Literally, “severance,” or “cutting through,” a meditative practice, probably stemming from India, introduced to Tibet within the Shijé school by Machik Lapdrön. Chö aims to sever attachment to self through a variety of contemplations, the most dramatic of which involves, the visualized offering of ones cut-up body to various gods, titans, and animals. Chö practices are found to this day in most Tibetan traditions. +
The levels traversed by a bodhisattva: the joyous, the stainless, the illuminating, the radiant, the hard-to-conquer, the manifest, the farreaching, the unmoving, the good-minded, the Dharma cloud. +
In all Buddhist traditions, a practitioner whose ''enlightenment'' is certain, usually because of his or her direct insight into the nature of things with a mind that is deeply concentrated. In a five-path system, whether ''Hinayana'' or ''Mahayana'', the point at which one becomes an ārya is ones entrance onto the path of seeing. +
In Tibetan Buddhism, an honorific term applied to a master who is widely and deeply learned as well as spiritually developed, displaying the best qualities of a pandit and a yogin. +
Generally speaking, any powerful attainment that results from spiritual practice. Yogic achievements are generally divided into the transmundane—i.e., complete ''buddhahood''一 and the mundane, which includes such powers as invisibility, flying, walking through solids, curing disease, and prolonging life. +
n tantric contexts, the fundamental, luminous awareness that is intrinsic to all beings. Tantric practice aims at the actualization of this gnosis, which is roughly synonymous with ''buddha nature'' and ''clear light''. +