Buddhist Terms A–Z
Clear, sourced definitions of the key terms in Buddhism. Every entry is traced to a named text, with a link to the fuller guide where one exists.
A
Anatta · Pāli: anattā; Skt: anātman
The Buddhist teaching that there is no fixed, permanent self or soul underlying experience.
Anicca · Pāli: anicca; Skt: anitya
Anicca is impermanence — the truth that all conditioned things arise, change and pass away — and is one of the three marks of existence.
Arahant · Pāli: arahant; Skt: arhat
An arahant is one who has fully awakened — greed, hatred and delusion destroyed, the path completed, and not subject to rebirth.
B
Bodhi · Pāli/Skt: bodhi
Bodhi is awakening or enlightenment — the liberating realisation the Buddha attained and the goal towards which the Buddhist path leads.
Bodhicitta · Skt: bodhicitta
The 'mind' or 'heart' of awakening: the aspiration to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings, and the defining motivation of the Mahayana bodhisattva path.
Bodhisattva · Skt: bodhisattva; Pāli: bodhisatta
A being bound for awakening; in Mahayana, one who vows to attain Buddhahood for the liberation of all beings.
Brahmavihara · Pāli/Skt: brahmavihāra
The brahmavihāras are the four 'divine abidings': loving-kindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), sympathetic joy (muditā) and equanimity (upekkhā).
Buddha · Pāli/Skt: buddha
An 'awakened one' — a being who has fully understood the nature of reality and is freed from ignorance and suffering, foremost the historical teacher Gotama.
Full guide →D
Dharma · Pāli: dhamma; Skt: dharma
The teaching of the Buddha, and more broadly the truth or law of the way things are.
Dukkha · Pāli: dukkha; Skt: duḥkha
Dukkha is the suffering, unsatisfactoriness or unease that pervades ordinary existence — the subject of the Buddha's first noble truth.
E
Eightfold Path · Pāli: ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga; Skt: āryāṣṭāṅga mārga
The Buddha's path of practice leading to the end of suffering, comprising eight interrelated factors and forming the fourth of the Four Noble Truths.
Full guide →J
Jhana · Pāli: jhāna; Skt: dhyāna
Jhāna is a state of deep meditative absorption — a collected, unified stillness of mind that the suttas treat as the substance of right concentration.
K
Karma · Pāli: kamma; Skt: karma
Karma is intentional action — of body, speech or mind — which, shaped by intention, carries consequences.
Khandha · Pāli: khandha; Skt: skandha
The five aggregates — form, feeling, perception, mental formations and consciousness — into which the Buddha analyses what we call a 'person'.
M
Metta · Pāli: mettā; Skt: maitrī
Metta is loving-kindness — the wish that all beings, without exception, be well and happy.
N
Nirvana · Pāli: nibbāna; Skt: nirvāṇa
Nirvana is the extinguishing of greed, hatred and delusion — the unconditioned freedom that ends the round of rebirth.
P
Panna · Pāli: paññā; Skt: prajñā
Paññā is wisdom — the discernment of things as they are that forms the third division of the Buddhist threefold training.
Parami · Pāli: pāramī; Skt: pāramitā
The 'perfections' — qualities perfected over many lives on the path to awakening; the Theravada tradition counts ten, while standard Mahayana lists six.
Paticca-samuppada · Pāli: paṭicca-samuppāda; Skt: pratītyasamutpāda
Dependent origination — the principle that phenomena arise in dependence on conditions rather than existing independently.
S
Samadhi · Pāli/Skt: samādhi
Samādhi is concentration — the unification and settling of the mind that forms the second division of the Buddhist threefold training.
Samatha · Pāli: samatha; Skt: śamatha
Samatha is serenity or calm-abiding — the tranquillising and steadying of the mind that the suttas pair with insight on the path to liberation.
Samsara · Pāli/Skt: saṁsāra
Saṁsāra is the beginningless round of birth, death and rebirth in which beings wander, driven by ignorance and craving.
Sangha · Pāli: saṅgha; Skt: saṃgha
The community of the Buddha's followers, and the third of the Three Refuges.
Sati · Pāli: sati; Skt: smṛti
Sati is mindfulness — the lucid, present awareness and recollection that the Buddha taught as the seventh factor of the Noble Eightfold Path.
Full guide →Sila · Pāli: sīla; Skt: śīla
Sīla is ethical conduct — the cultivation of virtue in speech and action that forms the first division of the Buddhist threefold training.
Sunyata · Skt: śūnyatā; Pāli: suññatā
Emptiness — the absence of any inherent, independent self-existence.
T
Tanha · Pāli: taṇhā; Skt: tṛṣṇā
Craving or thirst — the grasping desire that the Buddha identifies as the origin of suffering in the Second Noble Truth.
Tathagata · Pāli/Skt: tathāgata
An epithet the Buddha most often used of himself, conventionally rendered 'thus-gone' or 'thus-come', with a meaning the tradition itself treats as not fully settled.
Tilakkhana · Pāli: tilakkhaṇa; Skt: trilakṣaṇa
The three marks of existence — impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) and non-self (anatta) — that the Buddhist tradition holds to mark all existence.
V
Vipassana · Pāli: vipassanā; Skt: vipaśyanā
Vipassanā is insight — the clear seeing that penetrates the three marks of existence: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and non-self.