The “six perfections” refers to the perfectly realized practice of giving, moral virtue, patience, vigor, meditative discipline, and world-transcending wisdom. The treatment of the six perfections constituting this text is a fourteen-chapter section from Arya Nagarjuna’s long and detailed commentary on the 25,000 line Mahaprajnaparamita Sutra. Nagarjuna’s treatment of the six perfections herein is so subtle and expansive that, at least in breadth and depth of analysis, it likely has no peer anywhere in the extant Buddhist canonical literature.

This is a translation of chapters 17-30 of Arya Nagarjuna's Exegesis on the Great Perfection of Wisdom Sutra, a free-standing section exclusively devoted to analyzing and explaining the bodhisattva's six perfections. Nagarjuna sets forth numerous stories, analogies, and analyses as he explores the deepest meaning of giving, moral virtue, patience, vigor, meditative discipline, and transcendent wisdom.

Chinese and English