Archives: Glossary Terms

Signum

Latin: Image, sign of

Sila

Tendency, habit, custom, way of living or acting, shape, usage, virtue or practice. The three terms Sila, Samadi and Prajna are the Three Higher Trainings of Buddhism. Sila is ethics.

There are a lot of ways to interpret Sila. Do not use the word morality here, which is how many people translate it. Morality is completely subjective. What is moral in this country, is immoral in another country. What is moral in this culture, is immoral in another culture. What people in this group over here consider moral is considered immoral by us. So morality and immorality are completely subjective and have nothing to do with the laws of nature.

Ethics on the other hand are objective; they are universal. Violence is harmful. Anger is harmful. This is universal. Selfishness is harmful. This is universal. So this is what we mean by ethics.

Sila is about learning about our tendencies, habits, customs, ways of living, recognizing the ones that cause us to suffer and others to suffer, and starting to change them. That is how we learn to start meditating.

So the first thing is to start watching ourselves, all the time, and be honest with ourselves about what we see in ourselves.

Single Letters

There are twelve single Hebrew letters. The twelve reminds us of the twelve zodiacal salts of the twelve zodiacal signs; each one of us belongs to any one of the signs, of both Western and Chinese horoscopes, which are different origins of the same thing.

These twelve single letters symbolize the 12 tribes of Israel. So, we have the twelve tribes of Israel or the twelve salts, twelve archetypes within, and we belong to one of the seven rays, which are the double letters. Why are they called double? Because they go into good and evil, according to our will. Those who do not care about developing spiritually devolve in the negative aspect of that ray. But, that ray is always influencing us, regardless of what we do, because the ray respects the free will of each one of us, this is something we have to understand.