Curated category
Sanskrit words and phrases
- Avidyā (Buddhism)The Sanskrit word avidyā appears in the Rigveda, a collection of ancient hymns dating back to the second millennium BCE.
- Arya (Buddhism)The Sanskrit word ārya and the Pali term ariya appear in ancient Buddhist texts to describe spiritual warriors or heroes.
- 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"…
- ApatrapyaThe Sanskrit word apatrapya appears in ancient texts alongside its Pali counterpart ottappa and the Tibetan Wylie script khrel yod pa. Herbert V.
- Jāti (Buddhism)The Sanskrit word jāti and the Pali term jāti both mean birth within Buddhist doctrine. These words describe physical birth, rebirth as a new living entity…
- SkandhaSkandha is a Sanskrit word that appears in some of the oldest religious literature ever written. It shows up in the Vedic texts long before Buddhism, simply…
- VedanāVedanā is an ancient Pāli and Sanskrit term, and it may be the most consequential concept you have never heard of. Right now, as you listen to these words…
- VinayaVinaya is the name given to the body of monastic rules that has governed Buddhist communities for more than two thousand years.
- 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.
- JarāmaraṇaThe Sanskrit word jarā means to become brittle or decay. Ancient Vedic texts used the root jarati to describe consumption and crumbling.
- VihāraThe Sanskrit word vihara means a form of rest house, temple or monastery in ascetic traditions of India. It particularly referred to a hall that was used as…
- SatyaSatya is a Sanskrit word most often rendered in English as "truth" or "essence," and it carries a weight that simple translation barely captures.
- MaitreyaMaitreya is a figure unlike any other in world religion: a Buddha who has not yet arrived. Prophesied across every school of Buddhism, this bodhisattva is…
- Prajñā (Buddhism)Prajña is a word that has been translated at least five different ways by scholars who have spent their careers studying it. "Wisdom" is one translation.
- SparśaSanskrit texts from the early centuries of the Common Era describe sparśa as a precise coming together of three distinct factors.
- DharmaDharma is one of the most consequential concepts in human thought, and yet it resists every attempt at a clean definition.
- VijñānaVijñana is a word that carries the weight of at least three thousand years of thinking about the mind. Written as vijñāna in Sanskrit or viññāna in Pali, it…
- BhavaBhava is a Sanskrit word that carries more weight than almost any single term in the religious traditions of South Asia.
- Om mani padme humThe first known description of the six-syllable mantra appears in the Kāraņavyūha Sūtra, a text dating from the 4th to 5th centuries.
- 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…