The bud and the sow are symbols of _______.

Directions: Answer the given question based on the following passage:

Moment– to – moment awareness – that is one accurate way to describe the great enterprise of becoming free. But there are other valid ways to characterize our path. In the broadest conception of the path, in the vast context of spiritual practice, we cultivate and nourish certain qualities that support and propel us forward into freedom. The Pali word ‘parami ‘refers to ten wholesome qualities in our minds and the accumulated power they bring to us: generosity, morality, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, resolve, loving kindness, and equanimity.

The fact that we do not often find the word grace used by schools of Buddhism may allow us to connect with a fresh and immediate sense of the word by looking directly at our own experience. I feel that the paramis are one great influence in our experience that corresponds to the sense of grace, not as a theological doctrine or metaphysical concept but as something we can really feel and know.

The concept of parami reminds me of a line in a poem by Dylan Thomas: “The force that through the green fuse drives the flower.” Parami does not come from some being outside ourselves; rather, it comes from our own gradually accumulated purity. A Buddhist understanding of reliance on a higher power would not necessarily involve reliance on some supernormal being. It is, rather, a reliance on these forces of purity in ourselves that are outside our small, constricted sense of I, and that constitute the source of grace in our lives.

In the long course of evolution in this lifetime and perhaps over many lifetimes, we have generated a power of purity in our mind by acts of generosity and loving kindness, by deepening understanding and wisdom. This power becomes the karmic force that brings blessings in our life. So our own inner development, not an external agent, brings us this grace. Develop and strengthen the paramis within you, and from that source enjoy the blessings that result.

A poem by Galway Kinnell beautifully expresses the grace of blessings from within:

What is the Path?
Saint Francis and the Sow 
The bud 
stands for all things, 
even for those things that don’t flower, 
for everything flowers, from within, of self–blessing;
as Saint Francis 
put his hand on the creased forehead 
of the sow, and told her in words and in touch 
blessings of earth on the sow, and the sow 
began remembering all down her thick length, 
from the earthen snout all the way 
through the fodder and slops to the spiritual curl of the tail, 
from the hard spininess spiked out from the spine 
down through the great broken heart 
to the sheer blue milken dreaminess spurting and shuddering 
from the fourteen teats into the fourteen mouths sucking and 
blowing beneath them: 
the long, perfect loveliness of sow.

Freedom cannot be found within the contraction of ego identification. The practice of Buddhadharma awakens us to an underlying reality beyond that identification. As the paramis develop through our practice – and they have been developing over lifetimes – we experience an emergence of something called dhammoja in Pali, the essence of Dharma. In deepening meditation practice, we drop out of the conceptual realm into an energy flow of awareness. Dhammoja is this energy that keeps pushing us to liberation. It is something greater than our limited sense of self.

I had a strong experience of dhammoja during one of my periods of practice in Burma. I had been in Asia for several months and was rapidly losing weight and physical strength. At one point my body became so weak that I would actually topple over from my sitting position. But even in this very weakened bodily condition, the energy from the inner flow of awareness remained so strong that the meditation continued to unfold. It was as if nothing could stop the onward–leading momentum. This experience reminded me of those stories of the Buddha visiting people who were sick or dying. He would often say to them, “Though your body is weak and full of pain, train your mind to stay alert and mindful.” A taste of dhammoja shows us that we can actually do what the Buddha advised.

Another understanding of grace comes from the Buddhist world view that recognizes beings on other planes of existence. In traditional Buddhist cultures people believe that devas, or celestial beings from higher planes, can work to protect, guide, and help us in different situations. The Buddha taught that devas are drawn to us through the power of our virtue and loving kindness. As we cultivate and purify our own morality and love, we open ourselves to receive their positive energy and beneficent help.

You may or may not choose to believe this aspect of Buddhist cosmology. Our freedom does not depend on external things. You can come to full liberation whether or not you find devas credible. But a phrase from Coleridge might suggest a useful attitude: the willing suspension of disbelief. Can we remain open to possibilities of things we do not yet know for ourselves, with neither blind belief nor blind disbelief? Many things that today seem commonplace in our world, one hundred years ago would have been called miracles.

Although strong hidden influences, given the right conditions, can assist us, they cannot accomplish the work of spiritual practice for us. The beneficence of external beings like devas is secondary to the inwardly developed, liberating force of dhammoja and the paramis.

Reflecting on our own paramis can be a great help in practice. The force of delusion is so strong that most beings never see the possibility of coming out of suffering. The very notion that the mind can be purified of greed, hatred, and delusion never even occurs to most people. Only a vast reservoir of parami brings us to practice and creates the motivation and interest to do this difficult, ultimately liberating work. Appreciating the paramis within ourselves can be a cause for great self–respect and joy. Often, in the midst of the many ups and downs of practice, we forget just how powerful the paramis are in each one of us. They engender true grace in our lives.