Transliteration: sangs rgyas
<noun> "Enlightened One". Translation of the Sanskrit [NDS] "buddha". The original Sanskrit is derived from "buddh" which has the sense of "understanding, complete illumination". The Tibetan term was created from the Sanskrit by the early Tibetan translators according to the meaning of the original Sanskrit rather than as a literal translation of the original. As [SKD] says, བུདྡྷ་སངས་པ་དང་རྒྱས་པ་གཉིས་ཀ་ལ་འཇུག་པས་སངས་རྒྱས་ཞེས་བརྗོད་ "buddha is given the term སངས་རྒྱས་ in Tibetan because a buddha has become both སངས་པ་ cleared out and རྒྱས་པ་ expanded". The two terms are then commented on by Tibetans as follows: སངས་ means woken up in the sense that the obscurations have been purified completely and རྒྱས་ means expanded in the sense that all good qualities have been developed to their limit.English has words that match the original Sanskrit very closely. Thus this is one case where it is not necessary to translate the terms via the Tibetan but simply to use the appropriate English. Given the original Sanskrit buddha and its meaning, the best translation is "Enlightened one". This then matches well with "enlightened" as the best translation for the Sanskrit "bodhi" (see under བྱང་ཆུབ་, the Tibetan translation of bodhi for more).
1) "The buddha". The buddha is one of the དཀོན་མཆོག་གསུམ་ "Three Jewels" which are the places that followers of the buddha put their faith in. As such, a buddha is one of the three refuges for a Buddhist. 2) The Buddha is also listed as one of the དཀོན་མཆོག་དྲུག་ Six Jewels q.v. 3) See སངས་རྒྱས་ཀྱི་མཚན་ for a large group of epithets of the buddha.