This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. Good morning. I was invited to come and give a talk this morning on sila paramita. Sila Paramita is the second of the six Paramitas. And here at City Center, there is an intensive period of practice in which there is a study of the six Paramitas happening. So, Sila Paramita is most often translated. How's that sound? Okay. Sounds echoey to me, but that's okay.

[01:00]

Someone was signaling, turn it up. Up? A little up? Okay. Sila Paramita is most often translated as something like the perfection, paramita, of sila, ethics, morality, virtue. And when I was asked to give a talk on this topic, I thought, uh-oh. These are both pretty tricky words for us. There can be a kind of negative association with both ethics, which can feel kind of tight, you know, and restrictive and maybe finger-waggy. and even punitive, right? And then you add to that perfection.

[02:01]

You might as well just give up now, right? So the word param means the highest or the best, and it's often translated as perfection. Or paramita, if you break the word in half, refers to a kind of crossing over to the other shore. So my hope this morning is that I can speak to us about sila paramita in a way that undoes some of the kind of negative or restrictive or uptight perfectionistic valence that may come for many of us with that term. And really to invite all of us to have a different orientation, to invite you to take a different perspective on how it is that this particular paramita, the sila, can support us

[03:21]

support us not so much in tightening but in opening in releasing in supporting us in practicing in an ongoing way waking up in our day-to-day lives so there's a sutta that i have been quoting and practicing with for some time. This is from the Pali Canon. For those of you who don't know me, I'm a teacher in dual lineage in both Theravada insight meditation and also in Soto Zen. So this is a sutta in which there's a conversation between the Buddha and a merchant whose name is Jatta. So it's called the Jatta Sutta. And in the Jata Sutta, Jata comes to the Buddha and says, a tangle within and a tangle without.

[04:34]

The people of this world are entangled in a tangle. Gautama, tell me, who can untangle this tangle? And it struck me, you know, this was 2,600 years ago. The world was caught in a tangle. And here we are. So the first thing that the Buddha says to Jatta is, one who is established in sila, one who is established in ethics, in morality, this is a one who can untangle this tangle. And maybe, like me, some of you came here hoping to untangle a tangle. Every time I come to a city center, which is not that often, I have a flood of memory.

[05:36]

And I looked it up. It's been almost 40 years since I showed up one Sunday morning for the first time. And when I arrived, I was quite sure that I wanted this inner tangle unraveled. And I wanted the practice to really to fix me. You know? I had tried many other things and nothing else worked, so I thought, let's just try, you know, meditation. Maybe that'll work. And many of us come to spiritual practice with that mind, with the mind of... self-improvement, with the mind of trying to make things better. And I will say, and I'll speak about it more as we unfold the talk, that the tangle was untangled, but not the way I expected.

[06:40]

Because what we discover as we begin to untangle the tangle... Go. are all of these, this whole tangle of beliefs and assumptions, ideas that we have about ourselves and each other and the world. And for me, what was underlying my deep wish to be untangled, to be fixed, to be healed, was the belief that I was broken. And that was the tangle that the practice untangled. It was so much better to discover that I wasn't broken, that it would have been to be fixed. But I couldn't have imagined that when I first arrived. So I have been thinking a lot of practice, the whole of our practice, as a kind of radical reorientation of our

[07:47]

often deeply held and sometimes quite unconscious views and opinions about who we are and how we should be. And practice brings us surprise. It reorients us. It helps us see ourselves in the world in new ways. So my hope is that we can have that happen a bit with sila paramita. But I want to share with you, before I speak more about Sila, my favorite poem that describes so beautifully this reorientation that can happen and which also, I think, holds the seeds for a different way to engage with Sila than kind of a tight or restrictive or slap on the hand or critical or need to improve kind of way.

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So this is a poem of awakening from one of the early Buddhist nuns whose name is Dhammadina. Those of you who've practiced with me will have heard this before because I so love this poem. Dhammadina was one of the leaders of the Bhikkhuni Sangha. And the poem is called, She Who Has Given Herself to the Dhamma. She writes, For so long, for so long, I thought only of the river's end. She wanted to perfect herself too. This is how we come in. We think there's somewhere to go. We think there's something to get. We think there's someone to become. This deep longing. For so long, I thought only of the river's end.

[09:59]

Then one morning, I set my paddle down to watch the sun rise. over the eastern hills, only to find myself floating somehow gently upstream. I promise, it was not what I expected. So we may come in thinking we know what we want, And the yearning is real, that wish to come to the end of our suffering, to find a way to be free, to find a way to live in peace. But what would it mean to practice, even to practice sila, ethics, morality, by putting the paddle down?

[11:09]

This is a different way of engaging. So sila is the second paramita. It is also the very center of the Eightfold Noble Path. So the Buddha taught that there is suffering and there's an end of suffering and there is a path, there is a way of engaging in our lives that helps move us in that direction. And the Beginning of the path is what the first section or basket or bucket is called panya, wisdom. And this is where the reorientation happens. The wisdom part of the path includes wise view, which is where we're looking, and wise intention. And the radical reorientation that happens in our practice is a shift from our usual

[12:12]

view and intention. And this is not very complex. And if we're honest, if we look at our lives, we will see that many of us are functioning in this way. So Buddhist psychology says that every moment we are flooded with pleasant and unpleasant phenomena. It's a fancy word for sights and sounds and smells and tastes and touch and people. and circumstances and headlines. And moment by moment, as we receive this flood of input, we have a very simple but kind of reactive response, which is that if it's pleasant, I like it, I want it, I try to hold on. If it's unpleasant, we do the opposite, right? I don't like it, I don't want it, I judge it, I reject it, I try to get rid of it, I try to push it away.

[13:16]

And if we look at our lives, we will see that we are constantly being batted about by this liking and not liking, wanting and not wanting. And all of that is based on an often unexplored, unexamined assumption, a tangle. And that tangle is that We believe, if only, you can fill in the blank, if only for you, if only I could get what I want and get away from what I don't want, then I would be happy. And maybe those of you who show up at Zen Center on a Saturday morning are already on to the folly of this. way of engaging in our lives, you've maybe noticed that it doesn't actually work so well.

[14:19]

Grasping an aversion, wanting and not wanting, trying to get and get away from, it doesn't make us happy. It makes us tired. Why? Because it's endless. on and on and on. And this is what an old mentor of mine used to describe. We all carry the belief somewhere inside us of this island where it all works out. So we're trying to get and get away from the belief that if only I do that, I'll get there. I'll get to the other side of the river. I'll find my way to the place where I can rest. And there is a place of rest. But we don't get there this way.

[15:22]

We have to reorient. So wise view is the first part of the path, this wisdom of reorienting. And how do we reorient? The second step of the path is wise intention. We begin to live our life rather than in a state of ongoing reactivity, of grasping and pushing away. We consider what's important. What do I really care about? And we point ourselves. We intend in that way. And that intention is played out in this middle section of the path, which is, so the first part is panya, wisdom. And then wisdom is embodied, enacted, engaged through sila. Sila has to do with our behavior, our conduct, our activity, our relationships, through wise speech, wise action, and wise livelihood.

[16:28]

And the orientation, the reorientation that comes, the intention with sila is not to be good. The intention is to do no harm. Imagine what a different world it might be if instead of navigating by trying to get what we want and get away from what we don't want, we held in our hearts the wish to do no harm. This is what we sometimes refer to in this tradition as living by vow. living in a way that is intentional rather than reactive. There's a word that I think helps explain what it means, this do no harm.

[17:32]

It's sometimes translated as harm is the opposite of wholesomeness, or doing harm is to activity that's unwholesome. And harmful activity is no. Not doing harm is wholesome. There we go. And doing harm is unwholesome. But the root term is really interesting. It comes from the word kusala. So kusala is wholesome and akusala. When you put an A in front of something, it means no or not. So akusala would be unwholesome. But kusala... is better translated really not as wholesome but as skillful. Because kusala was, is a kind of grass. And in the old days, in the time of the Buddhas, the Buddha and the monks and the nuns and the people who practiced with him, they used grass to make their sitting cushions.

[18:36]

They didn't have buckwheat holes and cotton and kapok. So they would gather this grass to make their seat where they would sit. And the thing is that the grass, some of you probably have this experience, has sharp edges. So kusala has to do with being skillful at handling the sharp edges of our life. How do we turn something that's potentially harmful that can slice our hands into something useful, something that can support us as we practice. So if we're going to talk about behavior, conduct, sila, this is talking about action. We have to talk about karma.

[19:40]

And karma here means the karma of body, speech, and mind. The karma of what we think, what we say, and what we do. And karma is a pretty wildly misunderstood term, I think. The simplest translation of the word karma just means action. And the law of karma, sometimes called the law of cause and effect, It means that every action has an impact. Every action has consequences. And this is true because we're part of this web of interbeing, which means that everything, everything that you think and say and do, ripples. Everything that you think and say and do matters.

[20:42]

This is one of the first places that we can be invited to step in by recognizing that what we do counts. What we do is important. What we don't do is also counts and is also important. But we want to begin to practice by waking up to karma and karma I think are really important to say it doesn't mean fate sometimes it's described that way and at the time of the Buddha there was a caste system a very rigid system that determined what you were born into determined what was possible for you that was considered karma and the Buddha said no no no He changed all of that. He said, whatever caste you come in with, and of course, we have our own caste systems here.

[21:48]

Whatever the conditions of your life that you are born into, first of all, you are welcome. This path is for you. It's not just for the person sitting next to you, or the person who's not wiggling, or the person who's wearing robes or has a shaved head. This was a wildly, widely inclusive invitation that the Buddha offered in his Sangha. So part of practicing with karma is to recognize, first of all, to notice that we come in with conditioning. I think it's Anais Nen who said, we don't see the world as it is, but as we are. It's a humbling orientation to recognize that what we think is true is always conditioned by our karma, by our past history, by our culture, by our upbringing, by our education.

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And we live in a system in which there is a radically uneven playing field. So part of working with karma is to begin by acknowledging that tangle. Many of you are familiar with the beautiful full moon ceremony that's done here at Tsurisana, which opens with the words, all my ancient twisted karma from beginningless greed, hate, and delusion. born through body, speech, and mind, I now fully avow. We notice, we pay attention, we acknowledge our tangle. We acknowledge all of the ways in which we are confused, all of the ways in which we are reactive. So part of our practice

[24:08]

is this untangling of the tangle. We don't have to get rid of it, just like you don't have to get rid of parts of yourself or your thoughts while you're sitting. No, you want to see it for what it is, with as much clarity and kindness as you can, to see, oh, there it is again. I believe this. I thought that. Or, like me, you're sure of what you wanted. And when we're so sure, we close ourselves off to these other possibilities, this possibility of putting the paddle down, of being surprised. We can wait until the full moon to come and do our confession of our karma of our reflecting on our behavior, or we can practice with it every day.

[25:13]

This was the Buddha's instruction to Rahula, his son. It's one of the most, I think, tender descriptions in the Pali canon of how to practice. The Buddha says to Rahula, Rahula, what is a mirror for? And Rahula says, it's for reflection. And then he goes on to explain to Rahula that as he goes through his days, he should pay attention before, during, and after. Every karmic act, every thought, everything he says, everything he does, he should pause before and consider, will this be true? skillful or unskillful? Will this cause harm or not cause harm? So we pause at the beginning.

[26:17]

We pause in the midst of engaging. That's the hardest part, right? In the heat of the moment. And we also can pause at the end and consider, was it skillful? Was it harmful? This is what I call working with the arc of karma. That every activity has a beginning, a middle, and an end. That it begins with our intention. What is my intention? Maybe it's useful, skillful to pause before I hit send. Yeah? We want to pay attention as best we can when we're engaged, when we're speaking, when we're acting like that. And we definitely want to notice the impact How did it land what I said? How did it land what I did? And this part, of course, often there's a miscue between my intention and the impact.

[27:19]

This happens all the time. That's not what I meant, right? The only way that we can find out the impact often is we have to ask. This was my intention, but how did it land for the other people who were there? It requires us to engage with one another. And it asks us to be humble, to be willing to recognize that even our best intentions sometimes don't work out the way we had hoped. And in this way, we set ourselves up not in a place of punishment, you know, and self-criticism, but in an ongoing process of learning. Our whole life can become an opportunity, as the Buddha said to his son, for us to wake up, to pay attention to our actions, to pay attention to the impact of our actions, to pay attention to our intention, so that

[28:33]

we too can begin to transform our karma. That's how it happens. The Buddha says to Rahula, if you find out that something you thought or said or did was not skillful, then you should confess. You should apologize. But if you find out that something that you said or thought or did was skillful, it was helpful, then you You should celebrate. So this practicing with sila is not all negative. We can also notice when our actions are skillful, when they don't cut, when they are supportive like that. So this begins to give you a flavor of what it would look like to practice with sila with this vow, this wish to do no harm in a way that is not tight or rigid or punitive, but in a way that is

[30:02]

wide open that is an invitation to pay attention an invitation to let all of your actions all of your speech all of what you do all of what you think all of your interactions be the grist for waking up for discovering for yourself what is skillful and what isn't and as we learn about ourselves in this way we can begin to untangle the tangle. This, my friends, is not hard work. It is heart work. This is a practice in which we are invited to put the paddle down and to open ourselves to be interested, to be curious, to see from other perspectives. because we'll always have our own perspective.

[31:08]

And it's not that our perspective is necessarily wrong, but it's always partial. And when we open ourselves in this way, we get to take in and learn. We get to begin to disentangle for ourselves and find a way to live more and more fully without doing harm. without slicing our hands. We find a way to be in the world that is helpful to ourselves and to others. The heart of the reorientation that I'm pointing to, which was so true for me when I first came is the shift from believing that we are flawed or mistaken or broken to recognizing that the truth of our innate goodness, our innate Buddha nature.

[32:26]

If we practice from the place of just self-improvement, It will be endless. And yet, this doesn't mean we don't make an effort. Some of you know the quote from Suzuki Roshi who said, you are perfect just as you are. This is real perfection. You are perfect just as you are and you could use a little bit of improvement. So we begin with this sense of innate perfection. This is a different meaning of perfection. It's not the perfection of trying hard to get somewhere. It's the perfection of coming home to what's here, of untangling the tangle so that we can reveal or we can have revealed this

[33:29]

immense beauty that sits in your seat. And again, if you hear this and you think, you know, you look over your shoulder at the person sitting next to you, no, I'm talking to you. This is for all of us, this teaching. For many of us, certainly for me, this is a radical reorientation. So I talked about coming in believing that I was broken. And I thought that practice would help fix me. And it didn't. What I learned was not how to get fixed, but what I learned was that I was never broken. That's the invitation of a practice.

[34:31]

And how can we, from that place of resting in our innate goodness, still make an effort, still recognize when we make mistakes, still have the humility to keep learning, to keep paying attention, to checking in and finding out how did those words land? How did that action land? This is perfection. We don't do it once and we're done. It's an ongoing process. So I will leave you with what is for me one of the most beautiful descriptions of this from Dogen Zenji. And you can think of this as a or the or one of the ways you might reorient yourself toward practicing with sila paramita, practicing with ethics, morality, virtue, not as something that you're trying to get right, but as a way of coming home.

[35:57]

of a way of admitting, confessing all of our seen and unseen beliefs and assumptions and tangles. They're in there. We don't have to look very far, right, to see the impact of all of that tangle. But we're not trying to just do a self-improvement project. We're trying to find our way through the tangle home to something... that allows us to more and more fully be ourselves and express ourselves. So this is how Dogen says it. Realization, awakening, enlightenment. Realization, he says, neither general nor specific, is effort. without desire.

[37:00]

That's kind of good enough for a whole lifetime, I think. Effort without desire. Again, this is not the effort of hard work. This is the effort of Dhammadina giving herself to the Dhamma. This is the effort of devotion. This is the effort of caring so deeply that we want to not do harm. This is the effort of putting our paddle down. It's hard for some of us. Realization, neither general nor specific, is effort without desire. We give ourselves to our practice without holding on to our idea of how it's supposed to turn out. Like Dhammedina, like me, we allow ourselves to be surprised. We allow ourselves to let the practice show us, oh, I see.

[38:07]

I've been looking at it the wrong way. Or I didn't see the whole picture. Or I assumed that I was broken. Realization, neither general nor specific, is Effort without desire. Can we give ourselves to our life and to one another without holding on to insisting how it's going to have to turn out? Without insisting that things go our way? Being willing to observe that arc of karma and to learn to transform, to untangle as we go. And then my favorite image, maybe ever, from Dogen, he says, realization neither general nor specific is effort without desire.

[39:11]

Clear water all the way to the bottom. A fish swims like a fish. Sky, transparent throughout. A bird flies like a bird. We don't untangle the tangle by tightening. We don't untangle the tangle by being fierce and critical and judgmental of ourselves. We untangle the tangle by recognizing and allowing, inviting the spaciousness of a vast sky, of a bottomless ocean, and inviting ourselves to be ourselves. Just as a fish swims like a fish, you get to swim like you.

[40:17]

You get to fly like you. I wanted practice to transform me. But that transformation was rooted in the assumption of brokenness, in the assumption that I needed to be fixed. What practice offered was something so much better. What practice offered was a vast sky and a bottomless ocean. and an invitation to swim, to fly, for all of us to be ourselves. So I hope that this will provide some reorientation, some inspiration, some less than tight or perfectionistic ways of considering what it would mean

[41:22]

to live a life of no harm, to dedicate ourselves in a world with so many sharp edges to do our best, to do our best to discover the Buddha, the beauty that sits in each of our seats. Thank you very much for your kind attention. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma talks are offered at no cost and this is made possible by the donations we receive. Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving. May we fully enjoy the Dharma.

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