Prajna paramita is not newly gained by you, nor was it obtained by you before. Prajna paramita is selfless self, “selflessness.” In other words, it is another name of enlightening in emptiness. Without selfless self there is no enlightening phenomenon.
Maybe a wallet is a good example. You have a wallet. Everyone has a wallet. In everyone’s wallet there is something, some money, some dust, and there are many amounts of money outside of your wallet, too. This wallet is like our self. We say “it’s mine,” which is saying “I, I, I.” Inside the wallet there is maybe 10, or 100, while outside of the wallet are millions and billions. Usually we think of the self as the internal content of our wallet. Selfless self is an empty wallet, not caring how much is inside, how much is outside, because holding $10 in your wallet is holding the whole. If you become one hundred times a billionaire, your wallet is the same size, maybe an inside-out wallet! If you put your clothes on inside out and begin to speak, “I am Mary Kate,” that means outside of the clothes is Mary Kate. Do you understand this? If you own $10, it is like the little $10 is completely opened, outside the surface of the wallet. But you feel that $10 more is needed, and “Then I will have everything.” It’s the same way if you put on your clothes inside out and say, “I am Mary Kate.” It means you are everything, but the outside of the clothes is not “Mary Kate.” It means the $10 outside of the wallet is Mary Kate!
Selfless self means the wallet is actually always empty. In other words, you are always empty. The inside of the wallet, outside of the wallet, and you, yourself, are empty. But something extra appears on this empty occasion, which is that the inside is little and the outside is large. You have the sense of containing something inside, and an idea of something excluded, outside. But actually, when you contain something, you contain the whole and the container loses its meaning. That is what “selfless” means.