Browse Pali

Word studies

Curated studies of the wing's central words — each grounded in the corpus record, with live attestation counts and cited lines.

• Attā atta — self, soul, one's own person; the reflexive "self" of ordinary speech and, in doctrine, the enduring self whose existence the teaching denies— PTS: "that which has been taken up, assumed."
• cittaṁ citta — mind, heart, thought
• Dukkhā dukkha — suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness; the unpleasant and stressful, whether of body or mind, and the standing mark of conditioned existence— PTS: "adjective noun (adj. unpleasant, painful, causing misery (opp. sukha pleasant Vin.i.34 ; Dhp.117 . Lit. of vedanā (sensation) MN.i.59 (˚ṃ vedanaṃ vediyamāna, see also below iii.1 e) AN.ii.116 = MN.i.10 (sarīrikāhi vedanāhi dukkhāhi). Fig. (fraught with pain, entailing sorrow or trouble) of kāmā DN.i"
• kammaṁ kamma — deed, action, work; in the Buddha's usage, intentional action together with the fruit it ripens into, the moral force by which a being's willed acts shape what befalls it— PTS: "neuter the doing, deed, work orig. meaning (see karoti ) either building (cp. Lit kùrti, Opr. kūra to build) or weaving, plaiting (still in mālākamma and latā˚ “the intertwining of garlands and creepers”; also in kamma-kara possibly orig employed in weaving, i.e. serving); cp. Lat. texo, to weave = "
• mano mano — mind as the coordinating faculty of thought, the intellectual sense that ranges over ideas as the eye ranges over sights, and the sixth sense-base alongside eye, ear, nose, tongue, and body— PTS: "mind, thought."
• Mettaṁ metta — loving-kindness; benevolence, friendliness, active goodwill toward all living beings, the first of the four brahmavihāras— PTS: "friendly, benevolent kind as adj. at DN.iii.191 (mettena kāya-kammena etc.), DN.iii.245 (˚ṃ vacī-kammaṃ); as nt. for mettā in compounds of mettā (cp. mettaṃsa) and by itself at DN.i.227 (mettaṃ + cittaṃ), perhaps also at Snp.507"
• nibbānaṁ nibbana — the going out
• paññā panna — wisdom, insight, discernment
• Saṅkhārā sankhara — the conditioned formations; the constructing activities and constructed things of mind; the fourth of the five aggregates; the second link of dependent origination— PTS: "one of the most difficult terms in Buddhist metaphysics, in which the blending of the subjective-objective view of the world and of happening peculiar to the East, is so complete, that it is almost impossible for Occidental terminology to get at the root of its meaning in a translation. We can only "
• sati sati — mindfulness; the recollective presence of mind that holds an object steadily before awareness, ranging from plain memory to the trained attentiveness of the path— PTS: "feminine memory, recognition, consciousness ... intentness of mind, wakefulness of mind, mindfulness, alertness, lucidity of mind, self-possession, conscience."
• Vedanaṁ vedana — feeling, felt tone
• viññāṇaṁ vinnana — consciousness; the discriminating awareness that arises with the senses, the fifth aggregate, and the stream that carries individuality across rebirth— PTS: "neuter (as special term in Buddhist metaphysics) a mental quality as a constituent of individuality, the bearer of (individual) life, life-force (as extending also over rebirths), principle of conscious life, general consciousness (as function of mind and matter), regenerative force animation, mind"