The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (909 page)

(Jap, ‘walking, sitting, lying’). The Zen Buddhist emphasis that Zen attentiveness can and must be maintained, in all circumstances.

 
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Gyulü
(‘Illusory Body’ in Tibetan Buddhism)
:

see
N
RO CHOS DRUG
.

 
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Ha-Ari
(Jewish kabbalist)
:

see
LURIA, ISAAC BEN SOLOMON
.

 
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(Heb., acronym of
okmah, B
nah, Da‘at: wisdom, discrimination, knowledge). A religious and intellectual movement within Jewish
asidism
. Founded by
Shne’ur Zalman
and based on Isaac
Luria's
Kabbalah
and the doctrines of the Baal Shem Tov (
Israel ben Eliezer
), the terms
okmah, Binah, Da‘at (
BD) are understood as
sefirot
(emanations) in the divine mind. The
abad
Zaddik
is essentially a spiritual leader, and the
abad were the first
asidic group to found
yeshivot
. Shne’ur Zalman was succeeded by his son, Dov Baer, who settled in Lubavich, with the consequence that
abad and Lubavich are now interchangeable terms (though in fact there was a diffuse spread of
abad movements). Today their main centres of activity are in Israel and the USA.
Central to
abad is the belief that humans created in the image of God mirror the three sefirot within the divine mind.
Therefore a profoundly joyous experience must be expected when ‘like meets like’, hence the celebratory nature of
abad assemblies. This emerges from
bittul ha-yesh
, ‘annihilation of that which is’. This is the loss of the individual, grasping ego in the adoration of God, but it is, also, the belief that a part of the
Ein-Sof
lies within human nature: through annihilation of all else that surrounds it, the one is left with the One, and there is no distinction between them.