Truthfulness Paramita
Photo by Cristina Gottardi
“Who will teach me how to live?” a student asks in Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life.
In this talk, Zuisei speaks on the seventh paramita—truthfulness—and its critical place on the path to cultivating freedom for ourselves and for all beings.
Only each one of us can learn from our own expression, our own actions, skillful or not. But because every time we set down a mark, take an action, we affect the whole world, we’re actually saying that teaching ourselves how to live is the same as everything—every creature and every thing—teaching us.
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.
Truthfulness Paramita
"Who will teach me to live?" a student wanted to know. The page of life. The page that eternal blankness. The blankness of eternity, which you cover slowly, affirming time scroll as a right and your daring as a necessity. The page which you cover woodenly, ruining it, but asserting your freedom and power to act, acknowledging that you ruin everything you touch but touching it nevertheless, because acting is better than being here in mere opacity. The page which you cover slowly with a crabbed thread of your gut. The page in the purity of its possibilities. The page of your death, against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life strength. The page which is your life will teach you to live.
This is a quote from Annie Dillard from The Writing Life. She’s speaking of writing, but of course it's not a big stretch to speak about living in this way. I just adjusted the quote ever so slightly. "Who will teach me to live," a student wanted to know. I wonder what we hear when we hear that the answer is you. You yourself will teach yourself how to live.
I wonder what we hear because we're in a tradition that says that ignorance is ubiquitous. It's a condition that none of us can escape from, although we can be liberated from it. These two are not the same. We can't escape from it because we have consciousness. We have human consciousness. How can I teach myself how to live when I can't trust myself or I don't know what to trust? That's why I came here, right? I could study with a teacher. She or he could point the way. This is true, and it is necessary, but it cannot work unless we are most willing to learn from ourselves. Because even the most enlightened teacher can't tell you, can't tell any of us how to live. If they do or they try to, run for your life. That's not the teacher that you want. Only each one of us, affirming time, scroll as our right and our daring to scribble away as the ultimate necessity. We're the only ones who can do this work. We're the only ones who can learn from our own expression. Yet, it's never in isolation.
Every time we set down a mark, we affect everything. We affect the whole world. Actually, saying that you teach yourself how to live is the same as saying that everything teaches you how to live. Every creature and everything teaches me, teaches you how to live.
I was thinking yesterday, because we did a half-day sit, that I feel that these half-day sits are the hidden pearl, the unsung treasure. Not that many students come to them. I wonder why. I understand part of it is, of course, you have very busy lives. When you come to an intensive, you want to see a teacher. I understand. There's something that happens with these little chunks, little pearls of time, that is so silent, because there is nothing else. You don't have to present anything. There's really very little to do other than that service in the middle of the morning. There's no bells, no movement, people getting up, getting online. You spend, more or less, four hours in a kind of silence and stillness that is, I find, incredibly healing and a depth, I find a groundedness and a depth, that you can get to in these half-day sits that even Session is hard.
I was saying to someone, it's ironic, I come to the city to be silent, to be quiet, because at the monastery, it can be so busy. If you're part of the staff, you're doing Session and there's so much to do. There's always, certainly always something to take care of and people to speak to. It's hard, in fact, to truly become silent. These half-day sits are like having a little mini hermitage, like a little retreat, where you truly have a chance to be with yourself in a whole different way. Just to throw that out there.
Daido Roshi used to quote someone, I couldn't remember who, saying that art brings into existence something that didn't exist before. It's an act of creation, of course. That is true of life; your life, my life brings into existence something that didn't exist before, and we can produce an ode or we can produce pulp fiction. Where does the difference lie between one and the other? I'm not talking about talent, I'm not talking about success or failure, because every living person that has lived has failed and failed repeatedly. Every so-called successful person has failed more than they've succeeded. Maybe they just stuck with it a little bit longer, and it paid off. That's only if we think of it in terms of loss and gain, of payoff and debit, I guess.
The Freedom to Act: Success, Mistakes, and Presence
I was speaking with a student about success and how we have a very, very particular image of success in our culture. It reminded me of a talk, a TED Talk; it's actually a very well-known talk by Sir Ken Robinson, who's speaking about education and creativity. He was speaking about how kids are being educated out of creativity. Our range for success is in mathematics and sciences, certainly economics. After that, maybe you have languages at the bottom of that, the humanities. At the very bottom, art. He was grieving, really, that we're basically teaching children to stop thinking and to stop taking chances. Certainly, if you're working in a company, making a mistake is penalized. We learn that you shouldn't take risks unless it's a very calculated risk.
He was telling the story of his son who did a Nativity play. There's this scene where the three kings, the three magi, are coming to offer their gifts to Jesus. Their gifts of gold and myrrh and frankincense. He says one of the first little boys, maybe five years old, something like that, and one of them is coming forward and says, "I offer you gold." The second one comes forward, "I offer you myrrh." The third one comes forward and stands there very proudly and very confidently, says, "Frank brought these." He said, a child doesn't worry about whether they'll succeed or fail. They just go for it. They don't remember in that moment. You just do it, say what you think is right. Very quickly we learn that's not okay. That probably happened to that kid, somebody probably said, "Did you notice you made a mistake?" If other people were laughing, you learn right away, oh, that's not okay. That's not right.
Sir Robinson is saying, if you're not willing to make a mistake, you'll never be original. You'll never really create, really. It just made me think of, in this piece by Annie Dillard, what about those who refuse to measure and to be measured? What about those who say, "I may ruin the page, but I would rather do so than remain in opacity"? I would rather do so than have live. Take this ruining with a grain of salt because we so often take it literally. We judge ourselves. Yes, I do ruin everything that I touch. Dillard is saying, you may have this great vision. Then the moment you set it down on the page, on the canvas, it doesn't look at all like we thought it would, which is, of course, the artist's plight. It's their struggle. That's just like life, isn't it? She's saying, go ahead and ruin it. Go ahead and exert your freedom to act. Take a chance, because not taking it is not living. Ruining the page is just an idea. It's not the actual experience. That boy was just doing his thing. He was just in the play. He was saying his line. It's in the moment after where we decide, this was good, this was bad. This is success, this is failure.
Remember that our practice is one of intimacy, one of closeness, not just with who or what we like, but with everything. Being close, you can't be false. You can't be wrong. You actually can't be true either. You can't be right either. That's the moment after, the moment in which we harvest the fruit of our action, if you will. It's important to really understand what we mean by this intimacy or this closeness, because we are in fact so quick to judge or because we're so quick to turn it into what we want. I'll be close with what I like or with whom I like.
To really enter and experience a moment in which you're fully present with your breath, there is no way to know whether you're doing good or bad, Zazen. That is, there is just breath sitting on that seat, filling. Certainly there's room in the whole universe, really. Somebody said to me, it's like kind of when we say, it's my life and I don't know what to do with my life. They were saying, well, it's just life. It's just life. I happen to be the one who's in this stream. It's just life, and it's happening. Are we there or not?
You have to choose the proper time to speak what is true, what is factual, what is beneficial…
Truthfulness is the seventh Paramita, after patience and before determination. Truthfulness as a virtue has the characteristic of non-deceptiveness of speech, and its function is to verify in accordance with fact. It's not just expressing, it's not just stating the facts, but actually verifying them through our words. First I verify through my experience and then I express. I match my words to the facts. Being truthful is being harmonious.
Truthfulness is taken quite seriously as a Paramita because several of the texts say, someone who is willing to say a lie, tell a lie, will not hesitate to transgress, will not hesitate to commit evil. They actually use those words. It's seen as a big deal. The manifestation of truthfulness is excellence, and honesty is its proximate cause. In the Ten Grave Precepts, the fourth Grave Precept is to manifest truth, to not lie. In his commentary to this precept, Master Dogen says, "The Dharma Wheel unceasingly turns, and there is neither excess nor lack. Sweet dew fills the universe. The Dharma Wheel unceasingly turns, proclaiming the truth."
We understand the Dharma as the teachings of the Buddha, the words of the Buddha, but the Dharma is also truth itself, things as they are. The Dharma Wheel was actually turning long before Shakyamuni Buddha appeared in the world. It will continue to turn long after Buddhism from the face of the earth. If that's true, how is it possible to lie? Is it possible? It is. Of course it is, and it would be dangerous to think the contrary. There is neither excess nor lack, and sui du, which is perfection, a symbol for perfection, fills the universe. Until that's true for every being and everything, it's not true. We will perceive a lack and act accordingly. This is the world that we live in. This is the world that we've lived in for a long time. It's a world of very much lack, of fear. A world in which at times it seems safer to speak falsehood or to not speak at all.
How important it is, this matching of our words and our experience, and how it can also go the other way. The experience can match the facts, the words. I was thinking this morning about the liturgy, what we're doing when we're creating this liturgy together every Sunday morning, and every day, those of us who practice here regularly, we're inviting every Buddha, everybody Sadhva, every enlightened being that ever lived, that ever will live, in however we understand that word live, into this room. In one way, this is formality. They don't actually need to be invited. They're already here. It's a way of reminding ourselves that all of these beings, all of these beings included, are here and are turning; we are turning our minds toward truthfulness and toward harmony and toward clarity.
If you know you're going to be late in the morning, don't not come, but try, really do try to be here on time and to be here for the beginning of the service and to be here for the service, because you, your body, your mind, your words, are shaping quite concretely that reality. Without you, it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen. When we kind of just stream in casually as the service happens, it still happens, we still do the service, and there is something still happening, but it's different. Remember that liturgy is you're turning all of your being, your words, your thoughts, and your actions in a particular direction to create a Buddha field, as Shugun Sensei often says.
When it doesn't feel that way, when it doesn't feel safe to speak, what is that? What happens to a person who doesn't speak? I found again an article that appeared in the Mountain Record recently by Audre Lorde. She says, "The transformation of silence into language and action is an act of self-revelation." That always seems fraught with danger. My daughter, when I told her of our topic and my difficulty with it, said, "Tell them about how you're never really a whole person if you remain silent, because there's always that one piece inside of you that wants to be spoken out. If you keep ignoring it, it gets madder and madder and hotter and hotter. If you don't speak it out one day, it will just up and punch you in the mouth from the inside." I don't know how old her daughter was when she said this.
In speaking, we do reveal ourselves, and of course it feels dangerous. The silence of suppression is dangerous too. We practice a very deliberate silence. As I said to those of you who were doing beginning instruction, it shouldn't be of suppression at all. This is silence that can be affirming, that can be healing, even life-giving. That is what I was referring to with these half-day sits. For those of you for whom that peace inside of us is maybe not so forward, so aggressive, it might not punch you from the inside, but it just curls up into a ball, and it gets tighter and tighter and smaller and smaller, retreating into silence that is not spacious, it's confining, it's repressive, it's harmful, and it makes it that much harder to speak the next time you have to speak.
She says, "We can sit in our corners mute forever while our sisters and ourselves are wasted, while our children are distorted and destroyed, while our earth is poisoned. We can sit in our safe corners mute as bottles, and we will still be no less afraid." To me that is the key. It's not that we're afraid to speak, it's that we're afraid, period. We may ruin that page, we may in fact lose our life. She's saying, guess what? You're going to lose your life anyway, at some point. Why would you let that fear stop you?
We chant when we do Nenju, which is a short service that we do at the end of a session usually or at the end of a special teaching by a teacher, by the abbot really. It's a service of appreciation. One of the beginning lines says, "When this day has passed, our days of life will be decreased by one." In the evening Gatha, we say, "Time swiftly passes by, and opportunity is lost." We chant that every night. That's what we end the day with, essentially saying don't take this day for granted. Don't let it get lost in the shuffle of your life. It's not worth that. You're not worth that. You're worth so much more than that.
Dillard says, also in a different passage, "If you were going to write, write as if you were dying, and write for an audience of terminal patients," because that's in fact our condition. She asks, "What would we create? What would we say if we truly knew we were dying?" In this moment, we're dying. This isn't morbid or pessimistic. It is verifying in accordance with fact. What would we do? What circumstances will we change? What would we not tolerate if we felt in our bones the urgency of our dwindling days?
Speaking Truth with Flawed Excellence
Speaking truth requires a commitment, certainly. A commitment to not just take the easy route, the comfortable route. Have you ever spent a period of Zazen just fuming, going over a slight, an insult, a difficult conversation that you had where somebody really hurt you, and you spend half an hour or an hour and a half, if you do two periods, just going over exactly what you're going to say to this person, how you're going to put them in their place? Then the period ends, you go home, perhaps, and you have the chance to face this person, and you think, oh, it wasn't so bad at all. After all, you don't really need to say anything. You should just let it go. This is my practice; I should just let it go. It would be fine if we actually let it go.
Except nine times out of ten, we don't. We're stuck. We haven't spoken, and we haven't let it go. We just churn and spin and seethe. When we get tired, what we felt originally just goes underground. Lorde's daughter is saying, it's still there, and sooner or later, it's going to punch you in the mouth. This is true on a small scale, and it's true on a large scale. It's true in intimate relationships, when you're speaking to your partner, you're speaking to your child, you're speaking to your parents, or you're speaking to a government, to members of an oppressive ruling class. It's true individually, and it's true collectively, at a collective level.
In one moment, I'm choosing how to speak, and to whom? I'm choosing whether to speak at all. My mother used to say, you can't say anything. You can say anything if you know the right way to say it. She was absolutely right. I have found that to be true. You can say some things that are quite difficult to say, in fact. If you know the right way to say it, if you find a skillful way, you will be heard. The other person might not like it, they may not agree with you, but that's actually not the point. Sometimes speaking truth is not agreeable, endearing to others, the Buddha actually said. You have to choose the proper time to speak what is true, what is factual, what is beneficial, and what may or may not be endearing and beneficial and agreeable to others.
That's where the fear comes from. They may not like me, they may hurt me. It is true, and there are situations where that is very real, it's very true. Ultimately, each one of us has to live with the scribbles that we've made on that page, or the ones that we chose not to put down. Remember that manifestation of truth is excellence, and honesty is its proximate cause. Dillard says that the page is the thing against which you pit such flawed excellences as you can muster with all your life's strength. I really like that, those flawed excellences. We are flawed, but we are also excellent, as in perfect and complete, lacking nothing. How often we hear this? How much do we believe it?
We muster our courage and our strength to make a mark on the page because we must. We cannot, after all, make no mark. That is impossible. I remember that story, it's been attributed to Gandhi and it's not actually known if it was him or not, but a mother came to him and said, my son keeps eating a lot of sugar, and I'm really worried for his health, but I think if you tell him to stop, because he really admires you, I think he might. Gandhi just thought about it for a moment and said, well, come back in a week and bring your son. She went away, came back, brought the son, brought him in front of Gandhi. Gandhi just looked at him and said, "You really shouldn't eat so much sugar; it's not good for you." The boy just looked at him and said, "Okay, okay, if you say so, I won't." Then he walked away.
The mother was like, well, you could have said that to him a week ago. Why didn't you? Why did you make us come back? Gandhi said to her, because last week I was eating a lot of sugar myself. We would want to believe that he never ate sugar, perhaps, after that. That his integrity was such that he didn't fall. Maybe he did. Wouldn't that be wonderful? Wouldn't that be in accord with his flawed excellence?
I've had people ask me, not that I'm comparing myself to Gandhi at all, but I've had people ask me, after meditating for 20, 22 years, do you still get angry? Of course. Of course, I still get angry, and they get relieved. They're visibly relieved when I say that. Of course. Of course. I'm not an automaton, and I wouldn't want to be. I do my best to practice my anger, my distraction, my selfishness. That's the whole point: it’s not arriving at some state where I will never fall. That's not life. I mean, that's fantasy.
Truthful Communication and Attentiveness
Truthfulness also implies communication. We actually have to communicate with one another. Sometimes the channels just cross. How ironic that that can happen more with people that you're very close to. I think we assume so much. When I say X, she says Y, and she means Z, because that's what she's always meant. When I say X and she says Y, this is what she means. I go through this with my partner all the time. Fifteen minutes into the conversation, we look at each other like, why are we arguing? We're actually agreeing. We're not even listening to each other anymore. How striking it is that after fifteen years, this still happens. How much we fill in the blanks, we feel we know this other person. In that moment, she stops being alive. She stops being a person. The moment stops being alive. The page, you had marked it already. You had filled it with scribbles before you even began.
It implies a commitment to true expression and to wholehearted listening. To really be willing to be present for sometimes things that we do not want to hear. For what we don't know. In that TED Talk, Sir Robinson was saying that there's a girl, a six-year-old girl, who never paid attention in school. Her teacher, it was art class, they were doing drawing. For the first time, she was perked up. She was completely there. She was doing a drawing. The teacher approached her and said, "What are you drawing?" The girl said, "Well, I'm making a drawing about God." The teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." The six-year-old said, "They will in a minute." That's confidence, that's not hesitating, not holding back.
Not deceived about the true nature of phenomena, a student performs the functions of all the requisites of enlightenment and completes the practice of the Bodhisattva path. This is the commentary on the Paramitas. Truthfulness and all the Paramitas, all the virtues, are based on right perception, the right view of phenomena. That is why you're verifying your words to the facts, but you have to really see the facts. You can't see the facts while you're in the way. That's the catch. This is the only instrument that we have. The information has to go through the filters. That's the only way that it can come in and through.
Is it possible to get out of your own way enough to actually be able to see what is in front of you? We tell ourselves all sorts of stories about who we are and what our life is, and we have to. We're communicating animals, we're language-based animals. Practice allows us to very closely look at those stories so that we don't become their victims. A psychoanalyst once said to me, "Psychoanalysis is replacing a faulty story with a healthy one. Buddhism is showing you you don't need a story at all. It's getting rid of the story altogether." By that, really what it means is that you're not letting that story define you, limit you. We still use stories in order to understand ourselves. To look at a story for what it is, and to let it show you, to let those pages show you how to live.
This is what we will, this is what we do, and this is what we will continue to do. We're beginning Ango today, our ninety-day training intensive. They're doing the Ango opening. They're probably just finished at the monastery. Traditionally practitioners would come together to practice. That would always say in caves, in the monsoon season. I think it was really just in groves. A wealthy patron would give the Buddha a grove in which they would gather and practice, intensely, more intensely together because they were all there for ninety days rather than wandering. We do the same in a way, in our own way. We're saying we want to know how to live. This is the most important thing. We want to know how to live with ourselves, with each other, with this great earth. That will be the theme of the Ango.
Shugun Sensei spoke about it this morning in the talk that he gave. Please do listen to it. It will be online, especially those of you who are doing Ango, because that will be the core, the heart, of what we will be turning our attention to these ninety days. How to live with one another, but how to live with, as he said, our great mother, this earth. So far we don't have a very good record. We're looking at how do we, as a Sangha, as practitioners, treading the Buddha way, the awakened way, how do we live in harmony? Even if you're not participating in Ango, consider doing everything that you can to live peacefully, because Ango means peaceful dwelling. How can you dwell peacefully with yourself, with those close to you, with those far away, and with our world, with this earth?
Let me leave you with Annie Dillard again to end. Once again, I changed her words slightly. Push it, examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of your life. Do not leave it, do not course over it as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength. Admire the world for never ending on you, as you would admire an opponent without taking your eyes from them or walking away.
One of the few things I know about living is this: spend it, shoot it, play it, lose it all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in your life, for another life. Give it, give it all, and give it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful,it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice in the handwriting of his old age: "Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw, and do not waste time."
Truthfulness Paramita, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
Explore further
01 : Ten Paramitas
02 : The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action by Audre Lorde
03 : The Writing Life by Annie Dillard