Concepts
The ideas of unitive knowledge, from Absolute to Zen, with their original terms and the ways each tradition uses them.
A
- AbsoluteThat which is unconditioned and depends on nothing else.
- AdhyāsaSuperimposition: taking one thing for another, as a rope for a snake.
- AhiṃsāNon-harming: the refusal to injure any living being, central to Jain, Buddhist and Hindu ethics.
- AnekāntavādaThe Jain doctrine that reality is many-sided, and no single viewpoint captures it whole.
- ApatheiaFreedom from the passions: for the Stoics the calm of the sage, for the desert monks the health of soul that opens into love and prayer.
- Apophatic theologySpeaking of God by negation: saying what God is not.
- ĀtmanThe self, in the Upaniṣads and Vedānta.
- AttentionThe undivided, receptive presence of mind that many traditions treat as the heart of prayer and contemplation.
- AvidyāIgnorance: not a lack of information, but a misapprehension of what one is.
- AwarenessKnowing presence; in several traditions, the witness of all experience.
B
- BaqāʾIn Sufism, subsistence in God after the passing away of the self.
- BeingThe fact or act of existing; the subject of ontology.
- BhaktiLoving devotion to a personal God.
- BodhisattvaOne who seeks awakening for the sake of all beings.
- BrahmanIn the Upaniṣads, the ultimate reality underlying all things.
- Buddha-natureThe teaching that all beings have the potential, or the nature, of a buddha.
C
- Coincidence of oppositesThe meeting of contraries in the ultimate, beyond the reach of reason: Nicholas of Cusa’s coincidentia oppositorum.
- Comparative religionThe systematic comparison of religious traditions.
- ConsciousnessAwareness: the fact that there is experience at all.
- ContemplationLoving, attentive gazing on what is most real; in Christian use, a gift of prayer.
D
- DaoThe Way: in Daoism, the nameless source and pattern of all things.
- DeVirtue or power: the efficacy of one who embodies the Dao.
- Dependent originationThe teaching that everything arises in dependence on conditions.
- DetachmentThe letting go of self-will, images and attachments so that God, or the true self, can be found: Eckhart’s abegescheidenheit.
- DevekutCleaving to God: in Jewish mysticism, constant attachment of the mind to God.
- DhikrThe remembrance of God, above all by the repetition of divine names.
- Divine energiesIn Orthodox theology, God’s uncreated activities, as distinct from God’s essence.
- DukkhaSuffering or unsatisfactoriness, the first of the Four Noble Truths.
E
- Ein SofIn Kabbalah, the Infinite: God as hidden and beyond all attributes.
- EmanationThe procession of all things from a first principle, as light from a source.
- Emptiness (śūnyatā)In Mahāyāna Buddhism, the absence of intrinsic existence in all things.
- EnlightenmentAwakening; in Buddhism, the end of ignorance and suffering.
- EpistemologyThe study of knowledge and its limits.
- ErosLove as longing for the beautiful and the good, which in Plato draws the soul upward to the divine.
F
G
- GodThe supreme being of theistic traditions: creator, sustainer and object of worship.
- GodheadIn Eckhart, the hidden ground of God beyond the persons and every name.
- Ground of the soulThe innermost depth of the soul, beyond all its powers, where for Eckhart the soul and God are one.
- GuṇasThe three strands of nature in Sāṃkhya, clarity, activity and inertia, of which everything material and mental is woven.
H
I
- Ik OṅkārThe oneness of God, the first words of the Sikh scripture.
- ImmanenceThe presence of the divine or ultimate within the world and the self.
- Intellectual intuitionA knowing that grasps its object directly, without senses or concepts: denied by Kant, claimed by Fichte and Schelling.
- InterpenetrationThe Huayan teaching that every phenomenon contains and is contained by every other, as in Indra’s net.
- ʿIshqPassionate love, in Sufism the love that draws the soul to God.
- ĪśvaraThe Lord: God as personal creator and ruler of the world.
J
K
- KaruṇāCompassion: the wish that beings be free from suffering.
- KenshōIn Zen, “seeing one’s nature”: an awakening to one’s buddha-nature.
- Kevala-jñānaIn Jainism, the omniscience of the liberated soul, freed from the karma that obscured it.
- KhudiMuhammad Iqbal’s philosophy of the self, which is to be strengthened and realized in relation to God, not dissolved.
- KnowledgeJustified understanding; in contemplative traditions, also knowledge by identity.
- KōanA paradoxical case or saying from the Chan and Zen masters, used as the focus of meditation to break through ordinary thinking.
L
- Learned ignoranceThe knowing recognition that the infinite exceeds all knowledge: Nicholas of Cusa’s docta ignorantia.
- Li (principle)In Neo-Confucianism, the principle or pattern that makes each thing what it is.
- LiangzhiInnate knowing of the good, which Wang Yangming made the heart of his teaching.
- LīlāDivine play: creation as the spontaneous, purposeless delight of God.
- LogosWord, reason or account: for the Stoics the divine reason that orders the cosmos, and for Christians the Word of God.
M
- MāyāThe power by which the one appears as many; in Advaita, the world as appearance.
- MetaphysicsThe study of what is fundamentally real.
- Mindfulness (sati)Attentive awareness of body, feeling, mind and phenomena.
- MokṣaLiberation from the cycle of birth and death; the highest human goal.
- Mystical experienceExperience reported as direct contact with, or union with, ultimate reality.
N
- NāmThe divine Name: God’s presence and revelation, and the practice of remembering it.
- NeidanDaoist inner alchemy: the refinement of the body’s essence, energy and spirit to return to the Dao.
- NembutsuMindfulness of the Buddha, above all the recitation of Amida’s name, the central practice of Pure Land Buddhism.
- NirvāṇaThe cessation of craving and suffering; the goal of the Buddhist path.
- Non-self (anātman)The Buddhist teaching that no permanent self can be found in or behind experience.
- NondualityThe claim that reality is ultimately not two.
- NousIntellect: for Plato, the highest part of the soul; for Plotinus, the second principle.
O
P
- Philosophy of mindPhilosophical study of mind, consciousness and their place in nature.
- Philosophy of religionPhilosophical examination of religious claims and experience.
- PrajñāWisdom: insight into the true nature of things.
- PrakṛtiIn Sāṃkhya and Yoga, nature or matter, including the mind.
- PratyabhijñāRecognition: in Kashmir Śaivism, the self’s recognition that it is Śiva.
- PremaPure love of God, held by the Bengal Vaiṣṇavas to surpass even liberation.
- Pure prayerPrayer free of images and thoughts, in which the mind stands before God: the summit of the desert monks’ way.
- PuruṣaIn Sāṃkhya and Yoga, pure consciousness, distinct from all of nature.
R
S
- SahajThe natural, spontaneous state of equipoise reached in union with God.
- ŚaktiPower: the dynamic, creative energy of the divine, often worshipped as the Goddess.
- SamādhiMeditative absorption, in which the mind is wholly one with its object or wholly still.
- SefirotIn Kabbalah, the ten powers or qualities through which the hidden God is manifest.
- SelfWhat one is, beneath roles, thoughts and body.
- ShekhinahThe indwelling presence of God; in Kabbalah, the feminine aspect of the divine.
- Sobriety and intoxicationTwo Sufi descriptions of the mystic’s state: the ecstatic “drunkenness” of union, and the sober return to the world with God.
- SoulThe life and inner self of a person, in Greek philosophy and Christian thought.
- SpandaIn Kashmir Śaivism, the divine pulsation or vibration of consciousness.
- Storehouse consciousness (ālaya-vijñāna)In Yogācāra, the deepest layer of mind, holding the seeds of experience.
T
- TawḥīdThe oneness of God, the first principle of Islam; for the Sufis, also the unification of the heart.
- The beatific visionIn Christian theology, the direct vision of God that is the soul’s final happiness.
- The dark nightIn John of the Cross, the purifying darkness through which the soul passes to union.
- The Jesus PrayerThe short, repeated prayer at the heart of hesychast practice.
- The numinousRudolf Otto’s term for the holy as wholly other, awesome and fascinating.
- The OneIn Neoplatonism, the first principle, beyond being and thought.
- The perennial philosophyThe claim that one wisdom underlies the world’s religious and mystical traditions.
- The perfect human beingIn the school of Ibn ʿArabī, the human being who fully reflects all the names of God.
- The three waysPurgation, illumination and union: the classic stages of the Christian spiritual life.
- The two truthsConventional truth and ultimate truth, and how they relate.
- TheōsisDeification: in Eastern Christianity, the human being’s participation in God.
- Threefold truthZhiyi’s teaching that every phenomenon is at once empty, provisionally real and the middle: three aspects of one reality.
- TikkunIn Lurianic Kabbalah, the repair of the shattered world, in which every person takes part.
- TranscendenceBeing beyond the world, or beyond all categories.
- TruthWhat is so; the agreement of thought with reality, and in some traditions reality itself.
- TzimtzumIn Lurianic Kabbalah, God’s withdrawal to make room for the world.
U
W
- Waḥdat al-shuhūdThe “unity of witnessing”: Aḥmad Sirhindī’s teaching that the mystic’s experience of oneness is real as experience, not as a unity of being.
- Waḥdat al-wujūdThe “oneness of being”, the teaching associated with Ibn ʿArabī and his school.
- WisdomUnderstanding joined to right living.
- Wu weiNon-forcing action: acting in accord with the Dao, without striving.