Mount Meru, also known as Sumeru, Sineru or Mahāmeru, is the sacred five-peaked mountain of Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist cosmology and is considered to be the centre of all the physical, metaphysical and spiritual universes.
Maitreya or Metteyya, also Maitreya Buddha or Metteyya Buddha, is regarded as the future Buddha of this world in Buddhist eschatology. As the 5th and final Buddha of our times, Maitreya's goal would be to reinstate the Dharma. In all branches of Buddhism, Maitreya is viewed as the direct successor of Gautama Buddha. In some Buddhist literature, such as the Amitabha Sutra and the Lotus Sutra, the being is referred to as Ajita. Despite many individuals and religious leaders claiming to be Maitreya throughout history, all Buddhists firmly agree that these were false claims.
Vaiśravaṇa or Vessavaṇa, is one of the Four Heavenly Kings, and is considered an important figure in Buddhism.
Buddhism includes a wide array of divine beings that are venerated in various ritual and popular contexts. Initially they included mainly Indian figures such as devas, asuras and yakshas, but later came to include other Asian spirits and local gods. They range from enlightened Buddhas to regional spirits adopted by Buddhists or practiced on the margins of the religion. Notably, Buddhism lacks a supreme creator deity.
Buddhist eschatology, like many facets of modern Buddhist practice and belief, came into existence during its development in China, and, through the blending of Buddhist cosmological understanding and Daoist eschatological views, created a complex canon of apocalyptic beliefs. These beliefs, although not entirely part of Orthodox Buddhism, form an important collection of Chinese Buddhist traditions which bridge the gap between the monastic order and local beliefs of Imperial China.
In Buddhism, refuge or taking refuge refers to a religious practice, which often includes a prayer or recitation performed at the beginning of the day or of a practice session. Since the period of Early Buddhism until present time, all Theravada and mainstream Mahayana schools only take refuge in the Three Jewels which are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.
The yakshas are a broad class of nature-spirits, usually benevolent, but sometimes mischievous or capricious, connected with water, fertility, trees, the forest, treasure and wilderness. They appear in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist texts, as well as ancient and medieval era temples of South Asia and Southeast Asia as guardian deities. The feminine form of the word is yakṣī or yakshini.
The Nariphon, also known as Makkaliphon, is a tree in Buddhist mythology which bears fruit in the shape of young female creatures. The maidens grow attached by their head from the tree branches. This tree grows at the Himaphan, a mythical forest where the female fruits are enjoyed by the Gandharvas who cut the fruits and take them away.
Upāsaka (masculine) or Upāsikā (feminine) are from the Sanskrit and Pāli words for "attendant". This is the title of followers of Buddhism who are not monks, nuns, or novice monastics in a Buddhist order, and who undertake certain vows. In modern times they have a connotation of dedicated piety that is best suggested by terms such as "lay devotee" or "devout lay follower".
Jambudvīpa is a name often used to describe the territory of Greater India in Ancient Indian sources. The term is based on the concept of dvīpa, meaning "island" or "continent" in Ancient Indian cosmogony. The term Jambudvipa was used by Ashoka to represent his realm in the third century BCE. The same terminology was used in subsequent texts, for instance Kannada inscriptions from the tenth century CE which also described the region, presumably Ancient India, as Jambudvipa.
A chakravarti is an ideal universal ruler, in the history, religion, and mythologies of India. The concept is present in the cultural traditions of Vedic, Hindu, Jain and Buddhist narrative myths and lore. There are three types of chakravarti: chakravala chakravarti, a king who rules over all four of the continents ; dvipa chakravarti, a ruler who governs only one of those continents; and pradesha chakravarti, a monarch who leads the people of only a part of a continent, the equivalent of a local king. Dvipa chakravarti is particularly one who rules the entire Indian subcontinent. The first references to a Chakravala Chakravartin appear in monuments from the time of the early Maurya Empire, in the 4th to 3rd century BCE, in reference to Chandragupta Maurya and his grandson Ashoka.
Mount Meru is the name of the central world-mountain in Buddhist cosmology. Etymologically, the proper name of the mountain is Meru, to which is added the approbatory prefix su-, resulting in the meaning "excellent Meru" or "wonderful Meru".
Nagaraja is a title used to refer to the nagas, the serpent-like figures that appear in Indian religions. It refers to the kings of the various races of the nāga, the divine or semi-divine, half-human, half-serpent beings that reside in the netherworld (Patala), and can occasionally take human form. Rituals devoted to these supernatural beings have been taking place throughout South Asia for at least two thousand years.
Buddhist cosmology describes the planes and realms in which beings can be reborn. The spatial cosmology consists of a vertical cosmology, the various planes of beings, into which beings are reborn due to their merits and development; and a horizontal cosmology, the distribution of these world-systems into an "apparently" infinite sheet of "worlds." The temporal cosmology describes the timespan of the creation and dissolvement of universes in aeons. Buddhist cosmology is also intwined with the belief of karma, and explains that the world around us is the product of past actions. As a result, some ages are filled with prosperity and peace due to common goodness, whereas other eras are filled with suffering, dishonesty and short lifespans.
Kassapa Buddha (Pāli), known as Kāśyapa (काश्यप) in Sanskrit, is one of the ancient Buddhas whose biography is chronicled in chapter 24 of the Buddhavamsa, one of the books of the Pāli Canon.
Devotion, a central practice in Buddhism, refers to commitment to religious observances or to an object or person, and may be translated with Sanskrit or Pāli terms like saddhā, gārava or pūjā. Central to Buddhist devotion is the practice of Buddhānussati, the recollection of the inspiring qualities of the Buddha. Although buddhānussati was an important aspect of practice since Buddhism's early period, its importance was amplified with the arising of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Specifically, with Pure Land Buddhism, many forms of devotion were developed to recollect and connect with the celestial Buddhas, especially Amitābha.
In Buddhism, faith refers to a serene commitment to the practice of the Buddha's teaching and trust in enlightened or highly developed beings, such as Buddhas or bodhisattvas. Buddhists usually recognize multiple objects of faith, but many are especially devoted to one in particular, such as one particular Buddha. Faith may not only be devotion to a person, but exists in relation to Buddhist concepts like the efficacy of karma and the possibility of enlightenment.
The Vessantara Jātaka is one of the most popular jātakas of Theravada Buddhism. The Vessantara Jātaka tells the story of one of Gautama Buddha's past lives, about a very compassionate and generous prince, Vessantara, who gives away everything he owns, including his children, thereby displaying the virtue of perfect generosity. It is also known as the Great Birth Sermon.
In Buddhist tradition, Vipassī (Pāli) is the twenty-second of twenty-eight Buddhas described in Chapter 27 of the Buddhavamsa. The Buddhavamsa is a Buddhist text which describes the life of Gautama Buddha and the twenty-seven Buddhas who preceded him. It is the fourteenth book of the Khuddaka Nikāya, which in turn is part of the Sutta Piṭaka. The Sutta Piṭaka is one of three pitakas which together constitute the Tripiṭaka, or Pāli Canon of Theravada Buddhism.
Ikka myōju, known in English as One Bright Jewel or One Bright Pearl, is a book of the Shōbōgenzō by the 13th century Sōtō Zen monk Eihei Dōgen. It was written in the summer of 1238 at Dōgen's monastery Kōshōhōrin-ji in Kyoto. The essay marked the beginning of a period of high output of Shōbōgenzō books that lasted until 1246. The book appears as the seventh book in both the 75 and 60 fascicle versions of the Shōbōgenzō, and it is ordered fourth in the later chronological 95 fascicle Honzan editions. The essay is an extended commentary on the famous saying of the Tang Dynasty monk Xuansha Shibei that "the ten-direction world is one bright jewel", which in turn references the Mani Jewel metaphors of earlier Buddhist scriptures. Dōgen also discusses the "one bright jewel" and related concepts from the Shōbōgenzō essay in two of his formal Dharma Hall Discourses, namely numbers 107 and 445, as well as his Kōan commentaries 23 and 41, all of which are recorded in the Eihei Kōroku.
