Pali भाव, bhāva Burmese ဘာဝ(IPA: [bàwa̰]) Sinhala භව or භවය | Sanskrit भाव, bhāva Mon ဘာဝ([həwɛ̀ʔ]) | |
English feeling, emotion, mood, becoming | ||
The Sanskrit word "bhāva" (भाव) means "emotion, sentiment, state of body or mind, disposition", while "bhava" (भव) means "being, worldly existence, becoming, birth, be, production, origin". The former term is rooted in latter, and in some context also means "becoming, being, existing, occurring, appearance" while connoting the condition thereof.
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In Buddhism, bhava denotes the continuity of becoming (reincarnating) in one of the realms of existence, in the samsaric context of rebirth, life and the maturation arising therefrom. It is the tenth of the Twelve Nidanas, in its Pratītyasamutpāda doctrine.
In Buddhism
In Buddhism, bhava (not bhāva) means becoming, in the sense of rebirths and redeaths, because a being is so conditioned and propelled by the karmic accumulations. This bhava is the conditioned arising of beings, through the process of birth (jāti), in heaven, demi-god, human, animal, hungry ghost or hell realms (bhavacakra) of Buddhist cosmology. Sometimes it is referred to as punabbhava or re-becoming.
Bhava is listed as the tenth of the Twelve Nidānas, the links in the cycle of pratītyasamutpāda or dependent origination.
In the Jātakas, in which the Buddha didactically reminds various followers of experiences they shared with him in a past life, the hearers are said not to remember them due to bhava, i.e. to having been reborn.
In Hinduism
Bhava appears in the sense of "becoming, being, existing, occurring, appearance" in the Vedanga literature Srauta Sutras, the Upanishads such as the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, the Mahabharata and other ancient Hindu texts.
In Ramakrishna Mission
According to Swami Sivananda, there are three kinds of bhava – sattvic, rajasic and tamasic. Which predominates in a person depends on their own nature, but sattvic bhava is "Divine bhava" or pure bhava (Suddha bhava). Swami Nikhilananda classifies bhava as follows: