Buddhisms Key Terms Assessment

Samsāra

The continuous, painful cycle of death and rebirth in which unawakened beings wander across different cosmological realms (e.g., human world, preta), driven by craving and karma. You can be reborn as anything (plant, human, etc.). It is characterized by suffering and transience and is a condition of pervasive conditioning. Siddhartha realizes it lacks permanent substance. Nirvana breaks it. The human life is most valuable because you can make the most impact on your path toward nirvana.

Samsāra: what drives it

Primal confusion, craving, and karma

Samsāra: what breaks it

Nirvana

Duḥkha / dukkha

The essential Buddhist concept describing physical pain, mental grief, dissatisfaction, and the universal suffering inherent in worldly existence. A general sense of unsatisfactoriness.

Sukha and duḥkha

Sukha literally means "happy" (the opposite of dukkha), but it is also suffering, because we need to remember suffering is everywhere.

Three levels of dukkha

1) Evident suffering (physical pain, sadness); 2) Suffering of change (everything has to come to an end); 3) Suffering of pervasive conditioning (everything is out of your control)

Four Sights

The transformative encounters (an old man, a sick man, a corpse, and an ascetic) that revealed suffering and inspired the Buddha's renunciation.

Four Sights: context

Shown to Prince Siddhartha by the gods (devas), who interfered with his father's sheltering (his father wanted to keep him from leaving his royal life, i.e., Hindu dharma). They caused a dramatic abandonment of his luxurious life. He realizes the reality of suffering and the ignorance of people, discovers the Middle Way, conquers Mara beneath the Bodhi tree, and attains complete awakening.

Four Sights: significance

They represent the importance of seeing. The first three exposed him to the universal, inescapable nature of dukkha and impermanence; the fourth revealed the path.

Karma

The moral law of cause and effect where intentional physical, verbal, and mental actions generate corresponding positive or negative future results. A natural cause-and-effect, not a point system. It could show up in your next life.

Individual vs. collective karma

Individual karma: your actions affect your rebirth. Collective karma: the systems we exist in constrain us and put us in certain contexts (e.g., incarceration: people in prison are not necessarily there only because of their own actions). We all act to uphold systems that continue long after that life is over.

Karma: does not cancel out

External karma: being mean or dishonest naturally ruins relationships. Intentions build bad habits. Karma exists in thought too (harmful thoughts lead to bad intentions, which lead to wrong view).

Karma: examples

Pretas are the proof of karma (e.g., a stingy person forced to eat dung beetles because of an insult). The man with the nymphs at night who was bitten apart during the day represents the harsh fairness of karma (good actions at night, not during the day).

Noble Eightfold Path

The practical eight-step Buddhist guide (the Middle Way), comprising morality, concentration, and wisdom, that leads to the cessation of suffering and nirvana. Not rules like commandments, but eight areas of life to practice until we spontaneously do the right thing.

Eightfold Path: the eight steps

1) Right view; 2) Right intention; 3) Right speech; 4) Right action; 5) Right livelihood; 6) Right effort; 7) Right conscientiousness; 8) Right meditation

Right speech

Can mean refraining from speech too

Right action

Don't kill, don't engage in sexual misconduct, don't steal

Right livelihood

Don't work unethically

Right effort

Self-awareness, criticism

Right conscientiousness

Consistent recalling of ethical values

Right meditation

Practicing meditation leads to conscientiousness to practice the 6 other things

Preta / pretī

A preta (male) or pretī (female) is a hungry ghost reborn in a lower realm due to past stinginess, suffering intense hunger and thirst. Beings reborn into their worst nightmare.

Preta: appearance

Large stomachs but very small mouths, so perpetually starving

Preta: why they matter

They make karma material evidence so people are encouraged to practice good karma. They reflect that Buddhism is not just about knowledge but about perception as well. Related themes: taking refuge in community, giving alms, and interdependence.

Doctrine of No-Self (anātman)

Beings lack a permanent, unchanging soul, existing only as a changing collection of five physical and mental aggregates. What we call "you" is a combination of ever-changing parts.

Five aggregates

Form (material body), feelings, perceptions, mental formations, consciousness

Chariot analogy

The monk Nagasena asks King Milinda whether the chariot is its different parts. "Chariot" should only be seen as a convenient label for parts that work together (illustrates no-self).

Jātaka

A narrative story recounting a past life of the Buddha, illustrating moral virtues, the workings of karma, and the path to awakening. There are 547 stories of the Buddha's previous lives before he became enlightened.

Sasa Jātaka (316)

The future Buddha is a hare who shakes off bugs from his fur so they won't burn, then leaps himself into a fire to offer himself as food to a hungry guest.

Vessantara Jātaka (547)

Prince Vessantara practices extreme, radical generosity by giving away everything he owns, including his children (to Jujaka) and the elephant that brought his kingdom prosperity.

Doctrine of interdependence

All physical and mental phenomena arise, exist, and pass away in dependence upon interconnected causes and conditions. Everything in the universe is connected.

Interdependence: connections

Supports karma (every choice has ripple effects that come back to us). Connects to suffering (every one of our actions has an impact on someone else). Example: buying clothes from an unethical source.

Radical generosity (dāna)

The selfless practice of giving material gifts, food, and spiritual teachings to eliminate greed and generate spiritual merit. Giving without holding anything back; counter to greed, fear, and egoism.

Radical generosity: Jātaka 547

His perfection in Jātaka 547: gives away the kingdom's rain-making elephant, chariot, children, and wife. Shows the balance between personal spiritual goals and duties to your society or family.

Doctrine of impermanence (anicca)

All conditioned physical and mental phenomena are constantly changing, unstable, and inherently non-permanent. Nothing stays the same forever.

Impermanence: connections

Connects to suffering (when humans pretend good things will last forever) and to no-self. Festival example: two friends watch the festival and realize every single person is going to die.

Bodhisattva

Someone who obtains enlightenment through teachings (written, spoken from monastic teachings, etc.), essentially with the help of a Buddha. They choose to stay on Earth to help others teach enlightenment (a Buddha also does that).

Questions of King Milinda

A whimsical debate between King Milinda and the Buddhist monk Nagasena.

Questions of King Milinda: metaphors

Chariot (no-self); milk to ghee to lamp (rebirth without a permanent soul)

Four Noble Truths

The initial realization of the reality of the world, and the first thing the Buddha spoke about after obtaining enlightenment. They are the conditions for the Eightfold Path.

Four Noble Truths: the four

1) Everything is suffering; 2) Suffering is caused by craving and confusion; 3) You can end suffering by stopping the craving and confusion; 4) How you stop it is the Eightfold Path

First Noble Truth: details

Interdependence (everything you do inevitably perpetuates suffering); samsara is suffering; nirvana is the lack of suffering; moksa means liberation.

Second Noble Truth: details

Far along the path of samsara, you lose the craving for nirvana.

Four Immeasurables (brahmavihāras)

Ethical attitudes: maitri, karuna, mudita, and upeksa. Rather than being right behavior itself (the Eightfold Path), they help you make progress on the Eightfold Path.

Maitri

• Description: The commitment to advance the well-being of others and wish them happiness spontaneously, not because it benefits us, but because it makes them happy [58–59]. It begins by cultivating friendliness toward oneself and then radiates outward to loved ones, neutral people, and enemies until all moral barriers dissolve [60–62].

• Far Enemy: Malice / Ill-will (vyāpāda): Direct hatred or hostility toward others, which is completely antithetical to friendliness.

• Near Enemy: Passion / Egoistic Attachment (sineha): Partial, clingy affection for those close to us ("I love you because you're mine") [63–64]. It masquerades as love but is rooted in egocentric possessiveness.

• Connections to Other Concepts:

  • Bodhisattva Practice: During Mara's attack, Prince Siddhartha abides in universal benevolence (maitrī-vihāra), which miraculously transforms Mara's rain of burning coals into a soft shower of red lotus petals [130–131].

  • Eightfold Path: Expressed as Right Resolve (intentions of non-ill-will) and Right Action [117–118].

  • Mother's Analogy: The mother's attitude toward her little child, wanting him to grow and thrive

Karuna

• Description: The active commitment to relieve suffering and the psychological inability to bear seeing others in pain. While maitrī aims positively at bringing happiness, karuṇā aims negatively at removing duḥkha.

• Far Enemy: Cruelty (hiṃsā): The impulse to inflict harm or take pleasure in another's suffering.

• Near Enemy: Pity / Worldly Grief (gehasitaṃ domanassa): Sloppy sympathy or passive distress where we feel bad about someone's pain ("I feel your pain") but do nothing to help because we are overwhelmed by our own emotional reaction [69–70].

• Connections to Other Concepts:

  • Four Noble Truths: Grounded directly in an appreciation of the First Noble Truth (duḥkha) [68, 81–82].

  • Awakening Night: During the second watch of the night beneath the Bodhi tree, Siddhartha obtains the "divine eye" (divya-cakṣus), witnessing living beings trapped in lower realms due to bad karma, which causes his karuṇā to wax infinitely great [144–146].

  • Mother's Analogy: The mother's attitude toward her sick child, wishing for him to be free of illness

Mudita

• Description: Unreserved joy and celebration in the success, goodness, and happiness of others, completely free from competition.

• Far Enemy: Envy / Disaffection (arati): Resentment or jealousy triggered by another person's good fortune or achievements.

• Near Enemy: Clannish Partiality / Patriotism (gehasita-pāmojja): Joy in success that is tied to egocentric attachment—such as celebrating only when your child, your team, or your country succeeds.

• Connections to Other Concepts:

  • Preta Realm: Muditā is the direct antidote to the jealousy (mātsarya) that leads beings to be reborn as starving hungry ghosts (pretas) with mountain-sized bellies and needle-eye mouths [149–150].

  • Mother's Analogy: The mother's attitude toward her youthful son in his prime, yearning that his youth and success endure long

Upeksa

• Description: An attitude in which one does not take oneself to be the moral origin of the world, but views oneself as merely one node among countless equal moral agents in a vast, interconnected universe. It recognizes that all beings are the ultimate owners of their own karma.

• Far Enemy: Attraction & Repulsion / Hostility & Passion (rāga & dvesa): Knee-jerk emotional reactivity that divides the world into favorites and enemies.

• Near Enemy: Apathy / Ignorant Equanimity (gehasitā upekkhā): Cold, unfeeling indifference toward others' plight, confusing genuine moral open-mindedness with simply not caring [73–75].

• Connections to Other Concepts:

  • Metaphysics (Anātman & Pratītyasamutpāda): Reflects the Doctrine of No-Self and Interdependence by removing the egoistic "I, me, mine" center [72, 76–77].

  • Foundation for Other Virtues: Master Patrul Rinpoche advises cultivating impartiality first, because without it, friendliness, care, and joy degenerate into their near enemies of partial attachment.

  • Mother's Analogy: The mother's attitude toward her grown-up adult son, respecting his independence while remaining equanimous about his choices

Dharma (little d)

Duty; tied to the caste system (duty, not atoms).

Four castes

1) Brahmin (priests, the ascetics); 2) Ksatriya (warrior/royalty); 3) Vaishya (merchant); 4) Sudras (laborers/servants)

Dharma (big D)

The words of the Buddha

Brahmin

Highest caste / Hindus

Bhikkhu

Buddhist

Six perfections (pāramitās)

Generosity (dāna), ethical conduct, patience, diligence, meditation, wisdom

Perception / seeing

Ethical cultivation means changing how you see the world