Glossary

Ācariya: Teacher; mentor.

Anāgāmi: Non-returner. A person who has abandoned the five lower fetters that bind the mind to the cycle of rebirth (see saṅyojana), and who after death will appear in one of the Brahmā worlds called the Pure Abodes, there to attain nibbāna, never again to return to this world.

Anattā: Not-self; ownerless.

Anicca: Inconstant; impermanent.

Anupādisesa-nibbāna: Nibbāna with no fuel remaining (the analogy is to an extinguished fire whose embers are cold)—the nibbāna of the arahant after his passing away.

Apāya-mukha: Way to destitution—extra-marital sexual relations; indulgence in intoxicants; indulgence in gambling; associating with bad people.

Arahant: A person who has abandoned all ten of the fetters that bind the mind to the cycle of rebirth (see saṅyojana), whose heart is free of mental effluents (see āsava), and who is thus not destined for future rebirth. An epithet for the Buddha and the highest level of his Noble Disciples.

Ariya-sacca: Noble Truth. The word ‘ariya’ (noble) can also mean ideal or standard, and in this context means ‘objective’ or ‘universal’ truth. There are four: stress, the origin of stress, the disbanding of stress, and the path of practice leading to the disbanding of stress.

Āsava: Mental effluent or pollutant—sensuality, becoming, views, and unawareness.

Avijjā: Unawareness; ignorance; obscured awareness; delusion about the nature of the mind.

Āyatana: Sense medium. The inner sense media are the sense organs—eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. The outer sense media are their respective objects.

Bodhi-pakkhiya-dhamma: ‘Wings to Awakening’—seven sets of principles that are conducive to Awakening and that, according to the Buddha, form the heart of his teaching: [1] the four frames of reference (see satipaṭṭhāna); [2] four right exertions (sammappadhāna)—the effort to prevent evil from arising in the mind, to abandon whatever evil has already arisen, to give rise to the good, and to maintain the good that has arisen; [3] four bases of success (iddhipāda)—desire, persistence, intentness, circumspection; [4] five dominant factors (indrīya)—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment; [5] five strengths (bala)—identical with [4]; [6] seven factors for Awakening (bojjhaṅga)—mindfulness, investigation of phenomena, persistence, rapture, serenity, concentration, equanimity; and [7] the eightfold path (magga)—Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration.

Brahmā: ‘Great One’—an inhabitant of the heavens of form or formlessness.

Buddho (buddha): Awake; enlightened.

Deva: ‘Shining One’—an inhabitant of the heavens of sensual bliss.

Devadatta: A cousin of the Buddha who tried to effect a schism in the Saṅgha and who has since become emblematic for all Buddhists who work knowingly or unknowingly to undermine the religion from within.

Dhamma (dharma): Phenomenon; event; the way things are in and of themselves; the basic principles that underlie their behavior. Also, principles of behavior that human beings ought to follow so as to fit in with the right natural order of things; qualities of mind they should develop so as to realize the inherent quality of the mind in and of itself. By extension, ‘Dhamma’ is used also to refer to any doctrine that teaches such things. Thus the Dhamma of the Buddha refers both to his teachings and to the direct experience of nibbāna, the quality to which those teachings point.

Dhātu: Property; element; impersonal condition. The four physical properties or elements are earth (solidity), water (liquidity), wind (motion), and fire (heat). The six properties include the above four plus space and cognizance.

Dhutaṅga: Ascetic practices that monks may choose to undertake if and when they see fitting. There are thirteen, and they include, in addition to the practices mentioned in the body of this book, the practice of using only one set of three robes, the practice of not by-passing any donors on one’s alms path, the practice of eating no more than one meal a day, and the practice of living under the open sky.

Dukkha: Stress; suffering; pain; distress; discontent.

Evaṁ: Thus; in this way. This term is used in Thailand as a formal closing to a sermon.

Kamma (karma): Intentional acts that result in becoming and birth.

Khandha: Heap; group; aggregate. Physical and mental components of the sense of self, and of sensory experience in general (see rūpa, vedanā, saññā, saṅkhāra, and viññāṇa).

Kilesa: Defilement—passion, aversion, and delusion in their various forms, which include such things as greed, malevolence, anger, rancor, hypocrisy, arrogance, envy, miserliness, dishonesty, boastfulness, obstinacy, violence, pride, conceit, intoxication, and complacency.

Magga: Path. Specifically, the path to the disbanding of stress. The four transcendent paths—or rather, one path with four levels of refinement—are the path to stream-entry (entering the stream to nibbāna, which ensures that one will be reborn at most only seven more times), the path to once-returning, the path to non-returning, and the path to arahantship.

Majjhima: Middle; appropriate; just right.

Nibbāna (nirvana): Liberation; the unbinding of the mind from mental effluents, defilements, and the fetters that bind it to the round of rebirth (see āsava, kilesa, and saṅyojana). As this term is used to refer also to the extinguishing of fire, it carries the connotations of stilling, cooling, and peace. (According to the physics taught at the time of the Buddha, a burning fire seizes or adheres to its fuel; when extinguished, it is unbound.)

Nirodha: Cessation; disbanding; stopping.

Paññā: Discernment; insight; wisdom; intelligence.

Phala: Fruition. Specifically, the fruition of any of the four transcendent paths (see magga).

Rūpa: Form; body; physical phenomenon; sense datum.

Sabhāva dhamma: Condition of nature; any phenomenon, event, property, or quality as experienced directly in and of itself.

Sakidāgāmi: Once-returner. A person who has abandoned the first three of the fetters that bind the mind to the cycle of rebirth (see saṅyojana), has weakened the fetters of sensual passion and irritation, and who after death is destined to be reborn in this world only once more.

Sakya-putta: Son of the Sakyan. An epithet for Buddhist monks, the Buddha having been a native of the Sakyan Republic.

Sallekha-dhamma: Topic of effacement (effacing defilement)—modesty, being content with what one has, seclusion, unentanglement in companionship, persistence, virtue, concentration, discernment, release, and the direct knowing and seeing of release.

Samādhi: Concentration; the practice of centering the mind in a single sensation or preoccupation.

Sammati: Conventional reality; convention; relative truth; anything conjured into being by the mind.

Sampajañña: Alertness; self-awareness; presence of mind; clear comprehension.

Sandiṭṭhiko: Self-evident; immediately apparent; visible here and now.

Saṅgha: The community of the Buddha’s disciples. On the conventional level, this refers to the Buddhist monkhood. On the ideal level, it refers to those of the Buddha’s followers, whether lay or ordained, who have attained at least the first of the transcendent paths (see magga) culminating in nibbāna.

Saññā: Label; allusion; perception; act of memory or recognition; interpretation.

Saṅyojana: Fetter that binds the mind to the cycle of rebirth (see vaṭṭa)—self-identification views, uncertainty, grasping at precepts and practices; sensual passion, irritation; passion for form, passion for formless phenomena, conceit, restlessness, and unawareness.

Sati: Mindfulness; self-collectedness; powers of reference and retention.

Satipaṭṭhāna: Frame of reference; foundation of mindfulness—body, feelings, mind, and phenomena, viewed in and of themselves as they occur.

Sotapanna: Stream winner. A person who has abandoned the first three of the fetters that bind the mind to the cycle of rebirth (see saṅyojana) and has thus entered the ‘stream’ flowing inexorably to nibbāna, which ensures that one will be reborn at most only seven more times.

Taṇhā: Craving—the cause of stress—which takes three forms: craving for sensuality, for becoming, and for no becoming.

Tapas: The purifying ‘heat’ of meditative practice.

Tathāgata: One who has become true. A title for the Buddha.

Ti-lakkhaṇa: Three characteristics found in all conditioned phenomena—being inconstant, stressful, and not-self.

Ugghatitaññū: Of swift understanding. After the Buddha attained Awakening and was considering whether or not to teach the Dhamma, he perceived that there were four categories of beings: those of swift understanding, who would gain Awakening after a short explanation of the Dhamma, those who would gain Awakening only after a lengthy explanation (vipacitaññū); those who would gain Awakening only after being led through the practice (neyya); and those who, instead of gaining Awakening, would at best gain only a verbal understanding of the Dhamma (padaparama).

Vassa: Rains Retreat. A period from July to October, corresponding roughly to the rainy season, in which each monk is required to live settled in a single place and not wander freely about.

Vaṭṭa: The cycle of death and rebirth. This refers both to the death and rebirth of living beings and to the death and rebirth of defilement in the mind.

Vedanā: Feeling—pleasure (ease), pain (stress), or neither pleasure nor pain.

Vinaya: The disciplinary rules of the monastic order. The Buddha’s own name for the religion he founded was ‘this dhamma-vinaya’—this doctrine and discipline.

Viññāṇa: Consciousness; sensory cognizance.

Vipassanā:Clear intuitive insight into physical and mental phenomena as they arise and disappear, seeing them as they are in terms of the three characteristics and the four Noble Truths (see ti-lakkhaṇa and ariya-sacca).

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If anything in this translation is inaccurate or misleading, I ask forgiveness of the author and reader for having unwittingly stood in their way. As for whatever may be accurate, I hope the reader will make the best use of it, translating it a few steps further, into the heart, so as to attain the truth to which it points.