Treasury of the Eye of True Teaching by Dahui

Author:Dahui [Dahui]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala
Published: 2022-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

Select Glossary of Names and Terms

[A]

Acceptance of no origin—realization of all phenomena as interconnected, nothing occurring independently.

Accumulation of Fragrance—name of a Buddha-land, or field of awareness, appearing in the popular scripture Vimalakirti’s Advice; see Cleary, Vimalakirti’s Advice.

Adamantine sword—also called diamond or precious sword, stands for insight and wisdom, cutting through illusion.

Amitabha—”Infinite Light,” name of the meditation Buddha especially invoked by Pure Land Buddhists, said to preside over a Buddha-land called Sukhavati, “Blissful,” in the remote west, the direction of the setting sun, which symbolizes the ending of life, either by ordinary death or mystic death, internal quiescence, at which time Amitabha is believed to welcome the devotee into the world of bliss.

Ancient mirror—pristine awareness, simply reflecting being as such without interpretation or conceptual overlay.

Ashes—symbolize detachment, dispassion, equanimity, nirvana; “ashes on my head, dirt on my face” represents inward detachment with outward engagement.

[B]

Beating the grass to scare the snakes—teachers’ words or acts intended to elicit reactions to gauge the mentality or state of students.

Bird’s path—the practice of detachment; see “The Three Roads of Tung Shan” in Cleary and Cleary, The Blue Cliff Record, “Traditional Teaching Devices.”

Birth and death—arising and passing away of thoughts, states, and conditions of existence; commonly used as a general term for mundane existence.

Blind baldies—renunciants in form only, monastic careerists without enlightenment.

Blue-eyed foreign monk—refers to Bodhidharma.

Bodhidharma—regarded as the founder of Chan in China.

Bodhisattva—bodhi means enlightenment, sattva means being or essence; bodhisattvas are typically characterized as working for universal enlightenment. According to the scripture on perfect wisdom Questions of Suvikrantavikramin, “This practice of the bodhisattva, that is the practice of perfect insight, is unexcelled, clear, unsurpassed, transcendent…. This practice of the bodhisattva, namely the practice of perfect insight, is the practice of rising above all worlds”; see Cleary, Zen and the Art of Insight.

Bow falls into a wine cup—a reflection of a bow in a cup of wine looks to the drinker like a snake in the wine; the drinker gets sick, but then sees the bow hung on the wall, realizes the “snake” was a reflection of the bow, and, relieved of the influence of his false perception, recovers his well-being.

Brahma—in Hindu cosmology, Brahma as a god represents the creative force.

Buddha Victorious by Great Penetrating Knowledge—a figure in a story in the Lotus Sutra, said to have sat on the site of enlightenment for ten eons without fulfilling Buddhahood; see example 9 in Cleary, Unlocking the Zen Koan.

Buddha-nature—potential for enlightenment, regarded as inherent in all living beings.

Burning Lamp Buddha—symbol of the essential nature of awareness, mythically represented as an ancient Buddha in whose presence the historical Buddha Shakyamuni originally vowed to attain enlightenment.

[C]

Cao Valley—Caoqi, refers to the Sixth Patriarch of Chan; see Cleary, The Sutra of Hui-neng.

Celestial devil—conceptual consciousness; said to dwell in the “heaven of free use of others’ emanations”—that is, using the data from the organs and consciousnesses of the senses to construct subjective perceptions, conceptions, ideas, and attitudes.

Cessation—stilling the mind, stopping the flow of thought; see Cleary, Stopping and Seeing, and Body, Mind, and Breath: A Meditation Handbook.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.