Property:Gloss-def
From Buddha-Nature
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T
Cognate with the English yoke, it has the meaning of "union." The Tibetan translated it as "united" ('byor) with the natural state (rnal). It is also glossed as the active form sbyor ba, which conveys such meanings as "application," "practice," and "endeavor." +
Literally "cobra." The worship of the cobra as divine was an important part of Indian culture and remains particularly strong in southern India. They are considered to have a divine form and to live in an underground world, and as they appear everywhere during monsoons (in fact because their nests flood and they are driven up into such places as human habitations), they were considered to control the rains. Also skin illnesses, which can resemble snakeskin, were considered to be caused by the cobra, and therefore in Tibet nāgas are considered responsible for illnesses such as leprosy. In China nāgas were identified with dragons, while Tibet identified them as river deities (klu) whose homes are under the ground where springs are located. Nevertheless the cobra element remains as part of their identities, and they are still called "hood endowed," referring to the cobras flattened neck or hood +
This is synonymous with Indrabhūti, but it does not refer to only one person. In the Guhyasamāja tradition he is the King of Oddiyāna, who first received these teachings. There was also an Indrabhūti who studied under Tilopa. Another Indrabhūti was the King of Zahor, which is variously identified as the eastern region of present-day Bihar and with the Kangra valley in Northwest India. +
One proceeds through the four stages of the path of engagement as one comes closer to the path of insight, which is also the first stage of the bodhisattvas. The first path of engagement stage is heat (drod). It is said to be like the heat created when sticks are rubbed together, which presages the appearance of the fire. In the same way, there is here, through mental stability and realization, the omen of the coming "fire" of the wisdom on the path of seeing. The second stage is summit (rtse mo), when one's good karma or virtue becomes perfected. The third stage is patience (bzod pa), when one becomes unafraid of one's realization of emptiness. The final and culminative stage is supreme qualities (chos mchog), when one has attained the highest qualities possible prior to becoming an ārya. +
This could literally be translated as "concentration," meaning when the mind is completely focused. It therefore refers to a state of meditation free from distraction +
In earlier literature this was a terrifying being of the night that fed on human flesh and haunted the charnel grounds, but nowadays dākas are protectors of the Vajrayāna teachings, though they are often eclipsed in this role by their female counterparts, the dākinls +
In deity meditation, the samādhi being is the insignia and/or syllable in the deity's heart, symbolizing its essence, as opposed to the form, and is so named because that is what the mind concentrates upon during the practice +
Torma is Tibetan for a ritual offering cake usually made of barley flour and butter and often elaborately designed and subject to detailed explanations. The Indian precedent, the bali, was simply a baked circle of bread, and so the uses of the word torma in English translations of the canon are somewhat anachronistic. However, they can be taken in a general sense to mean a ritual food offering. Trāyastriṃśa. "Thirty-three" paradise. Situated upon the summit of Meru, it is the realm of Indra. The name "thirty-three" alludes to the number of deities living in that paradise +
Refered to by many Western practitioners as ashay, a single stroke that resembles the vertical stroke used in Tibetan calligraphy to mark the end of a verse or as the equivalent of a comma or period. The representation of the letter A by a single vertical line is a practice used in the Vartula script. Here it is used to represent the caṇḍālī flame at the navel, which is a thin vertical that narrows to a point at its apex +
This refers to the "first turning of the Dharma wheel" and includes all the sutras and Vinaya of the earliest Buddhist schools. The teaching of the four truths, which is the teaching the Buddha gave to his first five pupils in Sarnath, is considered representative of these teachings +
Literally "attainments," the term samāpatti has become synonymous with samādhi +
A seventh-century Indian author whose Madhya-maka works became seminal to the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. There is also' a later Candrakīrti from the end of the first millennium who was an author of Vajrayāna texts. The Tibetan tradition conflates the two, as it regularly does for teachers with the same name, thus enhancing the prestige of texts by the later author +
The Tibetan literally means "arise and increase," while the Sanskrit means "base" or "source." The term is used variously but most commonly for the six organs of perception—which includes the mental faculty—and their perceived objects. It may also refer to the various states of perception in the formless realms +
The Buddhas personal name. It means literally "goal accomplished." +
The dualistic accumulation of merit and the nondual "accumulation" of wisdom +
Vidyā is the general name for knowledge, as in branches of knowledge and the minds cognition in general, but gains deeper meaning by context, especially the nonconceptual knowing nature of the mind +
The obscuration formed by the defilements and the obscuration of knowledge, the last being named according to what is obscured rather than by the cause of obscuration: the subtlest level of ignorance +
Generally bindu means a spot or a dot, as in a leopard or snakes spots, and it is also commonly used for the decorative dot between a woman's eyebrows, which has been anglicized as bindi. It can also mean a circle, a zero in mathematics, the anusvāra in calligraphy, the colored spots representing deities in a mandala, or a sphere or circle of light, a globule, or a drop. In the context of tantric physiognomy, it refers to an essence, whether the essence of a purity or an impurity, and can occur in various forms, liquid and solid. For example, the white upside-down ham syllable in the crown of the head is solid white and in the shape of that letter. As a result of sexual excitement, or certain practices, it begins to melt, and drops fall from it down the channel that leads to the penis. These drops are also hindus. The subsequent ejaculate is also a bindu, and it is in certain contexts a synonym for semen. In those cases it can be translated as "vital essence." Though it is most often rendered as "drop" in this volume, a hindu is only technically a liquid "drop" in the context of the semen falling through the central channel; most visualizations involving a bindu in the central channel are of a tiny ball of light +
The Sanskrit vrata simply means a "vow," but it is commonly used in Hinduism and Jainism to refer to the practice of fasting. The Tibetan means "entering into subjugation" and could be translated as "discipline," but the term is associated most often with extraordinary behavior that is the very opposite of what we think of as discipline. In that context, it is defined as subjugating ordinary conduct and entering into extraordinary conduct. This may entail living in a charnel ground, for instance, or engaging in various kinds of unpredictable behavior +
The bodhisattva of compassion +
