1 See glossary: Abhidharma.

2 Literally’ awakened one,’ a bodhisattva is practitioner who has vowed to defer personal liberation in order to help sentient beings.

3 The Chan School had five major sects: Caodong, Fayan, Linji, Weiyang, and Yunmen.

4 Attributed to the great scholar/translator Nagarjuna, the Mahaprajnaparamita-sastra, was translated into Chinese by Kumarajiva. These lines appear in T. Vol. 25, Fascicle 1, No. 1509.

5 These two lines appear in the chapter, Samadhi and Prajna. For a full English translation of this sutra, see The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch, by Philip B. Yampolsky (NY: Columbia University Press, 1967.

6 This statement appears in the chapter, Formless precepts, of The Platform Sutra of the Sixth Patriarch.

7 Propensities (vasanas) are overt, as well as subtler and deeply ingrained habits (behavioral patterns), which mold and condition our lives, compelling us to perpetuate vexations and continuation in cyclic existence (samsara).

8 Perfect or transcendent wisdom from: prajna (wisdom)+ paramita (perfection).

9 The skandhas are the five aggregates (heaps) of experience. They consist of form, sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness. The five skandhas operating together make up our conscious life.

10 The four great vows of the bodhisattva: I vow to deliver all sentient beings. I vow to cut off all vexations. I vow to master limitless approaches to Dharma. I vow to attain supreme buddhahood.

11 Bodhi-mind (bodhicitta) is the aspiration to enlightenment on the Mahayana path, which stresses the practice of compassion simultaneously with the cultivation of wisdom.

12 The sixth consciousness integrates the perceptions of the five sense consciousnesses, i.e., the consciousnesses of sight, sound, scent, taste, and touch; as such, it is the fundamental faculty of discrimination and cognition.

13 ‘Retribution’ refers to the ripening, or working out, of karma, whether good, bad, or neutral.