Wisdom in Buddhism - From The Visuddhimagga

From The Visuddhimagga

In the 5th-century exegetic Visuddhimagga, Buddhaghoṣa states that the function of paññā is "to abolish the darkness of delusion" and that it is "manifested as non-delusion." Its proximate cause is concentration.

Buddhaghoṣa provides the analogy of a tree to discuss the development of paññā:

• The soil of the tree are the:
  • five aggregates
  • twelve sense bases and 18 elements
  • 22 faculties
  • four noble truths
  • dependent origination.
• The roots are:
  • purification of virtue
  • purification of consciousness.
• The trunk is made up of:
  • purification of view
  • purification by overcoming doubt
  • purification by knowledge and vision of what is and is not the path
  • purification by knowledge and vision of the way
  • purification by knowledge and vision.

Buddhaghoṣa instructs that, to achieve paññā, one should first learn about the soil, then the roots and then the trunk.

Buddhist scholar, Paul Griffiths, offers the following summary of Buddhaghoṣa's definition of paññā:

Buddhaghosa ... defines for us with some precision exactly what wisdom is: "Wisdom has the characteristic (lakkhaṇa) of penetrating the defining essence of things (dhammasabhāvapaṭivedha); its function (rasa) is to abolish the darkness of delusion (mohandhakāra-viddhaṇsana) which obscures the defining essence of things; its manifestation (paccupaṭṭhāna) is absence of delusion (asammoha). Because of the words: 'One who is concentrated knows and sees things as they really are' (samāhito yathābhūtaṃ jānāti passati), concentration is its immediate cause (padaṭṭhāna)" (14.7). The key term in this definition is yathābhūta, combined very frequently throughout the Pali literature with ñāṇa or dassana. Translated somewhat freely as "knowledge or vision in accordance with reality," this is the full and proper definition of paññā, wisdom, the desired aim of the man who practices insight meditation. Such a man can see the defining essence, the own-being (sabhāva) of everything, and his vision is no longer obscured by the threefold fault of passion (rāga), hatred (dosa), and delusion (moha).