Nidāna
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nidāna (T. gzhi/gleng gzhi; C. yinyuan/nituona; 因/尼陀那). A Sanskrit and Pali term that can mean "cause," "motivation," "occasion," or "episode," depending on the context.[1]
It has three primary meanings within Buddhism:[1]
- a general term for cause, used especially in the context of the twelve links of dependent origination, often referred to as the “twelve nidāna”
- one of the traditional categories of Buddhist literature, devoted to narratives that describe the occasion for the Buddha’s exposition of a particular point of doctrine or a specific monastic rule
- in this context it is one of the nine categories of teachings within the Pali tradition, and one of the twelve categories of teachings in the Sanskrit tradition
- the portion of a sūtra that describes the setting of the discourse, such as where the Buddha was residing, the audience members, etc.
The word is derived from the Sanskrit prefix ni- (नि; "down", "into") plus the root dā (दा; "to bind"), forming the verb nidā (निदा; "to bind on, fasten").[2][3]
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Buswell & Lopez 2014, s.v. nidāna.
- ↑ Thomas William Rhys Davids; William Stede (1921). Pali-English Dictionary. Motilal Banarsidass. p. 358'. ISBN 978-81-208-1144-7.
- ↑ Monier Monier-Williams (1872). A Sanskrit-English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. p. 486.
Sources
Buswell, Robert E.; Lopez, Donald S. (2014), The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism, Princeton University
External links
Nidana, Wikipedia
