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常住

Pronunciations

Basic Meaning: permanent

Senses:

  • Eternal, everlasting, eternally abiding, unchanging. Permanence is in many contexts, taken as an erroneous view held by unenlightened people, wherein they misunderstand objects to be permanent when they are in fact impermanent 無常. In other contexts, it can refer to positive notions, such as thusness 眞如 or the Dharma body 法身, that are everlasting. (Skt. nitya, sthita, nitya-sthita). 〔法華經 T 262.9.b10〕 (Skt. śāśvata; avasthita, kūṭa-stha, dhruva, nityatā, nityatva, nityam, *nitya-stha, niyata, *niyata-stha, vihārin, śāśvatatva, śāśvatika, sadā, sadāsthitaḥ, sadôpasthita, sthhāsyatesvaliṅgavān, sthititā; Pāli nicca) [Charles Muller; source(s): Ui, Nakamura, JEBD, Hirakawa,Yokoi]
  • Based on the Shōmangyō gisho 勝鬘經義疏, the Iwanami dictionary distinguishes two kinds of permanence: (1) the quiescently abiding permanence that is not subject to arising and ceasing 生滅 or change 變化 (Skt. kūṭasthanitya), and the permanence that is possible based on continuous cyclical change under the influence of external factors (Skt. pariṇāminitya). [Charles Muller; source(s): Iwanami]
  • Administrative wing. 'Always'  常 'staying'  住, refers to anything — buildings, furniture, icons, scriptures, ritual implements, tools, etc. — that is the permanent property of a monastery and must not be removed by an abbot when he/she leaves office and moves to another monastery.

    Because management of such property was generally the concern of monastic officers known as administrators 庫司, the part of the monastery where they lived and worked (the administration hall 庫堂 or kitchen-residence 庫裡) and the offices themselves became known collectively as the 'permanent property' area or administrative wing. In Zen monasteries today, the practice wing of a monastery, as opposed to the administrative wing, is sometimes called 'inside the hall'  堂內; that is a reference to the saṃgha hall 僧堂 or meditation hall 禪堂 where monks practice zazen and may also take meals and sleep.

    [Griffith Foulk]
  • A reference to the Nirvana Sutra 涅槃經. Short for 常住教. [Griffith Foulk]
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    [Dictionary References]

    Bukkyō jiten (Ui) 583

    Bulgyo sajeon 436-1

    Zengaku daijiten (Komazawa U.) 555d

    Iwanami bukkyō jiten 427

    Japanese-English Buddhist Dictionary (Daitō shuppansha) 144b/160

    Koga 223

    Zenrin shōkisen (Mujaku Dōchū) 44-45/8

    Japanese-English Zen Buddhist Dictionary (Yokoi) 292

    Zengo jiten (Iriya and Koga) 6-P42

    Bukkyōgo daijiten (Nakamura) 757b

    Fo Guang Dictionary 4524

    Ding Fubao

    Buddhist Chinese-Sanskrit Dictionary (Hirakawa) 0421

    Bukkyō daijiten (Mochizuki) (v.1-6)2691b

    Bukkyō daijiten (Oda) 969-2

    Sanskrit-Tibetan Index for the Yogâcārabhūmi-śāstra (Yokoyama and Hirosawa)

    Copyright provisions

    The rights to textual segments (nodes) of the DDB are owned by the author indicated in the brackets next to each segment. For rights regarding the compilation as a whole, please contact Charles Muller. Please do not reproduce without permission. And please do not copy into Wikipedia without proper citation!

    Entry created: 2001-09-08

    Updated: 2024-03-28