Appendix C · Glossary of Terms
In the main text, a Pāli or Sanskrit term is mostly glossed in one plain phrase at its first appearance, and after that the book simply goes on using the plain word, without parading those letters with their little dots and bars (diacritics). The full romanizations, with the Pāli (P) and Sanskrit (Skt) forms laid side by side, are gathered here.
The reader who wants to know how a term is written in the original, and what it first meant, can consult this table. The reader who would rather not bother can skip it without losing anything of the book—which is exactly why it sits at the back.
("P" marks Pāli; "Skt" marks Sanskrit; where the two traditions write the same word differently, both forms are given.)
I. Three Backbone Words
| Term in this book | Romanization | One plain sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Concentration / samādhi | samādhi (P/Skt) | The mind abiding on one thing without scattering—the true protagonist of this book; in Chinese it was also transliterated sānmèi and sānmódì. |
| Calm / śamatha | samatha (P) / śamatha (Skt) | The side of the work that brings the mind to stillness—the track that bears one yoke together with insight. |
| Jhāna / dhyāna | jhāna (P) / dhyāna (Skt) | The "dhyāna" of the four dhyānas—meditative states that can be identified rung by rung; the Chan of the Chinese Chan school is yet a third sense. |
II. Words from the Pāli Roots and the Treatises
| Term in this book | Romanization | One plain sentence |
|---|---|---|
| Insight / vipaśyanā | vipassanā (P) / vipaśyanā (Skt) | The side of the work that sees things as they really are—the other of the two tracks of calm and insight. |
| One-pointedness of mind | cittass'ekaggatā (P) | The mind focused on a single object—the very substance of concentration; the one word "one" that runs the length of this volume. (Volume four, The Precept, wrote "mental one-pointedness"; this volume is the home ground of the concentration-words and writes it as here.) |
| Applied thought / sustained thought | vitakka / vicāra (P) | The mind's coarse movement toward its object and its fine turning upon it—present in the first jhāna, set aside in the second. |
| Rapture / ease | pīti / sukha (P) | The exultation and the ease among the jhāna-factors—the third jhāna sets rapture aside; the fourth lays down even ease. |
| Equanimity | upekkhā (P) / upekṣā (Skt) | The even, impartial holding of the mind—the one pure thought that remains in the fourth jhāna; Yongjia's transliterated youbicha (equanimity-balance) is this very word. |
| Meditation-subject | kammaṭṭhāna (P) | The object where the work of concentration takes hold—the "door" of the forty doors. |
| Access concentration / full absorption | upacāra / appanā (P) | The doorway concentration of about-to-enter-but-not-yet, and the root concentration of complete settled abiding. |
| The learning-sign / the counterpart-sign | uggaha-nimitta / paṭibhāga-nimitta (P) | The two stages by which the object becomes internalized in the mind. |
| The five hindrances | pañca nīvaraṇāni (P) | The five regular guests that cover concentration over—sensual desire, ill-will, dullness-and-drowsiness, restlessness-and-remorse, and doubt. |
| The attainment of cessation | nirodha-samāpatti (P) | The deepest attainment realized on the śrāvaka path—the one set up for contrast in Vimalakīrti's ten-foot room. |
| Right concentration | sammā-samādhi (P) | The eighth factor of the noble eightfold path—the four jhānas woven into the path, facing toward wisdom. |
III. Words of the Mahāyāna and Prajñā
| Term in this book | Romanization | One plain sentence |
|---|---|---|
| The perfection of dhyāna | dhyāna-pāramitā (Skt) | One of the six perfections—concentration cultivated for the benefit of beings. |
| Prajñā | paññā (P) / prajñā (Skt) | The wisdom that sees reality as it is—that toward which this volume's gate at last opens back. |
| Expedient means | upāya (Skt) | The force that props the arrow and keeps it from falling to the ground—able to enter without sticking, able to be empty without falling. |
| The reality-limit | bhūtakoṭi (Skt) | The brink of quiescence—the point that "does not make the certification at the reality-limit" declines to step into too soon; in the Chinese, not the everyday word for "actually." |
| Dharma-attachment | dharma-rāga (Skt) | The subtle craving toward wholesome states and attainments—excellent among humans and devas, a burden at the forbearance of the unborn dharmas. |
| The conceit of false attainment (in Part Nine, the conceit of over-attainment) | abhimāna (Skt) | The self-reckoning that claims as attained what is unattained, as realized what is unrealized—the old name for one of the two failure modes. |
| The One-Practice Samādhi | ekavyūha-samādhi (Skt) | The concentration whose object is bound to the single mark of the dharma-realm—wisdom made the gate of concentration. (Volume one, Mindfulness, renders the same canonical line as "the dharmadhātu of one mark—binding one's conditioning to the dharmadhātu"; each volume keeps its own wording.) |
| Śūraṅgama | śūraṅgama (Skt) | "Heroic march," "heroic bearing"—the king among samādhis, the concentration that contains them all. |
| The Ocean-Seal samādhi | sāgaramudrā-samādhi (Skt) | The great sea, wind and waves stilled, printing in one moment the myriad images of the sky—concentration's capstone over the dharma-realm. |
| The dharma-realm | dharmadhātu (Skt) | The whole domain of all dharmas—the "whole" that the Ocean-Seal seals. |
| Meditative sitting | pratisaṃlayana (Skt) | Sitting serenely in solitary dhyāna—the "sitting" whose mark Vimalakīrti took away. |
| The dominant condition | adhipati-pratyaya (Skt) | A condition that works from outside, either favoring or opposing—AI's true rank with respect to concentration. |
| The direct condition | hetu-pratyaya (Skt) | The direct cause that brings forth its own fruit at first hand—the direct condition of concentration is nothing but the practitioner's own mind. |
IV. A Few Home-Grown Chinese Words
These words grew up inside Chinese Buddhism itself; there is no Sanskrit or Pāli original to set beside them. They are gathered here all the same, each with its one plain sentence.
| Term in this book | One plain sentence |
|---|---|
| Wall-gazing (biguan) | The signboard of Bodhidharma's gate—the load is borne not by the wall, but by the pacified mind that is "like a wall." |
| Pacifying the mind | Bodhidharma's new name for concentration—where the mind, searched for, cannot be found at all, the pacifying is already complete. |
| Silent illumination | Hongzhi's family style—the silence (stilling) and the illumination (seeing) present and complete at the same time; lacking either, it is not the thing. |
| The huatou | The "head" of speech—the moment before a single thought arises; to watch the huatou is to turn the light back upon the one who can give rise to thoughts. |
| The sensation of doubt | The whole-bodied urgency of "who, after all, is the one who can give rise to thought?"—the red-hot iron ball that can neither be swallowed nor spat out. |
| Relished dhyāna / blind attainment | Tiantai's twin diagnosis of concentration severed from wisdom—wallowing in the pleasure of absorption, and mistaking one's measure of realization in the dark. |
| Construing it as sagehood | Taking a passing state within concentration and fixing it as sagely realization—the switch on which the whole chart of the fifty skandha-māras turns. |