This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Pāramīs (1 of 10) Generosity

In introducing generosity as part of the meditation today, I am beginning a series of talks on these mornings about the ten pāramīs^[1]. The Pali word is pāramī, and in Sanskrit, it's pāramitā. These are really rich, beautiful, and important qualities of heart that develop as we practice.

We have been using them for the last 15 years or so as the reference point for offering spiritual care in the Buddhist chaplaincy training we have here. We train people to be hospital, hospice, and prison chaplains, and we use this as part of the framework for looking at the compassion and liberation that goes into Buddhist spiritual care.

In fact, the ten qualities that are the pāramīs^[2]—often called "the perfections" in English, or "that which is ultimate"—are intimately connected to the human capacity for compassion and the human capacity for liberating the heart. Generosity is the first one.

Many people in the world are generous; it's a wonderful thing to be. When generosity comes out of, supports, or is part of the path of greater compassion and greater liberation, then it is a pāramī. There is ordinary generosity, and then there is a generosity that is infused or informed by compassion and liberation. That is where the ten pāramīs are.

The ten are generosity, ethical behavior, renunciation, wisdom, energy (or engagement), patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving-kindness, and equanimity. Over the next two weeks, each morning, I will take up one of these ten.

What is nice about this list is that these ten are a different description of the path of practice. It's a way of understanding how practice can evolve sequentially. One gets stronger, then the next gets stronger, and the next gets stronger. By the time we get to the last one, equanimity, there is no possibility of thinking about equanimity as being some kind of cold indifference, because it is built on the foundation of all the other nine pāramīs. These are strengths that we develop. You feel that equanimity is a strength built on wisdom, determination, truthfulness, loving-kindness, and the others.

So, it begins with generosity. In many ways, the Buddha taught that the path of practice can be seen to begin with generosity. Generosity is a wonderful foundational practice for Buddhism. One of the reasons why generosity is so rich and valuable is that, if it is the beginning of the path of practice, it puts our practice in the context of our interpersonal lives—our lives with other people, and even other living beings.

If we start with meditation, it is very easy to get the message that the foundation and the beginning is ourselves. There is nothing wrong with beginning there, but it can sometimes lead to being a little bit askew, emphasizing excessive individualism or a certain kind of conceit about myself and my own experience. To begin with generosity clearly starts with the foundation of healthy interpersonal relationships. To have our practice—and our relationship with the world—built on that is a wonderful lesson and a wonderful reference point for doing the more individualistic work of meditation itself.

The other thing that is nice about generosity being emphasized at the beginning is that it is intimately connected to compassion and liberation. Especially with compassion, there are quite a few people who tend to relate to it with a sense of obligation. It feels like a duty to be compassionate—that we are "supposed to be" and "have to be." For some people, living up to the obligation of what we're supposed to do is central to their understanding of how to be a good human being. It can be almost frightening, disturbing, or upsetting to remove that sense of obligation from the orientation in which they live their lives.

Maybe this has a little bit to do with how we understand the words obligation, duty, or responsibility. But when we start with generosity, generosity is always voluntary. You can't be generous if it's not a voluntary act. You can give with attachment, or you can give reluctantly, but true generosity is a voluntary act of openness, of abundance, of letting go, and of granting. It cannot be obligatory.

Generosity comes out of some wellspring inside of health, goodness, openness, and connectedness. Sometimes this is discovered as we sit and meditate, stay in the present moment, and let go of all the attachments—all the crusts of resistance, defensiveness, greed, and fear that we have. As these begin to shed and relax, this natural feeling of wanting to care for someone or be generous to someone in an ordinary, simple way begins to become stronger and stronger.

To emphasize generosity in the beginning is to really point back to that possibility and that place of goodness that we have. It is very important to appreciate that it's not an obligation. We have to feel our way, make space for it, and take the time for it. It's almost like—if you like obligation—we have an obligation to find how to be generous without obligation!

Spiritual care is caring for others in all kinds of different ways. Compassion comes from this freedom—it is our freedom that is expressed in generosity, not our contractedness, heaviness, or weight of responsibility. Part of the practice of generosity is to stretch ourselves to be generous, but not to stretch ourselves with duty. Instead, stretch yourself by asking: Can we find this freedom? Can we find the liberation of heart that allows generosity to flow as a natural quality, as something we are inspired to do out of ease and goodness?

It's a simple, obvious thing to say, "Of course I want to be generous." So explore that edge. Look at the places where we don't want to be generous, where we hold back, where we are afraid to be generous, or where we are simply too preoccupied with our own concerns to be generous. See what it means to start living with greater generosity and what it is like to open up more and more.

Surprisingly, there is this wonderful way in which it sometimes feels like we receive more than we give. The more we are generous, the more life can be experienced as a gift. The more we are actually available for the gifts that life has to give. It's symbolic for me with this idea: if we hold something in our hand and hold it tight in a fist, that's one way of living. But in order to give what we have in our hand to someone else, we have to open our hand up so they can have it. Once our hand is open, it is available for other things to happen. It is available for the gifts of life. If we stay fisted, we aren't really available for what life has to give, and life is always supporting us in a way.

Generosity is the foundation of this journey of the pāramīs. I hope that as we go through this ten-part series, you might participate by spending each day focusing a little bit on these qualities. For today—or the next 24 hours, wherever you are—make generosity a theme. You might want to write it down, carry it with you, or put it somewhere so you're reminded of it. Explore it, stretch it, talk to your friends about generosity, and maybe do some simple reading about it in books or on the web. Live with it, feel your way into it, and reflect on your own relationship to generosity.

Do that each day with these different qualities, and maybe you will start getting a sense of the momentum of how they build one on top of the other. Hopefully, this building of something non-obligatory arises from some feeling of generosity, liberation, freedom, non-attachment, non-clinging, and our compassionate, caring connectivity to the world around us. The gift that we receive from our world is, in fact, the love and care that we can also give to the world. It is all mixed together—generosity and receiving in a rich way.

I look forward to these days on the pāramīs and filling you in more about what they are about as we go along here. Thank you very much for today.

Reflections on the Statue of Paṭācārā

For those of you who would like to stay a little bit longer, I can try to zoom in on the face of Paṭācārā. I see it on my screen here; it seems like a pretty clear picture, but maybe it would be nice for me to try and show you a little bit more and tell you a little bit more about the statue.

Okay, so let's see what we have here. First, I'll center her. Okay, there we go.

There is a whole story around Paṭācārā and how we received this gift. Andrea Fella, who is one of the senior teachers and a co-teacher here at IMC, told the story of Paṭācārā yesterday. Paṭācārā, like many of the early Buddhist nuns, had been a mother. She lost her children to a tragic death. Her husband died, and her family died.

When Andrea was telling the story yesterday of Paṭācārā having lost both her children, her husband, her parents, and her brother, I remembered what I was talking about on Sunday morning regarding the Cambodian Buddhist monk named Maha Ghosananda^[3]. During the Pol Pot times, the same thing happened to him; he lost his whole family to genocide. This happened in the ancient world, too. I think there was a lot of death at childbirth and young in life.

This huge grief is a part of many of these early Buddhist nuns' lives. In their grief, they came to the Buddha and received teachings in a different way. Paṭācārā was one of these nuns who worked through her grief. Apparently, her practice was not easy. But there is a beautiful story in her enlightenment poem where she talks about washing her feet. As she is finished with the foot-washing water, she pours it away. She sees it flowing down a little slope where she is sitting, and she gets concentrated watching the flow of water. In that concentrated state, she goes back into her dwelling—maybe her little hut—with an oil lamp with a little wick coming out of it that's burning there. She sits down on the bed, and she takes a pin to remove the wick so that the flame dies out. As the flame fades away, her mind is liberated.

You can imagine her getting concentrated and really absorbed in something. Sometimes when we really get absorbed in something and it suddenly disappears, the mind gives way in a certain way that sets it free. It's also symbolic, because the quenching and putting out of the flame—the fever, the flame of greed, hate, and delusion—is symbolic of liberation, and Buddhism represents it this way.

Paṭācārā then became an early teacher. She ordained other nuns, and many of the early nuns expressed their gratitude and appreciation for her teachings and her support.

This statue was made in Bali. The senior students here at IMC who were looking for a statue as a gift had a hard time finding a human Buddhist woman to have a statue of. It's easy to find statues of Kuan Yin and Tara, and different kinds of more Bodhisattva deities from Mahayana Buddhism. But Theravada Buddhism^[4]—the Buddhism that we practice here—is very human-centered. So we wanted to have an ordinary human being, ideally one of the early nuns from the time of the Buddha.

In the end, they decided to have it commissioned. We were given a connection to a wonderful sculpture studio in Bali, and we worked with the people there on the specifications of what we wanted to have. And this is what we ended up with, with Paṭācārā.

Let me see if I can... oops! Let's see, now you get to see what the studio looks like. I didn't mean to take it so far! [Laughter] So there you go.

Thank you very much, and I will see you tomorrow.