Pali glossary

Non-self; the teaching that no permanent, unchanging self or soul exists in any phenomenon.

Impermanence; the characteristic that all conditioned phenomena are transient and subject to change.

The Blessed One; an honorific title for the Buddha connoting fortune, dignity, and supreme attainment.

A fully ordained Buddhist monk who lives by the Vinaya rules and depends on almsgiving.

The teaching of the Buddha; also used for phenomena in general and for one's duty or moral law.

Suffering, unsatisfactoriness, the pervasive quality of conditioned existence that is rooted in craving.

Intentional action — mental, verbal, or physical — understood to have consequences that shape future experience.

The unconditioned; liberation from the cycle of rebirth through the complete cessation of craving and ignorance.

The Middle Indo-Aryan liturgical language in which the Theravāda canon (Tipiṭaka) is preserved.

The community of Buddhist practitioners; specifically the community of ordained monks and nuns.

Ethical conduct; the first of the three trainings (sikkhā), comprising right speech, action, and livelihood.

A discourse or teaching of the Buddha; the basic literary unit of the Sutta Piṭaka.

The Three Baskets; the complete Pali canon comprising Vinaya Piṭaka, Sutta Piṭaka, and Abhidhamma Piṭaka.

Observance day; held on new moon, full moon, and quarter-moon days for recitation of the Pātimokkha and lay precepts.

The monastic code; the first of the Three Baskets, containing rules of discipline for monks and nuns.

The third basket of the Pali canon; a systematic philosophical analysis of mind, matter, and dependent origination.

Intention or volition; the mental factor that constitutes kamma. The Buddha defined kamma as cetanā.

View, opinion, or speculative belief. Wrong view (micchā-diṭṭhi) is a root cause of suffering; right view (sammā-diṭṭhi) is the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path.

Meditative absorption; a state of deep concentration characterised by the presence of specific mental factors. Four form jhānas and four formless jhānas are enumerated.

Path; specifically the Noble Eightfold Path (aṭṭhaṅgika-magga) leading to the cessation of suffering.

Collection; the five major groupings of suttas in the Sutta Piṭaka: Dīgha, Majjhima, Saṃyutta, Aṅguttara, and Khuddaka.

Dependent origination; the 12-link chain describing how suffering arises conditioned by ignorance and how it ceases when ignorance ceases.

Wisdom; the third of the three trainings (sikkhā). The direct understanding of the three characteristics — impermanence, suffering, non-self.

Concentration; the second of the three trainings. The unification of mind through sustained attention on a meditation object.

Craving; the second noble truth, identified as the origin of suffering. Divided into craving for sensual pleasure, craving for existence, and craving for non-existence.

A title for the Buddha meaning 'the one who has thus gone' or 'the one who has thus come'. Used by the Buddha to refer to himself in the third person throughout the Nikāyas.

Insight meditation; the contemplative practice of directly observing the three characteristics of phenomena — impermanence, suffering, and non-self.

Ignorance; the first link in the chain of dependent origination (paṭicca-samuppāda) and the root cause of continued rebirth. Not mere lack of information but a fundamental misapprehension of the nature of reality.

Euphonic combination; the fusion of adjacent phonemes at word boundaries in Pali. A major challenge for automated word segmentation — 'Ekamsamayam' must be decomposed to 'ekaṃ samayaṃ' before lemmatization.

Cause, origin, or occasion; also the 12 links of dependent origination as listed in the Mahānidāna Sutta. Each link is a nidāna — a conditioned arising that gives rise to the next.

Mind or consciousness; the third object of mindfulness in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. In the Abhidhamma, 89 types of consciousness (citta) are enumerated and classified by their quality and object.

Feeling-tone; the quality of pleasantness, unpleasantness, or neutrality that accompanies every conscious moment. The second of the four objects of mindfulness in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta.

A fully ordained Buddhist nun who lives by the Bhikkhunī-vibhaṅga rules. The parallel order to the bhikkhus, established by the Buddha after the request of Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī.

Commentary; the genre of Pali literature that interprets and expands on the canonical texts. The principal Theravāda commentaries were compiled by Buddhaghosa in the 5th century CE from earlier Sinhala sources.

Arising or origination; the second of the Four Noble Truths (cattāri ariyasaccāni): the truth of the arising of suffering. Specifically, the arising of dukkha through craving (taṇhā) conditioned by ignorance.