Determination Paramita
Photo by Gentrit Sylejmani
In the eighth talk in this series of ten talks on the paramitas or perfections, Zuisei speaks on determination as “the unshakeable resolve to do whatever benefits others.”
Determination helps us to keep moving forward and keep discovering what there is to uncover along this path. It is a fierce commitment to realizing our potential and awakening, despite all hardship and possible resistance.
This talk was given by Zuisei Goddard.
Transcript
This transcript is based on Zuisei's talk notes and may differ slightly from the final talk.
Determination Paramita
Sometime in 1970 or 1971, there was a French sailor by the name of Frank Mulville. And he sailed solo, single-handed across the Atlantic to Cuba. He had an experience of what he called bliss and described feeling really in love with the ocean, the solitude, the silence, and his boat. It was named Iskra. He wanted to, in a sense, step back and look at what was happening. So he decided to tie himself with a rope, while his boat was still sailing, to float away from the boat so that he could look at it from a distance.
This is how he describes it: "It made me feel quite dizzy to look at her. She seemed the most lovely thing, dipping in and out of sight, as she mounted the long Atlantic swell and then slipped into the hollows. This, it struck me, was the supreme moment of my life. I had never achieved anything to equal it, and I was never likely to again. This was the ultimate experience. It was my dream, and I had it. Why not let go of the rope? To melt into the sea at this apex of experience was the only thing left. Nothing that could happen in the future could better this."
Mystics, for example, have described these sometimes very strong experiences of bliss during meditation and also in daily life. People who spend time in the wild report a sense of the complete rightness of things, including very much themselves, their wholeness. And so he says, "I stayed at the end of the rope for a while, and then I began to get frightened. I glanced deeply into the womb of the sea and watched the shafts of sunlight as they spent their energy uselessly in its density. I slipped a bowline off my shoulders and hung for an instant at the very end of the rope, my fingers grasping the bare end of life itself, and then I hold myself back hand over hand."
This is the moment of reckoning, this moment of hanging at the end of the rope. It's a moment that every practitioner must face if we sit long enough. It really forces us to ask: What happens? What is there at the limit of what is knowable? And in that moment, do we hold on or do we let go? For a while, sometimes a good long while, Zazen is really just about taming our minds, quieting our minds. They are noisy, they are unruly, they are anything but calm or centered.
I often think of water striders, where we're just flitting about, really on the surface, skimming the surface of our minds. But if we're following the Zazen instructions that we've received, if we're sitting well and as deeply as we can, as wholeheartedly as we can, eventually we do settle into a deeper level of stillness and silence. We begin to notice, sometimes for short periods, sometimes for a period of Zazen or longer, that our minds are steady, they are becoming quieter, that we're able to stay on the breath without distraction. We can focus without pushing, without tightening. And that's when we begin to sense that there is more.
Facing the Fear of Letting Go
I was saying to somebody earlier that we are floating, in fact, on the surface of the ocean, and our feet are dangling, and we can sense that there's a whole world, a whole universe down there beneath our feet. That there's miles and miles of water that we have not yet seen, we have not yet explored. And we want to. And it is frightening. We know also, without knowing, that what is stopping us is that rope tied around our shoulders, the one who is still watching and even suddenly measuring our progress. We know that we have to let go of the rope, and the thought is terrifying, because we have no idea what we will meet. We're afraid we'll meet nothing. We're afraid that our very being will disappear.
People describe this often: this experience of feeling like they're right at the edge and not being able to take that next step. What if I disappear? What if I lose myself? It feels like a kind of death. And we speak about it, in fact, in those terms in Zen—the great death. But it's not what we think it is. It's the death of an idea, of an illusion. But thinking about this, even knowing it, doesn't make it any less frightening at that moment.
That's why we cannot give too much weight to our thoughts. Shugun Sensei recently has been repeating a refrain. He says something like, you have to be disinterested in your thoughts, have to not be interested in your thoughts. He clarifies that it's not the content of your thoughts, it's not that if you're thinking about something that is very important to you, that that thing is not important. It's the thoughts themselves that we need to let go of. Therefore, that instruction: see the thought, let it go, and come back. Come back to what? To yourself. But what is that?
If we take that other image of standing at the edge of a precipice, and we know what's behind us, we've been there, we've seen it, we've been living there, we've gone its length and its breadth, and we know that it's not satisfying. That is why we're standing right there at the edge of the chasm with our toes curled over the edge. And we know the only way forward is to jump. But into what? And that is the thought: What if I lose myself and don't come back? What if what's at the bottom just devours me, consumes me? What if I like it, and I choose not to return?
Then you begin to realize that fear of the abyss, of the unknown, of this vast, unlimited space, was unnecessary.
I think of all our great myths: the hero descending into the depths to fight the dragon, descending into hell, to the bottom of the ocean, entering a desolate desert that stretches as far as the eye can see. They do it alone because they have to; you can't really bring anyone on this voyage. Although there are maps—hundreds, thousands, millions—they're of little use at that moment of being right there on the edge, in the actual traveling. They point the way, and I think they can give us great comfort in the fact that so many people have traveled the same way before, and they have come back and lived to tell the tale. But we're still the ones who have to jump off the face of that cliff and see what's at the bottom.
It is true, this story of the lone hero. But of course, that's just one piece of the story. Those millions of people who have made that jump, that dive, regardless of age, gender, intellectual capacity, or religion—long as human beings have walked this earth, they have also died this death. Perhaps a truer name, but I don't know if that's the right word, is freedom. It's the unbinding, the birthless and the deathless. There's a con that says, when you die once, you cannot die again. We should reflect on the applications of this. When you die once, you cannot die again. Another way of saying it is that when there is something that is not born, it cannot die, ever.
So this self that we are so terrified of letting go of—what if we begin to see that it was actually never there to begin with? Not in the way that we thought. That there's actually no one jumping. There is no cliff. There's no precipice. Yet standing at the edge of that cliff, the fear is very real. It takes quite a bit of determination not to let it stop you. And that is the eighth Paramita: determination. The unshakable resolve to do anything that will benefit others, that will benefit ourselves. It is accompanied by compassion and skillful means. But it's also the determination to practice very simply, very directly, very wholeheartedly, to study our minds, and to use what we see in order to benefit all beings, in order to benefit the world, all worlds.
Finding the Courage to Step Forward
The four skilled determinations are: to not be negligent of discernment or right view, to cultivate wisdom, because without it we're already on shaky ground; to guard truthfulness; to be devoted to renunciation, renunciation of what is unskillful; and to train in equanimity. These are four of the other paramitas, the perfections, the virtues of a great, enlightened being—or of an enlightenment being, as one translation of Bodhisattva. And so determination is needed, of course, to practice all of the paramitas. They actually depend—all of them—on every other one. It's a very intricate, tightly knit web, whose strands are so intimately entwined that, as Dairoroshi always loved to say with the net of Indra, you touch one strand of the web, and the whole web is affected. You cannot isolate any of them. All of the paramitas, without exception, have as their characteristic the benefit of others, and as their function, the offering of that very help.
Khandro Rinpoche, a Tibetan teacher, says that in the West, we sometimes put a lot of weight and emphasis on what we're doing with our mind, the liturgy, our aspiration, our vows—which of course is very important. But she said the moment it becomes abstract, it becomes abstract. So if you're vowing every day to save all sentient beings but you're not doing anything about it, what's the point? She said, if somebody walks by with a broom, you take the broom from their hands and say, "Let me do this." It is very nitty-gritty, very ordinary, and very real. We don't get lost in the ether. So the function of the Paramitas is to offer that help concretely and without hesitation. Their manifestation is the wish for the welfare of all beings, the realization of all beings. Their proximate cause is great compassion and skillful means.
As long as we're filled and preoccupied with ourselves, it is very difficult to help others. We can't even see the other; we just don't have space. Our practice is the study of the self, the forgetting of that self. Standing at the edge of that precipice, at the very limit, the very boundary of your experience, your mind is still and quiet, but perhaps your heart is pounding. You want to jump, and you don't. But you do—you do—or you wouldn't be on that seat. Sometimes you're pushed from behind. Sometimes there's a word. Sometimes the slap of the kiyosaku, the sound is all it takes. Sometimes you just get bored. You get exhausted with your hesitation, with your known, recycled storylines. You are no longer willing to stay on the sidelines. And so, you take that step.
Immediately, you think twice, maybe turn around, and grab onto a branch. You are holding onto it by your nails. Zuisei is that moment when your body jerks. You are feeling, you are getting quiet and quiet, and all of a sudden, you just bring yourself back out of your concentration. Or you have a period that is extremely still and silent, and the next one is a circus. The inane images and stories, things you hadn't thought about in twenty years, suddenly pop up. That one line of a song keeps looping over and over. This is what the self does. This is what Mara does. I was speaking about Mara the other day. That aspect of ourselves that wants us to stay asleep, basically, to stay just on the surface, and it won't give up easily.
But after a while, you become familiar with it and resolve to stay steady, to try again as many times as you need to get to that edge. You are no longer waiting for it to just happen. You learn how to bring yourself very directly to that precipice. You learn how to cultivate Samadhi. Thank you. It's no longer about waiting for the mind to settle, but actually doing that very deliberately. You know what you have to do, and you just do it. We do this long enough or often enough, and there is that moment when you don't even have to jump. There's no time, in fact, to jump. The Jikiro strikes the bell for the period to begin; a moment later, the Jikiro strikes the bell for the period to end. You weren't there, in a way. Yet if somebody walked by, they would see you sitting there. The bell rings, you get up, and you realize you're there in one piece. Everything is okay. In one way, nothing really happened; in another way, everything has changed.
Then you begin to realize that fear of the abyss, of the unknown, of this vast, unlimited space, was unnecessary. In letting go, it is in fact the most normal thing. It's what your mind wants to do. It's what your body wants to do. It doesn't want to hold on to a rope for the rest of your life. It doesn't want to be bound. You realize this precipice is actually not a precipice at all. You took that step, and as you stepped into the void, you were standing on the ground—the ground of reality, the ground of being—which is not solid at all, yet it is the firmest, most stable ground you will ever walk on.
There Is Always More to See
There's another sailor, Moitissier, who, at a different time, was sailing solo around the world. At a certain point, he decided that winning was not the thing; it was the sailing itself that interested him. He went off on his own. He says there is a point at which there was no longer man and boat, but a man-boat, a boat-man. What you would call isolation, he called communion. The things that mattered at the start didn't matter anymore.
I want to go further because there is something more to see. That is the key. There is always something more to see. We won't know what it is as long as we stay on the surface, at the edge. There's a very nice koan, a very long koan, but there’s a piece at the end. There's a ferryman, Chuanzi, having a dialogue with Jiaxuan. At one point, Chuanzi says, "I'm hanging a line; the heart is just three inches off the hook." I've always loved that line. He's really plumbing the depths, and Jiaxuan is just right over here. He says, "Why don't you say something?" Jiaxuan is about to open his mouth; Chuanzi takes a boat pole and whacks him, throwing him into the water. Jiaxuan comes up sputtering, gets back on the boat, and Chuanzi says, "Say something." Again, Jiaxuan opens his mouth; again, he is knocked out of the boat. This happens three times. On the third, Jiaxuan comes back up, realizes himself, and bows. Chuanzi says, "Now you can go and teach." Jiaxuan leaves, goes on shore, walking away, taking leave of his teacher. He keeps turning and looking back. Chuanzi calls, "Reverend," and Jiaxuan turns. Chuanzi holds up his oar and says, "There is something more." Upon uttering these words, he jumps out of the boat and disappears into the mist and waves.
There is always something more. We shouldn't forget that. We get used to our particular space, our particular nook of practice. In the beginning, students often want to see, they come to practice to alleviate suffering. They are compelled to practice and sit as well as they can. Often, they experience moments of truly letting go of the self. In a subtle way, it gets harder the longer we practice. We get tired of working hard. We think it's not necessary. My life is pretty good now. I'm not in the throes of suffering anymore. So maybe I can take it easy. It is not a matter of being frantic. But it requires a deep desire to always go deeper, to always see a little more. No matter how far we think we've come, it is incumbent upon us to strengthen our determination. Passing koans is staying on the surface—not seeing koans, but passing them. Worrying about who's ahead, who has more or less power, robe, raksu—staying on the surface. This is important. We form our modes of being. We enter into practice because that mode didn't work. Now we create a new one, perhaps with a little more desire to be awake.
It is not difficult to go to sleep a little and start skimming again. We impute power and give time to things that are not important. This is how we stop ourselves. This is how we give away our power. Practice is realizing our own power, which has nothing to do with name, position, or years of practice. The span of a human life is long enough to give a sense of urgency—not so short to drive panic, just long enough to keep moving us forward. It doesn’t matter how much time we have; we don't know how long that is, because this is the moment we have.
Using the cliff image, most of the time it's more like diving into the ocean. There are moments of sudden shift, a leap, but mostly, in my experience, it is gentle, gradual submersion. Sometimes it's imperceptible. We can take comfort that many have traveled before us, have let go of that rope, and realize themselves as indivisible from water, wind, sky. "Vivo sin vivir en mi," said St. Teresa of Avila. "Muero porque no muero." I live without living in myself, and I die because I'm not dying. I die because I have not died to myself, and therefore I can't really live. She was one such traveler.
Talk about determination: she founded seventeen convents, single-handedly. Each year, she traveled to all of them by foot or by donkey. On one trip, crossing a swollen river, she misstepped and fell in. The wagons traveling with her were swept, and all possessions were lost. She was at the limits of patience and endurance. She became quiet, turned inward, and heard God say, "This is how I treat my real friends." She said, "Well, no wonder your Lord has so few." She was accomplished in contemplation, wrote The Way of Perfection, The Interior Castle, and her biography. She spoke of this work as tending a garden: the first level, drawing water from a well, required great effort. The next level, setting up a water wheel or aqueduct, was Zazen, coming back constantly, letting go of thoughts, directing the flow. The third level, using river water, required less effort. You plant your garden in its path. Samadhi then begins to turn outward into activity. The final level, union, is like rainfall, permeating everywhere. Here, the soul becomes courageous, no matter how dry the soil is.
No matter what you see in front of you—bad period of Zazen, good period, long spells where nothing seems to happen—you are not daunted. She also said, it is important when beginning prayer or Zazen, not to be frightened by your own thoughts. Looking closely, we see what we are afraid of. They're not other, wrong, or in the way. We must see them clearly. It takes just an instant to let go—a moment of courage, infinitesimal in duration, boundless in scope. The thought of practice is always harder than doing it. The thought is huge compared to the actual experience.
There is still time in this day. Whether the rope is firmly tied around your waist or on your shoulders, whether holding with both hands, one hand, or one finger—still holding on—there is always a little letting go needed. We can always do that. Let's not wait.
Determination Paramita, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.