dana paramita, shila paramita, shanti paramita, virya paramita, jhana paramita, prajna paramita, these are the six paramitas. And in English, in English they are giving, dana, ethics, shila, patience, shanti, energy, virya, meditation, jhana, and wisdom, prajna, the six paramitas. And tonight I want to talk about the fourth of these paramitas. I want to talk about virya paramita. I want to talk about the practice of energetic enthusiasm dedicated towards awakening. I want to say some words, some encouraging words about wholehearted effort.

[01:55]

And over the past month, each week, on the Wednesday night talk and in the Wednesday practice prayer tea and in the class that I have on Thursday night, week by week, the Paramitas have been brought forward. And I remember about a month ago on a Saturday morning when the practice period began and I sat here and I talked about dana paramita, about the practice of giving and being charitable. And I said that that was the most important paramita. And I also remember In the class the next week, when I talked about Shila, when I talked about ethics, when I talked about how in our Zen training, the decision to take the precepts marked beginning in a foundation for Brian, I said, Shila Paramita is the most important.

[03:04]

And I was almost a little bit embarrassed last week talking about Shanti. about patience, when I said on Thursday night that that was the most important paramita. And I make this confession because I'm about to tell you all that the practice of virya, of enthusiasm, is the most important paramita. And perhaps saying this is just a manifestation of area of enthusiasm, but I feel it also. I really feel it. Each of the Paramitas are complete in some ways. They're Dharma gates of entry into the unfolding of our Bodhisattva life. They are snapshots of enlightenment, and there's not just one way to enter the gate.

[04:11]

But tonight I'm going to talk about enthusiasm. I'm going to talk about Virya Paranita and why it's the most important of them all. I think that there's probably different degrees of commitment to practice and experience and practice in this room. But I think maybe everyone might understand or be able to understand that it's not so easy to remain enthusiastic. There are things that at first seem compelling and exciting and strong. after a while fade. And even in the great matter of unfolding awakening and practice, I think that sometimes the longer we practice, the more blasé we get about the miracle of this endeavor.

[05:37]

We can get easily sidetracked. We can think that we're working too hard and we need to sleep in, and we can think that actually the Dharma talks that we attend are kind of boring, or we can think that zazen is boring, or we can get discouraged. And to be honest, I think sometimes we just don't have energy for practice. We make a decision to take this up and then we lose our sight. So I want to sort of set the stage a little bit for why I think it's important to practice, why I think it's important to engage in the Buddha way and take on the life that we take on here at the Dent Center. And so I want to say something about the fact that this life is not just something we do for ourselves.

[07:04]

We often, we start off for ourselves. But as we get engaged in it, as we go along the way, we realize that this is something that we do in order to meet other people and to encourage other people. And in fact, I want to say that to make a commitment to wake up is a heroic, miraculous, extraordinary decision. One which we think we may be... can fail that, but is embedded in the very beginning and embedded in the very decision and the turning towards waking up, embedded in it is eventual success, the true fact, the true fact that there is no failure in practice. This decision to, for instance, the way we

[08:11]

presented at the Zen Center might be, you might think, to Siddhasan or to, let's say Siddhasan. This decision to Siddhasan is how we meet our friends, how we meet ourselves, is how we learn about who we are. And this is how we fulfill ourself. At the very beginning, in naming the six Paramitas, I used Pali words, you know, Dana, Sheila, et cetera, Pali and Sanskrit words. And we, for the sake of expediency, have brought a bunch of these words from Asia into our vocabulary, into our life, and one of them is Buddhism, Buddha.

[09:16]

That word, Buddha, means woken up, awake. And Buddhism, this thing that we do here, is waking up-ism. This is the practice of waking up. But I want to try to say what that might be, which it means different things. It's both a modest thing and it's an extraordinary thing. For me, I mean, I think we have, we all have, we all share the modest thing about waking up, which is in the morning, our alarm rings and our hand reaches out and we turn it off and we blink our eyes and we might think, oh, or yeah. This is the kind of waking up, and not to get too fancy about it, waking up is waking up.

[10:23]

But this is not the waking up that Buddhism, this is not the waking up-ism that I'm talking about, as our heart's desire. In Zen, in Buddhism, there is... a whole special teaching, a vocabulary, a whole history, a story about what waking up is. And for instance, we have teachers who have come before us who say, this is waking up. And I'm going to quote Dogen, who is a teacher we respect and study here at the Zen Center, and he said about the practice of meditation, the practice of Zazen, he said that the Zazen of even one person at one moment, imperceptibly accords with all things. In the past, future, and present of the limitless universe, Zazen carries on the Buddhist teaching endlessly.

[11:32]

This is waking up. This is a kind of expression of waking up. He went on and he said, each moment of Zazen is wholeness of practice, wholeness of realization. And then he said, Practice is like a hammer striking emptiness. Like a hammer striking emptiness. Its exquisite appeal, its sound, permeates everywhere. How could it be limited to just this moment? And when I first heard, as a student, the way I heard that expression, like a hammer striking emptiness, it struck me. I felt it deeply and I felt it in some ways as a description that was outside of my experience. And I want to say about myself and I think this may be true of others that when we hear something like a hammer striking emptiness,

[12:48]

It might sound beautiful, but when we look to our own life, when we experience, when we think about how our day unfolds and our interactions with people, it might not seem like the sound of our endeavor is an exquisite peel permeating everywhere, but more like a cry out for help. And in the face of this feeling, in the face of feeling that while the Dharma might be beautiful and might describe something that we think is a lovely idea, our own reality is far from it. In the face of that, it's not impossible to feel discouraged. And the antidote, a sort of response, This sense of discouragement that can arise out of our own sense of not fulfilling or even embedding, embodying and realizing the teaching.

[13:53]

The response to this discouragement is to wake up enthusiasm, to arouse an energetic response, to actually take up in our heart and in our mind the spirit of enthusiasm. of energy, of zeal, of enthusiasm. And I want to say that when we wake up at Virya Paramita, this practice of enthusiasm, the perfection of energetic practice, this does not mean that we don't ever rest. This does not mean that we're failing to practice when we take a time out. Because practice isn't, whatever these practices are, commitment to wake up is not like some death march through the desert, you know.

[15:00]

It's not something where we have to keep trunching on, you know, irrespective of, you know, actually how we're feeling. Just success not measured by one foot after another. In fact, Part of the path of practicing with enthusiasm is to know how to make our practice sustainable, how to take time outs or to take care of ourselves, to nourish ourselves in the whole way of nourishing. You know, in traditional farming practice, I say traditional because dating in a type of farming that doesn't use external inputs of fertilizer, et cetera, to make the soil be fertile. In traditional farming practice, you allow a field to lay fallow. You know, you rest a field, maybe on some rotation, depending on the crop. And we need to do that in our own life, too.

[16:02]

There's a time for vigorous, and it's a time actually for resting and catching up with a whole bit of our life. What's tricky here in this true recognition that resting and not always striving is appropriate is that we have an endless, we have a very large capacity to try and be nice to ourselves. Whatever nice to ourselves we might think it is. And in some ways this being nice to ourselves is a limit to ourself. It is a persistent tendency to try and take care of ourselves only so far as we're comfortable. Only so far as we can... already ahead of time understand our limits are.

[17:03]

And this kind of taking care of ourself doesn't understand that in a very real way this source of our discomfort is our comfortable zone. This is why in Practice in Zen center, for instance, occasionally we have these things like sishins, seven-day, practice of zazen, period after period, day after day, because it actually, it's difficult to imagine how we can pull it off and how we can do it. Or practice periods at a place like tazar, where we separate ourselves from the Internet and email and everything that we think is our best friend. because we need to stretch ourselves and reach out. Suzuki Roshi said about practice, he said, especially he said this about beginning, in the quote, it's about beginning in practice, he said, for the beginner, practice without great effort is not true practice, and you have to stretch out your arms wide, as wide as they'll go.

[18:22]

And then he said, if you make your best effort and practice with your own body and mind, then whatever you do is true practice. So the topic of this is really a paramita, which is zeal, enthusiasm. As a way of talking about enthusiasm, I want to actually say some things about what might seem to be the opposite of enthusiasm. I want to say some things about what perhaps is commonly called laziness. And because one way of working with the practice of enthusiasm and energy is to recognize for ourselves in our own life, those places where we're lazy, those places where we are turning towards our comfort, turning towards our not being impeccable.

[19:31]

And, you know, if being lazy made us happy, that'd be okay. If being lazy was a way that we really met other people, well, you know, what's wrong with it? But actually, it doesn't work out that it is, in fact, the path to our happiness. In the Buddha Dharma, in the tradition of the Buddha Dharma, there are three aspects of what I'll call, and I'll kind of with quotes around it, laziness. There are three aspects of laziness that are talked about, and these are, number one, procrastination. The idea that I just don't have time now. And reading about this example of laziness in a book by Pema Chodron, she mentioned a cartoon that she'd seen. And there were three panels in the cartoon.

[20:34]

In the first panel, there was a baby, and the subtitle said, Too Young. And in the second panel, there were some students or workers, middle-aged, you know, and... And the panels and the caption said, too busy. And the third panel showed a coffin. And it said, too late. And that panel that shows the coffin and the expression too late actually points to that one of the traditional antidotes towards the tendency towards procrastination is the awareness, the recognition of our death, the fact that that's a piece of the puzzle of our life. When feeling lazy, when feeling like this infinite amount of time, remember what a fragile connection we have to this moment, to this day.

[21:39]

There's a second aspect of laziness. And this is something which I think especially can almost seem surprising because it doesn't necessarily look like laziness. And the second manifestation of laziness is to be tremendously energetically focused on trivial matters. to have a passion for who knows what. And you can feel, in fact, that you've brought forward a lot of energy, you're spending a lot of enthusiastic time on something, but really what you're spending time on doesn't speak to your real heart's desire. And for many people, I think for lots of people, the Internet, is an example of that. Or TV, watching TV.

[22:44]

You can have your favorite TV shows that you TiVo and tape and make sure you stay current with and even have to look at a website about it because you've got to keep current on the subtext or who knows what. But is this really the enthusiasm that you want to rise up in your life? And at the practice pre-T this afternoon, We were talking about this and I had the thought, I mentioned then, so excuse me for those of you who heard me say it then, but that one of the ways in which practice at Tassahara is so powerful is that at Tassahara we don't have as many opportunities for trivial distraction. We don't have the internet. We don't have our telephones. We don't have the chronicle coming to our front door in the morning. And so what happens is we... get bored. And the response to that boredom is we can either be deeply pained and discouraged by it, or in the space of the boredom, we can actually realize that the moment we're at is infinitely beautiful and rich, tactile, expansive.

[24:06]

This is the same thing that can happen during Sashin, where we drop away from the activity of our normal life, of our regular life, and we spend hour after hour facing the wall. The response to the challenge of Sashin is either very painful or very rich, and the richness of it is something that is expressed through energy. through the arising of enthusiasm for being just there. This is the second kind of aspect of laziness. And the third, so the first one is procrastination. The second one is energetic pursuit of trivial activities. And the third is to think that just simply to be discouraged. To believe that, for instance, the practice of Dharma is something that we don't

[25:10]

have the capacity to realize that we're not our, maybe back then people were good students, but nowadays I can't do it. But this is actually, this discouragement is a selfish decision. Is it turning towards a selfish decision? limitation, because if there's anything that the tradition of Zen, the tradition of Buddhism tells us is that over and over and over it says is that practice is useful, practice is beneficial. The commitment to wake up is something that leads to results. Maybe we can't see it in ourself, maybe we might, it's not uncommon to get discouraged, but that discouragement is your problem, isn't a problem with the path. And yes, sometimes it's true that Sazen is boring.

[26:22]

And sometimes it's true that it seems like we're not making progress. But It's very important, I feel like, to not give up. The secret of success in this thing called Zen practice is very simple. Please continue. Just continue. I have been in a Zen center for a number of years, and one of the things I've seen on many occasions is students who arrive that have an enormous amount of enthusiasm. And that's a great thing. That's an encouraging thing for everyone to see. But sometimes that enthusiasm is too much. And the real test of our practice, the real challenge of our practice is when we're disappointed by it.

[27:29]

When we feel that it actually isn't working. And then we, instead of blaming the practice and instead of giving up on it, we look at ourself. We turn the light inward at that point. and wonder whether it's something with us or something with the Buddha Dharma. Suzuki Roshi, our great teacher, founder, once said in a lecture, he said, your suffering is, your suffering comes from something created by your own mind. You are participating in creating this suffering. This suffering may not be just you, but you are acting, the main part of the play. Originally, there is no suffering. But sometimes you want to stop it. Sometimes you want to own that flower.

[28:34]

And this is the cause of suffering. This is the cause of our pain. This is how we create. that suffering. And then he said, after that same talk, after a pause, he said, a period of zazen is very difficult, you know. No, no. He said, a long period. He said, a long period of zazen is very difficult. But also, a short period of zazen is difficult, too. What do we have, you and I and us and here in this room, what do we have in common with everybody else? What do we have in common with someone who might just pass by us on the street unacknowledged and that we don't know?

[29:44]

What do we have in common with our friends? And what we share... with everybody on this earth is the inconstancy of life. We share the truth, the noble truth of impermanence. And this is the uniting bond between the most fortunate and most unfortunate persons. And it's not at all uncommon to experience this common bond, a common connection with others of impermanence as a sort of awkwardness or disappointment or pain. We use the word in Buddhism, dukkha.

[30:48]

And Dukkha has many, you know. Dukkha is just, I'd say this is a truth. This is not a speculative thing. We do get older. Beautiful flowers, wilt. Trees grow from seeds to saplings to lovely shade. Our beautiful, young, cute kids become surly and resentful. These experiences of change, of impermanence, are humbling, are profound, are beautiful truths. And this truth that things change is why we practice. I say, I'm suggesting that this is why we practice.

[32:04]

This is why we want to wake up, understand ourselves, understand how to be with other people. In our personal lives, the place that we're most familiar with. In the life that we live, that we don't necessarily even talk to others about, we make an effort to distinguish ourselves. We think that we are something special, which is true. And we make what might even be, or we might think are kind of reasonable, modest little filters of the day's experience. we remember what happened in the day where maybe we were wronged, or maybe we were generous, or maybe we were happy.

[33:18]

And in this story of the day, we are the hero. We're the one that we care about. And thinking of our day this way is very reasonable and it's also a lie. At the end of the Rohatsa Sashin in 1967, Suzuki Roshi said, right now, the most important thing is to find out What is the most important thing? And I'll say tonight, right now, the most important thing is to find out what is the most important thing. A picture of a rice cake can't feed us.

[34:26]

This is a question. We each have to answer for ourselves. This practice of the Paramitas, this practice of waking up through developing enthusiasm or through developing charity or through the cultivation of concentration or through patiently accepting the truth of dharmas as they already are. These teachings, these encouragements, these descriptions of the way things are, are not outside

[35:32]

of our experience. They are reflections, they are in fact really true and deep and helpful reflections of the way things happen to us, the way we notice things when we notice with a clear eye. We are asleep and in the morning The alarm rings. And we reach out and turn off the alarm and get out of bed. What sort of day will it be? How will we live the day? How will we take advantage of this extraordinary gift that's been given to us? Our human life. Our limited, unlimited, profoundly beautiful human life.

[36:33]

Thank you very much.

[36:51]

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