In the modem, pluralistic context, "Individual Vehicle," while descriptively accurate, need
not be taken as derogatory, since for all beings to be liberated from suffering, they must achieve that happy condition one individual being at a time.
not be taken as derogatory, since for all beings to be liberated from suffering, they must achieve that happy condition one individual being at a time.
Thurman-Robert-a-F-Tr-Tsong-Khapa-Losang-Drakpa-Brilliant-Illumination-of-the-Lamp-of-the-Five-Stages
Having realized this possibility, he becomes inspired with the intense ambition to attain, and that is called the "conception of the spirit of enlightenment.
" "Spirit" is preferred to "mind" because the mind of enlightenment should rather be the mind of the Buddha; and it is preferred to "thought" because a "thought of enlightenment" can easily be produced without the initiation of any sort of new resolve or awareness.
conceptualization (vikalpa). This brings up another important group of words that has never been treated systematically in translation: vikalpa, parikalpa, samllropa, adhyll- ropa, kalpana, samjiiil, and prapanca. All of these refer to mental functions that tend to superimpose upon reality, either relative or ultimate, a conceptualized reality fabri- cated by the subjective mind. Some translators have tended to lump these together under the rubric "discursive thought," which leads to the misleading notion that all thought is bad, something to be eliminated, and that sheer ''thoughtlessness" is "enlightenment," or whatever higher state is desired. According to Buddhist scholars.
thought in itself is simply a function, and only thought that is attached to its own content over and above the relative object, i. e. , "egoistic" thought, is bad and to be eliminated. Therefore I have chosen a set of words for the seven Skt. terms. respec- tively: "conceptualization," "imagination," "presumption," "exaggeration. " "construc- tion," "conception" or "notion," and "fabrication. " This does not mean that these words are not somewhat interchangeable or that another English word might not be better in certain contexts; it only represents an attempt to achieve consistency with the
original usages.
646 ? Glossary ofUnique Translation Terms
conscious awareness (apramilda). This denotes a type of awareness of the most seemingly insignificant aspects of practical life, an awareness derived as a consequence of the highest realization of the ultimate nature of reality. As it is stated in the Anavatapta-
pariprcchasiilra: "Who realizes voidness, that person becomes consciously aware. " "Ultimate realization," far from obliterating the relative world, brings it into highly specific, albeit dreamlike, focus.
consort, seal (mudra); evolution (karmamudra), wisdom or intuition Uiillnamudrll), and science (vidya). These expressions refer to the partner, either male or female, but more usually female, in a buddha-couple, such as Vairochana and Lochana. Sometimes the father and mother in a buddha-father-mother couple are considered different divine
beings, sometimes only the double manifestation of a single being. The Buddhist belief is that all beings, whatever the superficial sexual identity, are potentially both male and female-each has male and female aspects and energies in his or her being. The empathetic ability to transcend sexual identity-habits is cultivated by Tantric archetype meditation wherein a male will meditate himself as a female archetype buddha, a female will meditate herself as a male archetype buddha, or either will meditate him or
her self as a male and female buddha couple in union.
continuum (tantra - rgyud, rgyun). This is the root word for tantra, standing for the confluence of several continua: the basis continuum of the basis, that of the nature, and that of the fruition. Sometimes, exoterically, it is known as "life-continuum" (sam tina): the energy-continuity of a living being that proceeds from moment to moment in a life and from life to life in an individual's evolutionary progression. To quote Tsong Khapa, quoting in his great commentary the Esoteric Community Further Tantra and Naropa: "Tantra is renowned as 'continuum'; that continuum is of three types: differentiated in terms of the basis (adhara), likewise, nature (prakrti), and non-deprivation (asariz - hllrya). As for their aspects, the nature one is the cause; similarly, the non-deprivation
is the fruition; the basis is called the art. Those three comprise the meaning of 'tantra. ' (GST, xviii. 34--35) The etymological definition of 'tantra' is 'continuum. ' According to Naropa's explanation of the threefold division of Tantra in the verse, 'nature' means the nature of the jewel-like adept; this is the causal Tantra. 'Basis' refers to the art Tantra, the four branches of service and performance of the two stages. The Tantra of 'fruition'-of which no one can deprive you-is the holy communion body of non-
local nirvana, Vajradhara. " (J. R. C. Campbell, "Vajra Hermeneutics" [Ph. D. diss. , Columbia University, 2009], Appendix 1, p. 8. )
creation stage (utpannakrama - bskyed rim). This is the preliminary part of the Unex- celled Yoga Tantra, where the yogi/nT creates a divine environment and a divine self and embodiment, using serenity meditation to focus on the purified forms and critical insight meditation to recognize the voidness of all those visualized forms, thus planting the seed patterns and creating the templates for the subtle and extremely bodymind needed to traverse the ultimate yogas of the perfection stage and actually reach real, magical buddhahood. It therefore does "develop" (rnam par smin pa) the practitioner, but its main function is to begin the creation of the buddha-world along with the buddha embodiment needed to accelerate the time to buddhahood. So, though some use "development stage," I prefer "creation stage. " Nagabodhi in his Stage ofArrangement
creation (sam sklra). See "aggregate. "
Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 647 explicitly links the creation of the mandala universe to a mythic. theistic cosmogony
pattern.
death. This is the point of freedom when the subtle mind, indestructible clear light drop, or soul of a particular life loses connection with the embodiment of that life. It is perhaps beyond consciousness and unconsciousness, though ordinary people transit it unconsciously, never noticing the all-too-rapid (for them) transition from the uncon- scious segment of imminence into clear light and back into imminence. Thus death is understood as 11 pure negation, a perfect zero, 11 timeless moment, a widthless boundary, and is aligned with absolute reality, with the body of truth, with the ultimate clear light. A buddha, an enlightened being, is thus one whose death is an infinite body of ultimate reality, a concrete permanent resting place, which nevertheless not only never obstructs their relative experience of the interconnected realm of beings. it makes it indivisible from freedom and openness and therefore perfectly blissful. Needless to say, such a being is no longer afraid of death.
definitive meaning (nrtartha). This refers to those teachings of the Buddha that are in terms of ultimate reality; it is opposed to those teachings given in terms of relative reality, termed "interpretable meaning," because they require further interpretation before being relied on to indicate the ultimate. Hence definitive meaning relates to voidness, etc. , and no statement concerning the relative world, even by the Buddha, can be taken as definitive.
designation (prajflapti). This occurs in the axiomatic Madhyamika description of all things as existent by virtue of "mere designation" (prajflaptimlitra).
Dharma. One of the Three Jewels, the Jewel of the Buddha's teaching. It can also mean the ultimate reality itself that is taught in the teachings, the path that leads to its realization, the qualities that derive from it, and so forth. In Indian usage prior to the Buddha's time, it tended to mean "religion," "law," "duty," "custom," and so forth, patterns that hold human behavior and thought under control. These "pattern- maintaining" meanings still coexist in Sanskrit and other Buddhist languages with the Buddha's more liberating or "pattern-transcending" meanings, causing considerable confusion for translators in some contexts.
dhoti. See avadhoti.
discourse (satra - mdo ). Though sutra in general means a string of aphorisms meant to be memorized in Indian oral education system, in Buddhism in particular it has come to mean a recorded discourse of the Buddha.
Divine Lord (Bhagavan). "Divine Lord" translates well the title bhagavan because it is the term of greatest respect current in our "sacred" language, as established for the Deity in the Elizabethan version of the B ible. Indeed, the Skt. Bhagavlin was given as a title to the Buddha, although it also served the non-Buddhist Indians as an honorific title of their particular deities. As the Buddha is clearly described in the Siltras as the "Supreme Teacher of Gods and Men," there seems little danger that he may be
confused with any particular deity through the use of this term (as indeed in Buddhist Sotras various deities, creators, protectors, etc. , are shown in their respective roles). The often used "Blessed One" comes from the early translations, and conveys the subliminal suggestion to the nineteenth century reader that the Buddha too is "blessed,"
648 ? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms
i. e. found acceptable in the eyes of the Western "God" - still a looming presence over
the work of introducing Buddhism-even for the atheistic philologist.
drops (hindu - thig le). This word refers to physical, chemical essences (something like the modem notion of neuro-transmitters) that focus awareness within the subtle nervous system. In the subtle body, the channels form the structure, the winds serve as the energies that move things and cause transformations of experience, and the drops serve as the nodes of subjectivity that focus awareness within this realm that opens up when consciousness has been withdrawn from its functions in receiving and coordinating sense-data from the gross senses. These drops are also associated with the genetic material that is the essence of the male and female sexual fluids, and the yogic mastery
of their subtle potentials represents the sublimation of the creative energies that ordinarily build up the suffering life cycle into the reconstruction of the divine realm of the enlightened mandala. Thus, red drops refer to the female genetic essence, carried within the blood, and the white drops refer to the male genetic essence, carried within the semen. This is a difficult and abstruse subject, but this note can orient you to what is meant by this expression.
duality, dualism (dvaya, dvayagraha). "Duality" is largely self-explanatory. To be pointed out here is the connection between the mental habit of dualism and verbalization, insofar as dualism is inherent in the structure of language, in which things are pre- sented in terms of opposites.
emanation body (nirmtlt;? akllya). This refers to the miraculous power of buddhas and bodhisattvas of a certain stage to emanate apparently living beings in order to develop and teach other beings. This power reaches its culmination in the nirmtlt;? aktlya, the "emanation body," which is one of the three bodies of buddhahood and includes all physical forms of all buddhas, including Shiikyamuni, whose sole function as incar- nations is the development and liberation of living beings. See "three bodies of the Buddha (trikllya). "
enlightenment (bodhi). This word requires too much explanation for this glossary because, indeed, the whole of Buddhist literature tries to explain only this. The translation equivalent "awakening" is frequently used, which is perfectly alright as well, though should not be adopted due to some idea that the Buddha's enlightenment is somehow diametrically opposed to the Western "Enlightenment" of Diderot and Voltaire, et al. The dogmatic materialism and even nihilism that accrued to the Western Enlighten- ment is different from Buddha's transcendent realization of the exact and complete nature of reality. However, the Western movement's achievement in breaking away from irrational and unrealistic theories of reality, using reason and experience to distinguish the real from the unreal. its discoveries of many of the workings of macro and micro nature and so on, its elevation of empirical science, its appreciation of the human potential, and so on, these are all part and parcel of the Buddha's enlighten- ment, which preceded the Western one by more than 2000 years. Also, Sanskrit Buddha
is glossed as vibuddha and prabuddha, i. e. , not only "awakening from the sleep of ignorance," but also "expanding the knowledge of reality into omniscience"; so "awakening" may not contain both aspects quite fully.
emptiness (sanyatll). See "voidness. "
energy. See "wind-energy. "
Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 649
equalizing wisdom. One of the five wisdoms. this one associated with the buddha Ratnasambhava, the color yellow, the transmutation of pride and miserliness, and the apotheosis of the sensation aggregate.
Esoteric Community. The Guhyasamaja Tantric tradition, in which the subtleties and intricacies of Unexcelled Yoga are particularly well explained and systematically arranged for study and practice, and which is the "Lamp" which illuminates the world, was illuminated more brightly by ChandrakTrti in his Illumination of the Lamp, and was even more brilliantly illuminated by Tsong Khapa in the present work.
evolution, evolutionary. Sanskrit karma and karmika, translated in this way because "action" may be too general and vague. Karma specifically means mental/verbal/ physical action which leads to life-affecting. eventually life-constituting consequences. It is the key concept in the Buddhist theory of biology, the study of how life is consti- tuted. The modem materialistic worldview considers the structures of our present lifetimes to have been caused by the genetic re-embodiment of the subtly encoded experiences of millions of previous representatives of our species through the pro- cesses of biological evolution. The Buddhist worldview considers the structures of our present lifetimes to be caused by the spiritually genetic re-embodiment of our own experiences from millions of previous lifetimes, subtly encoded in a spiritual gene we bring with us, combined with the physical genes we receive from our parents, in a complex process of spiritually directed and physically conditioned biological evolution.
extremely subtle bodymind. This nondual combination of the indestructible drop com- posed of the subtlest wind-energies and the clear light enlightened awareness is the Buddhist soul, that entity or continuum that can be said to progress from life to life, and to mutate out of the suffering life cycle into enlightenment. Note that at this super micro level, the dualities of matter and mind are transcended, and even the duality of micro and macro. See "subtle bodymind. "
Father Tantra (pitlltantra - pha rgyud). This is a class of Unexcelled Yoga Tantras - all of which (in Tsong Khapa's interpretation) are nondual in terms of magic body and clear light-where the emphasis is on the creation of the magic body at the stage of mind isolation through the mind objective and the self-consecration, by the grace of the mentor. See also "Mother Tantra. "
furor, furor-frre (car. uja - gtum mo). This is the physical heat generated by mental concen- tration that focuses deep down upon the subatomic energies within the molecules and atoms of the yogi/nT and taps there the inexhaustible nuclear energies that can be mechanically released in fission or fusion reactions. The yogi/ni carefully channels that fire into the central nervous system to melt the "drops" that embed states of conscious- ness causing them to flow into the neural centers of the channel wheels and generate the subtle bliss consciousness that liberates from entrapment in the conceptually con-
structed world of samsara, consisting of the hopeless duality of self versus the entire universe of other beings, time, and space. The long observed, studied, and verified ability of such yogT/nTs to melt icy sheets in winter, to raise at will their whole body temperature or the temperature of specific parts of their bodies is only a relatively unimportant side-effect of this super subtle energy-tapping through concentration. "Furor" is a good translation since the heat of anger is similar to this subatomic heat energy. Anger and bile are in Buddhist medical fact connected to intelligence and the
? 650 ? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms
dissective power of critical analysis. which is what this concentration requires to break through the coarse levels of reality structure and penetrate the clear light energy of voidness ultimate reality.
gene (gotra - rigs). See spiritual gene.
gnosis (intuition, intuitive wisdom) Unana, llryajfillna). This is nondual, subject-object- dichotomy-transcending knowledge of the nonconceptual and transcendental which is realized by those attaining higher stages.
grace (adhi$thiina). The "supernatural power" with which the Buddhas sustain the bodhi- sattvas in their great efforts on behalf of living beings, which is bestowed as consecra- tion when entering the Tantric mandala realm.
great, or universal, bliss (mahasukha - bde ba chen po). This is the orgasmic ecstasy stabi- lized and not dissipated as experienced in focus on and immersion in universal void- ness, felt not only in ordinary, genitally organized sexual melting in normal, quickly dissipated sexual ecstasy, but felt steadily in every fiber and cell of the body and every neural energy of the mind and leading to the full experience of the void freedom of communion with clear light reality of all buddhas' body of truth: known as bliss-void- indivisible. This bliss is the secret engine of universal compassion also, as it remains with the enlightened being in no matter what circumstance, and spontaneously over- flows to lift suffering beings out of their trap of alienation into the bliss of which they also are made. The art (upaya) of doing that is necessary because the alienated being will only get more bound tight by simply a flood of energy, even if it is really bliss: so the blissed out compassionate being must create an entertainment that will attract the alienated beings according to their inclinations and open their minds to understand their deeper realities.
great, or universal, compassion (mahiikarur:zll). This refers to one of the two central quali- ties of a Buddha or high bodhisattva (see "enlightenment" entry): his feeling born of the wish for all living beings to be free of suffering and to attain the supreme happi- ness. It is important to note that this great compassion has nothing to do with any senti- mental emotion such as that stimulated by such a reflection as "Oh, the poor creatures! How they are suffering! " On the contrary, great compassion is accompanied by the clear awareness that ultimately there are no such things as living beings, suffering, etc. , in reality. Thus it is a sensitivity that does not entertain any dualistic notion of subject and object; indeed, such an unlimited sensitivity might best be termed "empathy. "
great seal. Sanskrit mahllmudrll indicates the same radical and direct approach to ultimate realization. It refers to the bliss-void-indivisible experience in its extreme perfection, where the adept experiences all of reality as her or his partner in inexhaustible blissful communion. It is a terminology based on the embrace of reality as a seal of experience, ultimate reality being the supreme seal of universal bliss wisdom's complete insight.
high resolve, or messianic ambition (adhyasaya). This is a stage in the conception or initiation of the spirit of enlightenment. It follows upon the positive thought, or aspira- tion to attain it, wherein the bodhisattva becomes filled with a lofty determination that he himself should attain enlightenment, that it is the only thing to do to solve his own problems as well as those of all living beings. This high resolve reaches its most intense
Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 65 1 purity as a messianic drive when the bodhisattva simultaneously attains the path of
insight and the first bodhisattva-stage. the stage ofjoy.
identity and identitylessness (svabhava, nilJvabh avatc7). Svabhava is usually rendered as "self-nature," sometimes as "own-being," both of which have a certain literal validity. However, neither artificial term has any evocative power for the reader who has no familiarity with the original, and a term must be found that the reader can immediately relate to his own world to fulfill the function the original word had in its world. In our world of identities (national, racial, religious, personal, sexual, etc. ), "identity" is a part of our makeup; thus, when we are taught the ultimate absence of identity of all persons and things. it is easy to "identify" what is supposedly absent and hence to try to under-
stand what that entails.
imagination yoga (*kalpandyoga - rtog pa'i rna/ 'byor). This is the category of the creation stage and lower Tantric practices where visualization is a primary focus.
imminence. This is the deepest state of the subtle mind, just next to the extremely subtle mind of clear light wisdom. It is divided into two halves. an initial moment when there is a consciousness of intense darkness, and a second moment of total unconsciousness.
It is called "imminence" (upalabdhi
reality clear light is about to occur in consciousness, where it is imminent. Its syno- nyms are "neuter," "the perfect," "consciousness," "delusion," "equal reality," (these in common with Sotra usages), and "HOM," "luminance-imminence," "great void," "misknowledge," and "medium passion. "
-
nyer thob) because it is the state where ultimate
indestructible drop (ak$arabindu - mi shigspa'i thig /e). This is the extremely subtle bodymind of a sentient being, more or less qualifying as the "soul" urva) continuum that takes rebirth life after life and eventually becomes self-aware and expands into being the truth bodymind of all buddhas. During the life of a being, from conception to death, it resides in the central chamber of the heart center channel wheel. "Death" is defined as the moment when the sixfold neural knot around that central chamber un- ravels and the indestructible drop departs into the clear light of universal void. This is not subjectively perceived by an ordinary being who, after a time of unconsciousness, arises in the subtle dreamlike body of the between state. In the case of a bodhisattva attaining buddhahood (either after three incalculable eons of bodhisattva deeds) or in the context of the unexcelled yoga Tantra perfection stage called mind objective (perhaps both), the unraveling of the heart knot is done consciously and carefully. The yogi/ni remains consciously aware during the descent through the three luminance gnosis intuitions into the clear light extremely subtle place where the duality of micro and macro is also transcended. Thus there is complete freedom to remain ever blissful in diamond-like clear light transparence infinite truth body communion, which free remaining in such supreme bliss does not at all preclude spontaneous and effortless emanations in magic bodies manifesting whatsoever educates whomsoever about their
own reality of bliss-freedom indivisible. This indestructible drop, or Buddhist soul continuum is part of the esoteric tradition, although hinted at in the Individual Vehicle refusal to state whether there is any ort of self after death or after nirvana, and more graphically in the Universal Vehicle buddha-nature teaching, in order to help na"ive beings not project onto it their unrealistic habitual views and subliminal habits of a coarse reality personality- and identity-bearing immortal, unchanging, fixated, inde- pendent self or soul.
652 ? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms
lndividuaJ Vehicle (hrnayana - theg dman). This is the Universal Vehicle (Skt. Maha- yilna) term for the foundation form of Buddhism, what I also call "Individualist," or "Monastic" Buddhism. The term was originally derogatory, referring to the narrow- minded refusal of early monastic Buddhists to accept the possibility of the Buddha also having taught a Universal, Messianic form of Buddhism. In recent eras of Universalist civilizations, it is descriptive and not derogatory, as the foundationaJ aspect of monastic Buddhism is respectfully accepted. Thus, when it is used in Tibet nowadays, it means a vehicle suitable for transporting the individual to freedom and enlightenment.
In the modem, pluralistic context, "Individual Vehicle," while descriptively accurate, need
not be taken as derogatory, since for all beings to be liberated from suffering, they must achieve that happy condition one individual being at a time.
individuating wisdom. One of the five wisdoms, transformation of conceptions, the trans- mutation of lust, associated with the Buddha Amitabha, the Lotus Buddha-clan, the color red, and the awareness of the distinctions between things, their particularity and individuality.
initiation (abhi? ekha - dbang bskur ba). Often translated by "empowerment," it means literaJiy "anointment," as in the coronation of a king or queen, the ritual acknowledge- ment of a being's assumption of a special transformation, blessing, authority, and responsibility. In Unexcelled Yoga Tantra there are four main initiations, the vase, secret, wisdom-intuition, and word initiations, that empower body, speech, mind, and the integration of aJI three to learn, practice, and realize all levels of the Tantric path.
instinct (vasana - bag chags; prakrti - rang bzhin). The subconscious tendencies and predilections of the psychosomatic conglomerate, the two Sanskrit and Tibetan terms in brackets reflecting usages in exoteric and esoteric contexts, respectively. This most obvious English word is seldom used in this context because of the hesitancy of Buddhist translators to employ materialist, "scientific" terminology.
perception (samjnll). See "aggregate. "
interpretable meaning (neyilrtha). See "definitive meaning. "
Kitlachakra Tantra - The Time Machine Tantra. This is one of the most important and elaborate of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras, with a number of distinctive features. It is one of the favorites of the Dalai Lamas, and the Namgyal Monastery of the Potala Palace in Lhasa (presently at the Thekchen Choling in Dharamsala) is the monastery most renowned for its expertise in the arts associated with this Tantra. Its vision of buddhahood and the buddhaverse is of its being an evolutionary time machine, an omnipresent force of wisdom and compassion in close contact with planetary beings throughout all the intricacies of their history. It is a unique vision of time as universal compassion, offering beings a theater in which to evolve toward freedom, rather than seeing time mainly as a destroyer and bringer of death by impermanence.
lama. This means guru or spirituaJ teacher in Tibetan, and represents a highly honored pro- fession, since the lama is the indispensable doorway to the practice and performance of Tantra. I sometimes use the Tibetan word, and translate it as "mentor" when it seems best to translate it.
Ialani. The left channel of the subtle yogic neural system, white in color, running next to the central channel, called Tqa in Hindu Tantra. See "avadhDti. "
? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 653
liberative art (upaya). See "art. "
life (samsilra - 'khor ba). This translation seems natural, instead of either the awkward "transmigration" or the vague "the round," because it conveys well the sense of the transformations of living things; it also connotes to all modem readers the whole span and scope of the world of living things. "Life" can translate three other Tibetan words: tshe, which means "lifespan" or "life-time"; skye ba, which literally means "birth"; and
srog, which means "vitality" or "vital principle. "
luminance (atoka - snang ba). The most surface state of the subtle mind, it is that which corresponds to the desire-oriented instinctual natures, and has the experiential sign of moonlit autumn sky during the death dissolutions and birth arisals. The other two states of the subtle mind, the sun-lit radiance, and the dark-lit imminence, are also sometimes called "luminances," and sometimes "luminance wisdoms. " Its synonyms are said to be "wisdom," "the relative," "mind," "anger," "the void side reality" (these in common with Sntra teachings), and "OM," "luminance," "void," "mind," amd "dispassion. "
magic body (mayadeha, mayakaya - sgyu Ius). A subtle body attained through the bless- ing of the mentor at the self-consecration stage of the perfection stage, and created, according to Tsong Khapa, "in order to bring to fruition one's former vows, to abandon the nihilistic tendency gotten from the teaching of the god Maheshvara (Shiva), to accomplish beings' aims until the end of the eon, and to abandon the cessation truth accepted as enlightenment by the disciples" (Tib. 78a). This subtle body seems to be a kind of death-birth-between embodiment, resembling a conscious dream embodiment, and holds (is made of) the extremely subtle mind of great bliss clear light. It is needed to compress eons of altruistic bodhisattva lifetimes into the single life of the perfection stage adept, in order to realize the matter body of a buddha that manifests the merit and compassion side of the truth body of a buddha.
mandala (maf)t/ala - dkyil 'khor). There are many types of mandala, which means "realm that protects the essence," the essence of life in the Buddha's view being the universal bliss energy of the clear light of void reality. There are habitat and inhabitant mandalas, which are, respectively. the environment of palace and gardens and death grounds around and firewalls surrounding, and the divine beings within the habitat. Then within that on a more subtle level, there are ( 1 ) the spirit of enlightenment mandala, within which one receives the secret empowerment of red and white spirits of enlightenment from the mentor father-mother; (2) the dharma-source or vagina mandala within which one receives the wisdom intuition empowerment with the consort; and (3) the word mandala, wherein one receives the great fourth empowerment, the word empowerment.
mantra (mantra - sngags). Literally meaning "saving (-tar or -tra) the mind (manas)," a mantra is a creative sound considered expressive of the deepest essence of things and understandings, so that its repetition can evoke in a formulaic or even magical way a state of enlightenment or positive energy. Some mantras resemble sentences, and express some wish, vision or affirmation, and others are just a single syllable or two, containing the germ of a deity, realm, or state of concentration.
materialism (vastugraha, bhavagraha - dngos por 'dzin pa). This is the grasping at things that conceives of material objects as possessing intrinsically real substantiality.
6? ? Glos. tary of Uniqu? Translation T? rm. v n1attc-r Ir? 1). S? "ag? regate. "
matter body (of a buddha) (rft'aktlya ? - IP'R? '? ,\? ku). The altruistic aspect of enlightenment, developed from the individual's l'nntinua nf body and speech, subdivided into the beatitic and emanation bodies. It has usually been called "form body," by confusing the two meanings of ritJa : "fonn" as specifically visible object, and "matter" as sub- stantial entity. whether visible or not.
mental quiescence, or serenity (samathtl). "Mental quiescence" is a general tenn for all types of mind-practice. meditation, contemplation, concentration, etc. , that cultivate one-pointedness of mind and lead to a state of peacefulness and freedom from concern with any sort of object. It is paired with "transcendent insight," which combines the analytic faculty with this one-pointedness to reach high realizations such as selfless- ness (see "transcendent insight").
mentor (guru - bla ma). The guru figure returns to esoteric Buddhism in the context of initiation, and for the depth psychological purpose of guiding the advanced spiritual adventurer who seeks reality and the attainment of buddhahood by diving into the unconscious realm of instincts and lucidly experiencing and mastering the processes of life and death. Though the Sanskrit word means "heavy" and so connotes the weight of the patriarchal authority figure, the Tibetan word fits with the "unexcelled" idea of Unexcelled Yoga (see entry) and so connotes a relationship beyond that of father or mother, rather the all embracing immanence of the buddha presence which is actually indivisible from even the ignorant being, and thus infuses the disciple with the buddha- presence, rather than holding it above as something far away and unattainable. Cer- tainly, the Tantric initiation doesn't "take" unless the recipient visualizes the mentor as indivisible from Vajradhara Buddha himself (or herself as with Vajrayogini). But the
point then of the initiation is to ritually and contemplatively open the door in the recipient's imagination for his or her own identity with the Vajradhara Buddha. Thus the lama mentor serves more as an exemplar of person-buddha communion in order for the disciple practitioner to find that same communion with him or herself. The relation- ship is abused when the reception of initiation becomes a justification for worship of the lama, as if the lama was more one with the buddha than the disciple; such an initia- tion only makes a disciple feel less empowered and more dependent on the lama, rather
than empowered to discover the buddha reality of him or herself.
mind isolation (cittaviveka - sems dben). The third of the five perfection stages, consisting of mind objective, self-consecration, and magic body attainments. Mind herein is iso- lated from coarse and ordinary reality in the buddha and divine reality of enlightenment.
mirror-like wisdom. One of the five wisdoms, the transformation of the matter aggregate, the transmutation of delusion, associated with the buddha Vairochana, the Tran- scendent Buddha-clan, the color white, and the awareness of that even relative things reflect ultimate reality, as in a perfect mirror.
Mother Tantra (matatantra - ma rgyud). This is a class of Unexcelled Yoga Tantras, all of which (in Tsong Khapa's interpretation) are nondual in terms of magic body and clear light, where the emphasis is on the deepening of immersion in the clear light transpar- ence and intensification of the four joys both before and after the creation of the magic body at the stage of mind isolation through the mind objective and the self-consecration,
Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 655 by the grace of the mentor. deepening it even more during the fourth stage clear
enlightenment practice. See "Father Tantra. "
nirvana (nirvapa - mya ngan las 'das pa). The opposite of samsara, the blowing away of suffering, the peace that surpasseth all understanding. the supreme good, the actual reality of the universe. In the dualistic Buddhism of the Individual Vehicle, it is repre- sented as a place apart from the world of samsara, an otherworldly elsewhere where the liberated saint could go to freedom, though Buddha was careful not to present it as a state of annihilation. Its highest fonn was called "nirvana without reminder. " In the nondualist Universal Vehicle teaching. nirvana and samsara were taught to be ulti- mately the same. though relatively still opposite, and the highest nirvana was called "unlocated," rather than "remainderless. " Thus, this very world, if understood by an enlightened mind, was revealed to actually be nirvana, a place of abundant happiness, bliss. freedom. love, and compassion. The task then for the bodhisattva is to destroy the ignorance that prevents us from knowing that bliss, and then share the discovered bliss with beings still caught in suffering by ignorance.
nonapprehension (anupalambha - dmigs med). This refers to the mental openness cultivated by the bodhisattva who has reached a certain awareness of the nature of reality, in that he or she does not seek to apprehend any object or grasp any substance in anything; rather, he or she removes any static pretension of the mind to have grasped at any truth, conviction, or view.
nonduality (advayatvll). This is synonymous with reality, voidness, etc. But it must be remembered that nonduality does not necessarily mean unity, that unity is only one of the pair unity-duality; hence nonduality implies nonunity as well.
ordinariness (prakrta - tha mal pa). A Tantric concept, where the world as perceived by the unenlightened is considered ordinary, because of being maintained by delusion and filled with suffering. The real world, revealed through wisdom and perceived through enlightened senses, is considered "extraordinary" (tha mal pa ma yin pa), a purified, enlightened, mandalic, buddhaversal realm of happiness and abundance. "Ordinary" is frequently used with "pride" (prakrtahamlara) "perception," "conception," "body," and other terms. The Tantric yogi/ni seeks to replace these with "deity-pride. " "pure perception and conception," and so forth.
outsider (*bahyapuru$a - phyi rol pa). This means a person who has not entered within the refuge of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, as opposed to an "insider" who has. It is often translated as "non-Buddhist" or some times as "heterodox," equated with the somewhat more derogatory tfrthika (mu stegs pa - "fundamentalist"). There is no standard Sanskrit or Tibetan term to translate the English "non-Buddhist," or even "Buddhist" for that matter, at least until modern time.
patron deity (adhidaivatll - lhag pa 'i lha). A practitioner's specially important buddha- deity form.
perfection stage. This is the second stage of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras, which follows on the successful completion of the creation stage (see above). After the yogi/ni has developed the ability to totally transform his or her perception and conception, so that s/he stably perceives the environment as the pure mandala, her or his body as a deity body, his or her speech as mantra, and her or his mind as buddha-wisdom, all three
656 ? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms
isolated from ordinariness, imperfection, and impurity, s/he is ready and secure enough to enter the practice of the rehearsal of death, the between, and the rebirth processes with a view to accelerating the evolutionary accumulation of the stores of merit and wisdom to gain buddhahood within a single lifetime or at maximum a few lifetimes. These processes are usually numbered five, including the stages of: ( 1 ) body isolation, (2) speech isolation, (3) mind isolation/self-consecration/magic body, (4) clear light/
enlightenment, and (5) communion.
performance, practice (sadhanli - sgrub thabs). This word is usually translated as "practice," which leads to locutions like "practicing the practice. " Wayman tried "evocation" occasionally. In contemporary practitioner circles the Sanskrit sadhana is used as an English word. I have discovered that "performance" works quite well in some cases, in that these contemplative sequences used in the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras and other categories of Tantra involve memorization, practice, ritual forms of gesture, speech, and visualization, and thus very much tum into contemplative performances,
either by a solitary individual or a group.
reincarnation, rebirth (punarjati, punarbhava). It is well to make a distinction between "rebirth" and "reincarnation. " "Rebirth" is the normal process following the death of a normal living being. "Reincarnation" is the conscious and voluntary descent into a physical body of a bodhisattva or buddha who, because of his or her transcendence of the bonds of action and addictions, is not compelled but incarnates in order to develop and liberate other living beings.
private, or personal, instruction (upadesa - man ngag). This is an instruction that connects to the exoteric and esoteric texts and transmits the technique and art of the tradition to the person seeking to understand the texts and put them into practice. Tsong Khapa is very clear that these instructions are not ever in contradiction to the treasured teachings in the texts, simply that they are needed to fully implement them, to bring them out from their hiding places in the indirect, intentional and cryptic encodings in the texts.
They also are required to fully realize the practices; so the serious practitioners requires both the mastery of the textual traditions and the personal instructions of a qualified and exemplary teacher.
psychonaut. A "voyager into the soul," an apt term for the Buddhist adept, who voluntarily abandons the pseudo-security of this planet of delusion, with its solid ground of ordi- nary, individuated suffering, to launch herself through the death-dissolutions into the subtle between states to deepen her wisdom by exploring the unconscious and to expand her compassionate heroism by serving universes of beings on the subtle level, and then to return to be reborn in her old ordinary embodiment of the adept to assist her contem- poraries.
rasana. The right channel in the subtle yogic neural system, red in color, called pi{lgala in the Hindu yogic systems.
radiance (t2bha? ? a, t2lokt2bht2sa - mched pa, snang ba mchedpa). The middle, sun-lit state of the subtle mind, the radiance-luminance-wisdom, corresponding to the anger-related instinctual natures, between the states of luminance and imminence. Some of its synonyms are "art," "imagined," "mentality," "lust," "sight side reality" (these in common with Sntra usage), and "AJ:I," "luminance-radiance," "extreme void," "mental function," and "passion. "
? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 657
Ratnasambhava. One of the five archetypal transcendent buddhas, Lord of the jewel buddha-clan. associated with the southern direction and the buddhaverse Ratnavyoha. He represents the equalizing wisdom. the transformation of the aggregate of sensations, the transmutation of the poison of pride or avarice. and the color yellow. His buddha consort is MamakT.
reality (dharmata. satya, even dharma - chos nyid, bden pa, chos). An important word in Buddhism since enlightenment purports to be ! he perfect knowledge and awareness of the actual condition of things, and the possibility of liberation from suffering is based on the truth of that condition and the untruth of the ordinary condition of suffering.
relativity (pratrtyasamutpada). This Skt. term is usually translated as "dependent origi- nation," which serves in certain contexts. However, in the Madhyamika context, which is an important context in this text, pratTtya. mmutpada describes ultimate reality. It is equated to shanyata, voidness, the nature of birthlessness; thus "origination" is somewhat out of place, since ultimately no thing originates. "Relativity," which T. Stcherbatski used perhaps over-zealously by extension for "voidness" itself, seems ideal to convey the sense that nothing exists independent of relation with something else; therefore there is no absolute, permanent, independent self-substantial thing-only things that exist con- ventionally, dependent on their verbal and intellectual designations.
samadhi (samadhi - ting nge 'dzin). An important Sanskrit word for meditational practice and meditational achievement. Usually defined as "one-pointedness of mind," it can also refer to creative mind states after enlightenment, mental concentrations which produce special light rays, liberating environments for disciples and so forth. It has now entered the English dictionary so there is no need for a diacritic mark.
samsara (sari'ISI'lra - 'khor ba). This is existence controlled by ignorance, desire, and hatred, which is always suffering for beings caught in it. It is by now an English word. and so can be written without diacritical marks. It is sometimes translated as cyclic existence, life cycle, or simply life. See "life. "
Sarhgha. The third of the Three Jewels, being the fourfold community of those who live in refuge in the Dharma and the Buddha Jewels. Its inclusion is extended in Universal Vehicle and Tantric literatures to include noble, angelic, and divine beings.
savior (nt'Jtha - mgon po). This is usually translated "protector," but so is Dharmapala (chos bsrungs, chos skyongs), name for mundane guardians of the tradition. Natha as in Natha Nagarjuna, Maitreyanatha, refers to an angelic or divine, messianic buddha- being who nurtures and guards the evolutionary essence, the spiritual soul, and so saves you from lifetimes of suffering in samsaric hells and wasted migratory lives.
self (t'Jtmll - bdag). It is crucial to understand what is meant by "self," before one is able to realize the all-important "selflessness. " Before we can discover an absence, we have to know what we are looking for, what we have been assuming to be present. In all Buddhist teachings, there is a self of persons (subjectivities) and a self of things (objectivities), both presumed habitually by living beings and hence informative of their perceptions. Were these "selves" to exist as they appear because of our presump-
tion, they should exist as substantial, self-subsistent entities within things, or as the intrinsic realities of things, or as the intrinsic identities of things, all permanent, unrelated and nonrelative, etc. The nondiscovery of such "selves" within changing,
658 ? GlossaryofUniqueTranslationTerms
relative. interdependent persons and things is the realization of ultimate reality, or
selflessness.
selflessness (anatmata, or nairatmya). This describes actual reality, as finally there is no enduring person himself or herself or thing-in-itself, since persons and things exist only in the relative. conventional, or superficial sense, and not in any ultimate or absolute sense. To understand Buddhist teaching correctly, we must be clear about the two senses (conventional/ultimate, or relative/absolute), since mistaking denial of ultimate self as denial of conventional self leads to nihilism, and mistaking affirmation of conventional self as affirmation of ultimate self leads to absolutism. Nihilism and abso- lutism effectively prevent us from realizing our enlightenment, hence are very much to be avoided.
signlessness (animitta). In ultimate reality, there is no sign, as a sign signals or signifies something to someone and hence is inextricably involved with the relative world. We are so conditioned by signs that they seem to speak to us as if they had a voice of their own.
conceptualization (vikalpa). This brings up another important group of words that has never been treated systematically in translation: vikalpa, parikalpa, samllropa, adhyll- ropa, kalpana, samjiiil, and prapanca. All of these refer to mental functions that tend to superimpose upon reality, either relative or ultimate, a conceptualized reality fabri- cated by the subjective mind. Some translators have tended to lump these together under the rubric "discursive thought," which leads to the misleading notion that all thought is bad, something to be eliminated, and that sheer ''thoughtlessness" is "enlightenment," or whatever higher state is desired. According to Buddhist scholars.
thought in itself is simply a function, and only thought that is attached to its own content over and above the relative object, i. e. , "egoistic" thought, is bad and to be eliminated. Therefore I have chosen a set of words for the seven Skt. terms. respec- tively: "conceptualization," "imagination," "presumption," "exaggeration. " "construc- tion," "conception" or "notion," and "fabrication. " This does not mean that these words are not somewhat interchangeable or that another English word might not be better in certain contexts; it only represents an attempt to achieve consistency with the
original usages.
646 ? Glossary ofUnique Translation Terms
conscious awareness (apramilda). This denotes a type of awareness of the most seemingly insignificant aspects of practical life, an awareness derived as a consequence of the highest realization of the ultimate nature of reality. As it is stated in the Anavatapta-
pariprcchasiilra: "Who realizes voidness, that person becomes consciously aware. " "Ultimate realization," far from obliterating the relative world, brings it into highly specific, albeit dreamlike, focus.
consort, seal (mudra); evolution (karmamudra), wisdom or intuition Uiillnamudrll), and science (vidya). These expressions refer to the partner, either male or female, but more usually female, in a buddha-couple, such as Vairochana and Lochana. Sometimes the father and mother in a buddha-father-mother couple are considered different divine
beings, sometimes only the double manifestation of a single being. The Buddhist belief is that all beings, whatever the superficial sexual identity, are potentially both male and female-each has male and female aspects and energies in his or her being. The empathetic ability to transcend sexual identity-habits is cultivated by Tantric archetype meditation wherein a male will meditate himself as a female archetype buddha, a female will meditate herself as a male archetype buddha, or either will meditate him or
her self as a male and female buddha couple in union.
continuum (tantra - rgyud, rgyun). This is the root word for tantra, standing for the confluence of several continua: the basis continuum of the basis, that of the nature, and that of the fruition. Sometimes, exoterically, it is known as "life-continuum" (sam tina): the energy-continuity of a living being that proceeds from moment to moment in a life and from life to life in an individual's evolutionary progression. To quote Tsong Khapa, quoting in his great commentary the Esoteric Community Further Tantra and Naropa: "Tantra is renowned as 'continuum'; that continuum is of three types: differentiated in terms of the basis (adhara), likewise, nature (prakrti), and non-deprivation (asariz - hllrya). As for their aspects, the nature one is the cause; similarly, the non-deprivation
is the fruition; the basis is called the art. Those three comprise the meaning of 'tantra. ' (GST, xviii. 34--35) The etymological definition of 'tantra' is 'continuum. ' According to Naropa's explanation of the threefold division of Tantra in the verse, 'nature' means the nature of the jewel-like adept; this is the causal Tantra. 'Basis' refers to the art Tantra, the four branches of service and performance of the two stages. The Tantra of 'fruition'-of which no one can deprive you-is the holy communion body of non-
local nirvana, Vajradhara. " (J. R. C. Campbell, "Vajra Hermeneutics" [Ph. D. diss. , Columbia University, 2009], Appendix 1, p. 8. )
creation stage (utpannakrama - bskyed rim). This is the preliminary part of the Unex- celled Yoga Tantra, where the yogi/nT creates a divine environment and a divine self and embodiment, using serenity meditation to focus on the purified forms and critical insight meditation to recognize the voidness of all those visualized forms, thus planting the seed patterns and creating the templates for the subtle and extremely bodymind needed to traverse the ultimate yogas of the perfection stage and actually reach real, magical buddhahood. It therefore does "develop" (rnam par smin pa) the practitioner, but its main function is to begin the creation of the buddha-world along with the buddha embodiment needed to accelerate the time to buddhahood. So, though some use "development stage," I prefer "creation stage. " Nagabodhi in his Stage ofArrangement
creation (sam sklra). See "aggregate. "
Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 647 explicitly links the creation of the mandala universe to a mythic. theistic cosmogony
pattern.
death. This is the point of freedom when the subtle mind, indestructible clear light drop, or soul of a particular life loses connection with the embodiment of that life. It is perhaps beyond consciousness and unconsciousness, though ordinary people transit it unconsciously, never noticing the all-too-rapid (for them) transition from the uncon- scious segment of imminence into clear light and back into imminence. Thus death is understood as 11 pure negation, a perfect zero, 11 timeless moment, a widthless boundary, and is aligned with absolute reality, with the body of truth, with the ultimate clear light. A buddha, an enlightened being, is thus one whose death is an infinite body of ultimate reality, a concrete permanent resting place, which nevertheless not only never obstructs their relative experience of the interconnected realm of beings. it makes it indivisible from freedom and openness and therefore perfectly blissful. Needless to say, such a being is no longer afraid of death.
definitive meaning (nrtartha). This refers to those teachings of the Buddha that are in terms of ultimate reality; it is opposed to those teachings given in terms of relative reality, termed "interpretable meaning," because they require further interpretation before being relied on to indicate the ultimate. Hence definitive meaning relates to voidness, etc. , and no statement concerning the relative world, even by the Buddha, can be taken as definitive.
designation (prajflapti). This occurs in the axiomatic Madhyamika description of all things as existent by virtue of "mere designation" (prajflaptimlitra).
Dharma. One of the Three Jewels, the Jewel of the Buddha's teaching. It can also mean the ultimate reality itself that is taught in the teachings, the path that leads to its realization, the qualities that derive from it, and so forth. In Indian usage prior to the Buddha's time, it tended to mean "religion," "law," "duty," "custom," and so forth, patterns that hold human behavior and thought under control. These "pattern- maintaining" meanings still coexist in Sanskrit and other Buddhist languages with the Buddha's more liberating or "pattern-transcending" meanings, causing considerable confusion for translators in some contexts.
dhoti. See avadhoti.
discourse (satra - mdo ). Though sutra in general means a string of aphorisms meant to be memorized in Indian oral education system, in Buddhism in particular it has come to mean a recorded discourse of the Buddha.
Divine Lord (Bhagavan). "Divine Lord" translates well the title bhagavan because it is the term of greatest respect current in our "sacred" language, as established for the Deity in the Elizabethan version of the B ible. Indeed, the Skt. Bhagavlin was given as a title to the Buddha, although it also served the non-Buddhist Indians as an honorific title of their particular deities. As the Buddha is clearly described in the Siltras as the "Supreme Teacher of Gods and Men," there seems little danger that he may be
confused with any particular deity through the use of this term (as indeed in Buddhist Sotras various deities, creators, protectors, etc. , are shown in their respective roles). The often used "Blessed One" comes from the early translations, and conveys the subliminal suggestion to the nineteenth century reader that the Buddha too is "blessed,"
648 ? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms
i. e. found acceptable in the eyes of the Western "God" - still a looming presence over
the work of introducing Buddhism-even for the atheistic philologist.
drops (hindu - thig le). This word refers to physical, chemical essences (something like the modem notion of neuro-transmitters) that focus awareness within the subtle nervous system. In the subtle body, the channels form the structure, the winds serve as the energies that move things and cause transformations of experience, and the drops serve as the nodes of subjectivity that focus awareness within this realm that opens up when consciousness has been withdrawn from its functions in receiving and coordinating sense-data from the gross senses. These drops are also associated with the genetic material that is the essence of the male and female sexual fluids, and the yogic mastery
of their subtle potentials represents the sublimation of the creative energies that ordinarily build up the suffering life cycle into the reconstruction of the divine realm of the enlightened mandala. Thus, red drops refer to the female genetic essence, carried within the blood, and the white drops refer to the male genetic essence, carried within the semen. This is a difficult and abstruse subject, but this note can orient you to what is meant by this expression.
duality, dualism (dvaya, dvayagraha). "Duality" is largely self-explanatory. To be pointed out here is the connection between the mental habit of dualism and verbalization, insofar as dualism is inherent in the structure of language, in which things are pre- sented in terms of opposites.
emanation body (nirmtlt;? akllya). This refers to the miraculous power of buddhas and bodhisattvas of a certain stage to emanate apparently living beings in order to develop and teach other beings. This power reaches its culmination in the nirmtlt;? aktlya, the "emanation body," which is one of the three bodies of buddhahood and includes all physical forms of all buddhas, including Shiikyamuni, whose sole function as incar- nations is the development and liberation of living beings. See "three bodies of the Buddha (trikllya). "
enlightenment (bodhi). This word requires too much explanation for this glossary because, indeed, the whole of Buddhist literature tries to explain only this. The translation equivalent "awakening" is frequently used, which is perfectly alright as well, though should not be adopted due to some idea that the Buddha's enlightenment is somehow diametrically opposed to the Western "Enlightenment" of Diderot and Voltaire, et al. The dogmatic materialism and even nihilism that accrued to the Western Enlighten- ment is different from Buddha's transcendent realization of the exact and complete nature of reality. However, the Western movement's achievement in breaking away from irrational and unrealistic theories of reality, using reason and experience to distinguish the real from the unreal. its discoveries of many of the workings of macro and micro nature and so on, its elevation of empirical science, its appreciation of the human potential, and so on, these are all part and parcel of the Buddha's enlighten- ment, which preceded the Western one by more than 2000 years. Also, Sanskrit Buddha
is glossed as vibuddha and prabuddha, i. e. , not only "awakening from the sleep of ignorance," but also "expanding the knowledge of reality into omniscience"; so "awakening" may not contain both aspects quite fully.
emptiness (sanyatll). See "voidness. "
energy. See "wind-energy. "
Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 649
equalizing wisdom. One of the five wisdoms. this one associated with the buddha Ratnasambhava, the color yellow, the transmutation of pride and miserliness, and the apotheosis of the sensation aggregate.
Esoteric Community. The Guhyasamaja Tantric tradition, in which the subtleties and intricacies of Unexcelled Yoga are particularly well explained and systematically arranged for study and practice, and which is the "Lamp" which illuminates the world, was illuminated more brightly by ChandrakTrti in his Illumination of the Lamp, and was even more brilliantly illuminated by Tsong Khapa in the present work.
evolution, evolutionary. Sanskrit karma and karmika, translated in this way because "action" may be too general and vague. Karma specifically means mental/verbal/ physical action which leads to life-affecting. eventually life-constituting consequences. It is the key concept in the Buddhist theory of biology, the study of how life is consti- tuted. The modem materialistic worldview considers the structures of our present lifetimes to have been caused by the genetic re-embodiment of the subtly encoded experiences of millions of previous representatives of our species through the pro- cesses of biological evolution. The Buddhist worldview considers the structures of our present lifetimes to be caused by the spiritually genetic re-embodiment of our own experiences from millions of previous lifetimes, subtly encoded in a spiritual gene we bring with us, combined with the physical genes we receive from our parents, in a complex process of spiritually directed and physically conditioned biological evolution.
extremely subtle bodymind. This nondual combination of the indestructible drop com- posed of the subtlest wind-energies and the clear light enlightened awareness is the Buddhist soul, that entity or continuum that can be said to progress from life to life, and to mutate out of the suffering life cycle into enlightenment. Note that at this super micro level, the dualities of matter and mind are transcended, and even the duality of micro and macro. See "subtle bodymind. "
Father Tantra (pitlltantra - pha rgyud). This is a class of Unexcelled Yoga Tantras - all of which (in Tsong Khapa's interpretation) are nondual in terms of magic body and clear light-where the emphasis is on the creation of the magic body at the stage of mind isolation through the mind objective and the self-consecration, by the grace of the mentor. See also "Mother Tantra. "
furor, furor-frre (car. uja - gtum mo). This is the physical heat generated by mental concen- tration that focuses deep down upon the subatomic energies within the molecules and atoms of the yogi/nT and taps there the inexhaustible nuclear energies that can be mechanically released in fission or fusion reactions. The yogi/ni carefully channels that fire into the central nervous system to melt the "drops" that embed states of conscious- ness causing them to flow into the neural centers of the channel wheels and generate the subtle bliss consciousness that liberates from entrapment in the conceptually con-
structed world of samsara, consisting of the hopeless duality of self versus the entire universe of other beings, time, and space. The long observed, studied, and verified ability of such yogT/nTs to melt icy sheets in winter, to raise at will their whole body temperature or the temperature of specific parts of their bodies is only a relatively unimportant side-effect of this super subtle energy-tapping through concentration. "Furor" is a good translation since the heat of anger is similar to this subatomic heat energy. Anger and bile are in Buddhist medical fact connected to intelligence and the
? 650 ? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms
dissective power of critical analysis. which is what this concentration requires to break through the coarse levels of reality structure and penetrate the clear light energy of voidness ultimate reality.
gene (gotra - rigs). See spiritual gene.
gnosis (intuition, intuitive wisdom) Unana, llryajfillna). This is nondual, subject-object- dichotomy-transcending knowledge of the nonconceptual and transcendental which is realized by those attaining higher stages.
grace (adhi$thiina). The "supernatural power" with which the Buddhas sustain the bodhi- sattvas in their great efforts on behalf of living beings, which is bestowed as consecra- tion when entering the Tantric mandala realm.
great, or universal, bliss (mahasukha - bde ba chen po). This is the orgasmic ecstasy stabi- lized and not dissipated as experienced in focus on and immersion in universal void- ness, felt not only in ordinary, genitally organized sexual melting in normal, quickly dissipated sexual ecstasy, but felt steadily in every fiber and cell of the body and every neural energy of the mind and leading to the full experience of the void freedom of communion with clear light reality of all buddhas' body of truth: known as bliss-void- indivisible. This bliss is the secret engine of universal compassion also, as it remains with the enlightened being in no matter what circumstance, and spontaneously over- flows to lift suffering beings out of their trap of alienation into the bliss of which they also are made. The art (upaya) of doing that is necessary because the alienated being will only get more bound tight by simply a flood of energy, even if it is really bliss: so the blissed out compassionate being must create an entertainment that will attract the alienated beings according to their inclinations and open their minds to understand their deeper realities.
great, or universal, compassion (mahiikarur:zll). This refers to one of the two central quali- ties of a Buddha or high bodhisattva (see "enlightenment" entry): his feeling born of the wish for all living beings to be free of suffering and to attain the supreme happi- ness. It is important to note that this great compassion has nothing to do with any senti- mental emotion such as that stimulated by such a reflection as "Oh, the poor creatures! How they are suffering! " On the contrary, great compassion is accompanied by the clear awareness that ultimately there are no such things as living beings, suffering, etc. , in reality. Thus it is a sensitivity that does not entertain any dualistic notion of subject and object; indeed, such an unlimited sensitivity might best be termed "empathy. "
great seal. Sanskrit mahllmudrll indicates the same radical and direct approach to ultimate realization. It refers to the bliss-void-indivisible experience in its extreme perfection, where the adept experiences all of reality as her or his partner in inexhaustible blissful communion. It is a terminology based on the embrace of reality as a seal of experience, ultimate reality being the supreme seal of universal bliss wisdom's complete insight.
high resolve, or messianic ambition (adhyasaya). This is a stage in the conception or initiation of the spirit of enlightenment. It follows upon the positive thought, or aspira- tion to attain it, wherein the bodhisattva becomes filled with a lofty determination that he himself should attain enlightenment, that it is the only thing to do to solve his own problems as well as those of all living beings. This high resolve reaches its most intense
Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 65 1 purity as a messianic drive when the bodhisattva simultaneously attains the path of
insight and the first bodhisattva-stage. the stage ofjoy.
identity and identitylessness (svabhava, nilJvabh avatc7). Svabhava is usually rendered as "self-nature," sometimes as "own-being," both of which have a certain literal validity. However, neither artificial term has any evocative power for the reader who has no familiarity with the original, and a term must be found that the reader can immediately relate to his own world to fulfill the function the original word had in its world. In our world of identities (national, racial, religious, personal, sexual, etc. ), "identity" is a part of our makeup; thus, when we are taught the ultimate absence of identity of all persons and things. it is easy to "identify" what is supposedly absent and hence to try to under-
stand what that entails.
imagination yoga (*kalpandyoga - rtog pa'i rna/ 'byor). This is the category of the creation stage and lower Tantric practices where visualization is a primary focus.
imminence. This is the deepest state of the subtle mind, just next to the extremely subtle mind of clear light wisdom. It is divided into two halves. an initial moment when there is a consciousness of intense darkness, and a second moment of total unconsciousness.
It is called "imminence" (upalabdhi
reality clear light is about to occur in consciousness, where it is imminent. Its syno- nyms are "neuter," "the perfect," "consciousness," "delusion," "equal reality," (these in common with Sotra usages), and "HOM," "luminance-imminence," "great void," "misknowledge," and "medium passion. "
-
nyer thob) because it is the state where ultimate
indestructible drop (ak$arabindu - mi shigspa'i thig /e). This is the extremely subtle bodymind of a sentient being, more or less qualifying as the "soul" urva) continuum that takes rebirth life after life and eventually becomes self-aware and expands into being the truth bodymind of all buddhas. During the life of a being, from conception to death, it resides in the central chamber of the heart center channel wheel. "Death" is defined as the moment when the sixfold neural knot around that central chamber un- ravels and the indestructible drop departs into the clear light of universal void. This is not subjectively perceived by an ordinary being who, after a time of unconsciousness, arises in the subtle dreamlike body of the between state. In the case of a bodhisattva attaining buddhahood (either after three incalculable eons of bodhisattva deeds) or in the context of the unexcelled yoga Tantra perfection stage called mind objective (perhaps both), the unraveling of the heart knot is done consciously and carefully. The yogi/ni remains consciously aware during the descent through the three luminance gnosis intuitions into the clear light extremely subtle place where the duality of micro and macro is also transcended. Thus there is complete freedom to remain ever blissful in diamond-like clear light transparence infinite truth body communion, which free remaining in such supreme bliss does not at all preclude spontaneous and effortless emanations in magic bodies manifesting whatsoever educates whomsoever about their
own reality of bliss-freedom indivisible. This indestructible drop, or Buddhist soul continuum is part of the esoteric tradition, although hinted at in the Individual Vehicle refusal to state whether there is any ort of self after death or after nirvana, and more graphically in the Universal Vehicle buddha-nature teaching, in order to help na"ive beings not project onto it their unrealistic habitual views and subliminal habits of a coarse reality personality- and identity-bearing immortal, unchanging, fixated, inde- pendent self or soul.
652 ? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms
lndividuaJ Vehicle (hrnayana - theg dman). This is the Universal Vehicle (Skt. Maha- yilna) term for the foundation form of Buddhism, what I also call "Individualist," or "Monastic" Buddhism. The term was originally derogatory, referring to the narrow- minded refusal of early monastic Buddhists to accept the possibility of the Buddha also having taught a Universal, Messianic form of Buddhism. In recent eras of Universalist civilizations, it is descriptive and not derogatory, as the foundationaJ aspect of monastic Buddhism is respectfully accepted. Thus, when it is used in Tibet nowadays, it means a vehicle suitable for transporting the individual to freedom and enlightenment.
In the modem, pluralistic context, "Individual Vehicle," while descriptively accurate, need
not be taken as derogatory, since for all beings to be liberated from suffering, they must achieve that happy condition one individual being at a time.
individuating wisdom. One of the five wisdoms, transformation of conceptions, the trans- mutation of lust, associated with the Buddha Amitabha, the Lotus Buddha-clan, the color red, and the awareness of the distinctions between things, their particularity and individuality.
initiation (abhi? ekha - dbang bskur ba). Often translated by "empowerment," it means literaJiy "anointment," as in the coronation of a king or queen, the ritual acknowledge- ment of a being's assumption of a special transformation, blessing, authority, and responsibility. In Unexcelled Yoga Tantra there are four main initiations, the vase, secret, wisdom-intuition, and word initiations, that empower body, speech, mind, and the integration of aJI three to learn, practice, and realize all levels of the Tantric path.
instinct (vasana - bag chags; prakrti - rang bzhin). The subconscious tendencies and predilections of the psychosomatic conglomerate, the two Sanskrit and Tibetan terms in brackets reflecting usages in exoteric and esoteric contexts, respectively. This most obvious English word is seldom used in this context because of the hesitancy of Buddhist translators to employ materialist, "scientific" terminology.
perception (samjnll). See "aggregate. "
interpretable meaning (neyilrtha). See "definitive meaning. "
Kitlachakra Tantra - The Time Machine Tantra. This is one of the most important and elaborate of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras, with a number of distinctive features. It is one of the favorites of the Dalai Lamas, and the Namgyal Monastery of the Potala Palace in Lhasa (presently at the Thekchen Choling in Dharamsala) is the monastery most renowned for its expertise in the arts associated with this Tantra. Its vision of buddhahood and the buddhaverse is of its being an evolutionary time machine, an omnipresent force of wisdom and compassion in close contact with planetary beings throughout all the intricacies of their history. It is a unique vision of time as universal compassion, offering beings a theater in which to evolve toward freedom, rather than seeing time mainly as a destroyer and bringer of death by impermanence.
lama. This means guru or spirituaJ teacher in Tibetan, and represents a highly honored pro- fession, since the lama is the indispensable doorway to the practice and performance of Tantra. I sometimes use the Tibetan word, and translate it as "mentor" when it seems best to translate it.
Ialani. The left channel of the subtle yogic neural system, white in color, running next to the central channel, called Tqa in Hindu Tantra. See "avadhDti. "
? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 653
liberative art (upaya). See "art. "
life (samsilra - 'khor ba). This translation seems natural, instead of either the awkward "transmigration" or the vague "the round," because it conveys well the sense of the transformations of living things; it also connotes to all modem readers the whole span and scope of the world of living things. "Life" can translate three other Tibetan words: tshe, which means "lifespan" or "life-time"; skye ba, which literally means "birth"; and
srog, which means "vitality" or "vital principle. "
luminance (atoka - snang ba). The most surface state of the subtle mind, it is that which corresponds to the desire-oriented instinctual natures, and has the experiential sign of moonlit autumn sky during the death dissolutions and birth arisals. The other two states of the subtle mind, the sun-lit radiance, and the dark-lit imminence, are also sometimes called "luminances," and sometimes "luminance wisdoms. " Its synonyms are said to be "wisdom," "the relative," "mind," "anger," "the void side reality" (these in common with Sntra teachings), and "OM," "luminance," "void," "mind," amd "dispassion. "
magic body (mayadeha, mayakaya - sgyu Ius). A subtle body attained through the bless- ing of the mentor at the self-consecration stage of the perfection stage, and created, according to Tsong Khapa, "in order to bring to fruition one's former vows, to abandon the nihilistic tendency gotten from the teaching of the god Maheshvara (Shiva), to accomplish beings' aims until the end of the eon, and to abandon the cessation truth accepted as enlightenment by the disciples" (Tib. 78a). This subtle body seems to be a kind of death-birth-between embodiment, resembling a conscious dream embodiment, and holds (is made of) the extremely subtle mind of great bliss clear light. It is needed to compress eons of altruistic bodhisattva lifetimes into the single life of the perfection stage adept, in order to realize the matter body of a buddha that manifests the merit and compassion side of the truth body of a buddha.
mandala (maf)t/ala - dkyil 'khor). There are many types of mandala, which means "realm that protects the essence," the essence of life in the Buddha's view being the universal bliss energy of the clear light of void reality. There are habitat and inhabitant mandalas, which are, respectively. the environment of palace and gardens and death grounds around and firewalls surrounding, and the divine beings within the habitat. Then within that on a more subtle level, there are ( 1 ) the spirit of enlightenment mandala, within which one receives the secret empowerment of red and white spirits of enlightenment from the mentor father-mother; (2) the dharma-source or vagina mandala within which one receives the wisdom intuition empowerment with the consort; and (3) the word mandala, wherein one receives the great fourth empowerment, the word empowerment.
mantra (mantra - sngags). Literally meaning "saving (-tar or -tra) the mind (manas)," a mantra is a creative sound considered expressive of the deepest essence of things and understandings, so that its repetition can evoke in a formulaic or even magical way a state of enlightenment or positive energy. Some mantras resemble sentences, and express some wish, vision or affirmation, and others are just a single syllable or two, containing the germ of a deity, realm, or state of concentration.
materialism (vastugraha, bhavagraha - dngos por 'dzin pa). This is the grasping at things that conceives of material objects as possessing intrinsically real substantiality.
6? ? Glos. tary of Uniqu? Translation T? rm. v n1attc-r Ir? 1). S? "ag? regate. "
matter body (of a buddha) (rft'aktlya ? - IP'R? '? ,\? ku). The altruistic aspect of enlightenment, developed from the individual's l'nntinua nf body and speech, subdivided into the beatitic and emanation bodies. It has usually been called "form body," by confusing the two meanings of ritJa : "fonn" as specifically visible object, and "matter" as sub- stantial entity. whether visible or not.
mental quiescence, or serenity (samathtl). "Mental quiescence" is a general tenn for all types of mind-practice. meditation, contemplation, concentration, etc. , that cultivate one-pointedness of mind and lead to a state of peacefulness and freedom from concern with any sort of object. It is paired with "transcendent insight," which combines the analytic faculty with this one-pointedness to reach high realizations such as selfless- ness (see "transcendent insight").
mentor (guru - bla ma). The guru figure returns to esoteric Buddhism in the context of initiation, and for the depth psychological purpose of guiding the advanced spiritual adventurer who seeks reality and the attainment of buddhahood by diving into the unconscious realm of instincts and lucidly experiencing and mastering the processes of life and death. Though the Sanskrit word means "heavy" and so connotes the weight of the patriarchal authority figure, the Tibetan word fits with the "unexcelled" idea of Unexcelled Yoga (see entry) and so connotes a relationship beyond that of father or mother, rather the all embracing immanence of the buddha presence which is actually indivisible from even the ignorant being, and thus infuses the disciple with the buddha- presence, rather than holding it above as something far away and unattainable. Cer- tainly, the Tantric initiation doesn't "take" unless the recipient visualizes the mentor as indivisible from Vajradhara Buddha himself (or herself as with Vajrayogini). But the
point then of the initiation is to ritually and contemplatively open the door in the recipient's imagination for his or her own identity with the Vajradhara Buddha. Thus the lama mentor serves more as an exemplar of person-buddha communion in order for the disciple practitioner to find that same communion with him or herself. The relation- ship is abused when the reception of initiation becomes a justification for worship of the lama, as if the lama was more one with the buddha than the disciple; such an initia- tion only makes a disciple feel less empowered and more dependent on the lama, rather
than empowered to discover the buddha reality of him or herself.
mind isolation (cittaviveka - sems dben). The third of the five perfection stages, consisting of mind objective, self-consecration, and magic body attainments. Mind herein is iso- lated from coarse and ordinary reality in the buddha and divine reality of enlightenment.
mirror-like wisdom. One of the five wisdoms, the transformation of the matter aggregate, the transmutation of delusion, associated with the buddha Vairochana, the Tran- scendent Buddha-clan, the color white, and the awareness of that even relative things reflect ultimate reality, as in a perfect mirror.
Mother Tantra (matatantra - ma rgyud). This is a class of Unexcelled Yoga Tantras, all of which (in Tsong Khapa's interpretation) are nondual in terms of magic body and clear light, where the emphasis is on the deepening of immersion in the clear light transpar- ence and intensification of the four joys both before and after the creation of the magic body at the stage of mind isolation through the mind objective and the self-consecration,
Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 655 by the grace of the mentor. deepening it even more during the fourth stage clear
enlightenment practice. See "Father Tantra. "
nirvana (nirvapa - mya ngan las 'das pa). The opposite of samsara, the blowing away of suffering, the peace that surpasseth all understanding. the supreme good, the actual reality of the universe. In the dualistic Buddhism of the Individual Vehicle, it is repre- sented as a place apart from the world of samsara, an otherworldly elsewhere where the liberated saint could go to freedom, though Buddha was careful not to present it as a state of annihilation. Its highest fonn was called "nirvana without reminder. " In the nondualist Universal Vehicle teaching. nirvana and samsara were taught to be ulti- mately the same. though relatively still opposite, and the highest nirvana was called "unlocated," rather than "remainderless. " Thus, this very world, if understood by an enlightened mind, was revealed to actually be nirvana, a place of abundant happiness, bliss. freedom. love, and compassion. The task then for the bodhisattva is to destroy the ignorance that prevents us from knowing that bliss, and then share the discovered bliss with beings still caught in suffering by ignorance.
nonapprehension (anupalambha - dmigs med). This refers to the mental openness cultivated by the bodhisattva who has reached a certain awareness of the nature of reality, in that he or she does not seek to apprehend any object or grasp any substance in anything; rather, he or she removes any static pretension of the mind to have grasped at any truth, conviction, or view.
nonduality (advayatvll). This is synonymous with reality, voidness, etc. But it must be remembered that nonduality does not necessarily mean unity, that unity is only one of the pair unity-duality; hence nonduality implies nonunity as well.
ordinariness (prakrta - tha mal pa). A Tantric concept, where the world as perceived by the unenlightened is considered ordinary, because of being maintained by delusion and filled with suffering. The real world, revealed through wisdom and perceived through enlightened senses, is considered "extraordinary" (tha mal pa ma yin pa), a purified, enlightened, mandalic, buddhaversal realm of happiness and abundance. "Ordinary" is frequently used with "pride" (prakrtahamlara) "perception," "conception," "body," and other terms. The Tantric yogi/ni seeks to replace these with "deity-pride. " "pure perception and conception," and so forth.
outsider (*bahyapuru$a - phyi rol pa). This means a person who has not entered within the refuge of the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, as opposed to an "insider" who has. It is often translated as "non-Buddhist" or some times as "heterodox," equated with the somewhat more derogatory tfrthika (mu stegs pa - "fundamentalist"). There is no standard Sanskrit or Tibetan term to translate the English "non-Buddhist," or even "Buddhist" for that matter, at least until modern time.
patron deity (adhidaivatll - lhag pa 'i lha). A practitioner's specially important buddha- deity form.
perfection stage. This is the second stage of the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras, which follows on the successful completion of the creation stage (see above). After the yogi/ni has developed the ability to totally transform his or her perception and conception, so that s/he stably perceives the environment as the pure mandala, her or his body as a deity body, his or her speech as mantra, and her or his mind as buddha-wisdom, all three
656 ? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms
isolated from ordinariness, imperfection, and impurity, s/he is ready and secure enough to enter the practice of the rehearsal of death, the between, and the rebirth processes with a view to accelerating the evolutionary accumulation of the stores of merit and wisdom to gain buddhahood within a single lifetime or at maximum a few lifetimes. These processes are usually numbered five, including the stages of: ( 1 ) body isolation, (2) speech isolation, (3) mind isolation/self-consecration/magic body, (4) clear light/
enlightenment, and (5) communion.
performance, practice (sadhanli - sgrub thabs). This word is usually translated as "practice," which leads to locutions like "practicing the practice. " Wayman tried "evocation" occasionally. In contemporary practitioner circles the Sanskrit sadhana is used as an English word. I have discovered that "performance" works quite well in some cases, in that these contemplative sequences used in the Unexcelled Yoga Tantras and other categories of Tantra involve memorization, practice, ritual forms of gesture, speech, and visualization, and thus very much tum into contemplative performances,
either by a solitary individual or a group.
reincarnation, rebirth (punarjati, punarbhava). It is well to make a distinction between "rebirth" and "reincarnation. " "Rebirth" is the normal process following the death of a normal living being. "Reincarnation" is the conscious and voluntary descent into a physical body of a bodhisattva or buddha who, because of his or her transcendence of the bonds of action and addictions, is not compelled but incarnates in order to develop and liberate other living beings.
private, or personal, instruction (upadesa - man ngag). This is an instruction that connects to the exoteric and esoteric texts and transmits the technique and art of the tradition to the person seeking to understand the texts and put them into practice. Tsong Khapa is very clear that these instructions are not ever in contradiction to the treasured teachings in the texts, simply that they are needed to fully implement them, to bring them out from their hiding places in the indirect, intentional and cryptic encodings in the texts.
They also are required to fully realize the practices; so the serious practitioners requires both the mastery of the textual traditions and the personal instructions of a qualified and exemplary teacher.
psychonaut. A "voyager into the soul," an apt term for the Buddhist adept, who voluntarily abandons the pseudo-security of this planet of delusion, with its solid ground of ordi- nary, individuated suffering, to launch herself through the death-dissolutions into the subtle between states to deepen her wisdom by exploring the unconscious and to expand her compassionate heroism by serving universes of beings on the subtle level, and then to return to be reborn in her old ordinary embodiment of the adept to assist her contem- poraries.
rasana. The right channel in the subtle yogic neural system, red in color, called pi{lgala in the Hindu yogic systems.
radiance (t2bha? ? a, t2lokt2bht2sa - mched pa, snang ba mchedpa). The middle, sun-lit state of the subtle mind, the radiance-luminance-wisdom, corresponding to the anger-related instinctual natures, between the states of luminance and imminence. Some of its synonyms are "art," "imagined," "mentality," "lust," "sight side reality" (these in common with Sntra usage), and "AJ:I," "luminance-radiance," "extreme void," "mental function," and "passion. "
? Glossary of Unique Translation Terms ? 657
Ratnasambhava. One of the five archetypal transcendent buddhas, Lord of the jewel buddha-clan. associated with the southern direction and the buddhaverse Ratnavyoha. He represents the equalizing wisdom. the transformation of the aggregate of sensations, the transmutation of the poison of pride or avarice. and the color yellow. His buddha consort is MamakT.
reality (dharmata. satya, even dharma - chos nyid, bden pa, chos). An important word in Buddhism since enlightenment purports to be ! he perfect knowledge and awareness of the actual condition of things, and the possibility of liberation from suffering is based on the truth of that condition and the untruth of the ordinary condition of suffering.
relativity (pratrtyasamutpada). This Skt. term is usually translated as "dependent origi- nation," which serves in certain contexts. However, in the Madhyamika context, which is an important context in this text, pratTtya. mmutpada describes ultimate reality. It is equated to shanyata, voidness, the nature of birthlessness; thus "origination" is somewhat out of place, since ultimately no thing originates. "Relativity," which T. Stcherbatski used perhaps over-zealously by extension for "voidness" itself, seems ideal to convey the sense that nothing exists independent of relation with something else; therefore there is no absolute, permanent, independent self-substantial thing-only things that exist con- ventionally, dependent on their verbal and intellectual designations.
samadhi (samadhi - ting nge 'dzin). An important Sanskrit word for meditational practice and meditational achievement. Usually defined as "one-pointedness of mind," it can also refer to creative mind states after enlightenment, mental concentrations which produce special light rays, liberating environments for disciples and so forth. It has now entered the English dictionary so there is no need for a diacritic mark.
samsara (sari'ISI'lra - 'khor ba). This is existence controlled by ignorance, desire, and hatred, which is always suffering for beings caught in it. It is by now an English word. and so can be written without diacritical marks. It is sometimes translated as cyclic existence, life cycle, or simply life. See "life. "
Sarhgha. The third of the Three Jewels, being the fourfold community of those who live in refuge in the Dharma and the Buddha Jewels. Its inclusion is extended in Universal Vehicle and Tantric literatures to include noble, angelic, and divine beings.
savior (nt'Jtha - mgon po). This is usually translated "protector," but so is Dharmapala (chos bsrungs, chos skyongs), name for mundane guardians of the tradition. Natha as in Natha Nagarjuna, Maitreyanatha, refers to an angelic or divine, messianic buddha- being who nurtures and guards the evolutionary essence, the spiritual soul, and so saves you from lifetimes of suffering in samsaric hells and wasted migratory lives.
self (t'Jtmll - bdag). It is crucial to understand what is meant by "self," before one is able to realize the all-important "selflessness. " Before we can discover an absence, we have to know what we are looking for, what we have been assuming to be present. In all Buddhist teachings, there is a self of persons (subjectivities) and a self of things (objectivities), both presumed habitually by living beings and hence informative of their perceptions. Were these "selves" to exist as they appear because of our presump-
tion, they should exist as substantial, self-subsistent entities within things, or as the intrinsic realities of things, or as the intrinsic identities of things, all permanent, unrelated and nonrelative, etc. The nondiscovery of such "selves" within changing,
658 ? GlossaryofUniqueTranslationTerms
relative. interdependent persons and things is the realization of ultimate reality, or
selflessness.
selflessness (anatmata, or nairatmya). This describes actual reality, as finally there is no enduring person himself or herself or thing-in-itself, since persons and things exist only in the relative. conventional, or superficial sense, and not in any ultimate or absolute sense. To understand Buddhist teaching correctly, we must be clear about the two senses (conventional/ultimate, or relative/absolute), since mistaking denial of ultimate self as denial of conventional self leads to nihilism, and mistaking affirmation of conventional self as affirmation of ultimate self leads to absolutism. Nihilism and abso- lutism effectively prevent us from realizing our enlightenment, hence are very much to be avoided.
signlessness (animitta). In ultimate reality, there is no sign, as a sign signals or signifies something to someone and hence is inextricably involved with the relative world. We are so conditioned by signs that they seem to speak to us as if they had a voice of their own.
