Curated category
Buddhist philosophical concepts
- MahayanaMahayana is the largest branch of Buddhism, and yet for centuries it left almost no trace in the archaeological record. The earliest stone inscription that…
- SassatavadaSassatavada is an ancient view the Buddha singled out for rejection, and understanding why tells us something essential about how early Buddhist thought…
- BodhipakkhiyādhammāBodhipakkhiyādhammā is a Pali term meaning qualities conducive to awakening, and it sits at the heart of Buddhist practice across traditions.
- Impermanence (Buddhism)Impermanence, called Anicca in Pali and anitya in Sanskrit, threads through the Pali Canon as one of the essential doctrines of Buddhism.
- Arya (Buddhism)Arya is a Sanskrit word that has been shaping Buddhist practice and thought for more than two millennia, yet most people outside the tradition have never…
- Saṃsāra (Buddhism)Saṃsāra, a term shared by Sanskrit and Pali, names the beginningless cycle of birth, ordinary existence and dying again in Buddhist thought.
- ReincarnationReincarnation is the belief that something essential in a living being survives death and begins again in a new body. This belief is not the property of one…
- AnattāAnattā is one of the most challenging ideas Buddhism asks of its followers: that there is no unchanging, permanent self.
- DuḥkhaDukkha is a Sanskrit and Pali word that sits at the center of three of Asia's oldest living religions, and its most common English translation, "suffering"…
- Nirvana (Buddhism)Nirvana sits at the center of Buddhist thought as the highest religious goal across all its forms. The word itself comes from a Sanskrit term meaning…
- Three marks of existenceThe three marks of existence sit at the heart of Buddhist teaching, and they begin with a claim so simple it can feel like a shrug: nothing lasts.
- Four Noble TruthsThe Four Noble Truths sit at the heart of how Buddhism describes the way things really are when seen correctly. In Pali they are the cattāri ariyasaccāni…
- BodhisattvaA bodhisattva is a being who has the wisdom to reach full enlightenment but chooses, instead, to remain engaged with the suffering world.
- Five hindrancesIn the Buddhist tradition, mental factors known as hindrances block progress in meditation and daily life. Theravada teachers identify these five specific…
- SatipatthanaSatipatthana is a Pali compound that has been translated at least three different ways. Scholars have rendered it as the establishment of mindfulness, the…
- Sentient beings (Buddhism)Sentient beings is a term at the very heart of Buddhist teaching, naming the vast company of living, conscious creatures that Buddhism addresses.
- BuddhahoodBuddhahood is a title, a state, and a cosmic condition all at once. The word "Buddha" comes from classic Indic languages and means simply "awakened one." But…
- Samatha-vipassanāSamatha-vipassanā names two qualities of the Buddhist mind that have, for over two millennia, been at the center of a quietly fierce debate.
- Kleshas (Buddhism)Kleshas are the mental states that, according to Buddhist teaching, cloud the mind and push a person toward unwholesome action.
- ParinirvanaParinirvana describes what happens, in Buddhist teaching, when someone who has already reached nirvana during their life then dies.
- SatyaSatya is a Sanskrit word most often rendered in English as "truth" or "essence," and it carries a weight that simple translation barely captures.
- NirvanaNirvana names something that has drawn seekers across four of India's great religious traditions for millennia: the complete extinguishing of passion, and…
- Merit (Buddhism)In 2016, two Taiwanese Buddhists released crabs and lobsters into the sea at Brighton, in the United Kingdom, hoping to make merit.
- DharmaDharma is one of the most consequential concepts in human thought, and yet it resists every attempt at a clean definition.
- Middle WayThe Middle Way is one of the most fundamental teachings of Buddhism, a doctrine built not on compromise but on a precise kind of refusal.
- Noble Eightfold PathThe Noble Eightfold Path is the central practical teaching of Buddhism, described in its earliest texts as the road out of samsara, the painful cycle of…
- PrajnaparamitaPrajnaparamita is a word that carries two ideas at once: wisdom so complete it has crossed to the other shore of understanding, and a vast collection of…
- Rebirth (Buddhism)Rebirth in Buddhism poses a question that has occupied philosophers, monks, and ordinary people for more than two millennia: if there is no soul, what…
- Refuge in BuddhismRefuge in Buddhism begins with a carved stone panel from Chorasan in Gandhara, dated to the 2nd century AD and now kept in the Ethnological Museum of Berlin…
- AsavaAsava is a Pali word that scholars still argue about. Does it mean something flowing inward, or something oozing out? The debate over that single prefix has…