Property:Gloss-def
From Buddha-Nature
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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 +
The "lesser way," a term that appeared in conjunction with the Mahayana ("great way"). Though yāna is more properly "a way," it was translated into Tibetan as theg pa meaning "vehicle." Both terms originate in the Lotus Sutra, where carriages or vehicles are used as an analogy for the ways, and the Hīnayāna is said to be "lesser" in terms of its goal of individual liberation as opposed to the Mahayana aspiration to emancipate all beings from suffering. The Hīnayāna encompasses both the śrāvaka and pratyekabuddha vehicles +
From the word for "treasure" gter, termas are discovered teachings, either practices concealed in the mind during a previous life or texts, artifacts, and substances discovered in physical form +
The word vajra refers to the "thunderbolt," the indestructible and irresistible weapon that first appears in Indian literature in the hand of the Vedic deity Indra. In Tibetan Buddhism, vajra is most often used as a modifier to indicate something related to the tantric path, as it symbolizes the swiftness and power of that path and the indestructibility of its animating reality, the dharmakāya +
Originally a part of Śaivite lore. These are the sacred places where various parts of Sati's body fell as Śiva carried it through the sky. With the defeat and adoption of Śivas body by Heruka, thus creating Cakrasamvara, he inherited all these sacred places, which play an important role in the Cakrasamvara literature and are also correlated with sites within the human body's network of channels and winds. +
The "Vajra Vehicle" is the path of tantra, and is synonomous with the Mantrayāna. Vārānasī. The oldest city of northeast India on the Gangetic plain, once the capital of its own small kingdom and known by various names. It was a religious center even during the time of the Buddha +
The Tibetan meaning is "commitment" but refers more accurately to the deity to which one has a commitment. The Sanskrit equivalent, istadeva or istadevatā, means "desired deity," emphasizing one's attraction to or choice of a deity +
Although prajñā is usually translated as wisdom, and jnāna is synonymous with it, prajñā-jñāna in the context of an empowerment is a reference to the consort, who is referred to as prajñā. This is the third empowerment, in which one gains wisdom through union with the consort +
The enlightened sambhogakāya identity in which the Buddha is said to have taught the tantras. In the Kagyü tradition he is also the personification of the dharmakāya, and the source from which the sambhogakāya deities manifest +
The Buddhas cousin, who became his attendant for the last twenty years of his life and eventually succeeded to the position of the head of the Buddhist tradition as its second patriarch, after the death of Mahākāśyapa +
An exalted sovereign with universal dominion. The name means "roller of a wheel." In the earliest sutras, cakravartins were mythical kings. On becoming king, they set a magical wheel rolling and wherever it went became their lands; for some it would roll throughout the world +
