Zen in Ten: The Paramitas

Six, Ten or Eleven: Always One Perfection

I found this image on the Plum Village website. There’s no credit given, however, I imagine that this is Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh’s illustration.

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Dear Spark Zen readers,

This 112th Tassajara practice period—a 90-day, cloistered Zen intensive—officially begins tomorrow. We are studying the paramitas, so I thought I’d share some information about these essential virtues of Buddhism. Paramita can be translated as “perfection” or “perfect realization.” “The Chinese character used for paramita means ‘crossing over to the other shore,’ which is the shore of peace, non-fear, and liberation.”¹

The paramitas are salient teachings in both the Mahayana and Theravada Buddhist traditions. Mahayana emphasizes the first six that I’ve listed below. However, the Theravada tradition emphasizes 10 perfections, and excludes dhyana, and includes the last five in boldface. Also, Robert Aitken Roshi includes: jnana (knowledge), upaya (skillful means), bala (spiritual power) and pranidhana (aspiration/vow) on his list.

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1. Dana: The Perfection of Generosity

   • We can give the gift of joy, love, true presence, peace, understanding, stability, and space. “You get what you offer.”²

2. Shila: The Perfection of Morality

   • This term shila literally means ‘cool and peaceful.’ “The practice of morality steadies and balances the mind and allows it to see clearly. Seeing clearly, we know that there’s a tremen­dous amount of inevitable pain that is part of life experience, and the impulse to respond with impeccable morality, to not add further pain to the inevitable dis­comfort of life, becomes spontaneous.”³

3. Kshanti: The Perfection of Tolerance

   • This perfection is also translated as “forbearance” and “patience.” Thich Nhat Hanh translates it as “inclusiveness”: “the capacity to receive, bear, and transform the pain inflicted on you by your enemies and also by those you love.”⁴

4. Virya: The Perfection of Energy

   • Aitken Roshi translates the Chinese ching-chin as “the advancement of single-minded spiritual vigor.” Virya, like the other paramitas develops and deepens with practice. “If you have enough vitality and stick-to-it-tiveness to sit through twenty-five minutes of zazen, then you have quite a lot of spiritual zeal.”⁵

5. Dhyana: The Perfection of Meditation

   • Dhyana is Zen in Japanese and Chan in Chinese. The two aspects of meditation are stopping (shamatha) and investigating deeply (vipashyana). “Doing everything mindfully is the practice of meditation, as mindfulness always nourishes concentration and understanding.”⁶

6. Prajna: The Perfection of Wisdom

   • The Sixth Ancestor Hui-neng likened prajna to the light and dhyana to the lamp. “Without the practice of settled, focused meditation, realization is not possible. And without realization, the practice is dark.”⁷

7. Nekkhamma: The Perfection of Renunciation

   • “In Buddhist scripture it usually describes renouncing the world and joining the order of monks and nuns. I find it more helpful to think of renounc­ing the habitual patterns of mind that keep me enslaved more than renouncing a particular lifestyle. Perhaps that’s be­cause at those times in my life when I have needed to make a choice in terms of a more skillful lifestyle or habit, my ex­perience has been that my strong deci­sion to make a change made the actual changing fairly easy. It’s been much harder for me to change the habits of my heart.”

8. Sacca: The Perfection of Truthfulness

   • “Ev­ery moment of mindfulness is a moment of truthfulness, of directed knowing. Di­rect and clear, true understanding is such a relief. It inspires determination in prac­tice.”⁸

9. Adhitthana: The Perfection of Determination/Resolve

   • This is a steadfastness of practice in our daily lives, especially when unfavorable causes and conditions arise that distract us by clouding our mind. There are four resolves that are mentioned in the Digha Nikaya are to: develop wisdom, experience truth, abandon unskillful mental states, and be tranquil.⁹

10. Metta: The Perfection of Loving-kindness

    • “As we become less judgmental and more tolerant, more able to understand that things and people are the way they are as a result of complex and legitimate causes, our capacity for balanced equanimity increases.”¹⁰

11. Upekkha: The Perfection of Equanimity

    • “Equanimity is the ability to feel and under­stand, in wisdom, that everyone and ev­erything is different, legitimately, as a result of different causes. To live in a friendly, non-adversarial relationship with all things, with all people, and with our lives is the source of greatest equa­nimity.”¹¹

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1. Nhat Hanh, Thich. The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings. New York, Broadway Books, 1999.

2. Ibid.

3. Boorstein, Sylvia. “The Pāramis: Heart of Buddha’s Teachings and Our Own Practice.” https://www.buddhistinquiry.org/article/the-paramis-heart-of-buddhas-teachings-and-of-our-own-practice/

4. Nhat Hanh, Thich. The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings.

5. Aitken, Robert. The Practice of Perfection. New York, Pantheon Books, 2012.

6. Nhat Hanh, Thich. The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings.

7. Aitken, Robert. The Practice of Perfection.

8. Boorstein, Sylvia. “Pāramis: Heart of Buddha’s Teachings and Our Own Practice.”

9. https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/study/perfections.html#relinquishment

10. Boorstein, Sylvia. “Pāramis: Heart of Buddha’s Teachings and Our Own Practice.”

11. Ibid.

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