自在聆听|晨读原著：T67: Six Ways of Compassionate Living-Comfortable with Uncerta

67 Six Ways of Compassionate Living THERE ARE SIX traditional activities in which the bodhisattva trains, six ways of compassionate living: generosity, discipline, patience, joyful exertion, meditation, and prajna, unconditional wisdom. Traditionally these are called the paramitas, a Sanskrit word meaning “gone to the other shore.” Each one is an activity we can use to take us beyond aversion and attachment, beyond being all caught up in ourselves, beyond our illusion of separateness. Each paramita has the ability to take us beyond our fear of letting go. Through paramita training we learn to be comfortable with uncertainty. Going to the other shore has a groundless quality, a sense of being caught in the middle, being caught in the in-between state. It is easy to regard the paramitas as a rigid code of ethics, a list of rules. But the warrior-bodhisattva’s world is not that simple. The power of these activities is not that they are commandments, but that they challenge our habitual reactions. Paramita training has a way of humbling us and keeping us honest. When we practice generosity we become intimate with our grasping. Practicing the discipline of not causing harm, we see our rigidity and desire to control. Practicing patience helps us train in abiding with the restlessness of our energy and letting things evolve at their own speed. In joyful exertion we let go of our perfectionism and connect with the living quality of every moment. Meditation is how we train in coming back to being right here. And the inquiring mind of prajna—seeing things just as they are—is the key to this training, because without prajnaparamita, or unconditional bodhichitta, the other five activities can be used to give us the illusion of gaining ground.