Glossary

Some of the key terms in making these practices vital

awakening
A process in which the practitioner finally experiences a profound letting go of the causes of suffering. This happens by realising, at a visceral level, the impermanence and insubstantiality of all the elements of her or his experience. One then attains ‘knowledge and vision of things as they really are’, which allows this sense of letting go.

Although awakening is a fundamental, formative process, it is often referred to as if it were a status or a state of being. Awakening is sometimes called ‘enlightenment’, and it also implies the liberated state of mind called nirvana in Sanskrit and nibbana in Pali.

When one awakens, the delusion of ego, of separate selfhood that causes our anguish, falls away. We then realise our interconnectedness with all of life, in this way experiencing unobstructed friendliness, compassion, shared joy and equanimity.

Awakening is not a matter of all or nothing. As we progress towards it, the heart and mind become more free, more positive and peaceful. How we are in the world and how we relate to others is enriched and becomes less troublesome.

It is through understanding and making the Buddha’s teachings an important part of our lives that we can gradually achieve this well being. Interestingly, modern psychology is reaching many of the same conclusions as the Buddha did 2,600 years ago about how to be a healthy, happy human.


the four brahma viharas
The four immeasurables, or literally the ‘divine abodes’, these are the four emotional tones of the awakened mind and are the tell-tale signs of awakening.

• friendliness – (also known as unversal loving kindness), which refers to a feeling of kindness and good will towards all sentient beings (human and otherwise)
• compassion – an understanding, empathic care towards all others in their moments of suffering
• empathic joy – often known as ‘sympathetic joy’, this refers to a genuine happiness at the joy of others
• equanimity – a calm, positive emotional balance in the face of both good fortune and bad.
  
  
  

Buddha
A title meaning ‘one who is awake’. “The Buddha” refers to a man called Siddhattha Gotama who lived around 480–400 BCE, who awakened fully at the age of 35 and who spent the next 45 years until his death instructing others.


dharma
In the first instance, the term dharma (a Sanskrit word, in Pali it is dhamma) refers to the teachings of the Buddha. The dharma is also a living tradition to which many awakened teachers have contributed – and continue to contribute – since the Buddha’s death.

‘Buddhism’, on the other hand, is a concept invented in Europe in the 19th century as a catch-all for the many varieties of dharma practice that European travellers ‘discovered’ in Asian countries. Today, it still functions as a term of rough and ready convenience.


dana
As its most fundamental level, dana means ‘generosity’. In the context of a community, it refers to the voluntary donations from participants to a teacher in gratitude for the teaching, and to a community to enable it to function.

The idea here is that it supports teachers who have spent a lot of time learning about and practising the dharma, and who, out of their own generosity, are freely sharing that learning with others.

It is also felt that since the generosity of others has meant that the teacher can share those teachings with us, our dana allows the teacher to offer those teachings to others.

This reciprocal relationship has underpinned the dharma tradition since its appearance two and a half millennia ago. Now, it is allowing us to create a culture of generosity.


the four focuses of mindfulness
The Pali term satipatthana is usually translated as the four foundations of mindfulness, and refers to facets of our ordinary experience to which we should pay special attention. In fact, they go to the heart of insight meditation and the Satipatthana sutta is considered the Buddha’s main guiding teaching for the practice.

In this teaching, we are asked to contemplate these four facets repeatedly, observing for ourselves that every experience we have can contains the seeds of suffering, is impermanent and devoid of any reference to a separate ego.

Once we directly and consciously experience these ‘markers’ of daily experience in this way, we’re in the process of breaking out of the world view that has trapped us for so long and consistently led us into error – the world view that suggests that our experience should always be wonderful, can be made permanent, and is all about ‘me’.

By working with these four focuses we cultivate presence, that is awareness of what is happening right now. The more we can dwell in the here and now, rather than rehashing the past or fantasising about the future, the happier we will be, the less suffering we will endure, and the closer we will come to ‘letting go’ of our ego (the cause of most of our suffering).

Secondly, as we learn to see our experience as being made up of these impermanent, selfless components, it becomes easier to abandon the stream of disturbing emotions that our ego-centred thoughts tend to produce – emotions that obstruct our efforts to be kind, compassionate, peaceful and joyful.

It’s like watching a puppet show. If all you can see is the stage and the puppets, you can be swept along with the story as if it were reality. However, if you can see the puppeteers pulling strings and putting on funny voices, the puppet shows become less alluring, less powerful over your emotions. You can see it for what it is.

If we can see the four components of our being and start to be aware of the patterns that occur between them, we can stop being ruled by our mind and emotions and start making choices that are more in line with the noble eightfold path (the Buddha’s ‘to do list’ on how to live).

The four focuses of mindfulness are:

• body – the physical sensations we feel, internally and through our physical senses
• feeling – the spontaneous reaction (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral) we have to everything we see, hear, smell, touch, taste or think of. This can also be thought of as our automatic feeling of a) desire or liking, b) a neutral reaction, or c) a desire to avoid or push away
• mind – emotions, moods and other mind states. These are referred to as mind states because the Buddha saw what modern psychology now recognises, that thoughts and feelings are inextricably connected.
• phenomena (dhammas) – under this heading we systematically contemplate all elements of direct experience in terms of sets of central teachings that the Buddha developed in list form, starting with the five hindrances, and ending with the four ennobling truths. In each case we test the teaching against our own direct, intimate experience, and we note how the potential for suffering, impermanence and not self is present in every element of experience.
  
  
  

the five hindrances
These are disturbing energies we often experience in meditation and in daily life. They contract the heart or mind as if it were a cramped muscle, and obstruct our access to more supple, expansive states of mind. They are not ‘bad’ things to be pushed aside, rather the result of our own mental habits that we need to engage with so as to overcome them. In this sense, they are our (temporary) teachers.

When you experience a hindrance (or several at the same time!), the most helpful thing to do is simply to notice what’s happening and name the hindrance of the moment, putting your attention on it. Notice how it feels to experience this, and just stay there with the feeling.

The five hindrances are:

• craving for sense contact – we have five physical senses, plus the mind is understood in the dharma as a sixth sense. We have cultivated the habit of having each sense continuously stimulated. when we meditate, we go against this habit, and so craving for stimulation arises.
• aversion – negative reactions of any sort: anger and ill will, but also boredom (which is a negative reaction to what is happening in the moment).
• sloth and torpor – sloth refers to physical lethargy, which takes the form of slouching in meditation, and torpor is the mental dullness and sluggishness which accompanies it.
• restlessness and anxiety – even when we are sleeping, our bodies constantly move and squirm. When we sit still in meditation, we thwart its usual restlessness, which can in turn induce anxiety in the mind.
• doubt – lack of self-confidence that we can practise successfully, and lack of conviction or trust in the methods and benefits of the practice. This shilly-shallying doubt simply obstructs practice; it is quite different to the bracing, no holds barred questioning (‘great doubt’) that the dharma encourages – there is no blind faith required to learn the dharma.
  
  
  

the three refuges (or jewels)
These are the central inspirations and orientations of the dharma practitioner. They give our lives direction and meaning – clarity without closure – as we follow the path to awakening and the end of suffering.

In the face of the fragility and uncertainty of our lives, which inevitably end in loss and death, we all ‘go for refuge’ to something – whether wealth, fame, career, relationships, entertainments, fantasies about all of the above, insurance policies, and whatever else we can find to distract us from our actual experience – such as obsessive busy-ness, drugs, overindulgence in music and television, fanaticisms and so on.

These are all ineffective refuges. They can ultimate fail and usually they make matters worse. But the three refuges of buddhism can never be taken away from us, they are always there for us, and tackle the great matter of life and death directly. They are:

• the Buddha – in this context, the term refers mainly to our human potential to awaken and in a way that makes life both meaningful and joyful. The fact that the Buddha was a human being too and he achieved awakening is an encouragement to us.
• the dharma – refers to the teachings of the Buddha and of the many contributors since who have maintained the dharma as a living tradition. The dharma is to be practised and realised, not merely contemplated intellectually. Nor is it a belief system or a philosophy.
• the sangha – refers in the first instance to our spiritual friends with whom we practise, but more generally to our fellowship with all dharma practitioners everywhere – mahasangha, the great sangha.

metta
At the heart of this term is the concept of friendliness, though it’s often translated as ‘universal loving kindness’. In this day and age, however, the feeling of friendliness and goodwill towards all other sentient beings (human and otherwise) comes closest to the spirit of metta.


four ennobling truths
More often translated as the Four Noble Truths (capital F, capital N, capital T), they bring grace to our daily lives as we work with them. Rather than being metaphysical propositions, dogmas or beliefs, rather they are inquiry questions that can focus our meditation practice and our everyday awareness.

1. the truth of the existence of suffering which is to be understood
In Pali this is known as dukkha and also implies unsatisfactoriness, anguish, stress, distress. We all experience suffering, but we are not always aware of it. Even when we are (half) conscious of it, we often try to ignore it or blame others or our ‘fate’ for it. The dharma requires us instead to notice it, take responsibility for it, and investigate and get to know it.

One of the most common mistranslations of this truth is ‘life is suffering’, which is radically different from the Buddha’s actual teaching. We all experience both suffering and joy.

2. the truth of the cause of suffering which is to be let go of
When we look deeply into our experience of suffering (the first truth), we discern that it arises from our self-ishly clutching at ‘pleasant’ experiences and objects of desire, and pushing away what we experience as unpleasant.

When we begin to weaken these selfish impulses, we weaken the causes of suffering in our lives. Eventually we can let go of them altogether.

Note that this whole process depends ultimately on the delusion that each of us is a separate entity, a ‘self’. However, this concept is often hard to grasp when beginning your exploration of dharma practice – don’t let this put you off.

The call to action here is to truly accept and embrace the impermanent and insubstantial nature of all things. To relish the various forms of joy while they’re here and to let them go when they pass. To experience the various forms of suffering when they come and to let them go when they, too, pass.

3. the truth of the end of suffering which is to be experiences and recognised
Suffering, like everything else, depends on causes and preconditions. If we cease to renew the causes of suffering, then it too must cease. Dharma practice deliberately undermines these causes (the second truth) until eventually they are eradicated.

In moments of deep meditation, and even in moments of total contentment in a life well lived, the causes of suffering will temporarily exhaust themselves, and without warning we experience a plush, sublime stillness. This is a foretaste of full awakening. We need to cultivate the awareness of this experience to know when one of these moments has come, to savour it, and to let it inform and inspire our practice. In this way we ‘realise’ even the most fleeting moment of bliss.

4. the truth of the path leading to the end of suffering which is to be cultivated
The Buddha taught a methodical, systematic path to put an end to suffering and attain liberation.

In general terms he called it ‘the middle way’ which avoids extremes, in the first instance those of self-indulgence on the one hand, and self-mortification on the other.

Then he charted a detailed ‘eightfold path’ that focuses our attention on the important headings in our lives – our working assumptions and reality constructs, our emotions and intentions, our ethical conduct, how we communicate, how we earn a living, our efforts towards spiritual development, our awareness, and how we deploy our moments of deep meditation. This is his not so little ‘to do list’ for a meaningful, examined life leading ultimately to awakening.


not self
Siddhattha Gotama, the Buddha, did not deal in metaphysics and refused to say whether there is such a thing as a self or soul. What he emphasised repeatedly was that if we pin our identity down to any aspect of our experience, be it the body, feelings, emotions or thoughts, we are falsifying who we truly are in a way that will lead us to act in self-defeating ways.

His doctrine of not self (anatta) does not deny the ultimate existence of a self, but rather erects a warning sign around anything we might latch onto in order to support the delusion of being a Robinson Crusoe type separate ego.


sangha
This term translates as community. In context, it refers to the spiritual community of people who are following the Buddha’s path to awakening.


sutta
The main original teachings of the Buddha are expressed in suttas, or discourses. This oral tradition was eventually committed to writing some five or six centuries after his death. Before and after that process, the teachings were chanted as a way of preserving and diffusing them.


This glossary has been put together by the Beaches Sangha of Sydney and is reproduced with gratitude