Glossary

Abhidhamma (Piṭaka): The third of the three collections forming the Pali Canon, composed of systematic treatises based on lists of categories drawn from the Buddha’s teachings.

Āpalokana-kamma: A procedure to use in conducting communal business of the Saṅgha, in which certain non-controversial issues are settled simply with an informal announcement. The following terms – ñatti-kamma, ñatti-dutiya-kamma, and ñatti-catuttha-kamma – refer to procedures where the issue must be settled by a formal motion stated once, twice, or four times, giving all the monks present the opportunity to object to the motion before it is carried.

Apāya: State of deprivation; the four lower realms of existence: rebirth in hell, as a hungry ghost, as an angry demon, or as a common animal. In Buddhism, none of these states are regarded as eternal conditions.

Arahant: A ‘worthy one’ or ‘pure one,’ i.e., a person whose heart no longer has any defilements and is thus not destined for further rebirth. A title for the Buddha and the highest level of his Noble Disciples.

Ariyadhana: Noble Wealth, i.e., qualities that serve as capital in the quest for liberation: conviction, virtue, shame, compunction, erudition, generosity, and discernment.

Āsava: Fermentation; effluent. Four qualities – sensuality, views, becoming, and ignorance – that bubble up in the heart and flow out, leading to the flood of further becoming.

Attha: Meaning, sense, aim, result.

Avijjā: Ignorance; counterfeit knowledge.

Āyatana: Sense medium. The six inner sense media are the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and intellect. The six outer sense media are their respective objects.

Bhagavant: An epithet for the Buddha, commonly translated as ‘Blessed One’ or ‘Exalted One.’ Some commentators, though, have traced the word etymologically to the Pali root meaning ‘to divide’ and, by extension, ‘to analyze,’ and so translate it as ‘Analyst.’

Brahmā: An inhabitant of the higher heavens of form and formlessness, a position earned – but not forever – through the cultivation of virtue and meditative absorption, along with the attitudes of limitless goodwill, compassion, appreciation, and equanimity.

Dhamma: Event; phenomenon; the way things are in and of themselves; quality – both in its neutral and in its positive senses: (1) the basic qualities into which natural phenomena – mental and physical – can be analyzed; the terms in which things are known by the sense of ideation. Also, any teaching that analyzes phenomena into their basic terms. This is one sense in which the Buddha’s doctrine is his ‘Dhamma.’ (2) The quality of one’s heart and mind, as manifest by the rectitude, fairness, compassion, composure, discernment, etc., revealed in one’s actions. The manifestations can be enumerated and prescribed as principles (again, ‘dhamma’ – another sense in which the Buddha’s doctrine is his Dhamma) that can then be put into practice and developed as means of removing everything defiling and obscuring from the heart so that the quality of deathlessness can become fully apparent within: This is the Buddha’s Dhamma in its ultimate sense.

Dhātu: Element, property, potential. Basic forces that, when aroused out of their latent state, cause activity on the physical or psychological level. In traditional Thai physics, which is based on the physics of the Pali Canon, the four dhātus of earth, water, fire, and wind are said to permeate all matter in latent or potential form. To become manifest, they have to be aroused. Thus, for example, the act of starting a fire is explained as the arousal of the fire-dhātu (tejas), which already exists in the air and in the object to be ignited. The lit fire then clings to the fuel, and the object will be on fire. The fire will continue burning as long as tejas has sustenance to cling to. When it runs out of sustenance or is forced to let go, it will grow quiet – returning to its normal, latent state – and the individual fire will go out.

On the level of the human body, diseases are explained as resulting from the aggravation or imbalance of any of these four physical properties. Diseases are classified by how they feel: Fevers are attributed to the fire property, dizziness and faintness to the wind property, constipation to the earth property, etc. Well-being is defined as a state in which none of these properties is dominant. All are quiet, unaroused, balanced and still.

There are a number of lists of dhātus given in the Pali Canon. The six dhātus are the four physical properties plus space and consciousness. The 18 dhātus are the six senses, their respective objects, and the acts of consciousness associated with each.

Gotarabhū-ñāṇa: Change of lineage knowledge – the glimpse of nibbāna that changes one from an ordinary, run-of-the-mill person to a Noble One.

Indrīya: Faculty; pre-eminent or dominant quality. The five faculties – conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment – are qualities that, when they become dominant in the mind, can lead to Awakening. The 22 qualities that can dominate consciousness are: the senses of vision, hearing, smell, taste, touch, ideation; femininity, masculinity, life; pleasure, pain, joy, sorrow, equanimity; conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment; the realization that ‘I shall come to know the unknown,’ final knowledge, the state of final-knower.

Jhāna: Absorption in a single object or preoccupation. Rūpa-jhāna is absorption in a physical sensation; arūpa-jhāna, absorption in a mental notion or state. When Ajaan Lee uses the term jhāna by itself, he is usually referring to rūpa-jhāna.

Kamma: Acts of intention that result in states of being and birth. ‘Kamma debts’ are the moral debts one has to others either through having been a burden to them (the primary example being one’s debt to one’s parents) or from having wronged them.

Kammapatha: Ten guidelines for moral conduct – not killing, not stealing, not engaging in sexual misconduct, not lying, not speaking divisively, not using coarse or vulgar language, not speaking idly, not coveting, not harboring ill will, holding right views.

Kasiṇa: An object stared at with the purpose of fixing an image of it in one’s consciousness, the image then being manipulated to fill the totality of one’s awareness.

Kesā: Hair of the head; the first in the list of 32 parts of the body used as a meditation theme for counteracting lust.

Khandha: Aggregate – the component parts of sensory perception; physical and mental phenomena as they are directly experienced: rūpa – sensations, sense data; vedanā – feelings of pleasure, pain, and neither-pleasure-nor-pain that result from the mind’s savoring of its objects; saññā – labels, perceptions, concepts, allusions; saṅkhāra thought-fabrications (see below); viññāṇa – sensory consciousness or cognizance. In Ajaan Lee’s writings, this last khandha refers to the act of attention that ‘spotlights’ objects so as to know them distinctly and pass judgment on them.

Magga: The path to the cessation of suffering and stress. The four transcendent paths – or rather, one path with four levels of refinement – are the path to stream entry (entering the stream to nibbāna, which ensures that one will be reborn at most only seven more times), the path to once-returning, the path to non-returning, and the path to arahantship. Phala – fruition – refers to the mental state immediately following the attainment of any of these paths.

Mala: Stains on the character, traditionally listed as nine: anger, hypocrisy, envy, stinginess, deceit, treachery, lying, evil desires and wrong views.

Methuna-saṅyoga: Fetter of lust. Seven activities related to sex that, if a monk finds joy in them, render his celibacy is ‘broken, cracked, spotted, and blemished’ even if he doesn’t engage in sexual intercourse: 1) He consents to being anointed, rubbed down, bathed, and massaged by a woman. 2) He jokes, plays, and amuses himself with a woman. 3) He stares into a woman’s eyes. 4) He listens to the voices of women outside a wall as they laugh, speak, sing, or cry. 5) He recollects how he used to laugh, converse, and play with a woman. 6) He sees a householder or householder’s son enjoying himself endowed with the five sensual pleasures. 7) He practices the celibate life intent on being born in one or another of the deva realms, (thinking) ‘By this virtue or practice or abstinence or celibate life I will be a deva of one sort or another.’

Nibbāna: The ‘unbinding’ of the mind from sensations and mental acts, preoccupations and suppositions. As this term is also used to refer to the extinguishing of a fire – which, in the time of the Buddha, was seen as clinging to its fuel while burning, and letting go when it went out – it carries the connotations of the stilling, cooling, and peace that come from letting go. (See dhātu.)

Nirāmisa-sukha: Literally, ‘un-raw’ pleasure, or pleasure ‘not of the flesh.’ The bliss and ease of nibbāna, a pleasure independent of sensations or mental acts.

Nirodha: Disbanding, stopping, cessation. In the absolute sense, this refers to the utter disbanding of stress and its causes. In an applied sense, it can refer to the temporary and partial suppression of defilement and stress attained in tranquility meditation.

Nīvaraṇa: Hindrance; any of five mental qualities that hinder the mind from attaining concentration and discernment: sensual desire, ill will, torpor & lethargy, restlessness & anxiety, and uncertainty.

Pāli: The name of the most ancient recension of the early Buddhist texts now extant and – by extension – of the language in which it was composed.

Pāṭimokkha: The basic monastic code, composed of 227 rules for monks and 311 rules for nuns.

Puñña: Inner worth; merit; the inner sense of well-being that comes from having acted rightly or well, and that enables one to continue acting well.

Puññakkhetta: Field of merit – an epithet for the Saṅgha.

Sambhavesin: Usually, this term is used to describe a being seeking a place to be born; generally regarded as an abject state. Here, Ajaan Lee uses the term to describe the mind when it is searching for an object to fasten onto.

Saṅgha: The community of the Buddha’s disciples. On the ideal level, this refers to all those, whether lay or ordained, who have reached at least the path to stream entry (see magga). On the conventional level, it refers to the Buddhist monkhood. In Thai, it also refers to the central administration of the Thai monkhood and to any individual monk. Traditionally, Saṅgha does NOT refer to all Buddhists. The traditional term for the entire ‘assembly’ of the Buddha’s followers – ordained or not, awakened or not – is buddha-parisā. The reason for this distinction is that Saṅgha is one of a Buddhist’s three refuges, whereas not all members of the buddha-parisā can be taken as refuge.

Saṅkhāra: Fabrication – the forces and factors that fabricate things, the process of fabrication, and the fabricated things that result. As the fourth khandha, this refers to the act of fabricating thoughts, urges, etc. within the mind. As a blanket term for all five khandhas, it refers to all things fabricated by physical or psychological forces.

Stūpa: Originally, a tumulus or burial mound enshrining relics of the Buddha or objects associated with his life. Over the centuries, however, this has developed into the tall, spired monuments familiar in temples in Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Burma; and into the pagodas of China, Korea, and Japan.

Suttanta (Piṭaka): The second of the three collections forming the Pali Canon, composed of discourses and other literary pieces related to the Dhamma.

Tejas: See dhātu.

Vinaya (Piṭaka): The first of the three collections forming the Pali Canon, dealing with the disciplinary rules of the monastic order. The Buddha’s own name for the religion he founded was, ‘this Dhamma-Vinaya’ – this Doctrine and Discipline.

Vipassanūpakkilesa: Corruption of insight; intense experiences that can happen in the course of meditation and can lead one to believe that one has completed the path. The standard list includes ten: light, psychic knowledge, rapture, serenity, pleasure, extreme conviction, excessive effort, obsession, indifference, contentment.

If these translations are in any way inaccurate or misleading, I ask forgiveness of the author and reader for having unwittingly stood in their way. As for whatever may be accurate – conducive to the aims intended by the author – I hope the reader will make the best use of it, translating it a few steps further, into the heart, so as to attain those aims.

The translator