So for these two months, we're focusing on the Bodhisattva practices, the 10 paramitas. Those of you in the practice commitment period have selected one or sometimes two to focus on. But they're all very much interrelated. So just to name them, generosity, ethical conduct, patience, enthusiasm or energy, meditative settling, Prajna or wisdom or insight. And then the set of four beyond that, skillful means, vow, powers and knowledge. Monday evening I spoke about, so these are all interrelated and it's helpful to look at them together, even if you're focusing on one. One day evening I spoke on the bodhisattva of wisdom, Manjushri, who focuses on samadhi and prajna, meditative settling and insider wisdom, which are very clearly connected, and I'll mention that again today.

[01:16]

But I wanted to talk this morning about a couple of these practices that relate to the Bodhisattva of Compassion. So often wisdom and compassion are seen as a complementarity in our practice. The Bodhisattva of Wisdom, Manjushri, sits in the center of the zendo in front of the Buddha. We have images on both sides of the zendo of Kannon, Kanseon, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. And she represents a combination of practices, generosity and patience, generosity in her helpfulness as the basis of compassion, and also patience in her practice of listening. So the Bodhisattva of Compassion's name means to listen to the sounds of the world, or sometimes it's understood as the suffering of the world. Basically, this is about being open to

[02:17]

hearing the suffering of the world, of the people around us, and of the various people on our Kushner chair, to be present for our own suffering. So this active patience, this attentive patience, and this generosity are very important to compassion. But there are two others that I want to focus on today that are also part of what the Bodhisattva of Compassion is involved with. First is skillful means. And the second one that I want to focus on today is powers. So skillful means has to do with how we respond, how compassion responds, maybe after. we listen after we stop and slow down and hear, regard, observe the situation of the world and the problems of the world and the suffering of the world.

[03:32]

So then from this listening there is a response. So skillful means a very important idea in Bodhisattva Buddhism. It's complicated. It's not some instruction manual. It's not some set of guidelines about how to skillfully take care of our life or the world. It's much more a matter of trial and error. It's the open-hearted response from patiently paying attention. It has to do with using the resources at hand. So one of the various images of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, actually many, many different iconographic forms,

[04:37]

And that's because skillful means has to do very much with paying attention to differences. We might say that wisdom is the side of sameness, of oneness, of emptiness, of seeing how we are all interconnected, seeing the wholeness of all things. Skillful means has to do with how do we respond to the particular situation? It's not one size fits all. It's actually each of us has our own particular way of expressing Buddha. Each of us has our own particular combination of spiritual needs, our own particular pattern of karmic hindrance and so forth. So the bodhisattva responding with skillful means has to pay attention to what is needed in this situation. and in this situation.

[05:45]

And often, as I said, it's trial and error, it's not some formula that you can apply. One of the forms of the Bodhisattva of Compassion is depicted with a thousand arms. Some of them have less than that as a way of expressing the thousand arms, but each of the thousand hands has an eye in it to see from a thousand different perspectives, to see the differences between beings and their needs from all those perspectives. And then all the hands, many of the hands have different implements in them. to use in different ways. So this is challenging.

[06:58]

We have to be willing to respond without knowing the outcome. And we need to be willing to make mistakes. in the Avatamsaka Sutra, the Flower Ornament Sutra, which talks about these ten practices. This practice of skillful means is called the practice of non-attachment. To not be attached even to particular Buddha realms, to particular teachings, or to any particular outcome. So, skillful means is to respond beyond some expectation or some idea. Just, oh, what's needed here? How do we meet each other? How do we help?

[08:01]

So, of course, this is related to generosity. How is it to be generous? What is actually generous? Do we measure how effective our generosity is? Do we just express generosity? Well, different times may be different ways. And this great bodhisattva of compassion, Kanon, there are many stories about her or him responding helpfully. And there's this sense of this bodhisattva's power. So in some sense, skillful means and powers go together. This practice of powers is, so I'll come back to skillful means, but this practice of powers is very complicated, complicated history, and maybe more than any of the other paramitas, a little challenging to see how to apply it.

[09:05]

in terms of our practice. But clearly, in the stories and folklore about the Bodhisattva of Compassion, who helps many beings in many different ways, there's this sense of not just that the Bodhisattva of Compassion is patient and attentive and listens and is generous and tries things to respond, but actually has this effective power So we're going to chant at midday the universal gateway of Kanzeon Bodhisattva, which includes the refrain, mindfully invoking Kanzeon's power. This Bodhisattva, Kanzeon, who hears the sounds of the world, has particular powers. how do we see this as a practice that is carried out by great bodhisattvas and buddhas, but also is, for all of us as bodhisattva practitioners, is some way of practicing in the world, in our life, expressing our awareness from our meditation practice in our everyday activity, mindfully invoking Kanzeon's powers.

[10:26]

So on some basic level, all of us have particular powers and ability. And the point of all of these practices is just to wake up. Everyone, wake up. Universal liberation, to help everyone awaken. In the Lotus Sutra, the main text on skillful means, it says the Buddhas appear in the world for the single reason of helping beings who are suffering onto the path of awakening. How do we help each other onto this path towards awakening? How do we help all the different beings in our life, co-workers and family members and neighbors and all the people that we are involved with, how do we help them awaken? Well, that's what all of these practices are about. So powers is about using our abilities skillfully, helpfully.

[11:31]

And each of the people in this room have many talents and many abilities. So one level of this practice of powers is simply how do we use that which we have at hand? How do we use our own special gifts to help relieve suffering and to help beings awaken? So that's one aspect of powers, but in terms of the classical Buddhist sutras, they also talk about the extraordinary powers of Buddha. The list of such powers include things like omniscience, all-knowingness, which I take to be not so much like some hard drive that has all the data of the universe, past, present, and future on it, but to know what's in front of you completely.

[12:38]

This is what a Buddha does. A Buddha knows minds of others, knows the past lives of others and himself. Anyway, in the early sutras, they talk about powers in these ways, and these are powers that arise from meditative practice. In the sutra, it talks about this practice of powers as simply the practice of good teaching, fully expressing the Dharma. But, you know, so it doesn't mention things like levitation, but it's, you know, one aspect of this is that kind of realm of having some special powers. So how do we relate that to our lives? Well, one aspect of what the sutra talks about, the Flower Ornament Sutra talks about in terms of this practice is, has to do with, Tom Cleary translates it as spells, but technically dharani,

[13:39]

Dharani, we include things that we chant. They're kind of like mantras. Actually, there may not really be any difference between mantras and dharanis. Mantras are incantations that we chant that have particular effects. So, at the end of the Heart Sutra, there's this kind of instruction about chanting mantras, and it ends with the mantra, gate, gate, pargate, parasamgate, bodhisvaha. And the point of this is the actual effect of the sound. It's possible to translate a lot of Dharanis in some way. That one means something like gone, gone, gone beyond, altogether gone beyond, awakening, hurrah. But it's more than the meaning, the literal meaning. And in our chat book, we have a few different dharanis.

[14:42]

And actually, in the Lotus Sutra, and in many Mahayana sutras, and even more in esoteric Buddhism, there are many, many lists of these dharanis, or things we chant, and the getas we do, which we chant usually. the Sagaki ceremony in autumn for feeding hungry spirits. There's a list of Dharanis, and it talks about what their particular effect is. So there's a whole science of this, and this is part of Buddhism that may seem obscure or mythological or superstitious to modern Westerners. But it's important in terms of this practice of powers. So for those of you who can come tomorrow evening, Monday evening, Paul Kopp, who's a professor of Buddhist studies at the University of Chicago, is going to be here speaking about Dharani.

[15:43]

His specialty as a Buddhist scholar is Dharani. And he particularly is going to be talking about that in terms of his studies of Dharani Tang period China, which is roughly 600 to 900 in China. He studied material from the Dunhuang caves that were recovered early in the 20th century. He's an expert in that aspect of Durrani. From his point of view, Durrani is just about invoking teachings. It's not so much about developing powers. So these practices change over time in the history of Buddhism. But still, this sense of Dharani is just one way that is traditionally talked about as developing mental powers to be able to memorize. We don't usually in our modern world focus on memorization as a mental ability.

[16:50]

In some realms, that happens. Before there was writing, these texts were kept alive in monasteries by monks memorizing whole sections of texts. So it is a mental capacity of human beings to memorize long parts of texts, and even texts that we don't necessarily, that are in Sanskrit or Sino-Japanese, and we don't really know what they mean. But it's considered that memorizing these dharani or mantra is an aid to memory, an aid to developing different capacities. And beyond the Buddha's special powers, there are ways in which we can develop particular capacities. So on some basic level, again, the practice of patience is involved in the Bodhisattva's compassion.

[17:56]

And patience means tolerance, acceptance, forbearance, capacity, by actively developing our patience. It's not a passive practice. By paying attention and listening to our own thoughts and feelings, paying attention to the beings around us and what they're expressing, we develop our capacity to be patient. So there are various other capacities that come out of practice. And this is this realm of power. So I don't think, it's not just mental powers. I think it also applies to what we might call yogic powers, energetic powers. So martial arts and yogic practices are about this too. How do we develop special capacities? Again, not for their own sake, but for the point of helping liberate beings.

[19:03]

So again, these early Mahayana sutras have this whole kind of, almost magical-seeming stories about the Buddha's special powers. In the Zen tradition, that's kind of dismissed in a way. So the Zen attitude is, going back to Lei Man Pang and the Tang Dynasty, just for him, just chopping wood and carrying water was his magical powers. And we emphasize in our practice, too, just applying our meditative awareness and settling to everyday activities, preparing the meals for the practitioners, cleaning the temple, as we will do later, taking care of physical things. This is our special powers. To be able to actually apply our most wholesome

[20:05]

uprightness to our life. It's nothing fancy. How do we use our abilities and capacity and patience and generosity? So all of this is the realm of powers. But I want to talk about this in terms of an interesting book I just started reading. I'm not quite halfway through. that talks about, it's called Imagine How Creativity Works by Joan O'Leary. And it talks about the new studies in neuroscience of the brain. This is something that's just developed in the last maybe 15 years, where they actually are tracking the parts of the brain that are responsible for particular abilities and particular mental functions and creative functions. And that's sort of interesting.

[21:07]

I'm less interested in the science part of it than in looking at how does creativity work. Because I think this practice of powers has to do a lot with how we express our creativity in our life. So many of you have heard me talk about how Zazen is a way of accessing creative energy. in some ways just sitting for a period or for a day, is a creative activity. How do you express Buddha on your cushion or chair in your way? It's something that we create. And it's connected to all of the creative activities that everyone in this room is involved with in everyday activity when you get up from formal meditation, in the activities of your life. So I think this creativity has something to do with what traditionally was talked about in terms of mental powers in these early Buddhist texts.

[22:13]

But it's a way of bringing it back into this sense of taking care of everyday things. So I wanted to just share a few of these new discoveries. that neuroscience is doing. And a lot of this has to do very directly with zazen. Zazen creates alpha waves. It's something, so they've measured the effect of our brain actually changes as a result of things we do. They've done studies now that show that people who've done meditation for a while, 20 years, actually their brains are different. there's more gyrofication is the technical term, that there are more kind of curves and curlicues in the brain. And this is actually something that helps in terms of making synaptic connections.

[23:17]

It allows more creativity. So that's one very basic level that they've measured how doing such meditative practice actually does not just affect our mental capacities, but they can actually measure it in the brain. in this book on how creativity works, he talks about different kinds of awareness and how they can measure that in terms of different aspects of the brain. So he talks about, he says that people who have Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, have more access to certain kinds of creativity. That there's an unexpected benefits of not being able to focus. He says, although we live in an age that worships attention, when we need to or if we force ourselves to concentrate, this approach can inhibit the imagination. So he's talking about what imagination is as a kind of creativity, and I would say as a kind of mental power, applying it to these transcendent practices.

[24:22]

He says, sometimes it helps to consider irrelevant information, to eavesdrop on all the stray associations unfolding in the far reaches of the brain. Occasionally, focus can backfire and make us fixated on the wrong answers. It's not until you let yourself relax and indulge the distractions that you discover the answer. The insight arrives only after you stop looking for it. So this relates to the connection between Samadhi and Prajna too. In our meditation, there are different aspects of mental function. And in creativity, there are different aspects of mental function. One is, what he's talking about is focusing the mind. Mindfulness practices, very disciplined focus on breath or on some particular line from a koan or something like that. There are, in our meditation, kind of focused aspects. But he's emphasizing that insight arises, and they actually know where this happens in the brain, that insight happens when we allow a kind of wider panoramic awareness, a kind of daydreaming.

[25:36]

So one of the scholars tells a story about a Zen Buddhist meditator that illustrates the importance of these alpha waves created in meditation. At first, this person couldn't solve any of the problems given him by the scientists who were studying creativity. Of course, this guy went through 30 or so of the verbal puzzles and just drew a blank. He assumed the way to solve the problems was to think really hard about the words on the page, to really concentrate. So they were using these kind of word puzzles as a way of measuring insight, imagination, and creativity. But then, just as the meditator was about to give up, he started solving one puzzle after another. By the end of the experiment, he was getting them all right. It was an unprecedented streak. This dramatic improvement depended upon the ability of the meditator to focus on not being focused, so that he could finally pay attention to all those 3D connections in the right hemisphere. Because he meditated 10 hours a day, he had the cognitive control to instantly relax.

[26:37]

So some of us have been to places where we could meditate 10 hours a day. And here today, we're doing a lot of time meditating. Having this experience and doing it over and over gives us the cognitive control to instantly mentally relax. He could ramp up, quote, he could ramp up those alpha waves at will so that all of a sudden he wasn't paying such close attention to the words on the page. And that's when he became an insight mission. So this is very interesting. They know where insights come from in the brain. There's this part of the brain, and I can find the name of it here somewhere, maybe. But it's just above the right ear, just inside the brain there. And that's where insights arise. And it's the kind of insights that happen when, like in scientific discoveries, when there's There's some eureka moment.

[27:40]

And it happens not from trying to focus on and figure out the problem, but from letting go. And both sides are a part of our meditation. Again, the focusing side, but also allowing the mind to wander. Just sitting, thoughts and feelings come up. We let them come and we let them go. being upright and attentive through that, develops this capacity. So again, this is a very modern way of talking about meditation, but I think it very much applies to this practice of powers. Another scientist talks, and he gives examples in the books of how creativity produces insights and tells the story of how postage were invented, for example. And he talks about people like Yo-Yo Ma and Bob Dylan and, you know, other creative people. But he talks specifically about two types of daydreaming.

[28:41]

The first type of curse, I don't know how many of you, when you were a kid, liked to daydream in school. I don't know if that's a function of something that leads people to meditation or not. I know I did, but it's OK if you didn't. But anyway, he says, the first type of daydreaming occurs when people notice that they are daydreaming only when prodded by the researcher. So they've actually studied this in a scientific context. Although they've been told to press a button, as soon as they realize their minds have started to wander, these people fail to press the button. So that's one type of daydreaming. The second type of daydreaming occurs when people catch themselves during an experiment. They notice they're daydreaming on their own. According to this researcher's data, individuals who are unaware that their minds have started wandering don't exhibit increased creativity. The point is that it's not enough to just daydream. Letting your mind drift off is the easy part. The hard part is maintaining enough awareness so that even when you start to daydream, you can interrupt yourself. and notice a creative thought or an insight.

[29:45]

So again, this goes back to talking about samadhi and prajna, meditative settling, which includes maybe both kinds, but it certainly includes this second kind of daydreaming, and then the insight that arises from it. I think this is very interesting. Part of this practice of power is being able to, he also talks about it in terms of letting go of our sense of control over things. So, one of my former teachers, Baker Roshi, talked about it, essentially, being wild on the cushion. I think he was talking about this. Just, it doesn't mean moving around or, you know, or shouting or anything while you're in the zendo. But just allowing this mental space to go anywhere. And yet, paying attention enough so that you realize when it happens.

[30:51]

Coming back to, OK, here I am. Upright. Inhale, exhale. And then allowing the mind to wander. And by doing that, insight arises. So the sixth ancestor, Queen Aang, talks about this in the Platform Sutra. But I think it's the same thing. Another way of thinking about it, and he takes this back to two archetypes of creativity that Nietzsche talks about, but one is divergent thinking. which is what I've been talking about, the unexpected thoughts when logic won't help, when working memory has hit the wall. In such instances, the right hemisphere helps expand the internal search. This is the kind of thinking that's essential when struggling with a remote associate problem, trying to find a new kind of pop song, figuring out what to do with a weak glue that led to posters. It's the thought process of warm showers and blue rooms, paradigm shifts and radical restructuring.

[31:53]

So that's that divergent thinking that I've been talking about, where mind wanders in different ways, and yet you're paying attention enough to come back. The other one is convergent thinking, which is this focus thinking. This mode of thought is all about analysis and attention. It's the ideal approach when trying to refine a poem. So he talks about how W.H. Auden, as a poet, used this way to refine his poetry. Or solving an algebra equation. when he requires conversion to thinking, or to perfect a symphony. He talks about Beethoven as someone who perfected his insights through struggling with small revisions in his symphonies. Anyway, all of this is about, it's kind of a modern way of talking about these mental powers. How do we allow the space of meditative awareness to be effective?

[33:04]

So the famous Zen koan that many of you have heard is about Zhaozhou saying to his teacher, what is the way? Nanjona's teacher said, everyday mind, ordinary mind is the way, and Jowdra said, how do I approach that? And the response was, the more you try and approach it, the further away you get. So, chanting Dharani, allowing mental space to create new possibilities. I'm suggesting that this is what this ninth paramita is about. So the traditional ways of, it may be that chanting a long chant or memorizing a long chant in Sanskrit or Sino-Japanese, where we don't know what it means cognitively, but still we allow the sound to be present. It may do something similar to what these brain researchers are talking about, of useful daydreaming or divergent thinking that allows some insight to arise.

[34:22]

These may be traditional techniques for something similar to this. So, this may not be as immediately practical for you as practitioners as thinking about patience or generosity or energy, or even vow or commitment. Again, all of us have particular capacities, particular skills, particular interests and awareness. And we also have, all of us in this room now, this ability to allow insight to arise from this kind of open-handed awareness. So the point of all of these, of skillful means, of powers, of patience, of generosity, the point of all of these, again, is simply how do we use the resources we have in our own bodies and mind to help, to liberate, to awaken beings, to relieve suffering?

[35:46]

and in the practice commitment period that some of you are doing. I think powers was one of the practices that the most people had listed as something they were interested in, which was interesting to me. But I think it's okay to look at, in fact, it's a good thing to look at the capacities that we develop in our meditation and the ways of meditating and how they develop different capacities for insight. And how do we enjoy them? How do we use them skillfully? So for those sitting for the day, we'll have some time for discussion this afternoon. But we have just a little bit of time if there's a couple of comments, responses, or questions at this point. Yes, Carlo. So, sometimes you hear in Buddhism, when you sit, don't think, get rid of your thoughts.

[36:55]

So, are you talking more about the kind of urgent type of thinking as opposed to just letting your thoughts come and go? Well, I'm not sure what books you've been reading. I don't think you've ever heard me say, get rid of all your thoughts. So the point of our practice is not to eliminate thinking. But there's a famous story about this that Dogen cites, where the master says, I'm thinking of not thinking. Right, that's what I mean. Yeah, so that's a kind of awareness. Part of this is about looking at the different aspects of awareness. Our usual discriminating discursive consciousness, the convergent thinking, that has its uses, too. But we know things in different ways. So don't try and get rid of thoughts or feelings.

[37:57]

But notice. how the thoughts and feelings are, and then let them go. And this realm of insight that these scientists are uncovering is about a wider kind of thing. It's a kind of thinking. It's a kind of knowing. But it's totally letting go of controlling what we're thinking. So maybe part of the practice of powers is realizing the different ways in which we are aware of awareness, the different ways we can be aware, and how to use them differently. There are times when convergent thinking is absolutely necessary, when discriminating, discursive, literal-minded thinking is absolutely important. How do we widen our capacity for seeing the aspects of awareness? Yes, sir? least anecdotally and what I've seen later in the literature there's usually quite a dismissal of powers and usually at least by the time you get into like the Zen literature you know usually somebody's demonstrating some kind of power they're kind of a jerk you know and they they're in need of

[39:34]

that kind of move in the literature actually kind of represents or embodies part of what you've been talking about in the sense that if you have this sort of very instrumentally focused kind of application of capacity or power, it can wind up inhibiting itself precisely. It gets in its own way. things naturally arise, but you don't curtail them by being too eager to sort of put them to some kind of instrumental solution to a problem kind of thing. Good. Yeah, and definitely there's a problem with thinking about powers and power and power corrupts and all of that. We've had lots of abuses of power in spiritual, different spiritual traditions, including Zen and Buddhism. So yeah, it's important.

[40:45]

So thank you for, again, expressing that caution. And just the power of, you know, getting up in the morning, you know, being able to show up where you say you will. Ordinary everyday stuff. When the bell rings, you get up for walking meditation. That's power. But by looking at these modern neuroscientific studies of powers of the mind, I'm trying to bring it out of some kind of mystical idea of special powers. This is the way the mind works. These are capacities that are available to everyone. So I don't think there are special creative geniuses. I think everybody has creative aptitude. I mean, as I understand, what's this guy's name? Jonah Lehrer, L-E-H-R-E. I mean, the way he represented, what he had to say, I mean, it seems actually very much in line with sort of the traditional, sort of the same take on things.

[41:49]

It's like when you, you know, give up trying to like, you know, just kind of like back off a little bit. Yeah, insight arises when we let go of trying to control creativity. Yes, Brooks. It also puts me in mind of the kind of awe that I heard my grandmother express after she'd broken her hip. She realized how athletic she had been before. She was able to walk around this little path around the lake and the buildings, and she was able to get up and go to the bathroom and wash her hands Make a tea, you know, with your powers. Yes. Yes. So part of this is just appreciating that we have the capacity to get up in the morning and show up and sit together.

[42:48]

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