Prajnaparamita

Prajñaparamita

Prajñaparamita (Skt. Prajñāpāramitā; Tib. ཤེར་ཕྱིན་, ཤེས་རབ་ཀྱི་ཕ་རོ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པ་, sherchin; wyl. sher phyin, sherab kyi parol tu shinpa) means 'Perfection of Wisdom', or more literally, ‘transcendent wisdom’. It refers to:

1. the sixth of the paramitas: perfect non-conceptual wisdom.
2. the class of Buddhist literature that was mainly discovered by Nagarjuna in the second century. Its central topic is emptiness.
3. the female deity who is the embodiment of transcendent wisdom.

Definition

"Prajnaparamita is the wisdom of directly realizing the non-conceptual simplicity of all phenomena, which has arrived at, or will lead one to, non-abiding nirvana."

Subdivisions

According to the teachings of the Abhisamayalankara, there are four subdivisions:

1. natural prajnaparamita
   
2. scriptural prajnaparamita
   
3. path prajnaparamita
   
4. resultant prajnaparamita

Literature

• Heart Sutra
• Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in One Hundred Thousand Lines
• Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in Twenty-five Thousand Lines
• Perfection of Wisdom Sutra in Eight Thousand Lines
• Seventeen mothers and sons
• Verse Summary of the Prajnaparamita

External Links

• Prajnaparamita Series on Lotsawa House
• Prajnaparamita (deity) outline page at Himalayan Art