A couple of nights ago, I picked up The Large Sutra on Perfect Wisdom and read a few more pages where I had last left off. The two chapters I read addressed the Mahayana Buddhist idea of the Six Perfections, especially generosity. It seemed timely:
Here a Bodhisattva, who courses towards enlightenment, and has stood firmly in the perfection of giving, gives a gift not for the sake of a limited number of beings, but, on the contrary, for the sake of all beings…
…His perfection of wisdom consists in that he sets up the notion that everything is made of illusion, and in that he gets at no giver, recipient, or gift…
…It is just as if a clever magician, or magician’s apprentice, were to conjure up a great crowd of people, and give food to the hungry, and thing upon thing to those in need of it. What do you think,… has this magician, or magician’s apprentice given anything to anyone?
morgannels 