Appamāda

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Apramāda (Sanskrit; Pali: appamāda; Tibetan Wylie: bag yod pa) is a Buddhist term translated as 'conscientious' or 'concern'. It is defined as taking great care concerning what should be adopted and what should be avoided.^[1][2] In the Pāli Canon, a collection of the Buddha's earliest teachings, the term appamāda is quite significant; the essence of its meaning cannot be captured with a single English word. 'Heedfulness', 'diligence', and 'conscientiousness' all capture certain aspects of appamāda. It is identified as one of the eleven virtuous mental factors in the Mahayana Abhidharma teachings.

Appamāda is a negation of pamāda, which means 'negligent' or 'lax'.^[3] Therefore, Appamāda means 'non-negligence', 'non-laxity', 'non-intoxication', 'non-deluded', correctly translated as 'heedfulness', or whichever word fully captures the sense of the term. 'Heedfulness', 'diligence', and 'conscientiousness' all capture certain aspects of appamāda.

The Buddhist text Abhidharma-samuccaya states the following:^[1]

What is concern? From taking its stand on non-attachment (alobha), non-hatred (adveṣa), and non-deludedness (amoha) coupled with diligence (vīrya), it considers whatever is positive and protects the mind against things which cannot satisfy. Its function is to make complete and to realize all worldly and transworldly excellences.

The scholar Alexander Berzin comments on carefulness:^[4]

A caring attitude (bag-yod, carefulness) is a subsidiary awareness that, while remaining in a state of detachment, imperturbability, lack of naivety, and joyful perseverance, causes us to meditate on constructive things and safeguards against leaning toward tainted (negative) things. In other words, being disgusted with and not longing for compulsive existence, not wanting to cause harm in response to its suffering, not being naive about the effects of our behavior, and taking joy in acting constructively, a caring attitude brings us to act constructively and to refrain from destructive behavior. This is because we care about the situations of others and ourselves and about the effects of our actions on both; we take them seriously.

The scholar Robert Thurman emphasizes the high degree of apramāda of a person who has realized emptiness (a.k.a. voidness):^[5]

This denotes a type of awareness of the most seemingly insignificant aspects of daily life, an awareness derived as a consequence of the highest realization of the ultimate nature of reality. As it is stated in the Anavataptaparipṛcchasutra: "He who realizes voidness, that person is consciously aware." "Ultimate realization," far from obliterating the relative world, brings it into highly specific, albeit dreamlike, focus.

The term is described at length in the fourth chapter of the Buddhist text Bodhicharyavatara.

• A caring attitude (Alexander Berzin)
• Carefulness (Alexander Berzin)
• Conscious awareness (Robert Thurman)
• Conscientiousness
• Concern (Herbert Guenther)
• Prudent
• Heedfulness (often used in Theravāda sources)

• Buddhist meditation
• Mental factors (Buddhism)
• Mindfulness

• Berzin, Alexander (2006), Primary Minds and the 51 Mental Factors
• Guenther, Herbert V. & Leslie S. Kawamura (1975), Mind in Buddhist Psychology: A Translation of Ye-shes rgyal-mtshan's "The Necklace of Clear Understanding". Dharma Publishing. Kindle Edition.
• Kunsang, Erik Pema (translator) (2004). Gateway to Knowledge, Vol. 1. North Atlantic Books.
• Thurman, Robert (2008), The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti, Pennsylvania State University

• dhammapada appamada chapter English
• dhammapada appamada chapter Pali
• parinibbana sutta