Training, Training, Training

We have an Irish friend who whenever she talks about the Dharma always says, “It’s all about training”. And she’s right. This last piece on the Perfections, before we go on to explore some bodhisattva meditations, is all about what training in the Perfections could look like and some of the things we might find coming up in ourselves when doing so.

But first another idea which is called the ‘two accumulations of merit and wisdom’. This one is important because it contains a hidden kindness. One of the great weaknesses of the secular mindfulness world is that we are either in or out depending on whether we are doing the meditation or not. In practice this means that most of us are very quickly out once our eight-week course is finished because going it alone afterwards is almost impossible. This is not a problem within Buddhism because we can be a practitioner of the Dharma and never meditate - which is probably the case for the vast majority of Buddhists throughout the world. This is because there’s a belief that living a kind and considerate life will create an accumulation of good karma - called ‘merit’ - that will at some point lead to the circumstances in which we can meditate and accumulate the wisdom that leads to realisation. However, and here is the kindness. It also means that for those of us who are patchy or indifferent meditators, when in periods of not meditating, we can still be fully engaged in the Dharma. That is, be members of the Buddhist Sangha, simply by continuing to take refuge and being committed to living by Buddhist values as best we can. No one is in or out depending on the quality of their meditation practice while at the same time it remaining true that meditation is necessary if we wish to become realised. Accumulating good karma - merit - though good, if we wish to achieve realisation is not enough - we do need both. This said let’s look at training in the Perfections each in turn with particular attention to how to make these qualities even more present in our lives.

Generosity

I have always worried that I am not generous enough. It’s not that I am not generous but I can feel a little tight knot somewhere inside that is easily triggered and it scares me because I believe generosity is fundamentally necessary for the practice of the Dharma. Here training is acknowledging this felt sense and intentionally doing something different. Open my clenched hand and heart. I have discovered I have to practice this over and over again. Closing is such a habit

Morality

On the other hand I have come to love sila, which we may translate as ethics or morality, because it’s all about relationships and interdependency. How we act, communicated and earn money is a really important area of training because fundamentally it’s about how we treat ourselves, others and world around us. Just think how the conflicts of our poor world would be radically changed if these Buddhist values were more widely embraced. If we really stopped and recognised that everything we do is connected to everything else and therefore cruelty and ignorance spreads out like ripples on a pond but then so do compassion and wisdom. Being kind really does matter. Noticing when we are not is part of the training.

Patience

I’m also OK with patience. I like its duel meanings of being patient, taking time to let something happen, and acceptance, which is not being at war with either ourselves or our circumstances. This issue of being at war, lacking acceptance, is a really big one because it’s a source of such widespread unhappiness. However this doesn’t come easily and being mindful of the felt sense of conflict within us - pushing and shoving, irascibility, short temper, frustration - and learning to relax is hard. Training in patience also links to the teaching on the first and second arrows. Circumstances are always shooting arrows into us - it’s inevitable. However, we can choose whether we shoot further arrows into ourselves and this is where acceptance comes in. Acceptance does not mean surrendering to the first arrow, but it does mean accepting this is what has happened and then deciding on the most skilful way to respond. Learning to spot the second arrow - which are frequently very sneaky - is another area of crucial training.

Diligence

This is second source of concern for me because I fear that deep down I am really a lazy person. My school report still haunts me - could do better if he tried. I think most Buddhist would-be meditators are a little persecuted by this as we all feel guilty about not meditating enough - I certainly do. And yet this has to be balanced by patience or it too becomes another battlefield where we fight with ourselves. Tsoknye Rinpoche has a phrase for this. He says a practitioner must have guts. This is an interesting one because it could so easily mean over-riding our own sensitivities, however perhaps this is just what is necessary when these sensitivities are actually disguised defences. Something that protects of us from emotions we are afraid of but which when confronted and gently pushed through could be released, giving us more space.

Meditation

Which naturally leads to the fifth Perfection, meditation. This one we are going to spend so much time on I’m not going to say anymore on here. Besides, we all know it’s about training, training and training already. Believing we are being kind to ourselves by not practicing is frankly a delusion. Practice does really make perfect!

One last bit: We can arrange the two accumulations of merit and wisdom in two ways. The first demonstrates how the first five create the circumstances in which wisdom will arise.

And the second, the non-dual view, how each of the five Perfections are actually qualities or expressions of the awakened mind that radiate out to other sentient beings as our practice - our training - progresses.

This takes us back to the notion of relative and ultimate bodhichitta. Our training is a little like scratching at the wall of a dam with kindness. One day the wall will collapse and out will poor a universe of kindness.

NW. With thanks to Norma for her inspiration. 14 December 2025