Todayand#8217;s Dharmabyte, and#8220;The Six Perfectionsand#8221; is a reminder from our last podcast where Nagapriya beautifully and clearly led us through his understanding of and#8220;The Ideal of Universal Awakeningand#8221;. In this little golden Dharma-nugget we are reconnected with the Six Perfections, a reading from the Bodhicaryavatara by Shantideva, and the 10 Bhumis or stages of the Bodhisattvaand#8217;s Path.
This is from the second talk in a five-part series called Visions of Mahayana Buddhism given at the Manchester Buddhist Centre, 2009.
[MUSIC] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you and happy listening. [MUSIC] Yeah, so someone who's made this vowel, or even it may happen before they make the vowel actually. It may be another way of stimulating or generating the bodhicitta, the urge to awakening. They practice a particular path, and this path is known as the six perfections. Yeah, well the six transcending virtues, they're sometimes described as. So these are six themes that the bodhisattva follows in order to become even more spiritually awakened. I'm not going to go into detail about these six perfections, but I'll list them briefly. And then I thought I might just talk a little bit about just one of them. So the six perfections are starting off with generosity. That's the first of the six perfections. This is the first thing that a bodhisattva does in their life. Secondly, they practice ethics. They live an upright life, they follow the Buddhist ethical precepts scrupulously. Thirdly, they practice patience, or forbearance, or restraint, and come back to that in a moment. Fourthly, they practice energy, they cultivate energy, and an image that has always struck me, which is said to characterise the life of the bodhisattva, is that their life of saving beings and moving from world system to world system is like the life of an elephant that is a bit hot in the midday sun and plunges from cool pool to cool pool over and over again. That's what their life is like. So they've got this energy, but it's not work to them. It's actually a delight because it's what they want to do. They want to share their awakening, their understanding with all beings. So they have, they cultivate energy. Fifthly, meditation. The bodhisattva fulfills and pursues many, many kinds of meditation. And in fact, I think I'm going to read out a passage a little bit later that may characterise something of the bodhisattva's meditative state of mind. And finally, they cultivate wisdom. This is the six perfections. So I said that I'd just perhaps step back and talk about one of them, and I just thought I'd say a little bit about forbearance or patience. In fact, rather than say a little bit, I thought I would read just a couple of verses from the bodhichari abattara just to give you a flavour. So this is Shanti Deva, who was the author of the bodhichari abattara, talking about forbearance or patience. There is no evil equal to hatred, and no spiritual practice equal to forbearance. Therefore, one should develop forbearance by various means with great effort. One's mind finds no peace, neither enjoys pleasure or delight, nor goes to sleep, nor feels secure, while the dart of hatred is stuck in the heart. This is whom one honours with wealth and respect, and also one's dependence. Even they long to destroy the master who is disfigured by hatred. Even friends shrink from him. He gives, but is not honoured. In short, there is no sense in which someone prone to anger is well off. The person who realises that hatred is an enemy, since it creates such sufferings as these, and who persistently strikes it down, is happy in this world and the next. So that's what Shanti Deva has to say about the value and the importance of forbearance and the relative sufferings that are consequent upon hatred and anger. Yeah, I mean just in passing it's worth noting that there's an additional list of perfections known as the Ten Perfections. I'm not going to go into those in detail just at the moment, but what I am going to touch on is another particular way of conceiving of the Bodhisattva's life, which is in terms of it traversing ten stages, or in technical terms they're known as boomies. So the Bodhisattva passes through progressively each of these ten stages or boomies. I think I mentioned at the beginning that the image that I have on screen represents Bodhisattvas who are accomplishing those ten stages. Again, I'm not going to cover all of those ten stages in detail. Instead, I thought I'd just look at one of them for you. But just before I do that, the boomies don't so much describe actual states that we're likely to develop, that we're likely to pass through. They more represent idealized spiritual states. They're kind of archetypal, you could say, spiritual states. So I don't necessarily think that their conditions that we, as we are, are going to enter. They're more like idealizations of what we could achieve. So I'm just going to read a little passage because I particularly like this one. And as well, this will give you some kind of idea about what the meditative state of mind or what the spiritual powers of the Bodhisattva are like. This is to describe the ninth boomy. So it's almost complete awakening but actually not quite there yet. So this is a very sublime, very elevated condition and this is how it's described. Even if the beings of a billion worlds were to come up all at the same moment and ask questions, each of them asking questions with countless nuances, each one asking a different question. The enlightening beings, that's the Bodhisattvas, would take in every tone and nuance and with a single utterance would satisfy all those beings' minds. Even if the beings of untold worlds all came up in the same moment and asked questions each with innumerable nuances, each different, the enlightening beings would take them all on instantly and edify them all with a single utterance, pervading untold worlds that expound the teaching according to beings' dispositions, faculties and inclinations. Sitting in discourse on the teaching, receiving the empowerment of the Buddhas, they simultaneously face all beings during the work of Buddhahood. So that's the ninth boomy. We hope you enjoyed the talk. Please come and help us keep this free at freebuddhistaudio.com/community and thank you. [music] [music] [music] [music] [BLANK_AUDIO]
