Gate 90: Diligence paramita

The diligence pāramitā is a gate of Dharma illumination; for [with it] we completely attain all good dharmas, and we teach and guide lazy living beings.
進度是法明門、悉得一切善法、化懈怠衆生故.

This part of the text is about the six paramitas, or perfections.  We've considered dana / offering, keeping precepts, and patience.  This time it's the diligence or virya paramita.  Sometimes we also use words like exertion, effort or zeal, and we usually mean that we’re really focusing our attention on accomplishing something we’ve decided to undertake.

Virya paramita is said to have three components. 
1) Development of character: cultivating the courage and the will to walk the path as far as it goes, for as long as it takes, which, for us, is more than forever.
2) Spiritual training: it’s hard to maintain energy without knowing the basics of the teachings and practices of your tradition and where to go for help.
3) Benefitting others: as bodhisattvas, this is the reason we get up in the morning; it’s the basis of our vows.

I can’t help but notice the relationship here between zazen, work and study, three main areas of our practice.  In zazen we manifest our bodhicitta and our most authentic selves, with no virtues missing.  With spiritual training we study and learn with body and mind.  In benefitting others we’re carrying out beneficial action.

Overall, with diligence there’s a real feeling of forward momentum or progress, achievement or accomplishment.  We’re continuously practicing moment-by-moment and cultivating wisdom and compassion, and also being constantly on the lookout for the arising of delusion and hindrance and the three poisons.  The gate statement says that when we’re engaged with the diligence paramita we’re able to help those who are lazy, and indeed there’s a feeling in the original terms that we’re making a strenuous effort to overcome laziness and develop strength of character.

In the Eihei Shingi, it seems like Dogen is talking about diligence every few pages: diligent practice, diligent effort, diligent conduct.  It seems like he’s always getting after us to not let up, not get slack
or let ourselves get lazy.  At this point, it would be easy to think that the diligence paramita is all about brute force or exertion, pushing through to overcome obstacles like boredom or distraction or the various demands of our lives in order to keep practicing and just keep going.  If we take it that way, we can develop a “victory at all costs” mindset -- especially if we put this paramita next to the non-reliance of Sanshin Style.  Again, non-reliance means that it’s only our own bodhicitta that keeps us practicing.  We’re not in it for a reward, and we’re not relying on others or on a system to pull us along in our practice.  We’re doing our own practice ourselves.

If we misunderstand this, we think that the only thing we have to work with is our own raw stamina.  If so, then practice turns into an endurance test where success depends on how long you can sit in an uncomfortable position, or how long you can go without sleep, or how many texts you can memorize, and it doesn’t matter who gets in the way because my practice and realization come first!

Non-reliance doesn’t mean you’re on your own in the woods, doing your own personal version of Survivor.  Supports are there for carrying out the vow -- goodness knows, we’re not going to finish that vow in this lifetime, and certainly not on our own, but there has to be a vow to carry out in the first place, and we need to be doing the discernment to understand what that vow is really about and where it comes from.

Brute force and everyone for him- or herself is not what the diligence paramita is about.  I like the use of “diligence” here because the Latin root of the word includes a sense of putting steady energy into something, and doing it with care because you value it or even love it.

Okumura Roshi had something relevant to say about this when he wrote about a little piece of the Tenzo Kyokun.  In this text, Dogen says: Next, get ready the following morning’s breakfast. Select the rice and prepare the vegetables by yourself with your own hands, watching closely with sincere diligence. You should not attend to some things and neglect or be slack with others for even one moment. Do not give a single drop from within the ocean of virtues; you must not fail to add a single speck on top of the mountain of good deeds. (1)

Okumura Roshi’s comment is: When we work on one thing, we study it, do some experiments with it, take care of it and penetrate it. One by one, each time. This is how we study the characteristics of all things. One thing at a time. When we practice that role sincerely, we penetrate that thing. When we make a mistake, we penetrate that mistake and learn from the mistake. Then a mistake is a great teacher for us. Nothing is meaningless when we have our own place and path to walk. Actually this place and path is not something outside us. The place and path are nothing other than ourselves.  

This is the very opposite of diligence as brute force.  It’s not about just smashing up obstacles to get through them, regardless of the mess you leave behind or the beings who get hurt.  It’s also not about turning practice into a show of strength or endurance to the detriment of your own wellbeing.  Both of those scenarios are all about ego.  Diligence, doing something carefully and steadily, is not about ego.  It’s about putting ego aside and going forward one step at a time.  When it’s time to put down that important thing you’re doing and put on a robe and come to the zendo again to do more zazen, you do that without complaint, and when it’s time to move from cushion to a chair because you’re not eighteen any more and your knees or back are in danger, then you do that without complaint.  Both of those actions are diligence.

One problem with diligence as toughness is that we can’t keep it up -- it’s not sustainable in the long term.  Uchiyama Roshi says: It is dangerous to say, “I am working hard,”  because later we may say, “I am tired of it.  I’ll quit.”  Unconditionally. without expecting rewards, without gaining something, we just keep making an effort.  This is true diligence as the practice of paramita.

Another problem with seeing diligence only as effort is that it doesn’t take into account how that effort is directed.  There’s a teacher from Sotoshu called Tenshin Nakano who gave a talk some time ago in the US.  He has a temple in Japan, but he also writes and does some teaching trips, and in this talk he raised an interesting point:  is there a difference between diligence and effort?

He said that various people come to his temple with issues in their lives; marital problems, trouble in their jobs, etc. and they all say, Well, I’m doing my best.  He thinks, Yes, it’s important to have an objective and to make effort toward it, and these people probably really are doing the best they can, but what is that effort based on?  Careful thinking and direction or not?  Where is that energy really going?

He says: Both Shakyamuni Buddha, who taught the teaching of Buddhism, as well as Dogen Zenji, who transmitted the Sotoshu teaching from China to Japan, left behind their final teachings just before they died.  Within these final teachings, they both said that in order to create true happiness, it is imperitive that we are diligent.  Dogen Zenji taught us very kindly and sympathetically about this matter of diligence.  In Japan, we combine diligence and effort into one word, although diligence and effort are generally thought to have the same meaning in the way these words are used.

Dogen Zenji defined diligence as “always endeavoring to face what is correct and in accord with reason.”  In other words, “diligence is always making the effort to face the correct direction.”  This means that if the direction we are headed in is mistaken, it is not diligence even if you make an effort.  Also, if the direction of our effort is mistaken, the more effort we make the further away we will be from our objective.   . . . We can say it is diligence precisely when we are making effort and always headed in the right direction.  

The gate statement says that with diligence paramita we attain all good dharmas.  “Attain” can also be translated “understand,” and good dharmas here are wholesome actions.  If we’re diligent, we understand what wholesomeness is.  In this practice we tend to say wholesome and unwholesome rather than good and bad or good and evil.  Something that’s wholesome promotes wellbeing, physically, mentally, morally, and not just for ourselves, but for all beings, because something that’s harmful for us is harmful for the network of interconnection as a whole and vice versa: there’s nothing happening “out there” that’s not also having an effect on what’s happening “in here.”

Again I like the use of “wholesome” in this sense because the earliest root of the English word “whole” is “undamaged” or “uninjured.”  It doesn’t presume to identify anybody’s motive or state of mind or moral imperitive or personal agenda.  It just says that something isn’t being broken; there’s no separation being created.  For us in our practice, that fits right in.  Delusion and unwholesomeness are about separation, or about not understanding interdependence and interconnection.  When we do unwholesome things, it’s because we don’t understand deeply enough how reality actually fits together.  When we see the way Buddha sees, we know what wholesomeness really is and we also know what skillful, beneficial action really is.

One way to think about diligence is that we’re happy to take on wholesome activities and tasks.  Our attitude is that we can do it without complaint because we’re not attached to our own preferences, and we can see that they benefit others.

Uchiyama Roshi says: [T]he perfection of diligence means to be diligent in genuinely living our all-inclusive life and continuing to courageously practice good deeds and cut off bad deeds.  That’s it.  Diligence is to pour our whole self into each moment and each activity, animated by our life force.  Some people try hard to avoid work.  I think such people suffer instead.  Since the life force works naturally, we’re at peace when we work in harmony with our own life force.  This is the perfectionof diligence.

The gate statement sets up laziness as the opposite of diligence, and traditionally there are three kinds of laziness: not wanting to do anything; discouragement; and busyness.  This laziness is not about the activity level in our lives; it’s about obstacles to diligent practice in particular.  

The laziness of not wanting to do anything makes it pretty hard to get up at 4:30 am and come to the zendo for zazen.  Yeah, we’d like to practice and we mean to come on Sunday or sit in the evening, but somehow it’s easier to plop down in the easy chair with a novel or game or TV show.  Procrastination falls under this element of laziness -- I’ll practice more after things settle down, once the kids are older, when I’m retired.  If we convince ourselves to wait for the perfect circumstances, we’ll never practice because all we have is here and now.  Because of impermanence, things might be even more challenging tomorrow!  Today might be a lost opportunity.

The laziness of discouragement has us telling ourselves, “This practice is too hard for me.  I can’t sit for 50 minutes or understand what Dogen is saying or get the forms right.  Better to give up.”  The obstacles get bigger and more solid in our minds and we start taking them personally.  I’m especially challenged because of my childhood or my temperament or my clumsiness or because I’m new -- and we let ourselves off the hook without really giving it a try.

The laziness of being busy with worldly things is about distracting ourselves with all kinds of other activities.  Those activities might actually be wholesome things that really do benefit others, but are also ways for us to escape working with our own stuff.  If I’m focused on being an activist or a volunteer, I might not have time for zazen or being with the sangha, so I don’t have to acknowledge my own suffering and delusion.

Now how do we shore up our diligence when we’re feeling lazy and lethargic?  Traditionally there are four things that create the right conditions for diligence: aspiration, self confidence, joyfulness, and relinquishment.

Aspiration: My suggestion is to find something about your practice in which you can take an interest.  Goodness knows this tradition is huge; it has every element that every other religious tradition has.  If you want to kickstart your practice, intersect it with something you’re really fired up about.  Intersect it with literature, music, economics, cooking, sports, nature, fashion, leadership, any field of endeavor that gets you out of bed in the morning.  You might not think there’s any connection, but I guarantee you there is (and someone may have written about it -- if not, why not you?)  This is the exercise I used to do with students when I taught in the college classroom -- I asked them to write a paper intersecting Buddhism with something, and the point for them was that Buddhism is not an exotic dead thing to be examined through a telescope from a distance.  It’s about moment by moment living, and there’s nothing outside of the Buddha way.  

When you’re really interested in something and coming at it with a spirit of inquiry, you want to do it and spend time with it and learn all you can with body and mind.  Then diligence is not such a challenge.  If you’re dragging yourself onto the cushion and going through the motions out of stubbornness or obligation or something, it’s pretty tough to keep that up.  That’s not what real bodhicitta feels like.

Self-confidence: Dogen is constantly reminding us, particularly in the Zuimonki, that we’re all perfectly valid vessels of the dharma.  We just have to use our karmic circumstances appropriately.  The first time Dogen appointed a shuso, Koun Ejo, he said to him in front of everyone (to paraphrase): Don’t worry that you’re a beginner.  Don’t put yourself down by saying that you’re not a vessel of the dharma.  Yes, a lot of people have learned from Shakyamuni, but a lot of people have also learned from his student Ananda.  Now, get up here and give a talk for your fellow practitioners and explain this koan.

Imagine that suddenly you’re teaching Dogen’s sangha in his place.  Talk about intimidating!  What an act to follow!  However, he was kind enough to say: you might not teach like I teach, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have something to say or that your practice isn’t completely legitimate and meaningful.

Joyfulness: it’s fine to take joy in doing wholesome stuff that helps other beings.  That’s not the same as clinging to an outcome for yourself to make your ego happy.  You can find joy in your bodhisattva activity without being selfish.  In the midst of selfless activity, that’s when joy actually arises.  It's fine to recognize that and let it fuel our practice of diligence paramita.  With real diligence, we’re happy to take stuff on; it’s not all a grinding slog.  Yeah, there can be some hard graft involved, but joy is there too.

Relinquishment: knowing when to let go of our ideas about what practice should be and who we are as practitioners.  I think that works two ways, with our ideas about whether or not we’re doing “enough.”  On the one hand, there really are times when it’s good to step back.  Maybe it’s time to do some serious discernment about the direction our practice is taking, and whether we’re developing in the most useful or effective way.  Maybe we’re overcommitted at the dharma center to the detriment of our home relationships or our wellbeing.  If that’s what’s happening, it might be time to take a hard look at whether we’re engaged in the laziness of busyness.

However, the other aspect of relinquishment is giving up attachment to what we’ve already done.  OK, I sewed my rakusu and took the precepts -- check -- now on to the next thing.  OK, I had some kind of peak experience; I graduated.  OK, I worked really hard on an event or project at my dharma center and now I’m just exhausted!  People disappear from sanghas for all of these reasons

If we’re challenged in our diligence, I think we can also ask ourselves why we practice, and actually, that’s an important question even when we’re going along pretty well.  We spend a lot of time talking about what we’re not here to do.  We’re not here to feed our egos, not here to cling to an outcome, not here to watch a performance being put on around us for our benefit.  Yes, and: why are you practicing?  How is that different (or not) from the reasons you had on Day One?

As we reminded ourselves last time: “zazen is good for nothing” is not the same as “practice has no outcome.”  We may not be setting a goal for our practice and then going at it like a rugby team, but that doesn’t mean we have no purpose or direction.  Why are we practicing?  If you’re just going through the motions, why?  You’re getting something out of that exercise -- what is it?  Is it worth it?  See whether you can reconnect with what you valued about the practice earlier on.

This is not something to do on the zafu.  This is something to do when you can spend a little quiet time on discernment.  What do I find meaningful in this practice and why?  What attachments does that bring up, and are they getting in my way?  Chances are, if our diligence is challenged, it’s because we’re attached to something: my ideas about how my non-working hours should be spent, my desire for my worldview to be true and not to have to confront my delusion and suffering, my assumption that I have all the time in the world and I can practice anytime later, my concepts of physical and mental comfort.

Uchiyana Roshi said: Dogen Zenji taught that our attitude should be one of diligent practice in every situation that we encounter. If we fall into hell, we just go through hell; this is the most important attitude to have. When we encounter unhappiness, we work through it with sincerity. Just sit in the reality of life, seeing heaven and hell, misery and joy, life and death all with the same eye. No matter what the situation, we live the life of the self. We must sit immovably on that foundation. That is “becoming one with the universe.”

I think one of the key points of what he said is When we encounter unhappiness, we work through it with sincerity.  He doesn’t say we grit our teeth and power through based on endurance and being tough.,  He says we sincerely investigate it by living the life of the self, by returning to prajna and the emptiness of the five skandhas.

Now we can see that not only does diligence lead to understanding, but understanding leads to diligence.  If we continue to practice steadily, dropping off body and mind, we may have a clearer perception of the true reality of all beings, and if we have a clear perception of the emptiness of the five skandhas, diligent practice naturally arises.

Notes:

(1) Dogen, E. (1996). Dogen's pure standards for the Zen community: a translation of the Eihei shingi. United States: State University of New York Press, p. 34.

Questions for reflection and discussion:

• How have you been caught in the pitfall of associating diligence with brute effort?
• How do you (of might you) create the right conditions for diligence: aspiration, self confidence, joyfulness, and relinquishment?
• What is it about practice that keeps you returning to the cushion or the temple?