Curated playlist
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 culture or one era. It appears in ancient India, in the writings of Plato, among…
- 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", may actually mislead more than it illuminates. Picture, for a moment, a wooden…
- Advaita VedantaAdvaita Vedanta begins with a claim so radical that philosophers have spent centuries arguing over what it actually means: that you, the person listening right now, are not different from the ultimate reality of the universe. The word…
- 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 any modern Western language that can capture what the term means. That admission…
- 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 priests: "Om! Let's eat. Om! Let's drink." That single image captures the challenge…
- 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 forms. The word itself comes from the Sanskrit root hiṃs, meaning to strike. Add…
- 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. Across Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism, this one concept has shaped how…
- SatyaSatya is a Sanskrit word most often rendered in English as "truth" or "essence," and it carries a weight that simple translation barely captures. Across the Indian subcontinent and across thousands of years, satya has been treated not as a…
- NirvanaNirvana names something that has drawn seekers across four of India's great religious traditions for millennia: the complete extinguishing of passion, and with it, the end of rebirth itself. Imagine carrying a fire you never asked to…
- PramanaPramana names the reasoning behind a classic example from ancient Indian logic: a man is fat, and he never eats during the day. Logicians reasoned that if both are true, he must be eating at night. That leap, from what can be observed to…
- DharmaDharma is one of the most consequential concepts in human thought, and yet it resists every attempt at a clean definition. Karl Friedrich Geldner, translating the Rigveda, needed 20 different English words just to capture the range of…
- 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, grasping. The other is entirely physical: fuel. What connects a mind grasping after…
- 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 important religious conceptions of the Rigveda". He went further, arguing that from…