Robert Aitken - The Practice of Perfection: The Paramitas from a Zen Buddhist Perspective

Encouraging Words

The Dragon Who Never Sleeps

The Gateless Barrier

The Mind of Clover

Taking the Path of Zen

A Zen Wave

The Ground We Share (with David Steindl-Rast)

Copyright 1994 by Robert Aitken

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

The essays in this book were published in an earlier form in Mind Moon Circle.

The first chapter appeared in an earlier form in Turning Wheel and Mountain Record.

The circle calligraphy by Suzuki Shunry Rshi is reproduced by permission of the San Francisco Zen Center.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Aitken, Robert, 1917

The practice of perfection : the Pramits from a Zen Buddhist perspective / Robert Aitken.

p. cm.

eISBN: 978-0-307-81747-1

1. Pramits (Buddhism) 2. Zen Buddhism

Ethics, Doctrines. I. Title.

BQ4336.A37 1994

294.3444dc20 93-47095 CIP

v3.1

To the compassionate presence of Nyogen Senzaki

This book evolved from classes at Diamond Sangha centers and from talks at institutes of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, and at seminars at Goat-in-the-Road and in the Department of Religion, University of Hawaii. I am grateful to many people who assisted with preparations. Transcriptions were made by Susan Garfield and a number of helpers at the Koko An Zend. Laurie and Alan Senauke and Jason Binford brought coherence and order to the question-and-response sections. Anne Aitken and Jason Binford gave careful study to preliminary drafts and made valuable editorial suggestions. Finally, I want to thank my editor, Jack Shoemaker of Pantheon Books, who knows what I want to say and makes me say it.

T he Pramits, or Perfections, evolved with the advent of Mahyna Buddhism some two thousand years ago. They were derived from the three-part teaching of Classical Buddhism: Shla, Samdhi, and Prajmorality, absorption, and wisdom. They also derived from the love of categories and classifications that distinguishes the culture of India. Though at first these lists can seem tedious, with unpacking they produce the treasures I seek to burnish in this book.

The first four Pramits relate to morality: Dna, giving; Shla, the moral code; Kshnti, forbearance; and Vrya, vitality or zeal. The fifth Pramit is Dhyna, zazen (settled, focused meditation)a term and practice closely related to Samdhi. The sixth is Praj itself, or wisdom.

Like other Buddhist teachings, the Pramits unfolded with experimentation over time. After the first six were established in the first few centuries of the Mahyna, the decimal system of arithmetic was invented and many of the categories and formulas of Yoga and Buddhism were rounded off to ten. It seems possible that for this reason four more Pramits were added to the original six: Upya, compassionate means; Pranidhna, aspiration; Bala, spiritual strength; and Jna, knowledge.

It is also possible that the evolution of Ten Pramits in Theravda commentaries (as a different set of Perfections) influenced the Mahyna teachers to increase their own table to ten, or that the Ten Stages of the Bodhisattva set forth in Mahyna literature established a precedent for an equivalent number of Pramits. In any case, we can be grateful for the inclusion of these additional Pramits. No matter what the reason for their inclusion, they clarify our way of practice and deepen our understanding.

The Pramits are inspirations, not fixed rules. We honor them with our conduct, speech, and thought. Shntideva, the great seventh-century Buddhist teacher, cites with approval the wisdom of an early Mahyna stra: The perfections of the Bodhisattva do not support meit is I who support them.

Though the Buddha Shkyamuni was transmuted with Anuttara-Samyaksambodhi, pure and complete wisdom and compassion, he nonetheless continues to support the Pramits. His work from the beginningless past through the endless future is to liberate himself and others. It is our work as well. Nobody, least of all the Buddha, can say, I have accomplished it. Zazen is itself enlightenmentas Dgen Kigen Zenji never tired of saying. Any residue of self-centered conduct, speech, or thought is wiped away. Any residue of that wiping away is then wiped away and so on endlesslyeach day more liberated, each day more joyous. There are milestones on the path, as the Buddha found under the Bodhi tree, but they are no more than milestones and are not any kind of ultimate consummation. Perfection is a process.

T he dictionary definition of Dna is charity or almsgivingof goods, money, or the teaching. More generally, Dna is the spirit and act of generosity. Its salutary effects are endless, and they multiply beyond measure at each point of renewal.

Thus, Dna is intimately tied in with karmacause and effectwhile its neglect too has inevitable consequences. As Lewis Hyde says in his landmark bookThe Gift, When property is hoarded, thieves and beggars begin to be born to rich mens wives.

It is with the Dna Pramit that the Buddhas teaching of universal harmony is put into practice. Mutual interdependence becomes mutual intersupport. It is practice that is not only Buddhist but perennial as well. The Earth itself flourishes by what Emerson calls the endless circulation of the divine charity: The wind sows the seed, the sun evaporates the sea, the wind blows the vapor to the field the rain feeds the plant, the plant feeds the animal. The very stars hold themselves on course through a mutual interchange of energy.

In keeping with this natural charity, ancient customs of gift giving and circulating the gift kept primal human society healthy. The Native Americans who greeted the Puritans in Massachusetts understood this well, though their guests, it seems, did not, for they scornfully called the customs Indian giving. In its uncorrupted form, the potlatch ceremony of northwestern America was usually a grand ritual of giving away precious possessions by the tribe on the occasion of naming a new chief. Giving ennobles.the virtue of the recitation back to Buddhas and Ancestral Teachers in gratitude for their guidance. We are constantly receiving that teaching, constantly sending it around again.

In Classical Buddhism there were several categories of Dna. One category was dual, including both the pure charity that looks for no reward and the sullied charity whose object is personal benefit. Another formulation was triple: charity with goods, doctrine, and services. Other formulations make it clear that Dna was traditionally considered to be preaching by monks, donations of clothing and medicine to the poor by temples, support of temples and monks by laypeople, and gifts to the poor by those laypeople who could afford them.

With the development of the Mahyna, the Sangha (kinship, fellowship) became universal, no longer centered upon monks and nuns and their temples. Dna became the open door to realization, showing clearly what had been there from the beginning, for by any name and in any practice, Dna is the hallmark of human maturity. The gift itself is foodoften in fact, always by analogy. Its virtue is absorbed, renewed, and passed on to nurture all beings.