Glossary of Pali Terms

Glossary Of Pali Terms The talks collected in this book contain an abundance of Pali terms. Luangpor Teean freely used Pali terms, both in discourses and guidance and in naming experiences that occurred in his practice, and for the most part his use of these terms corresponded more or less to their standard meanings – many of the terms have indeed been absorbed into the Thai language – although sometimes he would use technical terms in an individualistic and non-traditional way.

This glossary adds to and expands upon the brief translation of technical terms contained in the preceding text, and in so doing sometimes provides explication of the meanings of Pali terms that ranges more widely than Luangpor Teean's use of those terms. This glossary would therefore best be regarded as providing a background against which Luangpor Teean's use of technical Pali terms might be highlighted or clarified. Nevertheless, since it constitutes a major editorial intrusion, the glossary has been added to the preceding talks with some reluctance, and it should be used with circumspection; strictly speaking, the talks should be self-illuminating.

Single quotation marks enclose the words of Luangpor Teean.

Some of the Pali terms are given with their Thai versions in brackets; these Thai words are transliterated in a way consistent with customary English pronunciation, with only the following vowel sounds requiring definition: "ah" as in "father"; "o" as in "Tom"; "a" as in "cup"; "oo" as in "book" (except for roop, where the vowel sound is that of "moon").

ākāra [ahgahn]: Condition, state: property, quality, attribute; manner, mode, way; appearance, form, sign. In Thai, the word is used to mean; symptom, condition (as of one's health); manner, outward expression, attitude, behavior. In the seeing of vatthu – paramattha – ākāra it means that 'everything in the world and in us can change'.

ānāpānasati: Meditation in which one focuses attention and mindfulness on the feeling, at the tip of the nose, of the breath naturally going in and out, and the mind becomes progressively stilled and then serves as a refined object for investigation and penetration.

anattā: Not self; without a "soul"; the fact that experience cannot be appropriated, cannot be put under mastery; the fact that there in no thing that is the subject of experience; "even oneself is not one's own" – the Awakened One.

anicca: Impermanence; not stable; all conditions are necessarily subject to change, arising, changing while standing and then disappearing.

arahat: The fully and finally awakened one; the individual that has reached the extinction of dukkha, the end of being; the individual that has "done what had to be done" – the Awakened One.

ārammana [ahrom]: Object; a support, stay, basis, ground; the object of awareness, of knowledge, of sense. In Thai the meaning extends to: mental object, preoccupation, emotion, disposition, mood.

ariya: Noble, distinguished; one that has evolved to true humanity, has been altered through obtaining insight into things as they actually are: one that has seen the cessation of dukkha, and therefore knows what needs to be done.

āsava: Taints: a deep level of distortion in the mind; outflows: defilements flowing out from deep in the mind into thoughts, feelings, emotions, speech, and actions; mental intoxication; mental fermentation, eruption, discharge (as from a sore), corruptions, pollutants.

kāmāsava-bhavāsava-avijjāsava: The taints, outflows, fermentations of, the intoxication of sensuality – being – nescience; 'under the control of those things that make the mind calm – under the control of being and suffering – under the control of not-knowing'.

attha: Meaning, sense, essence; aim, goal, purpose; welfare, gain, advantage, fruitful conduct, acts productive of benefit.

avijjā: Nescience; counterfeit knowledge, wrong knowledge, being deceived; not knowing, ignorance, unawareness; an ignorance of the nature of existence so profound as to itself be beyond awareness.

bhava: Being; the state of existence; being the experience or the subject of experience; the experience "I am this, I am that, I am…"

cañkama [jong-grom]: Practicing meditation while walking to and fro.

Dhamma: [tamma, tam]: Actuality; nature; the way things are in and of themselves; the truth of nature, the inherent nature of and actual process of existence, of experience. By extension, "the Dhamma" is used to refer to any doctrine that teaches the way things are in themselves, the truth of nature, and the way to awaken to actuality.

dosa: Hatred; anger; all negative thoughts and emotions, all forms of mental resistance: dislike, aversion, malice, irritability, and so on.

dukkha [took]: Suffering, affliction, sorrow, misery, disease, stress, (inner) conflict, being oppressed; literally, "hard to endure, difficult to bear"; the inherent unsatisfactoriness of all conditions; the burden of personal existence; the hopelessness of the unenlightened person's situation.

dukkha-aniccam-anattā: Suffering – impermanence – not self; 'unbearable – unstable – uncontrollable'.

kāma [gahm]: Sense desire; sensuality; seeking and indulging in sensual pleasures; the hunger for sensual experience, for sense "input"; 'those things that makes the mind calm', the pacifying of the mind by sense experience, by attaching to sense experience, by attaching to the calmness that arises from unawareness of the problem of one's own existence.

kamma [gam]: Action; the Buddha defines action as intention; intentional action; volition. In Thai, gam often implies bad actions, which entail unfortunate consequences.

kammatthāna [gamma-tahn]: Literally, "work-place", "working-ground", "basis for action"; basis for mediation practice; meditation subject; ground for mental culture; that aspect of an experience that is the object of intelligent awareness. In Thai, the act of mediation or contemplation.

khandha [kan]: Aggregate, heap, bulk, mass, totality, group; category, all that is included under "…". In Thai, vessel, container; 'vessel, container, to contain, to fight [against kilesa]'.

sïlakhandha: All that belongs to moral behavior; the gathering together, the containing of all ethical behavior, of all normality; sanity, naturalness.

samādhikkhandha: The gathering together, the containing of all steadiness and stability of mind, of all setting up of the mind, and therefore the eradicating of attachment to things that make the mind calm.

paññākkhandha: The practice of the attainment of the highest knowledge; the gathering together, the containing of all insight knowledge, of thoroughly and completely knowing and seeing all action, mental, verbal, and bodily.

kilesa [gileht]: Defilement, corruption, impurity, impairment; all the things that defile, dull darken and sadden the mind; 'stickiness' in the mind.

lobha: Greed; lust, covetousness, desire; all forms of attraction, of the mind inclining towards things with wanting.

moha: Delusion; confusion, dullness, stupidity, bewilderment, unawareness; being unaware of what is happening here and now, especially unawareness of experience that is neither pleasant nor unpleasant.

nana [yahn]: Knowledge; wisdom, insight; higher knowledge; insight knowledge.

nana-paññā [yahn-panyah]: The transforming, liberating knowledge that comes from the accumulation of direct awareness-knowing of oneself, of experience, of existence; the knowledge arising from full, complete self-awareness, self knowing.

nibbāna [nippahn]: Extinction of dukkha; extinction of attachment, of craving, of dosa – moha – lobha; extinguishing the fire of being; ending the subtle conceit, "I(am)".

paññatti [banyat]: Designation, name, concept, idea; making know, declaring, proclaiming, manifesting, enacting. In Thai, the term means law, legal act, rule, regulation, to prescribe.

sammuti-paññatti [sammoot-banyat]: The convention of supposing; the designation of the mundane or conventional world, that which is conjured into being by the mind.

paramattha-paññatti [paramat-banyat]: The designation of the sphere of the real, the actual, of what can be touched by the mind.

attha-paññatti [atta-banyat]; 'The very deep meaning of the Dhamma, so deep as to be very difficult to know.'

ariya-paññatti [ariya-banyat]: The designating, making known of experience in which dukkha has been extinguished; agreement between those that have become true humans.

pañña: Knowing, understanding, wisdom; insight, intuitive wisdom, knowing by direct seeing outside of thought, seeing things as they are without conceiving; the knowing that results from dwelling in awareness of oneself.

pāpa [bahb]: Evil, bad, wicked; demerit; "sin";'stupidity','dark, stupid, not knowing how it is'.

paramattha [paramat]: The highest good; ultimate, absolute truth; the real, the actual; the true, unchangeable, invariable; 'the touching of things with the mind'; 'everything that really exists in the world and in ourself, seeing it, having it, being it, right now in front of us, touchable with the mind'.

paticcasamuppāda: Dependent co arising: "But let be the past, let be the future, I shall set you for the Teaching: when there is this, this is, with the arising of this, this arises; when there is not this, this is not, with cessation of this, this ceases" – the Awakened One.

phra: Noble; venerable; worthy of reverence and veneration. This Thai word (pronounced phra) is derived from the Pali vara, noble, splendid, best, excellent.

pïti: Rapture, exhilaration, joy, excited happiness.

puñña [boon]: Merit, inner worth; virtue, righteousness; the sense of well being and contentment that results from having acted rightly or well; 'clever, knowing, knowing everything', 'awareness, knowing oneself clearly'.

puñña-kamma [boon-gam]: Beneficial action; meritorious action; acting with awareness, with insight, acting with seeing thought.

roop-nahm [Pali rupa-nāma]: 'Body-mind'; form and name. In Pali, rupa is inertia, that is to say matter, substance, and therefore behavior, while nāma, name, is the designation, or appearance, of that behavior.

sacca: Truth; true, certain.

sammmuti-sacca: Conventional truth; truth formed by general opinion and agreement; that which is generally received as truth by the general consent of humanity.

paramattha-sacca: Truth that one contacts directly and individually; the truth of present awareness; that which is truth independently of its being supported by the authority of humanity.

attha-sacca: The deep truth, understood by few.

ariya-sacca: The noble truth, the truth that, being seen, alters one fundamentally, radically and irrevocably.

samādhi: Concentration; focusing attention, one-pointedness of mind; mental discipline, 'setting up the mind [to see our own mind, to see our own work, to see thought]', 'steadiness of mind', stability and firmness of mind; practicing the developing of awareness by providing awareness with a single object at any one time and maintaining awareness.

samatha: Calmness; tranquility; quietude of heart, calm, of one kind, can be attained by one-pointedness of mind, singleness of mind; that is, dwelling continuously on a (relatively) unchanging meditation object, training to attain absorbed concentration of mind; calm of another kind, peace, comes from developing the seeing of existence as it actually is, which gives rise to detachment, dispassion, disenchantment, and ultimately to release.

sammuti [sammoot]: In Pali, convention, agreement, general consent, general use, general opinion, conventional understanding; selection, choice; authorization, permission. In Thai, the primary meaning is "supposing", and also: usages commonly designated or agreed upon; conjuring into being with the mind; to assume, to make believe.

sañkhāra: (i) Determinations, conditions: things that determine or conditions other things to be as they are; "all conditions are necessarily impermanent, all conditions are necessarily a burden" – the Awakened One. (ii) One of the five aspects of an experience [rupa-vedanā-saññā-sañkhāra-viññāna]; intention; conceiving, constructing, formulating and fashioning thoughts and other aspects of (mental) life.

saññā: Percept; perception, In Thai, the meaning extends to: memory, recognition, discrimination, mark, concept.

sāsana: Advice; instruction, teaching; message; doctrine; order, command; 'the individual, every individual'. In Thai, religion.

Buddhasāsana: The Buddha's Dispensation; the instruction of the Awakened One; 'satipaññā that enters and knows the mind'.

sati: Awareness; recollection; detached watching; mindfulness; reflexion; calling to mind, presence of mind; alertness, collectedness, not forgetting oneself; reflective awareness of oneself, of experience-existence here-and-now.

satipaññā: Awareness-knowing; knowing that arises from the development of awareness; intelligence with regard to the fact and nature of existence.

satipatthāna [satipatahn]: The foundations, bases, grounds, objects of sati; the four aspects of existence-experience – body, feeling, condition of mind, ideas and images – to which awareness is applied in pursuing the development of self-study for the purpose of curing the fundamental affliction of existence.

sikkhā: Training; study; discipline.

adhisïlasikkhā, adhicittasikkhā, adhipaññāsikkhā: The training in the higher ethics, the higher normality; the training in the higher mind, the higher heart; the training in the higher knowing, the higher understanding.

sïla [seen]: (Right) conduct; virtue; moral precepts; verbal and bodily action in accordance with

Dhamma; character, habits, customs; 'normality', nature, naturalness; 'instead of a person taking care of ethical precepts, sïla – normality – takes care of and protects the person'.

tanhā: Craving; thirst; essentially unsatisfiable wanting(hunger); 'heaviness'.

upādāna [oopahtahn]: Holding; attachment, grasping, clinging; to attach continuously by taking all experience personally.

upekkhā: Indifference; neutrality, impartiality, detachment; equanimity; disinterestedness.

vatthu [wattoo]: Thing, object, substance, matter; grounded in, founded on, made a basis of ; occasion, cause, plot or subject, story, narrative; 'everything that exists inside and outside the mind', 'things that exist in the world, everything in the world and in ourself'.

vedanā: Feeling, agreeable, disagreeable and neutral. In Thai, feelings of pleasure, pain and indifference that result from the mind's savoring of its objects.

vijjā: Science; true knowledge of the nature of existence; being undeceived about the way things really are.

viññāna [winyahn]: Consciousness; cognizance; knowingness. In the Buddha's Teaching, viññāna is neither a thing nor an action.

vipassanā: Literally, "clear seeing"; to see clearly the true nature of personal existence; liberating, transforming insight into the universal characteristic of experience; 'to see clearly, to know really, clear insight, a complete uprooting'.