Prajnaparamita
Prajñaparamita (Skt. prajñāpāramitā; Tib. ཤེར་ཕྱིན་, ཤེས་རབ་ཀྱི་ཕ་རོལ་ཏུ་ཕྱིན་པ་, sherchin; Wyl. sher phyin, shes rab kyi pha rol tu phyin pa) means 'Perfection of Wisdom', or more literally, ‘transcendent wisdom’. It refers to:
- the sixth of the paramitas: perfect non-conceptual wisdom.
- the class of Buddhist literature that was mainly discovered by Nagarjuna in the second century. Its central topic is emptiness.
- 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."[1]
Subdivisions
According to the teachings of the Abhisamayalankara, there are four subdivisions:
- natural prajnaparamita
- scriptural prajnaparamita
- path prajnaparamita
- 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
Notes
- ↑ From The Words of Jikme Chökyi Wangpo by Khenpo Tsöndrü.
