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MY Six Paramitas: A Buddhist Primer.

tinalear
5 min readApr 25, 2019

This is about the Buddha’s ten commandments, only they’re not commandments and there are only six of them. The Six “Paramitas” (a Sanskrit word, translated as “perfections”) are generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditation, and wisdom.

But this is my take on the Six Paramitas, so they’ve become MY Six Paramitas. And the way I practice them, I try to put them into motion right when the wave hits.

It wasn’t really that big, the one in the photo. It just hit me at exactly the moment I wasn’t expecting it. Which is when most of what happens to us happens. Right? But that’s the fertile moment where your practice can mean something, where it can actually bear fruit.

When I first read about the Six Paramitas, images of The Perfect Buddhist showed up in my mind and it made me want to bury myself in youtube clips of bloopers from “The Office.”

I’m so far from the Six Paramitas, I don’t see why to start trying at all. But this is exactly what stops us: the perceived distance between us and whatever it is we want.

Here’s what I’ve learned, though: If you reach for the stars in the wrong way, you end up with nine hundred trillion excuses for why you didn’t make it. Reach for the stars in the right way, you can actually get…

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tinalear
tinalear

Written by tinalear

Novelist. Poet. Musician. Buddhist. Quilter. Animal lover. Visible grownup. Hidden child. Secret dancer when all alone. Makes good bread.

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