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Tipitaka » Sutta Pitaka » Khuddaka Nikaya »
Dhammapada
Glossary
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- Aggregate (khandha):
- Any one of the five bases for clinging to a sense of self: form (physical phenomena,
including the body), feelings, perceptions (mental labels), thought-fabrications,
consciousness.
- Arahant:
- A "worthy one" or "pure one;" a person whose mind is free of
defilement and thus is not destined for further rebirth. A title for the Buddha and the
highest level of his noble disciples.
- Becoming (bhava):
- States of being that develop first in the mind and allow for birth on any of three
levels: the level of sensuality, the level of form, and the level of formlessness.
- Brahma:
- An inhabitant of the highest, non-sensual levels of heaven.
- Brahmin:
- The Brahmins of India have long maintained that they, by their birth, are worthy of the
highest respect. Buddhists borrowed the term "brahmin" to apply to arahants to
show that respect is earned not by birth, race, or caste, but by spiritual attainment
through following the right path of practice. Most of the verses in the Dhammapada use the
word brahmin in this special sense; those using the word in its ordinary sense are
indicated in the notes.
- Deva:
- Literally, "shining one." An inhabitant of the heavenly realms.
- Dhamma:
- (1) Event; a phenomenon in and of itself; (2) mental quality; (3) doctrine, teaching;
(4) nibbana. Sanskrit form: Dharma.
- Effluent (asava):
- One of four qualities -- sensuality, views, becoming, and ignorance -- that "flow
out" of the mind and create the flood of the round of death and rebirth.
- Enlightened one (dhira):
- Throughout this translation I have rendered buddha as "Awakened," and dhira
as "enlightened." As Jan Gonda points out in his book, The Vision of the
Vedic Poets, the word dhira was used in Vedic and Buddhist poetry to mean a
person who has the heightened powers of mental vision needed to perceive the
"light" of the underlying principles of the cosmos, together with the expertise
to implement those principles in the affairs of life and to reveal them to others. A
person enlightened in this sense may also be awakened, but is not necessarily so.
- Fabrication (sankhara):
- Sankhara literally means "putting together," and carries connotations of
jerry-rigged artificiality. It is applied to physical and to mental processes, as well as
to the products of those processes. In some contexts it functions as the fourth of the
five aggregates -- thought-fabrications; in others, it covers all five.
- Gandhabba:
- Celestial musician, a member of one of the lower deva realms.
- Heart (manas):
- The mind in its role as will and intention.
- Indra:
- King of the devas in the Heaven of the Thirty-three.
- Jhana:
- Meditative absorption. A state of strong concentration, devoid of sensuality or
unskillful thoughts, focused on a single physical sensation or mental notion which is then
expanded to fill the whole range of one's awareness. Jhana is synonymous with right
concentration, the eighth factor in the noble eightfold path (see note 191).
- Kamma:
- Intentional act, bearing fruit in terms of states of becoming and birth. Sanskrit form: karma.
- Mara:
- The personification of evil, temptation, and death.
- Patimokkha:
- Basic code of monastic discipline, composed of 227 rules for monks and 310 for nuns.
- Samsara:
- Transmigration; the "wandering-on"; the round of death and rebirth.
- Sangha:
- On the conventional (sammati) level, this term denotes the communities of
Buddhist monks and nuns; on the ideal (ariya) level, it denotes those followers of
the Buddha, lay or ordained, who have attained at least stream-entry (see note 22).
- Stress (dukkha):
- Alternative translations for dukkha include suffering, burdensomeness, and
pain. However -- despite the unfortunate connotations it has picked up from
programs in "stress-management" and "stress-reduction" -- the English
word stress, in its basic meaning as the reaction to strain on the body or mind,
has the advantage of covering much the same range as the Pali word dukkha. It
applies both to physical and mental phenomena, ranging from the intense stress of acute
anguish or pain to the innate burdensomeness of even the most subtle mental or physical
fabrications. It also has the advantage of being universally recognized as something
directly experienced in all life, and is at the same time a useful tool for cutting
through the spiritual pride that keeps people attached to especially refined or
sophisticated forms of suffering: once all suffering, no matter how noble or
refined, is recognized as being nothing more than stress, the mind can abandon the pride
that keeps it attached to that suffering, and so gain release from it. Still, in some of
the verses of the Dhammapada, stress seems too weak to convey the meaning, so in
those verses I have rendered dukkha as pain, suffering, or suffering
& stress.
- Tathagata:
- Literally, "one who has become authentic (tatha-agata)," or "one
who is really gone (tatha-gata)," an epithet used in ancient India for a
person who has attained the highest religious goal. In Buddhism, it usually denotes the
Buddha, although occasionally it also denotes any of his arahant disciples.
- Unbinding (nibbana, nirvana):
- Because nibbana is used to denote not only the Buddhist goal, but also the
extinguishing of a fire, it is usually rendered as "extinguishing" or, even
worse, "extinction." However, a study of ancient Indian views of the workings of
fire (see The Mind Like Fire Unbound)
reveals that people of the Buddha's time felt that a fire, in going out, did not go out of
existence but was simply freed from its agitation, entrapment, and attachment to its fuel.
Thus, when applied to the Buddhist goal, the primary connotation of nibbana is one
of release, along with cooling and peace. Sanskrit form: nirvana.
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