Welcome everyone to talk number two in our series on the Six Paramitas. The American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron called the Paramitas "Six ways of compassionate living". They are simultaneously qualities that we have, qualities that we want to nurture, and ideals that we want to live up to.
Six Paramitas:
Generosity
Discipline
Patience
Joyful Effort
Meditation/Mindfulness
Wisdom
I would like to start this talk with a quote from the late great British icon David Bowie. In his 1983 song "Modern Love" after this awesome guitar riff, he leads off saying "I know when to go out. I know when to stay in..."
That is an example of, a description of, the Buddhist Paramita of Sila, or Discipline.
Another more Buddhist way of saying what David Bowie sang is "Knowing what to pick up and what to leave behind."
This is not Discipline as imposed on us from outside. This is not a parent scolding a child or a boss dressing down an employee. This Discipline is one that we discover, adopt and develop in ourselves.
Think back on a time in your life where you treated someone badly. You lied to them, or said something cutting, and you saw how it affected them. At some point afterwards you realized what you did. You apologized to them and you made a promise to yourself not to act that way again. Your promise to yourself is an aspiration to enact the Paramita of Discipline next time.
"I made a mistake. I caused suffering. I'm not going to do that any more."
Maybe you saw an animal being slaughtered for meat and thought "I'm going to become a vegetarian." Or you stole something and were embarrassed and ashamed. "I'm not doing that again." Maybe you had sex at the wrong time or with the wrong person. Maybe you lied to yourself or other people. You drank too much and acted like an asshole, and then had to live with the damage for years.
None of these are new behaviors. We've all done one or many of them. I know personally that I've done them all. Ugh.
We see the damage we are doing. We make a vow to behave differently next time. That’s path. You are setting yourself up to walk the path of Discipline. Both for yourself and for the beings around you.
Making a vow to ourself is one thing. "I'm not going to do that anymore." But then the situation arises again. There's meat and sex and lies and alcohol everywhere in this society. How do we avoid repeating the same pattern?
And if we don't avoid it, if we get hooked again, how do we treat ourselves and others afterwards? How can we get back up off the floor after falling down again and again? How about after we hurt other people again and again?
That's where the "Compassionate living" comes in. It's not just that living up to the ideals of these paramitas creates a compassionate world. It's also that feeling compassion, open heartedness, feeling the pain of yourself and others, helps us live up to the paramitas.
Discipline is not just about the big things like killing and stealing. It's about the way we treat ourselves and each other. It's having the discipline to say thank you when someone serves your food, or the discipline to keep focused on a project when you really just want to binge TV. This aspect is why the word Sila is sometimes translated as ethics or morals or willpower. I think those are fine words to use for Sila. But there's one enormous difference between the Paramita of Discipline and the way we usually think about morals or willpower.
When Buddhists refrain from lying, drinking too much, when we try to be polite and kind to each other, all of these things, we are doing it not because we want to be a good boy or girl and get a gold star. In Buddhism there is no one giving out gold stars and there are actually no gold stars anyway.
We are developing discipline because we have seen the pain that not having discipline can cause, for ourselves and for others. And we don't want to keep going around and around endlessly causing pain and being hurt.
We want to stop the pain, and we are going to do something about it. We are going to be more generous, be more disciplined, be more patient.
If a way to practice Generosity is to give something from your right hand to your left hand, a way to practice Discipline is, when confronted with a tempting offer, literally ask yourself "Do I really want to do that?" We can ask ourselves that question a hundred times a day. There's no shortage of things in our world to ask it about.
Another way that we can practice Discipline, another way that we can develop the Paramita of Discipline, is to do compassionate plain old meditation.
We have the wish, the aspiration to follow our breath, not our wandering thoughts. We think of ourselves and others, how our mindlessness has caused pain, and we dedicate this meditation session to benefiting those people.
So let's do that.
We take our seat. We arrange our body in a comfortable, upright posture. We say to ourselves "I've set aside this next ten minutes to follow my breath, not my wandering mind. I want to develop that discipline not only so my body and mind are more connected in my daily life, but so when things get rocky, or when I'm faced with difficult choices, I have the ability to actually choose what would actually be helpful."
Or so when I encounter another being on this planet, I have awareness of them. I can treat them with respect and maybe with compassion.
When you find that you have lost your breath, treat yourself with compassion and love. You fell off the horse. That's ok. Just get back on and try again.