GlossaryThe following Pali words encompass concepts and levels of ideas for which there are no adequate synonyms in English. The definitions of these terms have been adapted from the Buddhist Dictionary, by Nyanatiloka Mahathera.
anāgāmi The “nonreturner,” a noble disciple on the third stage of holiness.
anattā “No-self,” corelessness, nonego, egolessness, impersonality; “neither within the bodily and mental phenomena of existence, nor outside of them; can be found in 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.
arahant The enlightened or holy one. Through the extinction of all defilements, he or she reaches in this lifetime the deliverance of mind, the deliverance through wisdom, which is free from defilements, and which he himself has understood and realized.
ariya Noble ones; noble persons.
avijjā Ignorance, nescience, unknowing; synonymous with delusion; 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.
bojjhanga The seven links (limbs, factors) of enlightenment:
1. Mindfulness
2. Investigation of the law
3. Energy
5. Tranquility
6. Concentration
7. Equanimity
devas Heavenly beings, deities, celestials; 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.
dukkha 1. In common usage, “pain,” painful feeling, which may be bodily or mental; 2. In Buddhist usage, as, for example, in the four noble truths: suffering, illness, and the unsatisfactory nature and general insecurity of all conditioned phenomena.
jhāna Meditative absorptions; tranquility meditation.
kammaṭṭhāna Literally, “working-ground”; that is, for meditation; the term in the commentaries for subjects of meditation.
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, or the deterministic fate of man.
karunā Compassion, one of the four sublime emotions.
kāyānupassanā Contemplation of the body, one of the four applications of mindfulness.
khandha The five “groups,” “heaps,” or “aggregates”; 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”; all those states of consciousness and mental factors arising in the worldling, as well as in the noble one, that are not associated with the supermundane.
lokiya paticca samuppāda Worldly dependent arising; the wheel of twelve causes and effects fueled by ignorance that keeps us trapped in the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth.
lokuttara “Supermundane”; a term for the four paths and four fruitions.
lokuttara paticca samuppāda Transcendental dependent arising; the linear twelve-step series of causes and effects that begins with recognizing unsatisfactoriness and ends with liberation.
maggaphala Path and fruit. First arises the path consciousness, immediately followed by fruition, a moment of supermundane awareness.
māna Conceit, pride; one of the ten fetters binding us to existence, also one of the underlying tendencies.
mettā Loving-kindness, one of the four sublime emotions (brahmavihāra).
muditā Altruistic joy (sympathetic joy), one of the four sublime emotions.
nibbāna Literally, “extinction,” to cease blowing, to become extinguished. Nibbāna constitutes the highest and ultimate goal of all Buddhist aspirations, that is, the absolute extinction of that life-affirming will manifested as greed, hatred, and delusion, and clinging to existence, thereby the absolute deliverance from all future rebirth.
nibbīdâ Turning away, disenchantment.
nīvarana “Hindrances”; five qualities that are obstacles to the mind, blind our mental vision, and obstruct concentration, to wit: sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and skeptical doubt.
papañca Proliferation; literally, “expansion, diffuseness”; detailed exposition, development, manifoldness, multiplicity, differentiation.
parinibbāna “Full liberation”; a synonym for liberation, commonly used to refer to the death of the Buddha.
pīti Interest, enthusiasm, rapture; comes to full development in the first meditative absorption, and is then one of the seven factors of enlightenment.
puthujjana Literally, “one of the many folk”; worldling, ordinary man, anyone still possessed of all the ten fetters binding them to the round of rebirths.
rāga Greed, craving; a synonym for lobha and tanhā and thereby one of the unwholesome roots of existence.
sacca Truth, as in the four noble truths.
sakadāgāmi The “once-returner,” a noble disciple on the second stage of holiness.
samādhi Concentration; literally, “the being firmly fixed.” One-pointedness of mind.
samatha Tranquility, serenity; a synonym for samādhi (concentration).
saṃsāra The round of rebirth, literally, “perpetual wandering”; a name by which the sea of life is designated, ever restlessly heaving up and down.
saṃvega The sources of emotion, or a sense of urgency.
Sangha Literally, “congregation”; 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.
sankhāra Most general usage: formations, mental formations, and karma formations. Sometimes bodily functions, or mental functions. Also, anything formed.
sotāpatti Stream-entry, the first attainment in the process of becoming a noble one.
upekkhā Equanimity, an ethical quality, belonging to the wholesome mental formations; also, one of the four sublime emotions and one of the seven factors of enlightenment.
vedanânupassanā Contemplation of feeling, one of the four applications of mindfulness.
vicāra Sustained application. Continued attention to the object (of meditation).
vicikicchā Skeptical doubt, one of the five mental hindrances and one of the three fetters, which disappears forever at stream-entry.
vimutti Deliverance, liberation; two kinds of liberation are described: deliverance through mind and deliverance through wisdom, equivalent to the fruition of enlightenment.
vipassanā Insight into the truth of the impermanence, suffering, and impersonality of all corporal and mental phenomena of existence.
virāga Detachment, freedom from craving, dispassion.
vitakka Initial application. Fixing the consciousness to the object (of meditation).
yathābhūtañānadassana Knowledge and vision according to reality; one of eighteen principal kinds of insight.