Curated category
Sanskrit words and phrases
- Avidyā (Buddhism)Avidyā, in Buddhist teaching, is pictured as a figure who cannot see, sometimes shown wearing a blindfold. The word appears in Sanskrit as अविद्या, in an…
- 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…
- 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"…
- ApatrapyaApatrapya is a Sanskrit term at the heart of Buddhist moral psychology, and it asks a surprisingly personal question: what stops a person from doing wrong?
- Jāti (Buddhism)Jāti is a word spoken in one particular quoted line from the Buddhist scriptures. "Now this, monks, is the noble truth of dukkha: birth (jati) is dukkha…
- 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.
- JarāmaraṇaJarāmaraṇa is the Sanskrit and Pāli word for old age and death. Speaking to King Pasenadi of Kosala in the Pabbatopama Sutta, the Buddha described massive…
- 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.
- SparśaSparśa is a Sanskrit word, written स्पर्श, for a moment most people never notice. It is the instant three separate things meet inside a single act of…
- 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…