Good evening again. So I want to find my retreat people. Oh, they're okay. Thank you. So the theme for this retreat I've been having for the last couple of days is Kishanti Paramita. Kishanti is usually translated as patience or forbearance. But there are some more energetic translations as well. For instance, I like Thich Nhat Hanh's inclusion, including everything, because it gives some indication of the energy it takes to practice this. Whereas, I don't know, patience and forbearance don't really give you a good indication of how much work this really is and how much creativity goes into practicing Kishante Paramita.

[01:02]

Kishante is one of the six Paramitas or perfections. And Paramita in Sanskrit literally means that which has reached the other shore. And that other shore is the shore of liberation, of peace, a shore of non-fear. We spend most of our time here in the relative world, where we distinguish things and people from one another and where we confer different value according to how we break things up, how we separate things out. We say this is a really good car, this one's not so good, I really love this person, this person not so much. So because we live in a world of distinction and of difference, comparisons and preferences We're on the shore of anger and pain. And we want to cross over to the shore of well-being.

[02:05]

So to cross over, we have to do something, and that something is practice the paramitas. So to practice the paramitas means to get wider, to have a wider view than our ordinary self-centered state of being. So the paramitas encompass, to my mind, the most important practices in Buddhism. To my way of thinking, they're a blueprint of happiness. If you practice kashanti paramita diligently and devotedly, you will at the very least be cheerful. So our inherent wisdom, the wisdom that comes with this body-mind, is manifest. in practicing the paramitas. It reveals itself through the perfection of the paramitas. So, Kshanti Paramita has two main aspects, as implied by patience and forbearance.

[03:10]

One is forgiveness of injury by others, and the other one is endurance of hardship, accepting the reality of our situation, our karma. the parents we were born to, the time we were born in, the circumstances of our lives, the things we don't have any control over. You can certainly understand the central importance of Kishanti Paramita because if we're going to have any kind of spiritual aspirations or develop the ability to tolerate with good grace whatever cards were dealt in life, we have to consider Kishanti Paramita. But spiritual aspiration aside, it would certainly be impossible to be happy or to be at peace in this life without developing the ability to deal with the hardships that accrue just from being alive and having a body.

[04:15]

We have to figure out some way to to ease the disappointment and despair of being capable of love and yet losing love. We have to figure out how to forgive the large and small insults, the injury and wrongs that other people do us all the time that they seemingly casually inflict upon us. And we must figure out how to put up with the never-ending annoyance of other people. Whether they actually wrong us or not, they're very irritating. So Kishanti Paramita is about developing the capacity to be persistent and imaginative and patient enough to work, live, and communicate with others who might sometimes appear at worst to be frustrating our noblest aspirations.

[05:19]

and at best, oblivious or indifferent to our pain. So Kishanti Paramita is usually translated as patient or forbearance, but I would like to go with Thich Nhat Hanh's inclusion, inclusion of everything, because of how energetic it is. Thich Nhat Hanh says that if your heart is large enough to include all the points of view about a situation besides your own, You don't have to suffer. For instance, if you take a handful of salt and put it into a bowl of water, it's too salty to drink. But if you put the same amount of salt into a river, that salt is dispersed. The immensity of the river means that it has the capacity to receive and transform the salt. You might recognize Thich Nhat Hanh's language here. To receive and transform the salt. To transform your suffering, your heart has to be as big as the ocean.

[06:25]

So a subtle and deeply affecting way to investigate Kishantiparamita is through the phrase from the Jewel Mirror Samadhi, one of my favorite phrases in all Buddhism, which is turning away and touching or grasping. I'll use the word grasping for touching so that you remember what it means. Turning away and grasping are both wrong. Turning away from a situation and grasping, being interested in the results, are both wrong. As Reverend Anderson says in his book about the precepts, being upright, turning away and grasping both miss the point of intimacy. The first problem that we have is anything that we actively turn away from. or ignore comes to exert undue influence on us. Just because we turned away. Just because we ignore it.

[07:29]

The more energetic the ignoring, the more power you give whatever is ignored. Keeps arising. Keeps arising. Keeps a thorn in your side. Keeps arising. And the more determined you cut it out of your life, the more it arises. It's because you give it the power by cutting it off. So the power of the thing that you want to turn away from depends on your refusal to pay attention to it. You're separating yourself out from it and it makes it powerful in your own psyche. So turning away and ignoring is also the ultimate violation. of the bodhisattva vow. Turning away from the cries of the world has profound consequences for your heart's openness and your own flexibility.

[08:30]

For one, you have to become preoccupied with how narrow or how wide your world is going to be. Should I ignore homeless people? Should I go to parties where I don't know anyone? Should I lend money to friends? Should I tolerate crazy people? It's actually easier in some way, in a big way. It's actually just easier to just practice opening. Not saying, am I going to be open to this? But just open, open, open. And then deal with the consequences of being open. There are lots of those. But it's easier just to open. than to be thinking all the time about, here's this person coming down the street. They're obviously crazy. Am I going to cross the street? Blah, blah, blah. Not good for you to do that. I don't mean good like in the moral realm.

[09:31]

I mean it's not healthy for your mind to do that kind of thing. Grasping, on the other hand, means to be indulgent or inappropriately involved. So Dongshan said, turning away and touching are both wrong. It's like a massive fire. Both of them are like a massive fire. To turn away or grasp creates a massive fire which consumes us. There's a natural tendency to turn away from psychic and material toxins and the people who carry them. So here's where skill comes in, the skill of Krishanti. We must turn toward... people in situations without grasping, without expecting any results. That's what I mean by grasping, without indulging ourselves in the toxins or getting inappropriately involved in our ability to save the toxin carrier.

[10:37]

Many of us are quite seduced by the possibility that we might save the person who's the toxins so the skill involved in making these judgments is Kishanti Paramita so every mature practitioner is disappointed that they're not more like their Buddhist ideal people say I've been sitting so long decades and I see everything through the lens of practice but I'm still petty and nasty and fearful and resentful The logical thing is to defend ourselves and attack enemies. This is perfectly logical in our world of separate selfhood. So if you're annoyed one day at work, just don't take that annoyance in the next day. Let the person annoy you anew. So we have a student at Russian River Zendo, my husband and I, where we practice, who is very insecure about when she speaks, you know, in the discussion time after a Dharma talk.

[12:00]

But this insecurity does not prevent her from speaking frequently and at length. So she will go on and on and on and then... Either she'll be interrupted or she'll realize, oh, my God, you know, I should stop talking. And then, oh, the recrimination starts. And she calls us up after the program is over and says, oh, I'm so sorry. I really meant to say blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now, I find this really annoying. But I don't carry it around. From week to week, I don't carry it around. I mean, why should I suffer? So just every week I let her do this again. Every week I let her open her mouth and I end up annoyed. But that does mean that the annoyance goes on for a very short time. Not all week. God, I don't know how people bear that kind of poison.

[13:03]

You let it go and let it happen again and again. That's how you take care of your own suffering. Of course, in the case of this woman, since the situation that I'm telling you about has happened, of course, we've become closer. I didn't feel that I could approach her until she showed some interest in being approached. But of course, since then, we've been able to talk about this habit. So I would like to tell you a couple of stories because Sarita and I taught a Keshante class last year together and basically, you know, we invited people in the class to, you know, share with the class their worst, you know, difficult situations. Maybe not their worst but they did present a lot of difficult situations. And so because I believe that Kishante Paramita is perhaps demands from us the most intelligence and creativity of all the Paramitas, for most of the Paramitas, now I haven't thought about this deeply, but it seems to me that most of the Paramitas ask you to let go of your opinion or your separating out of yourself from the flow.

[14:29]

It seems that to practice most of the Paramitas, That's the skill involved. But Kshanti, Kshanti just asks you to make a couple of decisions. Two in particular. One, would you rather be superior or connected? Or inferior and connected. It's the same thing. So you have to make that decision. And then the second decision is, would you rather be right or connected? So once you've answered in the connection, part of that, then it's all skill. It's all imagination and creativity because you're now committed to connection. And so then it's just experimentation, you know, outrageous kinds of things. I could tell you tons of stories, but I will confine myself to these couple. In this class, a woman who had just

[15:33]

bought a house, her lifelong dream. She just bought a house, but it turned out that her next door neighbor had a barking dog. The dog barked all the time. Very annoying. And so she went and asked the owner to please control his dog. Take him in or whatever you do with a barking dog. And he said, oh, I'm so sorry. Yes, of course. Oh, yes. No change in behavior whatsoever. The dog continued to bark. She asked again, oh, yes, I'm so sorry. No change. So she presented to the class, what should I do? I guess I could ignore it. I guess I could, you know, like wear earplugs all day or I could turn up the music in my house. I guess I could do that. Or I could file a lawsuit. In fact, some of the people in the class suggested you have legal recourse.

[16:35]

But she wasn't real comfortable about that. So anyway, after we went around and around, what happened is we suggested to her that maybe her neighbor did not know what to do because he had been agreeable, but nothing happened. Maybe he just didn't know. So she went to him and said, this is so important to me that I'm willing to pay half to have your dog professionally trained not to bark. It was an incredibly felicitous solution. She and her neighbor got on very well. I mean, he was so touched by her offer. He didn't ask her for any money. And she took him instead flowers and baked goods and things like that. So here is an instance in which she neither turned away nor expected results to be the most important thing.

[17:47]

She always considered her neighbor. She never wanted to make an enemy of him. So this is pretty creative. But the basic starting point was her attitude. She considered ignoring him. She considered everybody suggested lawsuit. No, she was clear, no, no, no. And so the idea of helping him figure it out turned out to be very good for her. And then the second story I want to tell you is about long-term suffering. A situation that just eats at you day in and day out and that you have to live with maybe forever. And this is a personal situation. I thought about whether to tell you or not, but just because it's so personal and emotional for me. But, you know, I've been here for so many years and practiced here when I was young.

[18:49]

If I can't tell you, I don't know who I can tell. Anyway, the mother of my grandson, I love my grandson very much. He's now 14 years old. And his mother has always been quite hostile to our family for reasons I'm not even getting into. And she was so hostile that she abused this child before my son could get custody. And the way she did it was to slap him and then hold the phone... so we could hear him cry. Now, in case you think she's a monster, which, you know, I've presented it that way, I want you to understand that my son treated her terribly. I think he did, being a woman myself, I think he did one of the worst things that a man can do to a woman, which is get her pregnant and then break up with her and abandon her.

[19:50]

So that tempers it a little, right? anyway she had in her own mind very good reason to hurt us this way my son eventually got custody and that was the end of that so I thought about this I thought what a relief I never have to hear her see her put up with her screaming over the phone never have to do this again but you know As time went on, I'm thinking, what kind of Buddhist practice is that? To just discharge this human being whose blood runs in one of the most beloved people to me in the world. So I started by sending her a Mother's Day card and thanking her for her efforts on behalf of our grandson. Because, you know, I'm just telling you a story.

[20:54]

She wasn't all slapping him and holding the phone. So I decided not to turn away and to just do what I do forever, if need be, and not expect any results from it. So I send her family a Christmas card every year. I send her a Mother's Day card. I have sent her a birthday card from time to time. So I neither turn away nor hope for connection. So what I have to be careful of, I've now done this for years. My grandson is 14. What I have to be careful of is the passive aggressive edge. Now when I send her a Mother's Day card, I always think that it confuses her and reminds her that I'm still around. So my message has to be genuine. can't say just a bunch of flowery stuff because it I can just feel the aggression on my part you know this is a subtle thing you get it right okay one year many years ago she sent me flowers but it's degenerated since then she most recently texted me a blessing

[22:19]

You know, oh, I'm so glad you're in my life. In other words, I think she sent her whole contact list, this message, and forgot I was in there. So when I got this message saying, I just thank God every day that you're in my life, I immediately called her up and said, oh, this means so much to me. She said, it was a mistake. I would never send you a blessing. And I said, you can't take back blessings. And then I thought, oh no, I went over the line. The passive-aggressive line. So what this boils down to, do you want to be a force in the world for love and peace or not? That's what it boils down to. If you do, you have to work at this. This does not come naturally. A student asked me once in a show song ceremony, you know, that's where you have a public asking of the teacher, a question of the teacher after a practice period.

[23:26]

Anyway, he said to me, how do I bring about world peace? And I said, start with yourself. He said, what do you mean? And I said, every interaction you have with somebody, with everybody, make it about conveying your love and tolerance to that person. He said, but that's impossible. Many people don't share my views. So I asked him how he expected to do such a hard thing as bring about world peace if he was just going to do things the way he'd always done them. If that were sufficient, there'd be world peace already. So he thought world peace Peace was a view. He was asking me, basically, how can he get everyone on earth to agree with him? That's way beyond my capacity. In the Shosan ceremony, I'll work on it for the rest of my life.

[24:30]

But if that's what we think harmony is, we're doomed from the start. So ask yourself, do I really want to bring... about peace and harmony in my immediate circle even not even the hard political stuff in my immediate circle my thanga among my friends if you want to be the same old person that you've always been your views intact and in place and feel that people should share your views. Those are your friends. That's how you define friend, is they share your views. Then go on as you have. At least try not to do harm. I trust everyone in this room to try not to do harm. But if you want to transform the people around you, practice kashanti. diligently and with great energy and vigor, with great imagination and creativity, with intelligence and a sense of play.

[25:40]

This is play here. This is fun. I have to tell you that when I first started practicing, I used to go to parties and pretend I was a Republican just for a practice. So I'm sure that to this day there are many people at Zen Center that think that I'm against recycling. So I'm not saying that this is an easy practice to tolerate and to forgive others with different points of view than ours. But I am saying that if this is all you accomplish in your entire life, then you will have done what has rarely been tried. Thank you very much.

[26:37]

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