07.28.2023 The Power of the Paramitas In Buddhism, the six paramitas, or “perfections,” hold great significance. These six virtues are fundamental guiding principles for Buddhist practitioners. By cultivating the paramitas — generosity, discipline, patience, energy, meditation, and wisdom — we can experience profound benefits in our personal growth and spiritual journey.   These paramitas are essential virtues in Buddhist practice. Dana, or generosity, teaches us to let go of attachments while cultivating selflessness and fostering compassion to uplift others. Sila, or discipline, promotes integrity, honesty, and respect, forming a strong foundation for spiritual growth. Kshanti, or patience, cultivates inner strength, resilience, and understanding of oneself and others amid life’s challenges. Virya, meaning “energy” or “diligence,” develops discipline and perseverance through our sustained practice. Dhyana, or meditation, brings mindfulness, clarity, and a sense of interconnectedness through contemplative practice. The sixth and final paramita, prajna, represents the wisdom and insight that liberates us from ignorance, allowing us to realize our true nature and the interconnectedness of all things.   In Lion’s Roar’s new online course in partnership with San Francisco Zen Center, Cultivating the Way: The Six Paramitas, Jiryu Rutschman-Byler dives further into the wisdom of the paramitas, drawing inspiration from Zen and broader Buddhist teachings that allow you to put them into practice in your own life. Click here to learn more and enroll. Through practicing and embodying the paramitas, we can begin to experience a transformational process within ourselves, along with a greater ability to contribute positively to the world as a whole. The paramitas serve as a roadmap for a meaningful and purposeful life, guiding us towards the enlightenment that is already present and helping us to realize our full potential.   Below, you’ll find teachings on three of the paramitas: compassion, wisdom, and generosity. May they each help you on your path.   —Chris Pacheco, Content Marketing Editor, Lion’s Roar Compassion Without Calculation   How do we practice ethical conduct, or sila, without falling into judgment, and without ignoring the complexity of each moment? According to Norman Fischer, the way has always been there.   Sitting practice makes you more aware; it sensitizes you to the little nicks and bruises that the heart is subject to. Hurtful things you used to say and do, painful things said and done to you that you formerly brushed off or hardly noticed, you now see as painful. It pains you to say, even to think, hurtful things, and you notice even more—though you probably noticed before — when such things are said or done to you. The more you are familiar with all this in your own mind, the twists and turns of which increasingly come into view as you go on practicing, the more it dawns on you that others are like this too. You see you are not unique — there’s a human pattern here. ADVERTISEMENT The Freedom of Emptiness At the heart of the path of the paramitas is prajna, or wisdom — but a wisdom that goes beyond our conventional ideas about it. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche unpacks how that kind of wisdom works. Generally speaking, we all have a concept of self. We think of this self as solid, single, permanent, and independent. The Buddha taught that on the contrary, the true nature of the self is impermanent, interdependent, and in so many pieces. In other words, there’s multiplicity there. Consider how many composite parts are involved in self: matter, senses, feeling, concept, habitual tendency, consciousness, and so forth. And each one of those also has various different factors. So this seemingly solid “self” can be divided up in countless ways, and all these divisions exist in relation to each other — interdependent. Moreover, they are all continuously in the process of changing with time — impermanent. First, an Open Hand In any presentation of the paramitas, dana, or generosity, always comes first — Nikki Mirghafori explains why. Generosity supports insight into the three characteristics of existence: Practicing generosity provides insight into impermanence (anicca): things come, things go. Nothing is for me to keep, to hang on to. Holding onto things with a sense of scarcity creates more lack, more unsatisfactoriness, more suffering (dukkha). And in true generosity, we see that there is no separation between the giver, the receiver, and what is given (anatta). I have come to understand dana not as a preparatory practice, or one of only merit-making for lay folks, but as synonymous with liberation itself in ways I couldn’t have imagined. It is no mystery why dana occupies the first, most honored position among the perfections. LION’S ROAR PROMOTION New Online Course!