Curated category
Hindu philosophical concepts
- 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…
- 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"…
- Advaita VedantaThe earliest seeds of Advaita Vedanta took root in the Sannyasa Upanishads, texts composed during the first centuries CE.
- BrahmanBrahman sits at the center of one of the oldest philosophical traditions on earth, yet a scholar named Jan Gonda once concluded there is no single word in…
- UpanishadsThe Upanishads begin with a parody. In the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, the oldest of these ancient Sanskrit texts, a procession of dogs chants in mockery of…
- AhimsaAhimsa, the ancient Indian principle of nonviolence, insists that "cause no injury" extends not only to physical deeds but to every word and thought a person…
- DānaDāna is a Sanskrit and Pali word, and for thousands of years it has carried a single, weighty charge: the act of giving without expecting anything in return.
- 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…
- PramanaThe Sanskrit word pramāna literally means proof. It derives from the root pramā, which combines a preposition meaning outward or forth with a term for…
- DharmaDharma is one of the most consequential concepts in human thought, and yet it resists every attempt at a clean definition.
- UpādānaUpādāna is a Sanskrit and Pali word with two meanings that sit in quiet tension with each other. One is abstract and psychological: attachment, clinging…
- ṚtaṚta is a Sanskrit word that appears in the hymns of the Vedas roughly 390 times, and Sanskrit scholar Maurice Bloomfield once called it "one of the most…