The Six Perfections (Pāramitā) of the Bodhisattva

By Tim Yu, Founder & Editor · Published 27 June 2026 · Updated 6 September 2026

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The six perfections (Sanskrit pāramitā; Pāli pāramī) are the six qualities a bodhisattva trains to completion on the Mahāyāna road to buddhahood: generosity, ethical discipline, patience, diligence, meditative concentration, and wisdom. The Buddha lists them in that order in The Question of Subāhu, then explains each one in turn.

They belong to the wider core teachings of Buddhism and give the bodhisattva ideal a daily shape. Theravāda has a list of ten pāramī of its own — a different list, and a genuine trap for readers, handled further down.

Where the list comes from

The Question of Subāhu opens with a bodhisattva asking the Buddha what qualities lead to swift awakening. The answer is the list itself, given before any explanation:

The six perfections, one by one

1. Generosity — dāna

Dāna is spelled identically in Sanskrit and Pāli. The Question of Subāhu is unusually concrete about it: bodhisattvas seek what they give in accordance with the Dharma, give without bias, and give neither for fame nor for the sake of a high rebirth. They honour the recipient whether or not that person is worthy. They give in proportion to what they have, and a single coin is given with the same cheerful, magnanimous mind as a hundred thousand gifts. The sūtra also sets a limit: bodhisattvas do not give away everything in a way that harms or neglects their parents, children, spouse or servants. (See our guide to dāna.)

2. Ethical discipline — śīla (Pāli sīla)

Śīla is what the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls “moral discipline”. The Question of Subāhu grounds it in the five precepts, kept “even at the cost of their own lives” — no killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying or drinking, and neither inciting others to these nor rejoicing when they do them. Divisive speech, harsh speech and idle chatter are abandoned alongside. What makes discipline a perfection rather than rule-keeping is the motive the sūtra attaches to every clause: each precept is kept in order to establish all beings in that same discipline. (See śīla.)

3. Patience — kṣānti (Pāli khanti)

Kṣānti, says the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, is a complex concept, difficult to render with a single English word. The entry distinguishes three aspects: enduring hardship and delay; remaining unangered when others harm us — the primary sense, better rendered “forbearance”; and staying calm rather than fearful when hearing teachings about ultimate truth. It draws a line worth keeping: someone with strong discipline restrains the expression of anger, while someone with patient endurance does not become angry in the first place. The Question of Subāhu agrees, saying bodhisattvas neither retaliate nor harbour resentment even when robbed, struck or slandered. (See patience in Buddhism.)

4. Diligence — vīrya (Pāli viriya)

Vīrya is not grim effort. The Stanford Encyclopedia describes it as the ability to pour energy enthusiastically into constructive activities that benefit oneself and others; Britannica renders it “vigour”. The Question of Subāhu gives it an image: facing beings without limit in every direction, the bodhisattva resolves, “I shall don armor to benefit this infinite multitude of beings.” The argument is arithmetical: once the armour is on, the roots of virtue from that intention grow “in each and every moment of thought”, even when one is careless, distracted or asleep. (Compare right effort.)

5. Meditative concentration — dhyāna (Pāli jhāna)

Dhyāna is defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia as the ability to maintain clear, stable attention during meditation; thoughts still arise, but they no longer pull the mind off course. The Question of Subāhu describes the wider discipline supporting it: seeing, hearing and thinking without clinging to the characteristics and features of what appears, and never forsaking meditative equipoise “whether they are walking, standing, sitting, lying, or silent”. The sūtra adds a plain domestic condition — contentment with whatever food, bedding and medicine one has. (See jhāna and Buddhist meditation.)

6. Wisdom — prajñā (Pāli paññā)

Prajñā — “insight” in 84000’s rendering — is the quality the Stanford Encyclopedia describes as allowing a person to make distinctions between phenomena and to understand things as they actually are. The Question of Subāhu begins it, strikingly, with study: seeking out those who are learned, hearing the Dharma, retaining it and reflecting on it, until one comes to know the constituents, the aggregates, the sense spheres, the truths of noble beings and dependent origination. In the Perfection of Wisdom literature that knowing deepens into direct insight into emptiness — the theme of the Heart Sutra. (See paññā.)

Why wisdom is called the crown

The sixth is not simply the last. 84000’s introduction to The Transcendent Perfection of Wisdom in Ten Thousand Lines puts the relationship in the classic image of the blind and their guide: unguided by the perfection of wisdom, “the five other transcendent perfections have no scope to attain omniscience”.

The Stanford Encyclopedia explains the mechanism without the metaphor. A perfection becomes transcendent through what it calls the threefold purity: the bodhisattva does not regard herself, the act, or its object as a real, objectively existing thing. Give real food, as a real self, to a real recipient, and you have practised worldly generosity; give while seeing giver, gift and receiver as mirage-like, and the same act becomes the perfection. The entry notes that pāramitā can be rendered “transcendence” as well as “perfection” — which is exactly the point.

From six to ten

Mahāyāna also knows a list of ten. Britannica describes it as the six expanded by four further virtues: skill in the means of helping others (upāya), the profound resolution to produce enlightenment (praṇidhāna), the perfection of the ten powers (bala), and the practice of transcendent knowledge (jñāna).

The reason for the longer list is structural, and Bhikkhu Bodhi states it plainly: the four were added “in order to co-ordinate on a one-to-one basis the list of perfections with the account of the ten stages of the bodhisattva’s ascent to Buddhahood.” The Ten Bhūmis — the Daśabhūmika, translated for 84000 by Peter Alan Roberts — is where that scheme is worked out. It walks a bodhisattva through ten grounds (bhūmi), naming on each the perfection that “predominates” there: generosity on the first, good conduct on the second, then patience, diligence, meditation and wisdom, then skill in methods on the seventh, aspiration on the eighth, strength on the ninth, and knowledge on the tenth, the ground called Cloud of Dharma (dharmameghā). (See the ten bhūmis.)

Where the traditions differ

Here is the trap. Theravāda also counts ten perfections, and it is not the Mahāyāna ten. Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu places the divergence in the early centuries after the Buddha’s death, when the schools were settling what the perfections were: the Theravādins specified ten and organised their Jātaka collection to culminate in ten tales, one per perfection, while the Sarvāstivādins — a different early Indian school, not a Mahāyāna one — specified six and organised their Jātakas accordingly.

The Theravāda list, as given in Acariya Dhammapāla’s commentary to the Cariyāpiṭaka (translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi), runs: giving (dāna), virtue (sīla), renunciation (nekkhamma), wisdom (paññā), energy (viriya), patience (khanti), truthfulness (sacca), determination (adhiṭṭhāna), loving-kindness (mettā) and equanimity (upekkhā). Bodhi’s note to that list keeps a hedge: the passage “is untraced, but see Buddhavaṃsa I, v.76” — a cross-reference, not a located source. (In SuttaCentral’s Mahāsaṅgīti edition the ten are named at Bv 1:77–78.) Only about half the list overlaps with the Mahāyāna six, and meditation is not named as a separate perfection at all.

What is shared is more interesting than the mismatch. That same commentary says the ten “become sixfold through their specific nature: as giving, virtue, patience, energy, meditation, and wisdom” — renunciation folded into virtue and meditation, truthfulness into virtue and wisdom, loving-kindness into meditation, equanimity into meditation and wisdom, determination into all. Bodhi reads the overlap as a sign of “a central core already forming before the two traditions went their separate ways”.

Who practises them is a separate question, and the answer is layered. In the commentarial literature the pāramī are a bodhisatta’s equipment: Bodhi introduces them as qualities to be fulfilled by a bodhisattva across the long course of his development, and in the Buddhavaṃsa verses Sāriputta is asking the Buddha about his own ten. But Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu records that many Theravādins have vowed to become bodhisattvas, and that because the perfections “differ only quantitatively for arahants”, Theravādins who aspire to arahantship cite the same ten as qualities they develop outside formal meditation — giving to develop generosity, building projects to develop endurance. He calls it “a common misunderstanding” that the Theravāda school teaches only the disciple’s path. (See our Theravāda and Mahāyāna comparison.)

How the perfections are practised

The Question of Subāhu has the Buddha say that bodhisattvas must “constantly and relentlessly” complete all six. Śāntideva’s Way of the Bodhisattva is the classic Mahāyāna manual for training in them.

The sūtra is also unusually kind about beginners. After every one of the six it repeats the same concession (Toh 70, 1.12, 1.31, 1.46, 1.61, 1.78 and 1.158): should bodhisattvas lack the capacity to train fully, they train “from time to time, or little by little”, and, taking another birth, do not lose heart or become discouraged. Each concession is followed by the same encouragement: forming, recalling and cultivating the resolve to awaken is itself, at 1.12, an “immeasurable, incalculable” instance of that very perfection. That is the perfections at ground level: a direction of travel rather than a standard to be met at once. (See also buddha-nature and how to practise compassion.)