Several realizations make wisdom more difficult to imagine than the other five ideals we have examined. Wisdom differs from the others in the extent to which it is readily identifiable and noticeable. When we look for acts of generosity, morality, tolerance, energy, and meditation, we know roughly where to look. Acts of generosity, for example, are located in a certain sphere of our lives; they are easily identified wherever something beneficial is intentionally and freely transferred from one person or group to another. But where do we look to find examples of wisdom? Nowhere in particular, or anywhere. There is no specific domain of wisdom. You can be wise or unwise in any dimension of life. Wisdom can be found at work in all of the other perfections and in everything we do, rather than in its own domain. There is wise giving, wise tolerance, wise eating, wise shopping, and so on. Wisdom appears at a more comprehensive level than the other perfections, and this is how it can guide, encompass, and perfect the other perfections.

The ideal of this fifth perfection is to live in a meditative frame of mind regardless of whether we happen to be meditating. The goal, therefore, is not always to be meditating, always to be practicing a preparatory activity, but rather to live in the spirit of composure and insight that the practice has produced.

Desire is the basis of motivation. It is the source of our energy. Without wanting something enough to motivate our will and energize our action, we are unlikely to pursue or get it. Imagine what it would be to eliminate all desire while still living a human life. Without desires we would be inactive and impotent. Lacking ambition, we would be without purposes and plans. Existing in so dispassionate a way that we desire nothing, we would be indifferent to any outcome; we would not care—about anything. Apathetic, that is, lacking pathos and passion, we would be devoid of feelings of any kind as well as the activities and spiritedness that follow from them. Although it is no doubt true that there have been a few aspirants who have understood the Buddha’s enlightenment to be a state of complete desirelessness, this is not the image of the compassionate and energized bodhisattva that we are likely to imagine and admire. A richer and more complete conception of Buddhist enlightenment encompasses and elevates desire rather than rejecting it. …

Those skilled in practices of mindfulness and in the discipline of character know how to assess desires. They consciously evaluate and rank desires, and when some of them are out of accord with chosen purposes—a “thought of enlightenment”—they also know how to extinguish them. Keeping these points in mind, we can still say, in the spirit of traditional forms of Buddhism, that the bodhisattva’s wisdom arises from having eliminated desires, as long as what we mean by that is that enlightenment is incompatible with many of our immature, uncultivated desires. Immature desires—based on a narrow self-understanding—are eliminated in the process of enlarging the sense we have of ourselves to encompass aspects of the world or ourselves previously beyond incorporation. Our very best desires, however—those honed by compassionate elevation of vision—need to be cultivated and maintained. Desire of this kind fuels our energy; it propels our most capacious vision.

Accepting the reality in which we stand, tolerant people do not indulge in moods of resentment; they do not waste energy resenting that things are as they are. In the grip of resentment, we falsify the world, refusing to face the reality that has come to be. Wise patience does not struggle in this way; it does not exhaust resources of mind and body wishing that things were other than they are. Resentment of the real undermines our best efforts to see what we face and to deal with it constructively. Ideally, the practices of tolerance and patience would release us from the grip of these agitations, freeing the mind to deal with the situation calmly and directly. Letting go of unhelpful distractions, we are in a much better position to participate thoughtfully and effectively in the world.

“Guarding awareness” in the realm of morality, while indispensable, also leads to certain problems. The most significant of these recognized in Buddhist texts is attachment to rules and procedures themselves. “Grasping” the precepts too firmly and too rigidly was thought to prevent the development of more skillful forms of moral awareness. “Clinging” to rules for monks and nuns stands in the way of a deeper moral consciousness, just as craving and attachment cloud perceptions of the world generally. Moreover, attachment to moral rules often undermines the compassionate and liberating connection to other people that morality intends to cultivate in a society. Wherever rule-following becomes mechanical and self-serving, where there is only joyless guarding of one’s own moral standing, there the “perfection” of morality is rendered impossible.

[T]he attitude of the giver and the spirit of the gift are essential to the practice of generosity. Calm and even-minded, the enlightened donor is not moved by anything but the welfare of human beings and the openness of heart entailed in noble giving. Therefore, no thought is given to the rewards or “fruit” that inevitably flow back to the donor from a genuine act of generosity. Although there will be rewards that are a natural consequence of an act of giving, focus on those “fruits” demean and undercut the act. The higher and more selfless the conception of the gift, the greater is the perfection of giving. Thus the Large Sutra ends a section on the perfection of generosity by warning that the bodhisattva “does not aspire for any fruit of his giving which he could enjoy in Saṃsāra, and it is only for the purpose of protecting beings, of liberating them, that he courses [i.e., trains] in the perfection of giving.” Indeed, any attitude of self-congratulation on the part of the practitioner of giving is disdained. Self-satisfaction in a good deed displays the weakness of that act of generosity; it demonstrates that the motive and self-conception behind it are still immature. Coveting neither reward nor honor nor gratitude, the bodhisattva gives simply because a need exists. He gives anything, including himself, for the sake of others and in so doing meditates on the idea that “what is my very own this is yours.”

[T]he Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom says: “But if it occurs to the bodhisattva, the great being, that ‘I course [train] in perfect wisdom, I develop perfect wisdom’ – if he perceives thus, then he moves away from perfect wisdom. … If the bodhisattva even perceives the perfection of wisdom, then he has fallen away from it.”

So, if you seek a kind of wisdom that is unchanging, an eternal wisdom that exists in and of itself, something that just is what it is without reference to context, relations, and time, then you seek it unwisely. The sutras recommend instead that you engage in the quest for wisdom without objectifying any of the elements in it—the seeker, what is sought, and the search are all “empty.”

Early Buddhist texts are insistent on the necessity of meditation in the quest for Buddhist enlightenment. Without this kind of intense and deliberate discipline, various forms of human diminishment were considered very likely to prevail. Early sutras name the “three poisons” – greed, aversion, and delusion – that were thought to dominate human minds. The kinds of calm, focused mentality formed in meditation were considered the most effective remedies for the “three poisons” of human life. When human greed prevails, we pull the world toward ourselves. When aversion dominates, we push the world away, and when delusion obtains, we are oblivious of our true circumstances, or hide in denial. The goal of meditative practice, therefore, is to eliminate the oppressive force of these obstructions so that the truth that is otherwise hidden from us is open to our minds. Particular meditations aimed at each of these poisonous obstructions were designed so that cures would be as appropriate as possible to the particular ailments they were meant to alleviate.

Wisdom is the sixth perfection, the final stage in the hierarchy of practices, and the most profound achievement for Buddhists. The other five practices can only reach a level of perfection when wisdom informs them thoroughly, altering their inner structure and deepest motivation. The difference between the ordinary practice of energetic striving and that same practice honed by wisdom is located in the quality of the conception of practice. Ordinary practice “perceives a basis,” that is, it operates as though the seeker, the act of seeking, and the energy sought are each separate and self-constituted entities. Ordinary practice “bases” itself on the naïve thought that all things are permanently identified by their “own-being.” This “common-sense” view fails to see what wisdom enables one to see, that there is no permanent “self-nature” separating the self from the energy that it seeks. …

Seeing all things wisely as “empty” of their “own-being” the bodhisattva begins to live differently in the world. Based on the vision that this perspective enables, this new way of living absorbs energy from the surrounding world and transmits quantities of energy that can be harnessed by others. Wisdom empowers that ability, in part by offering “freedom from the ideas of pleasant and unpleasant” and from all static dichotomies that keep us isolated and closed. Recognizing the contingent and ironic existence of all things, including one’s “self,” the bodhisattva is not overwhelmed by hardships. Although these hardships do not go away, their presence is “empty” of “own-being” and therefore open to a wide variety of conceptions and attitudes. Not bound to conventional self-understanding and not obligated to experience suffering and hardship as unbearable or insufferable, the bodhisattva attains levels of freedom, flexibility, and energy that are inconceivable in ordinary existence. It is in this light that the classic texts of Mahayana Buddhism envision the perfection of energy, and in this sense that they claim that “where there is energy, there is enlightenment.”