Aggregate (khandha): Physical and mental components of sensory experience, which form the raw material for one’s sense of self: form (the body, any physical phenomenon); feeling; perception; thought-fabrications; and sensory consciousness (counting the intellect as the sixth sense).

Anusaya: Obsession, of which there are seven varieties: sensual passion, irritation, views, uncertainty, conceit, passion for becoming, ignorance.

Arahant: A person who has put an end to defilement and the effluents, and thus is not destined for future rebirth.

Bodhisattva: The Buddha prior to his Awakening.

Defilement (kilesa): Mental qualities that obscure the clarity of the mind. There are three basic sorts—passion, aversion, and delusion—but these can combine into a variety of forms. One standard list gives sixteen in all: greed, malevolence, anger, rancor, hypocrisy, arrogance, envy, miserliness, dishonesty, boastfulness, obstinacy, violence, pride, conceit, intoxication, and complacency.

Dhamma (Sanskrit: dharma): Dhamma with a small d (dhamma) means a phenomenon, an event, the way things are in and of themselves, their inherent qualities, the basic principles that underlie their behavior. Dhamma with a capital d (Dhamma) means 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 about dhammas or Dhamma.

Effluent (āsava): Four qualities—sensuality, becoming, views, and ignorance—that flow out of the mind and create the flood of the round of death and rebirth.

Establishing of Mindfulness (satipaṭṭhāna): The practice of using mindfulness and alertness to contemplate body, feelings, mind, and mental qualities as they are experienced in and of themselves.

Jhāna: Mental absorption; a strong, stable state of concentration based either on a physical phenomenon or a refined formless dimension of the mind.

Kamma (Sanskrit: karma): Intentional acts in thought, word, and deed that result in becoming and birth.

Māra: Death and temptation personified.

Name and form (nāma-rūpa): Mental and physical phenomena. “Form” is identical with the first aggregate (see above). “Name” covers the remaining four.

Nibbāna (Sanskrit: nirvāṇa): Unbinding; the liberation of the mind from mental effluents, defilements, and the fetters that bind it to the round of rebirth. 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.)

Noble Truths (ariya-sacca): The four categories for viewing experience in such a way that one can attain Awakening—stress, its cause, its disbanding, and the path of practice to its disbanding.

Saṁyojana: Fetter. The ten fetters binding the mind to repeated birth and death are self-identity views, uncertainty, grasping at precepts and practices, sensual passion, irritation, passion for form, passion for formlessness, conceit, restlessness, and ignorance. The first three fetters are abandoned at the first level of Awakening, called stream-entry; the next two are abandoned at the third level of Awakening, called non-returning; and remaining five are abandoned at the fourth and final level of Awakening, arahantship.

Soḷasa Pañhā: The Sixteen Questions, the final chapter in the Sutta Nipāta, in which sixteen young Brahmins question the Buddha on subtle points of the doctrine. Mogharāja’s Question is the last of the sixteen.

Upāsikā: A female lay follower of the Buddha.