Silaparamita: the Perfection of Morality

The art of supporting all beings in fully manifesting themselves

The second of the six perfections is morality - sila - which is a subset of ethics:  whereas ethics involves asking what kind of person we should become, morality specifically involves asking how we should relate to other people. All of the paramitas as well as the precepts and the four noble truths are about ethics; the perfection of morality is specifically about relating to other beings. 

The first paramita, generosity, opens the heart for the practice of morality.  If we wholeheartedly engage in morality, we find that patience becomes of absolutely fundamental importance and will feel a strong need to develop patience.  If we are not trying very hard to be moral, we do not need patience very much.  In trying to perfect morality, the door to the third perfection, patience, opens.

These following points have been helpful for me to reflect on while in meditation.  (Meditation, by the way, is the fifth perfection, so if you want to think more about the meaning of meditation and how it relates to practices of stilling the mind versus active contemplation and visualization, check back in :)  

– The morality of a bodhisattva: through every action of body, speech, and mind, support all beings in fully manifesting themselves.

– Connection: At each moment we can focus on and feel how the actions of our body, speech, and mind can serve to forge a deeper connection with other beings as well as how they can forge disconnection.  The bodhisattva path means to cultivate all the energies arising from your body, speech, and mind so that they facilitate deeper connection. 

– The link between meditation and morality: Attending to the moment – meditation – attunes our bodies to all that surrounds us, increasing our sensitivity and ability to notice subtlety, and thus awakens us to greater moral capabilities.   

– Meditation and intentionality: Meditation allows us to become increasingly aware of our own tendencies and allows us to form ourselves as beings whose intentional as well as unintentional thoughts and actions benefit all beings.  Meditation allows us to set meaningful intentions and follow through on them: If we sit with an intention, we come to understand the more subtle dimensions of it and can act on it.  Through meditation we stay present with a vision of morality that may otherwise be fleeting. 

– Meditation, regret, and shame: We may turn away from what we regret, choosing to move on, and thus lose the chance to grow morally.  In meditation we can face regret, witness the conditions that led us to do something harmful, and imagine skillful possibilities for action in the future.  We can sit with regret and shame with the ideal of enlightenment in mind, with a view towards understanding how ones actions have transgressed that ideal.  Shame entails self-condemnation and self-loathing.  We despise our weakness, question our capacity, and lose our self-respect.  To sit with shame is not to deepen these feelings and punish ourselves, but to witness ourselves with honesty while continuing to pursue our ideals. 

Danaparamita: the Perfection of Generosity

Generosity arises with every movement of body, speech, and mind,
Thus, with each and every movement,
Feel the energy of generosity arise and allow it to constantly
Deepen.  

Dana means "generosity," and paramita means "perfection."  In Buddhism, "perfection" means to constantly engage in deepening a practice, in this case, to constantly deepen ones capacity to be more generous.  Danaparamita is the first of the Six Perfections.  Although all of the perfections work on each other, or perfect each other, they also go in order.  Generosity comes first because it awakens the heart and reduces the tendency to be selfish or self-focused, which is necessary to create the aspiration to pursue the following perfections.  For example, generosity comes before morality - the second perfection - because generosity awakens the desire to cultivate morality in the first place.  I see this all the time as a teacher: one of the best ways to support troubled youth is to give them some opportunity to be generous on a regular basis, such as finding volunteer work that is meaningful to them.  Once these youth are engaged in generosity, they develop a much deeper desire to become better people.  Generosity inspires us, connects us to others, and gives us the energy to further cultivate ourselves. 

To be selfish is to be less aware of others, which is a form of delusion that leads to greed.  Greed is one of the Three Poisons in Buddhism; the others are hate (or dislike/aversion) and delusion.  In greed, we pull things that we desire towards us and often cling to them in ways that produce suffering.  In aversion, we push things away, and in delusion, we are unaware of how these desires and dislikes harm us, of what their causes are, and of how to end them.  

These three poisons are addressed in the Second Noble Truth, which says that the great many forms of suffering that we experience arise from karma, which arises from our desires and aversions, which arise from delusion.  The great tree of suffering, with so many branches of jealousy, anxiety, anger, fear, etc arises from the deep roots of delusion.  The last perfection, wisdom, is the ultimate antidote to delusion, to digging these roots out and toppling the entire tree of suffering.  But generosity comes first, it is one of the best ways to begin the path towards wisdom.

I created the following points about danaparamita to support my contemplation practice.  I was inspired to do this while reading Dale Wrights book The Six Perfections.  Anything in quotes is directly from his book; the rest are my own reflections or my summarizations of his points.  They don't function as a text to read through, but are points for extended reflection.  I hope they can support you in deepening your own path. 

·      - Classical Buddhist scriptures often divide generosity into two types of giving: material things, and the dharma. 

·      - Giving the dharma: To give the dharma means to give either the Buddha's teachings, or to give an understanding of the true nature of reality and ones relation to it.  

    - Enacting the dharma: Giving the dharma means enacting the dharma.  All actions of body, speech and mind can enact the dharma.  Even when speaking directly about Buddhism, the important thing is to enact the dharma in the way we speak, in the way we are present with ourselves and others. 

    - Giving material things: We can give the gift of the dharma in the way we give material things. Giving material things with insight and love can open the heart of another.  A gift may only be material on the surface; the true gift is a dharma gate, an opportunity to enter more deeply into the dharma.  

·   - For example, when giving a gift out of love, love is the dharma gate, not the physical gift itself. 

·    - Monks do not have many material things to give, but visualize giving great wealth as a mental practice of offering abundance.  In visualization, the abundance we can offer is infinite.  Through visualizing giving far more than can possibly be given, we can cultivate generosity. 

·    - Visualizations of generosity create a heart that is ready to give; reflections on generosity generate the insight necessary to give well. 

·    - Visualize giving ones highest energy to the world at each moment: every breath, every flutter of the mind… a gift of loving energy; of energy devoted to the enlightenment of all the beings around you.

·    - When practice is difficult, visualize offering its fruits, even if in the distant future. 

·    - Visualize the gift of generosity to the self, and of the highest generosity to the self being the gift of enlightenment.   

·    - Restraint from bad habits is a great gift to oneself; in moments of suffering due to restraint, in moments of desire to fall back into a bad habit, visualize ones restraint as a form of great beauty and say, in this moment of suffering, I am being truly generous to myself and thus generous to all beings.  

·    - Practice such restraint - practice discipline - with warmth and love: strong yet soft. 

·    - Scriptures as meditation manuals and visualization texts: In reading scriptures, consider how they might function as meditation manuals rather than literal texts.  Then consider how the energy brought to text shapes the way we receive and interpret the text.  For example, this passage: A bodhisattva must cast away even his body, and he must renounce all that is necessary for life.  Just as many texts describe Buddhists offering celestial and kingly gifts, this is a visualization more than a literal practice.  However, visualization must be accompanied by appropriate energy.  If we visualize renunciation and feel cold and stoic, we are only feeling our immediate reaction to the words, not the intention of the text: the visualization only functions accompanied by warmth and serenity.  When considering passages as potential visualizations, bring awareness to the fact that our original reaction to the passage may bring the wrong energy to it, and consider what energy allows the visualization to support the goal of enlightenment.

·    - In summation: Approach scripture with these questions: How might this function as a visualization?  What energy would allow this visualization to facilitate enlightenment? 

·    - What is a dharma gift?  The gift of dharma is the gift of opening a moment for another being in which they can sense the full flowering of their life and the lives of others.  The dharma allows us to sense what it would be to live the most beautiful life possible and to understand the steps to take in moving towards that life.  In making gestures that create a space for a person to become receptive to the dharma, we give the dharma.  What allows a gesture to open a person up to the dharma is the attitude of the gesture.  And the mindfulness, the love, the insight that informs the gesture is itself the dharma.  The actual gift – the gesture – is not separable from the energy of the way it was given. 

·   -  Whenever actions of body, speech, and mind are opening doors for other beings to feel the full flowering of their life, dharma gifts are being given.  

·    - A bodhisattva gives simply because a need exists.  Needs exist at every moment.  The need of each moment is to be attentive to the moment and fully meet it.  As practice deepens we perceive and gain the capacity to meet increasingly subtle needs. 

·    - The love I would like to have with another: two people continuously learning to meet each other more subtly; supporting each other in meeting all being more subtly.  To meet with more subtlety is to meet with deeper love.

·    - Ownership: Giving is perfected when one overcomes a sense of ownership and no longer feels a sense of “mine”, a sense of having given something up, a sense of righteousness or pride for having let go of what was “theirs.”  This is true of physical possessions as well as of ideas that we might cling to or feel that we possess.   

·    - Wise judgment often calls for not-giving, which is giving of a different sort: stories of zen masters accosting students exemplify giving through not-giving.  To learn from these stories we should ask: “what is the gift here?”  A good teacher is always giving some sort of dharma gift, it is up to us to discover what it is, especially if our first reaction is negative.    

·    - The generosity of being approachable: Generosity is not always reaching out; it often entails allowing others to come to us.  Our physical and psychological presence, our speech and our silence, can allow others to feel at ease and approach us.  We do not create the conditions for others to approach by telling them that we are open and approachable.  The gift of approachability arises when our body, speech, and mind reveals selflessness and warmth and compassion for all beings.

·   -  Closeness towards all beings: We can give warmth even to those who treat us coldly.  We have the freedom to not have our actions be predetermined by those of others.  If others give us coldness, we can still give warmth.  This often requires visualization.   

·    - The generosity of criticism: We can criticize in a way that is clearly motivated by care, that is warm and insightful, that helps other beings feel seen.  Less mindful criticism may not be understood to be caring by the one we are criticizing, even if it is.  Thus the generosity of criticism depends of the energy we criticize with. 

·    - Being generous to oneself: Pursuing the dharma is the greatest possible gift to self and others.  Pursuing this great generosity necessitates refraining from giving lesser gifts… say, the gift of sleeping in versus the gift of sitting morning zazen.

·    - The difficulty of generosity: If not reciprocated, or done only out of a sense of obligation, generosity may feel like a burden, a fruitless expense of energy.  Treat such feelings with warmth and turn to the sangha for support.  

·    - Generosity and thankfulness: We can give only because we have been given infinite gifts, gifts that go beyond what we can possibly be aware of, gifts that have brought us to this current state of pursuing the dharma.  I am thankful for and recognize my dependence on the many unseen dharma gates that have been opened for me. 

·    - One person’s generosity or thankfulness opens the hearts of others to be generous and thankful. 

The dharma of adapting Buddhism

Yesterday at the Berkeley Zen Center, Sojun Mel Weitsman reflected on how when Suzuki Roshi asked him to start the center, one of his tasks was to build a library.  They had little money, so the community donated many non-Buddhist books which Sojun then traded in at local bookstores for Buddhist ones. He collected virtually all the Buddhist texts published in English, ending up with one bookshelf.

Hearing his story reminded us of exactly how new this tradition is to the West.  In Sojun’s lifetime, he has seen a flowering of temples and teachers in the United States.  Popular Buddhist magazines exist where there used to be none at all; multiple rooms can now be filled with well-researched, deeply insightful books; major universities host popular and respected PhD's in Buddhist studies.  

He spoke of how this flowering of the dharma in a new land has often felt like a “grand experiment" requiring many adaptations.  When I asked him what adaptations he felt were most important, he quickly answered that American Buddhism was responsible for two major alterations that Buddhist leaders around the world are seeking to emulate.  The first is the striving for total equality of men and women within Buddhist practice.  In the United States, this has been a journey requiring sangha members to examine their own roles in patriarchal culture and to contribute to changing that culture.  Sojun stressed that we have the benefit of being used to and expecting continuous change, whereas in Japan change happens much more slowly.  Even though Japanese priests are working on it, reshaping culture is far more difficult.  The second adaptation was the introduction of zazen as a lay practice.  Sojun described how he has been working with Japanese priests for two decades in helping to bring these modifications to Japan.  Japanese priests, he said, are deeply impressed by the ability of American temples to bring meditation to the public.

Sojun’s talk was deeply affirming for me.  I have felt the need to leave certain traditions and teachings behind, the simple examples being reincarnation and laws of karma based in it.  While many western Buddhists do believe in these, it's important to note that throughout Asia, cosmology has been a major part of Buddhism.  Both cosmology and the vast bulk of ritual activity has been left behind by American Buddhists.  Despite the fact that many Buddhists around the world would hardly recognize American Buddhism as a form of Buddhism, these dramatic changes are nonetheless extensions of the dharma. 

Part of my practice is also taking teachings in new directions, such as my recent reflections on the paramitas.  In these contemplations I've been developing my own thoughts, inspired in part by tradition and in part by the reflections of recent Western ancestors like Reb Anderson and scholars like Dale Wright, who themselves take traditional teachings in new directions. The reflections on the paramitas from across Asia are immensely beneficial, but there is also much that is not said about such important topics as generosity, patience, and wisdom: as American Buddhists, we are taking these in new directions, and extending the dharma by doing so. 
  

I have been experiencing a growing desire to spread the dharma.  I don't know what this means for me because I have no intention of becoming a priest.  Although I increasingly feel drawn to the idea of spending a long period in meditation, study, and reflection in order to embody and understand the dharma, I cannot imagine the priestly route of stepping away from my activity in the world.  I have, however, reached a place where it feels important to communicate the dharma to many people from all walks of life, to contribute to helping people make sense of the dharma in this new soil.  It is not just me and my sangha that thrives on the dharma, the world needs it.  It has to be communicated very clearly and thoughtfully in order for the roots to continue to spread and to deepen.  This communication and taking root requires extending traditional teachings in new directions.  New directions don't mean straying from essential teachings and practices, but fully meeting the moment and recognizing what works here and now.  If we meet the moment fully here, in San Francisco and in the United States, we will apply the dharma in an appropriate and specific way which will entail altering tradition.  Sanghas around the world will very likely learn something from us. 

Thankfulness as generosity

Another post on the many manifestations of danaparamita, the perfection of generosity.  

My mother has been suffering from major health problems recently.  After a month in a nursing home, I am extremely thankful that she is healthy enough to be home once more, thankful that she can be in a warm and cozy space, thankful that she can once again sit in her chair and look out over the narrow strip of water that separates Alameda and Oakland.  

I want to write about a moment of thankfulness that she shared with me while she was still in the nursing home.  We were sitting calmly together, and in a very sweet moment after reading a story, she expressed with great sincerity how lucky she felt and how thankful she was.  She acknowledged that things could easily have been much worse.  She was thankful for what she did have of her health.  And she was so, so thankful for all the love she had in her life. 

Her expression of thankfulness was a great gift to me because it opened a space for my own.  My inability to find work as a history teacher despite years of hard work and complete devotion to the teaching path had driven me into an incapacitating depression.  As she expressed thankfulness, deep in my own body I could feel how right she was.  Her expression allowed me to fully feel how much I had to be thankful for despite feeling so unacknowledged and unsuccessful.  Thankfulness didn't get rid of that suffering.  But it did put it in a larger perspective, in which it wasn't such a big deal.  In depression we have trouble seeing outside of our suffering, and by focusing on it, allow suffering to overcome us.  In thankfulness, we focus on what is beautiful in life.  Suffering is real, but it is only part of the story.  Thankfulness shows us the other part. 

Giving thanks is seeing things clearly.  It is being present with reality.  It is loving.  It is a skill we can cultivate, a spiritual technique, a practice we can use to offer ourselves a more expansive view.  Thankfulness is spiritual because it allows us to enter into a deeper, more subtle and more perceptive relationship to this world.  If we practice the spiritual technique of thankfulness with sincerity we will see more clearly and love more deeply.  Giving thanks may start as a mental activity, but the mental activity serves to allow the body to become thankful.  We can feel and express thankfulness in the way we sip tea or touch another human being.  I imagine that bodhisattvas are beings whose bodies express love and thankfulness in each moment, and whose expressions of love and thankfulness open doors for others to be loving and thankful as well. 

Thankfulness is a form of danaparamita because when we are thankful, we are being generous to all beings.  People who give sincere thanks together develop love together and become dharma sisters and brothers. 

Allowing others to fully approach to us

Buddhists have traditionally divided danaparamita, or the perfection of generosity, into two parts: the giving of physical objects that benefit other beings, and the giving of the dharma.  However, giving physical gifts should always involve giving the dharma because the spirit in which we give should embody the dharma, should embody selflessness, compassion, and wisdom.  The way in which physical gifts are given can be the true gift.

Generosity is often thought of as giving physically or of actively reaching out.  But there is also the great gift of receiving, of being available, of being approachable.  What does it mean to perfect approachability?  It does not mean spiritual charisma or energy that entices people to approach.  Approachability means cultivating a certain physical and psychological presence so that when people watch our body language, look into our eyes, or hear our tone of voice, they will understand that they are deeply accepted and safe with us.  This is not about the mind.  Our body communicates to their body that they are completely accepted.  Without reaching out at all, on the surface offering nothing, we can in fact offer everything.  In this way we can allow people to fully approach us.
 

Approachability is perfected when our body, speech, and mind reveal our true warmth and compassion for all beings, just as they are.  It is perfected when everything about ourselves shows to others that we do not wish they were different in any way.  In zazen we fully face and accept ourselves.  We learn to witness and care for what is true in ourselves.  This is training for witnessing and caring for what is true in the world rather than expending energy wishing that things were otherwise.  The body that wishes that things were otherwise, that does not totally accept other beings, will not be a fully approachable body and thus will not fully manifest danaparamita.  Perfecting approachability includes witnessing and caring for people who are cold and distant towards us.  Their distance need not be ours; their wish that things were otherwise need not be our wish.  We can offer warmth and remain approachable in all circumstances.  We can at least reflect on this matter and work towards this goal.

When we practice witnessing and caring for what is true in ourselves and the world, we become at home in ourselves and in our interconnectedness with the world.  As our new ino Kyosho Valerie Beer wrote today, "the purpose of meditation is to come home...  Dogen called zazen 'the full investigation of the homeward course.'"  We are home right here, we do not need anything to be different; in finding home we have transcended the acquisitive mind. Not needing the world to change for us allows others to be at home with us.  Thus zazen provides shelter for all beings.    

Acquisitive energy is alive in each precept

During my morning reflections on the precepts, I read part of Reb's chapter on not-lying.  He mentions that, for many people, the precepts regarding intoxication, sexuality, and lying are connected.  Intoxication makes lying and bending the truth much easier – some of us may even become intoxicated to enable ourselves to be more willing to bend the truth.  If intoxication is a problem for us, its something we would be very tempted to lie about, including to ourselves; and of course, intoxication can lead to a lack of mindfulness regarding sexuality.  Sexual desire can facilitate lying for many reasons; one is because the desire to impress can lead many of us to bend the truth about ourselves.  

I found myself thinking of how the desire to impress, which can all too easily involve a lack of honesty, is often the desire to acquire, and realized that these precepts were also intimately connected with not-stealing. 

The precept of not-stealing has not meant much to me before, because I was thinking of it simply in terms of stealing physical objects.  However, considering not-stealing as the acquisitive mind and body, the mind and body that wants more than it already has, the mind and body that wants to own or control something, the mind and body that is not fulfilled by what it has in the present, has made this precept fruitful.  Considering not-stealing in this light has allowed me to consider how this precept facilitates perfecting other precepts: reading about not-lying, I was also reading about not-stealing.  

The being that lies - the being that refrains from total forthrightness, the being that speaks in half-truths or promotes obscurity rather than clarity - is often a being that feels the urge to acquire something; the being that is not mindful about sexuality is often a being who feels the impulse to acquire the attention of another being in a variety of ways and may even want to own or determine the way the energy of another being manifests.    

One of the great gifts we can give the world - one of the manifestations of danaparamita or the perfection of generosity - is a highly developed non-acquisitive nature.  When we develop this nature, others can feel free around us and truly cared for by us: we are not trying to get anything from anybody but are caring for all beings, including ourselves, exactly as we are.

When reflecting on many of the precepts – even those involving maintaining rituals and taking refuge – I realize it is fruitful to ask myself: do I have any acquisitive energy around this precept?  In some form, I do have acquisitive energy around every single precept, and part of the work of gradually perfecting the precepts will be working with the many manifestations of acquisitive energy. 

Remembering Georg Feuerstein

In the past month three friends have had loved ones pass before their time.  Sitting with them in their grieving I have felt sturdy and present, like an Atlas with the world feeling completely light on my shoulders.  I was simply there to support; it was not my partner, my sibling, my friend who had passed on so young.  It was not my grief, so the burden was light.   But leaving them, I have felt fragile, felt the total weight of the world.  But leaving them, perhaps by their grief I was reminded of my own friends who have passed.  And other events in my life force me to recognize the fragility of the body on the one hand, and the complete lack of control I have over events in my own life on the other. 

Today I hear that Neil Armstrong passed.  Neil was actually somewhat mythic to me; I was born in DC, had family working in NASA, and as a history buff was aware of the political construction of his mythology as part of cold war strategy: America had taken "one giant step for mankind," not the USSR.  As Suzuki Roshi himself implied in his contemporaneous lectures recorded in "Not Always So," the actual importance of that step was wildly dubious.  Not only the spiritually minded understood this; a military mind as keen as Eisenhower's understood the space-race as pure politics.  Myths always shatter when we investigate them; but rather than losing meaning history allows mythology to become more rich and complex, deeply involved in social constructions and political strategies.  In my psyche, Armstrong held a rich and symbolic place in American history.  

Today I also heard of the passing of the great yoga scholar Georg Feuerstein, whose work had a great impact on me.  The fact that the news came from a friend who knew and loved Georg heightened the affect.  These deaths, unlike watching my own loved ones grieve, simply reminded me: death is here.  It is here all the time.  People are dying, all the time.  Perhaps not the people we know, but if we think of all people, they are constantly drifting in and out of existence.  I recalled the first time visiting San Francisco after being in the Arizona desert for a long time.  I looked out over the city and thought to myself: "Wow: in that space I am looking at, someone is dying right now.  Someone is being born right now.  People are experiencing terrible suffering right now.  And others are experiencing the heights of bliss, in this very moment."  

As I rode my bike across the Fruitvale bridge from Alameda to Oakland, stopping to look at the channel, I suddenly felt at peace with death, as I have so often in the past.  This is part of being here, for this brief time.  Georg pursued the dharma and contributed to many lives while he was here.  Beyond that: he was a significant part of reshaping Western culture and may we continue his legacy in our own way by infusing our lives with the dharma and communicating the dharma as clearly and insightfully as possible.  His life was beautiful.  Life is transience and his transience was beautiful and so is our transience.  As I looked over the waters, instead of mourning his death, I felt increased inspiration to pursue and spread the dharma as he had.  Dark feelings were replaced by deep feelings of gratitude.    

What did Georg Feuerstein do?  I don't know much about his life.  But when I was young and in the desert and obsessed with Mircea Eliade (thanks, in fact, to James Bae who informed me of Georg's passing), Georg took me to a deeper level of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras than Eliade had done.  I don't refer to Patanjali much these days, and when I do, I use Edwin Bryant's commentary, but that doesn't matter: Bryant needed Feuerstein and maybe Feurestein needed Eliade.  There is a yogic-scholarly lineage.  And while it is brutally easy to criticize Eliade as a fascist these days - a real criticism which at the same time reveals an ineptitude at contemplating history - the fact remains that all three of these scholars practiced yoga with sincerity and communicated it to us with the utmost lucidity.  

Feuerstein was an incredible scholar and practitioner.  The practitioner side of him, the side of him that cared so much about spreading the yogic dharma in order to support all beings, allowed his scholarly side to be put to service and to communicate clear and concise histories to the broad yoga public.  Feurestein's "The Yoga Tradition" remains the best introduction to yoga for this public, and his "Encyclopedia of Yoga and Tantra" is the best way for general practitioners to familiarize themselves with the language of yoga.  His work lives on and will deeply inform the next generation of serious yoga practitioners.   

“May we not spend our days and nights in vain.”  I miss this chant; I miss those brief times in my life when I have chanted this daily with the sangha.  Recognizing the transience of life, with a community, is powerful, is a powerful way to sidestep delusion and be totally real with other people.  Together, may we not spend our days and nights in vain.  We do not know how long we will be here and that is okay.  In this moment we can cultivate the mind of enlightenment together and love each other.