prajnan.
/ˈpradʒnə/, /ˈprʌdʒnə/, /prədʒˈnjɑː/, U.S. /ˈprədʒnə/ Buddhism.
Insight into the truths taught by the Buddha, as a faculty required to attain enlightenment; transcendental wisdom. Also as a count noun: a principle of, or teaching on, wisdom.A constituent of the Eightfold Path and a mainstay of Mahayana Buddhism. In early quots. referring to a late Tantric adaptation of a Hindu concept, in which prajna in the sense ‘primordial awareness’ is personified as a female figure with a male counterpart, Adi Buddha.
ΘΚΠ
the mind > mental capacity > understanding > wisdom, sagacity > [noun] > teaching, precepts
wisdomc1175
prajna1828
sagacities1867
society > faith > sect > non-Christian religions > Buddhism > [noun] > concepts in
satori1727
karma1785
prajna1828
sunyata1828
dharma1829
Buddha dharma1853
middle way1863
Eightfold Path1870
middle path1877
Noble Truth1877
anitya1882
dukkha1886
anatman1894
Buddha dhamma1894
anatta1904
anicca1904
no-self1921
no-mind1934
nothingness1940
no-thought1949
no-mindness1959
1828 Asiatic Researches 16 440 By all, metempsychosis and absorption are accepted. But absorbed into what? Into..Súnyatá, or Swabháva, or Prajná, or Adi Buddha, say the various sects of the Bauddhas.
1889 M. Monier-Williams Buddhism ix. 204 Sometimes..this Ādi-Buddha is said to have produced all things through union with Prajñā.
1927 D. T. Suzuki Ess. Zen Buddhism 1st Ser. ii. 52 The presence in every individual of a faculty designated by the Mahayanists as Prajñā... Without Prajñā there could be no Enlightenment.
1956 J. Kerouac Let. 16 Jan. in Sel. Lett. 1940–56 (1995) 543 I'm sending Ginsberg..a prayer that is serving to introduce him to the preliminary prajnas of the hridaya prajna paramita.
1978 P. Matthiessen Snow Leopard i. 18 A true experience of prajna corresponds to ‘enlightenment’ or liberation—not change, but transformation.
1995 Tricycle Spring 8/3 Our path as Buddhists is to apply ourselves to the practice of meditation, to work with body, speech, and mind in such a way as to further, through the awakening of prajna a direct experience of the ultimate nature of mind.
This is a new entry (OED Third Edition, March 2007; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1828