Buddhadharma editor Koun Franz introduces the Spring 2022 situation and considers what it means when a path of transcendence leaves us proper the place we all the time have been.
Once I first took up Buddhist observe, I didn’t know something in regards to the paramitas—the transcendences, the crossings-over, the perfections, no matter we need to name them. I didn’t know a lot about any of it, truthfully, however I knew for positive that I wished to transcend one thing. I wished to cross over to another facet. Not that it was so unhealthy the place I used to be; it wasn’t. However non secular observe held the promise of ending up someplace, nicely, excellent. I imagined that, standing on the opposite shore and searching again on the place I’d began, I’d grin at how small my world had been, how little I’d actually seen.
On this shore, on this second of our lives, we let the tide are available in over our ankles and roll away.
On this situation, we have a look at six paramitas: generosity, ethical self-discipline, endurance, effort, meditation, and knowledge—the checklist most frequently related to the Mahayana path. Theravada gives a barely completely different checklist, one which additionally contains renunciation, honesty, resolve, loving-kindness, and equanimity, however even when the 2 paths look barely completely different, each level in the identical route.
One in all my academics, when he was educating folks to meditate for the primary time, was keen on declaring that once you’re making an attempt to get from right here to there, from A to B, in the event you take even one step off the trail, now you’re pointing within the unsuitable route. You’ll by no means get the place you supposed to go. Some a part of me likes that—it makes me ask myself, second to second, Am I dealing with the suitable manner? However within the case of the paramitas, I’m undecided if that all-or-nothing view applies. We discuss them as having a specific order, however they’re much less a map than an outline of one thing that simply organically unfolds. No matter framework we use, no matter steps there are alongside the best way, generosity naturally opens the best way to knowledge. So sure, we are able to attempt to do it excellent, and sure, we are able to push ourselves, however we are able to additionally enter the trail with some religion that it’s broad sufficient to carry our errors.
Or perhaps they don’t kind a path in any respect. We have a look at the paramitas so as, in a straight line, however we may simply as simply think about them as a circle, an limitless rediscovering. That very same trainer talked in regards to the repetitiveness of Zen observe as being just like the turning of a screw: from one angle, you’re simply stepping into circles, however from one other, each single motion takes the entire observe deeper.
So, how will we carry the paramitas to life? How will we get to that different shore? There are many solutions, numerous approaches; I’m undecided if one among them is extra proper than the others. What I’ve discovered, although, standing on this shore—and greater than thirty years later, I’m nonetheless proper right here—is that perhaps it doesn’t matter a lot. We are able to take up the paramitas as a system, as a curriculum. We are able to attempt to observe them , growing a really feel for his or her interaction. We are able to choose them up separately, devoting this present day to generosity, or to effort, or to persistence. It’s all okay. As a result of in the long run, we don’t know what’s over there, throughout the water. We simply know the place we’re, which is right here.
So we roll up our pants, take off our sneakers and socks, and dig our toes into the sand. On this shore, on this second of our lives, we let the tide are available in over our ankles and roll away. We discover small methods to supply ourselves, to be kinder, to tackle a bit of extra. We let our ft get soiled. We sink in.
There could also be someplace to go, one thing to transcend. I don’t know. What I do know, now, is that the world beneath my ft is a lot greater than I believed it was—there’s a lot right here to see, a lot for me to do. It’s excellent.