Browse Pali

Word studies

Curated studies of the language's central words, with attestation counts and cited lines from the corpus record.

• 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
• citta citta — mind, heart, thought
• dukkha dukkha — suffering, pain, unsatisfactoriness; the unpleasant and stressful, whether of body or mind, and the standing mark of conditioned existence
• kamma 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
• 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
• mettā metta — loving-kindness; benevolence, friendliness, active goodwill toward all living beings, the first of the four brahmavihāras
• nibbāna nibbana — the going out
• paññā panna — wisdom, insight, discernment
• saṅkhāra sankhara — the conditioned formations; the constructing activities and constructed things of mind; the fourth of the five aggregates; the second link of dependent origination
• 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
• vedanā vedana — feeling, felt tone
• viññāṇa vinnana — consciousness; the discriminating awareness that arises with the senses, the fifth aggregate, and the stream that carries individuality across rebirth