Beyond material gifts – the first level of generosity – is the gift of the dharma – teachings aimed at the elevation of human life to an enlightened level. …

That material generosity, while important, is less exalted than spiritual generosity is a point made frequently in early Mahayana sutras. Picturing human life as most importantly a spiritual quest, the kind of generosity that the sutras most fervently proposed was the gift of visionary life and human excellence, not material objects, and it is in this vein that they were written. Thus the Sandhinirmocana Sūtra says: “When Bodhisattvas benefit sentient beings by means of the perfections, if they are satisfied merely by providing benefits to beings through giving material goods and do not establish them on virtuous states after having raised them up from non-virtuous states, this is not skillful. ” The principal reason for giving material gifts is that human beings might be solidified in their lives and elevated to the point where a spiritual life of wisdom and compassion becomes possible. So, no matter how much material well-being is imagined, the possibility of an authentic spiritual practice goes far beyond it. Therefore, the Diamond Sutra makes this point firmly: “If someone were to offer an immeasurable quantity of the seven treasures to fill the worlds as infinite as space as an act of generosity, the happiness resulting from that virtuous act would not equal the happiness resulting from a son or daughter of good family who gives rise to the awakened mind and reads, recites, accepts, and puts into practice the sutra, and explains it to others, even if only a gatha of four lines.”

20-21

Wisdom is the capacity to envision and work with the “emptiness” of all things. Therefore, the sutras maintain that the bodhisattvas’ “home is deep thought on the meaning of emptiness.” “Emptiness” is a universal predicate in this Buddhist tradition, a claim about all claims, a view about all views, a position with respect to all positions you might hold. The bodhisattva dwells on the concept of emptiness, hoping eventually to embody its meaning at a more profound level than the conceptual.

What “emptiness” means is best explained in terms of what it is that things are empty of. All things are “empty,” the texts claim, insofar as they lack their “own-being.” “Own-being” is a technical term (svabhāva) for the quality of being self-generated, self-possessed. Tzu-hsing, the Chinese translation for svabhāva, literally means “self-nature,” the immortal self or immutable nature of a thing. Things in possession of their “own being” – things with “self-nature” – are not subject to conditions, influences, and change. They just are what they are without respect to other things or time. The central insight of “emptiness,” then, is that all things lack this characteristic – nothing generates itself, nothing stands on its own, and nothing just is what it is forever. If nothing controls its “own being” in this way then, in Buddhist terms, all things are “empty.” Claiming that all elements of existence are “empty” in this sense, Mahayana Buddhists took the word “emptiness” to name the character of reality overall.

What reasoning leads Buddhists to the conclusion of pervasive “emptiness”? Essentially the same line of reasoning and life experience that had generated the Buddhist tradition in the first place. Three early Buddhist principles are brought together to help define the Mahayana concept of emptiness: “impermanence,” “dependent arising,” and “no-self.” In the following passage from the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom, wisdom is defined in terms of “emptiness,” and “emptiness” is defined by way of these three early Buddhist concepts: “When he thus surveys dependent arising, a bodhisattva certainly does not see anything that is being produced without a cause, nor does he review anything that is permanent. … He reviews nothing as a self, a being, a soul, a creature.” All things are “empty” insofar as they “arise dependent” on other things, insofar as they are “impermanent” and subject to change, and insofar as they therefore lack a permanent essence, an independent soul or “self.” Wisdom is the ability to see how all things are “empty” in this sense, and to transform one’s relationship to everything accordingly.

“Emptiness” is the meditation that yields freedom, whether this meditation is performed in Buddhist or non-Buddhist terms. If you do not understand how the choices you make are conditioned by your background and the context within which you face them, you will have very little freedom in relation to these conditioning factors. If you do not understand that your political views are largely a function of the particular influences that have been exerted on you from early life until now, you will have no way of seeing how other worldviews give justification to other views just as yours does for you, and therefore no way of even beginning to adjudicate between them except by naively assuming the truth of your own.

If you do not realize that what seems obvious to you seems that way because of structures built into your time and place and the particularities of your life, you will have very little room to imagine other ways to look at things that stretch the borders of your context and imagination. You will have no motive to wonder why what seems obvious to you does not seem obvious to others in other cultures or languages, and to wonder whether you might not be better off unconstrained by those particular boundaries of worldview. The extent to which you are limited by your setting is affected by the extent to which you understand such constraints both in general (anyone’s) and in particular (yours). The way you participate in your current given worldview shapes the extent to which you will be able to see alternatives to it and be able to reach out beyond it in freedom.

“Emptiness” and similar non-Buddhist meditations on the powers of interdependence and contextuality are among the most fruitful means of generating sufficient freedom to live a creative life. Reflexively aware, we are more and more able to see and act on alternatives that would never occur to us otherwise. In reflexive meditation, we come to embrace the finitude of all acts of thinking as a way to liberate us from dogmatism and certitude. Understanding the uncertainty that is constitutive of our human mode of being, we develop the flexibility of mind necessary to be honest with ourselves about our own point of view.

The most important distinction within the practices of energy, emphasized in virtually all classical texts, is that between mundane or ordinary practices of energy on one side and their perfected forms on the other. This is the same internal distinction that we find in all six of the perfections. It separates ordinary practice predicated upon common modes of self-understanding from extraordinary practice taken to the level of “perfection.”

As the classic Mahayana texts describe it, the mundane practice of energy is hardly “ordinary”; indeed, it is admirable in virtually every way. The bodhisattva at this level meditates on various dimensions of energetic practice – on the possible sources of this power, on ways in which it can be put to use, on how to avoid discouragement, on ways to transcend previously generated levels of energy. The bodhisattva adopts an intentional way of living that incorporates a variety of individual practices and pursues these with a sincerity of purpose and concentration of mind as well directed toward the cultivation of energy as possible. In order to generate and maintain this focus, the bodhisattva purposefully cultivates a desire for enlightenment and uses this desire to motivate discipline.

If all of the six perfections are based on the expectation that human beings develop the freedom to sculpt themselves and their circumstances in liberating ways, then the perfection of toleration is essential to this effort. Without the developed capacity to face difficulties that arise in constructive ways, there is little hope of enlightened movement or progress. Building calm endurance through insightful understanding of our circumstances, we avoid stagnation and the deepening of suffering that goes with it.

So early Buddhist texts maintain that the first step toward overcoming self-destructive habits in response to suffering is developing the ability to accept suffering as part of life. This is why the “truths” of Buddhism begin here – they require at the outset a psychologically difficult admission: that suffering will inevitably be part of life and that everything depends on how we face up to that fact and how we cultivate our capacity to see it through constructively.

Skill in moral life entails cultivating an understanding of the Buddhist concept of karma, patterns of moral causality that are thought to govern all human transformation. Although karma literally means “action,” the principle of karma concerns the connection between the quality of an act and the nature of the consequences that follow from it. Actions of a particular quality give rise to consequences of a corresponding kind, and this is thought to be a law inherent in the nature of things. …

What remains constant across a wide variety of interpretations is the thought that all acts generate consequences that shape the character of the actor. Not all acts are thought to be productive of karma, however, because karma is restricted to those done with volition, intention, or purpose. Moreover, changes in human lives brought about by the karmic consequences of an intentional act are thought sometimes to follow immediately from the act and sometimes to arise over time. This idea is extended beyond the range of a person’s present lifetime to the point that the quality of a person’s acts governs the form that a future rebirth will take. Karma and rebirth are thoroughly intertwined in Buddhist thought, and the combination of these two teachings more than any other set of moral ideas serves as motivation for moral action. …

The fact that what becomes of a person is based on the qualities of actions undertaken makes moral decision making central to Buddhist practice. If the goal is to become something in particular – a wiser, more compassionate, more enlightened person – then the actions that have the power to generate that state will need to be skillfully chosen and enacted with a disciplined mind. Buddhist texts therefore frequently link mindfulness to the practices of morality, thereby connecting morality with meditation. Śāntideva, who goes so far as to say that “the perfection is the mental attitude itself,” writes extensively on “guarding awareness,” because only by diligently shaping one’s mind will acts conducive to negative karma be eliminated. So he writes: “If I let go of the vow to guard my mind, what will become of my many other vows?”

The Perfection of Wisdom Sutras divide the practice of giving into two types, following the lead of the earlier Buddhist tradition. At the most basic level is the gift of material goods of various kinds, especially those goods necessary for life itself, and at the higher level is the gift of the dharma, the teachings, the very possibility of a spiritually significant life. But the teachings are powerless if hunger and poverty stand in the way. So the sutras teach compassion for all levels of human suffering and demand that material generosity be the first order of business for an authentic Buddhist. Therefore the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom asserts: “Do give gifts! For poverty is a painful thing. One is unable, when poor, to accomplish one’s own welfare, much less that of others!”
Six Perfections: Buddhism & the Cultivation of Character, p 18-19

The perfection of wisdom is pictured as more than just the highest and most exalted of the bodhisattva’s virtues; it is the one that brings the others to fruition. The first five perfections are initially practiced at ordinary levels of understanding and then nurtured to the level of perfection when wisdom is applied to them. Therefore, the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight Thousand Lines says: “For this perfection of wisdom directs the six perfections, guides, leads, instructs, and advises them, is their genetrix and nurse. Because, if they are deprived of the perfection of wisdom, the first five perfections do not come under the concept of perfections, and they do not deserve to be called ‘perfections.’ ” Wisdom is also said to encompass the other five perfections: “It is thus that the bodhisattva, the great being who trains in this deep perfection of wisdom, has taken hold of all the six perfections, has procured them, has conformed to them. And why? Because in this deep perfection of wisdom all the perfections are contained.” The image of encompassing the other practices of perfection leads the Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom to claim that “when the bodhisattva trains in perfect wisdom, he acquires all the accomplishments which he should acquire.”

If by “self” we mean a permanent center of subjectivity, something fixed, self-established and independent of the world around it, something fully in command of its own existence and knowable as such, then careful observation leads to the conclusion that there is no such entity at the heart of human subjectivity. That single realization became perhaps the most important focal point for Buddhist meditation, and the sutras challenged practitioners to examine and test its truth in introspection and philosophical analysis.

The “no-self” claim is not the end of Buddhist reflection on this matter, however. In fact, it is just the beginning. If there is no self in the sense of a permanent soul, an independent entity whose experience this is, then who am “I”? Buddhist answers differ substantially depending on by whom, when, and where the question is posed. But one early and enduring articulation attempts to divide what appears to be a unified “self” into operating divisions or functions. Human beings, they claimed, are composed of five always impermanent components that are observable most directly from within but also in some way from the outside. These are the five skandhas, five components that make human experience what it is. They are (l) a body whose five senses make contact with the world; (2) various feelings of approval and disapproval in response to perceptual stimulus; (3) conceptual thinking that classifies and manages perceptions and feelings; (4) volitional forces that guide our movement through particular wishes and desires; and (5) self-consciousness that holds all of these components together as a relatively unified subjectivity in the world.

Different Buddhist texts and different translations of them divide these components up in different ways. But the important point is that, from a traditional Buddhist point of view, no one element constitutes the soul or self – the one you really are. Instead, human existence is imagined as a loosely configured movement in and among these various components as they shift and change over time.

In transition from the first three perfections to the final set of three, the classic texts of Mahayana Buddhism announce a significant shift of emphasis. The first three – generosity, morality, tolerance – are appropriate practices for anyone. The final three, however – energy, meditation, wisdom – operate at a higher level of spiritual awareness and therefore tend to be the focus of monks, nuns, and others who give priority in their lives to spiritual practice and insight. At this point in the practice, high levels of energy are required to undertake the practices of concentration and meditation prescribed in the fifth perfection, and in order to sustain the transformation in personal orientation experienced through insight and wisdom in the sixth. Thus, energy marks the transition from one level of practice to another, from preparatory exercises to a loftier level of endeavor. …

The final three perfections, beginning with energy, mandate a movement beyond these initial levels of practice. They are more abstract, less worldly in character, and their rewards are more difficult to visualize. But once they are initiated, the final three perfections begin to provide the basis on which the first three can be more profoundly comprehended and thus more wisely practiced. The transition between the two groups marks a point beyond which focus on enlightenment is more clearly defined. It is in this light that one sutra claims that “where there is energy there is enlightenment.”