Six paramitas: the sixth, wisdom

I just found this handy list of concise definitions of each paramita on Rigpa Wiki, an invaluable online source of information on Buddhist terms and categories. If you click on the first link above, you’ll see that the definition of wisdom (Skt. prajna, Tib. sherab, literally “highest knowledge”) in the context of the six paramitas is “the perfect discrimination of all phenomena, all knowable things.” It is sometimes called the paramita of discriminating awareness or wisdom-knowledge to distinguish it from the other kind of wisdom (Tib. yeshe), primordial wisdom, also known as timeless awareness, our fundamental, innate wisdom nature that we gradually awaken to on the path of practicing the six paramitas.

Everyone has this innate primordial wisdom-awareness; the point of the path is to learn to recognize, access, and spontaneously operate from it, as the Buddha did. An essential stage of that process is acquiring the wisdom of discriminating awareness, also known as “the wisdom that recognizes emptiness,” which is the true nature of all phenomena. The paramita of wisdom is the perfection of the realization of emptiness in our own direct experience. When it is perfected, we reach the first bhumi, or official bodhisattva level, which is the third of the five stages of the path to buddhahood, known as “the path of seeing.” If you’d like to know more about the five paths and the ten bodhisattva levels, Rigpa Wiki has those too! (Gampopa and Ringu Tulku have more detailed explanations.) When we attain the path of seeing, that is, when we come to directly see things as they really are — their empty aspect — there are still 9 bodhisattva levels of increasing refinement to go, but it’s the beginning of living from our innate wisdom (yeshe).

All this nerdy preamble is essential infrastructure for those who wish to attain awakening to the true nature of ourselves and everything that happens to us. You can read much better explanations of the wisdom paramita in the books linked above, among other sources, and I highly recommend them for all practitioners. Here I’ll limit myself to a concise, bare-bones outline of the main points:

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Six paramitas: the fifth, meditative stability

The name of the fifth paramita, samten in Tibetan, dhyana in Sanskrit, goes by various names in English. Ken Holmes, in his translation of the classic Kagyu guide to the path, Gampopa’s Ornament of Precious Liberation, calls this paramita meditative concentration; while RIngu Tulku Rinpoche, in his companion to OPL, Path to Buddhahood, simplifies it to meditation, as do a number of other contemporary sources. My preferred translation is meditative stability. This paramita refers not merely to the practice of meditation, but to the skill we develop through consistent shamatha practice of being able to place our mind single-pointedly on an object, or on the flow of our experience, without getting completely lost in thoughts or emotions.

Why is this paramita important? RIngu Tulku Rinpoche: “Even if we can master the four paramitas mentioned previously, without meditation our mind will stay out of control and under the influence of distraction… It will then be impossible to get out of samsara, to free ourselves from confusion, and even to help others.”

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Six paramitas: the fourth, joyful diligence

More on joyful diligence is coming soon. Meanwhile, as we know from the common definitions of joyful and diligence, the idea is that in order to free ourselves from suffering and fully realize our true nature of wisdom and compassion, and from there to empower our capacity to help others, we have to put in the work while we have this precious opportunity, and not allow ourselves to waste it on distractions, mindless busyness, or laziness.

This doesn’t mean we have to give up our work or family or enjoyments, but rather that, in addition to finding time to do regular formal meditation on the chair or cushion, we need to keep the dharma in mind no matter what we’re engaged in, and use our time to further our progress on the path. This is very doable! And as the name of the paramita implies, it can be a joyful endeavor!

Details to come, based on Gampopa’s Ornament of Precious Liberation and Ringu Tulku Rinpoche’s Path to Buddhahood, which you are of course also encouraged to read for yourself.

Six paramitas: the third, patience

The paramita of patience in Gampopa’s Ornament of Precious Liberation has gotten me through many a challenge in life, including my entire three-year retreat, a setting that provides many more mundane opportunities for practice than one might expect. Whenever I found myself momentarily annoyed at a fellow retreatant’s habits or behavior, rather than speak or act out of anger I would reread this chapter as soon as I got back to my room, and remember why acting (or even thinking) out of an emotional reaction is 1) not helpful and 2) based on a faulty understanding of the nature of things. Here, in a nutshell, is a concise overview of the paramita of patience, based on Gampopa’s explanation.

Patience is specifically the antidote to anger, which can manifest in a wide spectrum of emotional reactions from mild irritation to frustration to full-on rage. It is said in the sutras, “Anger is not the path to buddhahood.” How does patience counteract anger and keep us on the path? Let’s start by examining what the Buddhist definition of patience is: “to be unperturbed by anything,” “to be upset by nothing.” (page 185, OPL Ken Holmes translation). That may sound like an impossible goal, but fortunately there are some intermediate ways to work toward it.

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Six paramitas: the second, ethical conduct

The second paramita in Tibetan is tsultrim, usually translated as discipline, morality, or ethical conduct. Other terms that have been used to describe it include skillful conduct, right conduct, self-discipline, and integrity. In Sanskrit it is known as sila, which according to my research comes from the word for rock or stone. I’ve also seen it translated as coolness. For me, both definitions bring to mind Shantideva’s advice to “remain like a piece of wood” whenever we find ourselves on the verge of committing a counterproductive action of body, speech, or mind. It also resonates with the contemporary “gray rock” concept in psychology, i.e., responding minimally and without affect in an interaction that threatens to trigger an emotional reaction.

There’s more to the paramita of ethical conduct, but its overall intent is that we cultivate vigilance in order to 1) inhibit reflexive habits and reactions that feed the cycle of samsaric confusion and suffering, and 2) gradually replace them with new habits that are in accord with the dharma and with our bodhisattva aspiration to fully wake ourselves up from the illusion or dream of samsara so that we can help others free themselves. Ringu Tulku Rinpoche has said that this paramita comes down to practicing mindfulness. What do we need to be mindful about? This is expressed succinctly in Shakyamuni Buddha’s summary of the entire path, which also happens to reflect the three-fold practice of ethical conduct:

Refrain from actions that cause harm,
Engage in virtue all you can.
Tame your own mind utterly:
This is the Buddha’s great teaching.

~ Shakyamuni Buddha
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The Upside of Uncertainty

One thing most of us can be certain of is that many situations in the course of our lives will bring about feelings of uncertainty, and in many cases those feelings will be uncomfortable. My favorite dictionary defines uncertainty as “the state of being uncertain,” which in turn has various shades of meaning, including “not known precisely, not fixed; not precisely determined, established, or decided; not to be depended on, unreliable; liable to variation, changeable.”

Last Sunday the Palpung-Richmond Buddhist sangha engaged in an interactive dharma workshop defining, discussing, and practicing with uncertainty. It turns out that uncertainty isn’t always unpleasant, and also that, however it makes us feel, it has a very significant upside!

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Six paramitas: the first, generosity

PTC Monastery’s affiliated dharma center in Richmond, Virginia, Palpung Shenpen Tharchin, is devoting this year to study and practice of the six paramitas. We’ll meet the first Thursday evening of one month, beginning in January 2026, to discuss a paramita, and the first Thursday of the second month to compare notes and discuss any challenges that may have arisen. The homework between meetings will be to look for opportunities to practice the paramita as much as possible. During January and February our topic and practice will be the paramita of generosity.

The paramitas, aka perfections, aka transcending actions, are the action plan of bodhicitta, which is the intention to fully awaken to our own true nature of wisdom and compassion in order to help others do the same. There are six paramitas, and according to Gampopa they unfold naturally in the order in which they are traditionally presented: generosity, ethics, patience, joyful diligence, meditative stability, and transcendent knowledge (aka the wisdom that realizes emptiness). Actually putting the paramitas into practice (not just studying them) is how we wake ourselves up.

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Tips for keeping practice fresh: PTC monastery discussion

Palpung Thubten Choling Monastery, my home base, has been hosting a monthly sangha discussion via Zoom during the covid pandemic. The theme for March was “Refreshing Our Practice,” and by enthusiastic request we are continuing that general theme for a couple more months.

In March, we covered a variety of topics, beginning with the importance of consistent daily practice on the cushion or chair, within a time frame we can realistically maintain — 15 minutes a day was recommended as a good place to start. It can be challenging at the beginning to sit down every day to practice, and to stay sitting; but with repetition it gradually becomes a habit, like any other routine we wish to establish in our lives. And we may find that not only does our resistance diminish over time — we may even begin to look forward to this daily opportunity to deepen our understanding of our own mind.

In April, we zeroed in on how to work with our practice when it begins to lose vitality and become rote.

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Covid pandemic 2020, part 7: Advice from Situ Rinpoche: “Don’t panic. Don’t give up.”

A few days ago Guru Vajradhara Tai Situ Rinpoche shared advice about how to manage our safety and our fears and remember the dharma during the covid-19 pandemic, which continues to escalate. This video, embedded below, has been widely shared on social media, but I wanted to also preserve it here. Guru Vajradhara Tai Situ Rinpoche is the spiritual director of the worldwide Palpung network of Karma Kagyu monasteries and dharma centers, which includes Palpung Thubten Choling and its affiliated centers.

Rinpoche begins by reminding us that this pandemic is not an extraordinary or unique event in human history. “Many things like this have happened, and this is happening.”

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Covid pandemic 2020, part 6: Pinch me, I must be dreaming

With our routines upended by this week’s public health efforts to contain the coronavirus-covid-19 pandemic, this may be a good time to revisit the profound Buddhist teaching that all our experience is ultimately no more real, solid, lasting or reliable than a dream. Last week we were complaining about going to work, our kids were complaining about going to school, restaurants were packed, Disneyland was open, March Madness was about to begin, and you could buy toilet paper in any supermarket. This week — it’s all gone. Just like last year’s winter and last night’s dream.

We have a song for this, and so does the Buddhist tradition. First, ours:

Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream,

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily: life is but a dream.

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