Curated category
Twelve nidānas
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- SaṅkhāraSaṅkhāra is one of the most central and elusive words in the entire vocabulary of Buddhism. It carries two meanings at once, and those meanings pull in…
- 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.
- TaṇhāTaṇhā shares its oldest ancestry with the English word "thirst." Both descend from the Proto-Indo-European *ters-, meaning "dry," and that kinship is not…
- 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…