The Ten Perfections (Pāramī) in Theravāda

By Tim Yu, Founder & Editor · Published 21 October 2026

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The ten perfections (pāramī) are the qualities the Theravāda tradition says a future Buddha brings to completion over many lives: giving, virtue, renunciation, wisdom, energy, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness and equanimity, in that order. The list is not in the early discourses. It is found in the Buddhavaṃsa, the Cariyāpiṭaka and the Apadāna, late books of the Pali Canon, and was systematised in Ācariya Dhammapāla’s commentary. It is not the Mahāyāna list of ten.

The six perfections of the Sanskrit tradition, which the Mahāyāna made its own, and how the two lists overlap, are on the six perfections, part of our core teachings of Buddhism; this page goes into the Theravāda texts themselves.

The ten at a glance

The order is the Buddhavaṃsa’s (Bv 1:77; Bv 2:116–161 numbers each first to tenth), and Dhammapāla, Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu and Ajahn Sucitto keep it. Among them only the English varies; the Cariyāpiṭaka alone puts resolve before truth (below). The definitions paraphrase Dhammapāla in Bhikkhu Bodhi’s translation.

The bracketed renderings are Ṭhānissaro’s (discernment, persistence, endurance, truth, goodwill) and Bhikkhu Sujato’s (ethics, acceptance, resolve, love). Patience and equanimity share the earth image with different points: the patient earth endures without anger, the equanimous earth shows neither anger nor favour. For two of the ten on their own, see dāna and patience in Buddhism.

Where the list comes from

Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu is plain: “This list does not come from the original suttas.” Single perfections are taught there, but the list as a whole dates from “about two or three hundred years after the Buddha passed away”, probably just before the Canon closed. Bhikkhu Bodhi says the set of ten “comes from the Buddhavaṃsa”; Ṭhānissaro associates it with the Jātaka tales. SuttaCentral places the Buddhavaṃsa and Cariyāpiṭaka in a devotional literature of the second and first centuries BCE. Jeffrey Samuels, citing Gombrich and Warder, notes that the Buddhavaṃsa, though a relatively late addition to the canon, may date from the third to the second century BCE (see bodhisattva vows); on either dating it is late. Ajahn Sucitto, whose book on the perfections grew from talks at Cittaviveka (Chithurst Buddhist Monastery) in the UK, adds the comparative point: “Different schools of Buddhists selected different qualities to be pāramī”, and the school later called Theravāda settled on ten.

The first naming is in Buddhavaṃsa 1, a late verse book of the Pali Canon’s Khuddaka Nikāya. Sāriputta asks the Buddha about his original aspiration and about his ten perfections, giving them in the standard order (Bv 1:77). The next verse asks how the upapāramī and the paramatthapāramī were fulfilled (Bv 1:78), so the two higher grades are already in the canonical text, not first invented by the commentary. Editions number the verses differently. Bodhi’s note on Dhammapāla’s list keeps a hedge, calling the passage “untraced” and pointing to Bv I v.76; Rhys Davids numbers the Sumedha verses below 125–177; we use SuttaCentral’s numbering.

Sumedha searches out the ten (Bv 2:115–167)

Buddhavaṃsa 2 tells how the ascetic Sumedha makes his aspiration before the Buddha Dīpaṅkara and receives his prediction that he will become a Buddha (that scene, and his refusal of arahantship, is told on bodhisattva vows). Only after the prediction does he resolve to search out the “Buddha-making conditions, this way and that”, in Rhys Davids’ rendering (Bv 2:115). He finds them one at a time, each with its simile. The first is the water-jar, in Rhys Davids’ public-domain translation:

After the tenth he concludes that there are no others (Bv 2:165), and the earth quakes as he reflects on them (2:166–167). The prose of the Nidānakathā, the introduction to the Jātaka commentary and so a later layer, adds that the ten are found in no heaven or quarter but “reside in my heart of flesh”.

The Cariyāpiṭaka: seven headings, ten in the closing verses

The Cariyāpiṭaka (“Basket of Conduct”) is, in Bhikkhu Sujato’s words, “one of the latest books in the Pali canon”, and SuttaCentral calls it an early systematisation of the bodhisatta’s path. Its 35 short poems retell past lives in three chapters, and each poem is filed under a perfection: giving (Cp 1–10), ethics (Cp 11–20), renunciation (Cp 21–25), resolve (Cp 26), truth (Cp 27–32), love (Cp 33–34) and equanimity (Cp 35). That is seven. Wisdom, energy and patience have no poems of their own. The book also departs from the usual order in one place: it puts resolve before truth.

Its opening verse sets the span of practice at “a hundred thousand eons and four incalculable ages” (Cp 1:2). The last poem is the equanimity story: the bodhisatta sleeps in a charnel ground on a skeleton, mocked by some villagers and brought incense, flowers and food by others, and treats both alike. Its closing verses then gather all ten. Wisdom appears there as questioning the wise (“I inquired of the astute”, paṇḍite paripucchitvā), the image of the Buddhavaṃsa’s wisdom simile. Bhikkhu Sujato’s translation is CC0:

The last stanza’s gain and loss, fame and disgrace are four of the eight worldly conditions (lokadhamma) the suttas list; see the eight worldly winds. Nearly the same four stanzas, with pleasure and pain in place of fame and disgrace, stand in the Buddha chapter of the Apadāna (Ap 1:75–78), a book SuttaCentral calls “a much later counterpart to the Theragāthā”.

Dhammapāla’s Treatise on the Pāramīs

A detailed Theravāda account is a treatise by the commentator Ācariya Dhammapāla, preserved in his commentary to the Cariyāpiṭaka. Bodhi’s translation is abridged in places.

What makes a virtue a perfection. Dhammapāla defines the pāramī as qualities such as giving “accompanied by compassion and skillful means”, and untainted by craving, conceit and views. He derives the word from parama, “supreme”: the perfections are the conduct of supreme beings. (Ṭhānissaro’s two glosses on the word are in the glossary.)

What they rest on. The first condition is the great aspiration (abhinīhāra), voiced as “Crossed I would cross, freed I would free”. It succeeds only with eight qualifications, which the Buddhavaṃsa itself lists (Bv 2:59); the second is being male, a condition discussed on can a woman become a Buddha?. Great compassion and skilful means come next, skilful means being the wisdom that turns giving and the rest into requisites of awakening.

Why the order runs as it does. Dhammapāla gives two explanations. First, the order of teaching follows the order in which the perfections are undertaken, which follows the order in which they are investigated; Bodhi’s note reads this as an allusion to the bodhisatta’s investigation of the ten, as in Sumedha’s search above. Then, by “another method”, he gives reasons for every place in the sequence. Giving comes first because even ordinary people practise it, and because it is the least fruitful and the easiest. Virtue follows because it purifies both giver and receiver. Renunciation comes third as good conduct of mind after body and speech. Equanimity follows loving-kindness because it purifies it. Ṭhānissaro reads the same list differently: “There’s no clear progression from one perfection to the next.”

A borrowing. For giving, Dhammapāla names four “shackles”, each with a reflection that loosens it: not being used to giving, the poorness of the gift, its excellence and beauty, and worry over its loss. Bodhi notes that this section draws on the Mahāyāna Bodhisattvabhūmi, stripped of specifically Mahāyāna features, and calls the treatise “perhaps a unique instance” of a classical Theravāda work consciously borrowing from its northern cousin, without leaving Theravāda doctrine.

Thirty perfections: basic, intermediate, ultimate

Dhammapāla divides the ten into thirty: ten basic pāramī, ten intermediate (upapāramī) and ten ultimate (paramatthapāramī). For giving, the basic level is giving up children, wife and belongings such as wealth; the intermediate, giving one’s own limbs; the ultimate, giving one’s own life. The same three bases run through the rest: truthfulness at each level is not abandoning truth for the sake of belongings, of limbs, or of life. Rhys Davids’ 1880 translation of the Nidānakathā, the Jātaka commentary’s introduction, names the grades “Perfections”, “Lesser Perfections” and “Unlimited Perfections” and assigns limbs and property the other way round; this page follows Dhammapāla. The number thirty is itself canonical: the Apadāna’s Buddha chapter describes the Buddhas, near its opening, as complete in the thirty perfections (tiṃsapāramisampuṇṇā, Ap 1:6).

The commentary does not agree with itself about what the grades mean. “Some teachers” read them as mixed bright-and-dark qualities, purely bright ones, and qualities neither dark nor bright. “Others” read them as stages: begun at the start of the career, filled during bodhisattahood, completed at Buddhahood.

Bodhi sees in the grading, at most, a hint of a map. He writes that, unlike the Mahāyāna, the Theravāda “never developed a theory of stages”, though one may be implicit in the three grades. The Mahāyāna map, ten grounds with one perfection completed on each, is on the ten bhūmis.

Where meditation fits

Meditation is not one of the ten, but it is not missing. Dhammapāla places going forth, the ascetic practices, and jhāna through whichever of the forty meditation subjects suits a person under the perfection of renunciation. For the details he refers readers to the Visuddhimagga, adding that there they are explained for disciples, while here compassion and skilful means lead. (The forty subjects are set out on samatha meditation.) Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu puts it the same way: renunciation is “precisely the perfection under which meditation comes”.

Ṭhānissaro also says compassion and empathetic joy “come under” goodwill, so that, in his reading, all four brahmavihāras are included in the ten. And the bodhisatta’s wisdom is held back on purpose: in Dhammapāla’s account his insight goes only as far as “purification by knowledge and vision of the way”, and Bodhi’s note explains that in the Theravāda account a bodhisatta does not attain supramundane wisdom until the eve of his awakening. How the ten fold into the Mahāyāna six is on the six perfections.

Ten into four: the four foundations

Dhammapāla also gathers all ten under four “foundations” (adhiṭṭhāna, the same word as the eighth perfection, used here for the four bases): truth, relinquishment (cāga, which Sujato’s MN 140 below renders “generosity”), peace and wisdom. Truth grounds the perfections, relinquishment clarifies them, peace intensifies them and wisdom purifies them. Bodhi’s note points to the four’s canonical home, MN 140, a Majjhima discourse that explains them in relation to arahantship and does not mention the perfections at all:

The sutta puts wisdom first; Dhammapāla starts from truth. Ṭhānissaro builds his own teaching of the ten on the same four: discernment and goodwill under discernment; truth, virtue and persistence under truth; giving and renunciation under relinquishment; endurance and equanimity under calm. He calls the placement “somewhat arbitrary”.

The ten great births: the Jātaka culmination

The Jātaka collection ends with ten long tales, the Mahānipāta, named for their heroes and given here in the traditional order: Temiya, Mahājanaka, Suvaṇṇasāma, Nimi, Mahosadha, Bhūridatta, Candakumāra, Nārada, Vidhura and Vessantara. Justin McDaniel calls them “undoubtedly the most important Pali Buddhist stories” in Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, depicted in thousands of murals and reliefs. Ṭhānissaro writes that the Theravādins organised the collection to culminate in ten tales, one for each perfection (see the Jātaka tales).

Which tale goes with which perfection is less settled than that sounds. Reviewing Naomi Appleton and Sarah Shaw’s translation, McDaniel reports their point that the Thai scheme of one perfection per story began largely in the early 20th century, with the writings of the Sangharat Prince Jinavarasiriwadhana. It does not necessarily match the stories’ contents, nor the Burmese or Sri Lankan traditions. McDaniel adds that the Thai scheme “seems to be inspired more by the Cariyāpiṭaka” than by the Jātaka’s own introduction. One Burmese list, given by the British Library’s Curator for Burmese, San San May, pairs Temiya with renunciation, Nimi with resolution, Bhūridatta with perseverance and Candakumāra with forbearance, in her English. The Cariyāpiṭaka files the same heroes under its own headings, some of them unlike the Burmese list: Temiya under resolve (Cp 26), Nimi and Canda under giving (Cp 6–7), Bhūridatta under ethics (Cp 12). Ṭhānissaro adds that the Jātakas themselves “rarely explain” why a tale exhibits a given perfection.

Only one pairing appears, and agrees, in every source cited here that pairs these tales with perfections: Vessantara (Ja 547) is giving. The Cariyāpiṭaka’s version (Cp 9) has him give away the state elephant, his children and his wife, and has him explain:

Dhammapāla’s treatise sets limits that the poem does not state. A bodhisatta does not give weapons, poisons or intoxicants. Asked for his children, wife or servants, he does not give them “while they are as yet unwilling to go”, and never to cruel or demonic askers.

Who practises the perfections

Bodhi records that the school’s dominant view reserved the bodhisatta path for “the very rare and exceptional individual”. Yet “in established Theravada tradition”, he says, the perfections are not peculiar to future Buddhas: Buddhas, paccekabuddhas and disciples must all fulfil them, to different degrees and over different lengths of time. (See arahant, Buddha and bodhisattva.)

For a future Buddha the time is vast, and the commentary records more than one view of it. On the first, a bodhisatta in whom wisdom predominates needs at least four incalculable ages and a hundred thousand great aeons, the figure the Cariyāpiṭaka opens with; faith-predominant and energy-predominant bodhisattas need eight and sixteen incalculables. “Others say” the difference follows the keenness of their energy.

Ṭhānissaro’s point that Theravādins aspiring to arahantship cultivate the ten too is told on the six perfections; in the Jātakas, he adds, the future Buddha is “usually a layperson”, so the ten guide lay life. More on the school itself is on Theravāda Buddhism.

Practising the ten today

For people asking how to practise the Dhamma in daily life, Ṭhānissaro Bhikkhu calls the ten “a useful framework”. His study guide takes the approach he calls “following guidelines gleaned from the early canons”: it sets out numbered passages from the early texts under each quality, grouped under four aspects of determination that match the four foundations above. It is the place to see the single qualities taught in early texts. He also warns that without discernment the perfections are “simply generic virtues, common to all cultures”. So in his selection goodwill is not necessarily loving-kindness, since wishing others happiness need not mean wanting to be involved with them, and persistence is not simply brute force. Ajahn Sucitto writes that the ten “form a set of themes that are used in the Theravada tradition to this day”, practised at work, minding the children or stuck in a traffic jam.

Not the Mahāyāna ten

The words are cognate: Bodhi notes that pāramitā, the form Mahāyāna texts prefer, is “also used by Pāli writers”, as in the Buddhavaṃsa’s paññāpāramitaṃ (Bv 2:134). The difference is in the list. Later Mahāyāna texts have a ten of their own: the six of the Sanskrit tradition, giving, virtue, patience, energy, meditation and wisdom, plus four more so that one perfection completes each of the ten bhūmis. That list, in the Daśabhūmika’s order, is on the six perfections. One English word misleads. “Resolve” in Sujato’s English is the Theravāda adhiṭṭhāna, eighth of the Pāli ten, while Bodhi’s “resolution” is one of the four that later Mahāyāna texts added to the six: the same word in translation does not make them the same item. The two traditions are compared more broadly in Theravāda vs Mahāyāna.