We explore prajna as understanding with this passage from Norman Fischer's "The World Could be Otherwise":The Sanskrit word prajna is usually translated as “wisdom,” but I have decided to render it as understanding. Let me tell you why.

Wisdom is an old-fashioned word. We hardly use it these days. We think of people as quick, clever, intelligent, creative, innovative, knowledgeable, maybe as having good judgment, but seldom do we call them wise... Today’s world seems too fast and shifty for wisdom. The word wisdom suggests probity, character, the discernment that comes from long experience. A wise person is sober and careful, stodgy almost—and usually older. Synonyms for wisdom include sanity, caution, prudence.

Understanding, however, is an interesting double-sided word. It includes much of what the word wisdom does. If you understand, you see things clearly and from all sides, which will give you discernment. But the word understanding hides within it something more. Etymologically, to understand is “to stand with.” The “under” part of the word doesn’t mean under. It comes from a proto-Indo-European root that means “among, or between,” not “beneath.” So understanding means to be close to, to be with... The perfection of understanding includes both sides of what is meant by the English word understanding: to understand deeply how things are—to know, to see, how elusive and shimmering this life is and, at the same time, with and through this seeing, to be understanding of life, to care for it, to stand with it in empathy, love, and compassion.

Today’s talk comes from a year-long exploration of the paramitas, the perfecting qualities that lead to liberation, offered by HaiAn during the Thursday Meditations. Email haian@dharmapathways for the link to join these sessions on Zoom.

This session explores aspects of the sixth paramita, prajna or wisdom.  If you’re unfamiliar with the paramitas, Chapter 25 in Thich Nhat Hanh’s “The Heart fo the Buddha’s Teaching” offers an introduction and Norman Fischer’s “The World Could be Otherwise” gives a deeper dive. The paramitas are related to the parami, in Pali, for the Theravada tradition.

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