Under this category we share Paramita Project articles with you.
Well, friends, this has been a really educational ten months for me. I started this little project in the hopes that learning about and practicing these ten paramitas would teach me something deeper about them. And I do believe it did. Today, in this final post,…
Jnana is about connection. I’ll admit, this final paramita has been difficult to practice. It’s more like preparation for jnana, rather than jnana itself. Because you can’t really do anything to make awakened awareness come to you. You have to wait for it. But what I’ve…
Zen koans can bring awakened awareness, if we let them. A koan is a story, statement, or question used for meditation. Koans invite you into a deeper way of knowing. Originating in 12th or 13th century China, they continue to be used regularly by modern proponents…
Are we using words with freight? Robert Aitken spent his entire chapter on jnana describing how language has lost its power. He writes, “All words and phrases were intimate with experience but many have lost their intimacy, which is to say they have lost their meaning.…
Jnana is healing knowledge. While learning about this tenth and final paramita, the word knowledge is regularly used to translate it. The reason so many Western writers use other translations (like awakened awareness) is because for us, knowledge is so riddled with complications. Knowledge can be…
Awakened awareness is like communion with the universal mind. That’s what Lama Surya Das says. I was thinking about that today when I was reading about the distinctions between Western and Eastern mindsets. In the West, we hold individuality to be so important. We can’t fathom…
Spiritual power builds up, but it also destroys. And that’s a good thing. Now that we’ve walked through each of the panchabala, the five spiritual powers in Buddhist tradition, we can learn why each is considered a step on the path. In The Practice of Perfection,…
This month, I’m practicing the ninth paramita bala, or spiritual power. Buddhist tradition names five powers, the panchabala, that provide us strength over whatever hindrances we may face. The first of these is faith, or more specifically, trust. Often, when we hear the word faith, we…
New month, new paramita! And this May, I’ll be practicing the ninth paramita, bala. Bala is spiritual power. More specifically, in Buddhist tradition it is the cultivation of five powers, called the panchabala. These five powers are faith, zeal, recollection, absorption, and wisdom. I’ll be talking…
When we faithfully practice aspiration, eventually we arrive at a time when aspiration carries US. There’s something about the aspiration itself that carries us along. It’s as if we tap into something far beyond ourselves. This is great news, because if we had to do aspiration…
