Sanskrit Noun
tattva
Suchness
तत्त्व
དེ་ཁོ་ན་ཉིད།
Basic Meaning
The reality or the objective state of things as they are. In the Buddhist context, it refers to the ultimate nature of things although what exactly suchness means would depend on the philosophical position of the specific schools. The Middle Way school, for instance, consider emptiness as the suchness of all things.
| Term Variations | |
|---|---|
| Key Term | tattva |
| Topic Variation | tattva |
| Tibetan | དེ་ཁོ་ན་ཉིད། ( dekhonyi) |
| Wylie Tibetan Transliteration | de kho na nyid ( dekhonyi) |
| Devanagari Sanskrit | तत्त्व ( tattva) |
| Romanized Sanskrit | tattva ( tattva) |
| Chinese Pinyin | shixiang |
| Japanese Transliteration | jissö |
| Korean Transliteration | silsang |
| Buddha-nature Site Standard English | Suchness |
| Richard Barron's English Term | suchness |
| Jeffrey Hopkin's English Term | reality |
| Ives Waldo's English Term | suchness, the real |
| Term Information | |
| Source Language | Sanskrit |
| Basic Meaning | The reality or the objective state of things as they are. In the Buddhist context, it refers to the ultimate nature of things although what exactly suchness means would depend on the philosophical position of the specific schools. The Middle Way school, for instance, consider emptiness as the suchness of all things. |
| Term Type | Noun |
| Definitions | |
| Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism | In Sanskrit, lit., “thatness”; a term with two important denotations. First, it can mean “ultimate reality,” a synonym of paramärtha, the reality, free from all conceptual elaboration, that must be understood in order to be liberated from rebirth as well as the inexpressible reality that is the object of the Buddha’s omniscient consciousness. Second, more prosaically, the term may be translated as “principle” and refer to the central doctrine of a particular philosophical school, as in the title of the works Tattvasamgraha or Tattvasiddhi. When contrasted with tathatä , tattva is the essential identity of a particular dharma, while tathatä is the common essential reality in which all dharmas partake. |
| RigpaWiki | rigpa:དེ་ཁོ་ན་ཉིད་ |
