There is a reflexive dimension that is engaged whenever Buddhists take meditations on the concept of “emptiness” far enough to encompass the subjectivity of the thinker. This has long been important in the history of Buddhism, but now constitutes a significant contribution to the history of human consciousness. Here is a summary of how the “emptiness” of all things encompasses the “self” in such a way that we can get a glimpse of “the one who is right now reading this.” Recall that “emptiness” can be handily defined in terms of three basic Buddhist principles – impermanence, dependent arising, and no-self. Things are “empty” of their “own being” insofar as they are always subject to change and insofar as the change they undergo is caused and conditioned by change in other things upon which they depend. All things lack a “self,” therefore – a permanent, self-caused identity that always makes them exactly what they are.

Meditation on this universal predicate – that all things are empty – eventually attains a reflexive dimension when it returns to encompass the one who predicates “emptiness” – you or me as subjects. What would it mean to understand through prolonged meditation that “I” am “empty?”

We know from the history of religions – as well as the history of Buddhism – that varieties of spirituality range from the passionate to the dispassionate. The most common caricature of Buddhism emphasizes the dispassionate side – the image of reclusive monks in meditative, nonviolent serenity. But there are many exceptions to that pattern, from Tantric passion to the emotional ecstasies of devotional of Pure Land Buddhism to Vietnamese, Tibetan, or Burmese monks in political rebellion. There is no good reason to narrow this range of salutary emotions by recommending that a contemporary account of the six perfections would best entail one specific form of emotional life. It is not difficult to imagine enlightened bodhisattvas at both extremes of the range of emotions as well as in the middle. But it is clear enough that, however conceived, emotions are an important part of life and that the attempt to delete them altogether is as mistaken as any effort to get out of the life you have been given. Both insight and active striving are integrally connected to human passion.

Once we realize this point, there is no reason to conceive of enlightening practice as devoid of enjoyment – the experience of joy in the midst of daily activities. There is no point in maintaining a traditionally dour caricature of enlightenment. Can we imagine an enlightened life in which the practitioner does not enjoy the practices in which he or she is engaged? A practice in which he or she forever struggles against the grain of emotional inclinations? Can we imagine an ideal life that is devoid of joy and ecstatic release? It is unlikely that we can or will. Recognizing that desire and emotion are essential components of life, it will become obvious that striving for their perfection rather than their eradication is the wiser and more comprehensive image of enlightenment.

As the art of putting things into perspective, wisdom also teaches us how to contextualize problems, how to understand what worries us in a light that is liberating rather than debilitating. Recall that Buddhist wisdom is associated with the realizations that all things are impermanent and contingent. Cultivating the ability to tolerate the problems and difficulties that are almost always on our minds, awareness of their impermanence and contingency is essential. Keeping impermanence in mind, we realize that this problem, like all others, is transient. Although it weighs heavily on my mind right now, I can attain a perspective that predicts its transformation and eventual disappearance. That slight distance from the problem enables us to avoid being crushed by the perceived weight of problems.

In addition to seeing the transience of the problem, wisdom points to its contingency. All things just depend. They come into our lives due to particular conditions, and when those conditions change so will the problems. This formula – the Buddhist teaching of “dependent arising” – assists in understanding the status of difficulties. They are contingent and can be altered by changing the conditions upon which they currently depend. Understanding this empowers action and helps reduce the extent to which we waste time and energy bemoaning what has happened as though that state is permanent and unavoidable. Getting wise perspective encourages us to see the reality before us for what it is without lamentation or resentment. Accepting the problem as a problem does not undermine effective work to solve it. Indeed, it is exactly what makes skillful response possible by bringing pointless struggle to an end.

Since morality is a necessary dimension of practice, a dimension of perfection that enlightenment will require, bodhisattvas vow to help others initiate the practice. But in order to do that effectively, they must have attained a profound enough moral standing themselves that they will not be hypocritical in their moral instructions to others. Therefore Ārya-Śūra’s chapter on the perfection of morality begins with the sentence: “The one in whom has arisen the strong concern to grace people with the ornament of a complete Buddha’s morality should first of all purify his own morality.” It is not possible to teach what you are unable to practice yourself, and the outcome of this resolution is that Mahayana bodhisattvas are expected to focus first on their own moral wisdom, carrying it through extensively before they will be in a position to instruct others.

Upon whom should the bodhisattva bestow his or her generosity? Although answers to this question in the early Mahayana sutras occasionally vary, for the most part they prescribe universal giving. Although in practical circumstances it may be necessary to target those who are most needy, what the sutras want to cultivate is the desire to be generous with everyone. The virtues of nondiscrimination and impartiality are given high praise. Although there was a theory in circulation during the early years of Mahayana Buddhism that the value or merit of a gift is proportional to the worthiness or spiritual merit of the recipient, many texts speak directly against this idea. In this spirit, the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom describes the true bodhisattva as “having given gifts without differentiating, … But if a Bodhisattva, when faced with a living being … who does not seem worthy of gifts, should produce a thought to the effect that ‘a fully enlightened Buddha is worthy of my gifts, but not this [one],’ then he does not have the dharma of a Bodhisattva.”

Wisdom is the ability to face the truth and not be unnerved or frightened. It is the capacity to be disillusioned, but not disheartened. It is the ability to consider the contingency and the groundlessness of all things, oneself included, and not turn away from that consideration in fear. Wisdom means setting aside illusions about oneself and the world and being strengthened by that encounter with the truth. It entails willingness to avoid seeking the security of the unchanging and to open oneself to a world of flux and complex relations. This includes, as the Vimalakirti Sūtra puts it, “overcoming the habit of clinging to an ultimate ground.” One way to say this is that bodhisattvas – those who seek wisdom and open transformation throughout their lives – can be distinguished in terms of how much truth they can bear, how many illusions of comfort and security they are willing or able to set aside.

Philosophy as a form of Buddhist meditation does have an overarching rationale or aim. Theoretical practice is considered most worthwhile when it aims to improve the quality of life. This practical, ethical orientation in Buddhist meditative thought can already be seen in the early parable of the “poisoned arrow.” In this parable the Buddha poses a rhetorical question: Would the person struck by a poison arrow be well advised to pose speculative questions about the archer, his background, his motives, the quality of the shot, and so on? Or would he be best off attending to the practical question of how to deal with the situation at hand – the poison – in such a way that one’s life is preserved? Similarly, questions unrelated to the quest for “awakening” were thought unwise, irrelevant to the one issue that really matters. Questions aimed at transformative vision were considered to be the essence of philosophical meditation.

One of the most important functions of philosophical meditation is that this is the practice within which the conception of the Buddhist goal is engendered, honed, and articulated, and the means through which that conception becomes a reality in one’s daily life. “Conception of the goal” here means what Western philosophers have meant by the “concept of the good” and what Buddhists mean by the “thought of enlightenment.” This thought, and the realization that there may be forms of life clearly superior to the one I am living, when taken in their full force, lead to the practice of meditation on ideals.

To someone terrified, in despair, and depleted of sufficient energy to do anything it is not helpful to recommend the practices enjoined in the perfection of energy. These practices, as we have seen, are training for someone already well endowed with the capacity for energetic striving; it is training intended to prevent the occurrence of extreme despair by providing both purpose and the energy to stay with it. Energy to engage in practice, not to mention motivation and purpose, is precisely what those in terror and despair lack. In such a predicament, Mahayana sutras often recommend devotional exercises – prayer, chanting, and ritual. Here is how it is put in the Vimalakirti Sūtra, a text that is otherwise entirely focused on practice and conception at the level of the most discerning bodhisattvas. Mañjuśrī, the bodhisattva of wisdom, poses a question to Vimalakirti, the sutra’s most exemplary image of wisdom:

Mañjuśrī: To what should one resort when terrified by fear of life?

Vimalakirti: Mañjuśrī, a Bodhisattva who is terrified by fear of life should resort to the magnanimity of the Buddha.

The magnanimity of the Buddha is the Buddhist image of compassion and grace. In situations where we simply lack the power to pull ourselves up out of a lifeless despair, only “outside” help remains. “Outside help” would include theistic grace, medical and psychological assistance, the kindness and concern of family and friends, and more. The fundamental teachings of Mahayana Buddhism preclude conceiving of these as truly outside,” however. “No-self” means simply that the lines separating inside from outside are porous, temporary, and always open to erasure by way of the confluence of community interaction. When one person is saved or revived through the compassionate agency of others, the community heals itself.

How should we understand the higher form of generosity – “perfect giving”? The answer can be found throughout the Perfection of Wisdom Sutras, because wisdom is precisely what is needed to perfect generosity. Wisdom is the sixth perfection, the most perfect of the perfections, and the essential ingredient in all the others. Therefore it will need to be considered here in order to complete our understanding of the ideal of perfect generosity.

Perfect wisdom, whether related to generosity or any other dimension of life, consists in the realization of “emptiness,” and it is this teaching that the sutras promulgate from beginning to end. Although emptiness Śūnyatā) was an infrequently used word in the earliest layers of Buddhist literature, when it did make its appearance as the central concept in Mahayana sutras, it was defined in terms that were already familiar in the Pali sutras. To say that something is “empty” is to say that it is subject to continual change, that its existence is wholly dependent on factors outside of itself, and that it has no unchanging core or permanent essence. Making that claim, Mahayana Buddhists invoked the basic Buddhist teachings of impermanence, dependent arising, and no-self. All things are “empty” of their own self-established permanent essence because they are always subject to alteration and revision and because they are composed and defined in terms of what lies outside of them.

The “perfection” of giving incorporates the wisdom of “emptiness” to transform the perspective from which acts of giving occur. When the impermanence, dependence, and insubstantiality of all things are absorbed into one’s worldview down to the level of daily comportment, everything changes. A new, non-self-centered identity gradually emerges, one that entails reciprocity with everything that previously seemed to be other than oneself. This identity dissolves previous habits of self-protection and self-aggrandizement, opening the “self” to others in a connection of compassionate identification. To see how the vision of “emptiness” transforms thinking about generosity or giving, we look closely at passages in the sutras.

Instructing his disciple, Subhūti, in the perfection of generosity, the Large Sutra has the Buddha say: “Do not imagine that the gift is one thing, its fruit another, the donor another, and the recipient another. . . . And why? Because this gift is empty of a gift, its fruit empty of a fruit, and also the donor is empty of a donor and the recipient empty of a recipient. For in emptiness no gift can be apprehended nor its fruit, no donor, and no recipient. And why? Because absolutely those dharmas are empty in their own-being.”

The Buddha says, “Do not imagine.” Imagine what? Do not imagine that the world is divided up into separate self-subsistent entities, the way we ordinarily assume it to be. Do not imagine yourself as one of these isolated entities. Why not? Because all of these seemingly separate “things” are what they are only in connection to other things that make them what they are. Nothing stands on its own, and that is what it means to be “empty” of “own-being.” Applied to the act of giving, we see that the gift is not a gift without a donor and a recipient. Likewise, without the gift, there is no donor, no recipient. Each depends on the others, and when one changes, so do the others.

Several realizations make wisdom more difficult to imagine than the other five ideals we have examined. Wisdom differs from the others in the extent to which it is readily identifiable and noticeable. When we look for acts of generosity, morality, tolerance, energy, and meditation, we know roughly where to look. Acts of generosity, for example, are located in a certain sphere of our lives; they are easily identified wherever something beneficial is intentionally and freely transferred from one person or group to another. But where do we look to find examples of wisdom? Nowhere in particular, or anywhere. There is no specific domain of wisdom. You can be wise or unwise in any dimension of life. Wisdom can be found at work in all of the other perfections and in everything we do, rather than in its own domain. There is wise giving, wise tolerance, wise eating, wise shopping, and so on. Wisdom appears at a more comprehensive level than the other perfections, and this is how it can guide, encompass, and perfect the other perfections.