ACARYA (S): the word for a Hindu or Buddhist teacher or spiritual mentor.
ADVAITA (S): ‘nondual’. The doctrine of the Vedanta school of Hindu thought that teaches that reality is fundamentally nondual and that each individual self, or atman, is ultimately identical with the Self (Atman) of Brahman.
AHIMSA (S): lit. non-violence, from S: himsa, violence. In Gandhi’s thought, love of all things.
AHURA: in Zoroastrianism, a ‘lord’ or god.
AKASA (S): space, or the ether.
ALLAH (A): the Supreme Being, God, worshipped by Muslims. Islamic doctrine permits no images of Allah.
ANANDA (S): bliss. Together with sat and chit, ananda is ascribed to Brahman, the Hindu divine principle.
ANSAR (A): ‘helper’. The word for the followers of Muhammad who supported him in Medina.
ARHAT (S): means ‘the worthy one’. This is the person who has attained personal liberation. In Hinayana Buddhism this is the highest stage of achievement. It contrasts with the Mahayana ideal of the bodhisattva, the person who attains buddhahood but also strives altruistically for the salvation of others.
ATMAN (S): in Hindu philosophy, the soul, or self, whether that of the individual or of Brahman.
AVESTA: the Zoroastrian scriptures.
AVIDYA (S; in P: AVIJJA): literally, ‘not knowledge’; often translated as ‘ignorance’ in the Vedantic teaching of Hinduism. In Buddhism avidya usually refers to the state of spiritual blindness in which a person is ignorant of the true nature of reality; c.f. vidya.
BARDO (T; in S: ANTARABHAVA): literally, ‘between two’: the name given to any intermediate state of being, especially that in which the soul is dissociated from a body between incarnations.
BHAGAVAD GITA (S): ‘The Song of the Lord’, the best-known of the Hindu scriptures and thought to have been written in the fourth and third centuries BCE. It is a treatise on spiritual development in the Karma Yoga tradition, the Way of Right Action.
BHAKTI (S): the intense love and surrender of humankind to God, arising out of a full knowledge of God. Its consequence is unselfish conduct. The Buddhist Bhakti schools include the Shingon and Shin of Japan.
BHIKSHU (S; in P: BHIKKHU ): a Buddhist mendicant monk of the Theravada school.
BODHI (S): the spiritual condition of Buddhist enlightenment, brought about by wisdom (prajna) and compassion (karuna).
BODHICITTA (S): literally, ‘the mind for enlightenment’; i.e. the desire to become enlightened; the resolve to follow the path of the Buddha.
BODHISATTVA (S; in P: BODHIDSATTA): the person who is dedicated to achieving enlightenment for the sake of others as well as for the self and who delays accession to nirvana in order to help others in their search. The term is used chiefly in Mahayana Buddhism which teaches that everyone who strives for buddhahood is a bodhidsattva; c.f. arhat.
BRAHMA SUTRA (S): a collection of aphorisms about Brahman, the ultimate reality and divine power; probably composed by Badarayana and an important text in Vedantic philosophy.
BRAHMAN (S): the term, in Hinduism, for the ultimate reality and divine power.
BRAHMIN (S): the name for a member of the Hindu priestly class. [Note: this word is sometimes transliterated as ‘Brahman’, but in order to distinguish it in a simple way from Brahman meaning ‘divine power’ (see the preceding entry), the alternative ‘i’ spelling has been used.]
CH’AN (C; in J: ZEN; in S: DHYANA; in P: JHANA): meditation; the realization of truth and reality. The name of an influential school of Chinese Buddhism.
CH’I (C): the Confucian term for life-force or ‘matter-energy’; the active cause of all material entities.
CHIH: (C): wisdom.
CH’ING (C): feeling.
CHIT (S): the Hindu word for ‘consciousness’ or ‘mind’; one of the three attributes of Brahman, the others being ananda (bliss) and sat (existence).
DAEVA: in Zoroastrianism, the name for an evil spirit.
DARSANA (S): philosophy. The word’s literal meaning is ‘sight’ or ‘vision’. In Indian philosophy each school of thought is a darsana, an insight into the nature of things as well as a reasoned and critical exposition of a set of ideas.
DHARMA (S; in P: DHAMMA ): a word with a number of important meanings. The Sanskrit form is from the Aryan root ‘dhr’, meaning to sustain or uphold. According to the context of its use it may mean doctrine, law, virtue, moral rightness, standard, norm, entity, cosmic order, or the existents of the natural realm. In Buddhism, it often refers to the Buddha’s teaching; in Hinduism, righteousness, the right way of life, virtue or law.
DHYANA (S; in P: JHANA; in C: CH’AN; in J: ZEN): the generic term for meditation, the various types of which are named and graded differently in the different traditions.
DUALISM: the metaphysical theory which posits that reality consists fundamentally of two distinct substances.
DUHKHA (S; in P: DUKKHA): pain, misery, the condition of unenlightenment; a central concept in Hinduism.
DVAITA (S): the Hindu Vedantic doctrine of dualism. It upholds a distinction between Brahman and the world, and also between individual selves and the physical universe.
GATHA: a hymn or song. In Zoroastrianism the gathas are the hymns of the Yasna, the liturgy, and are the only direct source of Zoroaster’s own doctrine. Commentators have drawn attention to the similarity of the gathas to the hymns of the Vedic scriptures and also to affinities between the thoughts expressed in them and the concepts of Neo-Platonism.
GURU (S; in T: BLA MA): a holy man or teacher, prominent in Tantric forms of Hinduism and Buddhism and the most important figure in the life of a Tantric aspirant who owes him absolute obedience.
HADITH (A): the collection of Traditions derived from accounts of the life of Muhammad and from which the customs and practices of Islam have been enunciated.
HIJRAH (A): ‘migration’. The migration of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE marks the beginning of the Muslim calendar whose year is calculated according to the revolutions of the moon around the earth, resulting in one that is eleven days shorter than the solar year which forms the basis of the Christian calendar.
HINAYANA (S): the ‘Lesser Vehicle’; a term used by Mahayana Buddhists to refer to the doctrines of Theravada Buddhism.
HUA-YEN (C; in J: KEGON; in S: AVATAMSAKA): lit. ‘flower garland’; a school of Chinese Buddhism also influential in Japan. Founded by Ta-shun (557–640 CE) and Chih-yen (602–668 CE).
HUN-P’O (C): the soul.
ISLAM: the doctrine and religious community founded by Muhammad the prophet. The word is from the root ‘slm’ (A) meaning ‘to be in peace as an integral whole’. ‘Islam’ means ‘to surrender to God’s law and thus to be an integral whole’. The Muslim is ‘the person who surrenders’.
JEN (C): the virtue of love or benevolence, a fundamental concept in Confucianism.
JIVA or JIVATMAN (S): the surface ego or phenomenological self, as opposed to the atman, in Hindu thought.
JIVANMUKTA (S): in orthodox Indian thought, one who is free while living, i.e. who has attained moksa, q.v.
JU (C): the literati, or scholarly class, of which Confucius was a member.
KALPA (S): an immense stretch of time, somewhat as ‘eon’ is in English.
KARMA (S): a cosmic law and force which is instantiated in actions and which guarantees that we reap as we have sown. In Hinduism karma is believed to determine all that takes place in the universe and is inseparable from the doctrine of reincarnation in that it determines a future incarnation by reference to a present one; not by transmigration of soul but by transmigration of character.
KHUDI (A): selfhood; a concept that has special significance in the Islamic philosophy of Muhammad Iqbal (1877–1938 CE).
KOAN (J; in C: KUNG-AN): a special kind of problem, question or riddle used in Zen, especially but not exclusively in the Rinzai school. It is expressed in a brief phrase and is not susceptible to rational solution. The koan ‘What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ is unanswerable so long as rational, conceptual thought is concentrated on it. The purpose of all koans is to stultify reason and so permit a direct realization of reality.
KORAN: the holy book of Islam, the words of which, according to Muhammad, were imparted to him by the angel Gabriel.
LI (C): in early Confucianism the li are the formal rites of good conduct. In later Confucianism, Li is the Principle that governs all things.
LILA (S): play or sport; a term used in the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy to describe the activity of the World-Soul in creating the Cosmos.
MADHYA MIKA (S): the Middle Way; a school of Mahayana Buddhism that advocates a path midway between pairs of opposites. The term is often used to refer to Nagarjuna’s philosophy.
MAHAMUDRA (S; in T: PHYAG- CHEN): ‘great symbol’: (1) a system of yoga associated especially with the Tibetan Whispered Transmission school (bKa’brygud pa) of Buddhism; (2) a stage in mahasandi yoga, q.v.
MAHASANDI (S; in T: RDZOGS CHEN): ‘great perfection’: a system of yoga associated especially with the rNying ma pa (the Old Ones) school of Tibetan Buddhism.
MAHAYANA (S): the ‘Greater Vehicle’ of the Buddhist tradition; a developed and modified form of Buddhism, to be contrasted with Theravada Buddhism (Hinayana or ‘the Lesser Vehicle’) which preserves the Buddha’s original doctrines.
MANDALA (S): a visual representation of the universe, usually circular in shape, used as an aid to meditation, especially but not exclusively Tantric.
MANTRA (S): a word widely used to name a kind of sacred, repetitive chant to which is ascribed a special efficacy helpful to prayer and meditation. It is used especially in Tantric yogas to aid the visualization of deities.
MAYA (S): usually but not always aptly translated as ‘illusion’. Maya is best thought of in conjunction with avidya. When in the state of avidya, the object of thought and perception is maya, that is, the everyday word taken, in the state of spiritual blindness which is avidya, to be the ultimate reality.
MIDDLE WAY: see Madhyamika.
MING (C): Fate, Destiny; the Decree of heaven.
MOKSA (S): in Hinduism, ‘release’; the spiritual condition that is the goal of religious endeavour; a state of freedom from all desire and the result of insight into the true nature of reality.
MONDO (J): in Zen, a technique of question and answer used by the Zen master in a sanzen interview and designed to break down the habit of conceptual reasoning in disciples.
MONISM: the view that reality is fundamentally one substance.
MONOTHEISM: the view that there is only one God, as in the teaching of Judaism, Islam and Christianity.
MUHAJIRUN (A): the ‘believers’ who emigrated with Muhammad from Mecca to Medina.
MUSLIM: ‘a person who surrenders’; from the root ‘slm’ (A), meaning ‘to be in peace as an integral whole’. ‘Islam’ is from the same root and means ‘to surrender to God’s law and thus to be an integral whole’. Muslims believe that the creed of Islam is God’s eternal religion.
NAMA- RUPA (S): name and form: the ordinary conceptual framework of human experience. To take this for ultimate truth is to be in the state of avidya, q.v.
NEMBUTSU (J): the repeated phrase or mantra central to the practices of Pure Land Buddhism: in J, Namu Amida butsu (Reverence to Amida Buddha).
NIRVANA (S; in P: NIBBANA): the ‘blowing out’ or extinction of the individual self.
NOESIS (GK): a Platonic term for the highest kind of knowledge; a direct, intuitive comprehension of universals unsullied by the particularities of sense-experience.
NOMINALISM: the view that general words such as tree, dog, house, etc., are not the names of actual entities but are words applied to groups of similar things.
PALI: ‘the text language’, Magadhi, which, from around the first century CE, was developed for the writing of the scriptures of Theravada Buddhism. The Pali Text Society was founded in 1881 by T.W. Rhys Davids and has published most of the Pali canon in the Roman alphabet.
PARSI (pl. PARSIS): a term deriving from the ancient word for Persia (pars). Parsi is the name for a descendant of the Zoroastrians who fled from Persia to take refuge in India in the seventh and eighth centuries CE.
PRAJNA (S): the ultimate wisdom which, in Mahayana Buddhism, is a state of total identity with the Buddha essence.
PRAJNAPARAMIT A (S): perfection of wisdom.
PRAKTRI (S): Nature; in Hinduism, the primordial and eternal material of the universe.
PRAMANA (S): in Indian thought, a source or standard of knowledge.
PURE LAND (in J: JODO; in C: CHING- T’U): an important school of Buddhist thought, founded in the fourth century CE, which taught that after death the faithful would be led to Paradise, or the Pure Land.
QADI (A): an Islamic judge.
RAMADA N (A): the ninth month of the Muslim calendar, during which food and drink must be abstained from in daylight hours. Ramadan marks the belief that this is the time when the words of the Koran were sent down to humankind.
RIG VEDA: means ‘verse knowledge’ or ‘word knowledge’. It is the oldest of the Hindu scriptures.
RINZAI ZEN (J; in C: LIN- CHI): a leading Zen school, founded in China by Lin-chi (ninth century CE) and revivified in Japan by Hakuin. Rinzai Zen lays great stress on the use of koans.
SAMADHI (S): an advanced form of dhyana, or profound meditation, sometimes rendered as contemplation, sometimes as self-realization. The exact sense varies with tradition and context but common in all its uses is the notion that samadhi is either the ultimate goal of spiritual progress or very close to it.
SAMSARA (S; in P: SANGARA, and in some transliterations, SANGSARA): in Buddhism and Hinduism, the cycle of rebirths, often referred to as ‘the wheel of life’, through which the individual passes in accordance with karma, the law of action that ensures that we reap as we have sown.
SANSKRIT: the language of ancient Aryan India and of the early brahmanic scriptures.
SANZEN (J): in Zen, an interview between an aspirant and a Zen master, or roshi, for the purpose of assessing the aspirant’s progress.
SAT (S): the Hindu name for being or existence; one of the three attributes of Brahman, the others being chit (consciousness) and ananda (bliss).
SATORI (J; in C: WU): the Zen term for the experience of direct insight into the nature of reality; sometimes translated as ‘awakening’.
SATYA (S): truth; in Gandhi’s thought, the name for ultimate reality.
SATYAGRAHA (S): the political strategy of non-violent resistance.
SHINGON (J): lit. ‘true word’: the Japanese esoteric or Tantric school of Buddhism, founded by Kukai (774–835 CE; also called Kobo Daishi).
SIDDHA (S): one who has achieved advanced yogic accomplishments, especially in the context of Tantrism.
SIDDHI (S): accomplishment on the path to and including enlightenment achieved by means of yoga.
SKANDH A (S; in P: KHANDH A): The five groups of elements (c.f. dharma) used in early Buddhism to classify all existents. They are: rupa (matter), vedana (feeling), samjna (mental conceptions), samskara (forces, desires, drives) and vinjana (pure consciousness or sensation).
SMRTI (S): knowledge based on memory, tradition, inference or a combination of these. To be contrasted with sruti, q.v.
SOTO ZEN (J; in C: TSAO- TUNG): an influential Zen sect whose doctrine, which emphasizes the importance of the practice of zazen as a means to enlightenment, was introduced into Japan by Dogen (1200–1253 CE).
SRUTI (S): sacred knowledge, self-evident insight that is independent of concepts; c.f. smrti.
SUFI (A): a Muslim mystic. ‘Sufi’ means ‘coarse wool’ and refers to the white woollen clothing worn by these mystics.
SUNNAH (A): ‘the path of Tradition’ followed by orthodox Muslims. The term derives from an Arabic word meaning ‘custom’.
SUNNI (A): the majority and orthodox group within Islam. Its members place reliance on the sunnah, the traditions and practices of the prophet Muhammad.
SUNYATA (S; in J: MU; in T: STONG- PA- NYID): ‘emptiness’ or the Void. In the Middle Way philosophy of Nagarjuna sunyata describes the true condition of all things; that is, without essence and so without differentiation. On this understanding of reality even samsara and nirvana are recognized as being ultimately without differences.
SURA (A): the name given to each of the 114 sections of the Koran.
SUTRA (S; in P: SUTTA): a work attributed to an enlightened being. A work that is a commentary on a sutra is called a sastra. In some uses, ‘sutra’ can also mean each individual proposition in the whole work. In Buddhism, a sutra generally contains words attributed to the Buddha. ‘Sutra’ means literally ‘a thread’.
SUTTAPITAKA (P): the dialogues of the Buddha, collected in the second of the three ‘baskets’ of the Buddhist scriptural canon.
TANTRISM: the name given to the esoteric forms of Hinduism and especially of Buddhism. The revealed scriptures of these schools are referred to as Tantras (rather than sutras) and the schools make extensive use of mantras and mandalas. Tantric Buddhism is often referred to as the Vajrayana (S) or Diamond Vehicle. Whether the Vajrayana is to be counted as a third major form of Buddhism, on a par with the Theravada and the Mahayana, or is more properly a branch of the latter, is disputed.
TAO (C): Way, Principle, or cosmic order. In Confucianism tao usually refers to the ethical way of life. In Taoism it is the word for the metaphysical first principle of the universe.
TAT TVAM ASI (S): ‘That art thou’. ‘Tat’ refers to Brahman and ‘tvam’ to the individual self or soul. The phrase occurs in the Chandogya Upanisad and is used in Hinduism as a mantra that teaches that each individual soul, or atman, is one with the Atman of Brahman, the divine power.
TE (C): spiritual power, or virtue.
THERAVADA (S): ‘the teaching of the elders’; the name of the more conservative branch of Buddhism, sometimes known as Hinayana, ‘the Lesser Vehicle’.
T’IEN- T’AI (C; in J: TENDAI) lit. ‘celestial platform’: influential school of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism. Also called the Lotus school as a result of the centrality it accords to the Lotus Sutra. Its main systematizer was Chih-i (538–597 CE).
TRIPITAKA (S; in P: TIPITAKA): lit. three baskets: the scriptures of the Theravada School of Buddhism, divided into the Vinayapitaka, Suttapitaka and Abhidhammapitaka
UPANISADS (S): the concluding portion of the Vedas, which are the four major scriptures of Hinduism. .
VAJRAYANA (S): Diamond vehicle: see Tantrism.
VEDA (S): ‘knowledge’. The Vedas are the first part of the Hindu scriptures and consist of hymns, rituals and religious writings. The term is sometimes used to refer to the whole of the sacred canon of Hindu scriptures which culminates in the Upanisads, q.v.
VEDANTA (S): one of the six major philosophical systems of India that developed from about 200 CE onwards. The word derives from the Sanskrit veda (knowledge) and anta (end). Its bestknown exponent is Sankara (788–820 CE).
VIDYA (S): knowledge; often occurring in Hindu texts in the compound form Brahmavidya, knowledge of Brahman, the ultimate goal of spiritual endeavour, c.f. avidya.
VISESA (S): ‘particularity’; the ultimate unit of real existence; a particular soul or atom.
VISISTADVAITA VEDANT A (S): the Hindu school of qualified non- dualism propounded by Ramanuja, who maintained that individual selves, although parts of the body of Brahman, are not identical with the self of Brahman.
WU-WEI (C): non-action, in the sense of refraining from manipulating a situation or set of circumstances but living in accordance with natural laws. In Buddhism it refers to deeds performed without thought of self and therefore having no implications for the karma of the doer.
YANA (S): vehicle, path: a practical method for the attainment of enlightenment.
YASNA: sacrifice; the name of the Zoroastrian liturgy recited by priests during the sacrificial ceremonies. The Yasna has seventy-two chapters.
YI (C): right conduct; righteousness.
YIN- YANG (C): the theory of the interaction of the passive (yin) and active (yang) principles of the universe understood as the cause of all things.
YOGA (S): literally, a means of union, that is, between the individual and the divine. Yoga is any set of practices designed to bring about this union but is used especially of the practices set out in the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. A male practitioner of yoga is a yogi or yogin; a female practitioner is a yogini.
YOGACARA (S): the Mind Only school of Indian Buddhism, founded in the fourth century CE by the brothers Vasubandhu and Asanga; sometimes known as Consciousness-Only or Vijnanavada.
YU (C): desire.
ZAKAT (A): a poll tax paid by followers of Islam for the benefit of the needy.
ZARATHUSTRA: the Persian and so the true name of Zoroaster. (The latter is a Greek formulation.)
ZAZEN (J): the Zen discipline of seated meditation, used by all schools but of special significance in Soto Zen.