This essay continues our series on The Ten Paramis, taken from a talk given by Mark Donovan on February 10, 2026

This talk includes excerpts from Lila Kate Wheeler’s talk,
Parami of Truthfulness: Living the Truth, Dharma Seed 2010-10-25.  

Here is my effort to be truthful: It’s almost 10 am Tuesday morning, this morning, and this talk is not yet composed, there’s confusion, a feeling of some anxiety and cold sweat with each minute that passes, awareness of a background narrative of unworthiness, a sense of being stuck.  There’s some identification with this state - I AM these things - and yet I am also able to zoom out a bit and remember how these states historically arise and pass and to know deep down that I am much more than the mind objects presently arising.  This makes me think of Buddha sitting under the bodhi tree assailed by Mara: you’re unworthy of becoming the buddha, you’re not worthy of being free.  Maybe you can identify with that? Lila Kate Wheeler says: A big piece of the Buddha’s victory was being able to set aside that voice and go beyond it.  She says: One way of interpreting the earth-touching mudra - when the Buddha touched the Earth and called on it to witness his right to enlightenment, to exist - was that he dropped down from the level of the thoughts in his mind to a different form of reality. 

We experience this ourselves when we anchor attention in the body, ground our attention in the body, just having something where we know we were distracted when thinking that we can come back to, gives us a sense of the relativity of this whole world of thought.  That’s why we often emphasize the pause when you recognize you’re thinking, when you pause you’re no longer carried away by the stream of thoughts, you can actually take a stand somewhere else- touching earth, grounded.  And then you get a choice how you’re going to relate to those thoughts.  We’ve probably all had that experience of the thought balloon kind of popping and it was like being lost in a daydream and now I’m back to reality.

This essay is the fourth in a series on The Ten Paramis, taken from a talk given by Carol Russell on February 3, 2026


We’re offering a series of talks on the ten paramis, the ten perfections, positive aspects of our character that support our individual practice and our living in the world. We’ve been inviting you to take one each week and apply it in your life, practice it in your life, maybe be challenged, maybe be transformed by it. 

So far we’ve covered dana, generosity, sila, ethical living, and nekkhamma, renunciation.

If you recall from the intro to this series, we talked about two wings of the paramis: these ten qualities are rooted in both compassion and liberation, compassion and care for the world, and liberation from the greed, aversion, and ignorance of the unawakened mind.

Tonight, I’m talking about the fourth parami – wisdom, pañña in Pali, prajña in Sanskrit. Some teachers like to translate pañña as insight, which helps to broaden the meaning for me. 

One way to think of this unfolding of the ten perfections is that, in the first three paramis, we’ve laid a foundation with opening our hearts with generosity, awakened skill for living in a way that doesn’t cause harm, and we’ve developed our capacity to let go in a wholesome way. Now, wisdom will be our guide in developing all of the paramis.


Wisdom is a big topic in Buddhism. Buddhism is sometimes called a wisdom tradition or the path of wisdom. Wisdom has a superstar status in Buddhism. 

How to talk about the lofty subject of wisdom? Wisdom shows up uncountable times in the Pali Canon. It often comes up as references to being a wise person. I find it interesting to reflect on the difference between wisdom and being a wise person.

Commonly, wisdom in our culture is seen as more than simple knowledge. Knowledge is important. We might think of knowledge as one ingredient in a recipe that also includes experience and understanding such that we are able to make good and beneficial decisions. Wisdom is the practical application of all we have learned and experienced about well-being, ethical living, and the long-term consequences of our actions. We can be wise about many things in life.