 The term pāramitā, which I have been translating as “perfection,” could also be rendered as “transcendence.” In order to awaken fully, a bodhisattva must train in these qualities so deeply as to transcend how they are ordinarily understood. This is done by achieving what is known as “the threefold purity,” meaning that the bodhisattva does not regard either herself, the action being performed, or the object of that action as being a real, objectively existing thing. So, for example, someone who thinks that he has a substantial self and is giving real food to an objectively existing recipient would be showing worldly generosity. But someone who can give while regarding herself, the gift, and the recipient as like mirages, existing only from a certain point of view and not in objective reality, can practice the transmundane perfection of generosity. (On this see, e.g., Huntington trans. 1989, 150.)