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Pāli-English Glossary Abhidhamma: the name of the Third Basket, the third and last group of the
canonical books of the Buddhist scriptures; which is regarded as the most perfect expression possible of Lord
Buddha's unimpeded omniscient knowledge. It is his statement of the
way things appear to the mind of a Fully Awakened One, ordered in accordance
with the two poles of his teaching: suffering and the cessation of suffering.
The system that the Abhidhamma articulates is
simultaneously a philosophy, a psychology, and an ethics, all integrated into
the framework of a program for liberation. The Abhidhamma
may be described as a philosophy because it proposes an ontology, a
perspective on the nature of the real. This perspective has been designated
the “dhamma theory”.
Briefly, maintains that ultimate reality consists of a multiplicity of
elementary constituents called dhammas.
The dhammas are not noumena
hidden behind phenomena, not “things in themselves” as opposed to
“mere appearances”, but the fundamental components of actuality. The
dhammas fall into two broad classes: the
unconditioned dhamma, which is solely Nibbāna, and
the conditioned dhammas, which are the momentary
mental and material phenomena (nāma-rūpa) that constitute the process of experience. The
familiar world of substantial objects and enduring persons is, according to
the dhamma theory, a conceptual construct
fashioned by the mind out of the raw data provided by the dhammas.
The entities of our everyday frame of reference possess merely a consensual
reality derivative upon the foundational stratum of the dhammas.
It is the dhammas alone that possess ultimate
reality: determinate existence "from their own side" independent of
the mind's conceptual processing of the data. The project of systemization starts from the premise that
to attain the wisdom that knows things “as they really are,” a
sharp wedge must be driven between those entities that possess ontological ultimacy (the dhammas),
and those entities that exist only as conceptual constructs but are
mistakenly grasped as ultimately real. It posits a fixed number of dhammas as the building blocks of actuality, most
of which are drawn from the Suttas. The three dimensions—the philosophical, the
psychological, and the ethical—derive their final justification from
the Teaching’s cornerstone, the program of liberation announced by the
4 Noble Truths. The ontological survey of dhammas
stems from Lord Buddha's injunction that the noble truth of suffering,
identified with the world of conditioned phenomena as a whole, must be fully
understood. The prominence of mental defilements and requisites of
awakening in its schemes of categories, indicative of its psychological and
ethical concerns, connects the Abhidhamma to the
second and fourth noble truths. And the entire taxonomy of dhammas elaborated by the system reaches its
consummation in the “unconditioned element” (Nibbāna), the third noble
truth, that of the cessation of suffering. See paramattha
and sutta. ākāra: “the (way of) making”, i.e. mode, manner; gesture,
sign, appearance, external characteristic; indication; expression. When
practicing, we are particularly interested in “the (way of)
making” up a posture, that is, “the mode in which the body
is presently disposed”. For example, the mode that distinguishes the lying posture from the standing
posture, the walking posture from the sitting posture, etc. anattā: impersonality, not-self, no fundamental entity;
uncontrollability. The anattā
doctrine teaches that neither within the physical or mental phenomena of
existence (nāma-rupa), nor outside of them,
can be found anything that in the ultimate sense could be regarded as a
self-existing real ego-entity, soul, or any other abiding substance. See
“lakkhana/ti-lakkhana” below. “Mere suffering exists, no sufferer is found; The deed is, but no doer of the deed is there; Nibbāna is, but not the man that enters it; The Path is, but no traveler on it is seen” anicca: transient, impermanent, inconstant, unstable.
Impermanency of things is
the rising, falling and changing of things, or the disappearance of things
that have become or arisen. The meaning is that things never persist in the
same way, but that they are vanishing, dissolving from moment to moment. See “lakkhana/ti-lakkhana”. ānisamsa: subsequent result; result that pours forth. Kamma is action,
and vipāka, fruit or consequence, is
its reaction. Kamma is like potential seed: vipāka
could be likened to the fruit arising from such seed. As kamma may be good or
bad, so may vipāka be good or bad. It
is experienced as happiness, bliss, unhappiness or misery, according to the
nature of the kamma seed. Ānisamsa
are the subsequent results – material things such as prosperity, health
and longevity, or poverty, ugliness, disease, short life-span and so forth. Or
for example, birth is vipāka (a result
of kamma), and aging, sickness and death are the subsequent results of
birth. Seeing is vipāka, the reaction
to such seeing, which could be a greedy or angry reaction, is a subsequent
result. There are five kinds of ānisamsa
which accrue to the virtuous: great wealth, good report, self-confidence,
untroubled death and a happy state after death. Arahant: “a worthy one”, liberated one; a
technical term for one who has attained the Summum Bonum of religious aspiration (Nibbāna): That which leads to
rebirth is extirpated: the cord of craving (tanhā) which
is capable of leading from birth to birth is fully destroyed, cut off, made
not to continue. “Destroyed is (re-)birth, lived is a chaste life, (of a student)
done is what had to be done, after this present life there is no beyond.” ārammana: (1) objective support, (sense-)object. There are six: visible object
(color), sound, odor, taste, body-impression, and mind-object. (2) The
outward constituent in the relation of subject & object. (3) Anything to
be depended upon as a means of achieving what is desired; footing, basis of
contemplation. ariya: (1) noble; right, good. (2) A (noble) person
who has attained enlightenment. āsava: Mental effluent, pollutant, or fermentation. Four qualities—sensuality, (desiring)
existence, views, and ignorance—that
"flow out" of the mind and create the flood of the round of death
and rebirth. attā: self, ego, personality, is in Buddhism a
mere conventional expression, and no designation for anything really
existing. The feeling that we are somebody. attābhāva: frequently means: “material body as the
basis for individuality”. avijjā: ignorance; not-knowing. Lack of essential knowledge: not knowing what
is needed to know for getting out of samsāra-vatta—or
lacking the knowledge that release is possible; ignorance of the Four Noble
Truths. ayoniso manasikāra: unwise attention to the object,
improper consideration. See yoniso manasikāra. bhāvanā: mental development, mental culture. See puñña. bhaya: fear; danger; the awareness of the terror
implicit in (conditioned) existence. Buddha: The name given to one who rediscovers for
himself the liberating path of the Dhamma, after a
long period of its having been forgotten by the world. According to
tradition, there is a long line of Buddhas
stretching into the distant past. The most recent Buddha was born Siddhattha Gotama in cetasika: mental factors arising with consciousness (citta); they
are those mental concomitants that are bound up with the simultaneously
arising (bare) consciousness and conditioned by its presence. There are
altogether 52 kinds of cetasika.
See citta. citta: consciousness, the reality which knows or experiences an object. The word citta is derived from the verbal root citi, to cognize, to know. The commentators define
citta in three ways: as agent, as
instrument, and as an activity. As the agent, citta
is that which cognizes an object (ārammana). As the instrument, citta is that
by means of which the accompanying mental factors (cetasikas) cognize the object. As an activity, citta
is itself nothing other than the process of cognizing the object. The third
definition, in terms of sheer activity, is regarded as the most adequate:
that is, citta is fundamentally an activity
or process of cognizing or knowing an object. It is not an agent or
instrument possessing actual being in itself apart from the activity of
cognizing. The definitions in terms of agent and instrument are proposed to
refute the wrong view of those who hold that a permanent self or ego is the
agent or instrument of cognition. Buddhist thinkers point out, that it is not
a self that performs the act of cognition, but citta
or consciousness. This citta is nothing other than
the act of cognizing, and that act is necessarily impermanent, marked by rise
and fall. Each citta
must have its object of knowing: ārammana. The
citta which sees
(seeing-consciousness) has what is visible as its object, etc. There is not
any citta without an object (ārammana).
Even when we are sound asleep citta
experiences an object. However, there is not only citta, there are also mental factors, cetasikas, which accompany a citta. One
can think something with aversion, pleasant feeling, with wisdom. Aversion,
feeling, wisdom are mental phenomena which are not citta; they are cetasikas
which accompany different cittas. There
is only one citta at the time, but there are
several cetasikas (at least seven) arising
together with the citta
and falling away together with that same citta, citta never arises alone. Cetasikas share the same object with the citta, but they each have their own specific quality and function. dāna: gift; giving; generosity;
almsgiving; offering; charity; liberality; donation; benefaction. See puñña. Dhamma: the liberating law discovered and propounded
by Gotama Buddha, is summed up in the 4 Noble
Truths. Dhamma is natural truth,
which exists always; not as interpreted by a Buddha, much less invented or
decreed by him, but intelligible to a mind of his range. A Buddha awakens to
it by himself and shares it with the world. “Whether Perfect Ones appear in the world, or whether Perfect
Ones do not appear in the world, it still remains a firm condition, an immutable fact and
fixed law: that all formations are inconstant, that all formations are subject to
suffering, that everything is without a self” dhamma: (1) thing, condition; event; a phenomenon in and of itself; a reality; all
things and states conditioned or unconditioned. (2) Mental object or quality. ditthi: distorted view or opinion about what is real. Its
characteristic is unwise (unjustified) interpretation of things. Its function
is to preassume. It is manifested as a wrong
interpretation or belief. Its proximate cause is unwillingness to see the
nobles ones (ariya), and so on.[1] Ditthi actually only means “view”, but it mostly refers to
wrong view (micchā-ditthi), and only in a few
instances to right view: sammā-ditthi. domanassa: unpleasant mental feeling, displeasure; grief.
Grief is always associated with antipathy and grudge, and therefore kammically (see kamma) unwholesome. dosa: disliking; it comprises all kinds and degrees
of aversion, ill will, anger, irritation, annoyance and animosity. Its
characteristic is ferocity. Its function is to spread, or to burn up its own
support, i.e. the mind and body in which it arises. It is manifested as
persecuting, and its proximate cause is a ground for annoyance. dukkha: the inherent stress
of existence, revealed by the impermanence, suffering, and perpetual
incompleteness, intrinsic to all forms of life. (1) suffering [in its deepest sense]; the
unsatisfactoriness (and/or imperfection) of
conditioned realities. Happy/pleasurable
states (sukha)
are also considered dukkha
because they are all impermanent. (2) Pain, stress,
unpleasantness, unease, oppression, difficulty, ill, conflict. It is both
physical & mental. Sukha
and dukkha
are ease and des-ease. The
characteristic of suffering is the mode of being continuously
oppressed by rise and fall.There is no word in
English, or in any language that is not based on Buddhist thought, covering
the same ground as dukkha
does in Pali. Also our modern words are too specialized, too limited, and usually too strong. See
lakkhana/ti-lakkhana. guna(-dhamma): good
inner qualities like goodness, virtue, “(to have) Dhamma”, etc.; upakāra-guna: depositories
of gratitude, like our parents, teachers, etc. hetu: cause, reason, motive; cause-condition. iriyā-patha: lit., “ways of
movement”; the bodily postures or positions. jāti: to arise; birth or rebirth; ‘future
life’ as disposition to be born again, ‘former life’ as
cause of this life. Is a condition precedent of old age, sickness &
death, and is fraught with sorrow, pain & lamentation. It is itself the
final outcome of kamma, resting on avijjā,
performed in anterior births. It comprises the entire embryonic process
beginning with conception and ending with parturition. kalyānamitta: the good friend. A person of fine qualities
who is a friend, especially in helping one to progress in the practice by
his/hers example and advice; the mentor, the kammatthāna teacher. Lord Buddha himself is the
good friend par excellence: “Ānanda, it is owing to my being a good friend to
them that living beings subject to birth are freed from birth” kamma: Action,
deed; doing. Sanskrit form: karma. Means
volitional action by body, speech or mind, having an inherent tendency to
bear fruit in accordance with the kind of action done. Note that kamma means action, not the result of action (vipāka) as when people say,
“It’s my karma”. This
reduces the teaching of kamma to
mere fatalism. Kamma (will, volition,
intention) is a mental phenomenon and thus it can be accumulated. People
accumulate different defilements (kilesas) and different kammas. Different accumulations
of kamma are the condition for the
different results in life. This is the law of kamma and vipāka, of cause and result/effect:
ethical causality. Some Upanishads—post-Vedic
speculative texts, expressed causality as a morally neutral, purely physical
process of evolution. Others stated that moral laws were intrinsic to the
nature of causality, rather than being mere social conventions, and that the
morality of an action determined how it affected one’s future course in
the round of rebirth. Whether these last texts were composed before or after
the Buddha taught this view, though, no one knows. See vipāka
and puñña. kammatthāna: the word kamma literally means action or practice, and the
word khanda: the word
khanda is understood in the sense of
group, mass, or aggregate. The khandhas
are the 5 collections or groups which are the five
aspects in which Lord Buddha has summed up all the physical and mental
phenomena of existence and which appear to the ignorant man as his ego, self,
or personality. Lord Buddha
analyzes a living being into these five groups: materiality, feeling,
perception, mental formations and consciousness aggregate. The factors present in all
experience. kilesa: defilements, mind-defiling, unwholesome
qualities. That which afflicts, that which stains, thus makes the mind unable
to see things clearly (as they truly are). The 10 kilesas are: the 3 unwholesome roots (lobha, dosa and moha), plus māna, ditthi, doubt, sloth,
restlessness, shamelessness, and fearlessness of wrong doing. The defilements
are so called because they afflict or torment the mind, or because they
defile beings by dragging them down to a mentally soiled and depraved
condition. kusala: wholesome, meritorious, skillful, good, right; kammically wholesome or
profitable, conducing to well-being. Why “skillful”? Because it
deals skillfully with the law of kamma
and it’s the smart thing to do. lakkhana: characteristic, mark, sign, i.e. the salient quality of the phenomenon. Ti-lakkhana: the Three (universal) Characteristics of
all mental and physical phenomena, that is, anicca, dukkha and anattā. See the verse under “Dhamma” above. lobha: liking, greed; it is a synonym for tanhā. It covers all degrees of selfish desire, longing, attachment, and
clinging. Its characteristic is grasping an object. Its function is sticking,
as meat sticks to a hot pan. It is manifested as not giving up. Its proximate
cause is seeing enjoyment in things that lead to bondage. magga: path. Specifically,
the path leading to the cessation of suffering, the Noble Eightfold
Path, i.e. the last of the Four Noble Truths, namely: Right view III.
Wisdom (paññā) Right
thought Right
speech Right bodily action I. Morality (sīla) Right
livelihood
Right
effort Right mindfulness II. Concentration (samadhi) Right
concentration māna: conceit; it has the characteristic of
haughtiness. Its function is self-exaltation. It is manifested as vainglory
(a desire to advertise oneself). Its proximate cause is greed dissociated
from views. It should be regarded as madness. manasikāra: attention,
advertence, bringing-to-mind. moha: delusion; it is a synonym for avijjā, ignorance. Its
characteristic is mental blindness or unknowing. Its function is
non-penetration, or concealment of the real nature of the object. It is
manifested as the absence of right understanding or as mental darkness. Its
proximate cause is unwise attention (ayoniso manasikāra).
It should be seen as the root of all that is unwholesome. mokkha-dhamma:
‘salvation’. Condition of liberation; freedom from, release,
deliverance; independence; final emancipation: exemption from further
transmigration. nāma: mentality, mental event; mental phenomena.
There are two kinds of conditioned nāma: citta
and cetasika, and one kind of
unconditioned nāma: Nibbāna. Nibbāna: quenching, disbanding,
cessation of suffering. Sanskrit form: Nirvana. Lit., “to cease blowing, to become extinguished”. It would probably be more
accurate to talk of the non-state of one who has gained Nibbāna, because it is not possible to say what Nibbāna is like. How can you describe the condition of a non-being in a
non-state? It is that conundrum which led to Lord Buddha refusing to discuss
the existence or non-existence of the Tathāghata
(of himself) after death. All we can do is say what Nibbāna is not like. It is not like samsāra. Consequently it is often defined in terms of negatives or opposites.
It is “blissful” or “happy” as opposed to the dukkha of existence. It is “unmoving”
as opposed to the endless movement of samsāra. It is “without death” as opposed to the repeated deaths
of samsāra. It is without birth (ajāta),
and “without formed things” as opposed to the world, which has
birth, beings, made things, and formed things. It is the deathless or immortal
because no one is born, thus no one dies. It is the unconditioned reality
which is freedom from suffering; the departure from the entanglement of
craving — for as long as one remains entangled in craving one remains
bound in samsāra, the recurring cycle of birth and death, but when all craving has
been extirpated, Nibbāna is reached, that is, deliverance from the cycle of birth and death. “Extinction of greed, extinction of hate, extinction of
delusion: this is called Nibbāna” “This is peace, this is exquisite — the resolution of all
fabrications, the relinquishment of all acquisitions, the fading
away of craving; dispassion; cessation; Nibbāna” nirodha: cessation, extinction. nîvarana: hindrance. The 5 hindrances are: sensuous desire,
ill-will, sloth & torpor, restlessness & scruples, and sceptical doubt. ñāna: knowledge. It is used synonymously with paññā and
non-delusion (amoha). paccaya: aiding condition; conditioning factor, causal
or influencing factor; causal agent or element. paññā: wisdom (i.e. in one who has reached the path or is practicing Insight
for it, or else ‘native wit’), or knowing things as they really
are. paññatti: concept. paramattha: an ultimate; final
or ultimate reality; “in ultimate sense”. An ultimate is anything that is not a
concept (paññatti). There exists
either thinking, whose object is past or future, or feeling (pure
cognition/direct perception) of the present moment, whose object is an ultimate. An ultimate is that which is immediately felt or
experienced—before language tells us what it is, before thinking
discriminates. “…there must be in what is seen just the seen, in the
heard just the heard, in what is contacted just the contacted…” According to the Abhidhamma, there are to kinds o realities—the
conventional and the ultimate. Conventional realities are the referents of
ordinary conceptual thought and conventional modes of expression. They
include entities such as living beings, persons, men, women, animals, and the
apparently stable persisting objects that constitute our unanalyzed picture
of the world. The Abhidhamma maintains that these
notions do not posses ultimate validity, for the objects they signify do not
exist in their own right as irreducible realities. There mode of being is
conceptual, not actual. Ultimate realities, in contrast, are things that
exist by reason of their own intrinsic nature (sabhāva).
These are the dhammas: the final,
irreducible components of existence. Such existents admit of no further
reduction, but are themselves the final terms of analysis, the true
constituents of the complex manifold of experience. Hence the word paramattha is applied to them, which is derived from parama = ultimate, final, and attha
= reality, thing. As one extracts oil from sesame seeds, so one can extract
the ultimate realities from the conventional realities. For example
“being”, and “man”, and “woman” are
concepts suggesting that the things they signify posses irreducible ultimate
unity. However, when we wisely investigate these things with the analytical
tools of the Abhidhamma, we find that they do not
posses the ultimacy implied by the concepts, but only
a conventional reality as an assemblage of impermanent factors, of mental and
physical processes (nāma-rūpa). Thus by examining the
conventional realities with wisdom, we eventually arrive at the objective
actualities that lie behind our conceptual constructs. These objective
actualities—ultimate realities, dhammas—maintain
their intrinsic natures independently of the mind’s constructive
functions. Although ultimate realities exist as the concrete essence of
things, they are so subtle and profound that an ordinary person who lacks
training cannot perceive them. Such person cannot see the ultimate realities
because his mind is obscured by concepts, which shape realities into
conventionally defined appearances. Only by means of wise or thorough
attention to things (yoniso manasikāra) can one see beyond the
concepts and take the ultimate realities as one’s object of knowledge. See
Abhidhamma. puñña: merit or meritoriousness. Someone who
believes in kamma, who believes in the result of kamma—that
good kamma has a result which reciprocates as good, namely, well-being
for the doer himself; and that bad kamma has a result which
reciprocates as bad, namely, suffering and distress for the doer
himself—he must, as a rule, be someone who avoids doing bad kamma
and who exerts himself in doing good kamma. Good kamma is merit
itself. Therefore, someone who has confidence (saddhā)
together with right understanding of good and bad kamma, will naturally be
familiar with doing those things which are meritorious. The nature of merit
is opposite to that of evil. There are 10 types of merit: 1 dāna: giving, as well as sharing; generosity 2 sīla:
not to violate conduct, that is, to keep restrain through body and speech 3 bhāvanā: mental development through calm
(samatha) and insight (vipassanā) 4 apacāyana: to show respect, to be respectful,
to those one ought to show respect to 5 veyyāvacca: to exert oneself in the duties
that ought to be performed 6 pattidāna: to give one’s merit to others 7 pattānumodanā: that is, anumodanā, rejoicing in the merit others have
done 8 dhammassavana: listening to Lord Buddha’s
Teaching 9 dhammadesanā: preaching the Dhamma 10 ditthujukamma:
straightening one’s views; it actually means right view or right understanding
itself rūpa: materiality, physical event, or physical phenomena. One
should not confuse rūpa
with “matter” because, for example, the various bodily postures
are not matter but derivatives of matter. sabhāva: intrinsic nature, the true state of nature; principle of nature. sacca: truth, verity, reality, fact. ariya-sacca: noble truth(s). saddhā: confidence, conviction, faith, trust. A practitioner is said to have
faith if he believes in the Buddha’s enlightenment. His faith, however,
should be “reasoned and rooted in understanding” and he is asked
to investigate and test the object of his faith. The “faculty of
faith” should be balanced with wisdom. “Faith born of
understanding” is different from “faith” in other
religions, where it often means “to believe in something which cannot
be explained”. Faith is called the seed of all wholesome states because
it inspires the mind with confidence and determination, for “launching
out” to cross the flood of samsāra. Faith is a mental concomitant (cetasika), present in all kammically
wholesome states. “Too much faith is an impediment
for the arising of wisdom”, A. Prani samādhi: concentration, tranquility, calm. samatha: serenity; it is a synonym for samādhi. samniak: a Thai (not Pāli)
word which means to go on paying attention, observing and considering in
order to get to the meaning/essence (sāra) and bring it’s usefulness into
practice. sampajañña: “clear
comprehension”: It is the nāma-wisdom
that knows the object as rūpa
or nāma, and that knows the nāma that is knowing the
object (as rūpa
or nāma). samsāra: the round of death and [re]birth, perpetual wandering; coming and going
again and again, faring on, circulation; lit., “wandering-on”. The
continuous process of ever again and again being born, growing old,
getting sick and dying. More precisely put, samsāra is the unbroken chain of the khanda-combinations, which, constantly changing from
moment to moment, follow continuously one upon the other
through inconceivable periods of time. As
it is endless, it is beginningless. Many
people think of samsāra as the Buddhist name for the place where we
currently live—the place we leave when we go to Nibbāna.
But in the early Buddhist texts, it is the answer, not to the question,
“Where are we?”, but to the question, “What are we
doing?” Instead of a place, it is a process: the tendency to keep
creating worlds and then moving into them. When one world falls apart, one
creates another one and goes there. samvara: restraint; to collect oneself. It means to do
only that which is necessary (in regards to the eradication of suffering).
The Thai rendering for this term is “carefulness”. There are 5
kinds of restraint: (1) restraint by virtue (morality), (2) restraint by
mindfulness, (3) restraint by insight (wisdom), (4) restraint by patience,
(5) restraint by energy (persistence). samvara-indriya: restraint of the senses. samvega: the oppressive sense of shock, dismay, and alienation that comes with
realizing the futility and meaninglessness of life as it's normally lived; a
chastening sense of one's own complacency and foolishness in having let
oneself live so blindly; and an anxious sense of urgency in trying to find a
way out of the meaningless cycle. santāna:
continuity (of consciousness). In Thai “sandan”
means “inborn characteristic, trait, instincts”. saññā: label; perception; allusion; act of memory or recognition;
interpretation. sāra: importance, value, worth; core, essence,
substance, meaning. sati: mindfulness; alertness, carefulness. The word sati derives from
a root meaning “to remember”, but as a mental factor (cetasika) it signifies presence of mind,
attentiveness to the present, rather than the faculty of memory regarding the
past. It is said to have “non-superficiality” as it salient
characteristic, or not wobbling, i.e. not floating away from the object. Its
function is absence of confusion or non-forgetfulness. It is manifested as
the state of being turned towards the object. It is also called the
“non-negligence”, which indicates the state of unremitting
alertness. sikkhati: observation; to study/analyze/examine, to
train oneself. Sikkhati
knows if one is practicing correctly or not. sîla: morality, virtue; conduct. The basic sîla
consists of the 5 Precepts: abstinence from taking life, stealing, sexual
misconduct, false speech, and the use of intoxicants (alcohol and drugs). sotāpanna: stream enterer. Stream entry is the first of
the four levels of Awakening. It gains its name from the fact that a person
who has attained this level has entered the "stream" that flows
inevitably to Nibbâna. He/she is guaranteed to
achieve full Awakening within seven lifetimes at most, and in the interim
will not be reborn in any of the lower realms. sukha: happiness, pleasure, ease, comfort,
well-being; joy, bliss. sutta: (1) Discourse, text,
dialogue. (2) The discursive (narrational) part of
the Buddhist scriptures containing the suttas or dialogues; later
called the Basket of Discourses, the name of the second group of the
canonical books. tanhā: craving—in all its different forms and degrees. Literally, “thirst". It is a synonym for lobha. uddhacca: wandering mind; restlessness, distraction,
flurry, agitation. upādāna: taking as
one’s own, laying hold of, grasping,
attachment. It is an intensified degree of craving. upādāna-khanda: The five aggregates of attachment or clinging;
it can also be translated as
“the five groups of existence which form the objects of
clinging”, or “the five grasped-at groups”. “Whatever kind of materiality there is, whether past, future or
present, connected with taints and subject to clinging—this is called the materiality aggregate of clinging.” The same definition method applies to the 4 other
aggregates. See khanda. vatta: round; the rounds of existence, cycle of
transmigration. vedanā: feeling (only in the narrow sense of pleasure, pain and neither). Usually
divided into five, two kinds of (bodily) sensation: pleasant and unpleasant (sukha and dukkha), and
three kinds of (mental) feeling: pleasant (somanassa), unpleasant (domanassa) and
indifferent. vipāka: The consequence and result of a
past volitional action (kamma), either the result of a wholesome
deed (kusala kamma), kusala vipāka,
or of an unwholesome deed (akusala kamma), akusala vipāka. vipassanā: Insight. Clear intuitive insight into
physical and mental phenomena as they arise and disappear, seeing them for
what they actually are — in and of themselves — in terms of the
three characteristics (see lakkhana) and in terms of the 4 Noble Truths (ariya-sacca). vivatta: round free; cessation of the round; absence of
the cycle (vatta) of existence. Yogi,
yogāvacara: Dhamma
practitioner, one devoted to mental training. yoniso manasikāra: appropriate, wise or thorough attention to the object; proper consideration; thinking in
terms of specific conditionality. Having heard the Dhamma, it is important to
bring appropriate attention — seeing things in terms of cause and
effect — both to what one has heard and to ones experiences in general.
It is essentially the ability to frame ones understanding of experience in
the right terms. In many cases, this means framing the right questions for
gaining insight into suffering and its end: “This is
the way leading to discernment: when visiting a contemplative, to ask:
‘What is skillful? What is unskillful? What is blameworthy? What is
blameless? What should be cultivated? What should not be cultivated? What,
having been done by me, will be for my long-term harm and suffering? Or what,
having been done by me, will be for my long-term welfare and
happiness?’” Appropriate attention can also mean framing the way
one understand events as they occur: [MahaKotthita:] “Sariputta my friend, which things
should a virtuous monk attend to in an appropriate way?” [Sariputta:] “A virtuous monk, Kotthita my friend,
should attend in an appropriate way to the 5 clinging-aggregates (upādāna-khanda) as inconstant, stressful, a disease, a cancer, an
arrow, painful, an affliction, alien, a dissolution, an emptiness,
not-self…” The
five causes for the arising of appropriate
attention are: (1) to be in a place where there are wise individuals;
(2) “to sit next to” the wise person. (3) to listen to Dhamma from the wise person; (4) to put into practice
what has been heard from the wise person, as opposite “to dropping it
away”; (5) pubbekatapuññatā,
the state of having formerly done meritorious deeds, or having prepared
oneself with a good background or accumulation of merit (puñña),
thus appropriate attention can arise easily.
The first four are present causes; the last one is a former cause. Appropriate
attention arises from the factor of confidence (saddhā)
until it develops into Right View (sammā-ditthi).
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[1] Since seeing the
noble ones leads to hearing the true Dhamma, which can prevent wrong view from
getting a grip on the mind