The Six Paramitas

I watched the first DVD in a set of four about the Six Paramitas by His Holiness the Dalai Lama last night. Honestly I was amazed. He discoursed on the entire Buddhist path. I’m very humbled by his knowledge and brightness - knowing the path is essential to obtaining the fruit. He admonished us to not just meditate, but to understand suffering, impermanance, this precious human life, emptiness, and bodhicitta. To just meditate and picture the dieties, he said, is not Buddhism. Buddhism is only developing Bodhicitta and meditating on emptiness. The other methods are helpful, but without this understanding they are not Buddhism.

So he goes through the whole path and after an hour and fourty minutes he still hasn’t even mentioned the paramitas. The foundation for understanding the paramitas is called the ground. As I said, it comprises various understandings as above. The path is the actual practice of the perfections - six or ten paramitas. Paramita is a Sanskrit word that translates to ‘far reaching attitudes’. The paramitas are seen as the path to omniscience and as the fruit. They are techniques that the Bodhisattva (one who seeks to liberate all beings from suffering) practices on the way to realizing Buddha Nature and they are the spontaneous qualities of Buddha. This means they are already present in us as a potential and at the time of obtaining Buddhahood, no effort is needed to maintain them - they are attributes or qualities inherent in the Buddha.

So I will write up notes on over eight hours of teaching and relate them here - in my own style. I don’t do this because I have great pride or a think my way is superior. But maybe someone with a similar disposition as mine can easily understand what I have. Any mistakes are my own and do not belong to the Dharma or His Holiness. Also, I do not have the instructions committed to memory - doing so will increase the power of my meditation. This blog did not start out to be a “Buddhist” blog, but that is what it has become. Being that this is the case, it would be very beneficial to have the entire path available to anyone who wishes to tread this precious path of freedom.