1. Please see the preface for the usage of these terms.
2. Permanent phenomena are phenomena such as unobstructed space, emptiness, and cessations that do not disintegrate moment by moment in dependence on causes and conditions.
3. These are the six faculties (five sensory and one mental); two regenerative faculties (the male and female organs); the life force; five faculties to experience results of constructive and destructive actions (mental happiness and unhappiness, physical pleasure and displeasure, neutral feelings); five faculties to depart from the mundane (faith, effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom on the path of seeing); and three unpolluted powers (of seeing, meditation, and no-more learning). The first fourteen are causes of cyclic existence, the last eight causes of liberation and full awakening.
4. See chapter 5.
5. “Liberation of mind” refers to concentration because it is free from sensual attachment and malice; “liberation by wisdom” refers to wisdom because it is free from ignorance. In general, liberation of mind is the result of serenity, and liberation by wisdom of insight. When the two are unpolluted and conjoined, they are the result of the eradication of pollutants by an arahant’s supramundane path.
6. Here “body” refers to a corpus or collection of qualities.
7. Anālayo, “The Buddha and Omniscience,” The Indian International Journal of Buddhist Studies 7 (2006): 4n14.
8. Killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, divisive speech, harsh speech, idle talk, covetousness, maliciousness, wrong views.
9. Vism 16:15 quotes the Paṭisambhidāmagga on the sixteen attributes. The following explanation is based on a teaching given by Ledi Sayadaw, http://mahajana.net/texts/kopia_lokalna/MANUAL05.html.
10. There are two kinds of concentration: serenity concentration (samatha samādhi) and insight concentration (vipassanā samādhi). In the former, the nimitta is the object, while in the latter, the five aggregates characterized by one or another of the three characteristics are the object.
11. Through a conflation of terminology, in Sanskrit texts these came to be called samyak prahāna, “supreme abandonings.”
12. The Pāli explanation of the noble eightfold path was presented in chapter 3.
13. The first three metaphors are easy to understand. However, since the last metaphor seems true, we may think that perhaps the self is in the body. The meaning of this metaphor is that although a jewel is a distinct phenomenon from the box and can be removed from the box and examined separately from it, removing the self from the body and viewing it as a distinct entity from the body is not possible because the self is dependent upon the body.
14. Translated from Pāli. The words “dependent on” do not appear in the second verse, but the syntactical structure conveys this sense. The meaning of the second half of this verse is: the convention “a being” is used in dependence on the aggregates.
15. MN, p. 1346n1268. Translation was modified after personal communication with the translator, changing “truly” to “irreducibly” to avoid confusion with the Tibetan Buddhist presentation of true existence. “Reducibly” and “irreducibly” clarify that a distinction is being drawn between the mode of existence of the elements and of the person according to the Abhidhamma method of analysis.
16. Tsongkhapa, Ocean of Reasoning, translated by Geshe Ngawang Samten and Jay Garfield (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 97.
17. Translation by Nyanaponika Thera on www.accesstoinsight.org.
18. Suttanipāta 4:15, as translated by Andrew Olendzki on www.accesstoinsight.org.
19. Suttanipāta 3:12, as translated by Bhikkhu Bodhi.
20. Translation by Bhikkhu Bodhi in The Great Discourse on Causation (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1984).
21. Translation by Maurice Walshe on www.accesstoinsight.org.
22. Path consciousnesses correspond to uninterrupted paths and fruition consciousnesses to liberated paths in the Sanskrit tradition.
23. Bhikṣu Dharmamitra, On Generating the Resolve to Become a Buddha (Seattle: Kalavinka Press, 2009), 71.
24. This was elaborated in the section on Chinese Buddhism in chapter 9.
25. Walpola Rahula, “Theravada–Mahayana Buddhism,” in Gems of Buddhist Wisdom (Kuala Lumpur: Buddhist Missionary Society, 1996).
26. Dasabodhisattupattikathā 1:1–2. Translated by Hammalawa Saddhatissa in The Birth Stories of the Ten Bodhisattvas (London: Pali Text Society, 1975).
27. Jeffrey Samuels, “The Bodhisattva Ideal in Theravaada,” Philosophy East and West 47.3 (July 1997): 399–415.
28. Guy Armstrong, “The Paramis: A Historical Background,” http://media.audiodharma.org/documents/paramis/HistoricalBackground.html. Chodron also heard this from monks during her stay at a Thai temple in 2007.
29. Rahula, “Theravada–Mahayana Buddhism.”
30. Cariyāpiṭaka I 8:15–16. Translated by I. B. Horner in The Minor Anthologies of the Pāli Canon (Lancaster: Pali Text Society, 2007).
31. According to the Pāli tradition, one can become an ariya and arahant in a female body but not a buddha. According to the Tantrayāna, one can also become a buddha in a woman’s body.
32. From the Ugraparipṛcchā Sūtra. Translated by Jan Nattier in A Few Good Men (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2005), 259.
33. Other terms found in the discussion of buddha nature include buddha essence (tathāgatagarbha) and element of sentient beings (sattvadhātu) or just element. Sometimes these terms are used interchangeably; sometimes they have slightly different meanings.