Vicikiccha, Vicikicchā: 10 definitions
Introduction:
Vicikiccha means something in Buddhism, Pali. If you want to know the exact meaning, history, etymology or English translation of this term then check out the descriptions on this page. Add your comment or reference to a book if you want to contribute to this summary article.
In Buddhism
Theravada (major branch of Buddhism)
Vicikiccha (विचिकिच्छ) refers to “wrong uncertainty” representing one of the seven anusayas (‘latent tendencies’).—The anusayas are defilements that have not been eradicated by magga-ñāṇa and are liable to arise perceptibly whenever circumstances prevail. These anusayas are of seven kinds. They are called the elements of latent tendencies.They are: (1) Kāmarāga-anusaya, the seed element of greed, (2) Bhavarāga-anusaya, the seed element of attachment to existence, (3) Paṭigha-anusaya, the seed element of hatred, (4) Māna-anusaya, the seed element of conceit, (5) Diṭṭhi-anusaya, the seed element of wrong view, (6) Vicikiccha-anusaya, the seed element of uncertainty, (7) Avijjā-anusaya, the seed element of bewilderment.
F (Doubt).
Suspicion;
There is another akusala cetasika in these 14 akusala cetasikas. It is cetasika. It is undecisiveness. It is suspicion. It is suspicion on dhamma, sangha, the Buddha, paticcasamuppada or dependent origination and the practice.
Vicikiccha or doubt is another akusala cetasika.
1. Doubt is another akusala dhamma which is a hindrance. Doubt about the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, doubt about realities, all these kinds of doubt are a hindrance to the development of kusala, a hindrance to the development of right understanding. We need courage to continue to develop satipatthana, so that doubt can eventually be eradicated.
2. Vicikiccha is not the same as what we mean by doubt in conventional language. Vicikiccha is not doubt about someone's name or about the weather. Vicikiccha is doubt about realities, about nama and rupa, about cause and result, about the four noble Truths, about the "Dependant Origination".
One of the six Kamacchandas;
'sceptical doubt', is one of the 5 mental hindrances (nīvarana) and one of the 3 fetters (samyojana), which disappear for ever at Stream-entry, the first stage of holiness (s. ariya-puggala).
As a fetter, it refers to sceptical doubt about the Master (the Buddha), the Teaching, the Sangha, and the training; about things past and future, and conditionality (Dhs.1004; cf. A.X.71).
It also applies to uncertainty whether things are wholesome or not, to be practiced or not, of high or low value, etc.
According to Vis.M. XIV, 177, vicikicchā is the lack of desire to think (things out i.e. to come to a conclusion; vigata-cikicchā, desiderative to Ö cit, to think); it has the nature of wavering, and its manifestation is indecision and a divided attitude; its proximate cause is unwise attention to matters of doubt.
It is associated with one of the 2 classes of unwholesome consciousness rooted in delusion (Tab. I, No. 32). -
See also kankhā.
Theravāda is a major branch of Buddhism having the the Pali canon (tipitaka) as their canonical literature, which includes the vinaya-pitaka (monastic rules), the sutta-pitaka (Buddhist sermons) and the abhidhamma-pitaka (philosophy and psychology).
Languages of India and abroad
Pali-English dictionary
vicikicchā : (f.) doubt; uncertainty.
Vicikicchā, (f.) (fr. vicikicchati) doubt, perplexity, uncertainty (one of the nīvaraṇas) D. I, 246; III, 49, 216, 234, 269; S. I, 99; III, 106 sq. (dhammesu v. doubt about the precepts); IV, 350; A. III, 292, 438; IV, 68, 144 sq.; V, 144; Sn. 343, 437, 540; Vv 81 (=soḷasa-vatthuka-vicikicchā VvA. 317); J. II, 266; Pug. 59; Vbh. 168, 341, 364; Dhs. 425; Nett 11; Tikp 108, 122, 152 sq. 171, 255, 275; Dukp 170 sq. 265 sq. 289 sq.; Vism. 471 (=vigatā cikicchā ti v. etc.), 599 sq.; VbhA. 209; VvA. 156; MA 116; Sdhp. 459.—As adj. (-°) vicikiccha, e.g. tiṇṇa° one who has overcome all doubt D. I, 71, 110; M. I, 18; A. II, 211; III, 92; 297 sq.; IV, 186; 210.—See also Cpd. 242; Dhs. trsl. § 425 n. 1; and cp. kathaṅkathā, kicchati, vecikicchin. (Page 615)
1) vicikiccha (ဝိစိကိစ္ဆ) [(ti) (တိ)]—
[vicikicchā+ṇa．vicikitya-saṃ．vicikitaka-sakkatapiṭaka．]
[ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ+ဏ။ ဝိစိကိတျ-သံ။ ဝိစိကိတက-သက္ကတပိဋက။]
2) vicikicchā (ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ) [(thī) (ထီ)]—
[vi+kita+cha+ā．5．2．rū．467,528,531．vi+cikicchā．vigatā cikicchāti vicikicchā,sabhāvaṃ vā vicinanto etāya kicchati kilamatīti vicikicchā．abhi,ṭṭha,1．3vava．paṭisaṃ,ṭṭha,1．11va,26va．visuddhi,2．1va1．mahāni,ṭṭha．53,379．vigatā cikicchā assāti vicikicchā．sabhāvaṃ vicinanto tāya kicchatīti vā vicikicchā．aṃ,ṭī,1．78．(-vibhāvinī．8va)．vigatā cikicchā ñāṇappaṭikāro etāyāti vicikicchā．ṭī．17va．(-vibhāvinī．8va)．tikicchanaṃ tikicchā,vigatā tikicchā etissāti vicikicchā．nirutti．8va1．vicikitā-saṃ．vicikicchā,vitigiṃchā,vitigicchā-prā,addhamāgadhī．]
[ဝိ+ကိတ+ဆ+အာ။ မောဂ်၊ ၅။၂။ ရူ။ ၄၆၇၊ ၅၂၈၊ ၅၃၁။ ဝိ+စိကိစ္ဆာ။ ဝိဂတာ စိကိစ္ဆာတိ ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ၊ သဘာဝံ ဝါ ဝိစိနန္တော ဧတာယ ကိစ္ဆတိ ကိလမတီတိ ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ။ အဘိ၊ဋ္ဌ၊ ၁။၃ဝဝ။ ပဋိသံ၊ဋ္ဌ၊၁။ ၁၁ဝ၊၂၆ဝ။ ဝိသုဒ္ဓိ၊၂။၁ဝ၁။ မဟာနိ၊ဋ္ဌ။၅၃၊၃၇၉။ ဝိဂတာ စိကိစ္ဆာ အဿာတိ ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ။ သဘာဝံ ဝိစိနန္တော တာယ ကိစ္ဆတီတိ ဝါ ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ။ အံ၊ဋီ၊၁။ ၇၈။ (-ဝိဘာဝိနီ။၈ဝ)။ ဝိဂတာ စိကိစ္ဆာ ဉာဏပ္ပဋိကာရော ဧတာယာတိ ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ။ ဓာန်၊ဋီ။၁၇ဝ။ (-ဝိဘာဝိနီ။၈ဝ)။ တိကိစ္ဆနံ တိကိစ္ဆာ၊ ဝိဂတာ တိကိစ္ဆာ ဧတိဿာတိ ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ။ နိရုတ္တိ။၈ဝ၁။ ဝိစိကိတာ-သံ။ ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ၊ ဝိတိဂိံဆာ၊ ဝိတိဂိစ္ဆာ-ပြာ၊ အဒ္ဓမာဂဓီ။]
[Pali to Burmese]
1) vicikiccha—
(Burmese text): ယုံမှား-တွေးတော-မဆုံးဖြတ်နိုင်-သံသယဖြစ်-ခြင်းရှိသောသူ။
(Auto-Translation): A person who is indecisive due to doubts and misconceptions.
2) vicikicchā—
(Burmese text): ယုံမှား-တွေးတော-မဆုံးဖြတ်နိုင်- သို့လော သို့လော သံသယဖြစ်-ခြင်း၊ ဝိစိကိစ္ဆာ စေတသိက်(နာမ်တရား)။ မူရင်းကြည့်ပါ။
(Auto-Translation): Doubt - contemplation - indecision - or rather, being in doubt, is called uncertainty (a state of reflection). Look at the original.
Vicikicchā (in Pali) can be associated with the following Chinese terms:
1) 疑 [yí]: “doubt”.
2) 疑惑 [yí huò]: “doubt”; “perplexity”.
Pali is the language of the Tipiṭaka, which is the sacred canon of Theravāda Buddhism and contains much of the Buddha’s speech. Closeley related to Sanskrit, both languages are used interchangeably between religions.
See also (Relevant definitions)
Partial matches (+0): Vicikiccha, Vi, Kita, A, Ca, Cha, Na.
Starts with (+23): Vicikiccha Nivarana, Vicikicchabhava, Vicikicchabhibhuta, Vicikicchacariya, Vicikicchachinna, Vicikicchadhamma, Vicikicchadhikarana, Vicikicchahetu, Vicikicchakathamkathasalla, Vicikicchakilesa, Vicikicchamahogha, Vicikicchaniddesa, Vicikicchanivattana, Vicikicchanusaya, Vicikicchapahana, Vicikicchapanayananana, Vicikicchapanha, Vicikicchapara, Vicikicchapareta, Vicikicchapariyutthana.
Full-text (+70): Nibbicikiccha, Vicikiccha Nivarana, Tinnavicikiccha, Vicikicchi, Vicikicchadhamma, Mahavicikiccha, Vicikicchuppatti, Vicikicchapahana, Vicikicchasannojana, Vicikicchavippayutta, Vicikicchahetu, Vicikicchapanha, Vicikicchapareta, Vicikicchasankhara, Vicikicchavamana, Vicikicchavinodana, Vicikicchabhibhuta, Vicikicchamahogha, Vicikicchasisa, Vicikicchavitarana.
Relevant text
Search found 35 books and stories containing Vicikiccha, Vi-kita-cha-a, Vi-kita-cha-ā, Vicikicchā, Vicikiccha-na, Vicikicchā-ṇa; (plurals include: Vicikicchas, as, ās, Vicikicchās, nas, ṇas). You can also click to the full overview containing English textual excerpts. Below are direct links for the most relevant articles:
Abhidhamma in Daily Life (by Ashin Janakabhivamsa) (by Ashin Janakabhivamsa)
Factor 14 - Vicikiccha (doubt, scepticism) < [Chapter 2 - On akusala cetasikas (unwholesome mental factors)]
Chapter 2 - On akusala cetasikas (unwholesome mental factors)
Factor 1 - Saddha (faith) < [Chapter 3 - On kusala cetasikas (wholesome mental factors)]
The Buddha and His Teachings (by Narada Thera)
Chapter XXXVII - The Five Hindrances
Chapter XXXVI - The Way to Nibbāna (II)
Dhammasangani (by C.A.F. Rhys Davids)
Chapter VI - The Twelve Bad Thoughts < [Part II - Bad States Of Consciousness]
Chapter V - The Group Of The Fetters < [Part I]
Cetasikas (by Nina van Gorkom)
Chapter 20 - Sloth, Torpor And Doubt < [Part III - Akusala Cetasikas]
Chapter 23 - Different Groups Of Defilements Part III < [Part III - Akusala Cetasikas]
Chapter 12 - Zeal < [Part II - The Particulars (pakinnaka)]
A Survey of Paramattha Dhammas (by Sujin Boriharnwanaket)
Chapter 20 - Associated Dhammas < [Part 2 - Citta]
Appendix 2 - To Cetasika < [Appendix]
Appendix 1 - To Citta < [Appendix]
Abhidhamma in Daily Life (by Nina Van Gorkom)