Categories: Cosmic Messengers
May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you all!
In our exploration of the spiritual life, we have previously touched upon the profound topic of ‘Cosmic Agents’, beings who have come into this human world with a special purpose. This teaching builds on that foundation, delving into a subject of immense importance: the practice of fulfilling Paramita. The Paramita are the spiritual perfections, the noble qualities cultivated over countless lifetimes on the path to awakening.
This article is a practical guide for you. Its purpose is to help you recognize your own journey of fulfilling Pāramitā and to understand how to consciously continue this sacred work. We will not revisit the details of the different types of Cosmic Agents here; if you are new to this concept, we encourage you to explore our previous articles on the topic. For now, let us focus on the journey ahead. If you have ever felt an inner inkling, a deep spiritual calling that you are here to cultivate certain qualities, this teaching is for you.
Discovering Your Path Through Ancient Wisdom
How do you begin to recognize the specific perfections you are meant to cultivate? The path of fulfilling Pāramitā is not a blind one. The wisdom is available in the rich tapestry of Buddhist teachings. You can explore sources like:
- The Jātaka Pāli and its commentary, the Jātaka Aṭṭhakathā, which contain the stories of the Buddha’s previous lives as a Bodhisatta.
- The Pansiya Panas Jātaka Potha, a beloved collection of these stories.
- Modern scholarly works like the Venerable Rerukane Nāyaka Thero’s book on the Pāramitā.
By reading these, you will see how a Great Being, a Mahā Bodhisatta aspiring to Buddhahood, practices the ten perfections, giving away even his eyes, flesh, and blood; cultivating boundless patience and loving-kindness. This journey spans an unfathomable length of time, sometimes counted in twenty-four incalculable aeons, perfected through actions of body, speech, and mind. It is a serious and profound undertaking.
Once you receive an inkling through spiritual means that you are on such a path, the next step is to consciously engage in it. This is where your personal practice begins.
Laying the Foundation: Daily Practice and Generosity
Once you recognize this potential path, your spiritual life must begin in earnest. The first step is to establish a daily practice of Buddha Vandanā, or paying homage to the Buddha. This is a universal starting point, free from any distinctions of race, religion, caste, age, beauty, education, or wealth. It is for everyone.
You can start simply by reciting the Three Suttas (Mangala, Ratana, and Karaniya Metta Suttas) from a Pāli chant book. As you progress, you can include other protective chants like the Jinanpañjara or the Aṭavisi Pirita. Make this a morning and evening habit. Even if you are incredibly busy, a professional, a business owner, a university student, or a parent, try to do this at least once a day. Manage your time to create this sacred space for yourself.
But this alone is not enough for fulfilling Paramita. The next step is to engage in acts of generosity, or what is known as the Dāna Paramitas. As you practice, you will begin to feel a natural inclination. For example, if your primary perfection for this era is generosity, you will feel a deep, spontaneous urge to give.
You might find joy in offering food to monks, helping the poor, building homes for the needy, or constructing dwellings for monastics. The specific forms of giving are many. By engaging in these acts, you begin the conscious work of fulfilling Paramita.
The Path of Virtue (Sīla): A Compassionate Approach
The next essential practice is to cultivate virtue, or Sīla. As you read this, you may not consider yourself a virtuous person. You could be anyone, the teaching is all-embracing. You might be a prostitute, a drunkard, a womanizer, or even a murderer. You might be someone who doesn’t even keep the Five Precepts, the most basic ethical guidelines in Buddhism. You might keep some, but not others. You might be someone who harms others, or not. Wherever you are right now, make a determination today: ‘I will practice, little by little.’
We often advise those new to meditation that if you find it hard to perfect your virtue all at once, prioritize the meditation. As you continue to meditate, a natural desire to live a more virtuous life will arise. Your Sīla may break. That is okay. Do not let it discourage you. Simply re-establish it and try again. This process naturally helps you correct your shortcomings.
For laypeople, the goal is to establish yourself in the Five Precepts. For monks who may be reading, it is to protect your monastic discipline. If you have a long history of fulfilling Paramita across many lives, keeping Sīla may come easily. If your practice is newer, it may break more often. Do not let this become a source of anxiety. Instead, use it as motivation to develop further through chanting, meditation, and consistent effort. Gradually, your virtue will strengthen and become second nature.
Meditation (Bhāvanā): The Key to Unlocking Your Potential
The third pillar is meditation, or Bhāvanā. For anyone who is consciously fulfilling Pāramitā, meditation is absolutely essential. It is through meditation that we cultivate the mind. Now, it’s important to understand a key point. Some beings have received a niyata vivarana, a definite prophecy from a past Buddha, that they will achieve a specific goal in a future life,such as becoming a Buddha, or the mother, father, or wife of a Buddha.
For such individuals, attaining Nibbāna in this current life under the dispensation of Gautama Buddha is not possible, as their journey is set for a future time.
However, there are also Cosmic Agents whose perfections are already complete and who can attain the supreme goal of Nibbāna in this very life. If you are such a person, you should strive with your utmost effort to realize the fruits of the path. The Buddha declared that as long as the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are practiced correctly, the world will not be empty of Arahants (fully awakened beings).
For those on a long-term path of fulfilling Pāramitā, meditation helps develop psychic abilities (abhiññā), deep states of concentration (jhāna), and awakens inner energies like Kundalini. You don’t need to master all of them, and they may manifest in a gentle or moderate way rather than their most powerful forms. Regardless of your busy schedule, remember to dedicate time, even half an hour, an hour, or two, to this essential practice.
Like Attracts Like: How Present Practice Awakens Past Strengths
Why are these practices, giving, virtue, and meditation, so critical? In our journey through saṃsāra, the cycle of birth and death, we do not carry any of our physical belongings with us. The only things we carry forward are the energies we accumulate within our midstream. These are the energies of our wholesome deeds: the power of our virtue, our concentration, our generosity, our meditative development, and all ten perfections.
Practicing now does two things. First, it adds to this spiritual wealth for your future journey. More importantly, it reawakens the dormant energies from your past. Imagine you have practiced for a thousand lifetimes. But in this life, due to certain conditions, that vast potential lies dormant, suppressed.
It’s like water mixing with water; a liquid joins with a liquid. To bring your past strengths to the surface, you must engage in the same kinds of wholesome actions in this life. As you practice giving, virtue, and meditation now, the accumulated energies of those same actions from your past will rise up, merge, and mix with your present efforts.
This is not based on the Western psychological concepts of a conscious and subconscious mind, which are not found in the Abhidhamma (the Buddha’s higher teachings). The Buddhist model speaks of ultimate realities: Mind (Citta), Mental Factors (Cetasika), Matter (Rūpa), and Nibbāna.
Your past wholesome energies are lying dormant within this midstream. When reawakened, these powerful energies mature your wisdom (paññā), heighten your intelligence, elevate your mental state, and enhance your psychic abilities. This is the reason we must practice now.
Self-Verification: From Faith to Direct Knowing
As you continue this practice over time, something remarkable happens. You will develop the ability to confirm your own path without needing help from anyone, not from psychics, astrologers, occultists, or even another spiritual teacher. Through your own spiritual faculties, you can find the answers within.
With the development of powers like the Divine Eye (dibba-cakkhu) or the knowledge of past lives (pubbenivāsānussati-ñāṇa), you can look into your own past and see for yourself: ‘Have I received a definite prophecy from a Buddha to become a Buddha’s mother? Or am I on this path without a prophecy yet?’ Some develop this knowledge through a deep, intuitive knowing that arises on its own, even without the full opening of a ‘third eye’. You will come to understand yourself directly.
Once you have this self-realization, you can make a powerful aspiration, or adhiṭṭhāna. You can dedicate the merit from all your practices, your offerings, your virtue, your celibacy, your meditation, your loving-kindness, to your ultimate goal. You can resolve: ‘May all this merit be a cause for my aspiration to Supreme Buddhahood,’ or ‘…to become the wife of a Bodhisattva and attain Nibbana through him.’ This focused intention directs all your accumulated spiritual energy towards the goal of fulfilling Pāramitā.
Aligning with Your Life’s Purpose and Divine Assistance
After establishing your practice and confirming your path, you can use meditation to determine which specific perfection is most important for you to cultivate in this particular life. You can make an aspiration, asking for clarity. The answer may not come at once, but with persistence, it will.
Sometimes, even without a clear vision, you will begin to feel a natural inclination. You might suddenly feel, ‘In this period, I must practice more generosity,’ or ‘I must donate my body’s organs,’ or ‘Now is the time to perfect patience (khanti),’ or ‘I must focus on lovingly raising a child.’
When this happens, you are not alone. Deities of right view, be it Brahmas, Devas, or even righteous Yakkhas, Nāgas, or Gandhabbas, who watch over you will help. They will create the circumstances and guide you towards the specific duties you need to perform for the sake of fulfilling Pāramitā.
This divine assistance is another factor in your journey. As these pieces fall into place, your perfections will naturally be fulfilled in a systematic way, and your wisdom will continue to mature, allowing you to see your progress with ever-increasing clarity as you journey through life.
A Word of Caution: Walking the Path with Humility and Wisdom
Finally, a crucial piece of advice. Do not go around talking excessively about your spiritual aspirations or experiences. Do not announce them with excitement to everyone you meet. Just as we advise meditators not to discuss their experiences with those who are faithless or skeptical, you must be discreet about your path of fulfilling Pāramitā. Why? Because those who cannot understand will simply label you as mentally ill.
There are, unfortunately, individuals who forcefully fabricate spiritual identities, claiming things they do not have, and end up in a state of mental delusion. Skeptics see these cases and wrongly conclude that everyone on such a path is ‘crazy’. Do not allow yourself to be labeled. Do not invite this judgment. Practice your path in quiet dignity.
However, if you meet another true traveler, another Cosmic Agent on their path, you must help them. Explain these principles to them, guide them in the practices, teach them how to chant and meditate, and point them towards the right books and teachings. By helping another on their journey, you are also fulfilling Pāramitā. This act of compassionate guidance itself becomes part of your spiritual perfection. Understand this, and act accordingly.
Conclusion: Your Path Forward
By now, you should have a clearer understanding of how a Cosmic Agent can identify and begin the work of fulfilling Pāramitā. You have a framework for how to engage with this profound journey practically and consciously. This teaching is offered so that you may grasp these points well, recognize your own path, and proceed with wisdom and confidence.
We will continue to explore related topics in future articles to support you on your journey. For today, we conclude this teaching here.
May the powerful blessings of the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Saṅgha give you the strength to understand these matters clearly, to identify your own path of perfections, and to proceed with the practical work of fulfilling Pāramitā. May you have the ability to walk this path successfully.
We invite you to walk this path with us. Read our teachings, and most importantly, apply them practically in your own life. as you practice, questions will naturally arise. Please feel free to share your experiences and questions in the comments section below, via email or contact form. I will do my best to offer guidance in future talks based on your progress. For now, begin this practice with an open heart and a mind free from expectation. Cultivate it correctly, and may you find the clarity and peace you seek.
Thank you for joining us. We hope this blog will be of great benefit to your spiritual journey.
May you all be well and happy.
May the blessings of the Triple Gem be with you all!
