“Success,” as it is generally understood, is nothing more than personal success in the present lifetime, things like fame, wealth, and power. In the teachings of Mahayana Buddhism, “success” means benefiting living beings, having successful cultivation, and becoming a Buddha or bodhisattva.

Quite a number of people believe that for Buddhist monastics to develop from ordinary people into sages they must cut themselves off from their family and loved ones and hide away in some remote mountain hermitage. Likewise, there is a saying in Buddhism that “All things are empty,” though this concept of “emptiness” is often misunderstood to mean that we should not want or pursue anything. This misapprehension recasts the Buddhist teaching on “emptiness” into nothing but meaningless talk about metaphysical ideas. But, according to Buddhism, success comes as the fruition of karmic causes and conditions. These instances of karmic fruition are also called paramitas.

Parami is an ancient Sanskirt word which means “to cross over,” in that one crosses from the shore of suffering over to the other shore of nirvana, while “ta” is an auxiliary particle that indicates completion. When the Buddhist sutras were translated from Sanskrit to Chinese, the choice was made to transliterate the term paramita, rather than translating its meaning, and most English translations follow in suit. This was done in order to preserve the concept as close to the time of the Buddha’s transmission of the Dharma and not to limit it by a particular translated term.

If we want to cross over affliction, trouble, and the cycle of birth and death, and transform suffering into happiness, partiality into universality, and affliction into enlightenment, we must rely upon the six paramitas. Also known as the “six perfections,” the six paramitas are six methods that enable us to cross over and transcend. The six paramitas are giving, morality, patience, diligence, meditative concentration, and prajna. Each of the paramitas will be explained more fully later.