This post contains things I’ve learned that have been beneficial to me in my life. Last updated: July 31, 2022.

Prajna paramita: Clinging to your ideas about someone or something is your biggest obstacle to understanding the person or thing before you now.

One way to interpret the meaning of prajna paramita to English is to look at the roots of these Sanskrit words: pra (before) jna (to know): before knowing. You can look at this in one of two ways. I’ve found both to be helpful.

1. Practicing prajna paramita means letting go of your ideas of what someone or something is or isn’t to access that which comes before the formation of your idea. Knowledge and ideas are useful in pointing one in the right direction, but I’ve found that there comes a point where my ideas about a person, object, or situation (everything) is an obstacle to understanding and acceptance. Setting aside those ideas allows things to appear as-is, in all their messy, complicated glory. I can see present conditions, history, and what it might become: the cloud in the teacup, the grandmother in the child, the young woman in the grandmother, the unhealed wounds, the machinations, the pivot points, the threads passing through everything. When you allow yourself to see, compassion and Right View emerge. From those, Right Thought, Speech, Action, and Livelihood.

2. Pra and jna are cognates of the Greek words pro and gnosis. A prognosis is an estimation of future circumstances. The quality of a prognosis depends on how are aware one is of present conditions and the effects of those conditions on each other. Both action and inaction alter conditions, which alter future circumstances. So practicing prognosis well involves allowing oneself to become aware of all circumstances present and the history that lead to present circumstances.

Paramita is often translated as perfect. In English today, when people say perfect they often mean flawless. Looking at the Latin etymology of perfect — per + facere together mean to do or to make thoroughly — it aligns well with the meaning of the Sanskrit word paramita: completely attained. I suppose one way to interpret that is flawless, but I like to take paramita to mean practice. After all, practice makes perfect!

An alternate etymology for paramita is rooted in the words that mean “furthest distance” (para) and “shore” (mita). So, you may see some translators play with this a little bit, like Thich Nhat Hanh, who translates prajna paramita as “the insight that takes you to the other shore”.

Setting aside preconceived notions is hard to do. Even acknowledging that I have blind spots has been beneficial, though.

Good and Bad are Feelings in Disguise. Reframe for insight.

When my mind describes something as good or bad, better or worse, best or worst, it is disguising my feelings of like and dislike, attraction and aversion, as an attribute of an object. It is beneficial to reframe thoughts and speech in terms of like and dislike in order to gain insight into those feelings and the conditions underneath them. Being aware and honest about your feelings can also reveal conflicts of interest and bias, which can lead to harmful actions and behaviors.

The Three Jewels

1. Buddha – “Person who is awake” Everyone is capable of waking up, overcoming obstacles to seeing clearly, and lifting up others. Everyone is deserving of dignity and love.
2. Dharma (with a capital D) – the interconnected universe of situations and phenomena and the truths that come with being a part of it. Sometimes, people refer to the teachings about those truths as The Dharma. (Lowercase d – dharma is a general label people have given to situations and phenomena.)
3. Sangha – togetherness and solidarity; practicing and doing beneficial work together with other people. We need each other. We can nurture each other in such a way to heal each other, help each other wake up, and help us to refrain from hurting people and the environment on purpose.

The Three Root Guidances (The Three Pure Precepts)

I’ve written a more detailed post on these here.

This is how I’ve elaborated on the traditional verse that reads: “Don’t do evil things. Do good things. Keep your mind pure.” I don’t look at these as rules in a framework of reward and punishment. Rather, these guidances form the basis of sound spiritual advice that have helped me navigate conflict, love the people around me, build trust (what is trust but a state where the the idea of someone doing you harm doesn’t even enter your mind), and enable me to do really fulfilling and meaningful work in community with other people.

1. Stop myself from deliberately harming both others and myself. I’ve learned that, as a human, I harm others accidentally all the time through misunderstanding, poor word choice, bad timing, and bad luck. That is enough to work through. Add onto that the suffering I create for both myself and others when I hurt people on purpose (for example by pushing their insecurity buttons, or making people feel embarrassed or humiliated) and I can quickly find myself in a world of hurt. The violent thoughts, words, and actions directed at myself has similar harmful effects. Hurting yourself or others is basically shooting yourself in the foot.
2. Take every opportunity acknowledge harm and the conditions that create harm that I encounter and create conditions for harm reduction and healing. I’ve found that this is especially powerful when I am the source of harm, whether deliberate or accidental. I’ve also found that framing decisions around a consideration of harmful effects and harm-reducing and healing effects has a clarifying power. Who benefits and who bears the cost? It’s true that hurt people hurt people. The antidote to that is to help people help people. You can claim this superpower and multiply the effects by inviting others to join. Heal yourself and #1 gets a lot easier. I’ve found that compassion arises when I can see the wounds that lead to cruelty in others. I can see those wounds more clearly when I am not blinded by my own pain. Help others and make it easier for them to help other people, and you can see how that can have a big, beneficial effect for everyone. See Three Acts of Healing below.
3. Face ill will and willful ignorance as they arise. When you see them, you can release them.

Three Acts of Healing

These are lessons I learned the hard way. Not doing them throughout the course of my life cost me friendships. There comes a point where wounds are too old and too deep for a full reconciliation. The right time to deploy these is ASAP.

1. Acknowledge harm that your views, thoughts, speech, action, and livelihood cause, have caused, and will cause.
2. Apologize to the harmed for your views, thoughts, speech, action, and livelihood that led to harm.
3. Atone for the harm done in a way that is satisfactory to the harmed.

Five Guidances (Precepts) for Everyone

1. Don’t end the life of any living being that doesn’t want to be killed.
2. Do not exploit people or nature. Only take enough, and that which is offered with the full consent of the offerer and the offered, without coercion. Mitigate any harmful effects of your taking on the broader society and the environment.
3. When in relationship with others, especially where intimacy and sex are involved, be mindful of the effects on your partner, yourself, and other people in your lives. Ensure that the relationship is fully consensual and free of coercion as coercion is deeply harmful and works against freedom.
4. Let your words and actions illuminate, allow people to see clearly, and inspire Right Action. Stop yourself from misleading people (either others or yourself), fueling ill will, or bolstering willful ignorance.
5. Refrain from the use of intoxicants, which leads to willful ignorance and can increase the likelihood of causing harm to others.

The Five Skandhas/Heaps/Aggregates

1. Form – that which enters your mind through your senses, including sight, sound, smell, taste, touch/internal sense, and formations of the mind itself.
2. Feeling – your body and mind’s reaction to sense and mental objects that arise as like, dislike, or indifference.
3. Perception – your mind’s reflexive interpretation of something
4. Impressions – residual feelings or perceptions from either past experiences or imagined future circumstances that exist under the surface of awareness. These affect feeling and perception in the present.
5. Discrimination or discernment (often translated as consciousness) – your mind’s ability to tell things apart, compare, and draw distinctions

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness (Four Categories of Things To Be Aware Of)

1. Senses and sensations
2. Feelings of like/pleasant, dislike/yucky, and indifference and their underlying conditions. These are reflexive reactions to things in the other three foundations.
3. Ideas and mental formations: stories your mind tells itself, memories, habits, impressions, judgements, conclusions, justifications, narratives, etc.
4. Phenomena and situations and their underlying conditions and histories, including elements from the other three foundations.

Impermanance, Absence of Separate Self, and Interdependence (Emptiness in The Heart Sutra)

Snow falls from the sky

Twirling in all directions

Melt. Drip. Back to air.

Everything happens because of a lot of reasons. Some call this dependent origination. The world is as it is because everything happened as it did. Everything you encounter — sensations, feelings, mind stuff, and situations — is pushed into existence by a mountain of underlying causes. (Snow falls from the sky when warm, moist air meets frigid air.)

When conditions shift, things change. Things change all the time. Some call this impermanence. Nothing lasts forever. This is true of things we like, such as people we love, as well as things we don’t like, such as unjust and exploitative systems. They don’t change on their own, though. (When the weather warms up, the snow on the ground melts, drains into the ground, ponds, rivers, and streams, and evaporates into the air.)

There is no independent anything. We have big effects on one another. Some call this interdependence or interbeing or emptiness. Everything exists because conditions are present, and everything has an effect on conditions, and therefore, everything else in the web of existence. Nothing is isolated from cause and effect. This means that when a person holds harmful views and thoughts, says harmful or misleading things, commits harmful actions, and builds a livelihood dependent on harm and exploitation, those harmful effects ripple both outward and inward. This also means that making changes that lead to seeing clearly, reorienting towards healing oneself and others, using right speech, mending relationships, lifting up people around you, and building a life that supports these behaviors sends beneficial effects rippling both outward and inward.

These are the first things that Buddha realized about the nature of existence and his relationship to it. If you sit for a moment, you might see this, too. All of his other teachings are elaborations of this.

The Four Noble Truths

Note: The Pali/Sanskrit word that is often translated into English as “suffering” is dukkha. I’ve been playing with using the word “grief” instead.

1. The Truth of The Existence of Suffering – You and I have both experienced suffering. Every being has. It is the full body and mind experience of hurt that takes new form each time it appears. I’ve observed that it is often related to an unreconciled difference between my idea of the way things should be and the reality of the way things are.
2. The Truth of The Origins of Suffering – Suffering is an experience that, like all experiences, arises from various conditions.
3. The Truth of Cessation of Suffering – Addressing the conditions underpinning suffering transforms suffering.
4. The Truth of The Eightfold Path – a map of relationships between elements having to do with how you live your life and how you orient yourself in the world that will help you to navigate suffering and grief. More below.

The Eightfold Path

To me, the Eightfold Path is less a sequence of steps to follow and more a map of relationships between elements having to do with how you live your life and how you orient yourself in the world. Each element has effects on the others and thus is also a window into the others. For example, when I look deeply at the words I choose, I can gain insight into the way I think about what I’m saying. This is because the way I think about something affects my word choice and how I express that idea. The effects run the opposite direction, too. For example, when I choose different words, I can change my habitual way of thinking about something, and even my views.

1. View – deeply held assumptions, impressions, and beliefs
2. Thought – conceptualizations, ideations, stories, habits, and other forms of cognition
3. Speech – what you say and don’t say, how you say it, and when you say it
4. Action – things you do or don’t
5. Livelihood – how you exist and live in the nature and society and your context: where and how you live, the organizations you give your time and energy to, your network of friends and family, your relationship to broader systems, such as economic systems, political systems, and social norms. The structure of livelihood has strong effects on the other elements of the path.
6. Effort – how diligently you practice and where you apply your energy
7. Mindfulness (refer to the Four Foundations of Mindfulness above) – awareness of conditions, histories, and effects related to one’s senses and sensations, feelings, ideas and mental formations, phenomena/situations, obstacles to seeing clearly, such ill will and clinging to ideas, and interactions (view, thought, speech, action, livelihood, effort, and awareness)
8. Acceptance – The Sanskrit word here is samadhi, which is often translated as “concentration.” I don’t like the word “concentration” here. Concentration connotes strain or struggle, and in my experience, this involves the opposite. It’s the simple quiet that I experience when I accept something as it is and not as I wish it were, whether I like everything about it or don’t like anything about it. This includes acceptance and ownership of my own relationship to it. Acceptance doesn’t mean approval. It is the acknowledgement of its full reality. It’s a starting point for Right View, Thought, Speech, Action, and Livelihood. So why is it number 8 of 8? Beats me. I think of these elements as points on a circle, so is it the beginning or the end? Both? Neither? What difference does it make?

There is no line between practice and living.

The Six Practices of Compassionate People (The Six Paramitas of a Bodhisattva)

1. Generosity (dāna, दान)
2. Trustworthiness (Śīla, शील)
3. Forgiveness (kṣāntiḥ, क्षांति)
4. Energy, Activity (vīrya वीर्य)
5. Contemplation (dhyāna ध्यान)
6. Allowing awareness of causes and conditions, setting aside concept (prajñā प्रज्ञा)