Question

We're asked to meditate on the Ten Paramis. These are all rather complex, so it's hard to know where to start or end. For example, Renunciation, renunciation of what? What type of Morality, etc.? Can you go into more depth on each of the Paramis?

Answer

It would take too much time to go through all of these now. You can ask us in an interview, so we can go into more depth about these then. I'll go through them briefly for now.

Generosity: generosity, giving of our material things for the benefit of others and to lessen the harm in the world; giving of our time and effort through a compassionate intention.

Morality: I just talked about that in more depth.

Renunciation: renunciation of material things is one level. How do we bring forth more renunciation? By developing more inner contentment and understanding that happiness comes from within, transferring our dependence from a happiness dependent on external things to one that is dependent on internal qualities; this helps to bring forth a natural type of renunciation. The renunciation of greed, hatred and ignorance is the most important level. If we see the suffering involved in building greed within ourselves, then compassion helps us to let it go. Hatred, renunciation of hatred; if we see that we suffer within ourselves when we have hatred in the mind, then that compassionate understanding helps to bring forth renunciation, etc.

Wisdom: wisdom is usually defined within Buddhism as understanding the Law of Cause and Effect, the Law of Kamma, and the Four Noble Truths. If we have this Right View of Cause and Effect, then we can see more deeply into the nature of existence.

Energy: mental and physical energy, sometimes we don't have bodily energy, but that doesn't mean that we don't have mental energy. Mental energy can come from different aspects: confidence-inspiring objects, and understanding the preciousness of our existence and that it may pass away quickly.

Patience: patience comes about often through compassion, understanding and wisdom. Understanding that because things arise due to causes, we have to be patient and sow the causes for the results that are desired. Patience with people, understanding that a lot of people are ignorant of the true causes of suffering and the true causes of happiness helps us to have more patience.

Determination: resolve, that is where we have determined that something is beneficial to do, and have the determination to keep to it. Like Irena Sendler, she had the determination to keep to her resolve, keep to her principles, that enabled her to keep working despite the arising of Dukkha.

Compassion/Lovingkindness, I think that I don't need to go into more depth with that one; I've been talking about it a lot.

Equanimity: equanimity is so important and so misunderstood. Some people feel that if we have equanimity, we wouldn't want to help anybody in our life; but we have to try to understand that equanimity is not indifference. Equanimity gives us a steadiness in the mind that enables us to actually investigate in order to understand the true causes of suffering, and to contemplate so that we can get to compassion. If we don't have a certain amount of equanimity, we can't open to a deeper compassion for ourselves and others because we're too afraid of opening to Dukkha.

Compassion is a response to Dukkha; it's the wise response to Dukkha. Normally, the response to Dukkha is aversion, pushing it away. And so many people will escape into indifference to protect themselves from opening to the characteristics of existence, and Dukkha, because they don't know how to bring about the equanimity necessary to open to Dukkha in a skillful way. Equanimity can support the investigation, so we can open enough so that the heart opens, and also gets stronger as it opens.

But, if we have a weak mind without that strength of equanimity, it's almost impossible to open to Dukkha because normally the response is indifference, "I don't want to deal with that"; or anger, pushing it away in another way, getting angry, then overwhelmed with grief, falling down into grief. So equanimity supports the opening to Dukkha, so that we can have a compassion that doesn't fall into grief and anger or indifference. On the other hand, it is very, very, very, very important and it enables us to help more people in this world.

We have to protect equanimity from falling into indifference by remembering its relationship with compassion.

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.