Wisdom Paramita
Photo by Minh Pham
In this last talk in the series of ten talks on the paramitas or perfections, Zuisei speaks on prajna paramita, also known as the perfection of wisdom, and the Mother of all Buddhas.
Zuisei says, “[With wisdom] we can practice more skillfully, more effectively. We see that in this construct of the self, there are no rafters, no ridge pole, no house builder. If every time we pull a brick or two and when the house begins to wobble, we rush in to build it back up, then it becomes impossible to see. So it takes a certain kind of determination to tear up the house beam by beam and not hesitate when things begin to look a little bare.”
To move towards the cultivation of prajna paramita is to bravely embrace bare emptiness— total freedom.
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.
Wisdom Paramita
Through the round of many births, I roamed without reward, without rest, seeking the house builder. Painful is birth again and again. House builder, you are seen. You will not build a house again. All your rafters broken, the ridge pole destroyed. Gone to the unformed, the mind has come to the end of craving.
I wanted to speak about Prajna, Paramita, the perfection of wisdom. And in the Theravada listing of the Paramitas is the fourth, after renunciation. In the six Paramitas, the Mahayana list, it's the last one. And in the Sutras, it is said that its characteristic is to see the real specific nature of phenomena, and that its function is to illuminate. That the way that it manifests is non-confusion, and that the concentration of the four noble truths are its proximate cause. So they are the thing that wisdom arises out of concentration and the four noble truths.
And Prajnaparamita, perfect wisdom, is of course the basis for the Prajnaparamita Sutras, the literature, perfection of transcendent wisdom. And transcendent in part to differentiate it from knowledge, intellectual knowledge. But transcendent also because they go beyond our commonly held belief in a solid, fixed, independent self.
Prajnaparamita is also the mother of all the Buddhas, the female personification of wisdom, just as in the West, Sophia is the goddess of wisdom. And, you know, it's thought that this, in Buddhism, that it probably derived from the cult of Tara. And I remember towards the end of her life, Kaijin, I'm not sure how, came across a book by Lex Hickson, called Prajnaparamita, the Mother, the Womb of All the Buddhas. And she was delighted by this idea of wisdom being female and being the mother, the source out of which all Buddhas are born.
So wisdom itself is the main cause of the practice of all the other Paramitas. And although a Bodhisattva practices them, a Bodhisattva is the fulfiller, if you will, the guardian of all these noble qualities, these virtues. In truth, there is actually no agent. There is no one practicing these Paramitas.
Why We Keep Rebuilding the Self
In the large Sutra of Perfect Wisdom, Shariputra is asking the Buddha, how then should the Bodhisattva, the great being, course in perfect wisdom, travel, practice, journey in perfect wisdom? And the Buddha said, here the Bodhisattva, the great being, coursing in the perfection of wisdom, truly a Bodhisattva, does not review a Bodhisattva and by review, he means to see repeatedly. A Bodhisattva doesn't review the word Bodhisattva, nor the course of a Bodhisattva, nor the perfection of wisdom, nor the word perfection of wisdom. She does not review that she courses, nor that she does not course. She does not review form, feeling, perception, formative forces or consciousness.
Why? Because the Bodhisattva, the great being, is actually empty of the own being of a Bodhisattva. And because perfect wisdom is by its own being empty. Why is this? Because this is its essential, original nature. So there is no architect of this house of virtue, which is exactly what the Buddha saw on the night of his enlightenment.
And in this verse of the house builder, it's from the Dhammapada. And in seeing the house builder, it is like saying, there is no builder. House builder you are seeing is in fact saying, there never was one. There is no house, not even the internal structure of the house. Nothing to build the house on.
But then why, when we know this to some extent, sometimes when we experience it, even for brief moments, an instant of self-forgetting, and how liberating this is in a very non-abstract, non-intellectual way, why, when we know this, when we experience this, why do we insist, why do we rush over to the pile of bricks to build the house all over again? It's so compelling, isn't it? So powerful, this sense of me. And it just goes to show how challenging it is to live out of the realization of no self.
And so we build. And because there's no rafters and there's no ridge pole, it's really a house of cards. I mean, the slightest breeze, a word, a look, the lack of a look, can topple it over. Any little thing can and does shake its foundations. And so we persist in rebuilding. And I've asked myself this question many times, you know, why can't I just let go? Seeing, in a moment of seeing that the self is not what I think it is, that it is not as solid as I believed it to be, why can't I just let go? Would I rather live out in an open field or in a broom closet?
And of course, I want to say, I do say to myself, of course I want to live out in an open field. I want that spaciousness, as I'm firmly ensconced with the brooms and the mop buckets. And I think partly it's because it's familiar. It gives us a sense of comfort, of comfort being contained in that way, until it isn't, until it becomes too crowded, until the pain of being so limited becomes larger than the apparent sense of relief I get from these four walls.
And so Prajnaparamita strips everything away, but it doesn't—it's not that it leaves you without anything. And I was trying to come up with an image, because it's insubstantial, what is left. It doesn't have self-nature, and yet it is indestructible, it is unshakable. Like space, you can't tear it apart, and yet it is clearly there.
A few months ago, we were working with the Zen kids. We were doing a series on the five elements, the fifth element being space. And so we had gotten to space, and we asked a couple of the kids to bring, to build a house out of Legos. And they did; they built a magnificent house, you know, had several tiers on the roof, windows, doors. It was beautiful. And the plan was to slowly take it apart, and keep asking the question, you know, if you remove this, is this still a house? What if you remove this part? Is it still a house?
And I had imagined that we would show the house, and everyone would “woo” and “ah,” really admire it. And then that we would very gradually, and out of respect for the kids who had spent all this time building it, very gradually just take it apart. Except Anjan was leading the activity. And so, he takes the house, and he says, okay, so this is the house, and this is what we're gonna do. Actually, no, he didn't say what we're gonna do. He said, you know, so everybody sees the house, and he just started taking the thing apart, and I'm thinking, oh my God, he's wrecking Ralph. And I'm looking at the faces of the kids and thinking, how are they gonna take this? They actually took it very well, I have to say.
And so he started just taking the whole thing apart. You know, he took the ceiling off first, is it still a house? He took one wall, is it still a house? And, you know, we had a good, great discussion with the kids. And of course, what we were left with is all that space. And we asked him, at which point did it go from a house to not a house? Could you identify that moment, that instant? And I think often it is too much space. It's too open.
And so, until we build the ability to hold all that space, you know, for a little while it can feel a bit schizophrenic. We want to be free, but we want to be protected. We want to be selfless, and we want what we want. We want to be safe, and we want to be spontaneous and free and unhindered. And in my own experience, I've often seen it as, you know, almost as those cartoon characters where you have the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other one, and they're just duking it out. And I feel like I've spent a long time teaching them how to get along with one another and teaching myself to remember that what I most want is to be free.
And that it actually—even the fight—is okay. That some of it, I think, I don't know if it's necessary, but it's part of the journey, it's part of the process of ever deepening my desire, my aspiration to truly be free, superseding anything else that I think I might think I want at any given moment. And I think of my favorite, one of my favorite quotes by Ajahn Chah, I quote often: “If you let go a little, you'll have a little peace. If you let go a lot, you'll have a lot of peace. But if you let go completely, you will be free.” And this letting go completely, you don't do once and then you're done. It has to be done over and over and over again.
And so then I ask myself, how much can I let go in a moment? When sitting, how deeply can I sit? How vast is my mind? And what is in the way? What is in my way to find that out?
Opening the Door to Awakening
A Rohatsu is a celebration and a reliving of the Buddhist enlightenment, as Shugun Sensei said yesterday. And I have always thought it very auspicious that we do it right after the birth of Jesus Christ. I, too, had him on my mind. Sean mentioned him the other day. A wisdom being. And I know that it was not his actual birth, and Christmas is a pagan ritual. But growing up in Mexico, the Nativity was a very central theme at Christmastime.
And we had, in my family, what I see now is a very sweet and actually very powerful ritual, where we usually had a very big crowd on Christmas Eve. And there's a hymn, a call-and-response hymn, that you do by dividing the group into two groups. And half of you is inside the house, and half of you is outside, preferably with some sort of screen, so there is a barrier, and yet you can see each other. And the half that's outside is singing the part of Mary and Joseph, asking for refuge on the night that Mary was about to give birth. And they're going to all these places, house after house and inn after inn, and the people inside keep saying, no, it's too full, I'm too busy, you're a stranger, I don't know you, I can't let you in. And it goes on for quite a while, and Mary and Joseph keep getting more and more desperate, and Joseph is more and more pleading, until a certain point, and I couldn't remember what the turning point was, what happens that at a certain point, the innkeeper, the one with the barn, says, well, we're full, but yes, you can come in and you can go into the barn.
And there's this moment in the hymn where the whole thing changes, and the doors are flung open, and everybody comes into the house, that moment where you're saying, yes, you are accepted, you are welcome, you are one of us. And I so clearly remember those evenings, the face of my father as he was singing. He's a very good singer, has a very good voice, so he was completely in it. And he's normally very shy, so he was so, and not religious at all. And so it was wonderful to see him, he was there, he was fully there. And my mother, who loved, and she just loved the whole thing, and we're all holding these little candles. And her face was just lit up with this little ritual, this little ritual that we were doing as a family.
And I think when these are done right, something happens. Something clicks. When you think, I think even at a young age, you think, oh, life isn't just about me. There's more. There's more. And we are so, in this week, reliving the Buddha's Vigil before his enlightenment. So it isn't just another session, just another session where we're intensifying the schedule. We are celebrating, we're reliving that moment, that pivotal moment where it began, where it made it possible for us to be here now.
And I found a very nice account of the Buddha's enlightenment in a book by Walter Henry Nelson, who is British. And I think he describes very nicely what gets in the way of perfect wisdom, and certainly what that moment of meeting Mara, that Shugun Sensei was describing yesterday, what that was in a very visceral way. Mara means death, and it is the negation of bodhicitta, our aspiration to awaken. So Mara thrives, feeds on everything that wants to keep us asleep.
And so Mara, as we know, the story, sent his armies to stop the Buddha from awakening, because that would have been the death of Mara. And he first sent the demon of self, Atavada, which is the theory of self, theory of a soul, of a being. And this demon said, you know, if you're going to become enlightened, that's fine, but do it for yourself, just for yourself. And the Buddha recognized him immediately and just dismissed him.
And so next, Mara sent Visakicha, doubt. Look at everything that you've done so far, and look at everything that you've given up, the palaces, your wife, your son, your parents, six years of your life, given to these ascetic practices. And what do you have to show for it? So far, not much. Nothing exists anyway, so what you're doing is in vain. Why even bother? You're deluding yourself. That should be a familiar voice. And it's pernicious because it's so reasonable. From its perspective, it's always right. If you want to find evidence for the absurdity of your practice, you will. And the Buddha sat steadfast.
I know I will succeed, and it strikes me as perfectly normal, this marvelous thing, that absolute certainty where there is neither pride, nor fear, nor surprise.
And I was reflecting on that, and steadfast, I think the image that we have is so upright and so unmoving. It could have been a roller coaster, for all we know. I mean, he could have been really struggling. He could have been swept away and come back. But the fact is that he stayed on. He stayed on. He didn't bail.
And so next, Mara unleashed attachment to rituals, Silabat Paramasa, and said, how dare you think yourself greater than all the Brahmans that have come before you? How can you doubt their teachings, the sacrifices, the rituals? Why do you think that this is not necessary? And the Buddha said, the truth has nothing to do with outer forms. They are skillful means. They are means and not goals in themselves.
And the night kept getting darker. And Mara then sent Raga, the king of passions. And that's usually the scene that is brought up and depicted. All the sexual fantasies, all the desire, all those impulses to get up. This is uncomfortable. This is painful. There is something so much better somewhere else. And he stayed unmoving.
And then he confronted rage, hate, destruction, Rupa Raga, the lust for life, the lust for fame, self-righteousness, the fiend of pride, ignorance. And it just kept going. And as every demon stood before him, the Buddha saw it clearly, met it completely, unflinchingly. Those demons that most of us spend most of our time, our life, trying to deny or ignore, escape.
And it sounds so heroic, his struggle, and in one way I think it was. But maybe it wasn't, again, maybe it wasn't unflinching. Maybe he flinched more than once. And flinching is not the problem. Even turning away is not the problem. It's when we don't come back that we die, a little bit at a time. It's giving up.
And so we look at our pride and our lust and our pride, our self-doubt and our confusion. And at some point we realize, we see, you're not me. You are not me. You have power only if I granted it to you. At a certain point, we see that we are the ones doing all the building, and that we don't have to. And that when we don't build, then there's nothing to take down. It's easier to breathe in the open air, even in rough weather.
Letting Go of Fixed Roles
Khandro Rinpoche was speaking about not dwelling and how much she has tried to not have an abode, a dwelling place, because of all the trouble, all the conflict that comes with it. And in fact, she was quoting the Buddha, saying, dwelling nowhere is the practice of Prajnaparamita. And then she was talking about the Western mind, really, and how we grasp at labels, at roles, at meaning, at position, how we build our houses, essentially.
And she was saying, you know, I've spent twenty years teaching Westerners, and I thought I understood. I understood the Western mind, but she said, you know, I'm not, I don't know, I'm not so sure. Because she said, you know, in the East, roles are more fluid. You know, if you're, if you're saying, you're serving the Dharma, you know, in one moment, you may be sitting up in the throne teaching. In the next moment, you can be cleaning the bathroom. In the next moment, you're leading a class. It's fluid.
And she said, but here in the West, you know, you have, you have these, these roles, these positions. She's like, you know, like executives, for example, that say, but don't do. And you have officers who are supposed to do, but they're not told what they should do. And then you have administrators who are just there. They're not told what to do. They don't really have the authority to do anything, but they're expected to do something. And she said, why? She said, you know, we have roles, too. I mean, the president, we have the president, and the treasurer, and the secretary. She says, but the president knows they're not the president. The treasurer knows they have no control whatsoever over the finances. The secretary knows they have the least amount of information about what's actually going on. And so it flows.
In the commentary, the commentary to the Kariya Pitaka, which is a commentary on the Paramis, Paramitas, Acharya Dhammapala says, without wisdom, there is no achievement of vision. And without the achievement of vision, there can be no accomplishment in virtue. One lacking virtue and vision cannot achieve concentration. And without concentration, one cannot even secure one's own welfare, much less can we provide for the welfare of others.
Therefore, a bodhisattva practicing for the welfare of others should admonish themselves. Have you made a thorough effort to purify your wisdom? For it is by the spiritual power of wisdom that the great beings established in the four foundations benefit the world. Hell beings enter the path to liberation and bring their faculties to maturity. Ardently practicing, we ask ourselves, have I made a thorough effort to purify my wisdom? And purify, I think, establish, cultivate, manifest, without impediment. Do I actually see that the self is empty? That the breath has no self-nature? That awareness has no fixed form? And if I don't, what is in the way of me seeing? What do I need to do to work with this?
Because there's a time to practice wholeheartedly. No, there's no observation, no way to know how you're practicing. But there's also a time to reflect, if we are indeed practicing. Not so that we can beat ourselves up or compare ourselves to others. Not so we can feel guilty about what we're not doing. I've always said guilt is such an interesting, in my view, kind of really useless emotion, because it gives us the sense that we're doing something about usually something that we're not doing. So it gives us the sense that we're doing something, we're putting effort and attention into something. But we're not really doing anything about it other than beating ourselves up. And it's different from shame. Shame, interestingly, in the sutras, is used as a skillful means. There's a sutra that's called A Sense of Shame, where it says that shame leads to a person's non-decline. Respect, respect for shame leads to a person's non-decline, because shame is the signal that we have transgressed somehow. And so it stops us, hopefully. And it compels us to look for a different way, because we don't want to feel that way again. It compels us to look for an alternative.
So, it's not so that we can feel guilty, or even feel ashamed about our practice, simply so that we can take stock of what we're doing, so we can practice more skillfully, more effectively. Because we can really get to see that there's no rafters, no ridge pole, no house builder. If every time we pull a brick or two, and the house begins to topple, to wobble, again, if we rush in, you know, to build it back up, then it becomes impossible to see. So it takes a certain kind of determination to tear up the house, beam by beam, and not hesitate when things begin to look a little bare.
And also to remember, you know, that wisdom cannot stand, actually, without compassion. You know, that emptiness is not cold, and it's not detached. That together, the two are the fundamental condition of these Paramitas, so that with wisdom, we perfect the character of a Buddha. That's what these virtues do. And through compassion, we cultivate the ability to actually do a Buddha's work. Through wisdom, we understand our own and others' suffering. And through compassion, we vow, we work, to alleviate that very suffering. Through wisdom, we aspire for enlightenment, and through compassion, we remain in the world for the sake of all beings.
And so, in a very fundamental way, through wisdom and compassion, we don't make our lives difficult. We don't make others' lives difficult. And so, you know, when things get abstract, we want to really be very, very concrete, there's not the right word, just very, very practical, very grounded. This is about not creating more suffering and alleviating the suffering that is already there. So that we don't get lost in theories. Because when we look at our world now, when we look at the world at any point, probably, it is enormous, the degree of suffering. And it is a perfectly valid question to ask, what good is it to sit on this seat, and to be quiet, and to look at my mind, to see that the self is empty? What good is it when people are dying? Is it enough, what I'm doing here?
And I think one way to think about it is to make it as specific as possible. It's not countries that go to war. It's not governments that go to war. It's people. It's not a mob that kills a person. It's people. It's individuals who each of them are telling themselves a story, have a certain understanding of themselves and of the world, have certain beliefs, have certain opinions that corroborate what we think we already know. And that is why, at some point, it is necessary for someone, somewhere, to say, no, I am not willing to live this way anymore, which is, of course, exactly what the Buddha did.
A Quiet, Unshakeable Confidence.
The Bodhisattvas are fearless and givers of fearlessness. They are devoid of delusion and devoid of craving, accomplished in knowledge and accomplished in conduct, possessed of the powers and possessed of the grounds of self-confidence. But since there is no self, then what is that confidence based on? Wisdom. Perfect, transcendent wisdom that understands clearly what the self is and what it's not. And we think, I can't, but that's not me, but I'll never. And I say unto you, you are, it is you, and you can, because you are already a Buddha. And you know, whether we know this or not, whether we believe it or not, it doesn't change the actual fact. It very much changes how we act, of course. But it doesn't change the fundamental truth.
Buddha nature pervades the whole universe existing right here now. And it's not even, it's not limited to human beings. It pervades everywhere right now. In the 70s, there was a solo yacht race around the world, the first of its kind. And there was one man, a Frenchman, Moitessier, who was the favorite to win because he was the most skilled sailor. His boat was the fastest. And when he started, he was, in fact, winning. And at a certain point, he lost interest. He decided he would just keep sailing. And so he rounded. He was going to round the Horn of Africa and go to Haiti and just be there.
And at a certain point, as he was sailing, there was a school of dolphins that were acting, it seemed to him, kind of strangely. There were about a hundred of them. And they kept bunching together and rushing off to the right. And they kept repeating this action, coming together and rushing to the right. And he was just looking at them, kind of entranced, until he looked at his instruments and realized that wind had changed and he was going off course. And if he didn't do something, he was going to crash the rocky outcrop. And so he changed course, and he said the dolphins celebrated and left, disappeared.
And he says, this is the first time I feel such peace, a peace that has become a certainty, something that cannot be explained, like faith. I know I will succeed, and it strikes me as perfectly normal, this marvelous thing, that absolute certainty where there is neither pride nor fear nor surprise. The entire sea is simply singing in a way that I had never known before, and it fills me with what is both question and answer. I will round the Horn thanks to dolphins and fairy tales, which help me to rediscover the time of the very beginnings, where each thing is simple, free on the right, free on the left, free everywhere. That is the self-confidence of someone who knows his place in the universe. And, you know, when you see a picture of him, he's sitting on the prow of his boat, shirtless, with a huge beard and full lotus. So he clearly knew something as he was setting out, and it was just confirmed by his journey.
But this was a true knowing, what we call wisdom. And we too already know something before we set out. If that wasn't true, we wouldn't have gotten here. We wouldn't have gotten this far. But we have come this far to see the real specific nature of phenomena. To see very specifically the mechanism behind my anger, behind my doubt, my jealousy, my confusion, my pride. To see the illusory nature of that architect. And this is what we are here. This is what we're doing here this week. That's what the Buddha did 2,500 years ago.
And, you know, sometimes if there's a lot going on in our body and mind, a week doesn't seem like quite enough time to tear down the house. But there is time. There's time enough and more. Because when you do see that there was no ridge pole and no rafters, remember, then you don't have to take anything down anymore. And it only takes an instant for something to change. Sometimes profoundly, profoundly. And, you know, it's exactly as Moitessier described it. It's perfectly ordinary and utterly marvelous. I know I will succeed, and it strikes me as perfectly normal, this marvelous thing, that absolute certainty where there is neither pride, nor fear, nor surprise. I know I will succeed, and it is perfectly, perfectly normal. There's no need to fear. There's no need to be surprised, amazed by it. It is unavoidable, and it is utterly true. And utterly plain. Very simple. It is free on the right, free on the left, free everywhere.
Wisdom Paramita, a dharma talk by Zen Buddhist teacher Zuisei Goddard. Audio podcast and transcript available.
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