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adharma | Injustice, evil and against moral laws (not dharma). |
advaita | The supreme Reality. Used in Vedanta which stresses the unity of the Self (Atman) and Brahman. (without a second) |
ahamkara | Self will, separateness. |
ahimsa | Nonviolence, no injury, wishing no harm (not violence) as taught by Gandhi. |
akasha | Space and sky; the most subtle of the five elements. |
akshara | The eternal, Om. |
Ananta | The cosmic serpent on which Vishnu reclines in rest. |
apara | Lower knowledge; intellectual knowledge (not eternal) |
Arjuna | Seeks guidance from Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. One of the five Pandava brothers and an important figure in Indian epic and legend. |
Aryaman | Vedic god and an ancestor of mankind (noble one). |
asat | Untruth, untrue, unreal, lacking goodness. |
ashvattha | The pipal tree (like fig) or what is holy and found at temples. |
Ashvatthama | Drona's son who is a great archer and warrior. |
asura | Demon or a being with an evil nature. |
Atman | Divine Soul and Self in every creature. |
avatara | The descent of God; the incarnation of Vishnu; divine consciousness appearing first in the human heart (down cross). |
avidya | Ignorance, absence of wisdom, need of knowledge (not wisdom). |
avyaya | Changeless, eternal |
Bhagavad Gita | Hindu scripture of Krishna advising Arjuna (Lord song, The Song of the Lord) |
bhakti | Devotion, worship, love. |
bhakti yoga | The Way of Love. |
Bhishma | Kaurava dynasty elder who lets himself be killed by Arjuna in the Mahabharata battle. |
Brahma | Creator God who stands alongside preserver Vishnu and Destroyer Shiva. Not the same as Brahman. |
brahmacharya | self control, purity (conduct leading to God). |
Brahman | Highest God, supreme Reality, ground of being, impersonal God. |
brahmanirvana | Spiritual goal; union with eternity, union in Brahman (nirvana in Brahman). |
Brahmavidya | The science of knowing Brahman. |
brahmin | Person of the priestly/ learned class (person who strives to know Brahman). |
Bhrigu | A sage in ancient legend. |
Brihaspati | The guru/ priest of the gods. |
Buddha | Siddhartha Gautama Shakyamuni when enlightened (The awakened one). |
buddhi | Discriminating in the understanding of the correct view or correct purpose through true intelligence. |
Chitraratha | King of Gandharvas (having a bright chariot). |
daivam | Divine will, destiny. |
deva | A god. Immortal but like mortals in behaviour. |
devi | Goddess that is immortal but like a mortal. |
dharma | The universal law that unifies, duty. |
Dhritarashtra | Being blind since birth Dhritarashtra has never been enthroned as the rightful king of the Kurus, but is the effective ruler. The whole Bhagavad Gita is a narration told by Sanjaya to the blind king, whose sons are the Kauravas. |
Draupadi | The royal princess who married each of the five Pandava brothers. |
Drona | A brahmin, then warrior, and later general of the Kaurava army. Teacher of the royal princes. He taught the heroes of the Mahabharata war skills. |
duhkha | Suffering, pain, sadness. |
Gandharva | Heavenly musicians who are demigods, sensitive, proud, handsome and amorous. |
Gandiva | Arjuna's bow, a gift from the god offire. |
Ganges | The sacred river. |
Garuda | Vishnu's great eagle. |
gayatri | Metre used in Vedic hymns and especially a prayer to the sun. |
Gita | Shorter name of the Bhagavad Gita (the Song). |
Guna | The three qualities making up phenomena: sattva (law, harmony, purity, goodness - can say, "It is sattvic."), rajas (energy, passion - can say, "It is rajasic."), and tamas (inertia, ignorance - can say, "It is tamasi."). |
guru | A spiritual mentor. |
Hastinapura | Capital of the Pandavas and descendents, about sixty miles northeast of Delhi (city of the elephants). |
Hari | Vishnu or Krishna. |
Himalaya | Mountain range home of Shiva and other gods (hima, laya is snow, abode). |
Ikshvaku | Son of Manu, founder of the great Solar Dynasty of kings. |
Indra | The god of storms and battle. Indra is the chief of the gods (devas) in the Veda, but his place declines afterwards. |
Ishvara | The Lord, God. |
Janaka | Ancient effective king and a holy sage too. |
Janardana | Krishna (he who stirs up the people). |
jiva | Living soul but one which is separate from Atman, the eternal Soul, Living being. |
jnana | Wisdom, spiritual knowing (jna is to know). |
jnana yoga | The path of Wisdom. |
kalpa | One Day of Brahma or 1000 great yugas meaning 4320 million years. |
kama | Many forms of desire and craving and Kamadeva personifies this. |
Kamadhuk | The cow of wishes who grants all desires. |
Kapila | First teacher of Sankhya philosophy. |
karma | Cause and effect process (from kri meaning to do). |
karma yoga | Doing action and selfless service. |
Karna | Brave warrior in Mahabharata but short mention in the Bhagavad Gita. |
Kauravas | Duryodhana and brothers, seen as wicked usurpers, greedy for wealth and power, and enemies of the Pandavas brothers, who are the good guys. They fight the Pandavas for the ancient throne of Hastinapura. The battle to decide their conflict is ready to commence in the Bhagavad Gita (the sons of Kuru). |
Kripa | Teacher of the royal family and warrior. |
Krishna | Incarnation of Vishnu to restore dharma and who personifies spiritual love in everyone. Krishna is the friend and advisor of Arjuna (in the Bhagavad Gita) and the other Pandava brothers (either black or to krish to draw or be attractive). |
kshatriya | ruling class warrior or princethe . |
kshetra | A field, a place, a sacred place or temple. |
Kubera | God of wealth. |
kundalini | Spiritual or evolutionary energy, coiled at the base of the spine and, according to yogi texts, to be brought out by meditation and yoga so that it can rise up and activate higher centres of con-sciousness (The serpent power). |
Kurukshetra | Site of the Mahabharata battle |
lila game | Krishna in divine play disguises himself as someone in the world (The field of the Kurus). |
Madhava | Krishna (the descendant of Madhu). |
Madhusudana | Krishna, because he killed the demon Madhu (Slayer of Madhu). |
Mahabharata | The great Indian epic from 2,500 years ago, traditionally written by Vyasa. It tells of the deep conflict between the descendants of Pandu (the forces of light) and Dhritarashtra (the forces of darkness). |
manas | That which receives and retains sensory impressions, which we call the mind. |
mantra/ mantram | Reading and speaking a phrase repetitively because it has a spiritual effect. |
Manu | The first man of humankind. |
Marichi | A demigod in the Vedas (particle of light) |
Maya | appearance instead of reality but also from the creative power of God. |
Meru | A mountain at the centre of the world/ cosmos. It is a place of beauty in both cities and gardens. |
Mira | A medieval Indian female saint who gave songs to Krishna. |
moksha | Liberation, salvation, illumination. |
Nakula | A younger Pandava brother. |
Narada | The divine musician and sage and devotee to Krishna. |
Nirvana | No further separateness of the soul (nir, vana, out, to blow; that is blowout). |
nirvikalpa samadhi | Pure state of awareness beyond all dualities and within God. |
Om/ Aum | Holy Word for God (Brahman) repeated in meditation as taught in the Upanishads. |
Pandavas | Arjuna and brothers, Yudhishthira, Bhima, Nakula, and Sahadeva, enemies of Kauravas, and about to fight to a conclusion in the Bhagavad Gita (the sons of Pandu). |
Partha | Arjuna or his brothers Bhima and Yudhishthira (son of Pritha). |
Patanjali | The author of the Yoga Sutras which teach mediation through to self-realisation using raja yoga. He lived around the 100s B.C.E. |
Pavaka | God of fire (the purifier). |
Prahlada | A demon prince yet devoted to Vishnu. |
Prajapati | One great Father of all creatures, although there can be seven or more creating fathers or sages (lord of offspring). |
prajna | Transcendental knowing from meditation (jna, to know). |
prakriti | Forming energy of mental and physical worlds; nature. |
prana | Vital force, breath of life. |
Pritha | (or Kunti) Arjuna's mother thus he can be Partha (son of Pritha). |
Purusha | The Atman or spiritual soul (person) and the Bhagavad Gita uses both. |
Purushottama | Supreme Being (highest person). |
raja yoga | Patanjali taught this meditation as in the Yoga Sutras (the Royal Path). |
rajas | Energy or passion being one of the three guna qualities making up phenomena. |
Rama | An incarnation of Vishnu being the son of Dasharatha (king of Ayodhya), the prince who killed the evil demon Ravana to get his wife Sita back (Prince of Joy). |
Rik | Oldest of the four Vedas. |
Rudras | Either a group of gods or a single one dealing with destruction which replaced Shiva in later Hinduism. |
sadhana | A body of disciplines or way of life going to total self realisation. |
sadhu | Holy man or sage. |
Sahadeva | A younger brother of the Pandavas. |
Sama | One of the four Vedas with songs and chants. |
samadhi | Concentration bringing consciousness in line with God. |
samsara | Birth, decay, death and rebirth which forms the cycle nirvana is meant to end. |
Sanjaya | From divine perception he told the Bhagavad Gita to Dhritarashtra. |
Sankhya | This Hindu philosophy (one of six) teaches the ultimate separation and thus liberation of the individual purusha (spirit) from prakriti (mind and matter). |
sannyasa | Renunciation. |
sat | Truth, good, reality (to be) |
sattva | One of the three qualities making up phenomena, this being law, harmony, purity and goodness. |
satya | Truth and truthful, good and the Good, eg satyagraha |
savikalpa samddhi | Meditation state where awareness of object and subject remain and where there is not total unity with God (having distinctions, admitting separateness). |
Shakti | Feminine side of God or the divine mother, power. |
shama | peace from deep meditation. |
Shankara | Shiva (giver of peace). |
Shiva | Destroys and conquers death coming after Brahma, the Creator, and Vishnu, the preserver. |
shraddha | Faith. |
shudra | A worker or servant, being the fourth Hindu caste. |
Skanda | A god and son of Shiva and being general of the divine forces against the demons. |
soma | the drink of the gods used in Vedic ritual. |
Sri | Lord or holy and often placed before Krishna. |
svadharma | Individual dharma and therefore the duty appropriate to a person. |
tamas | One of the three qualities making up phenomena, being inertia or ignorance. |
tapas | Where having self control delivers spiritual strength. |
tyaga | Renunciation. |
Upanishads | Heard or revelatory documents at the end of each of the four vedas. |
Ushanas | A sage and poet in the Vedas. |
varna | One of the four castes of traditional Hindu society. |
Varuna | God of waters and the ocean who in the Veda is the moral overseer of the world. |
Vasuki | The king of the serpents who lives in the under world and balances the world on his serpent hood. |
Veda | The most ancient scriptures in Sanskrit being heard as knowledge from God to the mystics (vid, to know). |
vidya | Knowledge, wisdom in general or a science/ field of study. |
vijnana | Knowledge, judgment, understanding. |
Vishnu | The Preserver (after Brahma the creator and before Shiva the destroyer) who always becomes incarnate in every age for dharma and the welfare of all. |
Vivasvat | The ancestor of mankind who is also the sun god and is the father of Manu. |
Vrishni | A clan in north India which completely perished at the end of Krishna's life when their city, Dvaraka, disppeared into the sea. |
Vyasa | The father of both Dhritarashtra and Pandu, who gave Sanjaya the mystic vision to give the dialogue between Krishna and Arjuna, and so is regarded as the author of the Mahabharata and the Bhagavad Gita. |
yajna | Offering, sacrifice and worship. |
Yajur | One of the four Vedas. |
yoga | A discipline to realise the union with God and all life and also one of the six branches of Hindu philosophy as is Sankhya (yuj, to unite). |
yogi | Person carrying out a spiritual discipline. |
Yudhishthira | Arjuna's elder brother, who kept to the dharma. |
yuga | The world goes through 1000 yuga-cycles during one kalpa (a day of Brahma). There are four parts to a yuga-cycle, representing deterioration. First is Krita yuga or the age of perfection, and then treta yuga, followed by dvapara, after which Krishna was made incarnate, and finally the fourth and final yuga, kali happens, where creation is the most deteriorated (yuga is from a game of dice). |