Buddhism
बौद्ध धर्म
Also written: buddhism · buddha · four noble truths · eightfold path · anatta · nirvana · बौद्ध
Siddhārtha Gautama, born in the Śākya clan around the sixth or fifth century BCE, taught for forty-five years after his awakening. He accepted karma and rebirth, rejected the Vedic sacrifice and the caste order, and denied the permanent self — the last being the point on which every orthodox school engaged him.
The four noble truths
| Truth | Statement |
|---|---|
| Duḥkha | There is suffering — unsatisfactoriness runs through conditioned existence |
| Samudaya | It has a cause: craving (tṛṣṇā), rooted in ignorance |
| Nirodha | The cause can cease |
| Mārga | There is a path to its ceasing — the eightfold path |
The eightfold path
| Group | Limbs |
|---|---|
| Wisdom — prajñā | Right view, right intention |
| Conduct — śīla | Right speech, right action, right livelihood |
| Discipline — samādhi | Right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration |
The three marks and dependent origination
All conditioned things are impermanent (anitya), unsatisfactory (duḥkha) and without a permanent self (anātman). Nothing arises independently: this being, that becomes — pratītyasamutpāda, the twelve-linked chain from ignorance to old age and death, and back.
The schools
| School | Character |
|---|---|
| Theravāda | The elder tradition; Pāli canon; Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos |
| Mahāyāna | The bodhisattva ideal; śūnyatā; China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam |
| Madhyamaka | Nāgārjuna's dialectic: all things are empty of intrinsic nature |
| Yogācāra | Consciousness-only; the ālaya-vijñāna, the storehouse consciousness |
| Vajrayāna | The tantric vehicle; Tibet, Bhutan, Mongolia, Nepal |
The tributaries — traditions born from the same ground
Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism, the Nātha and Siddha lines, the bhakti sants and the modern reform movements: what…
Jainism
The twenty-four Tīrthaṅkaras, the eternal soul and karma as matter, the five vows, anekāntavāda, and the most …
Sikhism
Guru Nānak and the ten Gurus, Ik Onkar, the Guru Granth Sahib as living scripture, the three pillars of practi…
The Nātha sampradāya and haṭha yoga
Matsyendranātha and Gorakhnātha, the nine Nāthas and eighty-four Siddhas, the body as the vehicle of liberatio…
The bhakti movement and the sants
A thousand years of reform from inside: the Ālvārs and Nāyanmārs, Basavaṇṇa, Kabīr, Ravidās, Mīrā, Nāmdev, Tuk…
Modern movements and teachers
Brahmo Samaj, Arya Samaj, Ramakrishna Mission, and the teachers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who …
Last revised 2026-08-16. Corrections are welcome — see how this site is written.