This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good evening. Welcome to all you red-hearted human beings. It's beautiful to see you here tonight. And whether or not this is your first time or your It's wonderful to have you here. Welcome again. For those who might not know me, my name is David Zimmerman, and I've been a resident here for over 17 years, and currently serve as the head of practice at City Center. And this evening, I am continuing a series of talks on our study for the nine-week practice period that we are in the middle of. I'm co-leading with Topher Green and Wendy Lewis here, so it's an honor to be sharing this opportunity with my Dharma sisters.

[01:08]

And we are in the process of studying what's called the six perfections. And for those of you who are not familiar with this particular teaching or study, The perfections are virtues to be cultivated, to strengthen practice, and bring one to awakening, also sometimes known as enlightenment. And these virtues are generosity, ethical behavior, patience, effort or energy, concentration, sometimes known as also meditation, and wisdom. And again, for those of you who may not be familiar with them, the perfections is a translation of the Sanskrit word paramitas, which means having reached the other shore. And this is the crossing from the shore of samsara or suffering to the shore of liberation or nirvana.

[02:12]

And paramita can also mean transcendence or perfection. So one of the reasons why we use perfection instead of paramita. A more nuanced way of understanding paramita is as going beyond. And this is a going beyond meaning that our own experience goes beyond or is not limited by our thoughts, habits, and perceptions about our experience. The each of the perfections are considered somewhat kind of moving up, a progression in a certain way. And the sixth perfection, prajna, paramita, the perfection of wisdom, is that which kind of feeds back into all the other perfections and illuminates them in a further, deeper way. And it actually allows us to transcend the limitations of perception,

[03:17]

of a separate self, so that what we perceive ultimately is wholeness, complete, perfect wholeness. And sometimes you can think of this wholeness another... Well, sometimes I actually think of there's wisdom and there's clear seeing of wisdom, how it is that you see reality and things as it is. And then the experience of wisdom, I've been toying with the idea, is it's actually the experience of love. So in honor of Valentine's Day, I'm going to throw some references into this capacity for love that we have. And love, or this perfect awakening, is actually the source of the... Love of a bodhisattva. This perfect awakening is the source of the love of a bodhisattva. And a bodhisattva is an awakened being who is dedicated, whose sole orientation is towards the liberation of all beings from suffering.

[04:25]

And a bodhisattva's love, as seen through the six perfections, can be characterized as enduring, constant, forgiving, and patient love. And it's a love that's willing to bear all kinds of hardships and difficulties in order to move beyond the inevitable hardship that comes with being human. And so a bodhisattva's love is not characterized by the romantic conditional love that we might be familiar with in terms of this particular holiday today, you know? It's actually a love that transcends. It's a love that is indiscriminate, all-inclusive. It includes all beings in its sphere. And it also can withstand all types of obstacles and challenges and even insults.

[05:33]

And so the love of a bodhisattva is a perfected love, a love that transcends all conditions. This evening, I'm going to focus on and give us an introduction to the third perfection, which is Kashanti Paramita. And there are a number of English translations for the Sanskrit word Kashanti. And they include patience, tolerance. As I read these, I want you to feel in your body your particular relationship to each of these words. As I hear them, what comes up for you? What's your orientation to them? Again, patience, tolerance, forbearance, endurance, composure, acceptance, and forgiveness. So that's quite a number of words for a translation of just one simple word, kashanti.

[06:42]

So this word has this rich understanding a multiple-dimensional aspect to it that we're going to explore this evening. The literal meaning of the word means unaffected by, able to bear, and able to withstand. And in the Japanese and Chinese, when Kashanti is translated, it's translated in two ways. So there's, in Chinese, ren, and in Japanese, nin. And this particular translation, it means to endure, accept, bear, live with, to put up with, and to tolerate. And the other way of translating is renru and ninenku in Japanese. And this means to endure insults, humiliation, abuse, things that offend us, and so on. it's interesting that the Chinese biography for the word kashanti is formed by the symbols for sword over heart.

[07:56]

And therefore emphasizing the capacity to tolerate or endure any form of hardship, including the loss of life. And so this word is not just about... enduring hardship and suffering. It's also about giving ourselves permission to just be with what is. And I think this is kind of the actual ultimate activity that is embedded in this particular word. Being with. Just being with what is. How things are. Not turning away from in any way what it is. So through the practice of kashanti, in time we learn to bear the unbearable. We learn to bear the unbearable truths of our lives and what it means to be a human being.

[09:00]

There are a number of different quotes regarding this particular practice. Shakyamuni Buddha himself said that patience is the greatest wealth, and without it he would not have attained Buddhahood. Now that's a big thing to say, you know. He was dependent on patience in order to obtain Buddhahood. And in his text known as The Way of the Bodhisattva Shantideva, who is an 18th century Indian monk and scholar, claims that there is no spiritual practice equal to tolerance. Dale Wright, in his excellent book on the Six Parafractions, which is what we're using as our main source for this particular practice period, notes that Kashanti can also be translated as the perfection of endurance or the perfection of composure. And he says that bodhisattvas who have trained in this virtue are imperturbable and well-composed, calm, and focused in the midst of adversity.

[10:07]

So rather than being overcome by circumstances and falling into despair or complaint in some way, what a bodhisattva does is they actually conserve their energy. Because when we complain and fall into despair, we're actually losing the focus of our energy. It gets dispersed in some way. So by not falling into despair, focusing our energy, we're able to channel it in a more constructive way. to a positive goal, to the goal in which we have in mind, in this case for the bodhisattva, the channel energy in order to be of service to all beings. And Wright also notes that kashanti can be viewed as a strength, which is a counterpose to weakness. And weaknesses such as a tendency to lose focus, to become fearful, to react in anger to abuses or slights, that injure the body or mind, as well as to yield to the temptations of surrender and despair.

[11:12]

So basically, Kashanti indicates it's a strength of character. And Dale Wright in his book focuses on how it is that we're cultivating character through the practices of the six paramita, allowing us to develop composure and constancy, and in doing so, to embody a unconditional love in our pursuit of universal enlightenment for all beings. As we've been studying the paramitas, the perfections, we've been kind of turning over and noticing the different dimensions of each of them. And in this case... In the case of Kshanti, there are three primary dimensions that I want to introduce you to. The first dimension is that of enduring conditions. Kshanti as enduring conditions, which is the ability to endure personal hardship, to have tolerance for discomfort, poverty, and pain, and to even persevere regardless of one's personal suffering.

[12:24]

So that's the first dimension. The second dimension is having patience with others. And in the terms of human relationships, this means having the capacity to tolerate without anger or hatred. Without anger or hatred, injuries of body and ego, that is insults, caused by other people, and maybe even perhaps forgiving them, which is sometimes included as a fourth dimension in... The third dimension is tolerating, accepting the truth of the Dharma. And this means cultivating the capacity to tolerate, as Dale Wright says, more comprehensive visions of reality that undermine long-standing habits of mental insecurity. And so what we're doing is we're actually accepting the truth about ourselves.

[13:27]

that we are mortal, that we are messy human beings, that we are greedy, that we get angry often. And, so that dimension of accepting ourselves, but also accepting the reality that our sense of self is a delusion. And to turn to face that particular truth is perhaps the most difficult of them all. The Perfection of Kanshante begins with the acceptance of the Four Noble Truths, that there is suffering. And that we're all going to encounter hardships somehow in our life. And what really we need to look at is how it is that we're relating to and encountering these particular hardships. Are we relating to them in a way that actually causes more disease? Or are we relating to them in some way that actually brings relief? The Buddha said that the strength of our spiritual teacher is in his or her patience.

[14:37]

And so develop this capacity to be patient with ourselves and also with each other in some way. Suzuki Roshi said that one must be very patient if one wants to understand Buddhism. From the earliest days of Zen, there's been this practice of those wishing to enter a monastery, would do what is called tengario. And this is a practice of sitting outside the temple gates and waiting to be admitted in some way. And the word tengario actually means, it's Japanese for to stay until morning, with the idea that you would stay all night. But actually, in many cases, the practice would last for days at a time. At Tassajara, our current version of it is a five-day. event. Even though we don't make people sit outside the gate, we've actually been kind enough to allow them to come into the Zendo and we feed them and allow them to sleep in their beds at night.

[15:38]

But the original practice was to actually test people's resolve and their commitment and aspiration for practice. Were they really serious? Were they actually able to take up this path and not be turned away by discomforts and difficulties. Oftentimes, sitting outside the gate would entail all kinds of unpleasant conditions. You know, there'd be physical pain. There could be weather conditions, whether or not deep snow. It could be rain, torrents of rain, lots of heat, stinging bugs, mosquitoes. And the idea is you just stay with that experience. You don't leave. You just continue being there. Even sometimes the abbot would send someone to chase the people waiting, the novices away, and even insulting them some way, saying, you guys don't have what it takes to be here, go away.

[16:42]

And the actual truth is this is sometimes a compassionate way for the abbot to actually give them a break from having to be in the same posture for hours and hours on end. So, even though the novices wouldn't necessarily know that. And so, if you really wanted to join this practice, you had to be willing just to wait and be patient. Suzuki Roshi notes that the usual translation of the Japanese nin for kashanti is patience. However, then, he goes to point out in Zen Mind and Beginner's Mind, the problem with the word patience is is that it implies we are waiting for something to get better. We are waiting for something good that will come. A more accurate word for this quality is constancy, a capacity to be with what is true moment to moment after moment, to discover enlightenment one moment after another.

[17:46]

One must force himself to be patient, but in constancy, There is no particular effort involved. There is only the unchanging ability to accept things as they are. So, from this perspective, Tungaryo isn't a matter of just waiting until you get accepted. It's actually, in that very act, demonstrating right then, in that moment, that you already have the capacity to bear what is difficult, and to do so at the service of a larger calling and not be worried about your own comfort and ease. Willing to sacrifice your own comfort and ease for something larger than yourself. The thing is, even when a novice monk entered and was admitted to the temple, this test of their endurance didn't end there.

[18:51]

And we actually see this for ourselves whenever we come to a temple and we begin practicing zazen. And we finally go, oh, I'm going to do some meditation. We come, we sit down on our cushion. We're all like, okay, here I am. Let's go. Let's wake up. And then within a few moments, something happens. There's a little bit of a twitch down here. There's some pain in the knee. Our mind starts beginning to race. And all kinds of discomfort and disease just basically come rushing up. And here we are thinking, hey, what's this all about? I thought I had already done what I need to do by just showing up. And the thing is, as human beings, our tendency, whenever discomfort arises, is to actually turn away. So we have this experience and we try to run away from it. We are actually wired as organisms to get away from danger.

[19:52]

So it's not our fault. This is how we're hardwired as human beings. So we acknowledge, oh, I just want to get away from this discomfort. How do I do this? The training of a bodhisattva is actually different. A bodhisattva is training to do the opposite of running away. They're training to actually stay with what's difficult. And so in order to, they're staying without difficult, in order to understand in an experience a liberation that is beyond current conditions and circumstances. Beyond the physical, beyond the mental, and beyond the emotional disease that they may be experiencing in the moment. What is beyond all of that experience? Zazen supports us to develop the capacity to be unmoving, but not unmoved.

[21:02]

So we're unmoving in the face of difficulty and discomfort on the cushion. And yet we're still open to what it is that we're experiencing. Our effort then is to actually hold the mind and body steady and upright. kind of like balancing a ship on water. Regardless of whatever energies or waves of emotion or physical discomfort or thoughts that might be coming and trying to topple us over, we stay with our experience. We stay with this capacity to experience the experience that we're experiencing, even if it's deeply disturbing. So what Zazen is teaching us is Zazen. It's teaching us clear seeing and not moving. And we learn to sit and be with reality by learning to sit and being with reality.

[22:09]

And what Zazen is kind of doing is it's actually giving us a neutral set of circumstances for us to actually be with and to train being with discomfort so that when we get off our cushion and move out into the world, we actually have the capacity to deal with larger hardships than just a pain in the knee or an itch or a racing mind. These larger hardships of the loss of a loved one, cancer, war, oppression... All these things, how do we learn to bear them, endure them, cultivate a compassion to be with them in some way that we don't lose ourselves in the process? Shanti Davis said, there is nothing which remains difficult if it is practice. There is nothing which remains difficult if it is practice.

[23:15]

And so when we meet everything through the lens and posture of practice, everything becomes bearable. And it's not that we're going to get necessarily beyond suffering, but we actually move through suffering. How is it that we move through suffering, move through the experience, rather than trying to get around it or bypass it, rather than we try to acknowledge it and face up to it? Again, this capacity to be with. Kshanti, this perseverance of endurance, also keeps us from succumbing to doubt or discouragement or fear, not only in our everyday life but in our practice life. It enables us to stay on the path regardless of what our expectations are in practice. So we may have this expectation that we're going to be suddenly free of our problems the minute we start meditating and practicing Zen. And we actually may make some progress, we feel, in how it is that we relate to the world.

[24:19]

But then at some point, we may have some sense of slipping back. We find that we actually are still having difficulty with our parents, and we still become discouraged. And even then, we try to persist in our practice in some way. So it's actually, patience requires an act of will. It's a choice, not a matter of resignation. It's actually actively choosing to participate in what is happening now in a way that is deliberate. And in doing so, it's empowering. we need to recognize that kashanti is not merely control over patience. Rather, it's the virtue that appears in the absence of hate, repugnance, and malice.

[25:24]

So this brings us to the second dimension of kashanti, which is patience with others, and particularly patience with others under insult. This means a kind of patience that doesn't succumb to anger or aggression or despair when we are threatened by another person. The word forbearance that's sometimes used for Akashanti as a translation captures this particular sensibility because it means refraining from something or abstaining. And what it is that we're abstaining from is meeting harm with harm or meeting insult with insult. So we're encouraged to be mindful of our reactivity. and choose wiser ways to respond to when we are in some way insulted or injured by another person. The Buddhist teacher Arya Sura tells us that developing the capacity to tolerate insults, injustices, and other potential harmful actions with a composed hearing department is essential to bodhisattva practice.

[26:33]

Bodhisattvas, he says, do not get angry in situations in which harm comes from all directions. They do not engage in blaming, reviling, striking, threatening, or harming others for the sake of retaliation. They do not cling to resentment. Any form of retaliation only reifies a sense of the egoic self. Robert Thalright goes on to say that So patience requires humility in this case.

[27:35]

I am... I often think of this when I speak with my brother. He lives on the East Coast. A former military person leans to a very conservative bent compared to me. And whenever politics come up, it's a very difficult conversation. And I'm finding myself basically, I will admit, having kind of a left-coast, you know, liberal point of view. And... And I'm aware of there's a certain arrogance in there that I have to be aware of. How can I set that aside and actually, if I disagree with the way that my brother expresses his opinions, if I stay with it, stay with him long enough, and look from another point of view, I'm actually able to get beneath what it is that he's trying to express, which is a concern. And I realize that we actually have a shared concern.

[28:37]

How is it that we all can be happy and well and taken care of? We may have different opinions about how that can happen in our government, but we still share that concern. So I keep trying to make sure that I stay in relationship to that deeper wish that we share so I don't feel disconnected from him in some way. Patience requires a certain level of spiritual maturity. particularly in the realm of ethical behavior. And so we need to rise above our initial reactivity, our original desire to make someone wrong or put them down in some way. And we need to find, in doing so, a constructive way to engage the other people, even when they're insulting us in some way. I find the practice of pausing to be very helpful in this regard. Because... What it does is it creates a space for something else to happen.

[29:40]

So sometimes you probably are aware of when anger arises, count your breaths for 10 cycles so that you don't say or express something from immediate reactivity, but you give it a little bit of space. And this activity of pausing and finding a wider point of view, a more inclusive point of view, to find out what it is that we might not be seeing. And in doing so, stepping out of our self-centered view and stepping into a we-centered view. How is it that we can come from a view of we-ness? In fact, according to Thich Nhat Hanh, the word inclusiveness better conveys the Buddhist teaching on kashanti. He describes inclusiveness as the capacity to receive, hear, and transform the pain inflicted on you by your enemies and also by those you love.

[30:42]

And he says that the teachings of the four divine abodes are the immeasurable minds, which are love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, are ways of expressing and embodying the sense of inclusiveness. So what we're trying to do through Krishanti is cultivate a heart-mind as immeasurably wide. You can almost say as wide as the universe in some way. The spirit of patience is metta, or loving kindness. And so it's an attitude of gentleness and love, one that is strong enough, though, and robust enough to attempt and to understand and forgive in the face of all provocation and hurtfulness.

[31:56]

So we need to develop this attitude of patience and love and loving kindness towards both others and ourselves. Because if we don't exercise patience, then the fires of hatred and ill will are just going to consume us and fuel more negative reaction. As the Dharmapada says, hate is not conquered by hate. Hate is conquered by love. This is the law eternal. And most of the great social justice and spiritual leaders, such as Martin Luther King, Thich Nhat Hanh, the Dalai Lama, use as the foundation of their efforts a patience that is founded on love, not hate. And they would agree with the sentiment that while there are some acts that we have no right to forgive, there is no one who does not deserve our forgiveness. I also think of the word forgiveness, forgiving.

[32:59]

What is it we're able to give? Forgiving another person. a larger point of view. We're giving the opportunity for healing and repair and another space of growing into wholeness in some way. This brings to mind for me many of the stories of the Tibetan monks who were held and tortured in Chinese prisons. and the ways in which they spoke of how they tried to deal with their jailers and with their captivity. And many of them reported what they most feared during their captivities was not so much the torture that they experienced. They were more afraid about losing their capacity to have compassion and understanding for the Chinese who were imprisoning them. So we can condemn

[34:03]

acts of evil. But to liberate both ourselves and those who perpetuate harm on us, we must learn that they too are products of their conditioning and therefore they deserve love. And this won't be easy for us. How is it that we can study how it is that conditions create the difficulty that we're experiencing? and not to take it personally then in that way. So Kshanti asks us to see beyond the conditions, see from another place, see from an awareness that is unconditioned itself. How do we do that? How do we step back into that awareness? How do we abide in that awareness and meet the conditions as they constantly unfold and change? grasping onto nothing, holding onto nothing, allowing ourselves to be as spacious and wide and open as possible.

[35:11]

And we may talk about practicing patience with others, but I think for many of us, the most difficult practice of patience is with ourselves, with our own forables, our own endless mistakes, our senses of inadequacy, you know. How is it that we give ourselves love, tolerance, kindness, generosity in this way, and understanding that we are too messy-conditioned human beings? I'll quickly go to the final third dimension of Kshanti, which is tolerance or acceptance of the Dharma. And it's kind of interesting because as you move through the perfections, as you move through the paramitas, what happens from generosity towards wisdom, I think we get more uncomfortable. And I think this happens because we realize if we are going to achieve our ultimate vow and our ultimate goal as a bodhisattva to liberate all beings, that that actually calls for

[36:26]

the total dissolution of our self and the ground in which our sense of self stands on. And this discomfort is actually recognized by this third dimension of kashanti, tolerance or acceptance of the dharma of ultimate truth. Another name for this is Dharmashanti, which Dale Wright defines as tolerance of the dharma patient acceptance of the teachings about the nature of reality enough even though they are not yet within our grasp. So, patient acceptance of the Dharma requires us a willingness to see deeply without resistance the truth of the moment and the truth of the deepest levels of reality. And this includes living in accord with the insight that our core teachings There is no self to build up, to hang on to, or to defend.

[37:30]

And so seeing this luminous emptiness at the center of all things means that we begin to let go of the grasping to self-consciousness and fixed ideas of who we are. And this letting go requires a deep patience because deep spiritual insight is an affront to the ego. It's frightening to the ego. It takes, as Linudu was saying on Saturday, lots of courage and energy to persist in the recognition that we have to give up absolutely everything in order to be free. So remember that a bodhisattva's commitment is to keep the heart open, radically open. And sometimes this is painful. Kshanti means that you're willing to enter, you're willing to endure pain because you want to love.

[38:35]

And recognizing that, being willing to experience the pain in this way is necessary in order to open your heart. You're willing to open the heart to hurt in order to love. You're willing to be vulnerable. We're willing to be heartbroken by life and by those around us because, as Leonard Cohen reminds us, that's how the light gets in. And it's not that the light gets in so much as that we allow the light to go out and to meet the light that is in each and every one of us. So if you protect yourself from hurting, you can't love. Little by little, we take up this practice of opening our hearts and feeling a little bit more pain, a little bit more discomfort, a little bit more dis-ease in order to love.

[39:37]

Life is inevitably heartbreaking. We don't need to lose heart in the face of this truth. I like to think of it in the sense that we throw ourselves into the lap of the Buddha. We allow the Buddha within our innate, open, spacious, luminous awareness to bear the unbearable. Because our Buddha heart-mind knows its true nature as light and luminous. So I'll close by a quote from Suzuki Roshi. He said, We should practice and live with patience. In this way, we can control our lives. But control does not mean to gain or achieve something. It means to appreciate and constantly enjoy our life as it is. So thank you for your attention.

[40:41]

Thank you for your patience. Thank you for enduring. You know, it's really hard on Wednesday nights to come to a Dharma talk and sit. It's hard to give a Dharma talk. So we acknowledge our efforts to be here, regardless of what it is that we're experiencing on either side, and be really focused on opening, opening, opening. So thank you for being open to just this. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[41:47]

May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[41:50]

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