Return to Winter/Spring 2002-2003

The Paramitas

From a talk by Zen Master Wu Kwang

When the monk Tachu first came to call on the Patriarch Zen Master Matsu, Matsu asked, “Where are you coming from?” That means, “At this very moment, seeing, hearing—even your sense of I-ness—emerge from where? At this very moment, seeing and hearing are an expression of what?” But Tachu said, “I’ve come from Tayan Monastery in Yueh Chou.” Then the Patriarch asked him, “What is your intention in coming here?” You might also ask, “What is my intention in coming here this evening?” Tachu said, “I have come here to seek the Buddhadharma.” 

At that point you could say Matsu has completely sizedhim up and seen through him. He replied, “Without looking at your own treasure, for what purpose are you leaving your home and walking around? Here I do not have a single thing. What Buddhadharma are you looking for?”

Tachu replied, “What then is my own treasure?” Here the sense of intention and investigation points back towards himself, and his questioning becomes much more intimate.

Matsu said, “That which is asking me right now is your own treasure, perfectly complete; it lacks nothing. You are free to use it. Why are you seeking outside?”

Upon hearing this, Tachu realized the original mind, which was not relying on knowledge or understanding. Overjoyed, he paid his respects to the patriarch and thanked him. After this he stayed with him for six years, serving as his disciple.

Later he returned to Yueh Chou and composed a treatise, “Discourse on the Essentials of Entering the Way through Sudden Awakening,” written in the form of questions and answers. When Patriarch Matsu saw the text, he said, “In Yueh Chou there is a great pearl named Tachu. Its perfect brilliance shines freely, without obstruction.” 

That last sentence is important, and it points toward my focus tonight: the innate quality of generosity and the practice or relinquishment of obscurations. In the book, a questioner asks, “By what means can the gateway of our school be entered?” Tachu answers, “By means of Dana Paramita.” The questioner replies, “According to the Buddha, the bodhisattva path comprises six paramitas. Why, then, have you mentioned only one?” 

Before going further, I need to say something about the meaning of paramita. It literally means to cross over, with the connotation of to transcend. Sometimes the six paramitas are referred to as the six perfections. But perfections does not mean some kind of idealized trip to become perfect.

Dana Paramita, for instance, means giving or generosity, implying compassionate activity. Shila Paramita is sometimes translated as practicing the precepts; but in Zen we also want to recognize whether they are open or closed. For instance, if you had hidden some Jews in your home during WWII and Nazis had come to your home, asking if you had seen any Jews, you would not answer “Yes, they are up in my attic.”

Next, Kshanti Paramita translates as patience, endurance or perseverance, and can include an understanding and acceptance of karma.

The fourth, fifth and sixth paramitas go together. The fourth, Virya Paramita,is translated as effort or energy; it is connected with sincere trying—as when we say the Great Vow: “Sentient beings are numberless. I vow to save them all.” The fifth, Dhyana Paramita, referring to meditation, describes a mind that acts like a mirror: If red comes, it reflects just red; if white, just white. The practice of meditation is: Moment by moment, what am I doing just now? And not just when sitting on a cushion in the dharma room. The sixth, Prajna Paramita, is about wisdom. It tells us that when your practice becomes digested and assimilated, then clear seeing and acting, according to your situation moment by moment, becomes possible. This is sometimes referred to as “everyday Zen” or “last word Zen.”

“We give different names to these six methods only for convenience in dealing with passing needs,” Tachu says in his treatise. “But when we come to the marvelous principle involved in all of them, we find no differences at all.” 

The next part of the treatise asks, “Why is it called Dana Paramita?” Tachu replies, “Dana means relinquishment.” That is interesting, because it is ordinarily translated as giving or generosity. When asked, “Relinquishment of what?” Tachu replies, “Relinquishment of the dualism of opposites. Let go of all ideas of good and bad, being and not being, love and aversion, empty and not empty, pure and impure, concentration and distraction—let go of all of it.”

That last one, distraction, is important for formal meditation practice. Many times students will say, “When I sit, I think my mind is distracted or daydreaming about ninety-five percent of the time; five percent of the time I have concentration.” Here Tachu says, let go of looking at your mind in that dualistic way. Do not compare concentration with distraction. That is like the metaphor of the blue sky with the bright sun shining, while clouds are passing back and forth. Sometimes you see the blue sky and bright sun clearly; at other times you do not see them, because clouds are passing back and forth. But essentially, even the clouds are part of the blue sky. They are not separate—originally, all one.

If you can sit with that kind of confidence in the nottwoness of all of that, then you are not disturbed by your “distracting thoughts.” Then you settle down and become open and clearly perceptive. That is the view of the Dana Paramita as relinquishment. 

In the Japanese Zen tradition, there is a story where all these paramitas come together. It tells of a monk named Tetsugen, who lived several hundred years ago. He wanted to print the Buddhist Canon in vernacular Japanese, so the common people could read it. So he started traveling around Japan, begging for money. It took him about ten years to collect enough to hire someone to make the wood blocks for printing. Just at that time there was a big flood. People lost their homes and didn’t know what to do. Tetsugen gave them all his money, then started out again. Ten years later, he again had enough money. And then there was a drought that spoiled the rice crop; again, he gave his money and started out again. This time he actually got the sutras printed. 

The Japanese people said, “The monk Tetsugen did three printings of the sutras, but of these three, the first two were much better than the last.”

In his discussion of this, Suzuki Roshi says, “To give is to be non-attached; to not attach is to give.” The first is clear: If I give you my Zen stick, then I am not attached to it. But to be non-attached is to give? It means that originally we have the innate quality of generosity. If we are not clinging and reducing ourselves to some small grasping, egoistic perception, then already generosity is there. Then we are one with the world we are embedded in. Everything in nature is already giving. The sun is continuously giving, the rain and wind are continuously giving, the four elements are continuously giving to us.

Likewise, we also have that quality.