GLOSSARY
The following Pali words encompass concepts and levels of ideas for
which there are no adequate synonyms in English. The explanations of these terms have been
adapted from the //Buddhist Dictionary// by Nyanatiloka Mahathera.
-oOo-
//Anagami// -- The "Non-Returner" is a noble disciple on the
3rd stage of holiness.
//Anatta// -- "No-self," non-ego, egolessness, impersonality;
"neither within the bodily and mental phenomena of existence, nor outside of them can
be found anything that in the ultimate sense could be regarded as a self-existing real
ego-identity, soul or any other abiding substance."
//Anicca// -- "Impermanence," a basic feature of all
conditioned phenomena, be they material or mental, coarse or subtle, one's own or
external.
//Anusaya// -- The seven "proclivities," inclinations or
tendencies.
//Arahat/Arahant// -- The Holy One. Through the extinction of all
cankers, he reaches already in this very life the deliverance of the mind, the deliverance
through wisdom, which is free from cankers, and which he himself has understood and
realized.
//Ariya// -- Noble Ones. Noble Persons.
//Avijja// -- Ignorance, nescience, unknowing, synonymous with
delusion, is the primary root of all evil and suffering in the world, veiling man's mental
eyes and preventing him from seeing the true nature of things.
//Bhavaraga// -- Craving for continued existence; one of the seven
tendencies.
//Citta-viveka// -- Mental detachment, the inner detachment from
sensuous things.
//Devas// -- Heavenly Beings, deities, celestials are beings who live
in happy worlds, but are not freed from the cycle of existence.
//Dhamma// -- The liberating law discovered and proclaimed by the
Buddha, summed up in the Four Noble Truths.
//Ditthi// -- View, belief, speculative opinion. If not qualified by
"right," it mostly refers to wrong and evil view or opinion.
//Dukkha// -- (1) In common usage: "pain", painful feeling,
which may be bodily or mental. (2) In Buddhist usage as, e.g., in the Four Noble Truths:
suffering, ill, the unsatisfactory nature and general insecurity of all conditioned
phenomena.
//Jhana// -- Meditative absorptions. Tranquillity meditation.
//Kalyanamitta// -- Noble or good friend is called a senior monk who is
the mentor and friend of his pupil wishing for his welfare and concerned with his
progress, guiding his meditation; in particular the meditation teacher.
//Kamma/Karma// -- "Action" denotes the wholesome and
unwholesome volitions and their concomitant mental factors, causing rebirth and shaping
the character of beings and thereby their destiny. The term does not signify the result of
actions and most certainly not the deterministic fate of man.
//Kammatthana// -- lit.: "working-ground" (i.e. for
meditation) is the term for subjects of meditation.
//Kaya-viveka// -- Bodily detachment, i.e. abiding in solitude free
from alluring sensuous objects.
//Khandha// -- The five "groups", are called the five aspects
in which the Buddha has summed up all the physical and mental phenomena of existence, and
which appear to the ordinary man as his ego or personality, to wit: body, feeling,
perception, mental formations and consciousness.
//Lokiya// -- "Mundane," are all those states of
consciousness and mental factors arising in the worldling, as well as in the noble one,
which are not associated with the supermundane.
//Lokuttara// -- "Supermundane," is a term for the four paths
and four fruitions.
//Magga-phala// -- Path and fruit. First arises the path-consciousness,
immediately followed by "fruition," a moment of supermundane awareness.
//Mana// -- Conceit, pride, one of the ten fetters binding to
existence, also one of the underlying tendencies.
//Mara// -- The Buddhist "tempter" figure, the
personification of evil and passions, of the totality of worldly existence and of death.
//Metta// -- Loving-kindness, one of the four sublime emotions
(//brahma-vihara//)
//Nibbana// -- lit. "Extinction," to cease blowing, to become
extinguished. Nibbana constitutes the highest and ultimate goal of all Buddhist
aspirations, i.e. absolute extinction of that life-affirming will manifested as greed,
hate and delusion and clinging to existence, thereby the absolute deliverance from all
future rebirth.
//Nivarana// -- "Hindrances," five qualities which are
obstacles to the mind and blind our mental vision, and obstruct concentration, to wit:
sensual desire, ill-will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and skeptical doubt.
//Papanca// -- "Proliferation," lit. "expansion,
diffuseness," detailed exposition, development, manifoldness, multiplicity,
differentiation.
//Paticcasamuppada// -- "Dependent Origination" is the
doctrine of the conditionality of all physical and psychical phenomena.
//Puthujjana// -- lit. "one of the many folk," worldling,
ordinary man, anyone still possessed of all the ten fetters binding to the round of
rebirths.
//Sacca// -- Truth, such as the "Four Noble Truths."
//Sakadagami// -- The Once-Returner, having shed the five lower
fetters, reappears in the higher world to reach Nibbana.
//Sakkaya-ditthi// -- Personality-belief is the first of the ten
fetters and is abandoned at stream-entry.
//Samatha// -- Tranquillity, serenity, is a synonym of //samadhi//
(concentration).
//Samsara// -- Round of rebirth, lit, "perpetual wandering,"
is a name by which is designated the sea of life ever restlessly heaving up and down.
//Sangha// -- lit. Congregation, is the name for the community of monks
and nuns. As the third of the Three Gems and the Three Refuges, it applies to the
community of the Noble Ones.
//Samvega// -- "The sources of emotion," or a sense of
urgency.
//Sankhara// -- Most general usage: formation. mental formations and
kamma formations. Sometimes: bodily functions or mental functions. Also: anything formed.
//Silabbataparamasa// -- Attachment to mere rules and rituals is the
third fetter and one of the four kinds of clinging. It disappears on attaining to
stream-entry.
//Sotapatti// -- Stream-entry, the first attainment of becoming a noble
one.
//Vicikiccha// -- Skeptical doubt is one of the five mental hindrances
and one of the three fetters, which disappears forever at stream-entry.
//Vipassana// -- Insight into the truth of the impermanence, suffering
and impersonality of all corporal and mental phenomena of existence.
//Yatha-bhuta nana-dassana// -- The knowledge and vision according to
reality, is one of eighteen chief kinds of insight.