This is the fourth of the six perfections. It builds on the first three: Generosity, Observing the Precepts, and Patience. Generosity gets us going. It is the desire that others be free of suffering, whether or not we have the wisdom to free them from suffering. Generosity turns us from our common preoccupation with our personal suffering to at least notice the suffering of others. It leads us to the realization that our suffering, and our happiness, is not separate from the suffering and happiness in the world around us.
By observing the precepts, we build a foundation for this seemingly overwhelming task of benefiting all other beings. We take on what is relatively easy to control, namely our own thoughts, words and actions. We become more aware of the unconscious habits we live by, and how difficult it is to drop the habits that are no longer useful. This helps us understand both that it is possible for us to change, and how hard it is to change. We also begin to see how much we are like all those suffering beings we want to help, and realize that it is no easier for them to change than it is for us.
Patience gives us another perspective on change. We start to see time as a limitless resource. We are no longer confined in the bounded desperation of the present moment. We also learn that our own capacities, however limited they may seem, have the potential to grow beyond anything we can imagine, even if the time needed for that change is longer than we can imagine. What we still lack is the energy that keeps us moving. We are not just passive objects being propelled into enlightenment. We necessarily are part of the progress. We take the steps on the path ourselves.
This brings us to Endurance. This word gets the idea across, but to me it sounds too cold. “Endurance” could be taken to mean merely clenching one’s teeth and continuing in the face of adversity. While that can be part of it, we could also think of Endurance as persistence: getting right back on the horse after falling off. The idea of persistence at least gives a picture of putting our energy into something rather than being swept along lifelessly.
My favorite description of this perfection is one taught by some of my Tibetan Buddhist friends: “Enthusiastic Perseverance.” This way of looking at Endurance incorporates Patience. It is a picture of not just resisting something that discourages you from making progress. It is actively going after what you know you can do, even if you aren’t sure how to do it. It means not doubting your capacity to learn and, with time, to overcome whatever gets in your way. Even if there’s something you can’t do now, with practice you will be able to do it. Even if you find weaknesses or limits, you can overcome them, or even better, use them to your advantage.
We may even consider that this kind of Enthusiasm is what it takes for us to hear what the Buddha teaches. In Chapter Two of the Lotus Sutra, Shariputra asks the Buddha twice to give his highest teaching. Twice the Buddha refuses. The third time, when Shariputra asks with enthusiasm, the Buddha consents to preach. If we listen to this Wonderful Dharma the same way we listen to a television or other background noise we are barely conscious of, we will not hear it. The Dharma is not just entertainment, meant to fill up time in our lives. It is telling us what our lives mean, and how to live them. To hear that, we have to listen to the Buddha’s words carefully, as we would listen to a doctor who is telling us how to cure a terrible illness. To do that, we must ask with enthusiasm for the teaching.
Another way to make sense of this Perfection of Enthusiasm is by looking at its opposite: Laziness. This is another idea I stole from my Tibetan friends. They say the Buddha taught three different kinds of Laziness. The first is what we are most familiar with. It’s the not wanting to get out of bed, not wanting to put your bare feet on the cold floor, not wanting to deal with all the unpleasantness and dissatisfaction in the world. We all know this one. It’s usually felt more in the body than the mind, but the mind can generate it very easily. It can be hard to tell the difference between when we honestly need a rest and when we want to make another cup of coffee and read just one more meaningless article in the newspaper.
The other two types of laziness are more subtle: even harder to notice. One of them doesn’t look like laziness at all. It looks like perpetual busyness. I see it in myself when there is so much to do and there is no time to take care of the things I think are really important. That pilgrimage would be really wonderful but I only have so much vacation available. It would be great to spend 10 minutes doing my practice in the morning, but I have to fix breakfast and clean the house. In psychology this is known as “Displacement Activity.” We get so fixated on the demands that are right in front of us, that we forget long-term goals. We may even believe that someday all those daily demands will go away and time will just open up for us to do what we really want. So far in my life, this has not happened.
The last kind of laziness is the most insidious of all because it involves a belief that hides beneath the veneer of our awareness. This kind of laziness relies on the assumption not only that we cannot now do what we want to do, but that we could never do what we want to do. I could never write a book. I could never build a temple. I could never become as enlightened as the Buddha. If I don’t think the trip is possible, I won’t even start it. Or if I start it and get discouraged along the way, like the travelers in the story of the Magic City, I might give up halfway and miss out on the treasure at the end of the journey.
In theory then, it’s relatively easy to recognize that nothing good comes without perseverance. In reality, we do at times lose enthusiasm. How do we get our energy back? Working backwards through what we have learned about laziness, and what we know about patience, the first step should be obvious. We start by knowing that we can get our energy back. If we don’t think we can, then we won’t even try. This also shows us that no matter how drained we may feel, there is an energy within us. We just have to pay attention to what we are doing with it, then learn what we can do with it.
Being drained for awhile could be a good thing. It may be our body or mind telling us that we’ve been overdoing it. However, when the down time stretches into days or weeks, that’s a good indication that relaxation has become a habit, rather than a means for more progress.
One way to get our energy back is to notice what brings us joy. What attracts us in a way that washing dishes or going to the dentist does not? What are the things we enjoy doing rather than the things we do because they’re “good” for us? Here it is important to notice the difference between what gives us satisfaction and what gives us joy. Satisfaction comes from getting what we want. Satisfaction is what happens when you have a craving for ice cream and then you find it right there in your freezer waiting to be eaten. Joy is similar, and often mixed in with satisfaction, making it even more difficult to tell the two apart.
Joy comes from realizing how we can change. It can be in an “aha-moment” when the solution appears to something that had been a puzzle. It can come in each new word we pick up of a new language we are trying to master. It can come when someone recognizes in us something we are trying to improve, whether we’re trying to lose wait or gain calm.
Here is another way that joy is different from satisfaction: We can find joy in others’ joy. If I eat the ice cream, it means nobody else can get their satisfaction from what I have eaten. But when I share the joy in another’s accomplishment, that helps me realize what I can accomplish, and that my accomplishment can return the favor of their joy. There is no competition on the Bodhisattva path.
Another way to get our energy back is to notice how we are spending the energy we have. Are we applying it to impossible tasks? Trying, as the Buddha describes in Chapter Two of the Lotus Sutra, “to stop suffering by suffering”? One of the most common ways we have of losing our energy is by trying to change how other people think, rather than working with how we think. If we have doubts and fears of our own abilities, we believe we can change those by making other people give us certainty and courage.
We believe we can change how we dress, what we say, even what we do for people, and that will change what they think. We create an acceptable image of ourselves, then try to live up to that image. Or we coerce people by various forms of fear into saying things about us that we want to hear whether or not they are true. All this just to help change what we think about ourselves.
For one thing, we cannot know what others are really thinking. Most of the time we don’t even know what we are thinking. Most of what we do comes out of unconscious habit. Even when we do something intentionally, there are so many intentions at work there is no way to sort out which one is primary. This is why it is so important to learn about our own minds, and realize that they are fundamentally no different from others’ minds. The more we see that others are like us, the more dear they become, and the more determined we become to help them get what they really want.
All these attempts to change others’ minds are just other aspects of trying to manipulate the world outside us so that we can be happy. The six perfections are about our own practice. We are working to become more generous, not make others generous towards us. We are working to become conscious of what we do with our body, mind and speech, not control that of others. We are working to become more patient and enthusiastic rather than demanding patience and enthusiasm from others. We work to become more focused and wise, knowing we cannot focus anybody else, or give them wisdom.
As the Buddha taught, improving our practice will help others’ practice. As we become more generous, disciplined, patient, enthusiastic, focused and wise, others will improve also. But we are the ones taking the steps. Since we are more aware of what is in our own minds than anybody else can be, then we are responsible for dealing with what is in our minds, and not blaming others for what is in our minds.
Then again, we are not alone in our practice. We can get help from others, but only if we ask for it. Another way to kindle our enthusiasm and determination is so simple we often forget to do it. This is simply telling someone else about what we want to do. Now that my wife and I have moved to Tampa, I want to build a Nichiren Shu temple here in this city. I mentioned this to a dear friend of mine and he thanked me for telling him. He also reminded me to tell as many people as I can that this is something I want to do. It will be a lot of work and will involve many people working together. But unless others are aware of what we want to accomplish, it will not happen.
As Nichiren wrote in the Itai Doshin Ji, “All things are possible if people are united in one mind…Even if there are hundreds or thousands of people, if they are united in one, they are surely able to accomplish their aim.”
The perfection of Endurance, Persistence, Enthusiasm, however we come to think of it, this perfection unites us with the mind of the Buddha, and with each other. Generosity sets us on the Bodhisattva path. Precepts are the discipline that we build upon. Patience helps us grow our capacity. Endurance applies that capacity to our intent of benefiting all beings. What we still need is a way to concentrate that capacity, and the wisdom to see our practice in a larger context. These last two will come in future installments.
In March of 2007 I got an email from a Boy Scout leader in Lexington telling me of a project they were taking on later that month. On April 28, they were doing what they called a “multi-faith hike” and wanted to include our temple in their list of stops. Since that was such an auspicious day, and I always enjoy talking with people about the Dharma, how could I say no?
I replied and told him how delighted I would be to meet with them, but warned that since our temple is only about 300 square feet, we may not be able to accommodate a large group. He replied that he expected 20 people, including the scouts and their leaders, and sent me a list of questions that he thought would be helpful for me to use in my presentation to them.
Once I read the questions, I was even more certain that I wanted to talk with these young men. I too was a Boy Scout many years ago, so I was familiar with their activities and the values they worked to instill in their members. I thought it would also be great practice speaking to people who were interested in Buddhism but didn’t know that much about it.
I’m sharing these with you now since I often get requests from people for an overview of Buddhism in general and Nichiren-Shu Buddhism in particularly. This may also help people reading this to come up with answers for when others ask us these questions. (A version of this article has been published previously in the Nichiren Shu News.)
Here then are the questions.
- Who started your religion?
- What are the primary documents or scriptures of your faith?
- What are your main beliefs?
- What is required to be a member of your religion?
- What do you believe happens when and after we die?
- Describe the God you worship.
I should also mention that the group was spending only 20 minutes at our temple, since they also had a Muslim Mosque, a Jewish Temple, and a Methodist Church on their itinerary. So being able to cover all of these questions in that short time was another part of the challenge.
On the arranged day, I made sure I was there early. Candles and incense were lit at the Butsudan. I stood at the door outside the building that contains our temple so they would know they were in the right place. As the first few boys started trickling in, I directed them to where in the building to find our temple. For what seemed like five minutes there was a steady stream of them appearing. By the time the last stragglers came through our door there were almost 30 boys and men, crammed into every available square foot of our little temple.
Who Started Your Religion?
I told the boys that to answer this question there were two people we needed to talk about. I asked how many of them had heard of the Buddha. Several hands went up. One boy said he was a prince who lived a long time ago. One thought he was fat. One thought he was skinny.
Yes, I told them, the Buddha was born as a prince. He lived in northern India 500 years before Jesus was alive in another part of the world. In fact, he was the crown prince in his father’s kingdom, and could have anything he wanted. Even his name, Siddhartha, meant “every wish fulfilled.” In other words, he was more spoiled than Paris Hilton.
They knew exactly what I meant by that.
Even though the young Siddhartha had all the material comforts he could want, I continued, he knew there was more to life than just being comfortable. He wanted to know why people were so unhappy, and how he could make it so that nobody was ever unhappy again.
He left home and became a wandering holy man. For a long time he tried to live with very little food and water and got to be very skinny, just as the one boy described. But that practice made him so weak that he almost drowned while he was bathing in a river. As he lay exhausted on the bank, a kind shepherd girl brought him a bowl of milk mixed with grain. He ate it. As he felt the strength coming back into his body, he realized that the extremes of denying himself or indulging himself would not lead to what he sought; he had to find a “middle way.”
After he recovered, he spent a night meditating under a sacred tree. As the morning star came up over the horizon, he became aware that he had realized what he was looking for. People around him immediately recognized that something wonderful and profound had happened. They asked him, “Are you a man? Have you become a God? What has happened to you?” His answer was, “I am awake.”
The other person I told the Boy Scouts about was of course Nichiren, the founder of our branch of Buddhism. I explained how he lived 750 years ago in Japan. He was born into the lower classes as the son of a fisherman. But people saw his intellect and curiosity even as a child, and he was taken in as a novice at a monastery near the village where he grew up. In those days, the only way to learn how to read and write, if you were not part of the nobility, was by becoming a monk.
What are the Primary Documents of your Faith?
After the Buddha “woke up” or became enlightened, he spent 40 years traveling through what is now northern India teaching people about what he had found. In those 40 years he taught many different things to different people at different times.
For example, when he first started teaching, he told people that to be able to end their suffering, they had to give up their families, their jobs, their homes, their towns and their possessions. They had to come live as monks and nuns in the communities he set up. He gave them all rules for living with each other and for living with people outside that community. Even today, 2500 years later, there are still many of these communities all over the world where people work and live together to practice what the Buddha taught.
Later in his life, the Buddha told people something that seemed to contradict what he had taught before. He said that people could become enlightened without leaving their homes or their loved ones. He did not prevent people from joining the other communities he had set up if they thought they had to. But he gave them things to learn and ways of living their normal lives that would help them wake up to the same realization he had found.
It is said that there are over 14,000 sutras, or collections of what the Buddha taught during his lifetime. There were many other examples of the Buddha teaching one thing to one group of people at one time and another group of people at another time. For many people this was very confusing. They wanted to know which of these teachings they should believe.
When Nichiren was 17 years old, about the same age as several of the Boy Scouts who were listening to me, he made a vow that he would become the wisest man in all of Japan and solve this mystery. For the next 17 years, Nichiren walked all over Japan, studying each of the sutras he could find and talking with the great Buddhist scholars of his time. He covered an area as far as between Cincinnati, Lexington and Atlanta, all on foot. He wanted to know which of the sutras, which of the collections of the Buddha’s teachings was closest to the Buddha’s own mind, to his own understanding, to his own Enlightenment.
In the Lotus Sutra, Nichiren found the answer to this mystery. The reason the Buddha taught things differently at different times was because different people have different abilities to understand and practice what the Buddha was trying to teach. Just like when the Boy Scouts teach somebody how to make a fire, they may need to start with showing how to use matches properly. More advanced people can learn how to use flint and steel. In both cases the overall goal is making a fire. One just has to suit their methods to the ability of who is being taught.
Nichiren concluded that the Lotus Sutra was the most profound of the Buddha’s teachings, and the one that would lead us in our time to becoming just as enlightened as the Buddha. Based on what we learn from Nichiren, in our branch of Buddhism, we focus on the Lotus Sutra.
We approach the Lotus Sutra differently than other people may approach the central documents of their faiths. We do believe it contains information that the Buddha left for our benefit. However it does not contain a list of commandments and instructions telling us what to do and what not to do. There are many parables in it that necessarily must be interpreted, just as the whole book must be interpreted. We use Nichiren and each other as guides for how to interpret this book, but ultimately each of us has to make sense of it for ourselves.
This is just like the instructions in the Boy Scout manual. One has to take those instructions, make sense of them, and do something with them. It’s not like you can look at the section on knots, memorize everything it has to say about the square knot and say you know the square knot. You have to take pieces of rope in your hands, use the instructions to make a knot, test it, see if you’ve done it right, and if not try again. Then you have to take what you have learned there and apply it to your life. Like putting up a tent or building a tower. Learning the Buddha’s teachings is exactly like this.
What are your Main Beliefs?
This question I had to answer slightly differently from how it was posed. It made more sense to talk about what the Buddha taught rather than what we believe. To us faith means something different than it may mean to other people. As I am fond of saying, this practice isn’t something where somebody tells you to just check your brain at the door on your way in and believe everything I or anybody else tells you whether it makes sense or not. Faith and understanding do not oppose each other. Using your mind is essential to this practice.
There is a story of how the Buddha was teaching in a town called Kalama, which was at the crossroads of several trade routes. Many teachers would come to this town and tell people different ideas about how to live and what was important. When the Buddha and his group of monks arrived the people of Kalama asked him how they could tell whether something somebody taught them was true.
The Buddha told them not to believe something because it was written in a book, or because other people did it, or because it had been done that way for a long time or even because he himself told them that it was true. He advised them to take a teaching, apply it to their lives, and then to use their own judgment to decide whether it was harmful or beneficial. If beneficial they should continue it; if harmful they should stop it. Just like what I had said before about knots, we need to take the Buddha’s teachings and try them for ourselves in our lives for them to mean something.
What did the Buddha teach? Let’s start with happiness. The Buddha realized that most people, and even he himself before he became enlightened, go through life wanting to feel good as much as possible and feel bad as little as possible. When we feel good we say we are happy and when we feel bad we say that we are unhappy or that we are suffering.
The first thing the Buddha taught about happiness was that suffering exists. No matter how much we may want to deny it, or ignore it or want it to go away there are times when we are unhappy.
The next thing the Buddha taught was that there was a cause or a reason that suffering exists. It’s not because we are bad or some God hates us. It’s not even because we don’t have something we want. It’s because don’t want what we have. Even better, we can learn to get a lot more control over our own minds and our desires than we do over what goes on in the world around us, even though we think we’re better at manipulating the world than our minds.
But the Buddha didn’t stop there. He said he had learned how to end suffering, how to become happy through what he called the eightfold path. First we have to see things clearly, then we have to think about them clearly, then we have to speak the truth, then we can know how to do what is right, then we can live in the world without harming other people, then we can know how to apply our efforts and energies properly, then we begin to understand how our mind works, then we know how to concentrate our mind on what is important.
All these steps can seem either very easy or very difficult. And mastering them is a wonderful thing to do. But then later in his life the Buddha taught something else. He explained how what he taught about suffering was just a preparation for what he really wanted to explain, namely that anybody could become just as awakened as he was.
In some religions this is heresy. To think that one of us humans with all our flaws and difficulties can become just as wise and good as Jesus, or Mohammed or any of the beings that other religions consider as the most perfect example of what we can become, to think we could be just like them is taken as a sign of pride and arrogance.
There used to be these bracelets with the initials “WWJD” on them. I don’t know if people still wear them, but the initials stand for “What Would Jesus Do?” and the idea was for the bracelet to remind its wearers that they should do their best to act like Jesus in every situation of their lives. Isn’t this trying to become like Jesus?
If we know that we can become just like the Buddha, and we want to become just like Buddha, how do we do it? The Buddha taught that the essential thing we need is a strong determination to benefit other people all the time. We should want them to be happy. Why? Not because he tells us what to think. It is because they themselves want to be happy.
Instead of defining our happiness by what we want, we should define our happiness by how much we help people get what they want, by being of service to other people. This is very much like what is in the Boy Scout Law: A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. All these are meant to guide Boy Scouts to be a benefit to each other and the world in general.
What is Required to be a Member?
I chose to answer this question slightly differently from how it was asked. The real question is how can we practice what the Buddha taught? The answer is that we don’t have to be Buddhists to learn from the Buddha.
Anybody can read or listen to the teachings, think them over carefully, try to put them to work in their life, and see if they work. Then you go back, get more teachings, try those out, and so on. It’s just like in Boy Scouts when you learn what you need to become a Tenderfoot, then once you do that you learn how to become Second Class, and so on all the way up to Eagle Scout.
If you can do this as part of a group, it is much easier. Just like it’s easier to be a Boy Scout when you have a Troop to work with instead of just trying to do it by yourself. You can do a lot more on a camping trip with other people than you can do by yourself.
The Buddha knew this too. He taught how important it was to have what he called a Sangha, or a group of people working together to practice his teachings. He knew that different people have different abilities, different talents, different experiences and different perspectives on things. Until someone could become as enlightened as he is, no one person has all the answers.
It’s like the story of the blind men standing around the elephant, a story that many of the boys had heard. I was even able to get two or three to tell the story for themselves, how one man had the elephant’s trunk and thought the elephant was like a rope; another had its ear and thought it was like a heavy coat; another had its leg and thought it was like a tree; another put his hands on the side of the elephant and thought it was like a wall. None of the men was wrong, but none of them had the whole truth either.
I told them that there are some specific things that someone can do to become a member of our branch of Buddhism, but that we were happy to practice with anybody whether they are members or not.
What Happens When and After we Die?
Time was getting late. The boys were interested in hearing more but one of their leaders looked at me and pointed at his watch. I suppose they had another appointment to keep.
I explained that there were times that people asked the Buddha questions and he would not answer them. The reason is that he knew that if he answered one way or the other it would not help them either with their happiness or with becoming a Buddha.
One thing he did say was that there is not a permanent heaven or a permanent hell. Since all of us, all beings, are eventually going to become Buddhas, then even the beings who are suffering in hell or who are completely full of joy in heaven will eventually leave those places and continue their progress towards becoming Buddhas.
Something that Nichiren taught is that heaven and hell are just states of our minds. When we are angry we are in hell; when we have joy we are in heaven. There are of course other states of mind besides these two. Both the Buddha and Nichiren talked about these two, and more importantly how we can move from the more difficult states of mind, like anger, to states of mind that are more similar to our true nature, like generosity.
Describe the God we Worship
Many religions believe there is a powerful supreme being who controls what goes on in the world every day and decides after we die whether we go to heaven or hell. We don’t believe that.
We believe things happen for a reason and that the Buddha’s teachings help us find that reason. And while we don’t really worship the Buddha or even the statues and other representations we have of him, we work to develop a deep reverence and gratitude for what the Buddha taught.
Maybe the closest thing we have to what other religions call a God, I explained to them, is a teaching included in the Lotus Sutra. The Buddha said this teaching is the most difficult to believe and understand.
The Buddha taught that even though people looked at him and saw a man who was born in what is now northern India, left home, became enlightened, and taught for several decades, the real “Ever Present” Buddha existed before that man was born and will continue to exist for a countless number of years after that man dies. In all that time this Ever-Present Buddha is teaching all beings in all worlds, even the ones in heaven and hell, teaching them how to become just as enlightened as he is. He teaches whether we listen or not and whether we practice his teachings or not. He is always thinking, “How can I cause all beings to set themselves on the path to Enlightenment and quickly become Buddhas?”
Seeing Off
There were a few minutes left for questions. One boy wanted to know what the Kanji characters on the case for my inkin (ceremonial bell) meant. His father went to Japan many times each year and had brought things back for him with writing like that on it.
Some wanted to know how many members we had in our temple and how many members there were overall in Nichiren Shu. I told them there were several thousand in North America and Hawaii, and many millions in Japan.
Some wanted to know whether I was always a Buddhist and how I became a Buddhist. I told them that I was brought up as a Christian and decided about 15 years ago to take up this practice. However if they wanted to hear more details about why, they would have to come back, which I told them all they were welcome to do any time.
Their leader then thanked me sincerely for talking with them. I thanked them for including our temple on their hike. A few were interested in taking some pamphlets with them. I could hear lots of conversations in the hallway as they filed out that gave me the impression they had heard something interesting. I also noticed that several of the boys were taking pictures of our building as they left. I do hope to see any of them again soon.
南無妙法連華教
Filed under: Dharma Talks
We just got back from Santa Fe where I defended the thesis that has been consuming my time for the last year. I’ve added to the audio section of this blog recordings of the defense and a talk I gave on the Lotus Sutra the day before. Each is about an hour. The talk on the Lotus Sutra includes questions and discussion at the end. Enjoy!
This was a Dharma Talk I gave at the Hawaii Nichiren Mission on January 24, 2010
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Let me start this talk by thanking you all for bringing my wife Sandra and me to visit you here in Hawaii. The last two weeks in Kentucky have been unseasonably cold, so it is wonderful to be here enjoying your sunshine and warm air. Bishop Imai asked me to speak to you this morning about my experience with cancer. But since this is supposed to be a Dharma Talk, let me start by talking about the Dharma.
Chapter 16 of the Lotus Sutra has the parable of the doctor whose children take poison by mistake. The doctor mixes an antidote, but some of the children have lost their right minds and won’t take it. He decides to tell them that he is going away on business, and then sends word back that he has died. In Bishop Murano’s translation, there is a sentence that is difficult for me to understand. Speaking of the children when they hear of the death of their father: “Their constant sadness finally caused them to recover their right minds.”
Does this mean that we have to be miserable and depressed to recover our right minds? Do we have to wake up every morning dreading the disasters that the day will bring? This does not sound like what Chapter 27 calls the four states of mind we should seek: compassion, loving-kindness, joy and impartiality. What does sadness have to do with recovering our right minds? Through my experience with cancer, I believe I understand this sentence much better.
In August of 2007, I went in for a regular annual physical. Part of this was a blood test which came back slightly abnormal. I was sent to see a specialist who recommended taking a tissue sample. I agreed, expecting it all to be a futile exercise; everything was sure to come back normal.
The first clue I got that something was wrong was when I called for results and was told I needed to meet with the doctor in person. And I had to bring my wife. It’s a good thing she was there because I couldn’t hear anything he said after he told me I had cancer. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. I’m a vegetarian health nut who rides his bicycle to work every day. How could I have cancer?
That night I called my family to tell them about it. I wasn’t sure right away who else I should tell. Then I realized it was better for people to hear directly from me rather than whatever strange rumors would come up if I didn’t say anything. I also saw that my telling people could benefit them. They would realize that cancer could happen to anybody. Not hiding that I had cancer would also give people the chance to help me. This turned out to be tremendously important. People I barely knew let me know that they had survived cancer, and they knew that I would too.
All of this is much easier to talk about now. At the time I was pretty freaked out. It took several weeks after the diagnosis before I felt normal again. What is remarkable is that I was never troubled by self-pity. I never asked what I had done to deserve this, or thought that some evil deity was out to get me. I’m sure one reason for this is that I have our daily practice. Each morning I sit in front of our Omandala Gohonzon and dedicate myself to the benefit of all beings. And I have the teachings of the Lotus Sutra, which tell me that I am a Bodhisattva who has chosen this life, all the joys and troubles of this life, to help others.
Soon I got busy looking at my options for treatment. I talked with almost a dozen medical professionals. Read several books. Found out that my cancer was caught early and that my chances for a full recovery were very good. I chose surgery, spent 36 hours in the hospital, and recovered at home for three weeks before I went back to work. Since then I’ve had two years of clean tests. Three more years and I have officially beaten it. In many ways I got off easy. No radiation or chemotherapy was necessary. Other people with cancer go through much worse.
Let’s go back to that story about the doctor and his children. Can sadness really help us recover our right minds? Maybe if we think about grief rather than sadness, it will make more sense. The parable in Chapter 16 is about death. But grief can happen not just over death, but with any loss. Losing a job. Having a house burn down. Losing something we want. Or getting something we don’t want. We could see any kind of suffering as a loss.
In 1969 Elisabeth Kubler-Ross published a book, On Death and Dying, in which she described five stages of grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. We don’t go through these stages on order. Sometimes we go back and forth between them. None of these stages are inherently bad. These are all normal, human reactions. The idea is not to get stuck in any of the first four, to let ourselves reach the last one. There we see our loss for what it is, and lose our attachment to what we have lost.
No doubt I went through all five stages, repeatedly, with my cancer. At first I was just like those kids in the story. I didn’t need any medicine. Nothing was wrong with me. There had to be a mistake somewhere. I couldn’t have cancer.
It seems like I got through this stage quickly. But then even after the surgery, I wondered if the surgeon would come back and say that they had taken out healthy tissue; there had never been any cancer after all. Of course if I had remained in denial, I would not have done anything about the cancer. I would have gone on with my life until I got so sick that I may not have been able to be cured.
Anger was another phase I experienced. Maybe more like irritability. I didn’t realize it at first, but it turned out to be a very good thing I had told people I had cancer. They put up with my being so moody. I had an excuse. Still there are many things I did and said that I now regret.
The bargaining was when I started weighing options. I learned what the different possibilities were, talked with many people about the pros and cons, and made a good decision about what to do. Depression was also brief, although through the whole process I did not sleep well and felt exhausted most of the time.
Once I made my decision, I got to acceptance. The morning of the surgery, I was prepped and on the gurney, tubes coming out of my arms and famished from not having eaten in 24 hours. The surgeon came by and joked about setting me up at a table for one. I told him I had been looking forward to that day for six weeks, since the afternoon I had scheduled the surgery with him. I meant every word.
This is how we use the process of grief to get to our right minds. We start by facing our suffering. We don’t deny it. We don’t hide it. We aren’t embarrassed by it. We come to accept our suffering. This is part of our humanity: We are unhappy. We don’t get what we want and get what we don’t want. This is the first noble truth: Suffering exists.
But we can’t just accept suffering. We have to accept the Wonderful Dharma. We can be like the children in that story. We can know that we are unhappy and not think there is anything we can do about it. We keep doing the wrong things to make ourselves happy. We keep taking the wrong medicine. The Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sutra takes us beyond the four noble truths. It nourishes the seed of Buddhahood within us. It helps us realize that we are Bodhisattvas and shows us how to benefit all beings.
In his letter to Myoichi Ama, Nichiren Shonin wrote:
Those who put their faith in the Lotus Sutra are like winter, for many hardships come incessantly. Winter is surely followed by spring. We have never heard or seen that winter returns to fall. We have never heard that those whose faith is in the Lotus Sutra return to become ordinary people. The Lotus Sutra says, “All people who listen to this sutra will attain Buddhahood.”
I’m not sure if the concept of winter means much to people who live in Hawaii. I have heard that there are places on Big Island where you can visit snow if you want. In this quote when Nichiren says winter I think he just means suffering. What do we do with these hardships?
In Chapter 10 of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha teaches:
These good men or women (meaning us) are great Bodhisattvas. They should be considered to have appeared in this world by their vow to expound the Sutra of the Lotus Flower of the Wonderful Dharma out of their compassion towards all living beings.
We chose to take on the hardships in our lives because we knew we could use them to benefit all beings. We know that we are going to become Buddhas. So survival is not the point. We don’t have to just endure what we have and hope for something better.
Feeling good is not the point. But it is the result. It is a different kind of joy than what comes from getting what we want. It is the joy of using what we have, rather than wishing for what we don’t have. It’s being able to use disappointment, sadness, or even cancer in our process of becoming Buddhas. Not because these are the things we want. Just because they are all that we have.
Now I certainly wouldn’t recommend to anybody that they get cancer. As Molly Ivins said, from experience, cancer does not make you a better person. And I don’t believe I say this just because I survived it. But strange as it may sound, having cancer was one of the highlights of my life. To this day I have been able to use that experience to spread the Wonderful Dharma. And it has given others the chance to benefit me.
Thank you all again for bringing us to Hawaii. We hope to return soon.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
Filed under: Dharma Talks
Five years have passed since the Tsunami in the Indian Ocean destroyed so many people, animals and villages. Here in Lexington there was a memorial service in early January of 2005 for all the victims of the disaster. I was one of the representatives from many faith communities asked to come and present remarks. Fortunately I saved what I had prepared. Today it seems relevant in light of the continuing disasters we face, both ecological and political.
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Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo
Honor be to the Buddhas, to all the great teachers of the worlds of the ten directions.
Honor be to the Dharmas, to all the great wisdom of the worlds of the ten directions.
Honor be to the Sanghas, to all the communities of faith of the worlds of the ten directions.
The first teaching of the Buddha Shakyamuni was the reality of suffering. Despite all our best efforts to make ourselves comfortable, despite all the wonders of our science, our medicine, our engineering, suffering exists in the world.
When we face a calamity as great as the earthquake and tsunami last month, when the pictures and stories of destruction, disease, death and desperation on a scale unimaginable strike us here, even from half a world away, we cannot help but be moved to understand the reality of what the Buddha taught.
As we come together here today let us ask for the end of all suffering in the world, particularly among those directly affected by this disaster, and their families and friends present with us in this room. May we know the presence of the Eternal Buddha Shakyamuni and the protective deities who have vowed to defend all those who seek compassion and wisdom.
May we open our eyes to the suffering that exists around us and within us right here right now. May we awaken our hearts of compassion, and desire to benefit all living beings. May we cultivate seeds of wisdom and learn what we can do that will bring a genuine benefit to others and ourselves.
May this tragedy remind us of the fragility of life, of how much we depend on this earth for nourishment, warmth, and shelter. May we be reminded of the great debt we owe to all those who came before us, who built the farms, buildings cities, countries and everything that makes our lives possible.
May we know that as this tragedy has overcome the barrier of great distance to affect us here, the efforts we undertake here will overcome the barrier of even greater distances and bring benefits to all.
May we pledge to set aside any dislikes and animosities we have for each other and freely mix together as milk and water. May we respect and value our differences and work together with one mind to serve the good of all. May we know the power of generosity and the integrity of patience.
May the choking weeds of fear, stinginess and arrogance be uprooted from our hearts and the fragrant seeds of wisdom, charity and tranquility be sown in their place. May peace permeate the entire world and all beings enjoy peace and happiness.
In our work and our meditation, let us endeavor to increase our understanding and appreciation of what others have given and contributed to us, and to develop constant, mindful consideration of how our thoughts and actions will beneficially contribute to others.
May the merits we accumulate by the offering of our work be distributed among all living beings, and may we and all other living beings attain the enlightenment of the Buddha.
Namu Myoho Renge Kyo!
Filed under: Dharma Talks | Tags: Bodhisattva, Lotus Sutra, Six Perfections
The precepts give a sense of what we should not do. It would be reasonable to come to patience wondering what we should do. In these six perfections we are still working with our minds. We are still learning to see things for what they are. But first we need to understand the difference between doing something and when what we need to do is precisely nothing.
Through using the precepts, we develop a level of self-control. This level may not be as much as we want it to be. But we start to see how what we choose affects our own behavior. We are getting a better idea of how what we believe, say and do are the true causes of our happiness and our suffering. With patience, as with the precepts, there is still a focus on how we interact with others,. We also learn how to handle change. With patience we develop a new attitude towards suffering. Rather than trying to evade it, we learn to use it. Not as a way of controlling others, or even controlling ourselves. Instead we use it to increase and develop our own unimaginable capacities, and move closer to becoming the enlightened beings we are meant to be.
In chapter 17 of the Lotus Sutra, a verse describes patience:
He was patient, gentle
And friendly with others.
Even when many evils troubled him,
His mind was not moved.
This is an image of a gap between the mind of those practicing patience and what is going on in the world around them. In our delusion, we assume that what we do is determined by what other people do, or the situation we are in, or even our own feelings. We believe that our environment controls what we are. The Buddha explains that so long as we are attached to what is in our environment, our view is distorted. We need to let go of this attachment. We need detachment to see the world as it is.
Detachment is not indifference. Because our habit of attachment is so strong, we believe that if we let go we will lose the good things we have. We think that controlling our world and the people in it is the same as caring about it. We do not realize that in our distorted view, we are only trying to make ourselves happy. We do something for someone else because it makes us feel good. We only want somebody to be happy because we cannot stand to be around them when they are suffering.
It is possible to be detached and want all beings to be happy and free from suffering. In fact it is necessary to be detached. We have to let things change in their own time. We have to respect people enough to allow them to change in their own time, not the time we want.
We always think there’s too little time. The Lotus Sutra describes a different scale of time than we are used to. We think in terms of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months and sometimes years. The Lotus Sutra speaks of kalpas of time. How long is a kalpa? If every thousand years a heavenly being flies past a block of stone a mile on each side and brushes it with her veil, when that block of stone has worn away, a kalpa has elapsed. As unimaginable as that length of time is, there is an unimaginable number of those kalpas available to us. So there is no need for hurry. We are not going to run out of time.
Besides giving others time, we need to give ourselves time. We suppose we can just think ourselves out of suffering. We expect that we should be happy just because we can imagine ourselves being happy. Our minds are very quick. Our thoughts change rapidly. But the world is not like this. After we put the seed in the ground we can think immediately of a plant. But that plant still needs time to grow. We may want to change and be convinced that we need to change. But we need time to change.
So what do we do while we’re waiting, while we’re giving the world, other people and ourselves the time we need to change? What do we do with our minds? There is a view of patience that sees it as nothing but gritting our teeth, repressing our anger. It’s as if there are only two choices in life. One is to act out on every thought, every desire, every impulse we have. And when the world or the people in it aren’t doing what we demand, then we get angry to get what we want. Patience in this view would mean not indulging either our desires or our anger. We act like they aren’t there or even turn them inward as anger toward ourselves. None of this helps. Eventually all that bottled up anger comes out, usually directed at some innocent bystander who is then left bewildered, if not angered, by something that has nothing to do with them.
With what the Buddha calls patience, there is another way. We learn how to transform this attachment and use it to learn more about our minds and the world we live in. In other words, we learn how to use suffering to get at the root of suffering.
There are two parts of patience. The first is simple acceptance. Seen from another angle this means not resisting what is. What is happening is happening. We have pain. People are unhappy. Something tragic has happened. Wanting things not to be the way they are does not change what they are. This is the second of the four noble truths. We think the reason we are unhappy is because things are not the way we want them to be. In reality, we are unhappy because we want things to be other than what they are.
There is a word many Japanese use when they sit down to eat a meal: Itadakimasu. The literal meaning is “I accept,” meaning “I take this food.” But behind that literal meaning are two other meanings. The first is, “I am aware of everything that was necessary for this food to be here.” I know that someone had to cook it, and someone had to bring it to the person who cooked it, and someone else had to grow it, and the soil and the rain and the sunshine had to be just right. And the people who made all this possible had to have parents and teachers and friends and helpers. All those conditions and all those people, innumerable beings had to do an unimaginable amount of work just so that I could have this simple meal.
Following this first understanding is a second. When I realize how much work was necessary, I am grateful. I can certainly show my gratitude to whoever brought me this meal, and maybe to whoever cooked it. But for those I may never know or even see, the best way to show my gratitude is to want and hope for them to be happy.
This is not normally how we think of the things we get. Even with food, when something is presented to us we usually start picking it apart, finding its flaws. It’s too hot. It’s not hot enough. There’s too little salt.There’s too much spice. The dressing is supposed to be on the side. She didn’t smile at me when she brought the plate out. This fork is dirty. On and on and on. We pay so much attention to what’s wrong we miss out on what’s good.Why? Because we think we can’t handle it when things are wrong. We can’t eat the soup when it’s too hot. We feel bad unless someone smiles at us.
The truth is we can wait for the soup to cool. We can think that she was so focused on not spilling the food she brought us that she didn’t think to smile. In other words, we can bear it. This is what it really means to accept something, especially to accept suffering. When we are in pain, or unhappy, or not getting what we want, we are afraid that this is what things are going to be like forever and that we are going to be transformed by this suffering into something worse.
As outrageous as it may sound, we can choose to accept suffering. Not with shame and guilt. Like I’m so bad and I deserve to be punished. We can accept suffering in a noble way. Like I know that window is dirty. It’s not going to become clean just by my wanting it to be clean. This is something I know can be made better and I take it upon myself to make it better. Dealing with suffering is not always as easy as cleaning a window. But as we choose to face suffering rather than avoiding it, we find our capacity for dealing with suffering increasing. We find ourselves welcoming things we once thought would have been impossible to deal with.
This brings us to the second stage of patience. Beyond the idea, “I accept this” we come to the idea “I will transform this.” I know what this is now, but I know it will change. And when it does, it will be something wonderful and nourishing rather than something repulsive and frightening.
In my own life, when I was diagnosed with cancer a few years ago, I was spared any thought of “Why me?”, “What did I do to deserve this?” or “Am I being punished for something?” All these thoughts come from self-pity, a debilitating helplessness in the face of a difficult situation. Instead I knew I had to do two things. The first was accept that I had cancer. I could not deny it. I could not act like it wasn’t there. The second was to figure out how I could use my cancer to benefit other people. When someone wanted to help me, I let them. I thought, if I can beat this, I will show people how to do that. And if I can’t beat it, I would use that to show people how valuable life was. So far, I have beaten it. And while I can’t know for sure how many people benefitted from knowing about my experience, I do know of two dozen men my age who realized ten years was too long to wait between medical checkups.
Happily we don’t need to have cancer to learn about patience. Just sitting at a red traffic signal can be a wonderful chance to practice. We can start by noticing our frustration. We don’t want the light to be red but it is. We don’t even want to be frustrated, but we are. We could then take a step back and become aware of our beliefs. We think the light shouldn’t be red even though it is red. From there we conclude there’s something wrong, and we believe nothing should be wrong. When we step back and look at it like this, we realize it doesn’t really make sense. The light has to be red sometimes, otherwise traffic would be more of a mess than it is. And things are sometimes wrong, whether we want them to be or not. The good news is that the light will change eventually.
When anger comes up, at the stoplight or anywhere else, patience can help us deal with that in a different way. We don’t have to just suppress it. We can use it and transform it. First we have to accept it no matter how uncomfortable it is. Usually anger is so uncomfortable we move straight to action, as if doing something will get rid of the discomfort. But what happens is that our angry actions only increase the anger and we don’t feel any better at all.
If we can be conscious of the anger,, give it time, just sit with it, we can learn what the beliefs are behind it. Several years ago I was coming down a hill on my bicycle. At the bottom of the hill is a hospital and another street leading to the hospital. As I got to the intersection, a huge truck ran through a stop sign and nearly hit me. I was furious. Who did that so-and-so think he was? Just because he’s in a truck am I supposed to get out of his way? Was he trying to kill me?
Then I saw the truck pull up to the emergency room of the hospital. This did not change the situation. The truck did indeed run the stop sign and did almost hit me. But my belief about what the driver was doing changed. Rather than an arrogant, inconsiderate reprobate at the wheel of the truck, I realized this was someone scared, trying to get to the hospital. When my belief changed, my anger changed to compassion.
This is much more difficult when we are in the face of someone else’s anger. The Buddha taught this is one of the hardest situations. Especially if the other person is someone we hold dear, their anger is very hard to accept. We wonder what we have done to deserve such anger. How bad of a person can we be to have someone treat us like this. We believe that the other person truly hates us, and that we deserve to be hated.
This is the belief that has to be changed. If we hear what the Buddha taught, that we all have the nature of the Buddha within us, and that nature is infinite wisdom and infinite compassion. then within that person who we think hates us there has to be love. The person who is so disappointed in us must think highly of us for there to be such disappointment. Unless we believe that love is there, we can’t start looking for it. But the love is there. It is part of every one of us. It is sometimes very hard to see. Sometimes just sitting quietly in the face of anger, not saying anything, just thinking, “I respect you deeply, I do not despise you,” can be enough to bring someone back to their loving nature, to their Buddha nature.
Sometimes all we can do is be present for someone angry and accept their unhappiness. Like that stoplight, they aren’t going to be unhappy forever. We notice those rare glimpses of happiness mixed in with all the pain and help them notice it too. This may take a long time, especially with people who are attached to their pain. But time is what we need to grow.
When we develop our patience, and exercise our patience, we not only find out more of what we are, we help other people realize what they are. We don’t have to tell them or explain anything to them, unless of course they ask. But we are making a profound difference in their lives, just by showing them that there is another way to live. We are also getting out of the way of the Buddha, and letting him do what he describes in those wonderful verses from the end of chapter 16:
I am always thinking
How can I cause all living beings
To enter into the unsurpassed way
And quickly become Buddhas themselves?
Next: Enthusiasm
The second of the six perfections can seem strange coming after the first. Generosity is about living to be a benefit for others. Observing the precepts, at least in the earlier teachings of the Buddha, was about self-control. Now that we are on the Bodhisattva path, what is so important about being focused on ourselves? Is there a way we can now understand how keeping the precepts is being actively beneficial to others?
When the Buddha laid the precepts out for his followers he didn’t include a threat of punishment if people did not follow them. They are not commandments. Instead he presented them as principles, the way we modern people think of natural laws like gravity. The precepts are not something he created. They are his description of the way things work. This is the idea of karma: things happen for a reason. If we do something beneficial it brings a good result. If we do something harmful it brings a bad result.
One way of thinking about the precepts is imagining the inflatable bumpers that bowling alleys put in the gutters of lanes where kids are learning to bowl. When the ball goes too far to one side or the other, the bumper steers it back into the lane, towards its intended destination. In the same way, when we bump up against an action mentioned in the precepts, we know we’re not moving towards enlightenment. We aren’t seeing things for what they are.
All of the precepts have to do with our own actions This is not about changing others’ actions. And it’s not about using them to judge others’ actions. We may think that our actions are caused by what others do, but this is delusion. To understand what really makes us do things, we need to consider three kinds of actions. What we do with our mind, our speech, and our body. These are linked causally in one order, but the way to work with them is in reverse order.
What comes first is what is in the mind: beliefs. Based on these beliefs we get either things we say out loud, or we get thoughts, which are simply subvocal speech. Then based on what we say, we do things with our bodies. It can be hard to see these as three parts because they can happen very quickly. We may not notice that we are thinking or saying anything, especially when we act habitually. But if we slow down this process, and put some space between its parts we can see where our actions really come from.
We start by controlling our actions, by not doing things. This alone creates a lot of resistance within us. We become aware of thoughts like, “Go ahead”, “You deserve it”, or worse, “What difference does it make?” At first we may just be delaying an action, pausing at the cookie jar before we fill our hand again. But at least we’re starting to create that gap, becoming aware of what we’re doing rather than acting thoughtlessly. Then when we are aware of the speech, we start to consider what belief lies behind that speech and question it. “Will this cookie really make me happy?” Then when we change our beliefs, we consequently change our actions.
What actions should we consider not doing? For us ordinary people, the Buddha had five main precepts:
Not Lying
Not Stealing
Not Killing
Not Taking Intoxicants
Not Misbehaving Sexually
The first may look to be about just speech. But false speech can be as harmful as any physical action. There are many ways of saying things that are not true. We call them gossip, slander, flattery, coercion, deception, even exaggeration. None of these is a description of things as they are, and none of them is used to benefit those who hear the speech. All of them create another reality. When we choose that reality rather than the one we live in, the result is fear. As my Grandfather told me, when you tell the truth you don’t need to have a good memory. In its extreme, the result of lying could also be a dissociative mental illness, where one becomes so enmeshed in lies that the truth is no longer real for them.
But like all the precepts, this one is nearly impossible to keep. We are all deluded. How can we say what things are when we can’t see things for what they are? The least we can do is not add to that delusion by consciously lying. Otherwise it becomes nearly impossible to get at the truth.
The second precept of not stealing moves us into our actions. We can look at it in contrast to the first perfection of generosity. Taking things that are not given is based on the belief that I am more important than other beings. This in turn is based on the belief that my happiness is separate from that of other people, that someone else can be deprived of something and it will not affect me. Or worse, on the belief that the only way for me to benefit is at someone else’s expense. Generosity on the other hand recognizes that when others benefit I benefit. And when I truly benefit, not in a separate, selfish way, others benefit also.
The difficulty with this precept is knowing what is freely given. Is my breathing depriving someone else of air? If I take an apple from a tree, am I depriving someone of food? There is no one answer, good for every situation. But just asking the question, putting some space between what we want and what we are doing, gives a chance to make better choices.
The third precept has to do with stealing the one thing most valuable to any being: their life. In some views of the world, only humans are considered to be sentient beings, so only taking life from a human is considered killing. The Buddha taught that animals are also sentient, so taking life from them is also killing. He also taught that there are many other kinds of beings with life.
Does this mean we should all become vegetarian? Some may choose to, but that is not necessary to practice what Buddha taught. In Japan many people think vegetarians are hypocrites because even vegetables have to die for them to eat. It is impossible for us to live without other beings dying. The point is to be aware of this, and grateful to the beings who die for our benefit. This includes everything from the bacteria in our stomachs to the animals whose meat we eat (should we choose to eat it). The harm comes from taking pleasure in killing for its own sake.
Not taking intoxicants is usually thought of in relation to the powerful substances that can alter how we think. These include alcohol and the so called “recreational” drugs. The power of how these interact with our bodies is that we can find ourselves using them even though we do not want them, and even though we feel worse after having used them than before we used them. In these cases it is usually necessary for us to stop using them entirely before we can understand why we are using them.
But there are many other things we can use to intoxicate ourselves. Food, what we should use to keep our bodies strong and healthy, can be used as an intoxicant. This is obvious in people with allergies who for whatever reason continue to eat things that harm them. But it also happens when we let the pleasure we have in eating obscure the effect food has on us. Our modern epidemic of obesity is an example of this.
Drama can be an intoxicant. The idea that we need exciting lives, full of conflict, tension and uncertainty to be happy. This blinds us to the calm abiding that the Buddha described as true happiness. Attention and prestige can be intoxicants. The belief that I am special, that I deserve to be treated better than other people, and certainly better than I treat other people, this can lead to nothing but misery.
Conceit and arrogance are intoxicants. When we look at them closely, they are just the other side of self-pity and self-loathing, which are also intoxicants. When we have developed a true sense of who we are and what our value is, we no longer have to see ourselves as perfect and beat ourselves up for being imperfect.
The last precept, not misbehaving sexually, is the most difficult to think about, much less talk about. The sexual drive within us can be overwhelmingly strong. Without this part of our humanity, none of us would be alive. It is the foundation of our physical existence. It is also something that is constantly exploited in our culture, in advertising and other ways of influencing our behavior, often without our being aware of it.
Not misbehaving sexually could mean abstaining from sex completely. When life gets to a point where this is something we keep doing without knowing why, and not getting any joy from it, setting it aside for awhile can be helpful. What this precept is really about is not using sex to harm others. This includes both those we are sharing sex with, and those who could be hurt by our sharing sex with someone else. Misbehaving sexually involves seeing others as existing for our pleasure alone. We do not see them as sentient beings. Only as pleasing shapes, or as implements for our own satisfaction. We are not seeing them for what they are.
Getting back to our original question: What do the precepts mean in the context of the Bodhisattva practice? Yes these are all about working on ourselves, on our beliefs, on our thoughts and on our actions. But there is nothing else for us to work on. We cannot hope to benefit anyone if we have no control over ourselves. And truly we cannot force anyone to do anything or think anything or believe anything. Not even the Buddha can do that. Otherwise we would all be enlightened right now.
There are a few ways to see how keeping the precepts helps us benefit others. First of all, it makes us credible. If we want to show people another way of living in the world, a way that can lead them to true happiness, and the way we behave shows them nothing but greed, anger and ignorance, how can we expect them to believe us? Another way is that by working with our own delusions we learn to recognize those same delusions in others. This not only helps us become more compassionate towards them. It lets us reach them in ways we could not otherwise. Those who have struggled with addiction are in a better position to help addicts. Those who have struggled with disease are in a better position to help others who are diseased.
Perhaps the most important reason to emphasize the precepts in the Bodhisattva path is to remind us that no matter how far along the path we think we are, upholding them is still important. History is littered with great religious figures, Christian, Muslim and Buddhist, who believed because of their spiritual achievements they no longer had to worry about the consequences of their behavior.
The precepts are simply the law of Karma applied to our beliefs, thoughts and deeds. They tell us that anything we think, say and do has consequences, whether we are aware of those consequences or not. By using the precepts to become aware of our habits, we can decide whether to keep those habits or develop new and more beneficial habits. Thinking of our actions in terms of how they benefit others rather than just ourselves, we advance the process of learning to see things for what they are.
Next: Patience
Filed under: Dharma Talks | Tags: Bodhisattva, Lotus Sutra, Six Perfections, Suffering
Each of the six perfections is inexorably intertwined with the other five. In order to be truly generous, we also have to be ethical, patient, enthusiastic, focused and wise. To practice one we are practicing all the others. For most of us, considering all of them at once is too much. So it helps to consider one at a time.
Generosity is similar to compassion. Both are based on a desire to be a benefit to others. But generosity is different from compassion in that rather than being just a wish, it involves action. The wish is still important. The wish is an intention, and the intention is necessary for the outcome. If my intention is to harm someone else, then it is likely that my actions will result in harm. If my intention is to benefit others, this enables my actions to create benefit.
Generosity is not just something we either have or don’t have. It is a skill that we need to develop. Like any other skill it helps to have an idea of what we are doing. But then we have to take that idea and try it out. We may not get things right the first time. That’s ok. If we aren’t happy with how something came out, we can turn what happened over in our heads and think about how to do better the next time. Preparing our minds for what to do next is an essential part of practice in anything.
Generosity is not a business transaction. It is not giving something away just for the sake of getting something else, even enlightenment. Generosity is not favoring one person or group over another. These are both expressions of the what generosity is working against: greed. What greed tells us is that the only way to have anything is to hold on tight and not let it go. Otherwise we would lose it and never get it back again. And losing it means we lose what is most important to us: our happiness. Greed wants us to believe that the cause of our happiness is what is outside us. The house. The car. The reputation. The friends. The sensations that come at us when we are awake and the dreams we have when we are asleep.
The Buddha teaches otherwise. As usual he doesn’t say we have to believe anything. He just asks us to consider what he has found to be true and verify it in our own experience. For example, if greed were right, and our happiness depended on what we have, then all rich people would be happy. Instead we find that when people get things, all they want are more things. Once you get the BMW, then you want a Maserati.
Something else the Buddha points out is that the only reason we have anything is that it was given to us. You can apply this to the chair you sit in, the food you eat, the sunset you enjoy, any of the things in your life. You can even apply this to the world as a whole. The only reason we have our houses and roads and buildings and governments is from the work of countless people, most of whom are not still alive. So given this understanding, the way to have things is not by holding onto them, but by giving them away, by keeping this cycle of benefit moving.
This can be a scary idea, especially when our old habit of greed is screaming to hang on to what we have. But think about it. Who would you rather give money to? A miser who keeps everything to himself, not even able to give a handful of food to a starving dog? Or would you rather give it to someone generous who is committed to making the world a better place? Given that conclusion, what is the best way of attracting money? By greedily holding onto it for yourself? Or by using what you have to improve things? This is not to say you should just throw everything away. It is still possible to use the house and the car, and the reputation and the friends to improve the world. What is important is how you see the world.
Here’s an example you can try for yourself: paying your bills. We all have bills. Water, garbage, phone, rent or mortgage. Watch your mind when you get a bill. Do you think, “Oh how wonderful! A bill! I can’t wait to pay this!” Or do you think, “Here they are again, these leeches sucking out my life’s blood.” Most of us wait until the last possible moment to sit down with our checkbooks, or whatever we use to pay bills. Then we grudgingly send off the money out of fear that our water will be shut off or we will get thrown out of where we live.
Does this make sense? Haven’t you seemingly miraculously been able to turn on the faucet and have water there? Do you realize what millions of people in the world have to go through to get water? Maybe the water company is charging you more money than they should, but you agreed to pay them when you set up your account. Who does it harm for you to be so stingy about paying them? It doesn’t bother them. They get the money one way or the other. Why not be happy about it? Then if you choose to work to lower water rates you can be happy about that too.
Or think about all of the people who have worked so hard to make sure you have water at your tap. The people who run the treatment plants. The people who drive the trucks to the plants. The people who put in the pipes. The people who answer the phone when you call them. All these people are benefiting from you paying your bill. So why not be happy about it?
There is a point in our lives when we have to give everything away. All of our money. All the people we love. Our reputation. Even our bodies. This is what happens when we die. If we are not prepared for this, it will be frightening. But by giving things away while we can, we will make that inevitable process much easier.
What are the hardest things to give away? We might think that advice is the easiest thing to give away. We are always happy to tell other people what to do and how to live their lives. And done properly advice can be one of the most valuable things we can give. The person we help can then go on to help others.
The problem comes when we consider advice in the context of the Bodhisattva ideal, the wish to benefit others. Is our advice meant to benefit the person we are advising or ourselves? It’s not always clear. Some advice is nothing more than well disguised criticism. Some of it is not so well disguised: “I advise you to turn that music down before I smack you.” It’s really just saying that I can’t stand to see you doing what you’re doing, rather than that what you’re doing is harmful to yourself. Many people were raised in an environment of persistent criticism, given by people who themselves likely believed that they were providing that criticism out of love or concern. So for them it is even more difficult to tell the difference between criticism and advice, whether it is given or taken.
Something relatively simple to give is our presence. Just to be with someone sick or dying or grieving. We usually don’t need to say a word. Most of how we communicate with others is nonverbal anyway. Think of what it feels like to have a stranger smile at you. Not the “I want something” smile. Just the “Have a nice day” smile. Is that something you can give someone else?
Giving our time is more difficult. People are always asking us to volunteer for this or that, or stay late at work, or help with some project. Then we often feel there are times we just need to be alone, or maybe with a book or television. It can seem like we have a limitless amount of time available, but the concept of spending time can be very helpful. At some level we know that our lives won’t go on forever, that we have a limited amount of time to work with. How do we want to use that? This does not mean we should take ourselves out of the picture. We need time to eat, to sleep, to maintain where we live and our relationships. It is helpful to become conscious of how we spend our time. If we are an average American, do we need to spend four hours a day in front of the TV?
More difficult than giving time is giving money, or material things in general. It’s easy enough to give away things we have but don’t use any more. And this can be generous if we are trying to use those things to make someone else’s life better. But what happens to our minds when we realize someone could really use something we hold dear? Does greed set off our fear that we might not ever get what we had again?
But by far the hardest thing we can give away, the thing that we try hardest to hold onto is our merit. This is a difficult concept, and would make an excellent topic for another meditation, but it crucial for practicing what the Buddha taught. A simple way of thinking about it is a sort of karmic gas tank. The reason we now have lives that are relatively comfortable, relatively prosperous and relatively sane, is because of benefits that have been created and that we are now enjoying.
What then do we do with that merit? We could just rest on our laurels and empty out the tank. But the idea is that we can use it to create more. By now you can probably guess how to get more of it: We give it away. And to whom do we give it? To beings with less merit.
We can all recognize a desire to live in a world without greedy, angry, ignorant people. But if it were not for these people, who could the Bodhisattvas benefit? We as Bodhisattvas need these people, and can learn to appreciate them. This does not mean to allow ourselves to be harmed by them. It does mean that we should not hate them, to want them to go away, to wish we did not have to deal with them. We should remember the words of Never-Despising Bodhisattva in Chapter 20 of the Lotus Sutra:
I respect you deeply. I do not despise you. Why is that? Because you will be able to practice the way of Bodhisattvas and become Buddhas.
When we dedicate our merit to the Great Omandala Gohonzon, to the Ever-Present Buddha Shakyamuni, to the Wonderful Dharma of the Lotus Sutra, to our Founder Nichiren, and to the protective Deities of the Dharma, we are giving away our merit. It is important to do this practice every day because this is the foundation of generosity. It reminds us that whatever merit we have came from others, and cements our resolve to use that merit to benefit others.
It is said that the sun does not think about shining. Shining is just what it does. The ideal of a Bodhisattva is to be generous without thinking, especially thinking “I am so wonderful for being generous.” We want to use the practice of generosity to liberate ourselves and others from the habit of greed, and replace it with the habit of creating benefit for all beings.
Next: Precepts
Filed under: Dharma Talks | Tags: Bodhisattva, Lotus Sutra, Six Perfections, Suffering
In chapter seventeen of the Lotus Sutra, soon after the Buddha reveals his ever-present existence, he teaches that anyone who hears of how long his life is, and who understands the meaning of his words, even for the briefest moment, accumulates more merit than those who practice five of the six perfections for an inconceivable amount of time. The five included in his description are, briefly: Generosity, Morality, Patience, Perseverance, and Concentration. Why he left out the last of the six, Wisdom, we might think about later. But for now it would be good to consider all of these perfections and how they can help us as we travel together along the Bodhisattva path.
Much of the early chapters of the Lotus Sutra is filled with the Buddha trying to remind his audience, namely us, that we are Bodhisattvas. In chapter two, he says that the Buddhas teach only Bodhisattvas. This doesn’t mean he ignores those who are not Bodhisattvas. As he did in chapter eight, he is reminding us the same way he reminded Purna, of a vow we have already made to lead all beings to become Buddhas and eventually to become Buddhas ourselves.
Then in the last chapters of the Lotus Sutra, we get examples of how other Bodhisattvas lived. We see Never-Despising respecting everyone deeply, Medicine-King sacrificing himself over and over, Regarder-Of-The-Cries-Of-The-World being present for anyone suffering and Universal-Sage vowing to protect all those who practice the Lotus Sutra so that they can lead others to enlightenment.
But maybe we aren’t ready yet to leave the teachings about suffering. Maybe we think we have to get rid of our own suffering before we can think of helping anybody else. Ok then, let’s take some time to consider suffering.
First we have to know what suffering is. We say suffering is not happiness; suffering is opposed to happiness. We even define what we want and what we don’t want by using suffering and happiness. What we want is happiness and what we don’t want is suffering. Unfortunately, there are problems with this view.
It’s obvious that we are not happy when we don’t get what we want, or when we get something we don’t want. It’s not as obvious that even when we get what we want, we aren’t happy either. That is we aren’t happy for long. The shiny new car gets a dent in it. The beautiful new house has mice. The lover who was supposed to make all our dreams come true leaves their underwear on the floor.
Getting what we want is only a fleeting pleasure, like a junkie getting a fix. When the Buddha in the third noble truth said that we can end suffering, he didn’t mean all our cravings would be satisfied. He meant we can have a lasting happiness, that does not depend either on getting what we want, or keeping ourselves away from the things we find pleasurable. Thinking that happiness is getting what we want only confirms the view that what makes us happy is the things outside us: the status symbols, the people, the drugs, the reputation, whatever it is we don’t think we can live without.
If we go back to the second noble truth, we find this is what the Buddha is telling us. The reason we are unhappy is not because we don’t have what we want; we are unhappy because we want what we do not have. When this wanting is not just a whim, when it becomes full-blown craving, we are suffering whether or not we get what we want. When we can recognize that we are miserable and desperate without that thing we want, then we are starting on the path. Then we are beginning to see the difference between our desire for a thing and the thing itself. It is hard to recognize this state of mind when we are in it. It is even harder to recognize how disturbed we are when when we are in it. We think we are excited, anticipating some pleasure in the future. But then when our hopes are thwarted and it becomes obvious the desire will not be met, watch how the world comes crashing down around us.
We could hear the Buddha’s words and think the idea is not to want anything. We could try to live so that we put up with whatever comes our way, not even wanting to be enlightened. If we don’t want anything then we won’t be disappointed. But that can leave us inert, unconcerned with our own suffering, much less that of others. Try as we might we can’t stop wanting, especially wanting to be happy.
What the six perfections can show us is how to use suffering. We have put our hand on the stove and found how it can burn us. Now rather than running away from the stove, we can learn how to use it. We can learn how to transform suffering into something that can benefit not just us, but all beings. To do this we have to learn how to be brave, how not to be afraid of suffering. We have to learn how suffering can transform us, but not destroy us. Then no fear will hold us back.
Next: Generosity
