The question we started with
- How does a deep questioning of our existential reality affect how you live your day to day life?
- Are you the type of person that tends to that kind of contemplation? Why or why not?
Teaching notes
Introduction to the concept of the paramitas and how their practice is perfected by performing them with emptiness in mind (a preview of the future).
Verse 25: Generosity
- Generosity is what lightens the burden of “I”.
- It can look all kinds of ways: time, energy, money, goods, work, taxes, knowledge, Dharma, etc.
- “Even one’s body”: the Buddha gave of his body. Ultimate generosity is reserved for high-level bodhisattvas, but a challenging aspiration.
- Important to be aware of your capacity. It is not so good to regret generous acts, and working within smaller boundaries and examples can be more fruitful than overextending yourself. Still important to interact with the challenge.
- The practice of passing something from hand to hand.
- It is a state of mind.
- Challenge to give without any hope of return, but purely because someone needs something (compassion).
- Bodhicitta: even a morsel of food given to an animal generates vast merit when performed with the intention of bodhicitta.
- A perfection is “transcendent” when it destroys its counterpart (miserliness), is held by wisdom free of the three concepts, fulfills beings’ aspirations, and matures their potential. Three types: material giving (intention matters, not size), protection from fear (saving lives), and Dharma. “The motivation behind the act of giving makes all the difference.” Stories: Patrul Rinpoche buying thousands of animals from slaughter; Khenpo Sodargye’s own annual mass animal-release campaigns.
Verse 26: Discipline
- Moral discipline encompasses all laws and rules, from those of the dharma to those within our relationships that we have agreed upon.
- Not all laws are just, and when there is contradiction within the different sets of rules, check your intention and follow love and compassion.
- Rules exist “to protect our minds from wavering,” not to measure others.
- The main cause of a beneficial rebirth, essentially avoiding harm. However, must be performed with beneficial intention, not for personal gain.
- Moral discipline increases strength in virtue and weakens destructive action.
- Three disciplines: refraining from harm, gathering virtue, benefitting beings.
- Without it, you cannot accomplish your own goal.
- True intention keeps discipline pure. Wanting to do it vs. forcing yourself to do it.
Verse 27: Patience
- Willingness to be resilient in the face of your own harm and perfectly avoid the harm of others perfects and protects bodhicitta.
- An inner practice.
- Patience is especially potent when it is easy for us to retaliate.
- Not getting upset at harm and difficulty, instead responding with compassion and understanding.
- Not blindly accepting destructive behavior, but reacting wisely.
- The opportunity to practice patience is a great gift.
- Practice with emptiness of harm, harm-doer, and victim.
- Bearing harm without anger, enduring hardship for the Dharma with joy, and facing emptiness without fear.
Verse 28: Diligence
- Pronounced multiplication of benefit when intention is for all beings.
- Also called joyful effort, enthusiastic dedication to practice.
- Motivation important for continuing the helpful pattern.
- Drilling down out of obligation can lead to burnout and destruction of diligence.
- Arises naturally out of love and compassion for all sentient beings.
- True diligence is “joyous effort”: spontaneous, lively, “never grim self-forcing.” Three types (armor-like, in virtue, insatiable in serving others), each opposed by a laziness with its antidote: for craving comfort, meditate on death; for faint-heartedness (“a person like us will never reach enlightenment”), reflect on liberation’s benefits; for busyness with this life, see that it causes only suffering. Diligence permeates all other paramitas.
Analytical meditation
Settling
Find a way to sit that you can stay with for a while. Eyes closed, or lowered toward the floor. Take a few slower breaths, then let the breath go back to whatever it does on its own.
We explored three verses today, and each one is about a quality a bodhisattva works to grow: generosity, discipline, and patience. For our analytical meditation I thought we could try something a little more imaginative. For each verse we’ll picture someone who really embodies that quality, then someone who really, really struggles with it, and then we’ll imagine that second person being offered a kind of nectar, drinking it, and slowly becoming more like the first. As we go, let’s stay connected to the body and notice what each of these people might feel like from the inside.
pause
Verse 25
ring the bell
First, verse 25. The verse says that if even the body is to be given up on the way to enlightenment, material things hardly need mentioning, so give without hoping for reward or karmic return.
The verse is asking for a very special type of generosity, beyond ideas of “reciprocal altruism,” where generosity is turned into the experience of quietly keeping score or waiting for something back. This is a type of altruism that connects to giving for giving’s sake. Giving as an end in and of itself.
Let’s start our inquiry by imagining someone who really embodies that. It could be someone you’ve known, a teacher, a grandparent, a spiritual teacher or figure. Or it can be your own imaginal ideal of generosity, someone you make up entirely. Someone who gives easily and doesn’t seem to need anything in return. Let’s just trust whatever comes up.
pause
See if you can sense what it might be like to be them. Maybe there’s an openness in the chest, or a looseness in the hands, or a kind of warmth moving outward. Let’s see what happens when we try to embody our ideal in a bodily and energetic way.
pause
Now let’s imagine the opposite, someone who really, really struggles with giving. A bit of a Scrooge. They count every penny, they hold on tight, and they’re always a little worried there won’t be enough. Of course, there’s a virtue and a groundedness in being realistic, but this person’s thrift is more in the realm of anxious fear than realistic good judgement.
pause
See if you can sense what it might be like inside them too. Maybe there’s a tightness, or a clenching, or a kind of hunger that never quite settles. It’s okay if some of this feels familiar. Most of us have a little Scrooge in our life somewhere.
pause
Now imagine that our idealized generosity figure offers this person a cup of nectar, the very essence of generosity. Maybe it has a color, or a warmth, or a sweetness. Watch them take the cup and drink.
pause
As it moves through them, see if you can watch the tightness start to soften. Their hands open, their shoulders drop, and little by little they start to look like the generous person you imagined at the beginning.
pause
And notice what happens in your own body as you watch this.
quiet, one minute
Verse 26
ring the bell
The verse says that without discipline you cannot accomplish even your own purpose, let alone anyone else’s, so guard your discipline without regard for worldly life.
The verse is pretty direct here. If we can’t keep our commitments to ourselves, it’s hard to be much help to anyone else.
I thought we could explore discipline as a kind of congruence, where our values, our words, and our actions all line up. There’s something that just feels really good about that. Maybe you’re drawn to the values of Buddhism, or maybe your values are a bit different, and either way there’s something here for you, because living in line with what we care about tends to feel good whatever those values are.
At the same time, sometimes when we try really hard to be disciplined, we can end up with a lot of tightness, and even a kind of obsession about getting it right. I like to think about committing to this kind of congruence as similar to exercise. When we commit to exercise there’s a desire to get stronger, but we don’t want to be so sore we can’t get out of bed, or push so hard that we burn out and quit. So let’s think about the kind of congruence we can keep up, steadily and gently, day after day.
Let’s imagine someone who really embodies that. Someone steady, who does what they said they’d do, shows up when they said they’d show up, and seems at home in their own rhythms.
pause
See if you can sense what it might be like to be them. Maybe there’s a groundedness, a feeling of being upright and rooted, or a steady kind of energy that doesn’t need to rush.
pause
Now let’s imagine someone who really struggles with this. They care about certain things, and they might even say so out loud, but their days keep going in a different direction. Maybe they value rest and keep staying up too late or overcommitting, or value kindness and keep snapping at the people they love, or they’ve tried so hard to live up to their values that they burned out and stopped trying. There’s a gap between what they care about, what they say, and what they do, and even though they’re really trying they feel stuck.
pause
See if you can sense what it might be like inside them. Maybe there’s a scattered, restless feeling, or a heaviness, or a fog that makes it hard to begin. Let’s try to connect with the energetic signature of this person, real or imagined.
pause
Now imagine someone offers this person a cup of nectar, the very essence of congruent moral discipline. Maybe it has a color, or a temperature, or a taste. Watch them take the cup and drink.
pause
As it moves through them, see if you can watch their energy start to gather. They sit up a little straighter, their attention steadies, and little by little they start to look like the steady, congruent person you imagined at the beginning.
pause
And notice what happens in your own body and energetic system as you watch this.
quiet, one minute
Verse 27
ring the bell
The verse says that for a bodhisattva who wants a wealth of virtue, the people who do harm are a precious treasure, so be patient with everyone and carry no hostility.
The verse says something pretty surprising, that the people who give us a hard time are like a treasure, because they give us a chance to practice patience that we wouldn’t get any other way.
Let’s imagine someone who really embodies that. Someone who’s hard to ruffle, who meets frustration with warmth, and gives other people room to be difficult. Again this can be real or imagined. Someone you’ve met or someone you know by reputation.
pause
See if you can sense what it might be like to be them. Maybe there’s a spaciousness, a slow easy way of being, or a kind of coolness that lets things pass through.
pause
Now let’s imagine someone who really struggles with patience. Maybe little things get under their skin, a slow line, a car that doesn’t move when the light turns green, an email that lands the wrong way, and before they know it they’re already reacting. Usually there’s a lot going on for them underneath, and life has a way of pushing them past a tipping point.
pause
See if you can sense what it might be like inside them. Maybe there’s heat, or pressure in the jaw and chest, or a heartbeat that’s always running a little fast.
pause
Now imagine someone offers this person a cup of nectar, the very essence of patience. Maybe it has a color, or a coolness, or a softness to it. Watch them take the cup and drink.
pause
As it moves through them, see if you can watch the heat start to settle. Their breath slows, their jaw unclenches, and little by little they start to look like the patient person you imagined at the beginning.
pause
And notice what happens in your own body as you watch this.
quiet, one minute
Closing
ring the bell
Before we stop, one small thing to take with you. Imagine there’s plenty of nectar left over, and it’s yours, if you want it. Feel free to have some for yourself. And, good news: there’s an unlimited source of this nectar if you need it. All we have to do is imagine an idealized form of whatever quality we want to explore and ask them to generate it for us. The practices of Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism that have passed these practices on to us have many skillful means for generating these qualities, so feel free to keep exploring. Either way, feel free to revisit this nectar practice over the next week if it resonates.
pause
We can gently drop all that. Notice the weight of your body in the chair, the sounds in the room, the other people sitting here with you. When you’re ready, open your eyes.
Questions for the week
Choose one or more of these questions to take into the week ahead:
- Which of these paramitas feels most natural to you?
- Which feels most challenging?
- Pick one to practice throughout the week. Notice your intentions and perspective when you do. What is the effect for you and for others?