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Ten Paramitas

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Ten Paramitas

The Ten Paramitas (Tib. pa-rol tu chin-pa chu, pha rol tu phyin pa bCu; Skt. daśa pāramitā) are the ten perfections — the Mahāyāna framework of virtues-cultivated-to-completion-on-the-bodhisattva-path. Roaring Silence Ch.10’s Q&A maps them onto the Four Naljors.

The Ten

  1. Jinpa (sByin pa) — generosity
  2. Tsultrim (tshul khrims) — honor (usually “ethical discipline”)
  3. Zopa (bZod pa) — steadfastness (usually “patience” or “tolerance”)
  4. Tsöndru (brTson ‘grus) — vitality (usually “effort”)
  5. Samten (bSam gTan) — meditative stability
  6. Shérab (shes rab) — knowledge or insight
  7. Thab (thabs) — skillful means
  8. Mönlam (sMon lam) — wish-path / aspirational direction (usually “prayer”)
  9. Tob (sTobs) — power or strength
  10. Yeshé (ye shes) — primordial wisdom

The first six are the standard Mahāyāna paramitas; items 7–10 are the four additional perfections that expand the list to ten. The ten-fold structure is associated with the bodhisattva bhumis.

The Ch.10 Retranslations

Roaring Silence makes three load-bearing translation choices that depart from common Tibetan-Buddhist English usage:

  • Tsultrim = “honor” (not “ethical discipline”). KD: “We prefer to use the term ‘honor’ rather than ‘ethical discipline’ because there are sometimes puritanical ‘religious’ implications involved with ethical discipline. Honor means the same thing, but there’s a sense of valor there.” The retranslation avoids the moralizing register and keeps the courage-aspect.

  • Zopa = “steadfastness” (not “patience” or “tolerance” alone). “Maybe zopa is only adequately expressed by the three together.” The single-word English equivalents are each partial; steadfastness covers the enduring-without-flinching aspect that patience and tolerance tend to soften.

  • Tsöndru = “vitality” (not “effort”). KD: “The reason we don’t use the word ‘effort’ is that there is some sense of burden that seems to come across with that word. Vitality includes exertion and effort.” The retranslation avoids the exertion-as-burden reading.

Additional choice: Mönlam as “wish-path” or KD’s “direction of aspiration” / “aspirational direction”, departing from the common “prayer.” This makes mönlam something one has a direction toward, not something one petitions for.

The Mapping to the Four Naljors

Ch.10’s Q&A walks through the paramitas in terms of how they operate across the four naljors. A compressed rendering of NCR’s and KD’s development:

Jinpa — Generosity

  • Shi-nè level: “Generosity means allowing space in which shi-nè can bring us into the experience of the empty state.” Giving oneself the time to sit; giving all sentient beings the time of one’s sitting.
  • Lha-tong level: “We have to have the generosity to allow namthogs to arise again — we are not going to remain in the selfish domain where thoughts are not welcome. In lha-tong we have to have the generosity to welcome whatever arises.”
  • NCR frames sitting-in-silence as already being for all beings: “We are not sitting in silence for ourselves; that is crucial.”

Tsultrim — Honor

KD: “We have to be brave if we are to practice shi-nè, and we have to be brave if we are to practice lha-tong. We have to be brave if we are to stare into the face of emptiness and form and find the presence of rigpa. Honor means doing what one says one will do. It means sitting when one doesn’t particularly want to sit. It means persisting in one’s practice and not being seduced by other alternatives.”

Zopa — Steadfastness

KD: “To practice shi-nè might be to be bored out of your mind. To practice the Tantric ngöndro you might experience physical pain, and you will certainly experience frustration.”

NCR: “Patience arises out of generosity. One has been generous. One has said, ‘Here — this time is given for all beings.’ What can one do then but manifest patience? What else can one do but experience the results of generosity with tolerance?”

KD: “‘Good thoughts,’ ‘bad thoughts’ — they come and go, and one does not judge them. It’s said that whether clouds are black or white, if they obscure the sun they are the same. This is the meaning of tolerance.”

Tsöndru — Vitality

NCR: “Vitality is the sense of being alive in one’s practice. I’m not a dead body. One is alive. There is vitality in the practice. And, equally, one is alive in shi-nè and lha-tong.”

Samten — Meditative Stability

NCR: “The stability of one’s meditation is based upon the ground of generosity, patience, and vitality.”

The three-sphere claim — one of Ch.10’s most technical passages:

“In terms of Dzogchen, patience, vitality, and generosity are the three spheres of being: emptiness, energy, and form — chö-ku, long-ku, and trül-ku (dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya).”

The mapping:

ParamitaThree-SphereKaya
Patience (zopa)EmptinessChö-ku (dharmakāya)
Vitality (tsöndru)EnergyLong-ku (sambhogakāya)
Generosity (jinpa)FormTrül-ku (nirmāṇakāya)

See Three Spheres of Being. This is a non-trivial doctrinal move — the first three paramitas (before samten) are named as already the three kāyas in Dzogchen reading.

Shérab — Knowledge / Insight

NCR: “Shérab simply comes about through one’s involvement. There is no choice; flashes simply begin to occur. This is the point at which the experience of nyi’mèd percolates through the structure of the Tantric preliminaries. This is the point at which the preliminaries are no longer preliminaries and one begins to see that one could practice in this way for the rest of one’s life.”

The shérab-stage is the marker at which the nongradual recognition begins to penetrate the gradual framework. See Nongradual Approach.

Thab — Skillful Means

NCR: “We begin to see that something is possible. We see that we are personally involved in a process from which there’s no turning back. We begin to see that the method is really, actually directly connected with where we are. These ngöndros are no longer Tibetan practices. They are part of what we are and what we are becoming.”

Skillful means is the naturalization of the method — the method ceases to be a Tibetan practice I am performing and becomes the structure of what I am.

Mönlam — Wish-Path

KD: “One could translate mönlam as ‘the direction of aspiration’ or ‘aspirational direction.’ Obviously, when we see what is possible, we have no choice in what we do. Our own liberation seems possible, and so the liberation of all other beings begins to gain the momentum of inevitability.”

Mönlam is the structural bodhisattva move — having seen that liberation is possible, the extension of the aspiration to all beings is not optional. The aspiration-direction is not chosen; it is discovered as the only compatible continuation.

Tob and Yeshé — Not Developed in Ch.10

The Q&A does not develop tob (power) or yeshé (primordial wisdom). The list is given at the chapter’s opening but the walk-through ends at mönlam. Two possible readings:

  1. Editorial: the transcript was cut for length; tob and yeshé would have been developed in the full teaching.
  2. Structural: tob and yeshé operate at the lhun-drüp register and cannot be developed in discursive Q&A. They would land only in the realization itself.

The wiki records the absence without committing to an interpretation. The absence is worth noting for anyone studying the chapter closely.

The Dzogchen Purification Insert

Inside the paramita Q&A, NCR inserts a doctrinal clarification on what purification means in Dzogchen:

“This is what one could also call the purification of Dorje Sempa. Purification has different meanings according to the vehicle under discussion. In Dzogchen, the word relates to something that happens on its own. It means seeing it as pure because it already is pure. Here the word ‘pure’ means ‘nondual,’ and the word ‘purification’ pertains to a method of realizing the nondual state that has always been there. There is nothing to purify apart from the notion that there is something impure.”

  • Tantric purification (the kyé-rim / dzog-rim apparatus, Vajrasattva mantra) — method for removing defilements.
  • Dzogchen purification — seeing as pure what already is pure. No defilement to remove; only the notion of defilement to see through.
  • The two are operationally different but converge in realization.

This clarification is placed at the shérab paramita because shérab is the point at which the Dzogchen reading begins to displace the Tantric reading of purification.

Why the Paramita Frame Matters

Roaring Silence’s mapping of the paramitas onto the Four Naljors does three things:

  1. Locates the ngöndro within the full Mahāyāna paramita-structure. The Four Naljors are not a minimalist Dzogchen substitute for bodhisattva practice; they carry the paramitas.
  2. Prevents the Dzogchen practitioner from mis-reading the path as “just sitting.” Generosity, honor, steadfastness, vitality — these are prerequisites and accompaniments of shi-nè / lha-tong, not additional practices to be done elsewhere.
  3. Supplies the three-sphere mapping as a doctrinal bridge. Patience / vitality / generosity map to chö-ku / long-ku / trül-ku, making the three kāyas accessible through the everyday-ethical register of the paramitas.

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