Pāramitā is usually translated as perfection. It literally means gone to the far shore. On this shore we live inside ordinary confusion. Across the water is the other shore, and the Heart Sutra ends by naming the crossing: gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond. Every element in this painting is on the way somewhere. A bowl sits empty. In a Zen monastery each practitioner receives a set of nested bowls at ordination and keeps them for life. A full bowl holds what it already has. An empty bowl can receive the world. Small figures travel the canvas.
Ladders rise between levels, each one a stage of effort: the climb of discipline, the patience of practice, the step taken before the next step is clear. Boats carry the travelers. The Buddha compared his teachings to a raft, built of branches and reeds to cross a river and set down on the far bank. The boats here are the practice itself. Then the blue. Water and sky meet at the far edge and the line between them dissolves. The traveler arrives and finds that the far bank and the open sky were one field the whole time.
Stand at the left of the canvas and you are on this shore. Let the eye travel. Climb, board, cross, arrive in the blue.
