Mahayana literature gives prajna a distinctive status among the six perfections: without it, commentators argue, generosity, ethical conduct, patience, diligence and even concentration remain ordinary virtues rather than paramitas proper, because a paramita in the full sense requires being conjoined with insight into emptiness, the recognition that no giver, gift or recipient, no self performing an ethical act, possesses the fixed, independent existence ordinary perception assumes. This is the doctrinal core of the Prajnaparamita, perfection of wisdom, literature that gives the whole six fold scheme its name, an enormous body of sutras of which the Diamond Sutra and the much shorter Heart Sutra are the most widely read, both devoted almost entirely to stating and restating this single insight from different angles rather than to ethical instruction of the kind found in the other five perfections' supporting literature.
Paul Williams' account of Mahayana doctrinal foundations treats prajna's primacy as the feature that most sharply distinguishes the Mahayana path from earlier Buddhist ethical schemes, since the same generous act performed without this insight, however outwardly identical, is held to accumulate merit differently than one performed with it, a claim that gives the sixth perfection retroactive authority over how the first five are actually to be understood.