Question

Are there any living people today who have perfected all the Paramis?

Answer

By definition there's only one person ever that perfects all the Ten Paramis, that's the Buddha. That's part of the definition of a Buddha, only the Buddha can perfect all ten. The other enlightened people, called Arahants, get the ten very high, and they might perfect a small number of them, but they never perfect all ten. That quality is only for the Buddha. In other words, reading the question differently, are there any people living today, who have super high Paramis? Maybe.

I want to answer this a different way though. When I was in high school, I was a mathematical whiz kid, sometimes I would correct the calculus teacher when they made mistakes on the board. I was tutoring other kids after school to make a little extra money, and I could teach, I could teach very well. Now I'm a teacher and I'm pretty good too, but as a teenager in high school, I could teach algebra as good or better than any of the teachers with their university degrees. This is an important thing to understand, as to you developing in your practice. Even if you find an enlightened person, they may not be able to help you. They might have gone up the mountain crossing water, your technique might be crossing deserts, so they won't be able help you. According to the scriptures, some enlightened people simply can't teach the wisdom practice, they will teach the morality side.

All of you I'm sure have had teachers who were just lousy. They had the university degree, but they just were lousy teachers. So when you're looking for somebody who's going to be able to help you in your practice, it isn't really important whether they're enlightened or not. It's just whether they are a good example to follow and you can connect with them, and that they have more understanding about the practice than you have, so that they can guide you a bit more on the practice. It's classic, there's stories throughout history of people spending a lot of time looking for that great sage who's going to anoint them and enlighten them.

As to whether there are any enlightened people today or not, Rosemary and I are not sure, but we've let go of asking the question in our heads. Rather, when we visit teachers, no matter how famous they are, we simply start asking them questions and see how they can answer them.

Our apologies if there are any errors in the above text. If anything seems to be wrong or confusing in any way, please feel free to contact the teachers for further clarification.