Appendix C · Glossary of Terms

In the main text, every term was glossed in plain words at its first appearance; the Sanskrit romanizations and diacritics are gathered here, so as not to disturb the text.

Each entry gives: English rendering — Chinese — Sanskrit romanization — one plain sentence. As a Mahāyāna volume, the romanizations are Sanskrit. Terms native to the Chinese translations, or names laid down by the later classifiers, carry no romanization and are marked (Ch.) or (classifiers' term).

I. Positions and Names

• Equal-awakening — 等覺 — (Ch.) — equal to, on a level with, awakening, and not yet it; the position just before sublime-awakening, the subject of Part One.
• Sublime-awakening — 妙覺 — (Ch.) — the positional name of the fruit of buddhahood; the Keyūra's forty-second ground, "the unsurpassed ground"; the ground where walking ends.
• The stainless ground — 無垢地 — (Ch.) — the Keyūra's other name for the equal-awakening position; same characters as, but a different position from, the second of the ten grounds, the ground of freedom from stain (vimalā).
• The ultimate stage — 究竟位 — (Ch.) — the fifth and last of the Yogācāra five stages; abiding in unsurpassed perfect bodhi, the obscuration ended and the clarity full; naming the same fruit as sublime-awakening.
• The Tathāgata's full awakening — 如來成正覺 — (Ch.) — the Avataṃsaka's name for the Buddha's ultimate awakening; without two, without mark, without walking, without halting; the same referent again.
• The forty-two worthies and nobles — 四十二賢聖 — (Ch.) — the Keyūra's own positional frame: ten abodes, ten practices, ten dedications, ten grounds, the stainless ground, the ground of sublime-awakening.
• The six lineage-natures / six firmnesses — 六種性／六堅 — (Ch.) — the Keyūra's natures gathering the positions: habituation, disposition, the way, the noble, equal-awakening, sublime-awakening.
• The fifty-two positions — 五十二位 — (classifiers' term) — the later systematizers' integer count (Guifeng; Tiantai counting the Ten Faiths in); borrowed in this book for convenience, with the scripture's own language standing wherever doctrine is decided.

II. The Penultimate Birth and the Withholding

• The penultimate birth — 一生補處 — eka-jāti-pratibaddha — one span of life remaining, the next birth filling the Buddha's place; the most solid content of the equal-awakening position.
• The bodhisattva bound to one birth — 一生所繫菩薩 — (Ch.) — the Avataṃsaka's phrase, synonymous with the penultimate birth.
• Deliberately withholding realization — 故留不證／留惑不證 — (Ch.) — realization within reach, held untaken for the sake of buddhahood; the defining mark of the penultimate birth.
• Pratyekabuddha — 辟支佛 — pratyekabuddha — the solitary awakened one; the fruit into which the penultimate birth would fall were the realization taken now.
• The eighteen distinctive attributes — 十八不共法 — (Ch.) — the eighteen qualities the Buddha alone possesses, shared with neither vehicle; the upper bound of "up through the eighteen distinctive attributes."
• Unsurpassed perfect awakening — 阿耨多羅三藐三菩提 — anuttarā samyak-saṃbodhi — what the ultimate stage abides in.

III. The Concentration and the Severing

• The adamantine concentration — 金剛喻定 — vajropama-samādhi — the concentration likened to adamant; the last samādhi at the trainee's edge, crushing every defilement and crushed by none, severing the last nescience in one instant.
• The adamantine mind / adamantine cognition — 金剛心／金剛智 — (Ch.) — the keen cognition of equal-awakening; "the mark of nescience ending is the adamantine."
• Sarvajñā — 薩婆若 — sarvajñā (transliterated) — omniscience; "the ending-mark markless is sarvajñā," a name of the Buddha's knowing.
• The beginningless-nescience abiding-ground — 無始無明住地 — (Ch.) — the root nescience before which nothing further arises; the last thing severed; known by equal-awakening at its end, not at its beginning.
• Primal nescience / the last grade of nescience — 元品無明／最後一品無明 — (classifiers' term) — Tiantai and later usage for the last nescience severed; absent from the sources this book rests on, whose own word is "the beginningless-nescience abiding-ground."
• The uninterrupted path / the path of liberation — 無間道／解脫道 — (Ch.) — the thought in the act of severing / the thought that, severance done, realizes the cessation; the bodhisattva, of keen faculty, severs and realizes instant by instant, raising no two paths apart.
• The trainee's last thought — 學人末後心 — (Ch.) — the final thought of the trainee's stage; the adamantine concentration's place, the road's last thought as a road.
• Instant — 剎那 — kṣaṇa (transliterated) — the shortest measure of time; "in one instant the three realms severed at once."
• Trainee / beyond training — 有學／無學 — (Ch.) — one with something still to learn and sever / one with learning exhausted; the adamantine concentration arises at the trainee's outermost edge.
• The two hindrances — 二障 — kleśa-āvaraṇa / jñeya-āvaraṇa — the afflictive hindrance and the cognitive hindrance; their last innate subtleties severed at once when the adamantine concentration comes to presence.
• Transformation of basis — 轉依 — (Ch.) — the turning-over of the basis; "the buddha-fruit's perfected transformation-of-basis suddenly realized" when the concentration is present.

IV. The Rest

• The Dharma-Cloud Ground — 法雲地 — dharmameghā — the tenth of the ten grounds; where the previous volume set down its pen, the station just before this volume begins.
• The two vehicles — 二乘 — (Ch.) — the śrāvaka and the pratyekabuddha; their adamantine-concentration context (the last thought before arhatship) differs from the Mahāyāna's (entering the Tathāgata-stage), recorded in this book without adjudication.
• The obscuration ended, the clarity full — 出障圓明 — (Ch.) — the fullness shown when the hindrances are out; the mark of the ultimate stage.
• The omniscience of all modes — 一切種智 — sarvākārajñatā — the Buddha's knowing at its ultimate; "the omniscience of all modes illumining beginning and end."