Glossary

Definitions of terms used throughout CountryReports.

This glossary contains 1,144 terms used throughout CountryReports — political, economic, cultural, historical, and geographic terminology referenced in country profiles and articles. Terms are drawn from authoritative sources including the Library of Congress.

Enlightenment: Philosophical and spiritual movement in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, concerned with the relationship of God, nature, reason, and man, often challenging the tenets of conventional Christianity.
nibbana: More commonly known in Western literature as nirvana. The goal of the path, the extinction of desire, hate, and the illusion of selfhood. A state of mystical union with the absolute one world soul (brahma), not an individual soul that attains it (as in Hinduism). For the Hindu, a state of liberation or illumination. For the Buddhist, there are no immortal particular souls, only the world soul, in which all beings, both animate and inanimate, are participants. The goal of spiritual practice in all branches of Buddhism. Enlightenment is the realization of the identity of the self with the absolute. The release from the cycle of rebirths and the annihilation of the individual being that occurs on achievement of perfect spiritual understanding.; Source: Library of Congress
Theravada Buddhism: Literally, the Buddhism that is ""the way"" or ""doctrine of the elders."" Sinhalese called their beliefs Theravada. Their tradition, frequently described as Hinayana (Lesser Vehicle), preserves a clear understanding of the Buddha as a man who achieved enlightenment and developed monks as accomplished followers of his teachings. This is in contradistinction to the Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) Buddhism, which often treats the Buddha as a superhuman and fills the universe with a pantheon of enlightened figures (bodhisattvas) who help others achieve enlightenment. The Sri Lankans, with rare exception, speak only of Theravada Buddhism, of which there is no central religious authority.