A Dhamma Glossary

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Format. Each Part title carries a parenthetical with the canonical language(s); Pāli-canonical Parts (I–XI) additionally tag the doctrinal stratum (e.g., EBT, Abhi. + Theravāda comm.). In Pāli-canonical Parts (I–XI), headwords are Pāli with the Sanskrit form in parentheses — e.g. diṭṭhi (Skt: dṛṣṭi), or (Skt: same) when IAST-identical. In Sanskrit-tradition Parts (XII–XIV), the Sanskrit form is the headword; a Pāli cognate is parenthesized only when it carries parallel doctrinal use. Non-Indic Parts (XV) use the standard transliteration with the original script where useful. Terms whose stratum diverges from the Part default carry an inline stratum tag after the headword. Entries give brief glosses and rendering-notes rather than full prose definitions — though a handful of doctrinally load-bearing entries run to short essays; longer def-flags surface contested scholarship or multi-sense terms. Pāli quotations keep inflected forms: masculine a-stem nouns pluralize with -ā (dhammā, saṅkhārā, khandhā — plurals of dhamma, saṅkhāra, khandha; Skt nom. pl. dharmāḥ, saṃskārāḥ, skandhāḥ) — not to be confused with feminine singulars in -ā (taṇhā, saññā, paññā, mettā); English prose uses anglicized plurals (dhammas, jhānas).

Abbreviations. Canonical: DN / MN / SN / AN — the four main Nikāyas (Dīgha / Majjhima / Saṃyutta / Aṅguttara); DĀ / MĀ — Dīrgha / Madhyama Āgama (Chinese parallels); Sn — Sutta Nipāta; Dhp — Dhammapada; Itiv. — Itivuttaka; Ud. — Udāna; Vin. — Vinaya. Doctrinal labels: EBT — Early Buddhist Texts (the four Nikāyas + Āgama parallels); DO — dependent origination (paṭiccasamuppāda); 4NT — the four noble truths. Commentarial / Abhidhamma: Vism — Visuddhimagga; Spk — Sāratthappakāsinī (SN commentary); Abhi. — Abhidhamma. Other texts: MMK — Mūlamadhyamakakārikā (Nāgārjuna); YS — Yoga Sūtra (Patañjali). Linguistic: OIA — Old Indo-Aryan; PIE — Proto-Indo-European; BHS — Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit. Dictionaries: PED — PTS Pali-English Dictionary; DPD — Digital Pali Dictionary; MW — Monier-Williams Sanskrit-English Dictionary; Apte — Apte Practical Sanskrit-English Dictionary.

Part I — Earliest Stratum (Pāli; Aṭṭhakavagga / Pārāyanavagga)

Earliest stratum within the Pāli canon — often treated as among the earliest recoverable layers of Buddhist literature. Direct soteriology of dropping taṇhā/grasping/diṭṭhi (grasping attested here only as the participle anupādiyāno; the noun upādāna is later → VII.a), prior to the systematic lists. Flag here terms whose non-clinging soteriological use is characteristic of (or whose earliest stratum-defining attestation lies in) the Aṭṭhakavagga / Pārāyanavagga / parts of Sutta Nipāta — even where the word itself recurs pan-canonically (e.g. taṇhā, dukkha, diṭṭhi).

What is to be relinquished:

diṭṭhi (Skt: dṛṣṭi) — view, position.

def-flag: treated here in its earliest-stratum sense as “view/position to be dropped”; the technical sammā-diṭṭhi usage belongs under VIII.a, and sakkāya-diṭṭhi (identity-view, fetter 1) at VIII.g picks up the negative-view-to-be-abandoned sense in a later technical key. The systematic wrong-view taxonomies — micchā-diṭṭhi and the Six Teachers’ denials (VIII.a), the sassata/uccheda (eternalism/annihilationism) and atthitā/natthitā (existence/non-existence) antinomies (X.b) — are later four-Nikāya material, not earliest-stratum.
papañcasaṅkhā (Skt: prapañca-saṃkhyā) — proliferation-reckonings, proliferation-categories; lit. “reckoning, designation” (saṅkhā, Skt saṃkhyā — spanning counting → naming → concept). The Aṭṭhakavagga’s two attestations carry its dispute-genealogy: quarrels and disputes traced to papañca-categories rooted in perception (Sn 4.11 Kalahavivāda, saññānidānā hi papañcasaṅkhā), and their root — the notion “I am” — to be stopped entirely (Sn 4.14 Tuvaṭaka, mūlaṃ papañcasaṅkhāya … asmīti). The same earliest-stratum soteriology as the diṭṭhi-critique above, aimed at the conceptual machinery that generates views. For saṅkhā’s English: “reckonings” is the PED-literal; Thanissaro “categories” (of objectification), Ñāṇamoli/Bodhi “notions” (both at MN 18’s papañcasaññāsaṅkhā). For the bare noun and its four-Nikāya systematization (MN 18’s Madhupiṇḍika sequence) → papañca (X.b).
anupādiyāno (Skt: anupādāna) — not grasping; the earliest stratum’s non-clinging soteriology is carried by this negated participle of the upa-ā-√dā root — “not grasping anything in the world” (Sn 4.14), “not grasping, not even leaning on knowledge” (Sn 4.5). The abstract noun upādāna (clinging; VII.a) is absent from the Aṭṭhakavagga/Pārāyanavagga; its systematization as DO link 9 belongs to the (still-EBT) four-Nikāya core, later than this earliest stratum.
taṇhā (Skt: tṛṣṇā) — craving; lit. “thirst” (cognate with English thirst via PIE *ters-). Also appears in VII.a as taṇhā (DO link 8); flagged here per the Part headnote’s criterion.

def-flag: the standard formula at SN 56.11 characterizes taṇhā by three descriptors: its affective signature (nandī-rāga, “delight-and-lust”), its roving activity (delighting here and there in objects), and its function (giving rise to renewed becoming). Aversion is handled separately: dosa (root, VI.f), byāpāda (ill will — hindrance III.b and fetter 5, VIII.g), paṭigha (the latent aversion-anusaya, VIII.g). The split is soteriologically load-bearing — taṇhā is treated as the DO/4NT engine of renewed becoming; aversion is analyzed through dosa, byāpāda, paṭigha. Mettā/upekkhā are the primary antidotes to ill-will and reactive aversion (heart-cultivation); yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana is the primary undoing of craving (wisdom-cultivation). Final eradication for both, though, is path-insight: the fetter-architecture has kāmacchanda (4) and byāpāda (5) drop together at 3rd path, but taṇhā extends through rūpa-rāga/arūpa-rāga (6, 7) — no parallel subtle-aversion cluster. Vibhava-taṇhā (“craving for non-becoming”) is structurally a craving with non-existence as object, not aversion-to-existence (Bodhi, Anālayo). The “craving/aversion” framing in modern insight-pedagogy (Burmese Mahāsi noting, Goenka’s “craving and aversion”; popularized via IMS — Goldstein, Salzberg, Brach) unifies pull and push as twin dukkha-movements — useful entry-level synthesis; canonical distinction recovers at finer stages (Mahāsi-noting keeps “wanting”/“disliking” distinct).
upadhi (Skt: same) — attachment, acquisition, substrate.

def-flag: a central soteriological axis of the earliest-stratum Sutta Nipāta — in the Pārāyanavagga (Sn 5.5 Mettagū-pucchā; Sn 5.1 Vimutto upadhikkhaye; cf. Sn 3.12 Dvayatānupassanā Upadhinidānā pabhavanti dukkhā in the Mahāvagga), though not the Aṭṭhakavagga proper — with the goal articulated as anupadhi/nirupadhi (freedom from upadhi). No single rendering carries the full sense — major translators differ: Burford “substrate / basis for existence” (basis-of-becoming, not metaphysical substance) tracks the upa-√dhā “place-under” force most directly; Norman “acquisition” and Fronsdal “clinging” foreground the agential side; Bodhi “attachment” is the most general. Distinct from the Sanskrit term upādhi (XIV, Advaita limiting-adjunct): Pāli upadhi is from upa-√dhā; Sanskrit upādhi is from upa-ā-√dhā. The two are different words with the same IAST root-letters; the macron on the long ā in upādhi is the visual tell. (The Buddhist upadhi itself carries into Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit in the same soteriological sense — Edgerton glosses BHS upadhi “substratum of continued existence; attachment, bond uniting one to existence” — so the contrast here is specifically with the unrelated Advaita upādhi, not a claim that Sanskrit lacks a Buddhist upadhi.)

The predicament:

dukkha (Skt: duḥkha) — unsatisfactory (adj.), unsatisfactoriness, suffering (nom.). The existential predicament that frames the Aṭṭhakavagga soteriology — non-clinging is the response to dukkha. The goal-pointers in II (vimutti, āsavakkhaya, nibbāna) are co-extensively described as liberation from dukkha (e.g. dukkhass'antakaro “one who makes an end of dukkha,” Sn 2.11, DN 16) and from the āsavas (DN 2 formula kāmāsavāpi cittaṃ vimuccati…); the āsava-language specifies the producing-currents that must cease for dukkha to end. Doctrinally pariññeyya (to be fully understood) within the 4NT schema, distinct from taṇhā/upādāna/diṭṭhi which are pahātabba (to be abandoned); cf. VI.a for the three-marks treatment, IX for the 4NT framing.

The goal as freedom from clinging:

anupadhi (Skt: same) / nirupadhi (Skt: same) — without substrate, free of acquisition; the goal-pointer corresponding to upadhi.
santi (Skt: śānti) — peace; cf. Sn 4.14 santi-pada (“peace-state”; also Sn 1.12, Sn 5.12) as a synonym for the goal.

The sage:

muni (Skt: same) — sage; from √man/√mun “think, know” (DPD, MW) — the “silence” association is carried by the cognate mona / Skt mauna, not by the root of muni itself
moneyya (Skt: mauneya) — sagehood, the sage’s way; cf. mona (Skt: mauna).
viveka (Skt: same) — separation, seclusion; cf. III.c for the jhāna-formula sense.
akiñcana (Skt: same) (adj.) / ākiñcañña (Skt: ākiṃcanya) (nom.) — owning nothing / owning-nothingness; the adjective describes the muni at Sn 5.10 (Todeyya-pucchā) and Sn 5.5 (Mettagū-pucchā) — akiñcanaṃ kāmabhave asattaṃ “owning nothing, unattached to sensual existence”; the abstract noun is the form compounded into the third arūpa-samāpatti ākiñcaññāyatana (III.c).

Part II — The Goal: Nibbāna & Āsavakkhaya (Pāli; EBT)

nibbāna (Skt: nirvāṇa) — the goal; lit. “blowing out, extinguishing” (nir- + √vā “blow”). Often left untransliterated; when glossed, “extinguishing” or “quenching” is the standard modern rendering.
parinibbāna (Skt: parinirvāṇa) — final nibbāna; the nibbāna-at-death of the arhat. Near-synonym of anupādisesa-nibbāna in EBT usage — both name the nibbāna-at-death when the khandhas drop, contrasted with saupādisesa-nibbāna, the nibbāna-while-alive of the arhat with khandhas still present.
saupādisesa-nibbāna (Skt: sopadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa) — nibbāna “with remainder”; the arhat’s liberation while still alive (khandhas remaining). Itiv. 44 (Nibbānadhātusutta) frames the pair as the two nibbāna-elements — saupādisesā nibbānadhātu / anupādisesā nibbānadhātu; the bare -nibbāna compound is later shorthand for the nibbānadhātu formula.
anupādisesa-nibbāna (Skt: nirupadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa) — nibbāna “without remainder”; the nibbāna-at-death (khandhas drop). Near-synonym of parinibbāna in EBT usage; for the Itiv. 44 nibbānadhātu framing see saupādisesa-nibbāna.
amata (Skt: amṛta) — the deathless; lit. “un-dying” (a- + √mṛ “die”). A pervasive EBT epithet for the goal.
saṃsāra (Skt: same) — the round of rebirths, the wandering-on, cyclic existence; lit. “flowing on” (saṃ- + √sṛ “flow”). The correlative-contrast term to nibbāna; the condition from which nibbāna is release.
āsava (Skt: āsrava) — taint, defilement; lit. “flowing, inflow/outflow” (ā- + √sru “flow”). The standard EBT enumeration is three (kāmāsava sensual-taint / bhavāsava becoming-taint / avijjāsava ignorance-taint, e.g. MN 9), with diṭṭhāsava added as a fourth in the Abhidhamma (Vibhaṅga/Dhammasaṅgaṇī), not in the sutta lists. Thanissaro’s signature rendering is “effluent” (the ā-√sru outflow image; cf. DPD “discharge, outflow”). The Jain cognate āsrava means “karmic inflow.”
āsavakkhaya (Skt: āsravakṣaya) — destruction of the āsavas. An early goal-description (MN 27, DN 2, AN 6.55, etc.) — pre-systematic in the sense that “ending of the āsavas” predates and underwrites the more elaborate nibbāna/vimutti vocabulary as a compact name for what awakening accomplishes.
anāsava (Skt: anāsrava) — taint-free; of the arhat, of nibbāna itself.
khīṇāsava (Skt: kṣīṇāsrava) — one whose āsavas are destroyed; the arhat’s defining state.
taṇhākkhaya (Skt: tṛṣṇākṣaya) — destruction of craving; MN 37 (Cūḷataṇhāsaṅkhaya-sutta) frames the whole training around the ending of craving (there as the synonym taṇhāsaṅkhaya; taṇhākkhaya itself appears at MN 26, MN 64). Compressed paraphrase of the Buddha’s repeated formulation that he teaches “only dukkha and its ending” — dukkhañ ceva paññāpemi dukkhassa ca nirodhaṃ (MN 22.37, SN 22.86); cf. AN 10.58, SN 12.23. Like āsavakkhaya, names the goal from the negative side — what is destroyed — rather than the positive (vimutti, nibbāna).
vimutti (Skt: vimukti) — liberation, release, deliverance, emancipation, freedom.
cetovimutti (Skt: cetovimukti) — liberation of mind; paired with paññāvimutti as the two aspects of the arhat’s liberation (AN 2.31, MN 43, etc.).
paññāvimutti (Skt: prajñāvimukti) — liberation by wisdom; paired with cetovimutti.
ubhatobhāgavimutta (Skt: ubhayatobhāgavimukta) — liberated both ways; every arhat has both cetovimutti and paññāvimutti; the ubhatobhāgavimutta arhat additionally has mastery of the aṭṭha vimokkha (eight liberations, DN 15 / AN 8.66 — three form-based contemplations, the four āruppa attainments, and saññāvedayitanirodha), distinguishing them from the paññāvimutta arhat (MN 70). Distinct schema from the three vimokkha-mukha (suññatā/animitta/appaṇihita) below — same root, different list.
mutti (Skt: mukti) — liberation, release; near-synonym of vimutti, used more sparingly in the canon.
mokkha (Skt: mokṣa) — liberation, release.

def-flag: Pāli has two homophonous mokkha forms, both inherited reflexes of OIA — one from OIA *maukhya (Vṛddhi of mukha) “chief, foremost,” one from OIA *mokṣa- (√muc “release”) “liberation.” Regular sound change: OIA kṣ → Middle Indic kkh. Pāli did not borrow the word from classical Sanskrit; Pāli and Sanskrit are sister developments from OIA. The liberation-sense mokkha is rare in the Pāli canon, which prefers vimutti/mutti/nibbāna; the soteriological weight of the word lies with the cognate Sanskrit mokṣa in Brahmanical Upaniṣadic and Jain usage.
vimokkha (Skt: vimokṣa) — liberation, release; same vi-√muc family as vimutti; names two schemas in this Part — the aṭṭha vimokkha (eight liberations, DN 15 / AN 8.66; see ubhatobhāgavimutta above) and the three vimokkha-mukha “doors to liberation” (see suññatā below).
nirodha (Skt: same) — cessation, stopping; lit. “obstruction, holding back” (ni- + √rudh “obstruct”). The etymology suggests “blocking-off / bringing to a halt” rather than metaphysical annihilation. The 3rd noble truth (nirodha-sacca, IX); the cessation-half of paṭiccasamuppāda’s “this-not-being, that does not arise.”
nibbidā (Skt: nirveda) — disenchantment, disillusionment. Its slot in the upanisā-type chains (SN 12.23 Upanisā-sutta; AN 10.2): yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana → nibbidā → virāga → vimutti — one of two parallel EBT goal-path formulas; DN 2’s closing pericope passes from the knowing-and-seeing directly to liberation without these links (see the parallel-formulas note, III.a).
virāga (Skt: same) — dispassion, fading of passion; same sequence.
bodhi (Skt: same) — awakening. “Enlightenment” in older translations; “awakening” is the modern scholarly consensus that better tracks the √budh “wake” root.
sammā-sambodhi (Skt: samyak-saṃbodhi) — complete, proper awakening; a Buddha’s kind of awakening. Standardly “right awakening” or “perfect awakening” (sammā rendered “right”/“perfect” in most translations); see VIII.a sammā note for the “proper” rendering rationale.
suññatā (Skt: śūnyatā) — emptiness. One of the three terms later grouped as the vimokkha-mukha (“doors to liberation”; with animitta and appaṇihita). The three terms themselves — and their use as the three samādhis/cetovimuttis — are EBT (MN 43, MN 121, etc.); but the compound vimokkha-mukha and the “doors to liberation” framing as such are late-canonical (Paṭisambhidāmagga, Vimokkhakathā, and later), not four-Nikāya. The symmetric three-marks-to-three-doors mapping (suññatā ↔ anattā, animitta ↔ anicca, appaṇihita ↔ dukkha) belongs to the same stratum — Paṭisambhidāmagga II 48 (Vimokkhakathā), elaborated at Visuddhimagga XXI.66–73 — not an EBT lexical correspondence (cf. VI.a). Distinct from the aṭṭha vimokkha (eight liberations, DN 15 / AN 8.66) referenced under ubhatobhāgavimutta above — same root, different schema.

def-flag: EBT sense is meditative/phenomenological (MN 121, MN 122); the Prajñāpāramitā/Madhyamaka sense — universal negation of svabhāva (not itself an ontological posit; cf. XII.b śūnyatā-śūnyatā) — goes under XII.a/XII.b.
animitta (Skt: same) — signless (meditation/liberation); without nimitta (III.c). One of the three vimokkha-mukha alongside suññatā and appaṇihita; corresponds to anicca in the (late-canonical/commentarial) three-marks-to-three-doors mapping; cf. VI.a, and II suññatā for stratum.
appaṇihita (Skt: apraṇihita) — undirected, wishless, non-aspiring (meditation/liberation). One of the three vimokkha-mukha (with suññatā and animitta); corresponds to dukkha in the (late-canonical/commentarial) three-marks-to-three-doors mapping; cf. VI.a, and II suññatā for stratum. “Undirected” follows Sujato; Bodhi “directionless/wishless.”
pabhassara (Skt: prabhāsvara) — luminous, radiant, bright; the AN 1.49–52 description of citta (Sujato numbering; Bodhi Numerical Discourses AN 1.51–52; PTS 1.5.1–2) — pabhassaramidaṃ, bhikkhave, cittaṃ, tañca kho āgantukehi upakkilesehi upakkiliṭṭhaṃ “luminous, bhikkhus, is this mind, but it is defiled by adventitious defilements.” A contested EBT passage: Theravāda commentarial readings identify the luminous citta with bhavaṅga (XI.a) — the subliminal life-continuum running between active cognitive moments; proto-Mahāyāna readings take it as a primordial luminous awareness, a thread that develops into Mahāyāna prabhāsvara-citta (XII.d), tathāgatagarbha (XII.d), and Vajrayāna 'od gsal clear-light (XIII.b). Distinct from viññāṇa (VI.b) — viññāṇa is object-distinguishing cognition; pabhassara names the mind’s luminous-knowing register.

def-flag: the luminous citta (the pabhassaraṃ cittaṃ of AN 1.49–52) may be the closest Buddhist analogue to “phenomenal consciousness” in modern philosophy of mind (Block, Chalmers — qualia, what-it-is-likeness), but the comparison is interpretive rather than lexical; the Buddhist usage remains soteriological rather than merely descriptive.

Part III — The Gradual Training (Pāli; EBT)

The DN 2 / MN 27 gradual-training pericope (anupubbasikkhā) is the most stable pedagogical sequence in the four Nikāyas, repeated nearly verbatim across DN 2 Sāmaññaphala-sutta, MN 27 Cūḷahatthipadopama, MN 38, MN 39, MN 51, MN 53, MN 107, MN 125 (Chinese Āgama parallels at DĀ 27, MĀ 146). Its closing pericope inside the āsavakkhaya-ñāṇa fruit — yathābhūtaṃ-pajāna of the 4NT and of the 4NT-of-the-āsavas → cittaṃ vimuccati from the āsavas → vimutti-ñāṇadassana (“khīṇā jāti…”) — is the gradual training’s terminus. SN 12.23 Upanisā-sutta presents a parallel post-jhāna formula in a different idiom: yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana → nibbidā → virāga → vimutti → khaye-ñāṇa (“knowledge of destruction”). The terminal goal-terms (nibbidā, virāga, vimutti, āsavakkhaya) are at Part II as goal-pointers; commentarial jhāna apparatus is at XI.b.

III.a Sequence of the Training

The gradual-training pericope (DN 2, MN 27, MN 38, MN 39, MN 51, MN 53, MN 107, MN 125):

sīla (Skt: śīla) — virtue, ethical conduct, morality. DN 2 expounds in three sub-sections: cūḷasīla, majjhimasīla, mahāsīla.
indriya-saṃvara (Skt: same) — sense-restraint, restraint of the faculties.
sati-sampajañña (Skt: smṛti-samprajanya) — mindfulness and clear comprehension; expanded as the satipaṭṭhāna training in IV.
santuṭṭhi (Skt: saṃtuṣṭi) — contentment (with the requisites); DN 2’s bird-with-wings simile.
vivitta-senāsana (Skt: vivikta-śayanāsana) — resort to a solitary lodging; the canonical training-narrative for the renunciant retiring to root-of-tree, charnel-ground, mountain-cleft. Neither necessary nor sufficient for jhāna — what the jhānas require is viveka (III.c): separation from sensuality and unwholesome states. Physical solitude supports but doesn’t compel that.
nīvaraṇa-pahāna (Skt: nīvaraṇa-prahāṇa) — abandonment of the hindrances; MN 27 / MN 39: pañca nīvaraṇe pahāya cetaso upakkilese paññāya dubbalīkaraṇe (“having abandoned the five hindrances — the corruptions of the mind that weaken wisdom”); DN 2 instead enumerates each hindrance separately. See III.b for pañca nīvaraṇa.
cattāro rūpa-jhānā — the four form-jhānas; see III.c.
yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana (Skt: yathābhūta-jñāna-darśana) — knowledge-and-vision of things as they are; lit. “as-it-has-come-to-be knowledge-and-seeing.” The nominal compound is the chain-form attested at SN 12.23 / AN 10.2 (yathābhūtañāṇadassanaṃ); DN 2 itself expresses this step verbally — yathābhūtaṃ pajānāti (“understands as it has come to be,” 16× in the sutta) — with ñāṇadassana as its own fruit-term. In DN 2’s closing pericope, the yathābhūtaṃ-pajāna is of the four noble truths and of the four-noble-truths-of-the-āsavas; in this pericope the knowing-and-seeing issues directly in liberation (cittaṃ vimuccati) — the nibbidā → virāga links of the upanisā-type chains do not intervene (see Parallel canonical formulas below; in the SN 12.23 idiom it is virāga, not this knowing-and-seeing, that stands as vimutti’s proximate condition).
vimutti (II) / āsavakkhaya (II) — the liberation event itself (DN 2: kāmāsavāpi cittaṃ vimuccati, bhavāsavāpi cittaṃ vimuccati, avijjāsavāpi cittaṃ vimuccati); named from two sides as vimutti (the citta becoming free) and āsavakkhaya (the āsavas being destroyed). Doctrinally co-extensive descriptions of one event, not two sequential steps.
vimutti-ñāṇadassana (Skt: vimukti-jñāna-darśana) — knowledge-and-vision of liberation; the post-liberation reviewing certitude (DN 2: vimuttasmiṃ vimuttamiti ñāṇaṃ hoti) expressed as khīṇā jāti, vusitaṃ brahmacariyaṃ, kataṃ karaṇīyaṃ, nāparaṃ itthattāyā (“birth is destroyed, the holy life has been lived, what was to be done is done, there is no more becoming-this”) (DN 2, MN 39).

Each step is developmentally conditioned by the prior; DN 2 expresses this with “endowed with X…” or “having abandoned X…” connectives rather than the explicit upanisā-vocabulary used in SN 12.23.

Parallel canonical formulas:

SN 12.23 Upanisā-sutta substitutes a different post-yathābhūtaṃ chain: yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana → nibbidā → virāga → vimutti → khaye-ñāṇa (= āsavakkhaya-ñāṇa). The Upanisā chain is structured around the explicit upanisā (supporting-condition) idiom — X-upanisaṃ Y (“Y has X as its supporting condition”) — and interposes an affective-evaluative pair (turning-away from formations, fading of passion) between insight and liberation that DN 2’s closing pericope does not. khaye-ñāṇa and vimutti-ñāṇadassana are formula-distinct but doctrinally near-synonymous reviewing knowledges, naming the post-liberation certitude by what’s destroyed (the āsavas) and what’s gained (vimutti) respectively. The two formulas have been read as reflecting different strata or competing liberation-narratives within EBT (Schmithausen 1981, On Some Aspects of Descriptions or Theories of “Liberating Insight” and “Enlightenment” in Early Buddhism; Vetter 1988, The Ideas and Meditative Practices of Early Buddhism); both are EBT.
Note on DN 2’s surface narrative: post-fourth-jhāna, DN 2 actually presents a sequence of ñāṇa-fruits beginning with ñāṇadassana of the body-and-the-viññāṇa-bound-thereto (a four-element-and-consciousness contemplation, distinct from step 8’s 4NT yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana), continuing through manomayiddhi and the five abhiññās (iddhividhi, dibbasota, cetopariyañāṇa, pubbenivāsānussati, cutūpapāta-/dibba-cakkhu-ñāṇa) — all optional fruits — and culminating in āsavakkhaya-ñāṇa. In DN 2’s surface narrative this closing pericope (4NT yathābhūtaṃ-pajāna → cittaṃ vimuccati → vimutti-ñāṇadassana) sits inside āsavakkhaya-ñāṇa (the last ñāṇa-fruit) rather than following it as a separate sequence; steps 8–10 of the numbered list above pull those three moments out and re-present them as their own developmentally-conditioned steps. Counting note: DN 2’s post-jhāna fruits total eight — (1) the body-with-viññāṇa contemplation, (2) manomayiddhi, (3)–(7) the five abhiññās just listed, (8) āsavakkhaya-ñāṇa. The canonical “six abhiññās” set (under abhiññā below) is simply fruits (3)–(8): the five mundane powers plus āsavakkhaya-ñāṇa as sixth, with (1) and (2) left as unnumbered fourth-jhāna fruits.

Ethical cultivation (adjacent to sīla):

hiri (Skt: hrī) / ottappa (Skt: apatrāpya) — conscience / dread of wrongdoing; the “guardians of the world” (AN 2.9, Itiv. 42); a paired-virtues cluster sitting beside sīla rather than within the numbered DN-2 sequence. The pair splits by reference-direction: hiri is the inward guardian — self-respecting shame/conscience (Vism: lajjā, “from within”); ottappa the outward — dread of wrongdoing’s consequences and others’ censure (Vism: ubbega, “from without”). “Shame” sits between them: PED/Vism attach it to hiri, but the before-others sense is closer to ottappa (DPD).
nekkhamma (Skt: naiṣkramya) — renunciation; lit. “going forth” (nis- + √kram “step”). Component of sammā-saṅkappa (VIII.a); the going-forth from household life that frames the entire training in DN 2 / MN 27.

Frame-terms for the training:

majjhimā paṭipadā (Skt: madhyamā pratipad) — the middle way; the frame of the first sermon (SN 56.11), identified there with the noble eightfold path.
kusala (Skt: kuśala) / akusala (Skt: akuśala) — wholesome / unwholesome (alt. skillful / unskillful); the fundamental ethical-qualitative category applied throughout EBT — the criterion being whether an action or quality leads to the cessation of suffering (dukkha) or to its arising (cf. MN 9 Sammādiṭṭhi-sutta, AN 3.65 Kālāma-sutta).
appamāda (Skt: apramāda) / pamāda (Skt: pramāda) — heedfulness / heedlessness. Summary term for the urgency and care of the whole training: Dhp 21 appamādo amatapadaṃ “heedfulness is the deathless path”; Dhp ch. 2 Appamādavagga; the Buddha’s last words at DN 16 — appamādena sampādetha “strive on with heedfulness.” Distinct from effort/vīriya (VI.f) — appamāda is attentive vigilance as an attitudinal stance, not exertion.
adhisīla (Skt: adhiśīla) / adhicitta (Skt: same) / adhipaññā (Skt: adhiprajñā) — higher virtue / higher mind / higher wisdom; the three higher trainings; the master frame under which the gradual training is often presented (AN 3.81, etc.).
bhāvanā (Skt: same) — development, cultivation (used as a near-synonym for “meditation”); lit. “bringing-into-being” (causative of √bhū)
kalyāṇa-mitta (Skt: kalyāṇa-mitra) / kalyāṇa-mittatā (Skt: kalyāṇa-mitratā) — admirable friend / admirable friendship (alt. “good friend / good friendship,” “spiritual friend / spiritual friendship”); lit. “beautiful friend” (kalyāṇa “beautiful, good, virtuous” + mitta “friend”), with the abstract-noun suffix -tā on the second form yielding “friendship.” SN 45.2 (Upaḍḍha-sutta): the Buddha rejects Ānanda’s suggestion that admirable friendship is “half the holy life” and corrects it — sakalam eva brahmacariyaṃ “the entire holy life” is admirable friendship. The relational frame for the training: a kalyāṇa-mitta is one in whom the eightfold path (VIII.a) is embodied. Also at AN 8.54 (Dīghajāṇu-sutta) as a condition of present-life welfare.

The six direct knowledges (post-jhāna fruits):

abhiññā (Skt: abhijñā) — direct knowledge, higher knowledge. The six abhiññās as a canonical set (DN 2, MN 27): (1) iddhi-vidhā psychic powers, (2) dibba-sota divine ear, (3) cetopariya-ñāṇa knowing others’ minds, (4) pubbenivāsānussati recollection of past lives, (5) dibba-cakkhu/cutūpapāta-ñāṇa divine eye / passing-and-rebirth, (6) āsavakkhaya-ñāṇa knowledge of the destruction of the taints. The last three alone are the tevijjā (three knowledges). In the long gradual-training suttas (DN 2, MN 27) the first five are presented as optional fruits available from the fourth jhāna onward — not as required steps (fruits (3)–(8) of DN 2’s eight-fruit sequence; see the narrative note above); only the sixth is the goal itself (cf. II āsavakkhaya).

III.b Hindrances (nīvaraṇa / Skt: same)

nīvaraṇa (Skt: same) — hindrance; lit. “obstruction, covering” (ni- + √vṛ “cover”)

The Five Hindrances (pañca nīvaraṇāni):

kāmacchanda (Skt: same) — sensual desire; the sensual defilement as hindrance — and, the same word, the suttanta sensual fetter (4, VIII.g). Its latent form is the anusaya kāma-rāga (VIII.g); its craving-form kāma-taṇhā (SN 56.11) — successive registers of one sensual defilement.
byāpāda (Skt: vyāpāda) — ill will; lit. “going against, opposing” (vi- + ā- + √pad). Aversion as hindrance — and, the same word, the suttanta aversion fetter (5, VIII.g). Distinct from dosa (root, VI.f) and the latent aversion-anusaya paṭigha (VIII.g).
thīna-middha (Skt: styāna-middha) — sloth and torpor (alt. dullness and drowsiness)
uddhacca-kukkucca (Skt: auddhatya-kaukṛtya) — restlessness and remorse (alt. restlessness and worry)
vicikicchā (Skt: vicikitsā) — doubt, skeptical doubt; also fetter 2 (VIII.g).

III.c Jhāna & Samādhi — EBT formulation

The rendering cluster below follows Kumāra Bhikkhu, What You Might Not Know about Jhāna & Samādhi (2022), in treating the Sutta jhāna as a progression of mental composure (not single-object absorption). Each entry carries a compressed rationale; Kumāra’s full argument is in that book.

jhāna (Skt: dhyāna) — meditation. Standardly “meditative absorption,” “absorption,” or left as “jhāna.” Following Kumāra: the verb jhāyati (“meditate, contemplate, think upon, brood over”) carries the core sense. AN 1.394–574 attaches “not devoid of jhāna” to many cultivations beyond the four stages — brahmavihāras, satipaṭṭhāna, sammappadhāna, iddhipāda, indriyas, recollections of death/not-self — so the word’s scope is wider than the four absorption-stages. “Absorption” imports the Visuddhimagga framing.

The four rūpa-jhānas (cattāro rūpa-jhānā):

paṭhamajjhāna (Skt: prathamadhyāna) — first jhāna; savitakka savicāra (with thinking-and-considering); vivekajaṃ pītisukhaṃ (joy-and-happiness born of separation).
dutiyajjhāna (Skt: dvitīyadhyāna) — second jhāna; avitakka avicāra (without thinking-and-considering); ajjhattaṃ sampasādanaṃ (internal serene-confidence); cetaso ekodibhāvaṃ (mental poise); samādhijaṃ pītisukhaṃ (joy-and-happiness born of composure).
tatiyajjhāna (Skt: tṛtīyadhyāna) — third jhāna; pītiyā ca virāgā (with the fading of joy); upekkhako sato sampajāno (equanimous, mindful, clearly comprehending); sukhaṃ kāyena paṭisaṃvedeti (sukha experienced with the body).
catutthajjhāna (Skt: caturthadhyāna) — fourth jhāna; upekkhā-sati-pārisuddhi (purity of equanimity and mindfulness); adukkham-asukhaṃ (neither-suffering-nor-happiness, in the feeling-tone sense).

Core EBT meditation vocabulary:

samādhi (Skt: same) — composure, collectedness; lit. “placing/collecting together” (saṃ- “together” + ā-√dhā “put, place”). Standardly “concentration.” Samādhi is the abstract noun corresponding to the participle samāhita (“composed, collected”), as in samāhita citta (“composed mind”) — gathering oneself rather than fixing attention on a single object. Kumāra’s central contrast: Sutta samādhi is unification of mind; the Visuddhimagga reframes it as one-pointed concentration on a single object. Parallels: German Sammlung “collection, collectedness, composure” (same sam- prefix); Chinese 定 (dìng) “calm, stable”; Thai forest-tradition jit ruam “collected mind”; U Tejaniya “stability of mind.” Anālayo independently arrived at the same etymology (Satipaṭṭhāna, p72). The general English noun “concentration” is older, but the now-familiar mental-focus/mental-faculty sense — the one English-speaking translators reach for here — only becomes prominent in modern English, especially from the nineteenth century onward.
samatha (Skt: śamatha) — settling. Standardly “tranquility,” “serenity,” or “calm abiding.” Kumāra: samatha has a general sense of settling/settlement — sabba-saṅkhāra-samatha “settling of all fabrications” (as an epithet of Nibbāna, SN 6.1); adhikaraṇa-samatha “case-settlement” in the Vinaya. In meditation specifically, cetosamatha “mental settling.” AN 4.170 (Yuganaddha-sutta) enumerates four ways samatha and vipassanā are cultivated: samatha-preceded vipassanā, vipassanā-preceded samatha, samatha-and-vipassanā yoke-tied (yuganaddha), and a fourth case in which the mind is seized by dhamma-uddhacca (restlessness regarding dhammas) and then settles into samādhi — none treats samatha and vipassanā as alternate methods to be chosen between (vs. the orthodox-Theravāda framing of samatha-yānika “samatha-vehicle practitioner” and suddha-vipassanā-yānika “pure-insight practitioner” as alternate paths). Chinese 止 (zhǐ) “cease, stop, halt”; Tibetan shinay “calm abiding.”
vipassanā (Skt: vipaśyanā) — clear-seeing, insight; lit. “seeing clearly / seeing distinctly” (vi- + √paś). “Insight” is the standard rendering and entered English Buddhist usage via the late-19th-c. PTS translators (Rhys-Davids et al.); the in-sight/inward-seeing register fits the vi- + √paś “see-distinctly” sense reasonably even if not literal. “Clear-seeing”/“discernment” (following Kumāra) keep the √paś root visible without the Mahāsi insight-moment register. In the Suttas vipassanā is the distinct-seeing of saṅkhāras (Tatiya-samādhi Sutta AN 4.94), cultivated together with samatha (in any of the three ways noted under samatha), not as a separate opposed meditation-type. Much of what modern Theravāda calls “vipassanā meditation” operationalizes satipaṭṭhāna techniques; in the Nikāyas, vipassanā more often names clear-seeing/insight cultivated together with samatha rather than a separate branded method.
nimitta (Skt: same) — basis, object. Standardly “sign” or “theme.” “Basis/object” follows Kumāra: in the Suttas nimitta is a general meditation basis or theme (what the mind is set on), not the visual kasiṇa-style concentration-object of the Visuddhimagga commentarial apparatus. The commentarial three-fold nimitta series (parikamma-/uggaha-/paṭibhāga-nimitta) is at XI.b.

The Jhāna Factors (jhānaṅga) — in canonical order, as in the 1st-jhāna formula:

vitakka (Skt: vitarka) — thinking, thought. Standardly “applied thought” or “directed thought.” “Thinking” follows Kumāra and the wide reading — see def-flag below.

def-flag: the EBT sense of vitakka-vicāra as jhāna factors is genuinely contested. Wide reading (Polak, Arbel, Sujato, Thanissaro, Kumāra): ordinary thinking/pondering, such that first jhāna admits wholesome discursive cognition and the 2nd-jhāna avitakka-avicāra marks a phenomenal shift from verbal-discursive to non-verbal awareness. Narrow/commentarial reading (Visuddhimagga, Mahāsi, Pa Auk, Brahm): subtle attention-mechanics proper to absorption, glossed as abhiniropana (“initial application of mind to the object”) and anumajjana (“sustained examination”), with the bee-at-flower and bell-reverberation similes. Key sutta evidence for the wide reading is SN 41.6 (Kāmabhū) and MN 44 (Cūḷavedalla), which define vitakka-vicāra as vacīsaṅkhāra (“verbal formation”) because “having first thought and considered, one breaks into speech”; AN 3.60 (Saṅgārava) further shows that vitakka creates “mental sound” that a mind-reader can hear. MN 19 (Dvedhāvitakka) shows the Buddha dividing his own vitakkas into unskillful and skillful. This also explains why the 2nd jhāna — avitakka-avicāra — is called “noble silence” (ariyo tuṇhībhāvo, SN 21.1): the first jhāna has internal speech, the second doesn’t. The narrow reading is a progressive technicalization through Abhidhamma → Buddhaghosa; see XI.b for the commentarial attention-mechanics apparatus.
vicāra (Skt: same) — considering; lit. “moving/wandering about” (cf. vicarati “to wander”). Standardly “sustained thought,” “examination,” or “evaluation.” “Considering” follows Kumāra; see vitakka def-flag for the scholarly divide.
pīti (Skt: prīti) — joy. Standardly “rapture.” “Joy” (Thanissaro, Kumāra) avoids the Christian-origin ecstasy-register of “rapture,” which misfits the EBT picture of pīti arising from freedom-from-remorse (the pāmojja-chain below) and from vivekajaṃ (separation-born). A vibrating/swaying-body “rapture” reading does not track the Sutta usage.
sukha (Skt: same) — happiness, happy. Standardly “pleasure,” “bliss,” or “ease.” “Happiness” follows Kumāra: sukha covers a range from gross (kāmasukha sensual happiness), to bodily (kāyika sukha), to the supramundane (nibbānaṃ paramaṃ sukhaṃ “Nibbāna is the highest happiness,” Dhp 203–204; cf. AN 9.34, where Sāriputta says “just that is the sukha here: where there is nothing felt”). “Pleasure” and “bliss” are too narrow: sukha includes a non-vedanā evaluative sense — the 4th jhāna formula explicitly abandons sukha as a vedanā-factor (sukhassa ca pahānā → adukkham-asukhaṃ “neither-painful-nor-pleasant”), but this evaluative-sukha sense is what licenses calling Nibbāna paramaṃ sukhaṃ in the Dhp 203 idiom, echoed in Sāriputta’s AN 9.34 sukhamidaṃ nibbānaṃ (a sukha-of-peace that obtains where vedanā has been transcended).
ekaggatā (Skt: ekāgratā) — one-placed-ness, stillness (of mind). Standardly “one-pointed, one-pointedness.” Kumāra against “one-pointedness”: agga in EBT usage does not mean “point” (spatially limited location) but either “top/tip” literally (tip-of-grass, top-of-tree) or — in a contracted-form sense related to agāra “place” (cf. suññāgāra “empty place,” dānagga “alms-place”) — “place.” Ekagga = “one-placed” → idiomatically “still” (Kumāra’s preferred rendering; lead here keeps the literal) — a still mind being one that is gathered, not scattered. PED (1921) introduced “one-pointedness of mind” as a hedged rendering in quote-marks acknowledging its non-Englishness, and it became entrenched in 20th-c. Theravāda; C. A. F. Rhys Davids (1900) earlier rendered cittassekaggatā as “self-collectedness.” The cittassa ekaggatā ayaṃ samādhi passage (MN 44.12) reads naturally as “stillness of mind — this is composure,” awkwardly as “one-pointedness of mind — this is concentration.” Cross-ref to def-flag below on whether ekaggatā is a jhāna-factor.

def-flag: the recurring EBT first-jhāna formula foregrounds four terms — vitakka, vicāra, pīti, sukha — with ekaggatā appearing in the same paragraph as a separate mental quality but not counted among those four in the formula itself. MN 43 (Mahāvedalla, paṭhamajjhānaṃ pañcaṅgikaṃ) explicitly lists first jhāna as five-factored, adding cittass'ekaggatā as the fifth — so the five-factor enumeration is sutta-attested. Its development as a formal pañca-jhānaṅga framework (the systematic jhāna-factor scheme as such) is Abhidhamma/commentarial — cittass'ekaggatā already among the absorption factors in Dhammasaṅgaṇī; see XI.b.

Adjacent/supporting terms (not jhāna factors):

viveka (Skt: same) — separation. Standardly “seclusion.” “Separation” (following Kumāra) tracks the adverbial vivicca “having separated” in the 1st jhāna formula — vivekajaṃ pītisukhaṃ, “joy-and-happiness born of separation (from sensuality and unwholesome states).”
pāmojja (Skt: prāmodya) — gladness; lit. “rejoicing, delight” (from pamodati “rejoice, enjoy, be glad”). “Gladness” follows Kumāra. Not itself a jhāna factor. Two canonical chains pass through pāmojja: (a) the sīla-rooted gladdening-chain (AN 10.1, AN 10.2, AN 11.1) — sīla → avippaṭisāra (freedom from remorse) → pāmojja (gladness) → pīti (joy) → passaddhi (tranquility) → sukha (happiness) → samādhi (composure) → yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana — the samādhi link opening into the jhānas; and (b) the SN 12.23 Upanisā-sutta transcendental DO chain, which begins with dukkha → saddhā (faith) → pāmojja → pīti → passaddhi → sukha → samādhi → yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana → nibbidā → virāga → vimutti → khaye-ñāṇa. Both pass through the same affective ascent (pāmojja → pīti → passaddhi → sukha → samādhi); they differ in their entry-points (virtue vs. seeing-suffering) and in (b)‘s extension past samādhi into the goal-pointers.
ekodibhāva (Skt: ekotibhāva) — poise, equipoise; lit. “equipoised state.” Standardly “unification” or “singleness” (of mind). “Poise” follows Kumāra’s proposed derivation — eka here bearing the less-common sense “equal” (cf. Latin aequus) + odi (for odhi, o- + √dhā “hold inside”) → “equal-inside-holding” = equipoise; standard Pāli lexicography (PED, DPD) instead connects ekodi with “one aim” / single-pointed unification. The reading is contextually motivated by Sn 4.16 ekodi nipako sato — “poised, judicious, mindful,” where “unified” cannot render. Not itself a jhāna factor; characterizes the 2nd jhāna’s cetaso ekodibhāvaṃ (“mental poise”).

The Formless Attainments (cattāro arūpa-samāpatti):

Modern usage often labels these the “formless jhānas” (jhānas 5–8); EBT presents them as samāpatti (attainments) / āyatana (bases) — e.g. the anupubbavihāra sequence — and does not standardly call them jhānas; that label is commentarial-and-later.

arūpa-samāpatti (Skt: ārūpya-samāpatti) — formless attainment

ākāsānañcāyatana (Skt: ākāśānantyāyatana) — base of infinite space
viññāṇañcāyatana (Skt: vijñānānantyāyatana) — base of infinite consciousness
ākiñcaññāyatana (Skt: ākiṃcanyāyatana) — base of nothingness
nevasaññānāsaññāyatana (Skt: naivasaṃjñānāsaṃjñāyatana) — base of neither-perception-nor-non-perception

saññāvedayitanirodha (Skt: saṃjñāvedayitanirodha) — cessation of perception and feeling; the attainment beyond the four arūpa-samāpattis.
nirodha-samāpatti (Skt: same) — attainment of cessation; = saññāvedayitanirodha; same referent, shorter name.

Part IV — Satipaṭṭhāna (Pāli; EBT)

def-flag on the Part: the inclusion of the 21-exercise expansion (ānāpāna, four postures, clear comprehension, 31 body parts, four elements, nine charnel grounds, etc.) in the earliest stratum of MN 10 / DN 22 is contested in scholarship (Sujato, Anālayo disagree); the basic four-foundation framework is uncontroversially EBT.

satipaṭṭhāna (Skt: smṛtyupasthāna) — establishment of mindfulness, foundation of mindfulness
sati (Skt: smṛti) — mindfulness; lit. “remembering, recollection” (√smṛ “remember” — same root as Vedic smṛti “that which is remembered, tradition”). Recurs across the seven sets: as sammā-sati on the eightfold path (VIII.a), as bojjhaṅga (VIII.b), as faculty (VIII.c), as power (VIII.d) — and as the EBT-attested cetasika (VI.f).
sampajañña (Skt: samprajanya) — clear comprehension, clear knowing; sato sampajāno — “mindful and clearly comprehending” — the pair describing the meditator throughout the gradual training. “Clear comprehension” is the established rendering — from Soma Thera’s 1941 Satipaṭṭhāna translation through Ñāṇamoli and Bodhi; Kumāra renders it “full awareness,” Thanissaro “alertness.” Sati Sutta (SN 47.35) defines sampajañña as knowing feelings, thoughts, and perceptions as they arise, persist, and disappear. In MN 10 itself it figures twice: in the core formula (ātāpī sampajāno satimā, below) and as the sampajānapabba body-exercise (“acting with clear comprehension” in going, returning, looking, bending…); the “21 exercises” tally counting the latter is commentarial (Papañcasūdanī; cf. the Part def-flag above).

def-flag on the “mindfulness” rendering: the Pāli core-semantic is a memory-and-attention fusion — keeping-in-mind, holding-in-awareness, not-forgetting-what-should-be-attended-to (the object of practice, the teaching, the bodily posture, etc.). “Mindfulness” is an older English word, but its use as a Buddhist technical rendering of sati begins with late-19th-c. Buddhist studies (Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas, 1881); the rendering lost both the mnemonic layer and the deliberateness layer; in modern pop-mindfulness usage it has collapsed further into bare present-moment awareness, stripped of the object-keeping and remembering-the-instruction dimensions. Sujato has pushed “remembering” or “memory”; Gethin (“On Some Definitions of Mindfulness,” 2011) has written the definitive critical survey. The rendering is now too entrenched to displace, but the √smṛ-root sense matters for reading sati as “holding the teaching/object-of-attention in mind” — a cognitive discipline with directional content — rather than as the thinner “being aware” register pop-mindfulness usage has accreted. This divergence is a live problem across the glossary: wherever “mindfulness” appears (IV, VI.f, VIII.a/b/c/d, sati-sampajañña in III.a), the Pāli term is doing heavier lifting than the English naming suggests.
anupassanā (Skt: anupaśyanā) — contemplation, sustained observation; lit. “looking-along, repeated-seeing” (anu- “along, repeatedly” + √paś “see”). The abstract noun underlying all four foundation-names below; the satipaṭṭhāna formula’s kāye kāyānupassī viharati (“dwells contemplating the body in the body”) makes it the verbal-form of the practice.

The Four Foundations (cattāro satipaṭṭhānā):

kāyānupassanā (Skt: kāyānupaśyanā) — contemplation of the body; the body-section within the four-satipaṭṭhāna framework. Cf. kāyagatāsati below — body-mindfulness as a self-standing practice in MN 119, covering substantially the same content (breathing, postures, sampajañña, 31 body parts, four elements, charnel-ground contemplations).
vedanānupassanā (Skt: vedanānupaśyanā) — contemplation of feelings
cittānupassanā (Skt: cittānupaśyanā) — contemplation of mind
dhammānupassanā (Skt: dharmānupaśyanā) — contemplation of dhammas / of phenomena; the ambiguity is deliberate — “dhamma” here spans the teaching, categories of analysis, and phenomena generally. Standardly “contemplation of mental objects” (Soma, Nyanaponika — the older convention; too narrow for the section’s actual contents); Bodhi “phenomena,” Sujato “principles,” Thanissaro “mental qualities.”

Associated terms:

ānāpānasati (Skt: ānāpānasmṛti) — mindfulness of breathing
kāyagatāsati (Skt: kāyagatāsmṛti) — mindfulness directed to the body, mindfulness immersed in the body. Title and topic of MN 119, presenting body-mindfulness as a self-standing practice (breathing, postures, sampajañña, 31 body parts, four elements, charnel-ground contemplations) rather than within the four-satipaṭṭhāna framework of MN 10 / DN 22. MN 119 itself calls it mahānisaṃsa (“of great benefit”); the AN 1 Kāyagatāsati-vagga (AN 1.575–615, ≈ 563–599 in PTS numbering) extols it at length.
ātāpī (Skt: ātāpin) — ardent; element of the satipaṭṭhāna refrain formula.
abhijjhā-domanassa (Skt: abhidhyā-daurmanasya) — covetousness and grief; the refrain pairs ātāpī with having put these away.

Part V — Brahmavihāras (Pāli; EBT)

brahmavihāra (Skt: same) — divine abiding, sublime abiding; lit. “brahma-dwelling”
appamāṇā (Skt: apramāṇa) — immeasurable, boundless; the four brahmavihāras as “the four immeasurables.”

The Four Brahmavihāras (cattāro brahmavihārā) — listed canonically in this order across the Nikāyas; Visuddhimagga ch. IX (the Brahmavihāra-niddesa, in commentarial XI.b) reads the order as developmental (karuṇā/muditā extending from mettā toward suffering/flourishing beings; upekkhā integrating and culminating).

mettā (Skt: maitrī) — loving-kindness; alt. “good-will” (Thanissaro), “friendliness,” “loving-friendliness” (Bhante Gunaratana); lit. “friend-ness” (from mitra “friend”)
karuṇā (Skt: same) — compassion
muditā (Skt: same) — appreciative joy, altruistic joy; joy at another’s flourishing. “Sympathetic joy” is the older translator idiom (pre-Bloom sympathy/empathy distinction); “appreciative joy” and “altruistic joy” (the latter via Ñāṇamoli; Thanissaro himself uses “empathetic joy”) aim to avoid the empathy-as-affective-mirroring reading — muditā is not feeling-into another’s state (affective mirroring), and is distinct from karuṇā’s concern for another’s suffering — it is joyful appreciation of their flourishing.
upekkhā (Skt: upekṣā) — equanimity; lit. “looking on, observing” (upa- + √īkṣ “see”)

Part VI — Understanding Experience (Pāli; EBT)

VI.a Three Marks (tilakkhaṇa / Skt: trilakṣaṇa)

anicca (Skt: anitya) — impermanent (adj.), impermanence (nom.); lit. “not-lasting” (a- + nicca “lasting, constant”). Corresponds to animitta (signless liberation) in the (late-canonical/commentarial) three-marks-to-three-doors mapping; cf. II suññatā for stratum.
dukkha (Skt: duḥkha) — unsatisfactory (adj.), unsatisfactoriness, suffering (nom.). A traditional folk etymology parses du-kha as “bad axle-hole” (contrasted with su-kha “good axle-hole”) — memorable but philologically unreliable. The 1st noble truth (IX); cf. I for the earliest-stratum predicament-framing; corresponds to appaṇihita (undirected liberation) in the (late-canonical/commentarial) three-marks-to-three-doors mapping; cf. II suññatā for stratum.
anattā (Skt: anātman) — not-self (serves adj. and nom.); a- privative + attā “self.” Corresponds to suññatā (empty liberation) in the (late-canonical/commentarial) three-marks-to-three-doors mapping; cf. II suññatā for stratum. Sanskrit-tradition counterpart nairātmya (selflessness of persons and dharmas) extends the doctrine to dharmas in Mahāyāna (XII.b). “Not-self” (Thanissaro, Sujato) keeps the canonical predicate-form (“form is not self,” SN 22.59) without reifying a “non-self” doctrine; “non-self” (Bodhi) is the other major convention.

VI.b Aggregates (khandha / Skt: skandha)

khandha (Skt: skandha) — aggregate, heap, bundle; lit. “shoulder, trunk (of a tree), mass”

The Five Aggregates (pañcakkhandha):

rūpa (Skt: same) — form, material form; Bodhi sometimes renders “materiality.”
vedanā (Skt: same) — feeling, hedonic tone (pleasant, unpleasant, or neither-pleasant-nor-unpleasant tonal quality of experience); also DO link 7 (VII.a); 2nd satipaṭṭhāna foundation (IV).
saññā (Skt: saṃjñā) — perception; lit. “together-knowing” (saṃ- + √jñā). Covers recognition, labeling, apperception — recognizing by marks, what lets blue be perceived as blue (SN 22.79 nīlampi sañjānāti …). Distinct from viññāṇa (below), the bare cognizing-of-an-object (MN 43 vijānāti vijānātī'ti), by function rather than separation: the two co-arise in every cognition, “conjoined, not disjoined” (MN 43 saṃsaṭṭhā no visaṃsaṭṭhā — what is felt is perceived, what is perceived is cognized: co-extension, not a processing order; where the suttas give an order, viññāṇa comes first — MN 18’s Madhupiṇḍika cognition-sequence: cakkhuviññāṇa → phassa → vedanā → saññā → vitakka → papañca).
saṅkhāra (Skt: saṃskāra) — (here, the 4th aggregate) intentional formations; lit. “con-struction, together-making” (saṃ- + √kṛ “do, make”). “Formations” or “mental formations” is the common generic rendering; the Abhi. takes cetanā (intention, VI.f) as the leading factor of this aggregate, hence Bodhi’s more specific “volitional formations” — re-rendered “intentional” here for consistency with cetanā = intention. Other renderings: “fabrications” (Thanissaro’s signature) emphasizes the saṃ-√kṛ “together-making” root over the cetanā-specific reading; Sujato’s “choices” emphasizes the active cetanā-led-decision angle.

def-flag: saṅkhāra occurs in three major doctrinal contexts (Bodhi, “Anicca Vata Saṅkhāra”), plus two special uses; beneath them is an active/passive duality in the word itself — the constructing and the constructed. (1) DO link 2 (VII.a): intention in its kamma-making role, conditioning consciousness; defined both as the kāya-/vacī-/citta-saṅkhāra triad — bodily, verbal, and mental (SN 12.2, MN 9; cf. the parallel three-door idiom kāya-/vacī-/manosañcetanā, SN 12.25) and as the puñña-/apuñña-/āneñjābhisaṅkhāra triple (SN 12.51) — wholesome, unwholesome, and formless-sphere generative intention. (2) The fourth aggregate (here): the conative-constructive activity within experience — shaping the present moment’s constituents (SN 22.79 rūpaṃ rūpattāya … saṅkhatamabhisaṅkharonti, “they construct form into being form”) and, as kamma, seeding future ones (cetanāhaṃ bhikkhave kammaṃ vadāmi, AN 6.63); defined as the six cetanā-bodies (SN 22.56–57). The khandha-analysis factors each moment of experience into five concurrent aspects rather than sorting moments into kinds, so this aggregate — like vedanā and saññā — is present in every moment while naming one function within it; its contrast class is the other four aggregates. The DO use (1) is its kammically generative subset — with avijjā eradicated the arahant generates none (SN 12.51); what still arises is the playing-out of past construction (the sense bases as purāṇakamma, “old kamma” — SN 35.146), exhausted at parinibbāna. (3) All conditioned things (VII.b): the passive-universal sense — (all) conditioned phenomena, (all) formations, (all) fabrications, (all) constructions (sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā “all fabrications are impermanent”) — whose contrast class is the asaṅkhata; here even the other four aggregates, and the constructing saṅkhārā themselves, count as constructed (SN 22.79 continues: saṅkhāre saṅkhārattāya saṅkhatamabhisaṅkharonti). Special uses: (4) in MN 44 (the nirodha-samāpatti context) the same kāya-/vacī-/citta-saṅkhāra triad bears a different, non-volitional, relational sense — the saṅkhāra of each domain, what its functioning is bound up with: breath as kāya-saṅkhāra (kāyappaṭibaddhā “bound up with the body”), vitakka-vicāra as vacī-saṅkhāra (“having first thought and considered, one breaks into speech”), saññā-and-vedanā as citta-saṅkhāra (cittappaṭibaddhā) — ceasing as the attainment deepens in the order vacī → kāya → citta; same compounds, different sense from their DO use. (5) āyu-saṅkhārā — life-formations/life-force (MN 43, DN 16). No single English word covers all of this (Bodhi: “no exact parallel”); “formations”/“fabrications” are serviceable across the uses because they carry the same active/passive duality — which use is live must still be read off each context.
viññāṇa (Skt: vijñāna) — consciousness, cognition; lit. “knowing-apart” (vi- “apart, distinct” + √jñā “know”) — the cognitive moment of being-aware-of-an-object, distinguishing X from non-X. Six kinds: cakkhu-, sota-, ghāna-, jivhā-, kāya-, mano-viññāṇa — one per sense-modality. Also DO link 3 (VII.a); the consciousness-element (viññāṇa-dhātu, VI.d). Distinct from saññā (above) by function, not separation — see there. Division of labor among the mind-terms: viññāṇa is the cognitive event arising at a sense-base; mano (VI.c) is a faculty — itself the sixth base (mano-viññāṇa = the cognition arising at mano, parallel to cakkhu-viññāṇa at the eye); citta (VI.f) is the mind as a whole in its varying states — what is trained and liberated. In non-technical passages EBT applies all three names to one referent — SN 12.61’s cittaṃ itipi, mano itipi, viññāṇaṃ itipi (“called ‘mind’ and ‘intellect’ and ‘consciousness’”; also DN 1) — naming the undifferentiated mental life, while the technical analyses divide the roles as above.

upādāna-khandha (Skt: upādāna-skandha) — clinging-aggregate, aggregate subject to clinging; the five khandhas insofar as they are objects of upādāna.

VI.c Sense Bases (saḷāyatana / Skt: ṣaḍāyatana)

Four overlapping technical terms — three EBT (āyatana, indriya, dhātu) and one Abhi./commentarial (dvāra) — for the standing apparatus at each sense-organ. In the Abhi. systematization of the EBT triad, all three terms co-refer for the five physical sense-organs to a single subtle-matter referent (pasāda-rūpa: cakkhu-pasāda “eye-sensitivity,” sota-pasāda “ear-sensitivity,” etc.; XI.a) — the lenses (locus, capacity, constituent) remain conceptually distinct even when they pick out one referent. The mental case is different — mano has no pasāda-rūpa, and the three Abhi. framings of mind are not co-extensive here as they are for the five physical sense-organs: manāyatana (mind as one of the 12 āyatanas) and manindriya (mind as one of the 22 indriyas) both span the full set of 89/121 cittas, while mano-dhātu is narrower — one of the seven viññāṇa-dhātus, denoting only the three cittas that perform the adverting-and-receiving function (pañca-dvārāvajjana and the two sampaṭicchana cittas), with the rest of the mental cittas falling under mano-viññāṇa-dhātu.

āyatana (here, VI.c) — base/sphere/locus; the eye as the where-of-seeing. The canonical 12-āyatana analysis (6 internal + 6 external).
indriya (VIII.c; Abhi. expands to 22 faculties) — faculty/controlling-power (from indra “lord, chief”); the eye as the structural capacity / dispositional power enabling seeing — distinct from the actual seeing-event (viññāṇa).
dhātu (VI.d) — element/constituent; the eye as a basic constituent in the 18-element analysis.
dvāra (XI.a) — door/gate (Abhi./commentarial); the eye as the access-point through which objects enter cognition.

Abhi. explicitly identifies these for the eye: cakkhāyatana = cakkhundriya = cakkhu-dhātu — same cakkhu-pasāda referent under three (or four) lenses, all naming the standing apparatus rather than the cognitive event. (Parallel identification holds for the other four physical sense-organs. The mental case diverges as noted above — manāyatana/manindriya/mano-dhātu do not all map onto one referent.) The actual seeing/hearing-as-event is viññāṇa (eye-consciousness, ear-consciousness, etc.; VI.b) arising from base + object via phassa (contact, VI.c) — saḷāyatana → phassa → vedanā at VII.a tracks the structural-to-dynamic transition.

āyatana (Skt: same) — sense-base, sense-sphere
saḷāyatana (Skt: ṣaḍāyatana) — the six sense-bases; also DO link 5 (VII.a).

The Six Sense-bases:

cakkhu (Skt: cakṣus) — eye
sota (Skt: śrotra) — ear
ghāna (Skt: ghrāṇa) — nose
jivhā (Skt: jihvā) — tongue
kāya (Skt: same) — body
mano (Skt: manas) — mind (as the sixth sense-base), intellect; the faculty whose objects are dhammas in their mind-door sense (ideas, mental phenomena — see dhamma below); in the mind-terms’ division of labor, a faculty — beside viññāṇa (VI.b), the cognitive event, and citta (VI.f), the mind as a whole in its varying states.

The Six Sense-objects (corresponding to the six bases):

rūpa (Skt: same) — visible form, sight-object; cf. VI.b and VI.e.
sadda (Skt: śabda) — sound
gandha (Skt: same) — smell, odor
rasa (Skt: same) — taste, flavor
phoṭṭhabba (Skt: spraṣṭavya) — tangible, touch-object
dhamma (Skt: dharma) — mental object, mind-object; cf. XI.a for the Abhi. “ultimate constituent” technical sense.

phassa (Skt: sparśa) — contact; also DO link 6.

VI.d Elements (dhātu)

dhātu (Skt: same) — element; lit. “that which places/holds” (from √dhā “place”)
pathavī-dhātu (Skt: pṛthivī-dhātu) — earth element (solidity)
āpo-dhātu (Skt: abdhātu) — water element (cohesion)
tejo-dhātu (Skt: tejas-dhātu) — fire element (heat)
vāyo-dhātu (Skt: vāyu-dhātu) — wind/air element (motion)
ākāsa-dhātu (Skt: ākāśa-dhātu) — space element
viññāṇa-dhātu (Skt: vijñāna-dhātu) — consciousness element; cf. viññāṇa (5th aggregate, VI.b; DO link 3, VII.a).

Stephen Procter (MIDL — Mindfulness in Daily Life) frames the four primary elements experientially as quality-ranges directly observed in body and mind, citing MN 10’s 'This is earth element, this is water element, this is fire element, & this is wind element':

earth (pathavī) — range of solidity: hardness, softness, pressure, heaviness, lightness
water (āpo) — range of cohesion: wetness, dryness, stickiness, trickling
fire (tejo) — range of temperature: hotness, warmth, coolness (extends the canonical “heat” rendering to include coolness)
wind (vāyo) — range of movement: movement, vibration, contraction, expansion

Each element-quality is most readily encountered at specific phenomenological loci — earth at body-contact-points, water in saliva/mouth/lips and the stickiness of mental qualities, fire in body and mental qualities, wind in breathing / physical pain / attention-movement. The framing keeps the elements as direct experiential observables rather than as “external” physical substances — consistent with the canonical satipaṭṭhāna treatment at MN 10 / MN 28 / MN 62.

VI.e Form and Name-and-form

rūpa (Skt: same) — form, material form; cf. VI.b (rūpa as 1st khandha — broader material-form sense) and VI.c (rūpa as sight-object specifically).
arūpa (Skt: same) — formless, immaterial
nāma-rūpa (Skt: same) — name-and-form; standardly “name-and-form” (Bodhi, Sujato, Thanissaro); Bodhi elsewhere “mentality-materiality.” Also DO link 4.
jīva (Skt: same) — soul, life-principle; in EBT chiefly in the avyākata formulas (e.g., taṃ jīvaṃ taṃ sarīraṃ “the soul is the body”); the technical Jaina/Vedāntic sense goes under XIV.

VI.f Mental Qualities & Functions (EBT-attested)

def-flag on the section: this gathers EBT-attested mental qualities, factors, and functions — covering both what would later be systematized as cetasika (concomitant mental factors) in Theravāda Abhi. and structural mind-terms (e.g., citta itself, ñāṇa) that are not cetasika under the technical 52-cetasika typology. cetasika as a category delimiting a fixed list of 52 is an Abhi. development; the systematic cetasika-theory apparatus is in XI.a.

cetasika (Skt: caitasika / caitta) — mental factor, mental concomitant; the umbrella category for the qualities listed below. The technical 52-cetasika typology is at XI.a.
citta (Skt: same) — mind, heart-mind; the mind as a whole in its varying states and dispositions — defiled or luminous (AN 1.49 pabhassaraṃ cittaṃ — see pabhassara, II), scattered or composed, bound or freed (cittaṃ vimuccati) — and so the subject of cultivation: cittānupassanā (3rd satipaṭṭhāna foundation, IV) contemplates exactly these state-pairs (sarāgaṃ vā cittaṃ … vītarāgaṃ vā cittaṃ, MN 10), and cetovimutti (II) names its liberation (ceto- is citta’s compound form). Also the iddhipāda-sense at VIII.f (purposeful application). Distinct from viññāṇa (VI.b), the cognitive event, and mano (VI.c), a faculty — the sixth base.
cetanā (Skt: same) — intention; AN 6.63 famously defines kamma as cetanā: cetanāhaṃ bhikkhave kammaṃ vadāmi — “what I call kamma, monks, is intention.” Distinct from saṅkappa (deliberate forming/disposing of mind — VIII.a sammā-saṅkappa).
manasikāra (Skt: same) — attention, bringing to mind; lit. “mind-making” (manas + √kṛ)
saddhā (Skt: śraddhā) — faith, confidence; lit. “putting heart on” (śrad + √dhā). Faculty (VIII.c) and power (VIII.d).
chanda (Skt: same) — motivation, zeal, wish-to-do; in the wholesome/iddhipāda sense (VIII.f), explicitly distinct from taṇhā — chanda is the directional motivation that drives wholesome cultivation, taṇhā is the dukkha-generating craving.
vīriya (Skt: vīrya) — effort, energy, vigor; lit. “heroic-ness” (from vīra “hero”). Recurs across the seven sets: bojjhaṅga (VIII.b), faculty (VIII.c), power (VIII.d), sammappadhāna (VIII.e), iddhipāda (VIII.f), and as sammā-vāyāma (VIII.a).
passaddhi (Skt: praśrabdhi) — tranquility, calm, repose; also bojjhaṅga (VIII.b).
paññā (Skt: prajñā) — wisdom; faculty (VIII.c) and power (VIII.d); the wisdom-section of the eightfold path (sammā-diṭṭhi + sammā-saṅkappa, VIII.a).
ñāṇa (Skt: jñāna) — knowledge, direct knowledge; cf. yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana (III.a), the sixteen vipassanā-ñāṇas (XI.b).
upekkhā (Skt: upekṣā) — equanimity; cf. V (brahmavihāra) and VIII.b (bojjhaṅga); also the 4th-jhāna characteristic (III.c).

Wholesome and unwholesome roots (mūla):

kusala-mūla (Skt: kuśala-mūla) / akusala-mūla (Skt: akuśala-mūla) — wholesome / unwholesome roots; the three wholesome and three unwholesome root-qualities paired as a root-analytic schema (AN 3.34, etc.); cf. III.a kusala/akusala.
lobha (Skt: same) / dosa (Skt: dveṣa) / moha (Skt: same) — greed / hatred / delusion; the three akusala-mūla. At the root-analytic level: lobha is the broad craving-side (mapping to taṇhā); dosa is the aversion-side (the structural parallel that licenses the modern insight-pedagogy “craving/aversion” framing — see I taṇhā def-flag); moha maps to avijjā (DO link 1, fetter 10). Sensuality-restricted manifestations at lower analytic levels — kāmacchanda (III.b hindrance and VIII.g fetter 4, eliminated at 3rd path while broader taṇhā extends through bhava-/rūpa-/arūpa-forms only fully ended at 4th path), kāma-rāga (the sensual anusaya, VIII.g), kāma-taṇhā (sensuality-form of the three-fold taṇhā at SN 56.11). Aversion-mode at lower levels — byāpāda (III.b hindrance and VIII.g fetter 5), paṭigha (the latent aversion-anusaya, VIII.g).
alobha (Skt: same) / adosa (Skt: adveṣa) / amoha (Skt: same) — non-greed / non-hatred / non-delusion; the three kusala-mūla.
rāga (Skt: same) — passion, lust; the broader pull-toward term, paired throughout EBT with dosa and moha. Related to but broader than lobha — rāga is the general coloring/passion register, lobha the technical root-quality. Reappears compounded in the higher fetters as rūpa-rāga (6), arūpa-rāga (7), and in the anusayas as kāma-rāga and bhava-rāga — see VIII.g.
kilesa (Skt: kleśa) — defilement, affliction; lit. “stain, impurity” (from kilissati “to be stained”). The umbrella term for what defiles the mind — the genus under which the specific taxonomies fall: āsava (II), nīvaraṇa (III.b), the fetters and anusaya (VIII.g), akusala-mūla (above). The word-family is EBT-attested — saṅkilesa “corruption” (paired with visuddhi “purification,” DN 1) and upakkilesa “adventitious mental imperfections” (the āgantuka “incoming” defilements that obscure the luminous citta, AN 1.10; cf. pabhassara, II) — but the bare noun kilesa is rare in the suttas (PED: “rare in the Piṭakas; in later works very frequent”), and the reified enumerated category, the ten kilesa-vatthūni (lobha, dosa, moha, māna, diṭṭhi, vicikicchā, thīna, uddhacca, ahirika, anottappa), is Abhi./commentarial (Dhammasaṅgaṇī, Vibhaṅga, Vism). The Skt cognate kleśa becomes a central Mahāyāna term — the kleśa-āvaraṇa (afflictive obscuration) paired with the jñeya-āvaraṇa (cognitive obscuration).
domanassa (Skt: daurmanasya) — mental pain, sadness, displeasure; cf. IV satipaṭṭhāna refrain (abhijjhā-domanassa).
somanassa (Skt: saumanasya) — mental pleasure, gladness, joy

Part VII — Dependent Origination & Causal Frame (Pāli; EBT)

VII.a Twelve Links (paṭiccasamuppāda / Skt: pratītyasamutpāda)

paṭiccasamuppāda (Skt: pratītyasamutpāda) — dependent origination, dependent arising; lit. “arising-together-in-dependence” (paṭicca “depending on” + saṃ- “together” + uppāda “arising”)
idappaccayatā (Skt: idaṃpratyayatā) — specific conditionality, this-that conditionality; lit. “this-as-condition-ness”

avijjā (Skt: avidyā) — ignorance; lit. “not-knowing” (a- + √vid “know”). Also fetter 10 (VIII.g); maps to moha (delusion, VI.f) at the root-analytic level.
saṅkhāra (Skt: saṃskāra) — (here, DO link 2) intentional formations; cf. VI.b saṅkhāra def-flag.
viññāṇa (Skt: vijñāna) — consciousness; cf. VI.b (5th aggregate) and VI.d (consciousness-element).
nāma-rūpa (Skt: same) — name-and-form; cf. VI.e.
saḷāyatana (Skt: ṣaḍāyatana) — six sense-bases; cf. VI.c.
phassa (Skt: sparśa) — contact; cf. VI.c.
vedanā (Skt: same) — feeling; cf. VI.b (2nd aggregate); 2nd satipaṭṭhāna foundation (IV).
taṇhā (Skt: tṛṣṇā) — craving; cf. Part I for the def-flag on craving vs. the modern insight-pedagogy “craving/aversion” framing.
upādāna (Skt: same) — clinging, grasping; selfing, self-making (modern contemplative dharma teaching — picking up the reflexive “taking-for-oneself” force of upa + ā + √dā); “fuel, sustenance” (PED’s material-support sense); lit. “taking up.” The systematic noun (DO link 9). The earliest stratum has only the participle → anupādiyāno (I).
bhava (Skt: same) — becoming; Bodhi renders “existence” to emphasize the state-of-being resulting from upādāna.
jāti (Skt: same) — birth
jarā-maraṇa (Skt: same) — aging-and-death; the Buddhist Sanskrit form is jarāmaraṇa (identical to the Pāli, as in the Sanskrit DO-chain — MMK 26, Śālistamba); jarāmṛtyu is the Vedic compound MW lemmatizes.

The canonical formula extends with the trailing phrase: ...jarā-maraṇa-soka-parideva-dukkha-domanassa-upāyāsa sambhavanti — “aging, death, sorrow, lamentation, dukkha, displeasure, despair come into being.” The chain culminates in evametassa kevalassa dukkhakkhandhassa samudayo hoti (“thus is the arising of this whole mass of dukkha”) — and the reverse formula in ...nirodho hoti (“thus is the cessation”). The 12 links explain the arising and cessation of dukkha (I); dukkha is the predicament the chain accounts for, not a discrete link within it.

VII.b Causal-Frame Terms

hetu (Skt: same) — cause; in the suttas, near-synonymous with paccaya (the paired idiom ko hetu ko paccayo, e.g. MN 135); in Abhi., narrowed to the six roots (lobha/dosa/moha and opposites) as hetu-paccaya, first of the 24 paccayas (XI.a).
paccaya (Skt: pratyaya) — condition; in Abhi., the genus-term for conditionality — the 24 paccayas of the Paṭṭhāna (XI.a).
nidāna (Skt: same) — source, cause, causal link; lit. “tying down” (ni + √dā) — source-as-anchor, vs. hetu’s impulsion image
upanisā (Skt: upaniṣad) — supporting/proximate condition, basis; the X-upanisaṃ Y idiom (“Y has X as its supporting condition”) that structures SN 12.23 Upanisā-sutta’s post-jhāna chain (yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana → nibbidā → virāga → vimutti → khaye-ñāṇa) — the so-called “transcendental dependent origination.” Commentary glosses it ≈ paccaya/kāraṇa (Spk).

def-flag: the etymology is unsettled — possibly Vedic upaniṣad (upa-ni-√sad, the word behind the Upaniṣads), but PED judges a contraction of upanissaya (upa-ni-√śri, “support, basis”) more likely.
saṅkhāra (Skt: saṃskāra) — (here, sense 3 of the def-flag at VI.b) (all) conditioned phenomena, (all) formations, (all) fabrications, (all) constructions; the noun corresponding to saṅkhata below — used in sabbe saṅkhārā aniccā (“all fabrications are impermanent”), sabba-saṅkhāra-samatha (“settling of all fabrications,” epithet of nibbāna at SN 6.1). Cross-ref to VI.b def-flag for the map of saṅkhāra’s uses (three major contexts plus special uses).
saṅkhata (Skt: saṃskṛta) — conditioned, constructed, fabricated
asaṅkhata (Skt: asaṃskṛta) — unconditioned, unconstructed, unfabricated; standard epithet of nibbāna (cf. II).
kamma (Skt: karman) — action; usually left untransliterated in modern usage. EBT-defined as cetanā (intention, VI.f) at AN 6.63: “cetanāhaṃ bhikkhave kammaṃ vadāmi” — “what I call kamma, monks, is intention.”
vipāka (Skt: same) — result, fruition (of kamma); lit. “ripening”

Part VIII — Path Systematizations within EBT (Pāli; EBT)

The seven sets (bodhipakkhiyā dhammā) are grouped together in EBT material (DN 16, MN 103, SN 22.81, AN 7.71 — per Gethin, The Buddhist Path to Awakening). What’s late-canonical/commentarial is (a) the strict identification of bodhipakkhiya-dhammā with exactly these seven sets, (b) the fixed count “37,” and (c) the systematic cross-mapping of items across sets.

bodhipakkhiyā dhammā (Skt: bodhipakṣa-dharma) — qualities conducive to awakening; lit. “awakening-side dhammas.”

def-flag: see Part header; the “37” as a fixed technical enumeration is late.

VIII.a Noble Eightfold Path (ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga / Skt: āryāṣṭāṅgamārga)

Note on sammā: rendered “proper” throughout, following Kumāra (2022). Standardly rendered “right” (Bodhi, Sujato, Thanissaro) — the near-universal Anglophone convention. Sammā is sam- “together, completely, correctly” — perfected/complete/correct — not English “right vs. wrong” in any moral-binary sense. “Proper” is a better calque; “right” is the reader’s likely first encounter with each term. The Pāli-form references throughout this glossary (sammā-diṭṭhi, sammā-samādhi, etc.) stay as Pāli.

Wisdom (paññā / Skt: prajñā)

sammā-diṭṭhi (Skt: samyag-dṛṣṭi) — proper view; contrasts with the diṭṭhi-as-view-to-be-dropped of Part I and with sakkāya-diṭṭhi (fetter 1, VIII.g); its contrary is micchā-diṭṭhi (below).
sammā-saṅkappa (Skt: samyak-saṃkalpa) — proper thought, proper resolve; modern textbooks frequently render “right intention,” but “intention” is more strictly cetanā (VI.f). Saṅkappa is the deliberate forming/disposing of mind, defined at MN 117 as thoughts of nekkhamma (renunciation, III.a), abyāpāda (non-ill-will), and avihiṃsā (non-cruelty).

Ethical Conduct (sīla / Skt: śīla)

sammā-vācā (Skt: samyag-vāc) — proper speech
sammā-kammanta (Skt: samyak-karmānta) — proper action
sammā-ājīva (Skt: samyag-ājīva) — proper livelihood

Composure (samādhi / Skt: same)

sammā-vāyāma (Skt: samyag-vyāyāma) — proper effort; the four sammappadhānas (VIII.e) elaborate this.
sammā-sati (Skt: samyak-smṛti) — proper mindfulness; the four satipaṭṭhānas (IV) elaborate this.
sammā-samādhi (Skt: samyak-samādhi) — proper composure, proper collectedness; diverges on the noun too — standardly “concentration,” see III.c samādhi. The four jhānas (III.c) elaborate this.

Wrong view (micchā-diṭṭhi) and the Six Teachers’ denials:

micchā-diṭṭhi (Skt: mithyā-dṛṣṭi) — wrong view; the contrary of sammā-diṭṭhi (above) — its paired counterpart in MN 117 (Mahācattārīsaka), which sets each path-factor against its micchā counterpart, and the first factor of the “wrong tenfold path” (micchatta, AN 10.103). The three views below are what mundane (sāsava) sammā-diṭṭhi — MN 117’s affirming of kamma-fruit, this world and the next, spontaneously-arising beings, and realized ascetics — is defined against: the positions of the Six Heretical Teachers (DN 2 Sāmaññaphala-sutta; cf. MN 60 Apaṇṇaka, MN 76 Sandaka).
natthika-diṭṭhi (Skt: nāstika-dṛṣṭi) — the “there-is-not” view, nihilism; Ajita Kesakambala’s materialist denial (DN 2) of kamma-fruit, the other world, spontaneously-arising beings, and realized ascetics.

def-flag: “nihilism” is standard but misleading at the EBT level — Ajita’s ontology was materialist (four-elements), not a denial of existence as such; natthika-diṭṭhi names a specific bundle of denials, not a global “nothing exists.” Distinct from the abstract natthitā (the bare non-existence pole, X.b → SN 12.15).
akiriya-diṭṭhi (Skt: akriyā-dṛṣṭi) — the “no-action” view; Pūraṇa Kassapa’s denial (DN 2) that deeds carry moral weight — no good or evil done by acting.
ahetuka-diṭṭhi (Skt: ahetuka-dṛṣṭi) — the “no-cause” view; Makkhali Gosāla’s denial (DN 2) that any cause or condition — including one’s own effort — defiles or purifies beings; the corollary of his Ājīvika niyati-vāda, the doctrine of all-determining fate.

VIII.b Bojjhaṅgas (satta bojjhaṅgā / Skt: sapta bodhyaṅga)

bojjhaṅga (Skt: bodhyaṅga) — factor of awakening; lit. “awakening-limb” (bodhi + aṅga).

def-flag on the subsection: the list itself and the sequential developmental chain (each factor conditioning the next — MN 118 Ānāpānasati, SN 46.3) are both EBT. What is commentarial is the balancing-pairs analysis (energy/tranquility, investigation/concentration counterposed around mindfulness), the hindrance-counteractive mapping, and the path-moment integration. Keep the developmental-chain reading as canonical; flag the balancing-pairs framework as Theravāda comm. when it comes up.

sati (Skt: smṛti) — mindfulness; cf. IV satipaṭṭhāna; VI.f cetasika; VIII.a/c/d.
dhamma-vicaya (Skt: dharma-pravicaya) — investigation of dhammas, discrimination of phenomena; “dhamma” here spans mind-states, phenomena, and the teaching. The wisdom-cultivation factor of the bojjhaṅga set; the active discriminative mode of paññā (VI.f).
vīriya (Skt: vīrya) — effort, energy; cf. VI.f cetasika; recurs across VIII.a/c/d/e/f.
pīti (Skt: prīti) — joy; cf. III.c (jhāna factor).
passaddhi (Skt: praśrabdhi) — tranquility; cf. VI.f cetasika.
samādhi (Skt: same) — composure, collectedness; cf. III.c (jhāna formulation); VIII.a/c/d.
upekkhā (Skt: upekṣā) — equanimity; cf. V (brahmavihāra), VI.f (cetasika), III.c (4th jhāna characteristic).

VIII.c Faculties (pañca indriyāni / Skt: pañca indriya)

indriya (Skt: same) — faculty, spiritual faculty; lit. “pertaining to Indra” (i.e. belonging to a ruler, hence “controlling faculty”). The five faculties listed below are the path-faculties; Abhi. enumerates 22 faculties total, including the six sense-faculties (cakkhundriya, sotindriya, etc.) which share referent with the VI.c sense-bases (āyatana) under a different framing — the eye as structural capacity rather than as locus.

The Five Faculties:

saddhindriya (Skt: śraddhendriya) — faculty of faith
vīriyindriya (Skt: vīryendriya) — faculty of energy
satindriya (Skt: smṛtīndriya) — faculty of mindfulness
samādhindriya (Skt: samādhīndriya) — faculty of composure (samādhi)
paññindriya (Skt: prajñendriya) — faculty of wisdom

VIII.d Powers (pañca balāni / Skt: pañca bala)

bala (Skt: same) — power, strength

The Five Powers — identical items to the faculties (saddhā/vīriya/sati/samādhi/paññā), held as unshakable:

saddhā-bala (Skt: śraddhā-bala) — power of faith
vīriya-bala (Skt: vīrya-bala) — power of energy
sati-bala (Skt: smṛti-bala) — power of mindfulness
samādhi-bala (Skt: same) — power of composure
paññā-bala (Skt: prajñā-bala) — power of wisdom

VIII.e Proper Strivings (cattāro sammappadhānā / Skt: catvāri samyakpradhāna)

sammappadhāna (Skt: samyakpradhāna) — proper striving, proper exertion

The Four Strivings — named as four padhānas at DN 33 (Saṅgīti Sutta, fours; also AN 4.69), parallel to the descriptive right-effort formula:

saṃvarapadhāna (Skt: saṃvarapradhāna) — striving by restraint; preventing unarisen unwholesome states
pahānapadhāna (Skt: prahāṇapradhāna) — striving by abandoning; removing arisen unwholesome states
bhāvanāpadhāna (Skt: bhāvanāpradhāna) — striving by development; arousing unarisen wholesome states
anurakkhaṇāpadhāna (Skt: anurakṣaṇāpradhāna) — striving by protection; maintaining arisen wholesome states

VIII.f Bases of Power (cattāro iddhipādā / Skt: catvāra ṛddhipāda)

iddhipāda (Skt: ṛddhipāda) — basis of success, base of psychic power; lit. “foot of iddhi”

The Four Bases:

chanda (Skt: same) — motivation, zeal; cf. VI.f.
vīriya (Skt: vīrya) — effort; cf. VI.f.
citta (Skt: same) — (purposeful) mind, application of mind; cf. VI.f in iddhipāda sense.
vīmaṃsā (Skt: mīmāṃsā) — investigation, inquiry, examination

iddhi (Skt: ṛddhi) — psychic/spiritual power, success, accomplishment. Pāli iddhi = Skt ṛddhi (from √ṛdh “thrive, accomplish”), not Skt siddhi (from √sidh “succeed”). The two are frequently conflated in Anglophone dharma writing — probably because both came to mean yogic attainments in later tantra, and siddhi is the form that escaped into English. In the Pāli canonical register the correct Pāli term is iddhi. Cf. siddhi at XIII.a for the Sanskrit-tantric term that absorbed iddhi-sense in later usage.

VIII.g Fetters & Stages of Awakening

def-flag on the subsection: the fetter-vocabulary and the stages-of-awakening vocabulary are both EBT, as is the broad mapping of which fetters are eliminated at which stage (MN 6, AN 10.13, etc.). What is arguably late-canonical crystallization is (a) the fixed “ten fetters” list — EBT material shows some count-variation; (b) the strict one-to-one codification of the fetter-to-stage correspondence. Cross-ref to the bodhipakkhiyā-”37” def-flag at the head of Part VIII.

Ten Fetters (dasa saṃyojanāni / Skt: daśa saṃyojana):

Lower fetters (orambhāgiya):

sakkāya-diṭṭhi (Skt: satkāya-dṛṣṭi) — identity-view, personality-view; lit. “view-of-the-existing-group”
vicikicchā (Skt: vicikitsā) — doubt, skeptical doubt; also hindrance (III.b).
sīlabbata-parāmāsa (Skt: śīlavrata-parāmarśa) — clinging to precepts-and-practices, misapprehension of rites-and-rituals

Middle fetters (editorial grouping; canonically these are still part of the orambhāgiya — the sensual-realm pair distinguishing anāgāmi from sakadāgāmi):

kāmacchanda (Skt: same) — sensual desire; the suttanta sensual fetter (SN 45.179, AN 10.13, MN 64, DN 33) — the same word as the 1st hindrance (III.b). Its latent form is the anusaya kāma-rāga (below), which is also the Abhidhamma’s name for this fetter. Cf. lobha/rāga (root, VI.f), kāma-taṇhā (SN 56.11).
byāpāda (Skt: vyāpāda) — ill will; the suttanta aversion fetter (SN 45.179, AN 10.13, MN 64, DN 33) — the same word as the 2nd hindrance (III.b). Distinct at the root level from dosa (VI.f). Its latent form is the anusaya paṭigha (below), which is also the Abhidhamma’s name for this fetter (paṭigha-saṃyojana).

Higher fetters (uddhambhāgiya):

rūpa-rāga (Skt: same) — lust for form (form-sphere existence)
arūpa-rāga (Skt: same) — lust for formlessness (formless-sphere existence)
māna (Skt: same) — conceit, pride; from √man “think, consider” (DPD) — distinct from the homonym māna (< √mā “measure”). Although the root is √man, conceit is canonically analyzed as comparison — the three conceits “I am better/equal/worse” (seyyo'hamasmi/sadiso'hamasmi/hīno'hamasmi, SN 22.49) — so the “measuring self against other” sense belongs doctrinally to this fetter, not to the measure-homonym.
uddhacca (Skt: auddhatya) — restlessness; cf. uddhacca-kukkucca as hindrance (III.b).
avijjā (Skt: avidyā) — ignorance; also DO link 1 (VII.a); maps to moha (delusion, VI.f) at the root-analytic level.

Path, fruit, noble persons:

magga (Skt: mārga) / phala (Skt: same) / magga-phala (Skt: mārga-phala) — path / fruit / path-and-fruit; the momentary path-consciousness immediately followed by fruition at each of the four stages. EBT has the twofold structure; the magga-phala technical analysis as distinct consciousness-moments is Abhidhammic — see XI.b vipassanā-ñāṇa sequence (ñāṇas 14–15).
ariya-puggala (Skt: ārya-pudgala) — noble person; generic category-term for the four stages below; lit. “noble individual.”

Stages:

puthujjana (Skt: pṛthagjana) — worldling, ordinary person; lit. “many-folk”; the baseline the stream-enterer breaks from.
sekha (Skt: śaikṣa) — trainee, learner; the first three noble persons, still with work to do.
asekha (Skt: aśaikṣa) — non-trainee, adept; the arahant, training complete.
sotāpanna (Skt: srotāpanna) — stream-enterer; lit. “one who has entered the stream”; drops fetters 1–3 (sakkāya-diṭṭhi, vicikicchā, sīlabbata-parāmāsa).
sakadāgāmī (Skt: sakṛdāgāmin) — once-returner; lit. “one who returns once”; weakens fetters 4–5 (kāmacchanda, byāpāda).
anāgāmī (Skt: anāgāmin) — non-returner; lit. “one who does not return”; drops fetters 4–5.
arahant (Skt: arhat) — arahant, worthy one; lit. “one worthy/deserving” (√arh “deserve”). Usually left untransliterated. Drops fetters 6–10 (rūpa-rāga, arūpa-rāga, māna, uddhacca, avijjā).

Latent tendencies (anusaya):

anusaya (Skt: anuśaya) — latent/underlying tendency; lit. “lying beneath” (anu + √śī “lie”). The dormant level of defilement. MN 64 grounds the latent-vs-active distinction: even an infant has the kāma-rāga anusaya lying beneath it though no fetter is active, and the active fetter (kāmacchanda) arises from it. The systematized three-tier depth-model — anusaya (latent) → pariyuṭṭhāna (aroused into an active state) → vītikkama (overflow into bodily/verbal act), countered by paññā/samādhi/sīla respectively — is a Theravāda commentarial schema (Visuddhimagga). The seven (AN 7.11) follow; the anusaya- and fetter-lists largely co-vary, and what path-insight uproots at each stage is naturally described at the anusaya level.
kāma-rāga (Skt: same) — sensual lust; the sensual anusaya (kāmarāgānusaya, AN 7.11) and the active-lust register (kāmarāgapariyuṭṭhāna, MN 64); the Abhidhamma uses kāma-rāga for the sensual fetter where the suttas use kāmacchanda (fetter 4). Cf. lobha/rāga (root, VI.f).
paṭigha (Skt: pratigha) — repulsion, resistance, aversion; lit. “striking against” (prati- + √han). The aversion anusaya (paṭighānusaya, AN 7.11) — the latent tendency, not a momentary state; also sensory resistance (paṭighasaññā). The Abhidhamma uses paṭigha-saṃyojana for the aversion fetter where the suttas use byāpāda (fetter 5). Same affective family as dosa (root, VI.f); often paired with anunaya (“inclining-toward”) as the basic like/dislike reaction-pair.
diṭṭhi (Skt: dṛṣṭi) — the views anusaya (diṭṭhānusaya); the same term as diṭṭhi (I) and sakkāya-diṭṭhi (fetter 1).
vicikicchā (Skt: vicikitsā) — the doubt anusaya; the same term as fetter 2 and the hindrance (III.b).
māna (Skt: same) — the conceit anusaya; the same term as fetter 8.
bhava-rāga (Skt: same) — lust for existence, lust for becoming; the becoming anusaya (bhavarāgānusaya, AN 7.11). Where the anusaya-list has this single becoming-term, the fetter-list splits it into rūpa-rāga/arūpa-rāga (fetters 6–7) — the one slot where the two lists do not align.
avijjā (Skt: avidyā) — the ignorance anusaya; the same term as fetter 10 and DO link 1 (VII.a).

Part IX — Four Noble Truths as Systematic Frame (Pāli; EBT)

def-flag on the Part: one historical-critical hypothesis (Vetter, Schmithausen, Bronkhorst — not Anālayo’s position) treats the four noble truths as a systematizing master-schema that became increasingly central in the received Nikāyas — not adding new content relative to the gradual training and the goal, but functioning as a downstream organizing presentation. The individual truths’ contents (dukkha, taṇhā, nirodha, magga) are EBT and appear in earlier Parts; what is placed here is the master-schema framing itself.

ariyasacca (Skt: āryasatya) — noble truth
cattāri ariyasaccāni (Skt: catvāri āryasatyāni) — the four noble truths

The Four Noble Truths (cattāri ariyasaccāni):

dukkha-sacca (Skt: duḥkha-satya) — truth of unsatisfactoriness/suffering; cf. VI.a dukkha.
samudaya-sacca (Skt: samudaya-satya) — truth of (the) origin; lit. “arising-together” (saṃ- + udaya “arising”); the origin of dukkha = taṇhā (I, VII.a).
nirodha-sacca (Skt: nirodha-satya) — truth of cessation; cf. II nirodha and nibbāna.
magga-sacca (Skt: mārga-satya) — truth of the path; the noble eightfold path (VIII.a).

The four functions (kicca) — what is to be done regarding each truth, as articulated in the second turning of SN 56.11:

pariññā (Skt: parijñā) — full understanding; the kicca for dukkha-sacca (1st truth: pariññeyya “to be fully understood”). Distinguishes dukkha-as-pariññā-object from taṇhā-as-pahāna-object — dukkha is not what gets abandoned, but what gets seen-through.
pahāna (Skt: prahāṇa) — abandonment, relinquishment; the kicca for samudaya-sacca (2nd truth: pahātabba “to be abandoned”); specifically the abandonment of taṇhā.
sacchikiriyā (Skt: sākṣātkriyā) — realization; lit. “eye-witnessing” (sacchi- < sa- + akkhi “eye”). The kicca for nirodha-sacca (3rd truth: sacchikātabba “to be realized”) — direct experiential realization, not inferential knowing.
bhāvanā (Skt: same) — development, cultivation; the kicca for magga-sacca (4th truth: bhāvetabba “to be developed”). Already present in III.a as a frame-term for the training; also a Part XI.a Abhi. category.
tiparivaṭṭa (Skt: triparivarta) — the three turnings / twelve-aspects framing; SN 56.11.
sacca (Skt: satya) — truth; lit. “what is, what really is” (from sant- “being”)

Part X — Non-clinging and the Limits of Doctrine (Pāli; EBT)

X.a Non-clinging themes

anupādāna (Skt: same) — non-clinging; also “without fuel, without sustenance” (the complement of upādāna’s fuel-sense)
nissaya (Skt: niśraya) — support, reliance, what one leans on; often in the negative formulation — the sage leans on nothing.
nissita (Skt: niśrita) — leaning on, dependent on, attached to; in the Aṭṭhakavagga sense of what the sage does not do.
atammayatā (Skt: atanmayatā) — non-identification; lit. “not-made-of-that” (a- + tad-maya-tā); MN 137.
anissita (Skt: aniśrita) — not leaning on, unsupported, independent
tathatā (Skt: same) — suchness, the way things are; lit. “thus-ness” (from tathā “thus”). EBT sense (cf. SN 12.20 Paccaya-sutta — tathatā avitathatā anaññathatā idappaccayatā “suchness, non-falsity, non-otherness, this-conditionality” applied to dependent origination) is epistemic/phenomenological — the way things are. Yogācāra and Tathāgatagarbha strata (XII.c/XII.d) develop ontologically-reifying readings of tathatā that Madhyamaka (XII.b) explicitly refuses. Cf. XII.a for the Prajñāpāramitā usage compatible with emptiness.

X.b Open Questions (avyākata)

avyākata (Skt: avyākṛta) — the undeclared, the unanswered; lit. “not-explained, not-elaborated” (a- + vi- + ā- + √kṛ). The four/ten questions the Buddha set aside (MN 63 Cūḷamāluṅkya-sutta, MN 72 Aggivacchagotta-sutta, SN 44 Avyākata-saṃyutta).

The ten undeclared positions (dasa avyākata-vatthūni) — four sets, expanded to ten by enumerating positions. In the disputational framing each is asserted as a dogmatic truth-claim with the suffix idam eva saccaṃ, mogham aññaṃ (“only this is true; anything else is foolish”) — so MN 72, where all ten carry it; in MN 63 and the SN 44 Avyākata-saṃyutta the positions appear without the suffix. Abbreviated here:

Cosmological — eternity:

sassato loko — the world is eternal
asassato loko — the world is not eternal

Cosmological — extent:

antavā loko — the world is finite
anantavā loko — the world is infinite

Soul-body:

taṃ jīvaṃ taṃ sarīraṃ — the soul is the same as the body
aññaṃ jīvaṃ aññaṃ sarīraṃ — the soul is one thing, the body another

Post-mortem status of the tathāgata (the catuṣkoṭi-shaped set):

hoti tathāgato paraṃ maraṇā — the tathāgata exists after death
na hoti tathāgato paraṃ maraṇā — the tathāgata does not exist after death
hoti ca na ca hoti tathāgato paraṃ maraṇā — the tathāgata both exists and does not exist after death
neva hoti na na hoti tathāgato paraṃ maraṇā — the tathāgata neither exists nor does not exist after death

The middle-teaching antinomies (the view-pairs the Buddha’s “teaching by the middle” avoids):

sassata-diṭṭhi (Skt: śāśvata-dṛṣṭi) / uccheda-diṭṭhi (Skt: uccheda-dṛṣṭi) — eternalism / annihilationism; the two extremes the middle teaching rejects. Eternalism posits a self that persists eternally; annihilationism (lit. “cutting-off view,” ud-√chid) presupposes a real self now, cut off at death. DN 1 Brahmajāla catalogues the varieties — four kinds of sassatavāda, seven of ucchedavāda. Distinct from the avyākata sassato loko / asassato loko above, which concern the world (loka); these concern the self (attā).
atthitā (Skt: astitā) / natthitā (Skt: nāstitā) — existence / non-existence; the duality SN 12.15 Kaccānagotta-sutta says “this world mostly relies on” (dvayanissito … atthitañceva natthitañca) and that the middle teaching transcends by teaching dependent origination instead (ubho ante anupagamma majjhena tathāgato dhammaṃ deseti). Load-bearing downstream: Nāgārjuna cites this sutta by name at MMK 15.7 to deny both asti and nāsti, making the EBT middle-teaching the source for the Madhyamaka critique of svabhāva (XII.b).
papañca (Skt: prapañca) — conceptual proliferation, mental proliferation, objectification; standardly “conceptual proliferation” (Ñāṇananda); “mental proliferation” (Ñāṇamoli/Bodhi), “objectification” (Thanissaro). Earliest-stratum anchor: the Aṭṭhakavagga attests the compound papañcasaṅkhā (I) — Sn 4.11’s dispute-genealogy, Sn 4.14’s asmi-root. Its stilling (papañca-vūpasama) frames the limit of useful doctrine (AN 4.173); MN 18 thematizes the cessation of papañcasaññāsaṅkhā (without the -vūpasama compound).
nippapañca (Skt: niṣprapañca) — free of proliferation, unelaborated

Part XI — Later Theravāda (Pāli; Abhi. + Theravāda comm.)

XI.a Abhidhamma systematics

Note: Abhidhamma vocabulary below is the post-Nikāya systematization of EBT terminology (canonical within Theravāda — the Abhidhamma Piṭaka is the third basket — but later than the early-discourse stratum) — the dhamma-theory, the enumeration of 52 cetasika, the citta-typology. The Abhi. strata treats these as paramattha-sacca (ultimate) categories; modern critical scholarship (Y. Karunadasa, Ronkin, Cousins) treats the dhamma-theory as a later analytic development rather than as recoverable from the Nikāyas themselves.

dhamma (Skt: dharma) — (Abhi. technical sense) ultimate constituent, ultimate phenomenon; the Abhi. technical sense — the irreducible unit of Abhi.’s analytic decomposition, that-which-bears-sabhāva (“own-nature,” below). Includes the four ultimate categories: citta (consciousness), cetasika (mental factor), rūpa (materiality), and nibbāna. Distinct from dhamma as 6th sense-object (VI.c) and from the general teaching/phenomena sense.
paramattha (Skt: paramārtha) — ultimate (truth/reality); Abhi./commentarial sense: paramattha-sacca “ultimate truth” contrasted with sammuti-sacca “conventional truth” — the conceptual distinction is an Abhidhamma-era development (Karunadasa), but the explicit paired two-truths terminology crystallizes in the commentaries.
sammuti (Skt: saṃvṛti) — convention, conventional (truth); Abhi. sense; cf. XII.b for the Madhyamaka saṃvṛti-satya usage.
paññatti (Skt: prajñapti) — concept, designation, nominal entity; the conventional-reality counterpart to paramattha in Abhi.
sabhāva (Skt: svabhāva) — own-nature, own-characteristic, essential nature; Abhi. sense: the characteristic by which a dhamma is analytically identifiable as that dhamma. Not to be read as the Madhyamaka target-sense of independent, self-subsisting inherent existence — cf. XII.b for the Madhyamaka critique of svabhāva, historically aimed at Sarvāstivāda/Vaibhāṣika ābhidharmika realism rather than the Theravāda system specifically, though structurally parallel.
asabhāva (Skt: asvabhāva) — without own-nature
cetasika (Skt: caitasika / caitta) (Abhi.) — mental factor, mental concomitant; Abhi. sense: the technical 52-cetasika typology, paired with citta in the citta-cetasika analysis. Cf. VI.f for the EBT-attested mental-quality entries.
javana (Skt: same) — (in Abhi.) impulsion, active cognition, apperception; lit. “swift, running”
bhavaṅga (Skt: bhavāṅga) — life-continuum, subliminal mind; lit. “factor of existence/becoming.” Theravāda commentarial readings of the AN 1.49–52 pabhassara citta (II) identify the luminous citta with bhavaṅga — the subliminal continuity-mind running between active cognitive moments.
cittavīthi (Skt: cittavīthī) — cognitive series, thought-process
dvāra (Skt: dvāra) — door, gate; the Abhi./commentarial framing of the six internal sense-organs as access-points through which objects enter cognition. Same referent as āyatana (VI.c) and indriya (VIII.c sense-faculty usage) — the eye/ear/etc. as access-point rather than as locus or capacity. Used especially in Mahāsi-tradition vipassanā literature (“guarding the sense-doors”); not the same as āyatana, with which it is sometimes confused in popular usage.
pasāda / pasāda-rūpa (Skt: prasāda / prasāda-rūpa) — sensitive matter, sensitive material; lit. “clarity, translucence, calm” (pa- + √sad “sit, settle” — the clarity sense emerges from the compound pasāda, not the root). The subtle/refined matter within each gross sense-organ that is the Abhi. analysis’s actual locus of sense-cognition. Theravāda Abhi. recognizes five pasāda-rūpa: cakkhu-pasāda (eye-sensitivity), sota-pasāda (ear-sensitivity), ghāna-pasāda (nose-sensitivity), jivhā-pasāda (tongue-sensitivity), kāya-pasāda (body-sensitivity, distributed throughout the body). The cakkhāyatana/cakkhundriya/cakkhu-dhātu triple identification (VI.c) refers to cakkhu-pasāda as the shared referent. Loosely analogous to the modern physiological transducers (retina, cochlea) but conceived as subtle matter rather than gross sensory anatomy. Not a Sutta term; the pasāda-rūpa analysis is an Abhi. systematization (with Sarvāstivāda parallels in Abhidharmakośa).
kalāpa (Skt: same) — cluster, group, bundle
rūpa-kalāpa (Skt: same) — material cluster, cluster of matter
paṭṭhāna (Skt: prasthāna) — conditional relations; the 24 conditions; also the name of the Abhidhamma text.

Spheres of citta (cittāvacara):

kāmāvacara (Skt: same) — sense-sphere (realm of sense-desire)
rūpāvacara (Skt: same) — form-sphere (realm of subtle form)
arūpāvacara (Skt: ārūpyāvacara) — formless-sphere (realm of formlessness)
lokuttara (Skt: lokottara) — supramundane, transcendent; lit. “beyond the world”

XI.b Commentarial Meditation Apparatus (Visuddhimagga / aṭṭhakathā)

The Three Nimittas (commentarial three-fold progression, ascending):

parikamma-nimitta (Skt: parikarma-nimitta) — preparatory sign; the original physical object or initial percept.
uggaha-nimitta (Skt: udgrāha-nimitta) — acquired sign, learned sign; the internalized mental image.
paṭibhāga-nimitta (Skt: pratibhāga-nimitta) — counterpart sign; the most refined of the three, taken as an idealized mental image independent of the physical object.

Commentarial Samādhi stages:

upacāra-samādhi (Skt: upacāra-samādhi) — access concentration, neighborhood concentration; the stage just short of absorption.
appanā-samādhi (Skt: arpaṇā-samādhi) — absorption concentration, fixed concentration; full jhāna in the commentarial scheme.
khaṇika-samādhi (Skt: kṣaṇika-samādhi) — momentary concentration; the form of concentration proper to vipassanā in the commentarial dry-insight (sukkha-vipassaka) path.

Jhāna-factor analysis:

pañca-jhānaṅga (Skt: pañca-dhyānāṅga) — the five jhāna-factors.

def-flag: the five-factor enumeration of first jhāna (vitakka, vicāra, pīti, sukha, ekaggatā) is sutta-attested at MN 43 (Mahāvedalla, paṭhamajjhānaṃ pañcaṅgikaṃ); its development as a formal pañca-jhānaṅga framework is Abhidhamma + Theravāda commentarial (already in Dhammasaṅgaṇī) — cf. III.c ekaggatā def-flag.

Other Vism. apparatus:

kasiṇa (Skt: kṛtsna) — kasiṇa; a meditation object used as a fixed visual or elemental basis for absorption; lit. “whole, entire.” Usually left untransliterated; “totality” when glossed.
asubha (Skt: aśubha) — the foul, the unattractive; the ten contemplations of the foul (decomposing-corpse contemplations).
anussati (Skt: anusmṛti) — recollection; the ten recollections (Buddhānussati, etc.), systematized in Vism.
visuddhi (Skt: viśuddhi) — purification; the seven purifications scheme specifically (Visuddhimagga spine); cf. VI.f (kilesa) for the general saṅkilesa/visuddhi sense.
vipassanā-ñāṇa (Skt: vipaśyanā-jñāna) — insight-knowledge; the general category-term; see the sixteen-ñāṇa sequence below.

The Sixteen Vipassanā-ñāṇas (Visuddhimagga insight-progress series):

nāma-rūpa-pariccheda-ñāṇa (Skt: nāma-rūpa-paricchedaka-jñāna) — knowledge of the delimitation of mind-and-matter
paccaya-pariggaha-ñāṇa (Skt: pratyaya-parigraha-jñāna) — knowledge of discerning conditions
sammasana-ñāṇa (Skt: sammarśana-jñāna) — knowledge of comprehension (investigating the three marks in formations)
udayabbaya-ñāṇa (Skt: udaya-vyaya-jñāna) — knowledge of rise and fall; also “arising and passing away.”
bhaṅga-ñāṇa (Skt: bhaṅga-jñāna) — knowledge of dissolution
bhayatupaṭṭhāna-ñāṇa (Skt: bhayopasthāna-jñāna) — knowledge of appearance as fearful; also “knowledge of fear” / “fearfulness” (tracking the shorter bhaya-ñāṇa form).
ādīnavānupassanā-ñāṇa (Skt: ādīnavānupaśyanā-jñāna) — knowledge of contemplation of danger; also “misery” (older translator-idiom).
nibbidānupassanā-ñāṇa (Skt: nirvedānupaśyanā-jñāna) — knowledge of contemplation of disenchantment; also “disgust”/“aversion” (older translator-idiom). Cf. nibbidā in II.
muñcitukamyatā-ñāṇa (Skt: mumukṣā-jñāna) — knowledge of desire for deliverance
paṭisaṅkhānupassanā-ñāṇa (Skt: pratisaṃkhyānupaśyanā-jñāna) — knowledge of contemplation of re-examination; also “re-observation.”
saṅkhārupekkhā-ñāṇa (Skt: saṃskāropekṣā-jñāna) — knowledge of equanimity about formations
anuloma-ñāṇa (Skt: anuloma-jñāna) — conformity-knowledge
gotrabhū-ñāṇa (Skt: gotrabhū-jñāna) — change-of-lineage knowledge; the transition-moment to the path.
magga-ñāṇa (Skt: mārga-jñāna) — path-knowledge; the path-moment itself.
phala-ñāṇa (Skt: phala-jñāna) — fruition-knowledge; immediately following the path-moment.
paccavekkhaṇa-ñāṇa (Skt: pratyavekṣaṇā-jñāna) — reviewing-knowledge; reflection upon what has been attained.

Part XII — Mahāyāna — Sūtric (Sanskrit; XII.e in Chinese / Japanese)

Ordered by chronological-developmental stratum: Prajñāpāramitā → Madhyamaka → Yogācāra → broader Mahāyāna sūtra corpus. (First-wave chronology — Madhyamaka and Yogācāra continued to develop in dialogue after the 4th–5th c., and Yogācāra is not a strict “improvement” on Madhyamaka.)

Inclusion in this Part records the vocabulary, not blanket assent to its metaphysics — and the assent here is differential. The emptiness-of-svabhāva analysis of Madhyamaka (XII.b), on a Prāsaṅgika-rangtong reading, is taken as philosophically binding, with the Prajñāpāramitā corpus (XII.a) as its doctrinal source; Yogācāra (XII.c) is engaged more guardedly; and the broader sūtra corpus (XII.d) — tathāgatagarbha, trikāya, the bodhisattva-path cosmology, pure-land — is carried as vocabulary the reader will meet, not as assented ontology. This is the same stratum-distance the glossary marks throughout: later material is surfaced because it is load-bearing in its tradition, not because its inclusion implies endorsement.

XII.a Prajñāpāramitā

prajñāpāramitā — the perfection of wisdom; both the doctrine and the name of the corpus (Aṣṭasāhasrikā, Pañcaviṃśatisāhasrikā, Heart Sūtra, Diamond Sūtra, etc.) in which śūnyatā is first elaborated as the central Mahāyāna doctrinal pivot.
śūnyatā — emptiness; lit. “zero-ness, void-ness” (from śūnya “empty, zero”). Prajñāpāramitā-stratum ontological-soteriological sense: all phenomena empty of svabhāva. Cf. II for the EBT meditative sense, XII.b for Madhyamaka’s systematization of the Prajñāpāramitā teaching.
tathatā — suchness, thusness; Prajñāpāramitā usage: the way-things-are, used compatibly with emptiness (not as a reified ultimate). The ontologically-reifying readings of tathatā develop later in the Yogācāra (XII.c) and especially the Tathāgatagarbha (XII.d) strata — Madhyamaka (XII.b) explicitly refuses those. Cf. X.a for the EBT sense.

XII.b Madhyamaka

madhyamaka — the Middle (Way school); from madhyama “middle.”
mādhyamika — Mādhyamika, adherent of Madhyamaka
śūnyatā — emptiness; Madhyamaka sense: the absence of svabhāva in all phenomena. Cf. II and XII.a.
svabhāva — own-nature, intrinsic nature, inherent existence, ultimate existence; the target of Nāgārjuna’s critique. “Inherent existence” (Garfield, Siderits) emphasizes the ontological bite; “ultimate existence” / “true existence” (Hopkins, Gelug-tradition) emphasize the bears-up-under-ultimate-analysis quality — something ultimately exists iff it has svabhāva, and Madhyamaka denies this for all phenomena (everything exists only conventionally/saṃvṛti-sat). “Own-nature” (Gethin, more literal) is also common. Cf. XI.a for the structurally parallel Theravāda Abhi. sabhāva; Nāgārjuna’s actual historical target was Sarvāstivāda/Vaibhāṣika svabhāva-realism and analogous ābhidharmika dharma-theory more broadly, not specifically the later Theravāda Abhi system summarized in XI.a. The EBT antecedent of the critique is SN 12.15 Kaccānagotta’s rejection of the atthitā/natthitā (existence/non-existence) duality (X.b), which Nāgārjuna cites by name at MMK 15.7 to deny both asti and nāsti.
niḥsvabhāva — without svabhāva, lacking intrinsic nature
nairātmya — selflessness, absence of self; abstract-noun form from anātman (= Pāli anattā, VI.a); systematized in Mahāyāna as the two selflessnesses (pudgala-/dharma-nairātmya below).
pudgala-nairātmya — selflessness of persons; the selflessness the śrāvakayāna already teaches.
dharma-nairātmya — selflessness of dharmas; the distinctive Mahāyāna extension (no svabhāva in the dharmas themselves) — the point at which Mahāyāna departs from Abhi.
pratītyasamutpāda — dependent origination; Madhyamaka reading: śūnyatā, pratītyasamutpāda, and upādāya-prajñapti (“dependent designation”) are three equivalent ways of saying the same thing (MMK 24.18). On the strong Prāsaṅgika development of this verse (Candrakīrti; the Tibetan Geluk-Prāsaṅgika stream), the counterintuitive radical claim is that phenomena themselves are designations in this reading — not in the realist sense where a designation is a label applied to a separately-existing thing, but in the sense that there is no thing-in-itself underlying the designation. What we call “the cup” is not an inherently-existing entity to which we apply the name “cup,” but a prajñapti-mātra (“mere imputation”). The cup is the imputed object — it exists conventionally as such but lacks the svabhāva that would make it exist ultimately. Even the apparent imputation-basis (parts, causal history, function) is itself dependently designated — neither cup nor basis exists with svabhāva. The thing/name distinction the realist relies on collapses; phenomena exist only as dependent designations. Cf. VII.a.
saṃvṛti-satya — conventional truth; cf. XI.a sammuti for the Abhi. sense.
paramārtha-satya — ultimate truth; cf. XI.a paramattha.
dve satye — the two truths; the two-truths framing.
catuṣkoṭi — tetralemma, four corners; lit. “four-cornered”; the fourfold logical schema (X/not-X/both/neither). Madhyamaka’s distinctive move is to negate all four positions — sometimes called the “negative catuṣkoṭi” (in modern scholarship: Garfield, Westerhoff) or catuṣkoṭi-vinirmukta (“free from the four corners”). Nāgārjuna deploys this fourfold-negation pattern at MMK 1.1 (“not from itself, not from another, not from both, not without cause”) and MMK 22.11–12 (the four-cornered schema in the Tathāgata-parīkṣā — catuṣṭaya — picking up the EBT avyākata register at X.b); MMK 25.17–18 returns to the Tathāgata case under the nirvāṇa-parīkṣā. MMK 18.8 (sarvaṃ tathyaṃ na vā tathyaṃ tathyaṃ cātathyam eva ca / naivātathyaṃ naiva tathyaṃ etad buddhānuśāsanam) states the four-corner schema as such — phenomena’s reality-status across the four positions.
prasaṅga / Prāsaṅgika — consequence; “Prāsaṅgika” (and the matched “Svātantrika” below) is a later Tibetan doxographic classification retrojected onto Indian Madhyamaka — the school-label is Tibetan taxonomy, the method it names is Indian. The Prāsaṅgika method (associated by Tibetan doxographers with Buddhapālita and Candrakīrti, picked up by Tsongkhapa and the Gelug stream) uses consequence-only (prasaṅga) argumentation — refuting opponents by showing that their own premises entail absurd consequences, without putting forth any counter-thesis of one’s own. The method is purely negational: it accepts no positive thesis carrying svabhāva-implication; it uses the opponent’s metaphysical presumptions (their assumption of svabhāva) to undermine the opponent’s argument from within, on the opponent’s own terms. Cf. paryudāsa/prasajya-pratiṣedha (XIV.c) for the formal grammatical-logical typology of negation that frames the prasaṅga method. Contrasts with Svātantrika (Bhāviveka), which uses autonomous positive syllogisms (svatantra-anumāna) to establish Madhyamaka conclusions.
svātantra / Svātantrika — independent inference; Svātantrika (sub-school admitting positive arguments). Like Prāsaṅgika above, “Svātantrika” is later Tibetan doxographic classification retrojected onto Indian Madhyamaka — Bhāviveka and his stream are the figures the Tibetan taxonomy assigns the label to.
apratiṣṭhita — non-abiding, unestablished; a characterization of emptiness.
niṣprapañca — free of conceptual proliferation, unelaborated; cf. X.b.
śūnyatā-śūnyatā — “emptiness of emptiness”; Nāgārjuna’s guard against reifying śūnyatā into a view or ultimate — emptiness itself is empty of svabhāva and cannot be grasped as a doctrinal position. MMK 24.11 warns that śūnyatā mis-grasped “ruins the dull-witted, as a snake wrongly caught or a spell wrongly cast.” Central to Prāsaṅgika-rangtong reading: the point at which Madhyamaka refuses all ontological reification including its own apparent metaphysics.

XII.c Yogācāra

yogācāra — Yogācāra; lit. “yoga-practice,” the practice-school
vijñānavāda — doctrine of consciousness, consciousness-school; alternate name for Yogācāra.
cittamātra — mind-only, nothing-but-mind
vijñaptimātra — representation-only, cognition-only; Vasubandhu’s preferred formulation; subtly distinct from cittamātra — “vijñapti” is the appearance-in-cognition, not mind as such.
aṣṭa-vijñāna — the eight consciousnesses (as a schema)
ālayavijñāna — store-consciousness, storehouse consciousness, foundational consciousness; lit. “abode-consciousness” (ālaya “abode, dwelling”; “store(house)” renders the whole compound, not ālaya alone)
kliṣṭa-manas — the defiled mind (seventh consciousness)
manovijñāna — mind-consciousness, mental consciousness; the sixth — corresponds to EBT mano-viññāṇa (cf. VI.b viññāṇa, VI.c mano); distinct from kliṣṭa-manas and from the five sense-consciousnesses.
pravṛtti-vijñāna — active/“turning”/forthcoming consciousnesses; the first seven, or the first six, depending on schema.
trisvabhāva — the three natures; Yogācāra svabhāva here carries the sense “nature, aspect” (of phenomena) rather than the strong “inherent existence” critiqued by Madhyamaka — Yogācāra affirms svabhāva for paratantra and pariniṣpanna in this weaker sense.
parikalpita-svabhāva — imagined nature, constructed nature
paratantra-svabhāva — dependent nature, other-dependent nature
pariniṣpanna-svabhāva — perfected nature, accomplished nature
āśraya-parāvṛtti — transformation/revolution of the basis
bīja — seed; technical term for karmic potentials in the ālaya.
vāsanā — habitual trace, perfuming, latent impression; lit. “infusing, perfuming”
pariṇāma — transformation, evolution (of consciousness); Vasubandhu’s Triṃśikā frame: the threefold vijñāna-pariṇāma — (1) the ālayavijñāna storing seeds, (2) kliṣṭa-manas’ self-grasping, (3) the six active consciousnesses’ object-perception. The Yogācāra account of how consciousness appears to produce a world while remaining only consciousness.
svasaṃvedana / svasaṃvitti — reflexive cognition, self-awareness (of cognition); Dignāga and Dharmakīrti’s claim that every moment of cognition is implicitly aware of itself — each cognition cognizes both its object and its own cognizing. A pillar of the Dignāga-Dharmakīrti pramāṇa tradition (in Tibetan doxography: “Yogācāra-Sautrāntika” epistemology, distinct from the Yogācāra-Svātantrika Madhyamaka sub-school of Śāntarakṣita/Kamalaśīla — same Yogācāra-prefix, different second term). Contested by Mādhyamikas (Candrakīrti’s critique in Madhyamakāvatāra VI.72–76).
nirvikalpa-jñāna — non-conceptual cognition; direct non-conceptual realization of suchness, contrasted with conceptual (savikalpa) cognition. In Yogācāra-Buddhist epistemology (Dignāga, Dharmakīrti), the mode of knowing proper to meditative realization. Cf. XIV nirvikalpa/vikalpa generally.
dharmatā — dharma-nature, the dharma’s nature; the pariniṣpanna, the way things are.
dharmadhātu — dharma-realm, dharma-sphere; Yogācāra and later East Asian Mahāyāna ontological category for the total field of dharmas.

XII.d Broader Sūtra Corpus

The Mahāyāna sūtra material beyond the Prajñāpāramitā pivot: bodhisattva-path vocabulary, trikāya doctrine, tathāgatagarbha, pure-land, and East Asian Mahāyāna usages.

mahāyāna — the Great Vehicle
yāna — vehicle; the organizing category under which the Mahāyāna distinguishes itself.
ekayāna — one vehicle; Lotus-sūtra frame asserting the three yānas ultimately collapse into one.

The Three Yānas:

śrāvakayāna — hearers’ vehicle
pratyekabuddhayāna — solitary-buddhas’ vehicle
bodhisattvayāna — bodhisattvas’ vehicle

hīnayāna — lesser vehicle.

def-flag: originally a Mahāyāna polemical term for the śrāvakayāna. Modern scholarship (and inter-tradition courtesy) substitutes śrāvakayāna / mainstream Buddhism / early Buddhism; listed here with the polemic flagged, not endorsed.

Bodhisattva-path vocabulary:

anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi — unsurpassed complete awakening; the Mahāyāna goal formula.
bodhisattva — bodhisattva; lit. “awakening-being, being-(destined-for)-awakening.” Usually left untransliterated.
bodhicitta — mind of awakening, awakening-mind; sometimes left untransliterated.
pāramitā — perfection; the six (and in later lists ten) perfections of the bodhisattva path; cf. XII.a for prajñāpāramitā specifically.

The Six Pāramitās:

dāna-pāramitā — perfection of giving/generosity
śīla-pāramitā — perfection of ethics/virtue
kṣānti-pāramitā — perfection of patience/forbearance
vīrya-pāramitā — perfection of energy/diligence
dhyāna-pāramitā — perfection of meditation
prajñā-pāramitā — perfection of wisdom; cf. XII.a for the corpus/doctrine.

upāya / upāya-kauśalya — skillful means; lit. “means / skill-in-means”
dhāraṇī — mnemonic formula, protective formula; bridges Mahāyāna sūtra and tantric literature.

The Three Bodies (trikāya):

trikāya — the three bodies; the three-bodies doctrine as a systematic frame.

dharmakāya (Pāli: dhammakāya) — dharma-body, truth-body.

def-flag: Pāli dhammakāya is attested (DN 27, etc.) as “body/embodiment of dhamma” — an epithet of the Buddha; the Mahāyāna trikāya-doctrinal sense (unconditioned absolute body of the Buddha) is a later development.
sambhogakāya — enjoyment-body, reward-body
nirmāṇakāya — emanation-body, manifestation-body, transformation-body

Tathāgatagarbha vocabulary:

tathāgatagarbha (Tathāgatagarbha) — tathāgata-womb, buddha-embryo, buddha-matrix; the central Tathāgatagarbha-stratum doctrine — the teaching that all beings have the potential for buddhahood within.
buddhadhātu (Tathāgatagarbha) — buddha-nature, buddha-element.

def-flag: Pāli buddhadhātu exists meaning “Buddha-relic” or “Buddha-element”; the Mahāyāna buddha-nature doctrinal sense (synonymous with tathāgatagarbha) is the loaded one.
prabhāsvara-citta — luminous mind; the Mahāyāna systematization of the EBT pabhassara citta (II) theme. The intrinsic luminosity of mind that is obscured but never destroyed by defilements; closely associated with tathāgatagarbha and buddha-nature literature, and a central category in Yogācāra accounts of non-conceptual wisdom (jñāna). Vajrayāna inherits this as 'od gsal clear-light (XIII.b).

Pure-land/bodhisattva-stages vocabulary:

buddha-kṣetra — buddha-field, buddha-realm
daśa-bhūmi — the ten stages, ten grounds (of the bodhisattva)

XII.e East Asian Mahāyāna — Chan/Zen (Chinese / Japanese)

zuòchán (坐禪; Chinese) / zazen (坐禅; Japanese) — seated meditation; lit. “sitting Zen.” The foundational practice across Chan/Zen traditions. Sōtō zazen is often understood specifically as shikantaza (“just sitting”) — non-objective, non-goal-directed; Rinzai zazen typically incorporates kōan-investigation.
shikantaza (只管打坐; Japanese) — “just sitting”; lit. “nothing but sitting” (只管 shikan “only / just / nothing but” + 打坐 taza “sit”). Dōgen’s articulation of zazen as the practice-realization (shushō ittō) of awakening itself, not a method to achieve awakening; Sōtō-tradition core.
gōngàn (公案; Chinese) / kōan (公案; Japanese) — public case, paradoxical question. A teaching-narrative or impasse-question (e.g. the classical Chinese case of Zhàozhōu’s wu; later Japanese kōan such as Hakuin’s “sound of one hand”) used in Rinzai/Linji practice as an object of meditative inquiry; the “case” is the impasse the practitioner sits with until conceptual mind exhausts.
wúxīn (無心; Chinese) / mushin (無心; Japanese) — no-mind; lit. “without-mind.” Mind free of attachment to thoughts and concepts; not a blank state but mind-functioning unimpeded by self-clinging or categorizing.
hishiryō (非思量; Japanese) — non-thinking; lit. “not-thinking.” Dōgen’s term (Fukan-zazengi) for the cognitive register of zazen — neither thinking (shiryō) nor not-thinking (fushiryō), but a third mode he describes as “the essence of zazen.”
běnlái miànmù (本來面目; Chinese) / honrai no menmoku (本来の面目; Japanese) — “original face” (often expanded as “your original face before your parents were born”). The practitioner’s nature prior to conceptual elaboration; a common kōan-frame for inquiry into Buddha-nature.
satori (悟り; Japanese) — awakening, realization.

def-flag: Zen practice (especially Rinzai) loosely distinguishes kenshō as an initial breakthrough — seeing one’s nature — from satori as the more complete realization, though the terms are often used interchangeably; Sōtō-tradition framings de-emphasize the distinction in favor of practice-realization unity (shushō ittō). The two-stage frame (initial glimpse → full awakening) maps loosely onto Theravāda’s 1st-path/4th-path structure (sotāpanna → arahant); structural analogy, not doctrinal equivalence (no fetter-eradication correspondence).
kenshō (見性; Japanese) — seeing (one’s) nature; lit. “see-nature”
wu (無; Chinese) — no, not, nothingness; the Chinese gate-word of the famous Zhàozhōu kōan (Mumonkan 1).
mu (無; Japanese) — same graph as Chinese wu; common in Zen kōan usage and in Nishida/Kyōto-school philosophical vocabulary (“absolute nothingness”)

Part XIII — Mahāyāna — Tantric: Vajrayāna, Dzogchen & Mahāmudrā (Sanskrit / Tibetan)

Vajrayāna is doctrinally a tantric mode within Mahāyāna (Mantrayāna), not a separate vehicle in most non-Tibetan classifications. This Part isolates the tantric methodological apparatus and its Tibetan elaboration for length and vocabulary cohesion; sūtric Mahāyāna is in Part XII.

XIII.a Sanskrit-stratum

vajrayāna — Diamond/Adamantine/Thunderbolt Vehicle
vajra — diamond, thunderbolt, adamant; the implement, the path-principle, and a widely compounded element (vajra-guru, vajra-sattva, etc.).
mantra — mantra, sacred formula; lit. “instrument of thought” (manas + -tra “instrument”). Included here in the tantric sense; the Pāli manta/paritta usage is separate.
tantra — tantra; lit. “loom, warp, continuum” (√tan “stretch”).

def-flag: tantra names both a genre (esoteric ritual-meditation texts, distinct from public sūtra discourses) and a soteriological path-principle — taking the result as the path. Where sūtric Mahāyāna treats poisons (kleśas) as defilements to be abandoned, tantric Buddhism treats them as energies to be transformed in deity-yoga, mantra-recitation, and subtle-body practices. The Tibetan rgyud (“continuum”) frames a tantric system as a basis-path-fruit triad — the unbroken continuity between practitioner-nature (basis), method (path), and realization (fruit) is the “thread” the etymology evokes.
maṇḍala — maṇḍala; lit. “circle, disk”
mudrā — mudrā, seal, ritual gesture; lit. “seal”
sādhana — practice, means of accomplishment; lit. “means of achieving”
abhiṣeka — empowerment, initiation; lit. “sprinkling, consecration.” Tibetan wang (Wylie: dbang).
samaya — tantric commitment/pledge; taken at abhiṣeka.
guru — teacher, spiritual master; in Vajrayāna, soteriologically central.
siddhi — accomplishment, attainment; both ordinary/supernormal powers and the supreme siddhi of awakening. Distinct from Pāli iddhi (Skt ṛddhi, VIII.f) — siddhi (√sidh “succeed”) and iddhi/ṛddhi (√ṛdh “thrive”) are different etymological roots that frequently get conflated in Anglophone dharma writing because both came to denote yogic attainments in later tantra; see VIII.f iddhi for the EBT register.
siddha — accomplished one; a practitioner who has attained siddhi.
mahāsiddha — great siddha; the 84 Mahāsiddhas of the Indian tantric tradition.
ḍākinī — ḍākinī, sky-dancer, feminine enlightened energy; Tibetan khandroma (Wylie: mkha’ ‘gro ma “sky-goer,” feminine; bare mkha’ ‘gro is the male dāka).
mahāmudrā — the Great Seal; especially associated with the Kagyü realization-system, though present in other Tibetan lineages as well (notably Sakya, and via Padampa Sangye and the Shije lineage).
mahāsukha — great bliss

XIII.b Tibetan (Dzogchen / Mahāmudrā)

dzogchen (Wylie: rdzogs chen) (Dzogchen) — the Great Perfection; lit. “great completion.” The Nyingma tradition’s non-dual realization-system — emphasizing the primordially-pure (kadag) and spontaneously-present (lhundrub) nature of mind (rigpa). Often classified as the ninth and highest of the nine yānas in Nyingma doxography.
lama (Wylie: bla ma) — lama, teacher; Tibetan rendering of Skt guru. Tulku-lama, root-lama, etc.
tulku (Wylie: sprul sku) — incarnate lama, recognized reincarnation; the Tibetan term that also translates Skt nirmāṇakāya (emanation-body, XII.d); in Tibetan Buddhist institutional usage, a recognized reincarnate teacher.
bardo (Wylie: bar do) — intermediate state, in-between state; Tibetan-tradition elaboration of Skt antarābhava. The Bardo Thödol frames six bardos; the term has broader use beyond the between-lives bardo.
yidam (Wylie: yi dam) — personal meditation deity; translates/functions like Skt iṣṭa-devatā.
rigpa (Wylie: rig pa) (Dzogchen) — awareness, pristine awareness, pure awareness, knowing, presence; the Dzogchen term for non-dual awareness as the ground of experience. Translation equivalent of Skt vidyā.
ma rigpa (Wylie: ma rig pa) (Dzogchen) — ignorance, non-knowing, non-recognition (of rigpa); translation equivalent of Skt avidyā but Dzogchen-specific in usage.
‘od gsal (Wylie) / clear light — Tibetan rendering of Skt prabhāsvara (also rendered “luminosity”); central to Mahāmudrā, Dzogchen, and the Six Yogas of Nāropa. The clear-light nature of mind, recognized at moments of subtle dissolution (sleep, dreaming, dying) and as the goal of practice. Cognate with the EBT pabhassara (II) and Mahāyāna prabhāsvara-citta (XII.d) but with its own Vajrayāna technical apparatus.
sems nyid (Wylie) — mind-itself, the nature of mind; the Tibetan term for the intrinsic, non-dual nature of mind as opposed to thoughts/contents arising within it. Used across Mahāmudrā and Dzogchen; closely tied to rigpa and 'od gsal.

The four Dzogchen liberations (grol bzhi):

rangdrol (Wylie: rang grol) (Dzogchen) — self-liberation; the general term for the Dzogchen mode of liberation.
shardrol (Wylie: shar grol) (Dzogchen) — liberation upon arising; thoughts and appearances liberate at their moment of arising, without intervening in the chain.
cherdrol (Wylie: gcer grol) (Dzogchen) — naked liberation, liberation upon nakedness; effortless liberation in raw awareness, without conceptual mediation.
yedrol (Wylie: ye grol) (Dzogchen) — primordial liberation; the already-liberated nature of mind, never bound.
jalü (Wylie: ‘ja’ lus) (Dzogchen) — rainbow body
gankyil (Wylie: dga’ ‘khyil) (Dzogchen) — wheel of joy; the tri-partite swirling symbol.
rangtong (Wylie: rang stong) — self-empty; the standard Madhyamaka reading — phenomena empty of own-nature; in Tibetan doxography especially associated with the Gelug systematization (Tsongkhapa-stream Prāsaṅgika), though rangtong-style readings are broader.
shentong (Wylie: gzhan stong) — other-empty; ultimate reality empty only of what is other than itself; a Tathāgatagarbha-inflected position; especially associated with the Jonang school (Dolpopa, Tāranātha), with reception-history strands in Kagyu and Nyingma as well.
trekchö (Wylie: khregs chod) (Dzogchen) — cutting through, breakthrough; one of the two principal Dzogchen practices (with tögal).
tögal (Wylie: thod rgal) (Dzogchen) — direct crossing, leap-over; the visionary/luminosity practice.
kadag (Wylie: ka dag) (Dzogchen) — primordial purity
lhundrub (Wylie: lhun grub) (Dzogchen) — spontaneous presence, self-accomplished

Part XIV — Vedānta & Indic Comparatives (Sanskrit)

Pāli surface cognates exist for several entries below (puruṣa/purisa, prakṛti/pakati, pratyakṣa/paccakkha, prāṇa/pāṇa, svarūpa/sarūpa) but the doctrinal usage here is Sanskrit-tradition only; the Pāli forms are not listed in parentheses.

XIV.a Vedānta

ātman — self, Self; the Upaniṣadic self-principle; contrasts with Buddhist anātman (VI.a).
brahman (n.) — brahman, the Absolute; the Upaniṣadic ground of reality. Advaita distinguishes nirguṇa-brahman (brahman without qualities, the absolute) from saguṇa-brahman (brahman with qualities, identified with īśvara, the personal God).
nirguṇa (Vedānta) — without qualities, unqualified; applied to brahman: nirguṇa-brahman = brahman without qualities, the absolute ultimate beyond all attributes — the higher Advaita reading approached via neti neti. Contrasts with saguṇa-brahman below.
saguṇa (Vedānta) — with qualities, qualified; applied to brahman: saguṇa-brahman = brahman conceived with attributes, identified with īśvara (the personal God) in Advaita; the lower/conditioned reading.
nirvikalpa-samādhi (later Vedānta / post-classical yoga) — samādhi without conceptual distinction, non-conceptual samādhi.
savikalpa-samādhi (later Vedānta / post-classical yoga) — samādhi with conceptual distinction, conceptual samādhi. The savikalpa/nirvikalpa pair is widely used in later Vedānta and post-classical yoga literature; the classical Pātañjala Yogasūtra division is samprajñāta/asamprajñāta with sub-types savitarka/nirvitarka/savicāra/nirvicāra — see Sāṅkhya / Yoga sub-section below.
Brahmā (m.) — Brahmā; the personified creator deity.
īśvara — Lord, the personal God; central in Viśiṣṭādvaita and the Yogasūtra; in Advaita, saguṇa-brahman (brahman-with-qualities).
advaita (Vedānta — Advaita) — non-dualism, non-duality; lit. “not-two”
dvaita (Vedānta — Dvaita) — dualism; lit. “two-ness”
viśiṣṭādvaita (Vedānta — Viśiṣṭādvaita) — qualified non-dualism; lit. “non-dualism-with-distinction”
Vedānta — Vedānta; lit. “end/culmination of the Vedas”
Veda / Vedas — Veda(s), revealed knowledge; lit. “knowledge” (√vid)
Upaniṣad / Upaniṣads — Upaniṣad(s); lit. “sitting down near” (a teacher, for esoteric instruction)
śruti — that which is heard, revealed scripture; the Vedas + Upaniṣads as divinely-heard texts.
smṛti — that which is remembered, tradition; in the Vedic-canonical sense (contrasts with śruti). Cf. III/IV for the meditative sati/smṛti.
tat tvam asi — “you are that” (Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.8.7, etc.); one of the four mahāvākyas.
so’ham — “I am he/that”; abbreviated contemplative formula.
ahaṃ brahmāsmi — “I am brahman” (Bṛhadāraṇyaka 1.4.10); another mahāvākya.
neti neti — “not this, not this”; the foundational apophatic formula from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad — primary locus BU 2.3.6 (athāta ādeśo neti neti), recurring at BU 3.9.26, 4.2.4, 4.4.22, 4.5.15 in the formula sa eṣa neti nety ātmā. Brahman/ātman characterized only by what it is not. Structural parallel to Buddhist negation-of-self (na me so attā) and to the Christian apophatic tradition (cf. XV.a apophasis, hyperousia).
oṃkāra — the syllable Oṃ; lit. “the making/uttering of Oṃ”
praṇava — the primordial sound; a synonym for Oṃ; lit. “the praising/sounding-forth” (pra- + √nu).
udgītha — the high-chant; the chanted portion of Sāmavedic recitation; a major Chāndogya meditation object.
turīya — “the fourth”; not a fourth empirical state in the same series as waking, dreaming, and deep sleep, but the non-dual witnessing/reality underlying or transcending the three (Māṇḍūkya Up. 7). In Advaita, turīya is ātman, and ātman is brahman.
svarūpa — own-form, essential nature, intrinsic form; structurally parallel to Sanskrit svabhāva (XII.b) — own-nature — but in Advaita used affirmatively for brahman’s essential nature rather than as a target of critique.
cidākāśa — consciousness-space, space of consciousness
Hiraṇyagarbha — the Golden Embryo / Golden Womb; the cosmogonic principle of Vedic-Upaniṣadic thought.
saccidānanda — being-consciousness-bliss; Advaita’s tri-partite characterization of brahman.
sat — being, existence, that-which-is; component of saccidānanda.
cit — consciousness, awareness; component of saccidānanda.
ānanda — bliss; component of saccidānanda.
māyā — illusion, cosmic appearance-power; core Advaita category for the world’s dependent-appearance status vis-à-vis brahman.
avidyā — ignorance (Advaita sense).

def-flag: Advaita uses avidyā for metaphysical ignorance-as-cause-of-superimposition of world on brahman. The Buddhist avijjā/avidyā (DO link 1; fetter 10 — see VII.a, VIII.g) is canonically defined as ignorance of the four noble truths (SN 12.2); vipassanā-pedagogical framing extends this to ignorance of the three marks (anicca, dukkha, anattā); Mahāyāna framings read it as ignorance of emptiness — mistaking dependently-arisen phenomena for inherently-existing ones. The three Buddhist framings are nested refinements of the same fundamental misperception. Same IAST word, two doctrinal contexts (Advaita/Buddhism) — handled here as a split entry (cf. sabhāva XI.a vs svabhāva XII.b).
adhyāsa — superimposition; Śaṅkara’s preamble to the Brahmasūtrabhāṣya frames the root epistemic error as mutual superimposition of ātman and anātman.
upādhi — limiting adjunct.

def-flag: Advaita “limiting adjunct” — that which makes the one brahman appear as many. Distinct from Pāli upadhi (I) — different Sanskrit words (upa-ā-√dhā vs. upa-√dhā); the macron is the tell.
sākṣin / sākṣi-caitanya — witness / witness-consciousness; the uninvolved awareness in which experience appears. A distinctive Advaita category.
jīvanmukta / jīvanmukti — one-liberated-while-living / liberation-while-living; the Advaita doctrine that mokṣa can obtain while the body persists.
videhamukti — liberation at death, bodiless liberation; paired with jīvanmukti.
ahaṃkāra — I-maker, ego-principle; ego-principle in the Sāṅkhya-Vedānta psychological hierarchy.
buddhi — intellect, discriminating faculty; Sāṅkhya-Vedānta.
manas — mind, sensory-coordinating faculty; Sāṅkhya-Vedānta sense; distinct from the Buddhist mano at VI.c.
antaḥkaraṇa — inner instrument; the four-fold psychological apparatus (manas, buddhi, ahaṃkāra, citta).
ajāti-vāda (Vedānta — Advaita) — the doctrine of non-origination; Gauḍapāda’s claim in the Māṇḍūkya-kārikā (esp. book IV Alātaśānti) that nothing ever truly comes into being; apparent arising of a world is unreal. Structurally parallel to Madhyamaka’s critique of origination (XII.b); whether Gauḍapāda actively absorbed Madhyamaka premises or arrived at the parallel independently is debated in scholarship (many read it as Madhyamaka-influenced). Either way Gauḍapāda redirects the conclusion toward non-dual brahman rather than śūnyatā — affirming an “Unborn” (ātman) where Nāgārjuna refuses any positive ground.

Yogas (paths of practice):

bhakti-yoga (Vedānta) — devotion; loving devotion to a personal deity, the path of the Bhagavad-Gītā and of the later devotional traditions.
karma-yoga (Vedānta) — the yoga of action; selfless action without attachment to its fruits (niṣkāma-karma), as taught in the Gītā.
jñāna-yoga (Vedānta) — the yoga of knowledge; discriminative realization of brahman–ātman identity. In classical Advaita the identity holds for ātman stripped of upādhi (not jīva, ahaṃkāra, body-mind, or empirical self-experience); in Nisargadatta-style teaching language the manifest “I am” / witness-consciousness functions as a doorway to the Absolute but is itself transcended (Parabrahman is prior to even consciousness). Path of viveka and the three-stage śravaṇa-manana-nididhyāsana (both below); Advaita’s path par excellence. Cf. XIV.c jñāna for the underlying term.

Method-vocabulary of jñāna-yoga:

viveka (Vedānta) — discrimination, discernment; in Advaita, specifically nitya-anitya-vastu-viveka (“discrimination between the eternal and the non-eternal”), the first of Śaṅkara’s four prerequisites (sādhana-catuṣṭaya) for liberating knowledge. Distinct from the Pāli viveka at III.c (“separation,” the jhāna-formula sense) — same word, different doctrinal use.
śravaṇa-manana-nididhyāsana (Vedānta) — hearing, reflecting, meditating; Śaṅkara’s three-stage epistemic procedure on Bṛhadāraṇyaka 2.4.5 (ātmā vā are draṣṭavyaḥ śrotavyo mantavyo nididhyāsitavyaḥ): hearing the teaching from a guru / from śruti (śravaṇa), reflecting on it (manana), and sustained contemplation toward direct realization (nididhyāsana). The standard Advaita pedagogy of jñāna-yoga.

XIV.b Sāṅkhya / Yoga

puruṣa (Sāṅkhya) — spirit, pure consciousness, the conscious principle
prakṛti (Sāṅkhya) — nature, primordial matter, the unconscious-material principle
guṇa (Sāṅkhya) — quality, strand; the three strands constituting prakṛti.

The Three Guṇas:

sattva (Sāṅkhya) — lucidity, clarity, goodness, purity
rajas (Sāṅkhya) — passion, activity
tamas (Sāṅkhya) — inertia, dullness, darkness

vyakta (Sāṅkhya) — manifest
avyakta (Sāṅkhya) — unmanifest; the equilibrium-state of prakṛti before manifestation. In the Bhagavad-Gītā and Vedānta, avyakta is variously absorbed depending on commentator and verse — often as unmanifest prakṛti/māyā, sometimes as akṣara, sometimes as a brahmanic register. In classical Sāṅkhya it is prakṛti-side, not brahman-side; Sāṅkhya is dualistic, and brahman is not a Sāṅkhya category.
kaivalya (Sāṅkhya / Yoga) — isolation, aloneness, independence, absolute freedom; the Sāṅkhya-Yoga goal: puruṣa’s separation from prakṛti — the literal “isolation” is the positive liberative state, the Seer standing free of nature.
samprajñāta-samādhi / asamprajñāta-samādhi (Pātañjala Yoga) — samādhi with / without cognized object; the two-fold division at YS 1.17–1.18. YS 1.17 characterizes samprajñāta as accompanied by vitarka, vicāra, ānanda, and asmitā; YS 1.42–1.44 then elaborates the savitarka/nirvitarka and savicāra/nirvicāra samāpatti distinctions.
prāṇa — breath, life-force, vital energy
kuṇḍalinī (Hindu tantra / Haṭha-yoga) — coiled (serpent-energy); not Sāṅkhya/Pātañjala-Yoga vocabulary — a Hindu-tantric and Haṭha-yoga concept (developed in the Śaiva and Nātha tantric corpora, codified in the Haṭhayogapradīpikā and similar texts) of dormant energy at the base of the spine, raised through the central channel in subtle-body practice. Listed here under Indic comparatives for its structural parallel to Vajrayāna caṇḍālī / Tibetan tummo (tantric inner-heat practice).

XIV.c Epistemology (pan-Indic)

pramāṇa — means of valid knowledge, instrument of cognition; systems differ on which and how many pramāṇas are admitted — e.g. Nyāya accepts four (perception, inference, comparison, verbal testimony), Advaita six (adding postulation and non-apprehension), the Cārvāka only direct perception.

Core pramāṇas (the standard trio of the orthodox/āstika systems — but śabda is not universal: Buddhist logicians from Dignāga onward accept only pratyakṣa and anumāna, and the Vaiśeṣika likewise admits no independent śabda):

pratyakṣa — direct perception; lit. “before-the-eye”
anumāna — inference
śabda — verbal testimony, authoritative word; (in epistemology); the same word as “sound” generally — cf. VI.c.

vikalpa — conceptualization, mental construct, discriminative thought
nirvikalpa — without conceptualization, non-conceptual
paryudāsa / prasajya-pratiṣedha — implicative (choice) negation and non-implicative (sheer) negation; the two negation-types in Sanskrit grammatical-logical analysis. paryudāsa (“not-X but Y”) denies X while implying a positive alternative; prasajya-pratiṣedha (“not X at all”) denies X without implication. Originating in Pāṇinian grammar and Mīmāṃsā exegesis; doctrinally consequential in Madhyamaka (XII.b), where Nāgārjuna’s prasaṅga method is read as deploying prasajya-pratiṣedha to negate svabhāva without reifying its absence as a positive thesis.
jñāna (Pāli: ñāṇa) — knowledge, cognition; cf. VI.f.

XIV.d Ethics / Other

ahiṃsā — non-harming, non-violence; lit. “non-injuring”
dharma — order, duty, righteousness (pan-Indic sense); cf. XI.a for the Abhi. technical sense.

Part XV — Non-Indic Philosophical / Mystical Comparatives (Greek, Hebrew, German)

Comparative entries below are included as orientation aids, not equivalence claims. They flag partial structural, phenomenological, or pedagogical resonances — not shared metaphysics, identical soteriology, or direct historical dependence. Where a structural-only analogy is at issue (e.g., kenosis/śūnyatā, ayin/śūnyatā, Gelassenheit/virāga, apatheia/upekkhā), the entry says so; where historical influence is plausible, it is flagged inline.

XV.a Greek

Platonic/Neoplatonic principles (Plotinus, Proclus, Pseudo-Dionysius):

to hen (τὸ ἕν) (Plotinian) — the One; Plotinus’s first and highest principle, beyond being and beyond predication (Enneads VI.9). Cf. brahman (XIV.a) as non-dual ground.
nous (νοῦς) (Plotinian) — intellect, mind, intelligence; the second hypostasis — first emanation from the One, realm of the Platonic Forms.
psychē (ψυχή) (Plotinian) — soul; the third hypostasis — world-soul and individual souls as its particularizations.
hypostasis (ὑπόστασις) (Plotinian) — “standing-under,” subsistence, level-of-reality; Plotinus’s three principle-levels — to hen, nous, psychē — are the three hypostases. Christian trinitarian theology later redeploys the term for the three divine persons in one ousia.
monad (μονάς) — one, unity, unit; Neoplatonic primal unity; Leibnizian metaphysical individual.
ousia (οὐσία) (Aristotelian / Neoplatonic / Christian) — being, essence, substance; the Aristotelian category of what-something-is, redeployed in Christian trinitarian theology (three hypostases in one ousia) and inverted by hyperousia.

Apophatic/beyond-being:

hyperousia (ὑπερούσιος / ὑπερουσία) (Neoplatonic / Pseudo-Dionysius) — beyond being, superessential; the One’s transcendence of ousia — not a being among beings, not the highest being. Central to Pseudo-Dionysius’s apophatic theology.
apophasis (ἀπόφασις) — negation, denial; the apophatic theological method — knowing God by what God is not.

Modes of knowing:

noēsis (νόησις) (Platonic / Plotinian) — intellection, direct intellectual apprehension; the non-discursive knowing proper to nous, contrasted with dianoia (διάνοια) — discursive step-by-step reasoning.
gnosis (γνῶσις) — knowledge (esp. spiritual/experiential knowledge); Greek cognate of Skt jñāna / Pāli ñāṇa — all from PIE *ǵneh3- “know” (same root as English know, Latin cognoscere).

Contemplation, return, union:

theōria (θεωρία) (Platonic / Neoplatonic) — contemplation, contemplative vision; engagement with the intelligible, contrasted with praxis (practical activity); the Neoplatonic soteriological ideal.
epistrophē (ἐπιστροφή) (Plotinian / Proclean) — return, reversion; the soul’s turn back toward the One, reversing the outward proodos (procession). Proclus’s triad: monē → proodos → epistrophē.
henōsis (ἕνωσις) (Plotinian) — union with the One; Plotinus’s soteriological goal — “the flight of the alone to the alone” (Enneads VI.9.11).
theōsis (θέωσις) (Eastern Orthodox) — deification, divinization; the human person becomes “by grace what God is by nature” (Athanasius, Maximus, Palamas); the Christian-personalist redeployment of Plotinian henōsis.

Love (the Platonic-Christian trio):

eros (ἔρως) (Platonic) — desiring love, aspirational love; in Plato (Symposium, Phaedrus), the soul’s ascent toward the Beautiful and the Good; in Plotinus, the soul’s drive-toward-the-One.
agape (ἀγάπη) — selfless/divine love; distinguished from eros (desiring) and philia (friendship).

Christian-mystical/Gnostic:

plērōma (πλήρωμα) — fullness; Pauline cosmic fullness; Gnostic Pleroma as the totality of divine emanations.
kenosis (κένωσις) — emptying, self-emptying; Philippians 2:7 on Christ’s self-emptying incarnation; semantic echo of śūnyatā.

XV.b Hebrew (Kabbalah)

Divine absolute (beyond emanation):

ein sof (אֵין סוֹף) — the Infinite, without-end; the hidden, unmanifest Godhead prior to the sefirot. An affirmative (though hidden) divine infinitude, not a predicate-stripped absence.
ayin (אַיִן) — nothing, there-is-not; the Kabbalistic “divine nothingness” — especially in the Ḥasidic reading, Ein Sof as Ayin from the creaturely side. Names divine transcendence, not the absence of svabhāva.

The sefirot (the ten emanations through which Ein Sof manifests):

sefirot (סְפִירוֹת; sing. sefirah) — emanations, numerations, divine attributes; the ten channels through which Ein Sof flows into manifestation; read as both divine self-structure and map of creation.

The Ten Sefirot (canonical order, from nearest-the-Infinite downward):

keter (כֶּתֶר) — crown; the first sefirah, closest to Ein Sof; sometimes identified with Ayin.
ḥokhmah (חָכְמָה) — wisdom; the second sefirah — flash-of-insight, pre-discursive.
binah (בִּינָה) — understanding; the third sefirah — articulated comprehension; often paired with ḥokhmah as wisdom-unfolded.
ḥesed (חֶסֶד) — loving-kindness, mercy; the fourth sefirah — outward-flowing grace.
gevurah (גְּבוּרָה) — strength, severity, judgment; the fifth sefirah — the restraining/limiting aspect, paired with ḥesed.
tifʾeret (תִּפְאֶרֶת) — beauty, harmony; the sixth sefirah — the balanced center of the tree, harmonizing ḥesed and gevurah.
netzaḥ (נֶצַח) — victory, eternity, endurance; the seventh sefirah.
hod (הוֹד) — splendor, majesty, acknowledgment; the eighth sefirah; paired with netzaḥ.
yesod (יְסוֹד) — foundation; the ninth sefirah — the channel gathering the flow toward malkhut.
malkhut (מַלְכוּת) — kingdom, sovereignty; the tenth sefirah — the manifest world / receiving-vessel; frequently identified with Shekhinah.

Divine immanence, mystical union:

shekhinah (שְׁכִינָה) — divine presence, indwelling; God’s immanent/dwelling aspect; often feminine-coded and identified with the tenth sefirah malkhut. In exile with Israel in post-biblical Jewish thought.
devekut (דְּבֵקוּת) — cleaving, adherence, communion (to/with God); continuous cleaving to the divine — “communion” (Scholem) rather than absorptive union, since Jewish mysticism generally preserves the soul–God distinction; the central soteriological term in Ḥasidism.

XV.c German

Erleuchtung — enlightenment, illumination
Aufklärung — the (European) Enlightenment
Istigkeit (Eckhart) — is-ness, is-ity; Meister Eckhart’s neologism for the sheer being-of-things.
Gelassenheit (Eckhart / Heidegger) — releasement, letting-be, equanimity; Eckhart: detachment as spiritual posture; Heidegger: a stance toward technology and Being.
Ungrund (Böhme) — un-ground, abyss; Jacob Böhme’s term for the groundless ground of divine reality prior to any determinate being.

Notes:

Pāli headwords always carry (Skt: …) — (Skt: same) when IAST-identical.
Part titles carry (language; stratum). Anomalous terms get inline stratum tags.
Entries give brief glosses and rendering-notes rather than full prose definitions. Def-flags surface contested scholarship or multi-sense terms.
Sanskrit -an stem nouns use the technical stem (ātman, karman, brahman, nāman), not popular shortened forms. In compounds the -n drops by sandhi (nāma-rūpa).

Index

Alphabetical index of all headwords across Parts I–XV. Primary entries are in bold; cross-references from Sanskrit or Pāli equivalents are in italics and point to the primary entry. Location abbreviations are the Part + subsection (e.g. VI.b). Terms with multiple appearances list all locations. Sort is alphabetical by Pāli / primary form, diacritics folded.

A

abdhātu → see āpo-dhātu (VI.d)
abhidhyā-daurmanasya → see abhijjhā-domanassa (IV)
abhijjhā-domanassa (Skt: abhidhyā-daurmanasya) — IV
abhijñā → see abhiññā (III.a)
abhiññā (Skt: abhijñā) — III.a
abhiṣeka — XIII.a
adhicitta — III.a
adhipaññā (Skt: adhiprajñā) — III.a
adhiprajñā → see adhipaññā (III.a)
adhisīla (Skt: adhiśīla) — III.a
adhyāsa — XIV.a
ādīnavānupaśyanā-jñāna → see ādīnavānupassanā-ñāṇa (XI.b)
ādīnavānupassanā-ñāṇa (Skt: ādīnavānupaśyanā-jñāna) — XI.b
adosa (Skt: adveṣa) — VI.f
advaita — XIV.a
adveṣa → see adosa (VI.f)
agape — XV.a
ahaṃ brahmāsmi — XIV.a
ahaṃkāra — XIV.a
ahetuka-diṭṭhi (Skt: ahetuka-dṛṣṭi) — VIII.a
ahetuka-dṛṣṭi → see ahetuka-diṭṭhi (VIII.a)
ahiṃsā — XIV.d
ajāti-vāda — XIV.a
ākāsa-dhātu (Skt: ākāśa-dhātu) — VI.d
ākāsānañcāyatana (Skt: ākāśānantyāyatana) — III.c
ākāśānantyāyatana → see ākāsānañcāyatana (III.c)
akiñcana — I
ākiñcañña (Skt: ākiṃcanya) — I
ākiñcaññāyatana (Skt: ākiṃcanyāyatana) — III.c
ākiṃcanya → see ākiñcañña (I)
ākiṃcanyāyatana → see ākiñcaññāyatana (III.c)
akiriya-diṭṭhi (Skt: akriyā-dṛṣṭi) — VIII.a
akriyā-dṛṣṭi → see akiriya-diṭṭhi (VIII.a)
akusala (Skt: akuśala) — III.a
akusala-mūla (Skt: akuśala-mūla) — VI.f
ālayavijñāna — XII.c
alobha — VI.f
amata (Skt: amṛta) — II
amoha — VI.f
amṛta → see amata (II)
anāgāmī (Skt: anāgāmin) — VIII.g
anāgāmin → see anāgāmī (VIII.g)
ānanda — XIV.a
ānāpānasati (Skt: ānāpānasmṛti) — IV
ānāpānasmṛti → see ānāpānasati (IV)
anāsava (Skt: anāsrava) — II
anāsrava → see anāsava (II)
anātman → see anattā (VI.a)
anattā (Skt: anātman) — VI.a
anicca (Skt: anitya) — VI.a
animitta — II
aniśrita → see anissita (X.a)
anissita (Skt: aniśrita) — X.a
anitya → see anicca (VI.a)
antaḥkaraṇa — XIV.a
anuloma-jñāna → see anuloma-ñāṇa (XI.b)
anuloma-ñāṇa (Skt: anuloma-jñāna) — XI.b
anumāna — XIV.c
anupādāna — X.a
anupadhi — I
anupādisesa-nibbāna (Skt: nirupadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa) — II
anupādiyāno (Skt: anupādāna) — I
anupaśyanā → see anupassanā (IV)
anupassanā (Skt: anupaśyanā) — IV
anurakkhaṇāpadhāna (Skt: anurakṣaṇāpradhāna) — VIII.e
anurakṣaṇāpradhāna → see anurakkhaṇāpadhāna (VIII.e)
anusaya (Skt: anuśaya) — VIII.g
anusmṛti → see anussati (XI.b)
anussati (Skt: anusmṛti) — XI.b
anuttara-samyak-saṃbodhi — XII.d
apatrāpya → see ottappa (III.a)
āpo-dhātu (Skt: abdhātu) — VI.d
apophasis — XV.a
appamāda (Skt: apramāda) — III.a
appamāṇā (Skt: apramāṇa) — V
appanā-samādhi (Skt: arpaṇā-samādhi) — XI.b
appaṇihita (Skt: apraṇihita) — II
apramāda → see appamāda (III.a)
apramāṇa → see appamāṇā (V)
apraṇihita → see appaṇihita (II)
apratiṣṭhita — XII.b
arahant (Skt: arhat) — VIII.g
arhat → see arahant (VIII.g)
ariya-puggala (Skt: ārya-pudgala) — VIII.g
ariyasacca (Skt: āryasatya) — IX
arpaṇā-samādhi → see appanā-samādhi (XI.b)
arūpa — VI.e
arūpa-rāga — VIII.g
arūpa-samāpatti (Skt: ārūpya-samāpatti) — III.c
arūpāvacara (Skt: ārūpyāvacara) — XI.a
ārūpya-samāpatti → see arūpa-samāpatti (III.c)
ārūpyāvacara → see arūpāvacara (XI.a)
ārya-pudgala → see ariya-puggala (VIII.g)
āryasatya → see ariyasacca (IX)
asabhāva (Skt: asvabhāva) — XI.a
aśaikṣa → see asekha (VIII.g)
asamprajñāta-samādhi → see samprajñāta-samādhi (XIV.b)
asaṃskṛta → see asaṅkhata (VII.b)
asaṅkhata (Skt: asaṃskṛta) — VII.b
āsava (Skt: āsrava) — II
āsavakkhaya (Skt: āsravakṣaya) — II
asekha (Skt: aśaikṣa) — VIII.g
āsrava → see āsava (II)
āsravakṣaya → see āsavakkhaya (II)
āśraya-parāvṛtti — XII.c
aṣṭa-vijñāna — XII.c
astitā → see atthitā (X.b)
asubha (Skt: aśubha) — XI.b
asvabhāva → see asabhāva (XI.a)
atammayatā (Skt: atanmayatā) — X.a
atanmayatā → see atammayatā (X.a)
ātāpī (Skt: ātāpin) — IV
ātāpin → see ātāpī (IV)
ātman — XIV.a
atthitā (Skt: astitā) — X.b
auddhatya → see uddhacca (VIII.g)
auddhatya-kaukṛtya → see uddhacca-kukkucca (III.b)
Aufklärung — XV.c
avidyā → see avijjā (VII.a, VIII.g)
avidyā — XIV.a
avijjā (Skt: avidyā) — VII.a, VIII.g
avyākata (Skt: avyākṛta) — X.b
avyākṛta → see avyākata (X.b)
avyakta — XIV.b
āyatana — VI.c
ayin — XV.b

B

bala — VIII.d
bardo — XIII.b
běnlái miànmù — XII.e
bhakti-yoga — XIV.a
bhaṅga-jñāna → see bhaṅga-ñāṇa (XI.b)
bhaṅga-ñāṇa (Skt: bhaṅga-jñāna) — XI.b
bhava — VII.a
bhāvanā — III.a, IX
bhāvanāpadhāna (Skt: bhāvanāpradhāna) — VIII.e
bhāvanāpradhāna → see bhāvanāpadhāna (VIII.e)
bhavaṅga (Skt: bhavāṅga) — XI.a
bhava-rāga (Skt: same) — VIII.g
bhayopasthāna-jñāna → see bhayatupaṭṭhāna-ñāṇa (XI.b)
bhayatupaṭṭhāna-ñāṇa (Skt: bhayopasthāna-jñāna) — XI.b
bīja — XII.c
binah — XV.b
bodhi — II
bodhicitta — XII.d
bodhipakkhiyā dhammā (Skt: bodhipakṣa-dharma) — VIII
bodhipakṣa-dharma → see bodhipakkhiyā dhammā (VIII)
bodhisattva — XII.d
bodhisattvayāna — XII.d
bodhyaṅga → see bojjhaṅga (VIII.b)
bojjhaṅga (Skt: bodhyaṅga) — VIII.b
Brahmā — XIV.a
brahman — XIV.a
brahmavihāra — V
buddha-kṣetra — XII.d
buddhadhātu — XII.d
buddhi — XIV.a
byāpāda (Skt: vyāpāda) — III.b, VIII.g

C

caitasika / caitta → see cetasika (XI.a)
cakkhu (Skt: cakṣus) — VI.c
cakṣus → see cakkhu (VI.c)
cattāri ariyasaccāni (Skt: catvāri āryasatyāni) — IX
caturthadhyāna → see catutthajjhāna (III.c)
catutthajjhāna (Skt: caturthadhyāna) — III.c
catuṣkoṭi — XII.b
catvāri āryasatyāni → see cattāri ariyasaccāni (IX)
cetanā — VI.f
cetasika (Skt: caitasika / caitta) — VI.f (EBT), XI.a (Abhi.)
cetovimukti → see cetovimutti (II)
cetovimutti (Skt: cetovimukti) — II
chanda — VI.f, VIII.f
cherdrol — XIII.b
cidākāśa — XIV.a
cit — XIV.a
citta — VI.f, VIII.f
cittamātra — XII.c
cittānupassanā (Skt: cittānupaśyanā) — IV
cittānupaśyanā → see cittānupassanā (IV)
cittavīthi (Skt: cittavīthī) — XI.a

D

ḍākinī — XIII.a
dāna-pāramitā — XII.d
daśa-bhūmi — XII.d
daurmanasya → see domanassa (VI.f)
devekut — XV.b
dhamma (Skt: dharma) — VI.c (EBT), XI.a (Abhi.)
dhamma-vicaya (Skt: dharma-pravicaya) — VIII.b
dhammakāya → see dharmakāya (XII.d)
dhammānupassanā (Skt: dharmānupaśyanā) — IV
dhāraṇī — XII.d
dharma → see dhamma (VI.c, XI.a)
dharma — XIV.d
dharma-nairātmya — XII.b
dharma-pravicaya → see dhamma-vicaya (VIII.b)
dharmadhātu — XII.c
dharmakāya (Pāli: dhammakāya) — XII.d
dharmānupaśyanā → see dhammānupassanā (IV)
dharmatā — XII.c
dhātu — VI.d
dhyāna → see jhāna (III.c)
dhyāna-pāramitā — XII.d
diṭṭhi (Skt: dṛṣṭi) — I, VIII.g
domanassa (Skt: daurmanasya) — VI.f
dosa (Skt: dveṣa) — VI.f
dṛṣṭi → see diṭṭhi (I)
duḥkha → see dukkha (I, VI.a)
duḥkha-satya → see dukkha-sacca (IX)
dukkha (Skt: duḥkha) — I, VI.a
dukkha-sacca (Skt: duḥkha-satya) — IX
dutiyajjhāna (Skt: dvitīyadhyāna) — III.c
dvaita — XIV.a
dvāra — XI.a
dve satye — XII.b
dveṣa → see dosa (VI.f)
dvitīyadhyāna → see dutiyajjhāna (III.c)
dzogchen — XIII.b

N

nairātmya — XII.b
naiṣkramya → see nekkhamma (III.a)
naivasaṃjñānāsaṃjñāyatana → see nevasaññānāsaññāyatana (III.c)
nāma-rūpa — VI.e, VII.a
nāma-rūpa-pariccheda-ñāṇa (Skt: nāma-rūpa-paricchedaka-jñāna) — XI.b
nāma-rūpa-paricchedaka-jñāna → see nāma-rūpa-pariccheda-ñāṇa (XI.b)
ñāṇa (Skt: jñāna) — VI.f
ñāṇa → see jñāna (XIV.c)
nāstika-dṛṣṭi → see natthika-diṭṭhi (VIII.a)
nāstitā → see natthitā (X.b)
natthika-diṭṭhi (Skt: nāstika-dṛṣṭi) — VIII.a
natthitā (Skt: nāstitā) — X.b
nekkhamma (Skt: naiṣkramya) — III.a
neti neti — XIV.a
netzaḥ — XV.b
nevasaññānāsaññāyatana (Skt: naivasaṃjñānāsaṃjñāyatana) — III.c
nibbāna (Skt: nirvāṇa) — II
nibbidā (Skt: nirveda) — II
nibbidānupassanā-ñāṇa (Skt: nirvedānupaśyanā-jñāna) — XI.b
nidāna — VII.b
niḥsvabhāva — XII.b
nimitta — III.c
nippapañca (Skt: niṣprapañca) — X.b
nirguṇa — XIV.a
nirmāṇakāya — XII.d
nirodha — II
nirodha-sacca (Skt: nirodha-satya) — IX
nirodha-samāpatti — III.c
nirodha-satya → see nirodha-sacca (IX)
nirupadhi — I
nirupadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa → see anupādisesa-nibbāna (II)
nirvāṇa → see nibbāna (II)
nirveda → see nibbidā (II)
nirvedānupaśyanā-jñāna → see nibbidānupassanā-ñāṇa (XI.b)
nirvikalpa — XIV.c
nirvikalpa-jñāna — XII.c
nirvikalpa-samādhi — XIV.a
niṣprapañca → see nippapañca (X.b)
niṣprapañca — XII.b
niśraya → see nissaya (X.a)
niśrita → see nissita (X.a)
nissaya (Skt: niśraya) — X.a
nissita (Skt: niśrita) — X.a
nīvaraṇa — III.b
nīvaraṇa-pahāna (Skt: nīvaraṇa-prahāṇa) — III.a
nīvaraṇa-prahāṇa → see nīvaraṇa-pahāna (III.a)
noēsis — XV.a
nous — XV.a

O

‘od gsal / clear light — XIII.b
oṃkāra — XIV.a
ottappa (Skt: apatrāpya) — III.a
ousia — XV.a

P

pabhassara (Skt: prabhāsvara) — II
paccavekkhaṇa-ñāṇa (Skt: pratyavekṣaṇā-jñāna) — XI.b
paccaya (Skt: pratyaya) — VII.b
paccaya-pariggaha-ñāṇa (Skt: pratyaya-parigraha-jñāna) — XI.b
pahāna (Skt: prahāṇa) — IX
pahānapadhāna (Skt: prahāṇapradhāna) — VIII.e
pamāda (Skt: pramāda) — III.a
pāmojja (Skt: prāmodya) — III.c
pañca-dhyānāṅga → see pañca-jhānaṅga (XI.b)
pañca-jhānaṅga (Skt: pañca-dhyānāṅga) — XI.b
paññā (Skt: prajñā) — VI.f
paññā-bala (Skt: prajñā-bala) — VIII.d
paññatti (Skt: prajñapti) — XI.a
paññāvimutti (Skt: prajñāvimukti) — II
paññindriya (Skt: prajñendriya) — VIII.c
papañca (Skt: prapañca) — X.b
papañcasaṅkhā (Skt: prapañca-saṃkhyā) — I
paramārtha → see paramattha (XI.a)
paramārtha-satya — XII.b
paramattha (Skt: paramārtha) — XI.a
pāramitā — XII.d
paratantra-svabhāva — XII.c
parikalpita-svabhāva — XII.c
parikamma-nimitta (Skt: parikarma-nimitta) — XI.b
parijñā → see pariññā (IX)
parikarma-nimitta → see parikamma-nimitta (XI.b)
pariṇāma — XII.c
pariññā (Skt: parijñā) — IX
parinibbāna (Skt: parinirvāṇa) — II
parinirvāṇa → see parinibbāna (II)
pariniṣpanna-svabhāva — XII.c
paryudāsa — XIV.c
pasāda / pasāda-rūpa (Skt: prasāda / prasāda-rūpa) — XI.a
passaddhi (Skt: praśrabdhi) — VI.f, VIII.b
paṭhamajjhāna (Skt: prathamadhyāna) — III.c
pathavī-dhātu (Skt: pṛthivī-dhātu) — VI.d
paṭibhāga-nimitta (Skt: pratibhāga-nimitta) — XI.b
paṭiccasamuppāda (Skt: pratītyasamutpāda) — VII.a
paṭigha (Skt: pratigha) — VIII.g
paṭisaṅkhānupassanā-ñāṇa (Skt: pratisaṃkhyānupaśyanā-jñāna) — XI.b
paṭṭhāna (Skt: prasthāna) — XI.a
phala — VIII.g
phala-jñāna → see phala-ñāṇa (XI.b)
phala-ñāṇa (Skt: phala-jñāna) — XI.b
phassa (Skt: sparśa) — VI.c, VII.a
phoṭṭhabba (Skt: spraṣṭavya) — VI.c
pīti (Skt: prīti) — III.c, VIII.b
plērōma — XV.a
prabhāsvara → see pabhassara (II)
prabhāsvara-citta — XII.d
prahāṇa → see pahāna (IX)
prahāṇapradhāna → see pahānapadhāna (VIII.e)
prajñā → see paññā (VI.f)
prajñā-bala → see paññā-bala (VIII.d)
prajñā-pāramitā — XII.d
prajñāpāramitā — XII.a
prajñapti → see paññatti (XI.a)
prajñāvimukti → see paññāvimutti (II)
prajñendriya → see paññindriya (VIII.c)
prakṛti — XIV.b
pramāda → see pamāda (III.a)
pramāṇa — XIV.c
prāmodya → see pāmojja (III.c)
prāṇa — XIV.b
praṇava — XIV.a
prapañca → see papañca (X.b)
prapañca-saṃkhyā → see papañcasaṅkhā (I)
prasajya-pratiṣedha — XIV.c
prasaṅga — XII.b
prasāda / prasāda-rūpa → see pasāda / pasāda-rūpa (XI.a)
Prāsaṅgika — XII.b
praśrabdhi → see passaddhi (VI.f, VIII.b)
prasthāna → see paṭṭhāna (XI.a)
prathamadhyāna → see paṭhamajjhāna (III.c)
pratibhāga-nimitta → see paṭibhāga-nimitta (XI.b)
pratigha → see paṭigha (VIII.g)
pratisaṃkhyānupaśyanā-jñāna → see paṭisaṅkhānupassanā-ñāṇa (XI.b)
pratītyasamutpāda → see paṭiccasamuppāda (VII.a)
pratītyasamutpāda — XII.b
pratyakṣa — XIV.c
pratyavekṣaṇā-jñāna → see paccavekkhaṇa-ñāṇa (XI.b)
pratyaya → see paccaya (VII.b)
pratyaya-parigraha-jñāna → see paccaya-pariggaha-ñāṇa (XI.b)
pratyekabuddhayāna — XII.d
pravṛtti-vijñāna — XII.c
prīti → see pīti (III.c, VIII.b)
pṛthagjana → see puthujjana (VIII.g)
pṛthivī-dhātu → see pathavī-dhātu (VI.d)
psychē — XV.a
pudgala-nairātmya — XII.b
puruṣa — XIV.b
puthujjana (Skt: pṛthagjana) — VIII.g

R

rāga — VI.f
rajas — XIV.b
rangdrol — XIII.b
rangtong — XIII.b
rasa — VI.c
ṛddhi → see iddhi (VIII.f)
ṛddhipāda → see iddhipāda (VIII.f)
rigpa — XIII.b
rūpa — VI.b, VI.c, VI.e
rūpa-kalāpa — XI.a
rūpa-rāga — VIII.g
rūpāvacara — XI.a

S

śabda → see sadda (VI.c)
śabda — XIV.c
sabhāva (Skt: svabhāva) — XI.a
sacca (Skt: satya) — IX
sacchikiriyā (Skt: sākṣātkriyā) — IX
saccidānanda — XIV.a
ṣaḍāyatana → see saḷāyatana (VI.c, VII.a)
sadda (Skt: śabda) — VI.c
saddhā (Skt: śraddhā) — VI.f
saddhā-bala (Skt: śraddhā-bala) — VIII.d
saddhindriya (Skt: śraddhendriya) — VIII.c
sādhana — XIII.a
saguṇa — XIV.a
śaikṣa → see sekha (VIII.g)
sakadāgāmī (Skt: sakṛdāgāmin) — VIII.g
sakkāya-diṭṭhi (Skt: satkāya-dṛṣṭi) — VIII.g
sakṛdāgāmin → see sakadāgāmī (VIII.g)
sākṣi-caitanya — XIV.a
sākṣin — XIV.a
sākṣātkriyā → see sacchikiriyā (IX)
saḷāyatana (Skt: ṣaḍāyatana) — VI.c, VII.a
samādhi — III.c, VIII.b
samādhi-bala (Skt: same) — VIII.d
samādhindriya (Skt: samādhīndriya) — VIII.c
samatha (Skt: śamatha) — III.c
samaya — XIII.a
sambhogakāya — XII.d
saṃjñā → see saññā (VI.b)
saṃjñāvedayitanirodha → see saññāvedayitanirodha (III.c)
sammā-ājīva (Skt: samyag-ājīva) — VIII.a
sammā-diṭṭhi (Skt: samyag-dṛṣṭi) — VIII.a
sammā-kammanta (Skt: samyak-karmānta) — VIII.a
sammā-samādhi (Skt: samyak-samādhi) — VIII.a
sammā-sambodhi (Skt: samyak-saṃbodhi) — II
sammā-saṅkappa (Skt: samyak-saṃkalpa) — VIII.a
sammā-sati (Skt: samyak-smṛti) — VIII.a
sammā-vācā (Skt: samyag-vāc) — VIII.a
sammā-vāyāma (Skt: samyag-vyāyāma) — VIII.a
sammappadhāna (Skt: samyakpradhāna) — VIII.e
sammarśana-jñāna → see sammasana-ñāṇa (XI.b)
sammasana-ñāṇa (Skt: sammarśana-jñāna) — XI.b
sammuti (Skt: saṃvṛti) — XI.a
sampajañña (Skt: samprajanya) — IV
samprajanya → see sampajañña (IV)
samprajñāta-samādhi / asamprajñāta-samādhi — XIV.b
saṃsāra — II
saṃskāra → see saṅkhāra (VI.b, VII.a, VII.b)
saṃskāropekṣā-jñāna → see saṅkhārupekkhā-ñāṇa (XI.b)
saṃskṛta → see saṅkhata (VII.b)
saṃtuṣṭi → see santuṭṭhi (III.a)
samudaya-sacca (Skt: samudaya-satya) — IX
samudaya-satya → see samudaya-sacca (IX)
saṃvarapadhāna (Skt: saṃvarapradhāna) — VIII.e
saṃvarapradhāna → see saṃvarapadhāna (VIII.e)
saṃvṛti → see sammuti (XI.a)
saṃvṛti-satya — XII.b
samyag-ājīva → see sammā-ājīva (VIII.a)
samyag-dṛṣṭi → see sammā-diṭṭhi (VIII.a)
samyag-vāc → see sammā-vācā (VIII.a)
samyag-vyāyāma → see sammā-vāyāma (VIII.a)
samyak-karmānta → see sammā-kammanta (VIII.a)
samyak-samādhi → see sammā-samādhi (VIII.a)
samyak-saṃbodhi → see sammā-sambodhi (II)
samyak-saṃkalpa → see sammā-saṅkappa (VIII.a)
samyak-smṛti → see sammā-sati (VIII.a)
samyakpradhāna → see sammappadhāna (VIII.e)
saṅkhāra (Skt: saṃskāra) — VI.b, VII.a, VII.b
saṅkhārupekkhā-ñāṇa (Skt: saṃskāropekṣā-jñāna) — XI.b
saṅkhata (Skt: saṃskṛta) — VII.b
saññā (Skt: saṃjñā) — VI.b
saññāvedayitanirodha (Skt: saṃjñāvedayitanirodha) — III.c
santi (Skt: śānti) — I
santuṭṭhi (Skt: saṃtuṣṭi) — III.a
sassata-diṭṭhi (Skt: śāśvata-dṛṣṭi) — X.b
śāśvata-dṛṣṭi → see sassata-diṭṭhi (X.b)
sat — XIV.a
sati (Skt: smṛti) — IV, VIII.b
sati-bala (Skt: smṛti-bala) — VIII.d
sati-sampajañña (Skt: smṛti-samprajanya) — III.a
satindriya (Skt: smṛtīndriya) — VIII.c
satipaṭṭhāna (Skt: smṛtyupasthāna) — IV
satkāya-dṛṣṭi → see sakkāya-diṭṭhi (VIII.g)
satori — XII.e
sattva — XIV.b
satya → see sacca (IX)
saumanasya → see somanassa (VI.f)
saupādisesa-nibbāna (Skt: sopadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa) — II
savikalpa-samādhi — XIV.a
sefirah — XV.b
sefirot — XV.b
sekha (Skt: śaikṣa) — VIII.g
sems nyid — XIII.b
shardrol — XIII.b
shekhinah — XV.b
shentong — XIII.b
shikantaza — XII.e
siddha — XIII.a
siddhi — XIII.a
sīla (Skt: śīla) — III.a
śīla-pāramitā — XII.d
sīlabbata-parāmāsa (Skt: śīlavrata-parāmarśa) — VIII.g
śīlavrata-parāmarśa → see sīlabbata-parāmāsa (VIII.g)
skandha → see khandha (VI.b)
smṛti → see sati (IV, VIII.b)
smṛti — XIV.a
smṛti-bala → see sati-bala (VIII.d)
smṛti-samprajanya → see sati-sampajañña (III.a)
smṛtīndriya → see satindriya (VIII.c)
smṛtyupasthāna → see satipaṭṭhāna (IV)
so’ham — XIV.a
somanassa (Skt: saumanasya) — VI.f
sopadhiśeṣa-nirvāṇa → see saupādisesa-nibbāna (II)
sota (Skt: śrotra) — VI.c
sotāpanna (Skt: srotāpanna) — VIII.g
sparśa → see phassa (VI.c, VII.a)
spraṣṭavya → see phoṭṭhabba (VI.c)
śraddhā → see saddhā (VI.f)
śraddhā-bala → see saddhā-bala (VIII.d)
śraddhendriya → see saddhindriya (VIII.c)
śrāvakayāna — XII.d
śravaṇa-manana-nididhyāsana — XIV.a
srotāpanna → see sotāpanna (VIII.g)
śrotra → see sota (VI.c)
śruti — XIV.a
styāna-middha → see thīna-middha (III.b)
sukha — III.c
suññatā (Skt: śūnyatā) — II
śūnyatā → see suññatā (II)
śūnyatā — XII.a (Prajñāpāramitā), XII.b (Madhyamaka)
śūnyatā-śūnyatā — XII.b
svabhāva → see sabhāva (XI.a)
svabhāva — XII.b
svarūpa — XIV.a
svasaṃvedana — XII.c
svasaṃvitti — XII.c
svātantra — XII.b
Svātantrika — XII.b

T

tamas — XIV.b
taṇhā (Skt: tṛṣṇā) — I, VII.a
taṇhākkhaya (Skt: tṛṣṇākṣaya) — II
tantra — XIII.a
tat tvam asi — XIV.a
tathāgatagarbha — XII.d
tathatā — X.a (EBT), XII.a (Prajñāpāramitā)
tatiyajjhāna (Skt: tṛtīyadhyāna) — III.c
tejas-dhātu → see tejo-dhātu (VI.d)
tejo-dhātu (Skt: tejas-dhātu) — VI.d
theōria — XV.a
theōsis — XV.a
thīna-middha (Skt: styāna-middha) — III.b
tifʾeret — XV.b
tiparivaṭṭa (Skt: triparivarta) — IX
to hen — XV.a
tögal — XIII.b
trekchö — XIII.b
trikāya — XII.d
triparivarta → see tiparivaṭṭa (IX)
trisvabhāva — XII.c
tṛṣṇā → see taṇhā (I, VII.a)
tṛṣṇākṣaya → see taṇhākkhaya (II)
tṛtīyadhyāna → see tatiyajjhāna (III.c)
tulku — XIII.b
turīya — XIV.a

U

ubhatobhāgavimutta (Skt: ubhayatobhāgavimukta) — II
ubhayatobhāgavimukta → see ubhatobhāgavimutta (II)
uccheda-diṭṭhi (Skt: uccheda-dṛṣṭi) — X.b
uccheda-dṛṣṭi → see uccheda-diṭṭhi (X.b)
udaya-vyaya-jñāna → see udayabbaya-ñāṇa (XI.b)
udayabbaya-ñāṇa (Skt: udaya-vyaya-jñāna) — XI.b
uddhacca (Skt: auddhatya) — VIII.g
uddhacca-kukkucca (Skt: auddhatya-kaukṛtya) — III.b
udgītha — XIV.a
udgrāha-nimitta → see uggaha-nimitta (XI.b)
uggaha-nimitta (Skt: udgrāha-nimitta) — XI.b
Ungrund — XV.c
upacāra-samādhi (Skt: upacāra-samādhi) — XI.b
upādāna — VII.a
upādāna-khandha (Skt: upādāna-skandha) — VI.b
upādāna-skandha → see upādāna-khandha (VI.b)
upadhi — I
upādhi — XIV.a
upanisā (Skt: upaniṣad) — VII.b
Upaniṣad — XIV.a
Upaniṣads — XIV.a
upāya — XII.d
upāya-kauśalya — XII.d
upekkhā (Skt: upekṣā) — V, VI.f, VIII.b
upekṣā → see upekkhā (V, VI.f, VIII.b)

V

vajra — XIII.a
vajrayāna — XIII.a
vāsanā — XII.c
vāyo-dhātu (Skt: vāyu-dhātu) — VI.d
vāyu-dhātu → see vāyo-dhātu (VI.d)
Veda — XIV.a
vedanā — VI.b, VII.a
vedanānupassanā (Skt: vedanānupaśyanā) — IV
vedanānupaśyanā → see vedanānupassanā (IV)
Vedānta — XIV.a
Vedas — XIV.a
vicāra — III.c
vicikicchā (Skt: vicikitsā) — III.b, VIII.g
vicikitsā → see vicikicchā (III.b, VIII.g)
videhamukti — XIV.a
vijñāna → see viññāṇa (VI.b, VII.a)
vijñāna-dhātu → see viññāṇa-dhātu (VI.d)
vijñānānantyāyatana → see viññāṇañcāyatana (III.c)
vijñānavāda — XII.c
vijñaptimātra — XII.c
vikalpa — XIV.c
vīmaṃsā (Skt: mīmāṃsā) — VIII.f
vimokkha (Skt: vimokṣa) — II
vimokṣa → see vimokkha (II)
vimukti → see vimutti (II)
vimukti-jñāna-darśana → see vimutti-ñāṇadassana (III.a)
vimutti (Skt: vimukti) — II
vimutti-ñāṇadassana (Skt: vimukti-jñāna-darśana) — III.a
viññāṇa (Skt: vijñāna) — VI.b, VII.a
viññāṇa-dhātu (Skt: vijñāna-dhātu) — VI.d
viññāṇañcāyatana (Skt: vijñānānantyāyatana) — III.c
vipāka — VII.b
vipassanā (Skt: vipaśyanā) — III.c
vipassanā-ñāṇa (Skt: vipaśyanā-jñāna) — XI.b
vipaśyanā → see vipassanā (III.c)
vipaśyanā-jñāna → see vipassanā-ñāṇa (XI.b)
virāga — II
vīriya (Skt: vīrya) — VI.f, VIII.b, VIII.f
vīriya-bala (Skt: vīrya-bala) — VIII.d
vīriyindriya (Skt: vīryendriya) — VIII.c
vīrya → see vīriya (VI.f, VIII.b, VIII.f)
vīrya-bala → see vīriya-bala (VIII.d)
vīrya-pāramitā — XII.d
vīryendriya → see vīriyindriya (VIII.c)
viśiṣṭādvaita — XIV.a
visuddhi (Skt: viśuddhi) — XI.b
vitakka (Skt: vitarka) — III.c
vitarka → see vitakka (III.c)
viveka — I, III.c, XIV.a
vivikta-śayanāsana → see vivitta-senāsana (III.a)
vivitta-senāsana (Skt: vivikta-śayanāsana) — III.a
vyakta — XIV.b
vyāpāda → see byāpāda (III.b, VIII.g)

W

wu — XII.e
wúxīn — XII.e

Y

yāna — XII.d
yathābhūta-jñāna-darśana → see yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana (III.a)
yathābhūta-ñāṇadassana (Skt: yathābhūta-jñāna-darśana) — III.a
yedrol — XIII.b
yesod — XV.b
yidam — XIII.b
yogācāra — XII.c

Z

zazen → see zuòchán (XII.e)
zuòchán — XII.e

Jack Koch

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