What Are the Six Paramitas? | The Meaning and Practice of the Six Teachings

The Six Paramitas are six practices: giving, discipline, patience, effort, meditation, and wisdom. Mahayana Buddhism teaches them as the path to be cultivated by the bodhisattva, the practitioner who seeks peace and awakening for both self and others. They guide us in growing compassion and wisdom in everyday life.

Paramita comes from the Sanskrit pāramitā, which means “perfection.” Because it describes crossing from this shore of delusion to the other shore of awakening, it is also translated as “reaching the other shore” (tōhigan). It is a path of refining everyday acts, such as sharing with others and restraining one’s words and actions, together with the wisdom that lets go of attachment.

Even the single act of offering something to someone involves all six practices. A heart of giving that thinks of the other person needs words and conduct that do not hurt them (discipline). We do not grow angry when no thanks come (patience), keep acting with consideration (effort), stay calm (meditation), and look again at whether we are caught by a sense of having done someone a favor (wisdom).

Giving is the practice of letting go of stinginess and sharing with others. Buddhism teaches three kinds: material giving (zaise), offering money or food; the giving of the Dharma (hōse), passing on right teaching and knowledge; and the giving of fearlessness (muise), removing fear and anxiety so that others feel safe. The Sūtra of the Six Perfections describes compassionate giving that answers each person’s need, such as food for the hungry and clothing for those freezing in the cold.

The Diamond Sūtra teaches giving without abiding in marks (fujūsō fuse): giving that dwells on no object, whether something seen or something heard. The Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra gives as the reason giving is perfected that the giver, the receiver, and the gift are all unobtainable. Dāna pāramitā in its true form means setting aside gain and loss, such as what or how much one gave or whether anything comes back, and offering out of care for the person in front of us.

Discipline is the practice of ordering body (actions), speech (words), and mind (thought) in order to prevent wrongdoing and keep a good way of life. The Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra (Treatise on the Great Perfection of Wisdom) compares discipline to the earth: just as every visible thing rests upon the earth, all good conduct dwells in discipline.

Shingon Buddhism values the Ten Good Precepts (jūzenkai) as a guide for daily life. They are ten precepts such as cherishing life, not taking what belongs to others, refraining from untruthful words, and not being swept away by anger or excessive desire. We use them to reflect on our conduct and to live calmly.

Patience is the practice of staying calm when we meet unjust insult or hardship, without letting anger seize the mind. The Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra divides patience into two kinds: patience toward beings (shōnin) and patience toward dharmas (hōnin). Patience toward beings is bearing blame and obstruction from others. Patience toward dharmas is meeting illness or natural disaster and quietly accepting it as the truth of impermanence.

Quickly moving away from situations where one may suffer harm or violence, and seeking the help one needs, are also part of practicing patience. The heart of kṣānti pāramitā is not to give the mind over to anger or hatred, and to stop the chain of anger with oneself.

Effort is the practice of working steadily at good deeds and keeping them up. The Sanskrit vīrya means courage. The Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra calls effort “the root of all good dharmas.” Giving and discipline, too, deepen only when there is the will to keep going without giving up.

In effort, we find joy in good deeds themselves and keep them up without strain. When we notice laziness or the urge to give up, we recall why we began and do, one at a time, the things we can do today.

Meditation is the practice of calming the scattered mind, focusing on one object, and seeing things rightly. The Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra teaches that, just as a lamp cannot give light in a strong wind, wisdom cannot fully work in a scattered mind. Placed in a quiet room sheltered from the wind (meditation), the lamp does its work fully.

The Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra also compares meditation without wisdom to an unfired clay pot. Only when concentration, which calms the mind, and insight, which sees reality as it is, come together does meditation become a vessel that holds immeasurable merit. Settling quietly and looking again at the movements and assumptions of one’s own mind is the cultivation of meditation.

Wisdom is the fundamental insight that sees things as they truly are. It sees through to emptiness (kū): all things arise through countless relationships (dependent origination) and have no fixed, unchanging substance. The Heart Sūtra’s “form is emptiness” (shiki soku ze kū) expresses this wisdom in a few words.

The Mahāprajñāpāramitāśāstra praises prajñā pāramitā as “the mother of all buddhas.” With the eye of wisdom, acts such as giving and keeping the precepts do not turn into new pride, such as “I gave to them” or “I kept the precepts,” but become steps toward awakening. Wisdom guides the other five practices to completion.

After being kind to someone, we may feel dissatisfied with how they respond. Comparing ourselves, as people who keep the rules, with those who do not, we may look down on them. Both can happen in anyone’s heart. The more good deeds we do, the more easily pride in them and attachment to them arise. The wisdom of prajñā lets us notice such attachment.

In a single passage, the Mahāprajñāpāramitā Sūtra teaches the perfection of each of the six pāramitās. All six are to be practiced while abiding in the perfection of wisdom without abiding in anything. As the reason giving is perfected, it says that the giver, the receiver, and the gift are all “unobtainable” (fukatoku), that is, they cannot be grasped as fixed things.

Practicing the Six Paramitas does not end after one round; it comes around again and again. Through giving we notice our own attachments, through discipline we order our conduct, through patience we keep the mind steady, through effort we keep acting, through meditation we calm the mind, and through wisdom we see things as they truly are. Repeating this cycle in daily life, we grow wisdom and compassion together.

At the opening of the Benkenmitsu Nikyōron (Treatise on the Distinction between Exoteric and Esoteric Buddhism), Kōbō Daishi Kūkai distinguishes exoteric from esoteric teaching. Exoteric teaching takes the practice of the six perfections as its core and teaches that one becomes a buddha over the long span of three immeasurable eons. Esoteric teaching is the teaching in which the Dharma-body Buddha himself expounds the gate of the Three Mysteries of body, speech, and mind. The Three Mysteries are the workings of the Buddha’s body (gestures and mudrās), speech (mantras and words), and mind (heart and meditation). Through sanmitsu kaji, practitioners join their own body, speech, and mind with the Buddha’s. In this way they walk the path of attaining awakening in this very body (sokushin jōbutsu).

In the Hannya Shingyō Hiken (Secret Key to the Heart Sūtra), Kōbō Daishi presents holding the mantra in mind and reciting it aloud as a practice that clears away ignorance (mumyō), the root delusion of the mind, and opens the pure mind we originally possess.

The Six Paramitas can be practiced not only in temple training but also before a family grave or a household altar. An oral tradition handed down in Shingon assigns the six kinds of offerings placed before the Buddha to the Six Paramitas: water (aka) to giving, scented powder (zukō) to discipline, flowers to patience, incense to effort, food (onjiki, such as rice and dishes offered to the Buddha) to meditation, and the lamp to wisdom. We bring the six teachings into the gestures of daily worship, and with the mind we have settled before the Buddha, we go on to meet the people in our lives.