What Is Buddhism? Meaning, Teachings and Who Buddhists Are

By Tim Yu, Founder & Editor · Published 9 November 2026

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Buddhism is a “religion and philosophy”, in Encyclopædia Britannica’s words, that grew from the teachings of the Buddha, the “Awakened One”, who lived in northern India between the mid-6th and mid-4th centuries BCE. Its goal is the end of suffering (dukkha), reached through ethics, meditation and wisdom. About 324 million people identified as Buddhists in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center, most of them in Asia. There are three main branches: Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna.

To start practising, see Buddhism for beginners; for the teachings in depth, the core teachings of Buddhism.

What does the word “Buddhism” mean?

“Buddhism” is an English name, and a fairly recent one. The historian Philip C. Almond dates it to the first half of the nineteenth century, when the term “first made its appearance in English” in scholarly journals.

Buddhists’ own names for it are older. In the Pali discourses it is simply the dhamma (Sanskrit dharma), the teaching (see what is Dharma?). The Buddha’s own name for what he founded was dhamma-vinaya, “doctrine (dhamma) and discipline (vinaya)”, which Bhikkhu Sujato translates “this teaching and training” (AN 8.19). Another is sāsana, “the doctrine of the Buddha” in the Pali Text Society’s dictionary. The Lotus Sutra speaks of “this Buddhadharma”, and in Chinese the religion is Fojiao (佛教), which Pew Research Center calls “the largest officially recognized religion in China”.

Who was the Buddha?

The Buddha was a teacher of ancient India: Siddhārtha Gautama in Sanskrit, Siddhattha Gotama in Pali. Buddha is a title, not a name: it “literally means ‘awakened’”, writes Mark Siderits in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, and is given to one who discovers the path to nirvana and teaches it to others; the state reached is enlightenment (bodhi).

He was born into the Sakya (Śākya) clan, in the area of the present border between India and Nepal, and the Sutta Nipāta (Snp 3.11) names Lumbinī as his birthplace. His dates are disputed: many modern scholars, Britannica reports, place him at about 563–483 BCE, and many others about a century later (about 448–368 BCE); Siderits notes that “many scholars now hold that he must have died around 405 BCE”. Tradition gives him eighty years; in DN 16, the account of his last journey, he says, “I’m currently eighty years old.”

He reached awakening under a pipal, or Bo, tree at Uruvelā on the Nerañjarā River (SN 6.1), now Bodh Gaya in the Indian state of Bihar. He gave his first sermon in the deer park at Isipatana near Varanasi (SN 56.11), now Sarnath. After some forty-five years of teaching he died near Kusinārā (DN 16). The full story is on who was the Buddha?; see also his enlightenment, the first sermon and his death.

What did the Buddha teach? Buddhism in simple terms

In simple terms, the Buddha taught that suffering has a cause, craving, that it can end, and that a path of ethics, meditation and wisdom leads to its end.

The middle way. The first sermon, given to five former companions, opens with the middle way between two extremes:

The sermon’s own title is “Rolling Forth the Wheel of Dhamma”, and Buddhist tradition counts it “the first turning of the wheel of dharma” (Britannica); the eight-spoked Dharma wheel is now a widespread symbol of Buddhism.

The four noble truths. The sermon then sets out the four noble truths: suffering; its origin, “the craving that leads to future lives”; its cessation; and the path to its cessation. Every Buddhist tradition counts this as the Buddha’s first teaching, and versions survive in Pali, Sanskrit, Chinese and Tibetan.

Ethics, meditation, wisdom. The fourth truth, the path, “is simply this noble eightfold path” (SN 56.11). In MN 44 the nun Dhammadinnā sorts its factors into ethics (right speech, action and livelihood), meditative immersion, or samādhi (right effort, mindfulness and immersion), and wisdom (right view and purpose). See the noble eightfold path and the three trainings.

The three marks. Three verses of the Dhammapada (277–279) state the three marks of existence: “All conditions are impermanent”, “All conditions are suffering”, “All things are not-self” (trans. Bhikkhu Sujato). The third is the teaching of non-self (anattā), which locates the ignorance behind suffering in “the conceit that there is an ‘I’ and a ‘mine’” (Siderits).

Karma and rebirth. Karma is intentional action (“It is intention that I call deeds,” AN 6.63), and its results include the circumstances of future births. Some Buddhists have rejected rebirth as hard to square with non-self, a response Siderits calls “not rare among Western Buddhists today”, though he judges the evidence that the Buddha himself accepted it “quite strong”. See karma in Buddhism and rebirth vs reincarnation.

Nirvana. The goal is nibbāna (Sanskrit nirvāṇa), a word that also names the going out of a fire; Sujato translates it “extinguishment”. Asked what it is, the disciple Sāriputta answers: “the ending of greed, hate, and delusion is called extinguishment” (SN 38.1). See what is nirvana? and the glossary entry.

In one verse. The Dhammapada gives the tradition’s own summary, discussed on avoid evil, cultivate good:

What is a Buddhist?

In the early texts, a Buddhist lay follower is someone who has gone for refuge to the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Saṅgha: the Three Jewels. AN 8.25 gives the definition:

The same discourse adds that an “ethical lay follower” does not kill living creatures, steal, commit sexual misconduct, lie or take intoxicants: the five precepts. The practical steps of taking the three refuges are on how to take refuge and how to become a Buddhist.

The discourses count four kinds of follower, monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen, and in AN 4.7 all four, when learned and practising the teaching, “grace the Saṅgha”. In its conventional sense, though, saṅgha means the communities of monks and nuns (see what is the Sangha?).

Lived identity can be looser. In China, Pew Research Center notes, people need not join a temple or formally take refuge (guiyi 皈依) to identify with Buddhism. In 2018 surveys about 4% of Chinese adults formally identified as Buddhist, but 33% said they believe in Buddha and/or a bodhisattva, many of them alongside other religious figures. See also do you have to be Buddhist?

What do Buddhists actually do?

The discourses name three ways of making merit: “Giving, ethical conduct, and meditation” (AN 8.36).

Giving (dāna), in its specific sense, means offering the four requisites (robes, almsfood, lodgings and medicines) to monks and nuns, who in return teach the Dhamma (see merit and the almsround). The Itivuttaka puts the exchange in a verse:

In DN 16 the Buddha names four “inspiring places” — where he was born, awakened, first taught and passed away — and foresees faithful monks, nuns, laymen and laywomen visiting them (see the four pilgrimage sites). In a 2022 Pew survey of six South and Southeast Asian countries, 96% of adults in Cambodia, 92% in Sri Lanka and 84% in Thailand said they burn incense; meditation was highest in Thailand and Sri Lanka (62% each), though Hindus in the region were more likely than Buddhists to say they meditate. See Buddhist meditation, Buddhist chanting, do Buddhists pray?, making offerings and Buddhist temples.

For millions of Buddhists the most sacred day is Vesak, which commemorates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment and passing away; the United Nations recognised it internationally in 1999. Other festivals are on Buddhist festivals.

Do Buddhists believe in God?

Not in a creator God, if the Pali discourses are the guide. They explain the idea of a creator as a misunderstanding, and treat the gods as real but mortal beings, caught like everyone else in saṃsāra, the round of death and rebirth. Devotion to buddhas and bodhisattvas, as in Pure Land, is a different thing from belief in a creator.

In DN 1 the first being reborn in “an empty mansion of divinity” takes himself for “the Maker, the Creator”, and those reborn after him agree, “Because we see that he was reborn here first”. The gods (devas) are long-lived, not eternal: hearing the Buddha teach, they cry, “Oh no! It turns out we’re impermanent” (AN 4.33). Asked by the brahmin Doṇa whether he is a god, the Buddha says he is not, and ends, “Remember me, brahmin, as a Buddha” (AN 4.36).

In Japanese Pure Land, Hōnen taught that simply saying the name of Amida Buddha, entrusting oneself to his vow, brings birth into his buddha-field; in the Larger Sutra Amida was first a bodhisattva, Dharmākara, who fulfilled his vows to become a buddha (Dennis Hirota, Stanford Encyclopedia). In China, Pew notes, the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara “has evolved into an important folk deity, the goddess of mercy” (Guanyin). More on devas, is the Buddha a god? and do Buddhists believe in God?

Whether Buddhism is a religion or a philosophy (Britannica says both) is argued on is Buddhism a religion?

What are the Buddhist scriptures?

Buddhism has no single bible: the traditions keep different canons, and the early scriptures developed in languages of ancient India, above all Pali and Sanskrit (Britannica). See Buddhist scriptures.

• The Pali Canon, or Tipiṭaka (“three baskets”), is the scripture of Theravāda. Its three parts hold the monastic rules (Vinaya), the discourses (Sutta) and philosophical treatises (Abhidhamma). Scholars generally agree, Access to Insight notes, that it “contains the earliest surviving record of the Buddha’s teachings” (see the Pali Canon and the Dhammapada).
• The Chinese canon gathers the scriptures in Chinese translation; Kumārajīva’s Lotus Sutra (T. 262), completed in 406, is the version that made that sutra popular.
• The Tibetan canon has two parts: the Kangyur, Tibetan translations of Indian texts considered to be the words of the Buddha, and the Tengyur, Tibetan translations of works by the great Indian Buddhist masters.
• Mahāyāna sūtras include the Lotus Sutra, which had a devoted following in India but has been most popular in East Asia, and the Heart Sutra, read and recited by Mahāyāna Buddhists in East and Central Asia for well over a thousand years.

How do the Buddhist traditions differ?

The traditions are usually grouped into three branches, Theravāda, Mahāyāna and Vajrayāna, though some scholars count two and treat Vajrayāna as part of Mahāyāna (Pew Research Center). For Charles Goodman and Aaron Schultz, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the “principal difference” between Theravāda and Mahāyāna “lies in the goals they recommend”.

Sources: Pew Research Center (2012); Goodman and Schultz; 84000.

Theravāda, the only surviving tradition that is not Mahāyāna, holds up the arahant, a saint who will not be reborn; a small minority of Theravādins aim at buddhahood (see what is an arahant?).

Mahāyāna began in India, and “all serious Mahāyānists take the bodhisattva vow, promising to become Buddhas in order to help all beings” (see what is a bodhisattva?). Its East Asian schools include Chan, which developed in China from the sixth century CE and is called Zen in Japan (Zen Buddhism); Pure Land, centred on Amida Buddha; and Nichiren Buddhism, whose founder began proclaiming the supremacy of the Lotus Sutra in 1253.

Vajrayāna, practised in the Himalayas and parts of Central Asia and by a few Japanese Buddhists, is for Goodman and Schultz a branch of Mahāyāna sharing its goal, different in ritual, iconography and meditation techniques (see Tibetan Buddhism).

All of them take refuge in the Three Jewels and keep the four noble truths. One word needs care: Mahāyāna texts call the non-Mahāyāna schools Hīnayāna, the “lesser vehicle”, which Goodman and Schultz call “a pejorative term”. More on types of Buddhism and Theravāda vs Mahāyāna.

Where did Buddhism spread, and where are Buddhists today?

Buddhism spread from India to Central and Southeast Asia, China, Korea and Japan, and from the 20th century to the West (Britannica). The third Mauryan king, Ashoka, who calls himself a “lay-disciple” in his Minor Rock Edict 1, played “a crucial part” in spreading it through India and abroad, in his translator S. Dhammika’s judgement (see how Buddhism spread and the history of Buddhism).

Of the 324 million Buddhists Pew Research Center estimated for 2020, 98% live in the Asia-Pacific region. Thailand has the most, about 68 million (94% of its people); China has the second most, about 53 million, though that is only 4% of its population. Buddhists are a majority in seven countries: Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Laos and Mongolia. In India, where Buddhism began, Buddhists (about 10 million) are now less than 1% of the population (see why Buddhism declined in India). Outside Asia, only North America (5.0 million) and Europe (2.5 million) have more than a million Buddhists each (see Buddhism in the West).

The total fell from 343 million in 2010, making Buddhists the only major religious group to shrink in that decade. Pew puts this down to people in East Asia leaving Buddhism and to a relatively low birth rate. Pew stresses that its counts leave out people who practise Buddhism without formally considering themselves Buddhist. See how many Buddhists are there? and Buddhism around the world.

Where to go next

• To start practising: Buddhism for beginners.
• For the teachings: the core teachings of Buddhism.
• For the schools: types of Buddhism.
• For the texts: Buddhist scriptures.
• For common mistakes: Buddhism misconceptions.