Glossary

Glossary

arahant: A Worthy One or Pure One—i.e., a person whose heart is freed from the fermentations of defilement and is thus not destined for further rebirth. An epithet for the Buddha and the highest level of his Noble Disciples.

ariya sacca: noble truth. The word Noble (ariya) here can also mean ideal or standard, and in this phrase carries the meaning of objective or universal truth. There are four: stress, its cause, its disbanding, and the path of practice leading to its disbanding.

āsava: Fermentation; effluent—mental defilements (sensuality, states of becoming, views, and ignorance) in their role as causes of the flood of rebirth.

avijjā: Ignorance, obscured awareness, counterfeit knowledge.

āyatana: Sense medium. The inner sense media are the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and intellect. The outer sense media are their corresponding objects.

buddha (buddho): The mind’s innate quality of pure knowingness, as distinct from the themes with which it is preoccupied and its knowledge about those preoccupations.

dhamma: Event; phenomenon; the way things are in and of themselves; the basic principles underlying 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 quality of the Deathless that can be touched at the mind in and of itself. By extension, Dhamma refers also to any doctrine that teaches such matters. To view things—mental or physical—in terms of the Dhamma means to view them simply as events or phenomena, as they are directly perceived in and of themselves, seeing the regularity of the principles underlying their behavior. To view them in terms of the world means to view them with regard to their meaning, role, or emotional coloring—i.e., in terms of how they fit into our view of life and the world.

dhātu: Element; potential; property; the elementary properties that make up the inner sense of the body and mind: earth (solidity), water (liquidity), fire (heat), wind (energy or motion), space, and consciousness. The breath is regarded as an aspect of the wind property, and all feelings of energy in the body are classed as breath sensations. According to ancient Indian and Thai physiology, diseases come from an aggravation or imbalance in any of the first four of these properties. Well-being is defined as a state in which none of them is dominant: All are quiet, unaroused, balanced, and still.

ekaggatārammaṇa: Singleness of object or preoccupation.

jhāna: Meditative absorption in a single notion or sensation.

khandha: The component parts of sensory experience; physical and mental phenomena as they are directly experienced: rūpa (sensations, sense data), vedanā (feelings of pleasure, pain, or neither pleasure nor pain), saññā (labels, names, concepts, perceptions), saṅkhāra (mental fabrications, thought formations), viññāṇa (sensory consciousness).

lokavidū: An expert with regard to the cosmos—an epithet normally used for the Buddha.

magga-citta: The state of mind that forms the path leading to the transcendent qualities culminating in unbinding. Phala-citta refers to the mental state that follows immediately on magga-citta and experiences its fruit.

nibbāna (nirvāṇa): Unbinding; the liberation of the mind from greed, anger, and delusion, from physical sensations and mental acts. As this term is used to refer also to the extinguishing of fire, it carries connotations of stilling, cooling, and peace. (According to the physics taught at the time of the Buddha, the property of fire in a latent state exists to a greater or lesser extent in all objects. When activated, it seizes and gets stuck to its fuel. When extinguished, it is unbound.)

nimitta: Mental sign, theme, or image.

nīvaraṇa: Hindrance. The mental qualities that hinder the mind from becoming centered are five: sensual desire, ill will, torpor & lethargy, restlessness & anxiety, and uncertainty.

pāli: The name of the most ancient recension of the Buddhist canon now extant and—by extension—of the language in which it was composed.

samādhi: Concentration; the act of keeping the mind centered or intent on a single preoccupation. The three levels of concentration—momentary, threshold, and fixed penetration—can be understood in terms of the first three steps in the section on jhāna: Momentary concentration goes no further than step (a); threshold concentration combines steps (a) and (c); fixed penetration combines steps (a), (b), and (c) and goes on to include all higher levels of jhāna.

saṅgha: The community of the Buddha’s followers. On the conventional (sammati) level, this refers to the Buddhist monkhood. On the ideal (ariya) level, it refers to those of the Buddha’s followers—whether lay or ordained—who have practiced to the point of gaining at least the first of the transcendent qualities culminating in unbinding.

saṅkhāra: Fabrication—the forces and factors that fabricate things, the process of fabrication, and the fabricated things that result. As the fourth khandha, this refers to the act of fabricating thoughts, urges, etc., within the mind. As a blanket term for all five khandhas, it refers to all things fabricated, compounded, or fashioned by nature. ‘Saṅkhārūpekkhā-ñāṇa’ refers to a stage of liberating insight in which all saṅkhāras are viewed with a sense of equanimity.

vipassanā (-ñāṇa): Liberating insight—clear, intuitive discernment into physical and mental phenomena as they arise and disappear, seeing them for what they are in terms of the four noble truths and the characteristics of inconstancy, stress, and ‘not-selfness.’

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.

The Translator