One thing about perfection of the Paramis, the ten perfections, is that by definition only the Buddha perfects all ten. Other enlightened people do not perfect all ten. They might perfect one or two, but not all ten. I'm not even sure that all enlightened people have to perfect any at all, but they have to get the ten very high. Only the Buddha perfects all ten.
As to the work towards perfection, we're all doing that, we're working towards perfecting the Paramis, getting them as high as we possibly can. So is this more of an accumulative practice or is it a moment-to-moment practice to keep them all high? I think it's both. You're accumulating, you're working, but as high as you've got them already you want to keep them that high and then make them higher. So it's hard for me to say there's any line drawn between the two, between being an accumulative practice plus a practice of maintaining what you've already got.
Now when you think of the Four Great Efforts; the four great efforts include the effort to prevent, the effort to let go, the effort to develop and the effort to maintain. The last two, the effort to develop and the effort to maintain, that's more or less what we're talking about here. An accumulative process is developing, keeping them all as high as they are is maintaining, so really we have to look at that, we want to use all great efforts in our practice.