Study
Buddhist Glossary
Clear explanations of terms from Tibetan Buddhism as we study and practise them: from the foundations of the Buddhist path to the Ngöndro, the Nyingma tradition and Dzogchen. The glossary grows step by step alongside our teachings.
Foundations
Bodhicitta
changchub sem
Bodhicitta is the wish to reach complete awakening, not for your own sake but in order to free all beings from suffering. It is the heart of the Mahayana and Vajrayana path.
Buddha
sangye
A buddha is someone who has fully awakened: free of all confusion, with every quality of the mind fully unfolded. The Buddha is Shakyamuni, the historical teacher who taught this path in India.
The Three Jewels
könchok sum
The Three Jewels are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha: the three in which a Buddhist takes refuge, and the ground on which all further practice rests.
Dharma
chö
Dharma is the Buddha's teaching and the practice of it: the path that leads out of suffering, and the reality that path points towards.
Karma
lé
Karma means action: the understanding that what we do, say and think leaves a trace, and that the trace comes back to us.
Nirvana
nyangdé
Nirvana is liberation from samsara: the ending of suffering and of its causes, desire, aversion and ignorance. The word means "blowing out".
Samsara
khorwa
Samsara is the cycle of existence: being born, living and dying again and again, driven by karma and by confusion about who and what we are.
Sangha
gendün
Sangha is the community of practitioners: the people walking the same path as you, and the third of the Three Jewels in which a Buddhist takes refuge.
Taking refuge
kyabdro
Taking refuge means turning to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha as what you genuinely rely on: the step by which someone enters the Buddhist path.
Vajrayana
Chöd
chöd
Chöd means "cutting through" and is the practice that cuts through clinging to a self, by meeting fear and obstacles with compassion and generosity.
Dakini
khandro
A dakini is the wisdom principle in female form, in Tibetan khandro, "she who moves through space".
Guru yoga
lamé naljor
Guru yoga is the practice of mixing your mind with the mind of the teacher, so that you come to recognise your own awakened nature. It is the final part of the Ngöndro and is often called the heart of the path.
Tantra
gyü
Tantra is the name for the texts in which the Vajrayana teachings are recorded, and for what those texts are about: the unbroken continuity of the nature of mind. The word means "thread" or "continuum".
Tsok
tsok
Tsok is a communal Vajrayana offering practice in which food and drink are offered, blessed, and then shared out among everyone present.
Vajrayana
dorje tekpa
Vajrayana is the branch of Mahayana Buddhism that uses tantric methods such as visualisation and mantra to bring our already present awakened nature directly onto the path. The name means "diamond vehicle".
Ngöndro
Ngöndro (preliminary practices)
ngöndro
Ngöndro is the preliminary practice of Vajrayana Buddhism: the foundation of the path, and at the same time so profound that it contains the entire path.
Vajrasattva
Dorje Sempa
Vajrasattva is the buddha of purification: a form of enlightenment through which practitioners purify the traces of harmful actions and broken commitments, with the hundred-syllable mantra at its heart.
Nyingma & Lineage
Dudjom Tersar
düdjom tersar
The Dudjom Tersar, "the new treasures of Dudjom", is the cycle of terma teachings revealed by Dudjom Lingpa and H.H. Dudjom Rinpoche, and the main lineage of our centre.
Guru Rinpoche (Padmasambhava)
Pema Jungne
Guru Rinpoche, in Sanskrit Padmasambhava, is the Indian master who established Buddhism in Tibet in the eighth century and whom the Nyingma school reveres as the second Buddha.
Nyingma school
nyingma
Nyingma is the oldest school of Tibetan Buddhism, named after the first translations of Buddhist texts brought from India to Tibet in the eighth and ninth centuries.
Dzogchen
Dzogchen
dzogchen
Dzogchen, the Great Perfection, is the highest teaching of the Nyingma school and points directly to the nature of mind, which according to this teaching is already complete and lacks nothing.
Trekchö
trekchö
Trekchö means "cutting through" and is the first of the two main Dzogchen practices, in which the primordial purity of mind is recognised and held without effort.