The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (2048 page)

 
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see
HABIT, RELIGIOUS
;
MONASTICISM
(Buddhism).

 
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see
DAXMA
.

 
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(Heb.,
hakhamim
, sing.,
hakham
). Jewish scholars and biblical interpreters, often translated as ‘the Wise’. The sages were the active leaders and teachers of the Jewish religion from the beginning of the second
Temple
period until the Arabian conquest of the East. They are also known as
azal, an acronym for
akhameynu zikhronam li-berakhah
, ‘our sages of blessed memory’.

 
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(P
li, derived from Skt.,
svarga
, ‘heaven, the next world’). In Buddhism, the pleasant conditions of reappearance (
punabbh
va
) which result from a life of moral, religious living.
According to the P
li canonical texts, sagga is not ‘heaven’ in spatial terms, in keeping with the early Buddhist non-cosmographical conceptions. It is described as a condition or state of birth: the beings reborn into heavenly conditions are described as
devas
(gods) and they are in the same spatial dimension as are human beings. The names of the different heavens, given as fourteen (consisting of the six lower heavens and the eight higher heavens) do not describe separate mini-worlds or compartments in space, but only different conditions of spiritual attainments by which alone they come to be distinguished.