look at the first paramita for a minute - generosity or dana: Prajna understanding is what makes generosity deep and transformational and beyond a kind of transactional idea of being generous because you're supposed to, or because of what you'll get out of it. The Prajna is lifts that out of the relative conditioned world of tit for tat and who deserves whatever it is and who doesn't into the unconditioned world of ultimate reality - where generosity goes beyond any idea of me over here giving you over there some something because of what a great guy I am. Prajna invites a kind of beyondness - a purity that's not the opposite of impurity but a radical lack of clinging and conditions.
So just mentally repeat that for the next 4 paramitas: ethical living with prajna is such a beautiful and unself conscious way of living for and with all beings.
Patience with prajna isn't me being virtuous but a natural expression of how things are that it makes not sense for impatience ever to arise because we aren't clinging to ideas of how something's supposed to be.
Joyful effort with prajna means we never burn out of feel life we aren't getting the outcome we deserve - the effort is offered completely and without condition or fixed expectation (though of course to be skillful we have some discernment of where to apply our effort but then it's an offering, completely and offering, nothing extra in there, nothing sticky, no strings). And you can see how with prajna every paramita has the space to include every other one as several of our speakers have mentioned.
And meditation-concentration with prajna isn't meditating to get something. It's also a joyful, patient, attachment-free engagement with just this. Just this, right here, right now, just this as exactly how it is and how could it be otherwise.
So this wisdom, this prajna, is the secret sauce of the paramitas and the magical elixer of Buddha's life. It's the invitation out of small self and into big self. The boundless and open self of Buddha's Way.
In Norman Fischer's paramitas book, The World Could be Otherwise, he likes "understanding" for prajna and has a helpful chapter on it. He talks about how central it is: "Without perfection of understanding nothing in a bodhisattva life holds up." And how the arising of perfect understanding - of understanding beyond understanding - makes it possible for us to really feel and intuit the empty, fluid interpenetrating nature of all that is. He also emphasizes meditation strongly: that the practice of meditation is an essential condition for the arising of prajna.
Because here's the thing: prajna isn't something you can do - although you can for sure do wiser things in your life. It isn't something you can learn - although you can for sure learn more about the Buddhist path and how prajna is understood and cultivated. And it's absolutely not something you can get, or identify with, or be proud of your great understanding off. To say it's subtle or elusive isn't quite right either because actually it's also quite obvious and clear. But boy do our busy minds, strong opinions, and deep conditioning get in the way!
Here's a poem that has a nice flavor of Prajna to it:
John Welwood - Forget about enlightenment Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be,
Not the saint you are striving to become,
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out,
Touch in,
Let go.
I was especially thinking about the line: You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Just so, just so. And that's true about everything. Everything we think we understand or don't understand is more and less than whatever we can know in that way of concrete or describable learning.
And yet we do try so hard to figure it all out - especially who and what we are. And that's okay as long as we remember that whatever we come up with for our model of the self isn't quite it.
This kind of understanding, this prajna, isn't something we can do or explain, studying prajna helps us realize that while we might have been thinking that the paramita practices of generosity, ethical living, patience, joyful effort, and meditation-concentration as something we can do - and thus we could learn how to do them right, or at least better than we used to. We see that that's not wrong, but it's limited. It's not complete. That's not true understanding or going beyond. It's bound in the narrower frame of relative world. Or me and you, this and that. Prajna encourages us to go beyond any idea of this and that, self and other, me and you. To open to the boundless interpenetrating nature of our big self - to appreciate our Buddha nature. As not just an idea or a cool philosphy but a deep feeling in our bones.
And yet we have to do stuff too. We chose how we spend our time. We choose our activities and our focus. And all of us here have chosen to include Zen practice. But what is it we're doing exactly and how does it really help us grow and transform. How does it help us re-member our true nature as Buddha?
Here's a classic Zen story about all of this about one of the most famous Zen Masters of China - a guy named Mazu. In this story he's a very earnest student. Trying very very hard - lots and lots of virya effort but maybe not always so joyful and how this teacher, Nanyue, helped him see the truth of Prajnaparamita in his effort to meditate and wake up
KTS_147 - Case 139 Nanyue Polishes a Tile
Note
During his training Mazu had left the other monks and gone to live at the temple Chuanxinfa yuan, where he practiced seated meditation throughout the day and night.
Recognizing in him a vessel of the dharma, Nanyue went to him and asked, “Worthy monk, why do you sit in meditation?” Mazu replied, “I wish to become a buddha.”
So Nanyue picked up a roof tile and started to rub it against a stone in front of Mazu’s hermitage. Mazu asked him what he was doing. Nanyue replied, “Polishing it, so that it will become a mirror.” “How can a tile become a mirror through polishing?” asked Mazu. “How can you become a buddha through sitting meditation?” responded Nanyue.
See what the teacher's doing? And you have to really put yourself in young Mazu's place. Imagine working really, really, really hard in your meditation. Sitting on your own. He even left the activites of the monastery to go off on his own in a small quiet temple - like the daily practice of zazen at a Zen monastery wasn't enough for the guy. So he was invested to say the least. "I am doing zazen. I am practicing hard. I am trying to understand. I am trying to wake up!"
And here's the teacher doing this little dance to challenge him, to undermine his idea of "me, unenlightened edition" will now "do zazen" to become "me, enlightened edition."
The story goes on...
Note
Mazu asked, “Then what should I do?”
Nanyue asked, “It’s like riding in an cart. If the cart doesn’t move do you hit the cart or do you hit the ox?” Mazu had no reply.
Nanyue continued, “Are you practicing seated meditation? Are you practicing to be a seated buddha? As for seated meditation, meditation isn’t limited to sitting or lying down. As for being a seated buddha, “buddha” isn’t limited to any fixed form. In the nonabiding dharma, you should neither grasp nor reject. If you sit to be a buddha, you simply kill the buddha. If you cling to the sitting posture, you will never realize the essential principle.”
When he heard this, Mazu felt as though he had just partaken of the finest ghee.
I'd never heard that particular translation of the feeling he had of really tasting prajnaparmita - "he had partaken of the finest ghee" - isn't that sweet? And kind of surprising, I thought ghee was an Indian thing and we're in 8th century China.
In my experience prajna paramita arises when there's more space. More space in the kind of overall less-rushed-life way, sure, but I think it's a mistake to thing that our schedule or our workload is an obstacle and we can't really practice until we're retired or something.
The space in which prajna glows through the cracks is also available in every moment. In the deep pause of just this.
And sure, absolutely, the continuous practice of sesshin is a great support. I have many memories of moments of deep stillness and insight in various sesshins. I was just remembering a moment gazing at the deep dark trees on the hillside at a place up the Frazier Valley where Mountain Rain always used to have their November sesshin with Norman. In the mist I think. It's hard to describe but some sense of deep connection and being absolutely with the tree and the tree with me to the point of no tree, no me. Which sounds a bit pretentious when you try to put it in words. But a moment it seems I'll not forget - that must've been 20 years ago.
And it's also a mistake to think that we need sesshin to experience prajna paramita - the beyondness of all things - we don't need anything. It's exactly the opposite of that - it's stepping out of the believe in needing something to make something else happen that's so ingrained in us we don't even notice that we're thinking that way. It seems logical or natural to think that way.
But that's only the logic of the small self in the relative world.
One nice analogy for the role of prajna in the six paramitas is that the prajna is the palm and the five fingers are the 5 other paramitas. A finger is not the palm, the thumb is not the pointer finger, but it's all one hand. No fingers can function or even be without the palm. Prajna makes everything possible.
And if this way of talking sounds a bit like how I was talking about emptiness in the Heart Sutra talks that's no surprise that are deeply interconnected topics and remember how in the Heart Sutra the central question that Shariputra asks Avalokitesvara to set the whole teaching in motion was, "how can a good son or daughter of the noble way practice prajna paramita" sending the bodhisattva of compassion need into her practice of prajna paramita on behalf of all of us for the rest of time and space.
I'll close with a few suggestions for the practice of prajna paramita, some are so obvious and you've heard them a million times before but that doesn't mean they aren't profound.
- take a breath. and take a breath. right here and now, take a breath.
- invite your heart to open and give generously and patiently to everyone you meet regardless of who they are
- let go of your thoughts, and let go of your thoughts, and let go of your thoughts
- be curious, be open, be full of wonder
- rejoice in the truth that everything you know is incomplete, rejoice in how wonderful it is that we always have so much to learn, and that we have more to learn than we can ever imagine or think about
- smile deeply - let your smile fill the universe
Here's that sweet little poem again. Thank you for listening to my talk. I am curious what you make of all of this. Let's enjoy some discussion with the whole group together this time.
John Welwood - Forget about enlightenment Sit down wherever you are
And listen to the wind singing in your veins.
Feel the love, the longing, the fear in your bones.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be,
Not the saint you are striving to become,
But the being right here before you, inside you, around you.
All of you is holy.
You are already more and less
Than whatever you can know.
Breathe out,
Touch in,
Let go.
