Today is the sixth day of Higan week, the three days before the equinox and the three days after. As explained in a Nichiren Shu brochure:

For Buddhists, this period is not just one characterized by days with almost equal portions of light and dark. Rather, it is a period in which we strive to consciously reflect upon ourselves and our deeds.

Today we consider the perfection of meditation.

“Emptiness” is the meditation that yields freedom, whether this meditation is performed in Buddhist or non-Buddhist terms. If you do not understand how the choices you make are conditioned by your background and the context within which you face them, you will have very little freedom in relation to these conditioning factors. If you do not understand that your political views are largely a function of the particular influences that have been exerted on you from early life until now, you will have no way of seeing how other worldviews give justification to other views just as yours does for you, and therefore no way of even beginning to adjudicate between them except by naively assuming the truth of your own.

If you do not realize that what seems obvious to you seems that way because of structures built into your time and place and the particularities of your life, you will have very little room to imagine other ways to look at things that stretch the borders of your context and imagination. You will have no motive to wonder why what seems obvious to you does not seem obvious to others in other cultures or languages, and to wonder whether you might not be better off unconstrained by those particular boundaries of worldview. The extent to which you are limited by your setting is affected by the extent to which you understand such constraints both in general (anyone’s) and in particular (yours). The way you participate in your current given worldview shapes the extent to which you will be able to see alternatives to it and be able to reach out beyond it in freedom.

“Emptiness” and similar non-Buddhist meditations on the powers of interdependence and contextuality are among the most fruitful means of generating sufficient freedom to live a creative life. Reflexively aware, we are more and more able to see and act on alternatives that would never occur to us otherwise. In reflexive meditation, we come to embrace the finitude of all acts of thinking as a way to liberate us from dogmatism and certitude. Understanding the uncertainty that is constitutive of our human mode of being, we develop the flexibility of mind necessary to be honest with ourselves about our own point of view.

Today is fifth day of Higan week, the three days before the equinox and the three days after. As explained in a Nichiren Shu brochure:

For Buddhists, this period is not just one characterized by days with almost equal portions of light and dark. Rather, it is a period in which we strive to consciously reflect upon ourselves and our deeds.

Today we consider the perfection of energy.

Desire is the basis of motivation. It is the source of our energy. Without wanting something enough to motivate our will and energize our action, we are unlikely to pursue or get it. Imagine what it would be to eliminate all desire while still living a human life. Without desires we would be inactive and impotent. Lacking ambition, we would be without purposes and plans. Existing in so dispassionate a way that we desire nothing, we would be indifferent to any outcome; we would not care – about anything. Apathetic, that is, lacking pathos and passion, we would be devoid of feelings of any kind as well as the activities and spiritedness that follow from them. Although it is no doubt true that there have been a few aspirants who have understood the Buddha’s enlightenment to be a state of complete desirelessness, this is not the image of the compassionate and energized bodhisattva that we are likely to imagine and admire. A richer and more complete conception of Buddhist enlightenment encompasses and elevates desire rather than rejecting it.

Today is the third day of Higan week, the three days before the equinox and the three days after. As explained in a Nichiren Shu brochure:

For Buddhists, this period is not just one characterized by days with almost equal portions of light and dark. Rather, it is a period in which we strive to consciously reflect upon ourselves and our deeds.

Today we consider the perfection of patience.

Modern Western thought has produced something closely related to the realization of “emptiness” – “historical consciousness,” the consciousness or awareness that everything is immersed in history, that everything becomes what it is through the shaping powers of historical conditioning and change whenever constitutive conditions change. The ability and willingness to understand ourselves historically is similar to the ability to see the “empty” character of all things—that is, its relational and always changing character.

In this insight, we realize that everything is a product of history, of dependence and time, including ourselves. Through it, we understand that all human thinking is subject to future doubt and revision, no matter how certain we may be about our knowledge. The upshot of historical awareness is not that we cannot know the truth, but that doubt and openness are essential ingredients to any quest for understanding. Similarly, realizing that all human knowledge is “empty” or “historical” does not in any way amount to saying that knowledge is not valid, or that it is pointless. It is rather a profound look into both the dependent character of everything and the reality of ongoing change that pervades the entire cosmos.

Today is the second day of Higan week, the three days before the equinox and the three days after. As explained in a Nichiren Shu brochure:

For Buddhists, this period is not just one characterized by days with almost equal portions of light and dark. Rather, it is a period in which we strive to consciously reflect upon ourselves and our deeds.

Today we consider perfection of discipline:

Like most of us, bodhisattvas at earlier levels of practice assume that things stand on their own and can therefore be grasped in isolation from other things. They take the language of things to validate a certain understanding of things and cannot at the outset think otherwise. But the practice of the perfections is meant to disrupt that understanding and to show how the depth of things is more truthfully disclosed through the “emptiness” of linguistic signs and their referents. …

The realization that all moral rules are “empty” works toward freeing the bodhisattva from an inappropriate attachment to them. Holding the rules in one’s mind without “clinging” to them, without “grasping” them dogmatically, yields a certain degree of latitude in their practice. The moral rules are understood as means, not ends, and when these means come into conflict with important ends, the bodhisattva learns to practice the rules flexibly.

Today is the final day of Higan week, the three days before the equinox and the three days after. As explained in a Nichiren Shu brochure:

For Buddhists, this period is not just one characterized by days with almost equal portions of light and dark. Rather, it is a period in which we strive to consciously reflect upon ourselves and our deeds.

The today we consider the Perfection of Wisdom.

Several realizations make wisdom more difficult to imagine than the other five ideals we have examined. Wisdom differs from the others in the extent to which it is readily identifiable and noticeable. When we look for acts of generosity, morality, tolerance, energy, and meditation, we know roughly where to look. Acts of generosity, for example, are located in a certain sphere of our lives; they are easily identified wherever something beneficial is intentionally and freely transferred from one person or group to another. But where do we look to find examples of wisdom? Nowhere in particular, or anywhere. There is no specific domain of wisdom. You can be wise or unwise in any dimension of life. Wisdom can be found at work in all of the other perfections and in everything we do, rather than in its own domain. There is wise giving, wise tolerance, wise eating, wise shopping, and so on. Wisdom appears at a more comprehensive level than the other perfections, and this is how it can guide, encompass, and perfect the other perfections.

Today is the sixth day of Higan week, the three days before the equinox and the three days after. As explained in a Nichiren Shu brochure:

For Buddhists, this period is not just one characterized by days with almost equal portions of light and dark. Rather, it is a period in which we strive to consciously reflect upon ourselves and our deeds.

The today we consider the Perfection of Meditation.

The ideal of this fifth perfection is to live in a meditative frame of mind regardless of whether we happen to be meditating. The goal, therefore, is not always to be meditating, always to be practicing a preparatory activity, but rather to live in the spirit of composure and insight that the practice has produced.

Today is the fifth day of Higan week, the three days before the equinox and the three days after. As explained in a Nichiren Shu brochure:

For Buddhists, this period is not just one characterized by days with almost equal portions of light and dark. Rather, it is a period in which we strive to consciously reflect upon ourselves and our deeds.

The today we consider the Perfection of Energy.

One place where the mental and physical dimensions of human life converge is the domain of desire. Our desires cut across the body/mind divide because they always seem to implicate both. Perhaps this is one reason why all classical religions hold desire in suspicion. In the throes of desire, we can hardly tell where matter stops and spirit begins. No traditional religion had given desire a more negative role than Buddhism. Desire was named in the Four Noble Truths as the singular cause of suffering. Desire was precisely what was to be eliminated in enlightened life.

At this point in the development of Buddhist thought and practice, however, it is not difficult to see the limitation of this perspective. Desires, more than anything else, get us moving in life. They provide the energy for accomplishments of all kinds, including the quest for enlightenment. We can learn to desire the good, we can desire a comportment of peace and compassion, and when they are fully developed, desires can help us work for the enlightenment and health of all beings. The question before us therefore is: What is the relation between human desire and the energy that moves us? How can we conceive of desire so that we can contemplate both the problematic side of desire that early Buddhists saw so clearly and the inevitable role that desire plays in any life of excellence?

Today is the third day of Higan week, the three days before the equinox and the three days after. As explained in a Nichiren Shu brochure:

For Buddhists, this period is not just one characterized by days with almost equal portions of light and dark. Rather, it is a period in which we strive to consciously reflect upon ourselves and our deeds.

The today we consider the Perfection of Tolerance.

For the perfection of tolerance, wisdom is the art of understanding when to be tolerant and how. This is why tolerance or patience is a skill of character that is so difficult – it depends on the insight and subtlety of mind to know when it ought to be practiced and when not, and in each case how to practice it to good effect. The appropriateness and effectiveness of patience, like generosity, is context dependent, and the capacity to see these subtle nuances of context takes wisdom. In this way, patience is a matter of balance, wisdom to sense the whole of the situation in which we find ourselves and to act in accordance with just proportion and sound timing.

Both balance and timing indicate to us that it will not always be appropriate to be patient or tolerant. Wisdom guides us to ask – tolerant or patient of what? For what reasons and on behalf of what larger goal? Knowing when to be patient entails knowing how to place this present situation in the context of overriding goals, especially one’s “thought of enlightenment.” Limited practices of patience must fit into a larger scheme of practices aimed at more and more encompassing ends, both personal and communal. There are times, clearly, when it is unwise and unenlightening to wait patiently, times when, for the good of everyone, only direct action will do.

Today is the second day of Higan week, the three days before the equinox and the three days after. As explained in a Nichiren Shu brochure:

For Buddhists, this period is not just one characterized by days with almost equal portions of light and dark. Rather, it is a period in which we strive to consciously reflect upon ourselves and our deeds.

The today we consider the Perfection of Generosity.

Morality is to the benefit of the selfish and selfless alike. Very often, though, the texts skillfully shift the orientation away from what you will receive if you behave morally toward more encompassing spheres of justification and less self-centered motivation. The self-centered motives that might have attracted someone to the practices of morality in the first place will gradually be replaced by others if the practice advances to any degree of depth. Undermined by the transformative effects inherent in moral action, old mental habituation begins to fade, replaced by new thoughts and new motives that have altered the mental landscape behind the practice. The bodhisattva encourages the practice of morality by skillfully articulating the rewards that follow from the practice on whatever level that they can be meaningfully understood and motivationally active.

To the extent possible, bodhisattvas are encouraged to eschew those rewards in their own practice and to raise their minds to a more profound grasp of what is at stake in moral life. This is the crucial point in “perfecting” moral practice. Perfection, in all six dimensions of human character, consists in the application of wisdom.