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
Abhidhamma · Pāli: abhidhamma; Skt: abhidharma
The “higher teaching”: the third basket of the Buddhist canon, which reworks the discourses into a systematic analysis of mind and experience.
Full entry → Full guide →Anatta · Pāli: anattā; Skt: anātman
The Buddhist teaching that there is no fixed, permanent self or soul underlying experience.
Full entry → Full guide →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.
Full entry → Full guide →Arahant · Pāli: arahant; Skt: arhat
An arahant is a worthy one: a person whose mind is free of defilement, who has abandoned the ten fetters and is not destined for further rebirth.
Full entry →B
Bhikkhu · Pāli: bhikkhu; Skt: bhikṣu
A fully ordained Buddhist monk, who gives up the householder's life to train under the Vinaya; the Pali Patimokkha code has 227 rules for monks.
Full entry → Full guide →Bhikkhuni · Pāli: bhikkhunī; Skt: bhikṣuṇī
A fully ordained Buddhist nun, the female counterpart of a bhikkhu, living under the Vinaya; the Pali Patimokkha code has 311 rules for nuns.
Full entry → Full guide →Bodhi · Pāli/Skt: bodhi
Bodhi is awakening or enlightenment — the liberating realisation the Buddha attained and the goal towards which the Buddhist path leads.
Full entry → Full guide →Bodhicitta · Skt: bodhicitta
The 'mind' or 'heart' of awakening: the aspiration to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all beings, which defines the Mahayana bodhisattva path.
Full entry →Bodhisattva · Skt: bodhisattva; Pāli: bodhisatta
A being bound for awakening; in Mahayana, one who vows to attain Buddhahood for the liberation of all beings.
Full entry → Full guide →Brahmavihara · Pāli/Skt: brahmavihāra
The brahmavihāras are the four 'divine abidings': loving-kindness (mettā), compassion (karuṇā), sympathetic joy (muditā) and equanimity (upekkhā).
Full entry → Full guide →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 entry → Full guide →Buddha-nature · Skt: tathāgatagarbha; Chin: fo-xing (佛性)
Buddha-nature is the Mahayana teaching that every sentient being already holds the innate capacity for awakening, to be uncovered rather than acquired.
Full entry → Full guide →D
Dana · Pāli/Skt: dāna
Dana is giving or generosity, the first theme the Buddha taught newcomers and the first of the perfections cultivated on the Buddhist path.
Full entry → Full guide →Deva · Pāli/Skt: deva
A deva is a god or heavenly being in Buddhist cosmology: radiant and dwelling in the heavens, but still born, dying and reborn like every other being.
Full entry → Full guide →Dhammapada · Pāli: dhammapada; Skt: dharmapada
The Dhammapada is a much-loved anthology of the Buddha's short verse teachings, gathered into twenty-six chapters and preserved in the Pali canon.
Full entry → Full guide →Dharma · Pāli: dhamma; Skt: dharma
The teaching of the Buddha, and more broadly the truth or law of the way things are.
Full entry →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.
Full entry → Full guide →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 entry → Full guide →F
Five Precepts · Pāli: pañca-sīla; Skt: pañcaśīla
The five training rules lay Buddhists undertake voluntarily: to refrain from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct, false speech, and intoxicants.
Full entry → Full guide →Four Noble Truths · Pāli: cattāri ariyasaccāni; Skt: catvāri āryasatyāni
The Buddha's core framework: there is suffering, it arises from craving, it can cease, and the Noble Eightfold Path is the way leading to its cessation.
Full entry → 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.
Full entry → Full guide →K
Karma · Pāli: kamma; Skt: karma
Karma is intentional action — of body, speech or mind — which, shaped by intention, carries consequences.
Full entry → Full guide →Karuna · Pāli/Skt: karuṇā
Compassion: the wish that others be free from suffering, cultivated in Buddhism as one of the four brahmavihāras or divine abidings.
Full entry → Full guide →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'.
Full entry → Full guide →Koan · Chinese: gong'an; Japanese: kōan
A koan is a "public case" from Chan and Zen literature, given to a student as a meditation exercise that ordinary reasoning cannot solve.
Full entry → Full guide →L
Lama
In the Tibetan traditions a lama is a spiritual teacher, the master a practitioner relies on; not every lama is a recognised reincarnation, or tulku.
Full entry → Full guide →M
Mahayana · Skt: mahāyāna
Mahayana, the Great Way or Greater Vehicle, is the branch of Buddhism whose followers vow to become Buddhas for the sake of all beings.
Full entry → Full guide →Mandala · Skt: maṇḍala
A sacred diagram of an awakened realm, arranged around a buddha at its centre, used in the tantric traditions for ritual and meditation.
Full entry → Full guide →Mantra · Skt: mantra
A mantra is a syllable, word or phrase recited as a practice, at the centre of the esoteric traditions of Vajrayana and Japanese Shingon.
Full entry → Full guide →Mara · Pāli: māra
The personification of evil and temptation in the Buddhist texts: the tempter who urged the striving future Buddha to abandon his effort for awakening.
Full entry → Full guide →Merit · Pāli: puñña; Skt: puṇya
Merit is the good that wholesome action accumulates, which the early texts call another way of saying what is blissful, desirable and pleasing.
Full entry →Metta · Pāli: mettā; Skt: maitrī
Metta is loving-kindness — the wish that all beings, without exception, be well and happy.
Full entry → Full guide →Middle Way · Pāli: majjhimā paṭipadā
The Buddha's path between extremes: neither sensual indulgence nor self-torment, and neither the view that everything exists nor that nothing does.
Full entry → Full guide →N
Nirvana · Pāli: nibbāna; Skt: nirvāṇa
Nirvana is the extinguishing of greed, hatred and delusion — the unconditioned freedom that ends the round of rebirth.
Full entry → Full guide →P
Pali · Pāli: pāli, 'text'
Pali is the Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Tipitaka, the canon that forms the doctrinal foundation of Theravada Buddhism.
Full entry → Full guide →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.
Full entry →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.
Full entry → Full guide →Paticca-samuppada · Pāli: paṭicca-samuppāda; Skt: pratītyasamutpāda
Dependent origination — the principle that phenomena arise in dependence on conditions rather than existing independently.
Full entry → Full guide →Pure Land · Skt: sukhāvatī
The Pure Land is the buddha-field of Amida into which devotees seek to be born, and the name of the East Asian Mahayana tradition built on that hope.
Full entry → Full guide →R
Rebirth · Pāli: punabbhava; Skt: punarbhava
Rebirth is the Buddhist teaching that a new life follows death, caused by craving and past action, with no unchanging self passing from one to the other.
Full entry → Full guide →Refuge · Pāli: saraṇagamana (going for refuge); tisaraṇa (the threefold refuge)
Refuge is the act of committing to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha as the guide of your life, expressed by reciting the three refuges.
Full entry → Full guide →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.
Full entry →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.
Full entry → Full guide →Samsara · Pāli/Skt: saṁsāra
Saṁsāra is the beginningless round of birth, death and rebirth in which beings wander, driven by ignorance and craving.
Full entry → Full guide →Sangha · Pāli: saṅgha; Skt: saṃgha
The community of the Buddha's followers, and the third of the Three Refuges.
Full entry → Full guide →Sanskrit
Sanskrit is a classical Indian language of Buddhist scripture and philosophy, and the source of familiar forms like dharma, karma, nirvana and sutra.
Full entry → Full guide →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 entry → 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.
Full entry → Full guide →Stupa · Pāli: thūpa; Skt: stūpa
A Buddhist relic monument: a burial mound or spired shrine over the remains of the Buddha or another holy person, honoured with offerings and reverence.
Full entry → Full guide →Sunyata · Skt: śūnyatā; Pāli: suññatā
Emptiness — the absence of any inherent, independent self-existence.
Full entry → Full guide →Sutta · Pāli: sutta; Skt: sūtra
A sutta is a discourse of the Buddha or his close disciples; the word means 'thread', and the Sutta Piṭaka of the Pali Canon collects them.
Full entry → Full guide →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.
Full entry → Full guide →Tantra · Skt: tantra
Tantra is the esoteric strand of Mahayana Buddhism and the class of scriptures behind it; Tsongkhapa defined it by the practice of deity yoga.
Full entry → Full guide →Tathagata · Pāli/Skt: tathāgata
An epithet of the Buddha, glossed as 'one who has truly gone' or 'one who has become authentic'; the canon offers several explanations of the title.
Full entry →Theravada · Pāli: theravāda
Theravada, the Doctrine of the Elders, is the only surviving school of early, non-Mahayana Buddhism, built on the Pali Canon.
Full entry → Full guide →Three Jewels · Pāli: tiratana; Skt: triratna
The Three Jewels are the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha: the teacher, the teaching and the community in which Buddhists take refuge.
Full entry → Full guide →Tilakkhana · Pāli: tilakkhaṇa; Skt: trilakṣaṇa
The three marks of existence: impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) and non-self (anatta), held to characterise all conditioned things.
Full entry → Full guide →Tripitaka · Pāli: tipiṭaka; Skt: tripiṭaka
Tripitaka means the "three baskets" of the Buddhist canon: the Vinaya of monastic discipline, the Sutta discourses, and the systematic Abhidhamma.
Full entry → Full guide →U
Upaya · Skt: upāya
Skilful means: teaching pitched to the hearer's capacity, so that a buddha gives each person the teaching that will actually help them.
Full entry →Upekkha · Pāli: upekkhā; Skt: upekṣā
Upekkhā is equanimity: the clear-sighted, unshakable balance of mind counted as the fourth of the four divine abidings.
Full entry → Full guide →V
Vajrayana · Skt: vajrayāna
Vajrayana is the tantric branch of Mahayana Buddhism, the 'Diamond Way' of Tibet and the Himalayas, which seeks buddhahood by tantric means.
Full entry → Full guide →Vinaya · Pāli/Skt: vinaya
The Vinaya is the code of discipline governing Buddhist monks and nuns, and the first division of the Pali Canon, on which monastic community life is built.
Full entry → Full guide →Vipassana · Pāli: vipassanā; Skt: vipaśyanā
Vipassanā is insight — the clear seeing that penetrates the three marks of existence: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and non-self.
Full entry → Full guide →Z
Zazen · Japanese: za-zen 坐禅
Zazen is seated meditation, the foundational practice across the Zen schools, sat either as objectless just sitting or with a koan to work on.
Full entry → Full guide →Zen · Skt: dhyāna; Chinese: chán
Zen is the Japanese name for Chan, the meditation school of East Asian Buddhism, whose foundational practice is seated meditation, zazen.
Full entry → Full guide →