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Ten Pāramīs - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 18, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Ten Pāramīs

Good morning everyone and welcome. Today I'd like to talk, as an introductory talk of sorts, about something called the Pāramīs¹ in the ancient Pāli language. One of the meanings, and it's often translated to English, is "the Perfections," which is a dangerous word for some of us. But the word also means something which is kind of ultimate or fantastic. And there are ten of these, ten Pāramīs.

So I'm going to talk about these ten, and some of you might be already disappointed because here we go, one more Buddhist list. Buddhism has a lot of lists. There's actually books of lists, lists of lists. And it's reasonable to be somehow discouraged by all the lists that exist in Buddhism until you understand their purpose. Part of their purpose is that they're describing some aspect of the ecology of the heart-mind, the natural processes that operate as we practice the Dharma, that get awakened and move through us and develop over time. The metaphors that the Buddha uses for this growth are all organic metaphors of the growth of a tree or a plant that flow and develop, in contrast to what is made synthetically. So we don't build up the Dharma, we don't build a practice like you build a house or make synthetic products, plastic or something. It's more like a gardener that allows something to grow and develop. You're supporting something to happen.

So these ten Pāramīs, these ten Perfections, are natural qualities, capacities that we have that we can grow, that can develop. And they grow most specifically when they are rooted or connected to compassion and liberation, to care for the world and a sense of non-clinging, not holding on tight to things. In fact, that's what kind of defines them as Perfections: when they have an intimate connection to compassion and liberation. They both support the development and growth of compassion and liberation, and they're an expression of compassion and liberation in the world.

When I was in Burma, a common statement among some of the meditation teachers there was that if someone was having challenges in their spiritual life, they would say, "Oh, that person hasn't developed enough of the Pāramīs." Or if someone has a really easy time, which maybe once in a million it happens in Buddhist practice, they'll say, "Oh, that person really has already had the Pāramīs in place." And because they were there, the person was able to practice quickly or something.

I want to talk a little bit more about this organic process. It's like if you've ever been through a forest after a forest fire. It can be sad, devastating to see everything charred and black, burnt. But how quickly, I've seen in some areas, sometimes within months, life comes back and things start getting green again. Some of the trees, if they haven't died, will leaf out. Some of the plants in the understory begin to appear. And then if some person comes along and says, "Well, those things that are coming back, those plants that are growing now, that's not the forest trees. We want the forest trees to be the way it was before," so they cut away the things that are growing up, you're actually preventing the return of the forest because there's a natural process by which a succession of plants will appear after a forest fire, each of them kind of preparing the ground for the next succession of plants until the forest returns. A botanist who's following this might make a list of ten different successive plants, and we don't complain, "Oh, ten plants one after the other," but actually they recognize, "Oh, this is how it grows, this is how it develops." One succeeds the other until we're back, maybe in 20, 30, 50, 100 years, we're back into the forest that burnt.

When I lived at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, it's in Muir Beach, Muir Valley, which is near Muir Woods in Marin County. The San Francisco Zen Center bought the place in 1972. And I came there, lived there first in 1979. It was very much like it had been. I remember I used to help with the farming at the bottom fields down by the ocean, and they were kind of salty, so all they could grow was potatoes. At some point in these 45 years since then, someone had the idea that it should be returned to its natural habitat, the natural way. The lower fields, at least, were a wetland, and partly to allow the salmon to come back up to those two creeks and partly to let it return to what it was. But that took a lot of steps. There was a lot of discussion, negotiations, money had to be raised, grants had to be made. And then at some point, they had to kind of clear out everything that was there. They had to change the canals and the rivers to make it flow the way it used to be, so river banks could overflow and create wetlands where things could grow. I hadn't been there for years until about two years ago, and I walked by the place where I used to help with the potatoes, and I couldn't quite see it anymore because now it was overgrown with the wetlands and trees, and it was beautiful. But it took this succession and all this planning, step-by-step.

It turns out that our Buddhist spiritual life is the same way. It's a succession of different things. We create a foundation, the foundation allows other things to happen, and it's not something that we build, but it's something that the conditions we put in place so that something can grow and develop. A lot of these lists the Buddha provides, if you actually study the key ones, are descriptions of spiritual maturation. The five faculties start with faith. It's a great place to start. You have to have some faith and some confidence. And with that, you do the second faculty, which is you put some energy and some effort into studying, learning the Dharma, practicing the Dharma, engaging in it. As you put effort into it, that allows mindfulness, present moment awareness, to grow and develop. As you develop more present moment awareness and you understand how the mind gets distracted and gets fragmented, it supports the growth of concentration. And as you get more stable and concentrated, that is a foundation for wisdom. So there's a sequence there that follows a progression. Not everyone follows that exactly that way, but this is the way it's presented. So faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom describe a succession where one grows strong, allows the other one to grow, and so forth.

The ten Pāramīs are this. In Mahayana Buddhism,² they have something called pāramitās, they call it in Sanskrit, and they have a slightly different list of ten. Now, these ten qualities are things that are already in the teachings of the Buddha. Way after the life of the Buddha, the tradition gathered these together to create this idea of a succession, and they gathered together with a brilliant recognition that these things—starting with generosity, that's the first one—are intimately connected to liberation and compassion. Not just that generosity is, but for generosity to be a pāramī, to be a Perfection, it has to have some relationship to our capacity for compassion, our capacity for freedom in the heart's freedom. That's what makes it a pāramī. It's great to be generous just for its own sake, but it becomes a pāramī when it has this wonderful part of an ecosystem that's supported or in reference to our capacity to have caring feelings—compassion, kindness, love, friendliness for others—and it has an intimate connection to our ability to not hold on, not tighten down, not cling or grasp or crave, not be caught in addictions and obsessions of the mind and the heart.

As we get a feeling for what it's like not to hold on, to freedom, of being free, then generosity can have a very different feeling, because generosity then can be more an expression of that freedom. It can be done with freedom. A few of us will have genuine feelings of generosity, but it gets so entangled with our attachments and our expectations and our ideas of exchange. "Well, I feel generous, but they better give me something back." It's not completely pure generosity, free with no clinging and expectations at all. And then, yes, it could be nice to be generous, but to be generous with a kind of sensitivity to how this supports others. And the key one is compassion, which is attuned to the fact that there's a lot of suffering in this world, and so we can work as a community as part of alleviating some of that suffering.

So the first pāramī is generosity. That's the foundation for all the nine that are going to follow. And one of the brilliant things about it is generosity is done in community. You can be generous to yourself, but chances are it's not quite generosity. Generosity is usually something we do to others, to living beings, for the planet. It's done in relationship to the world. Many people start Buddhism in the West with meditation, and for some people, the first instruction is to sit down and close your eyes, which is kind of like, "Sit down and shut out the world." It could, for some people, give the message that it's being self-serving. "It's me, myself, and mine. It's my practice, and all these people get in the way, and I just want to become a Buddha, the best Buddha on the block." Classically, the practice begins with generosity. It begins by caring for how we're relating to others. It's a relational practice that's rectifying or purifying or making healthy the relationships we have, cleaning them up so that they can have a genuine sense of compassion that's related to our beginning inklings of what it's like to not cling.

The second one is being ethical. Being very careful not to harm people, to live at least a non-harming life. The idea in Buddhism is that sometimes it's easier to know what to avoid doing than necessarily knowing what you should be doing. So the line is supposed to be quite strong in Buddhism: don't kill anyone. How to benefit people and let life flourish, that's not so clear, but don't kill them. Don't steal from them. Don't cause harm sexually, don't be involved in sexual misconduct. Don't lie. And don't get drunk, don't intoxicate your mind so that you're foolish. Part of the argument for not doing that is if you're drunk or intoxicated, sometimes you're more likely to break the first four precepts. People become careless and act in ways that, when they're wise, they would not. The idea is to be ethical. And how is that tied to compassion? You better believe it. If you're concerned with people's suffering, you don't want to make more suffering for them. Is there a connection between non-attachment, liberation, and ethics? Of course, there is, because most unethical behavior where we actively harm other people, we are clinging to something. You don't break the precepts without some kind of clinging.

As we're more generous and have this healthier relationship to people around us, the instinct is to be more ethical. The next one takes some explaining: renunciation.³ As we are living the world of generosity, as we're discovering the value of being ethical and how it benefits us, it becomes a natural thing to recognize when we are harming ourselves by clinging and holding on to things. We feel pretty relaxed and happy and content, and we find ourselves now holding on to some lie that we want to perpetuate to create a better impression on people of how great we are. And then we feel, "Oh, having that lie doesn't feel good. Having that clinging doesn't feel good. Of course, I want to let go of it." There's a movement towards letting go, not because you're supposed to, but because we know this is really good, it benefits from letting go.

As we let go more fully, it feels wonderful to not hold on and cling and grab, and that becomes the source of wisdom, which is the fourth of the Pāramīs. Wisdom here is experiential. Wisdom here grows out of what we're learning from the first three Pāramīs. We're learning, for example, how to recognize clinging and attachment and how it diminishes us, the downside of it. And we're learning something about how good it is to not cling. We can't always act on the wisdom, but we're starting to see this dynamic going on. That sets the stage for effort, for action, for courage, for engagement in the practice more, because now we have the firsthand personal proof of what is possible. We know for ourselves it's possible to be free, it's possible to let go. I might be 99% of the time completely attached, but that 1% that I had, I know something now I didn't know before, and I'm inspired. I see the downside of being attached. I'm harming myself, I'm harming others. Let me trust this path of letting go, of compassion.

So after wisdom, there is this more effort, and the word in Pāli, viriya,⁴ could probably be translated as courageous effort. Once you start making effort, you're going to have to learn patience, which is the next pāramī. This is not like getting onto a conveyor belt and just sailing to Nirvana. There's ups and downs and challenges. It's kind of like a really good romantic partnership where one of the partners is troublesome and one is not. You get to meet yourself and see yourself in all the ups and downs, the good, the bad, and the ugly, and your challenges. Rather than being discouraged, you have enough experience to know this is part of the richness. This is invaluable, so of course you'll be patient with this and keep practicing.

This tradition says the next one is truth, becoming truthful. Maybe if you've been patient and can really stay present and see what's there, the good, the bad, and the ugly, that allows us to be truthful. Some of us need to be truthful about ourselves, about the things we don't want to look at or see in ourselves, things we'd rather not admit. But to really be able to have the wisdom and the patience, the acceptance, to say, "Okay, I have to admit this is what I'm doing." To understand that telling the truth about ourselves can be a compassionate and liberating move, that makes it a pāramī, a Perfection.

With truth, when you see the truth, that's the condition for the next pāramī, which is resolve. Resolve is taking a stand. "This is what I want my life to be about. This is the orientation, the purpose, the values I want to live by." And it could be all the previous Pāramīs. "I'm resolved on generosity. I'm resolved on being ethical, on healthy letting go, healthy renunciation. I'm resolved on wisdom. I'm resolved on effort, the right effort. I'm resolved on patience. I'm resolved to be truthful." If your life is going to be rooted in something, these are fantastic roots.

With that purpose, maybe we feel really good about ourselves, with compassion and letting go, having a healthy purpose, having a strong sense of connectivity to other people. Practicing not only for ourselves but for the benefit of others as well is now in the domain of the social emotions becoming even stronger. And from this then grows our kindness, our mettā,⁵ loving-kindness, friendliness. The ninth pāramī is the growth of a strong feeling of kindness. Isn't that nice? If after all this, the goal, the purpose, is becoming a kind person.

And then the last one is not always so inspiring for people when they hear it, but in Buddhism, if you understand what it is, it's a powerful state of heart-mind that is only there because the first nine Pāramīs have been set in place. It's equanimity.⁶ The capacity to have all these wonderful Pāramīs alive in you, and with that support, to be able to look at the good and the bad in this world, the good and the bad in yourself, and to have clear, open channels to see, to know, to be wise without being reactive, staying balanced, not being pushed around or dismayed or crushed, not going up and down with praise and blame, just to have this tremendous balance and clarity. For that equanimity to be intimately connected to the sense of liberation of heart-mind and the sense of compassion for the suffering of the world.

These are the Pāramīs. These were put together as a list this way probably 300-400 years after the time of the Buddha, when people were beginning to think about how to become a Buddha. The Buddha became a more distant memory. People who were close to his lifetime, they had him, and they were happy with who he was and what he had to teach. But probably as over the centuries afterwards, the idea of him being more distant inspired people to say, "How are you going to have the next Buddha? How do you become a Buddha?" So they put together these ten in this way that I described as a description of what it takes to become a Buddha.

Down through the centuries after that, it turned out to be a fantastic list to support people to understand how you develop your heart-mind in a good way, how you develop your own practice towards liberation, how you develop your own life of compassion and service in the world. And so now it's become kind of a reference point, and for many people in the modern world, especially here in the West, it's proven to be a fantastic reference point—these ten Pāramīs as things to practice or cultivate or reflect on in daily life. Meditation is one thing, but it shouldn't just be about your private little meditation life. Buddhism is also about how you live your life. Some people have found that the teachings on the Pāramīs have been invaluable for bridging their meditation and their daily life. Some people don't even meditate, but the Pāramīs, learning them and practicing with them, is an invaluable way of developing the Buddhist path.

So if some of you felt that that was a long list, I apologize. What I was hoping to do through telling you the narrative around these was to inspire in you that you have a capacity for an organic growth. And whether your growth is described by these ten Pāramīs, that's not as important. But there is a healthy way in which Dharma practice, meditation practice, and mindfulness practice allows something to unfold, to mature and develop, that you can't make happen, but you can be the gardener of your own garden, the garden of your heart-mind, and create the conditions that allow something inside to grow and develop. And maybe you'll be surprised by what grows in you.

Q&A

Question: Why are Theravadin Pāramīs different from Mahayana pāramitās?

Gil Fronsdal: I have that question too. I don't have a good answer. Maybe if you dig deeply into the doctrines of Mahayana Buddhism, you may see why the differences are. One of them that's interesting is that the Mahayana list has jhāna,⁷ or meditation, as one of them, and the Theravada⁸ doesn't have that listed as one. Is meditation more important for Mahayana than it is for Theravada? I doubt that. But why that is, I don't know. So I don't really have an answer for you.

Question: I'm back on the first pāramī, generosity. I'm thinking that I am not generous in spirit, not so much giving of things, but more when I find myself judging other people, assuming things about them. That strikes me as not very generous. And I wonder if you might have some ideas about how to deal with that. In those circumstances, what would be generous?

Gil Fronsdal: In the circumstances where you're judging people that way, where do you find generosity? Could you find generosity even when you recognize you're that way?

Questioner: No.

Gil Fronsdal: Oh, then I'll offer you a way. You become generous if you decide to discover what would be generous. If you have the desire, "I don't want to be un-generous here, but I think I'm going to try to understand how and where to be generous," that's generous. That begins with that desire to be that way. I wouldn't underestimate that. So that's one answer.

To answer your question the way you asked it, what to do about it though is become the connoisseur of your lousy spirit. Get to know it really well, so well you can see it coming. So well you see the conditions for it, because that also comes from conditions that are in place. You have to understand the conditions that give birth to that for you and what supports it and makes it grow and become strong. And I use the word "connoisseur" so that you're not doing it in an aversive or angry way, or thinking that you're wrong for being this way. But you really get in there and savor, feel, or sense until you become the expert.

Questioner: Thanks, I'll take both ideas.

Question: This is a historical question about the intoxication part. In modern day, there's obviously a lot of ways to be intoxicated with drugs and all kinds of things. Historically, what were they referring to back in the Buddha's time?

Gil Fronsdal: Alcohol. The words were literally alcohol. They had, and they listed the three different types of alcohol in the precept, so you know exactly what they are. So it's literally alcohol. And by extension, people in the modern world have included drugs that have the same negative consequences. The literal word in Pāli will make you careless—pamada—and careless means that you do things that you later regret, that are not healthy.