Prajna is our own innate and intuitive wisdom. Pema Chodron wrote that it is “the fundamental aspect of your being — this prajna, or Buddha nature, basic goodness.” It is prajna moves us to do something good and kind and to avoid the mean. It is also the deep understanding that we are all  interconnected. Thich Nhat Hanh says this is the “highest kind of understanding, free from all knowledge, concepts, ideas, and views.” 

There are three levels of Prajna or wisdom: the Wisdom of listening; the Wisdom of reflection; and the Wisdom of meditation.

• Prajna of Listening

The first stage is the Wisdom of Listening or studying the Dharma. It is totally dependent on conceptual mind, on communication, and language. There is wisdom in our own self-directed study. We see a book or hear about one… Or we go through a list of podcasts and are drawn to one… listening, reading, studying the dharma. This is the foundation for the other levels of wisdom.

• Prajna of Reflection

The second level of wisdom is thinking or reflecting on what we’ve studied. The Roman poet Horace said, “Wisdom is not wisdom when it is derived from books alone.” Of course, we know this to be true. Wisdom or prajna won’t arise simply by reading or listening to the Dharma. We have to take it in – digest it, otherwise it’s just more information. By concentrating on the Dharma, we can absorb it more fully. One way to do this is through more in-depth study. We do this often sitting together in sangha and discussing the Dharma—in Noble Conversation. Many of also attend book groups, study groups, retreats… all of these help to deepen our understanding and allow us to apply the dharma in our day to day lives.

• Prajna of Meditation

With the third level of Prajna we go beyond conceptual understanding, usually as the result of a deep experience of the previous levels: we know the Dharma at the intellectual level, we have reflected on it deeply, it has become part of our thinking. Sadayasihi wrote, “The third level of wisdom involves us assimilating the truth we have heard and reflected on to the extent that we become that truth. At its highest we are talking about full Enlightenment. However, if we are sincerely practicing the Dharma, we often get glimpses of what this is like. Perhaps the easiest way of understanding what this level of wisdom looks like is through witnessing it in the lives of others. And it is often in times of adversity – through illness or oppression – that the teachings of the Dharma take on a life of their own.”

In the Dharma Jewel Platform Sutra, the Sixth Patriarch wrote, “The sharpness of prajna cuts at many levels. In the mundane sense, prajna represents a sharpening of perception and inquisitiveness. As we go about our lives, and particularly as we enter a spiritual path, we are always raising questions. We are always trying to understand. Instead of just accepting a superficial understanding, we think deeply and ask, “What do I really understand? Does any of this make any sense whatsoever?” Prajna has this quality of creative doubt—not just accepting things based on authority or hearsay, but continually digging deeper.”

[Edited by Dr. Martin Verhoeven and Rev. Heng Sure.]

“The Four Reminders” is a teaching that is considered foundational in the Buddha-Dharma. Point One of the Seven Points of the LoJong Slogans is, “The preliminaries, which are the basis for dharma practice.” The first of the 59 slogans is, “First, train in the preliminaries.” The “preliminary practice” of the Mahayana is to contemplate the four themes “that turn the mind away from samsara and inspire us to turn our attention towards liberation. This teaching is a decisive foundation to eventually experience and realize Bodhicitta.”

Karma Lodrö writes, “First, we contemplate the unique occasion of having attained a precious human birth and determine to use our life meaningfully. Then we contemplate impermanence and death. As long as we have a precious human life, we shouldn’t waste it, because the time of death is uncertain and impermanence is a fact. The third practice that turns one’s mind to the Dharma is contemplating how to really make use of the fortunate opportunity of having attained a precious human life more fully by accumulating positive karma. One understands that, due to the infallible law of cause and effect, unwholesome and unskillful activities of body, speech, and mind lead to painful results. Fourthly, one contemplates the meaningless propositions of samsara. These four contemplations inspire us to turn our attention towards liberation.”

His Eminence Khentin Tai Situ Rinpoche teaches that there are three ways to practice patience: (1) to refrain from hurting those who have caused us grief and pain, (2) to deal with any suffering we experience without fighting it uselessly or feeling intimidated, and (3) to have confidence in the ultimate truth.

The first type of patience is the patience of not being moved by those who hurt us. Now this is such a challenge. Shantideva says the way we learn to do this is by practicing in “little ways,” then we will have gained enough skill in patience that when the big things happen we may be able to handle them as a bodhisattva might. It’s like being stuck in traffic and being anxious and angry because you’re going to be late for your appointment or work and saying to yourself, “how would a bodhisattva handle this? Would she curse and smack the steering wheel and be angry at all these people in all these cars or would she say … oh all this suffering, let me suffer for us all while the rest sing and car dance.” That’s where we start. Then we practice this in each of those small situations… when we are insulted, when we are snubbed… uninvited… when we’re threatened… Tai Situ says that “By practicing patience and forbearance in the wake of irrelevant matters, one will eventually be able to master much more crucial situations and events.”

The second type of patience is the patience of enduring any suffering we experience without fighting it uselessly or feeling intimidated. OK so this doesn’t mean we seek suffering and pain and rejoice when we’re in agony. He says “Since time that has no beginning until the present every sentient being living in one of the six realms of existence has been suffering in one way or another.  During the entire expanse of time it is a fact that everyone has endured billions of centuries of suffering in the hell realms… and in all other realms of our world system, which is therefore referred to as  “the Saha world – the three thousand fold universe – of endurance.” In one way, all past suffering can be helpful in that one appreciates that one doesn’t suffer much at this point, yet in another way it hasn’t really helped much.”

The third type of patience is practiced by having confidence in the ultimate truth… the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, the four noble truths, understanding impermanence and dependent origination – inter-connectedness or emptiness – karma. We gain confidence in the teachings, in the dharma, by watching it work in our lives. The more we practice and then take a moment to notice the effect of our practice on ourselves internally and then how that effects others, the more we can trust that the dharma is working in our lives.

Photo by Arnie Chou on Pexels.com

This is from an article I’m reading by Norman Fischer. I love the way he speaks of emptiness as something that can be felt and experienced moment to moment. I also love his enthusiasm and easy way of talking about a topic that is so often misunderstood.

“From the first time I encountered the word in English, I liked the sound of it: emptiness. Some would find  it chillingly abstract, even scary. But I took to it immediately. I chanted the Heart Sutra (“form is emptiness, emptiness form …”) alone and with sangha every day for years before I ever bothered to find out what the great teachers of the past meant by emptiness. It didn’t matter to me what they meant. I knew what emptiness was.

“Of course I had no clue. But intuitively I knew… The logic of emptiness is wonderfully airtight. Like all simple truths, its clarity is immediately self-evident: we are. And there is no moment in which we are separate and apart: we are always connected—to past, to future, to others, to objects, to air, earth, sky. Every thought, every emotion, every action, every moment of time, has multiple causes and reverberations—tendrils of culture, history, hurt, and joy that stretch out mysteriously and endlessly.

“As with us, so with everything: all things influence one another. This is how the world appears, shimmers, and shifts, moment by moment. But if things always associate with and bump up against each other, they must touch one another. If so, they must have parts, for without parts they couldn’t touch (they’d melt into one another, disappearing). But the parts in turn are also things in their own right (a nose, part of a face, is a nose; an airplane wing, part of a plane, is an airplane wing) and so the parts must have parts (nostrils, wingtips), and those parts have parts and so on: an infinite proliferation of parts, smaller and smaller, clouds of them. (This is true of thoughts and feelings as well as physical objects.) If you look closely enough and truly enough at anything, it disappears into a cloud, and the cloud disappears into a cloud. All is void. There is no final substantial something anywhere. The only thing real is connection: void touching void.”