Living the Ten Pāramīs

Who are you becoming through the way you are living?

That is the question at the heart of Living the Ten Pāramīs.

The pāramīs are ten qualities developed within the Theravāda Buddhist tradition: generosity, ethical conduct, renunciation, wisdom, effort, patience, truthfulness, determination, loving-kindness, and equanimity.

They sound admirable. Living them is another matter.

Generosity changes when you want something in return. Patience gets tested when you are tired, angry, hurt, or inconvenienced. Renunciation becomes real when something in you insists, “I want this.” Truthfulness becomes harder when the truth could cost you something. Loving-kindness gets interesting when you genuinely do not like the person in front of you. Equanimity is tested when you care deeply about what happens but cannot control the outcome.

Living the Ten Pāramīs brings these ancient teachings directly into that territory.

G. Scott Graham draws especially from Ācariya Dhammapāla’s traditional analysis of the pāramīs, while asking a distinctly contemporary question: What would actually happen if we tried to develop these qualities in the lives we are living now?

The result is neither a scholarly commentary nor generic Buddhist inspiration. It is a practice book.

Each chapter explores what a pāramī means, what gets in its way, how it develops, how it interacts with the other qualities, and what you can deliberately practice. Personal stories and ordinary situations bring the teachings out of abstraction and into relationships, work, money, grief, desire, anger, physical pain, attachment, disappointment, praise, blame, and the choices we make when nobody is grading us.

You are practicing something every day whether you intend to or not.

Living the Ten Pāramīs asks you to notice what you are strengthening, and decide whether that is really the direction you want to go.