Appendix C · Glossary of Terms

In the body of the book, every technical term was explained in plain words at its first appearance; the Sanskrit and Pāli romanizations, with their dots and macrons, were all kept back here, so as not to disturb the text.

Each entry gives: the term — romanization (P/S) — one plain sentence. "P" marks Pāli (the idiom of the early āgama context), "S" marks Sanskrit (the idiom of the treatises); some terms carry both, and some are Chinese translators' own coinages, given without romanization.

I. Mastery and the Exhaustion of Taints

• taint — āsava (P) / āsrava (S) — an outflow; the general name for the defilements. The three taints: of sensuality, of being, of ignorance.
• exhaustion of taints — (Chinese: 漏盡) — the three taints forever spent; what the arhat accomplishes, the seal of the whole volume.
• mastery / freedom — (Chinese: 自在) — taken in this volume as a negative freedom, "nothing left that can bind," not an accumulation of powers or capacities. What the exhaustion of taints can be read by is exactly this freedom.
• arhat — arahant (P) / arhat (S) — the noble one of the fourth fruit, whose taints are exhausted; one sense of the very word is "worthy of offerings" (see below).
• self-attestation formula — (Chinese: 自證定型句) — "Birth is exhausted, the holy life has been lived, what was to be done is done, there is no further becoming"; the taint-exhausted one's self-known declaration, the closing refrain recurring through the volume.

II. Part Two — Liberation of Mind and of Wisdom

• liberation of mind — cetovimutti (P) — the mind's release from greed and the other defilements, the aspect of being unbound.
• liberation by wisdom (as liberation) — paññāvimutti (P) — the release won by severing the taints through wisdom.
• unshakable liberation of mind — akuppā cetovimutti (P) — the highest aspect of the liberation of mind: no falling-back (nothing from which it could fall), no waiting upon occasion (concentration entered without conditions). The name of liberation come to its floor.
• time-independent liberation — (treatise term) — liberation gained without waiting on occasion or conditions; the obverse of "time-dependent liberation," an alternate name for the unshakable.
• time-dependent liberation — (treatise term) — liberation that must wait for favorable conditions to enter concentration and must be constantly guarded for fear of loss; the aspect of the first five kinds of arhat, taken here only as a foil to the unshakable.
• the six kinds of arhat — (treatise classification) — the regressible, the reflective, the protectible, the abiding, the penetrable, and the unshakable by nature; the first five born of faith-release (dull faculties), time-dependent, the sixth born of the seen-and-reached (keen faculties), time-independent. This volume takes only the "regressible / non-regressible" contrast, not the schools' dispute over regression.
• liberated by wisdom (as person) — paññāvimutta (P) — the arhat who has not attained the cessation-attainment but, by wisdom alone, exhausted the taints by severing the obstruction of the defilements. Not "incompletely liberated," but "complete in severing the taints by wisdom."
• liberated both ways — ubhatobhāgavimutta (P) — the arhat who has both attained cessation (the eight liberations witnessed in his own person) and exhausted the taints; by the twin power of wisdom and concentration, freed of both the obstruction of defilements and the obstruction to liberation.
• obstruction of the defilements — kleśa-āvaraṇa (S) — the taints of greed, hatred, delusion, the obstruction binding one to birth-and-death; both kinds of arhat sever it alike (the exhaustion being one and equal).
• obstruction to liberation (the concentration-obstruction) — vimokṣa-āvaraṇa (S) — the obstruction to the arising of the deepest attainments (the eight liberations, cessation); only the both-ways liberated is also freed of it.
• the eight liberations — aṭṭha vimokkhā (P) — the eightfold series of attainments, from "contemplating form in form," through the four formless attainments, to the eighth, "the cessation of perception and feeling"; the eighth is the attainment of cessation.
• named jewel-treasure — (Chinese figure) — the most precious "jewel" among the wheel-turning king's seven treasures; the sutta uses it to figure the supreme standing of the unshakable liberation of mind among all attainments.

III. Part Three — The Three Knowledges and Six Powers

• the three knowledges — tisso vijjā (P) — the knowledge of past lives, the divine eye (passing-and-arising), and the exhaustion of taints; the fifth, second, and sixth of the six powers as subsumed at the adept stage.
• the six supernormal powers — chaḷabhiññā (P) — psychic motion, the divine eye, the divine ear, others' minds, past lives, and the exhaustion of taints; the first five rest on the four meditations and are gained by worldlings too, only the sixth, the power of exhaustion, belonging to the noble alone.
• the power of the exhaustion of taints — āsavakkhaya-abhiññā (P) — the sixth power, the cognitive face of exhaustion (its self-knowing); gained by the noble alone, the pivot of all the powers.
• the three-bound delusion — (treatise term) — the delusion concerning the prior bound (past), the posterior bound (future), and the middle bound (the present instant); the three knowledges cure them respectively, only the knowledge of exhaustion curing the middle—the very thought that is binding one now.
• worldling — pṛthagjana (S) — the ordinary person; one who has not seen the path, not severed the view-defilements. The first five powers the worldling gains too.
• the three demonstrations — (Chinese: 三示現) — the demonstration of psychic transformation, of others' minds, and of instruction; the Buddha's three modes of guiding, only the instruction (the teaching) making one exhaust the taints and be freed.
• the eye of wisdom — (Chinese: 智慧眼) — the eye that sees non-self and can light one's own taints to severance; Aniruddha deflates "the divine eye" and marks this as supreme.

IV. Part Four — The Attainment of Cessation

• attainment of cessation (cessation of perception and feeling) — nirodha-samāpatti (S) / saññāvedayitanirodha (P) — the eighth of the eight liberations, the summit of the nine successive attainments; the activities of body, speech, and mind all ceased, perception and feeling both ceased, yet vitality and warmth not departed, the faculties unbroken—stilling's limit, and not annihilation.
• the nine successive attainments — navānupubbavihārā (P) — the four meditations, four formless attainments, and the attainment of cessation, the nine entered in sequence; cessation is their summit.
• attainment of non-perception — asaññā-samāpatti (S) — an attainment in which only "perception" ceases while perception-and-knowing are not fully ceased; distinct from cessation's "perception and knowing both ceased," a shallower stilling.
• vitality, warmth, consciousness — āyu, usmā, viññāṇa (P) — the three sustaining life; at death all three are given up, while in cessation vitality and warmth do not depart (the fine point about consciousness in the body text).
• nirvāṇa here and now — diṭṭhadhamma-nibbāna (P) — the nirvāṇa-state realizable within this very life; the noble one enters cessation by this conviction, without fear.
• mastery over arising and ceasing — (Chinese: 起滅自在) — the sovereign capability over the entering, emerging, arousing, and ceasing of the cessation-attainment; here, and not in "deeper exhaustion," lies the criterion of the both-ways liberation.
• the bliss of stilling — (Chinese: 寂滅樂) — the bliss that is the ceasing of all feeling; the "supreme bliss" of cessation is this, not a bliss of feeling. One of the four blisses (of dispassion, seclusion, stilling, awakening).

V. Part Five — No-More-Becoming and the Worthy

• no further becoming — nāparaṃ itthattāya (P, "no more of this state") — after this life ends, no further round of birth-and-death taken up; what it closes is "the suffering of receiving further becoming," not a verdict on the existence or non-existence of a "post-mortem self."
• further becoming — punabbhava (P) — the continued existence of a next life.
• the unanswered — avyākata (S) — a question set aside and not answered; not from not knowing ("the World-Honored One is not without knowing, not without seeing"), but because the question is misplaced.
• the fourteen unanswered — (Chinese: 十四無記) — the four forms on the world eternal-or-not, the four on the world bounded-or-not, the two on the life-principle and the body, and the four on the Tathāgata after death, fourteen in all; each posits a fixed entity and asks after its attributes, and so is set aside.
• the four modes of answering — (treatise classification) — the four ways to a question: the one-sided answer, the analytic answer, the counter-question, and the setting-aside; the fourteen unanswered belong to the setting-aside.
• worthy of offerings — arahant (P) / arhat (S) — the etymological sense of the name "arhat": the one to whom all who still have defilements should make offerings; the social face of the mastery, the honor the world generates in reading the virtue of liberation.
• field of merit — puññakkhetta (P) — the world's field for planting merit; the arhat, by the virtue of liberation, is the "unsurpassed field of merit." Its merit is not sought by the arhat but is generated by the world in dependence on his virtue—seeking nothing, therefore a clean field.
• adept — asekha (P) — one with nothing left to learn; the arhat's standing. Field-of-merit persons divide into trainees (eighteen) and adepts (nine).
• the fivefold dharma-body — (Chinese: 五分法身) — the body of virtue formed of the five: virtue, concentration, wisdom, liberation, and the knowledge-and-vision of liberation; by these the noble community is "worthy of respect and honor, of service and offerings, the world's good field of merit."
• non-contention — araṇā (S) — the arhat, knowing himself supreme among fields of merit and fearing that another's defilements might arise on his account, cultivates this knowledge that guards others; the proof of "seeking nothing" carried through into the field-of-merit standing.
• stūpa — thūpa (P) / stūpa (S) — the reliquary tower for offerings; the four for whom a stūpa should be raised: the wheel-turning sage king, the taint-exhausted arhat, the pratyekabuddha, the Tathāgata.
• wheel-turning sage king — cakkavatti (P) / cakravartin (S) — the ideal monarch who rules by the true Dharma; listed in the suttas alongside the Tathāgata and the taint-exhausted arhat as one "the world should honor with offerings."
• pratyekabuddha — paccekabuddha (P) / pratyekabuddha (S) — one awakened without a teacher who does not found a teaching; one of the four for whom a stūpa should be raised.