Good evening. Well, tonight I'd like to speak about Shanti Paramita, the practice of the perfection of patience. And last week I asked Jordan whether anything was up for the practice period. And he said, well, we've gone through the first three. We've gone through the first couple of paramitas, the first couple of paramitas, and now we need to do a little bit of study on the third paramita, which is patience. So the first paramita is generosity. The second paramita is morality or ethics. And the third paramita is patience. Sometimes translated as forbearance or endurance.

[01:12]

And before I really studied Shanti Paramita, I thought, well, that's odd. Why is that a perfection? That seems more like a way to get through things that don't turn out your way than a perfection. Also, for me, the word has all these Victorian connotations, not Victoria, my name, but Victoria, like 1800s and, oh, patience, patience, you know, and has a lot of connotations of virtuous suffering. And I thought, this is perfection. And that's how my conventional mind sees perfection. or saw patience before I studied it. But I agreed to give the talk, and then somebody asked a very good question, and so I thought I would talk about that.

[02:19]

The question is, I've been trying to practice compassion towards people, even when I perceive that they're doing great harm to me. And it's not even about past harm, but sometimes there's present harm that's being done, present karma that's being created between that person and me. Maybe this is a practice of forgiveness, of trying to forgive them for what they're doing while they're doing it. This is the biggest challenge for me right now. So this was somebody's question. And when I thought about this question, I realized what a good question it is, because it's not about some generalized sense of compassion or a feeling of compassion, but rather about trying to bring that generalized feeling of compassion into a situation

[03:30]

in which usually we don't feel compassionate, but rather feel polarized. The perception that someone is doing harm to me. Actually, in the Bodhicaryavatara, the book on the Bodhisattva mind that the Venerable Shantideva wrote, Shantideva makes a very good point, and he says... Usually when things are being done to me, I get angry. And when things are being done to other people, although I might get irritated or upset or annoyed or a little bit angry, I don't get angry to that extent as if someone is deliberately harming me or even persisting in harming me after I've told them that I'm being hurt. So even if it's not deliberate, there's a feeling of something is going on.

[04:33]

And so really learning how to bring a sense of compassion to an everyday life situation such as when somebody is hurting us or is being indifferent to us is actually an advanced practice. It's a lot easier to bring a sense of compassion towards other people who are being hurt, towards the people who are hurting other people, or towards people who are being hurt, who aren't me. So let's talk about it a little bit in stages, and then maybe we can talk about how to realize it under any conditions. So actually our word patience, mainstream culture English use of the word patience. The word actually dates from the Middle Ages, and it may be related to a Greek word, pema, which means suffering.

[05:46]

I know, but it is from pati, to suffer. And so Webster defines it as bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint. Manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain. Not hasty or impetuous. Steadfast despite opposition, difficulty or adversity. or able or willing to bear something. And it's very closely related to the word forbearance. Shanti actually is not really described by the English word patience. Because there's elements of forbearance and there's elements of universality in the word Shanti that aren't in the word patience. But it's the best we can do in English.

[06:51]

And when I looked... I looked through the Buddhist texts and reflected on Buddhist texts that talk about patience. And the earliest example that I could find was in the Dhammapada. The Buddha talks about patience a couple of times. He talks about Kanti as the foremost austerity and unbinding. Kanti or Shanti itself is Nirvana. So say the awakened. And then he goes on. He who injures another is no contemplative. He who mistreats another, no monk. And then also in the section where the Buddha is talking about who's the real Brahmin. Is it someone who is born to be a Brahmin or is it someone who does...

[07:55]

virtuous deeds, and he says, one who endures unangered, insult, assault, and imprisonment, that person's army is strength. That person's strength is forbearance. That person is what I call a Brahman. So that's in the Dhammapada. There are various sutras. in the Theravada, in the earliest Buddhist literature that relate to forbearance. And, oh, let's see. There's various torture parables, like, you know, in the Diamond Sutra, the Buddha says, when the king of Kalinga cut off my flesh from every limb, At that time, if I were not practicing the perfection of patience, I would have had a perception of ill will.

[09:02]

So basically, the king of Kalinga, in a past life of the Buddhas, cut off his flesh and tortured him. But the Buddha was able to endure that torture without complaint. And so that's pretty much the early definition of patience. Later, when we come to the Mahayana, besides forbearance or endurance, the sutras are also talking about forgiveness, inclusiveness, the kind of inclusiveness that arises from wisdom. So, for instance, Thich Nhat Hanh's teaching is very similar to most of the Mahayana teachings that I read, but I actually like this selection a lot. Thich Nhat Hanh says, We suffer because our heart is small.

[10:06]

We demand that the other person should change in order to be accepted by us. But when our heart is large, we don't put forth any conditions. We accept them as they are. Then they have a chance to transform. The secret is how to grow our hearts. Helping our heart to grow big, Shanti Paramita, is the capacity of embracing everyone, everything. We don't exclude anyone. In true love, we don't discriminate anymore. Inclusiveness means non-discrimination. And then he goes on to talk about the past. definition of shanti is endurance, but that's pretty misleading because when we try to endure, it's more like the Buddha's first big mistakes on the path where he set one part of his mind against another part of his mind to subdue the ego.

[11:10]

But basically Thich Nhat Hanh says that the practice of shanti is a practice of making the heart and the body big enough and stable enough to hold even this. So that in the Mahayana, that's the teaching. And the Vajrayana, in addition to a practice of forgiveness and inclusiveness, includes the Vajrayana teachings, talk about the yoga of Shanti, Paramita, neither forcing nor failing to move in a situation. So the Vajrayana emphasis is on action, that the action is transcendent because it's not based on ego. Zen teaching has elements of all of these. And pretty much the Zen point of view,

[12:19]

is that when we're impatient, we're living in the future. And patience is the cultivation of enough strength to let the self be exactly as it is and to let circumstances be exactly as they are. So Suzuki Roshi talks about composure and about readiness. And this is the practice of patience in Zen. I remember Ed told a story that I didn't look up or anything, but Ed Brown became Tenzo a long time ago. He came with Tassajara. So in the 60s, he was Tenzo at Tassajara. And he tells how someone in the kitchen was extremely irritating to him. And no matter how irritated he was, the person wouldn't change. for some reason.

[13:21]

And he went to Suzuki Roshi and complained about how irritating the person was. And Suzuki Roshi listened patiently and then said, Ed, yes. Suzuki Roshi said, Ed-san. It takes a calm mind to see virtue. So the kind of inclusive calm that forgives imperfections and sees virtues is patience. It's not just a matter of bullying our way through one insult after another. Let me read a little bit from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. if I can find the... You know, I had the... I had the... One of my papers in the book as a bookmark, and then I took the paper out to read it.

[14:39]

So, thank you for your patience. So... Suzuki Roshi said, even to have a good thing in your mind is not so good. Buddha sometimes said, you should be like this, you should not be like that. But to have what Buddha says in your mind is not necessarily so good. It's a kind of burden for you. You may not really feel so good. In fact, to harbor some ill will, might even be better than to have some idea in your mind of what is good or of what you should do. To have some mischievous idea in your mind is sometimes very agreeable. That's true. Actually, good and bad is not the point.

[15:46]

Whether or not you make yourself peaceful is the point and whether or not you stick to it. When you have something in your consciousness, meaning something that sticks out in particular, you don't have perfect composure. The best way towards perfect composure is to forget everything. The best way towards perfect composure is to forget everything. But I'm doing really well in my 50s. The best way towards perfect composure is to forget everything. Then your mind is calm and it is wide and clear enough to see and feel things as they are, without effort. The best way to find perfect composure is not to retain any idea of things, whatever they may be. But if you try to stop your mind or try to go beyond your conscious activity, that will only be another burden.

[16:55]

saying, I have to stop my mind in my practice, but I can't. My practice is not good. That's the wrong way of practice. Leave everything as it is. Then things will not stay in your mind so long. Things will come as they come and go as they go. Then, eventually, your clear, empty mind will last fairly long. You know how to rest physically. You do not know how to rest mentally. Even though you lie in bed your mind is still busy. Even if you sleep your mind is busy dreaming. This is not so good. We should know how to give up our thinking mind, our busy mind. In order to go beyond our thinking faculty it is necessary to have a firm conviction in the emptiness of your mind. Believing firmly in the perfect rest of our mind is to resume our pure original state.

[18:02]

Okay, so that's actually the practice of patience. That's what patience does. Okay, I'm going to skip reading this. But, oh, let's see. So Suzuki Roshi says, the best way to control your cow is to give him a big pasture. That's what the practice of patience really is. It's not a matter of setting one part of the mind in conflict with another part of the mind. For instance, somebody did something that I felt was really bad for me. and I perceive that that person did something to me. So what do I do in that situation? So Suzuki Roshi's answer is just to make my mind bigger so that that action can have a beginning, a middle, and an end.

[19:16]

So it doesn't mean to forget my concerns. It doesn't mean to, let's not say forget, it doesn't mean to deny my concerns, but it does mean to drop the charge that makes them into, that turns them from concerns into suffering. Now, what do you have to do to practice this? Because I can say the words very easily, but when it comes to actually letting go of an actual wrong that I feel that someone has actually done me, it's not that easy. in real life. But the fire of that process of deattaching is extremely cleansing. It cleanses afflictions and returns me to a state that has some innocence about it.

[20:20]

So the first thing that we need to practice patience is an enormous, unshakable conviction in emptiness and in the phenomenal world as an expression of emptiness. We have to be able to hear when somebody says the word patience or kshanti, we have to be able to hear that that's not some partial or limited view. And then we have to check out the practice of patience in difficult circumstances so that we can develop the emotional heart and mind of patience. If we have a desire for awakening, we have to protect it. We can't slip off into this and that cursing about what has happened or the person who has done it to us.

[21:24]

I almost said for us because it actually is for us that these things occur, even though it doesn't feel like they're for us. If we can practice it that way, with it that way, it is for us. And we have to practice with great unceasing effort according to the teaching and not some other way. When we do this, it benefits all beings, have no doubt. It lessens the afflictions, although it makes us feel our own pain. It's a perfection precisely because it's not attached. It doesn't depend on any rewards. Precisely because that practice can't be corrupted. isn't stuck in any concept and is completely 100% dedicated with a complete state of purity.

[22:28]

When we practice patience, we are one with nature and the people around us. And as Dogen Zenji says, everything that comes up in the study of the way is the true human body. Here's a poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that talks about patience, and this is called Patience Taught by Nature. O dreary life we cry, O dreary life, and still the generations of the birds sing through our sighing, and the flocks and herds serenely live while we are keeping strife with heaven's true purpose in us. as a knife against which we may struggle. Ocean girds unslackened the dry land. Savannah swards unweary sweep. Hills watch unworn and rife meek leaves drop yearly from the forest trees to show above the unwasted stars that pass in their old glory.

[23:48]

O thou God of old, grant me some smaller grace than comes to these. But so much patience as a blade of grass grows by, contented through the heat and cold. So, now that I've thoroughly confused you, I wonder if anyone has any comments or questions about the practice of patience. I could say so much more. There's a poem that I practice with the teachings of that poem every day. Maybe I'll say it a little bit later, but there's so much to talk about when we talk about patience. It can so easily be mistaken for endurance or for not taking care of oneself.

[24:50]

It can be mistaken for so many different things. So if you have any comments or questions or experiences that you want to share about patience, now would be a good time to do it. And Jordan, you practice patience. Yes. Yeah. Is your question, should we? Should we practice? Should we practice patience? Or is your question like, what is it? Or how do we practice patience and still take care of? Okay.

[26:02]

Okay, so the culture is permeated with abuse. And that means that we are permeated with abuse. Okay? even though we repudiate abuse, we're still permeated with it. You know how people watch TV and play computer games really a lot now and go to entertainments that are saturated with violence? And the cultural norm, the cultural idea is that those activities have no effect on us. Isn't that interesting? That the culture somehow thinks that we can live on a steady diet of images of violence and stories about violence and practices of unacknowledged violence and still not be affected by it.

[27:15]

That's actually, it's not in accord with the way nature operates, but somehow we have that idea. And so I think that if we personally want to study abuse or transgressions in our own life, we are embarking on a culture-changing activity. it's possibly one of the most revolutionary things that we could do. So to develop that sensitivity personally after not having cultivated that sensitivity, you know, perhaps when we were growing up or having received violence or seeing other people, or heard of other people who are receiving violence, to cultivate a sense of sensitivity, even when there's something to be afraid or concerned about, is actually a culture-changing act.

[28:28]

It means that you stand up as a strong yet vulnerable human being, and that you trust your own inner sense of what's appropriate. and what are appropriate boundaries and types of contact in accord with human love, which is our natural state. So that's a difficult activity. And so we have to forgive ourselves if we make mistakes. But the process of forgiving ourselves When we try to develop that sensitivity, it means that to really forgive ourselves, we have to also confess our own transgressions and notice the transgressions that occur around us without attaching to or averting from any of that.

[29:33]

Does that make sense to you? I said... some things in the middle that were actually the beginning of that practice. And I said some things at the beginning which were actually the end of that practice. That's why I'm asking you if it makes sense. I'm not very patient. Well, I'm not very patient with my friends. a lot of the things like that. And also, women have been asked to be patient with her use of prosthetics. Excuse me? Women have been asked to be patient with her use of prosthetics throughout time. People of color have been asked to be patient with her use of prosthetics. That's right.

[30:36]

Right, and yeah. And it's intolerable. That's right. There's a real difference between, yeah, there's a real difference between the practice of patients and the practice of inappropriate toleration. Okay, so for instance, yeah, so in, And this happens in every age. So, for instance, last week when I was studying the Supreme Court decision about same sex marriage. And. Diagon Vince pointed out that the person who wrote the dissent. Was a lesbian and that her argument was that the newspaper said that her argument was that if that.

[31:41]

this is a good thing to occur, but it's not the time for it. That maybe if same-sex marriage is passed, then there would be a big backlash against it. And it brought up very, very uncomfortable connotations for me in terms of the Holocaust and the Judenrat, in which... Jews actually got together to modulate the decisions about who was going to have to be sent away and killed. So that, for me, is inappropriate toleration. And it is not patience. Patience is to live with how things are and to do what has to be done without... attaching or averting. It doesn't mean forget one's boundaries.

[32:46]

Now, patience might also mean to acknowledge that there have to be two sides, maybe, or more sides of a conversation being expressed. Think about an abusive situation that occurred at Zen Center in which Blanche and I were on completely opposite ends of... response. This was a person in the community who was in the community who was crossing boundaries sexually with other people and also crossing behavior boundaries with Zen Center as a whole, like would come up to the front door and scream. And Blanche and I were on completely different sides. Blanche saying, this person is wants to receive the precepts. He's a bodhisattva. He's an imperfect bodhisattva, but he's a bodhisattva. And I was saying things like, we have to make sure that this person has a diagnosis and is appropriately treated before he can be here.

[34:00]

That situation has to be addressed. So it felt like a conflict at the time and was very painful. But later, I realized, and I think that Blanche and I realized, that it took both of those points of view being expressed, maybe even by different people, to have the full picture come forth to be able to make an appropriate response. And I think there are many, many difficult conversations in our society that are just this way. It takes a person saying, this is intolerable, and another person saying, how can we change this gradually to express the whole situation? Yeah? How about situations when you already know how to say, and then you...

[35:08]

Yeah, that's an excellent question. And because impatience is just like any other addiction. You have to know what you're addicted to when you're impatient. So I'm not going to say, I don't know exactly what we are addicted to when we're attached, but usually impatience is attachment to a particular outcome in a particular time frame. So it seeks to control the energy, the momentum and direction of the situation so that it goes according to our idea. So that impatience is very connected with that.

[36:10]

Impatience can also be generated physiologically. So if we're adrenalinized and our pace is just quicker than the situation, impatience, the feeling of impatience, contentless impatience, may arise. So to work with another person, our practice of avowal, avowal, and repentance is really appropriate. So I can say, Tanya, you know, in that conversation, I was so adrenalinized from being in traffic for an hour that I couldn't even let you finish your sentence before I started mine. Will you forgive me? And then you might forgive me once, but if I come back the next week and say, Tanya, I had to go to the store, and so when we met, I couldn't even let you finish your sentences, and will you forgive me?

[37:13]

Yeah, so then you might need some support to actually practice with what you avail. You know, you might need a 12-step program, in which after you make amends, there's a lot more things that you have to do. It's like an addiction. Yeah. Yes. You mentioned de-attaching. Uh-huh. Detached to me. Uh-huh. Patience is actually staying connected to. Right. Keeping your heart open to. So one, I was wondering like that difference between de-attaching and being detached. Uh-huh. Part of patience that's not just, I think, a patient that's directed outward circumstance, but the patience that is also patient to our own, the truth of where we're at in the moment and what's arising.

[38:22]

And it's linked to patience and compassion. Did you hear that? It was a really good question. So Stephen asked, When we talked about patience as detachment, where I was saying patience was de-attaching, it reminded him of detachment. But his sense of patience is to stay open and connected. And also could we look a little bit at the link between patience, look together a little bit at the link between patience and compassion. So... I had a really good thought, but I forgot it. Words fail when we talk about perfections. So in one sentence, I can talk about deattaching, and in another section of the same sentence, talking about the same thing, I can talk about love.

[39:31]

And it's not a contradiction, but the words fail. don't really express it. This is the essential problem with giving Zen talks, that every time you open your mouth to give a Zen talk, you've already put your foot in it before you say the first word. But patience and compassion are very, very closely intertwined. Compassion is the ability to feel with someone. Patience takes you all the way from friendliness through equanimity. It's very connected with the four Mahabrahma Viharas, the divine abidings. So patience is actually the ability to be with things and people as they are. So to do that, you have to maintain an attitude of friendliness and curiosity, even when it's taking them a lifetime to express how they are.

[40:39]

And with friendliness, you can still hold someone or something at a distance. With compassion, it comes a little closer. With sympathetic joy, even closer. And with equanimity, it begins to become you and the other person or thing begin to become united. Because it doesn't matter. There's no gaining idea, no goal. The other thing is, you asked about patience as directed outwards. So in the beginning, it is. But actually, patience isn't... like that at all. It's a mind training that takes you from the world of difference to the world of unity and all the way back again.

[41:42]

Maybe I'll just close with a poem, Eight Stanzas for Training the Mind. And anyone who knows that poem is welcome to recite it with me. Also, if I get confused and there are only seven stanzas for training the mind, or six, please realize that there are actually eight. Okay? So I work with this poem. And this poem is recited by His Holiness the Dalai Lama in the morning as part of his personal service. With a determination to accomplish the highest welfare for all sentient beings who surpass even a wish-granting gem, I will learn to hold them supremely dear. Whenever I associate with others, I will learn to think of myself as the lowest among all and respectfully hold others to be supreme.

[42:54]

from the very depths of my heart. In all actions, I will learn to search into my mind, and as soon as an afflictive emotion arises, endangering myself and others, I will firmly face and avert it. I will learn to cherish beings of bad nature, and those pressed by strong sins and sufferings, as if I had found a precious treasure very difficult to find. When others out of jealousy treat me badly, with abuse, slander, and so on, I will learn to take all loss and offer the victory to them. When one who I had benefited with great hope, unreasonably hurts me very badly.

[44:00]

I will learn to see that person as an excellent spiritual guide. In short, I will learn to offer all beings without exception, both directly and indirectly. I will learn to offer them benefit and take upon myself all harm and suffering. of my mothers. I will learn to keep these practices undefiled by the stains of the eight worldly conceptions and by understanding all phenomena as like illusion be released from the bondage of attachment. Okay? So this is the bridge. The Prajnaparamita is the lion's roar of patience. And this is the practice of patience. And we can reflect on that. And if you ever want to discuss it, please do.

[45:05]

We all carry a piece of the world. And we all carry the whole world. Thank you. May our intention...

[45:28]

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