Frequently asked questions about Buddhism

The Buddha is not a god, and it is not a name. “Buddha” (buddha) means “awakened one” and is more like a title, a mark of high attainment - roughly like the modern title “world champion” in some sport. A buddha is someone who worked out by his own effort how suffering is built and how it ceases, and managed to teach that to others.

The historical Buddha was called Siddhattha Gotama (Pali, with the stress in Gotama on the first syllable; in Sanskrit - Siddhartha Gautama), also known as Shakyamuni, “the sage of the Sakya clan”. He lived in northern India; the exact dates are disputed, and modern scholars tend to place his passing around 400 BCE. He speaks of his teaching as an ancient path found anew: a traveller stumbles on an overgrown road in the forest and follows it to a forgotten city (SN 12.65). Before Gotama’s time many awakened ones of the past had walked this road, but it gradually faded from human memory. To put it very briefly: by walking this forgotten path again, Siddhartha rediscovered the so-called “Four Noble Truths”. The fourth of them is the Noble Eightfold Path - that very road, overgrown with time. Gotama himself (the Buddha), his teaching (Dhamma, Dhamma) and the community of practitioners (Sangha, Saṅgha) are called the Three Jewels in Buddhism. On entering Buddhism, a person takes “refuge” in them.

There is no almighty creator in the early canon, but there are plenty of deities of varying power (none of them, however, all-powerful, eternal, omniscient or omnipotent). In DN 1 Brahma, having appeared in his world first, takes himself for the creator of the beings who arose there after him - and is wrong. In MN 49 the Buddha tells Baka the Brahma that out of ignorance he holds as eternal what is impermanent: his world and his standing in it. There are many devas (devā) in the texts; they live unimaginably long, but remain mortal inhabitants of samsara.

The Buddha did not place himself in any category of beings either. The brahmin Dona asked who he was: a deva, a gandhabba, a yakkha (yakkha) or a human. The Buddha answered that no category fits, because he had destroyed the causes for being born as any of them (by reaching awakening), and added: “Remember me as a buddha” (AN 4.36). Even though the Buddha is honoured in earnest in the suttas, he does not hand out or grant liberation by his own will: in MN 107 the Tathagata (“thus gone”, another synonym for “buddha”) is called “one who points out the path”. Walking that path is something each person has to do for themselves. The Buddha was turned into a deity outside Buddhism: in the Vaishnava Puranas (Vishnu Purana 3.17-18, Bhagavata Purana 1.3.24; datings and recensions are disputed, the tradition took shape roughly between the 4th and 8th centuries CE) the figure of the Buddha appears in the lists of Vishnu’s avatars. This is not part of what the Pali canon teaches.

By the canon, Gotama is not the only buddha in history. The suttas list many buddhas of the past (DN 14). In the general sense, a buddha is someone who discovered the Dhamma on his own, without a teacher, and then became a teacher for others. The buddha Siddhartha Gotama is simply the one best known to us. For convenience, when texts write “Buddha” with a capital letter, they mean the buddha Siddhartha Gotama. Written with a lowercase letter, it can refer to other buddhas of the past as well as to Siddhartha (depending on context).

Where to read: MN 26 (how Gotama searched for and found awakening), MN 49 (the argument with a Brahma who takes himself to be eternal), AN 4.36 (the direct answer to the question “who are you?”).

The Dhamma (Dhamma; dharma in Sanskrit) is first of all the teaching of the Buddha. The word has no single English equivalent: depending on the passage it is rendered as “teaching”, “truth”, “principle”, “quality”, “phenomenon”, “object of mind”.

Four uses come up often enough to be worth separating - keeping in mind that this is not a strict canonical classification.

1. The Buddha’s teaching. In the suttas it usually travels in a pair with the Vinaya, the monastic discipline. Before his death the Buddha said that the Dhamma and Vinaya he had taught and laid down would be the teacher for the community after him (DN 16). Dhamma here is something you practise, not only something you read.
2. What the teaching points at: impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), the absence of an unchanging self (anattā), dependent origination (paṭicca samuppāda). These are specific regularities of experience, above all the causes of the arising and cessation of suffering (MN 38). In this sense the word does not mean prescribed duty or a single cosmic order - Sanskrit “dharma” carries those meanings outside the Buddhist teaching.
3. The path of practice through which the teaching is realised: virtue (sīla), collectedness or concentration of mind (samādhi), wisdom (paññā).
4. Dhammas in the plural - phenomena and contents of mind. Mind (mano) stands in the list of six sense bases alongside eye and ear, and dhammas are what it takes in, the way the eye takes in what is visible. The description of dharmas as elements of existence is set out in the third part of the Buddhist canon, the Abhidharma, and a separate text, the Abhidharmakosha, is devoted to their detailed classification. But the term did not start there: in MN 10 the fourth foundation of mindfulness is called exactly that, “contemplation of dhammas”, and it covers the five hindrances, the five aggregates, the six internal and external sense bases, the seven factors of awakening and the Four Noble Truths.

The canonical formula describes the Dhamma this way: well expounded by the Blessed One (svākkhāta), visible here and now (sandiṭṭhika), immediate (akālika), inviting one to come and see (ehipassika), leading onward (opaneyyika), to be known by the wise, each for themselves (MN 7).

The Dhamma is one of the Three Jewels, together with the Buddha and the Sangha, and these are what one takes refuge in. Taking refuge in the Dhamma means deciding to rely on the Path and to walk it. At the same time MN 22 warns against clinging to the teaching itself: the Buddha compared the Dhamma to a raft, bound together to cross a river - once it has done its job, it should be left behind, not carried further on one’s head.

Where to read: MN 22 (the simile of the raft), MN 10 (contemplation of dhammas), MN 7 (the formula of the Dhamma’s qualities).

Sangha (saṅgha) literally means “assembly”, “community”. The word has two uses in Buddhism: the sangha as the monastic institution as a whole, and the sangha as the class of practitioners with certain spiritual attainments. The two overlap, but they do not coincide completely.

The monastic Sangha is the community of monks (bhikkhu-saṅgha) and nuns (bhikkhunī-saṅgha) who live by the Vinaya, the code of discipline. In other words, the whole Buddhist monastic organisation with its ordinations, rules and procedures.

The Sangha of the Buddha’s disciples (sāvaka-saṅgha), also called the noble Sangha (ariya-saṅgha), is both monks and lay people who have reached one of the four key “milestones” of the path. The canonical formula defines them as “four pairs, eight persons” (MN 7, AN 8.59):

• the one practising for stream-entry and the stream-enterer;
• the one practising for once-return and the once-returner;
• the one practising for non-return and the non-returner;
• the one practising for arahantship and the arahant (the highest spiritual attainment in Buddhism, short of being a “buddha”).

A noble disciple, then, can turn out to be a monk or a lay person alike. It should be added that this is the classification of the Pali canon. Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism introduce the institution of bodhisattvas with gradations of its own.

The Sangha is one of the “Three Jewels” of Buddhism, in which refuge is taken (on entering Buddhism). The refuge formula means precisely the “noble Sangha”, the Sangha of the Blessed One’s disciples. Accounts of going for refuge sometimes mention “the Sangha of monks”, but the normative explanation of the Third Jewel is exactly the four pairs and eight persons.

These days the word “sangha” is often used as a collective name for the Buddhist community as a whole - the four assemblies (parisā):

• monks;
• nuns;
• laymen;
• laywomen.

And, beyond that, almost any group practising in the spirit of Buddhism, secular ones included.

In this sense our Majjhima Nikaya reading club can also be called a sangha - a gathering of people who read, argue and practise together. It is not, however, a canonical term.

A key theme for the Sangha is living in peace and concord. The suttas of the canon give it a great deal of attention. In particular, six principles of cordiality are laid down for the monastic sangha:

• kindness in deeds;
• kindness in speech;
• kindness in thought;
• readiness to share without stinginess with fellow practitioners whatever has been rightfully obtained, down to the food in the bowl;
• discipline held in common;
• view held in common (AN 6.12).

And if a dispute does arise, many ways of settling it are offered (MN 104).

Where to read: MN 7 (the formula of the Sangha’s qualities), MN 104 (how the community handles disputes), MN 118 (an exemplary monastic Sangha on a full-moon night).

The Four Noble Truths are the central teaching of the Buddha about suffering, its causes and the path to its cessation. They explain what is wrong with ordinary existence, where that comes from, whether it can end and what to do about it. According to tradition, the Buddha formulates them in his first discourse after awakening, set out, for example, in SN 56.11.

In the canon the truths are put like this:

1. The truth of dukkha (dukkha). Birth, ageing, illness, death, meeting what is disagreeable, parting from what is dear, not getting what one wants; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging (pañcupādānakkhandhā).
2. The truth of the origin of dukkha. It is craving (taṇhā) and the clinging born in its wake, leading to renewed existence and accompanied by delight and lust: craving for sensual pleasures (kāma-taṇhā), craving for existence (bhava-taṇhā), craving for non-existence or cessation (vibhava-taṇhā).
3. The truth of the cessation of dukkha. The remainderless fading away of the three “root” defilements of the mind - craving, hatred and ignorance - and, with their eradication, release from taṇhā and from the causes of suffering. This cessation is what is called Nibbāna (Nibbāna).
4. The truth of the path leading to the cessation of dukkha. This is the Noble Eightfold Path: right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration. The eight factors fall into three groups - virtue (sīla), concentration (samādhi) and wisdom (paññā) (MN 44).

Dukkha is wider than “suffering”: it covers plain pain, the unsatisfactoriness of impermanence and of pleasant things that end, and the unreliability of everything constructed. The canon distinguishes three kinds:

• dukkha as pain (dukkha-dukkhatā), obvious physical suffering;
• dukkha of change (vipariṇāma-dukkhatā), the disappointment of pleasant things running out;
• dukkha inherent in the conditioned (saṅkhāra-dukkhatā), or “all-pervading unsatisfactoriness” (SN 45.165).

What matters in the Four Noble Truths is not only the list itself but what has to be done with each truth. The Buddha describes three turnings for each: knowing the truth, knowing its task, knowing the task has been done. The tasks differ:

• dukkha is to be fully understood (pariññeyyaṃ);
• its origin is to be abandoned (pahātabbaṃ);
• its cessation is to be realised (sacchikātabbaṃ);
• the path is to be developed (bhāvetabbaṃ).

Agreeing with four statements is not enough here; each one calls for an act of its own. So the truths do not stop at the diagnosis - they offer a “treatment”: the third says dukkha can cease completely, and the fourth describes what has to be done for that. Incidentally, the comparison with medical treatment - diagnosis, cause, prognosis, prescription - is a much-used analogy that helps grasp the point, but it does not occur in the suttas.

Moreover, right view, the first factor of the path, is itself defined through knowledge of these same four truths (MN 9, MN 141). The path, then, is not attached to the truths from outside - it is the fourth of them.

Where to read: MN 141 (a detailed analysis of all four truths, given by Sariputta), MN 9 (right view), SN 56.11 (the first discourse and the three turnings).

The first noble truth does not claim that life consists of suffering. It says that anything in our life that is subject to arising and decay cannot give reliable, final satisfaction. The word “dukkha” (dukkha) is wider than the English “suffering”: it covers everything from sharp pain to barely noticeable background unease. Dukkha is suffering, and pain, and futility, and nagging weariness.

The canon (see SN 38.14, SN 45.165) distinguishes three kinds of dukkha:

• dukkha as pain (dukkha-dukkhatā);
• the dukkha of change (vipariṇāma-dukkhatā);
• the pervasive dukkha of conditionality (saṅkhāra-dukkhatā).

The first kind is clear to everyone. The second is about the fact that everything good ends or spoils. The third concerns the nature of all things: any support assembled out of conditions holds exactly as long as the conditions do. The short general formula: what is impermanent is dukkha (SN 22.45).

The pleasant is not cancelled by any of this. Pleasure in the suttas (see MN 13) is called by its own name (sukha) and taken apart under three headings:

• what makes it attractive (assāda);
• where its danger lies (ādīnava);
• and what the way out of this situation is (nissaraṇa).

The problem is that pleasure, sukha, is almost always conditioned and ends as soon as its causes end. And the attempt to hold on to it creates a whole spectrum of new problems and new causes for suffering. There is also a happiness that does not depend on sensual pleasures: from the Buddhist point of view this is Nibbana, awakening.

Dukkha does not arise simply because everything ends. The second noble truth names the cause more precisely: craving (taṇhā). So the cessation of dukkha comes with the fading of craving, not with the abolition of impermanence.

Where to read: MN 141 (the full definition of all four truths), MN 13 (gratification, danger and escape), MN 22 (the Buddha on what he teaches).

The Noble Eightfold Path (also known as “the Middle Way”) is the fourth noble truth: the path that leads to the cessation of suffering and to liberation. In SN 56.11 it is called the middle way between indulgence in sensual pleasures and self-torment.

The eight factors of the Noble Eightfold Path (SN 45.8):

• right view (sammā-diṭṭhi);
• right intention (sammā-saṅkappa);
• right speech (sammā-vācā);
• right action (sammā-kammanta);
• right livelihood (sammā-ājīva);
• right effort (sammā-vāyāma);
• right mindfulness (sammā-sati);
• right concentration (sammā-samādhi).

“Right” (sammā) here means “correct”, as opposed to wrong (micchā), not “perfect”. The factors are not steps to be passed through one after another - they are interconnected and develop together, though in MN 117 right view comes first and leads the other seven.

The eight factors are often gathered into three groups (for example, in MN 44): virtue, concentration and wisdom.

Virtue (sīla) - speech, action, livelihood.

• Right speech: no lying, no divisive speech, no harsh speech, no idle chatter.
• Right action: refraining from killing, from taking what is not given, and from misconduct in sensual pleasures (kāmesu micchācāra, usually sexual misconduct).
• Right livelihood: abandoning a wrong way of life and earning, or one that fosters the unwholesome. Lay people are separately given five kinds of trade to avoid: in weapons, in living beings, in meat, in intoxicants and in poisons (AN 5.177).

Concentration (samādhi) - effort, mindfulness, concentration.

• Right effort is aimed at four tasks: preventing new unwholesome (akusala) states of mind from arising, letting go of those already arisen, cultivating wholesome states (kusala) not yet arisen, and maintaining, developing and bringing to completion those already present.
• Right mindfulness: establishing attention and observation over four domains of experience - the satipatthanas (satipaṭṭhāna): contemplating body, feelings, mind and dhammas (mental phenomena), “ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having put away covetousness and grief for the world” (MN 10).
• Right concentration (per SN 45.8 and MN 141) leads to the four jhanas (jhāna). The higher attainments of concentration called the “formless spheres” are not part of this definition, and “access concentration” (upacāra-samādhi) is a term from the later commentaries.

Wisdom (paññā) - view and intention.

• Right view is understanding the four noble truths, the nature of suffering and the path to liberation. MN 117 separates the mundane view, which accepts that actions bear fruit, from the supramundane one, which is the factor of the noble path.
• Right intention comprises renunciation, first of all of passions and craving (nekkhamma), good will (abyāpāda) and harmlessness (avihiṃsā).

A widespread image illustrating the Noble Eightfold Path is the wheel of the Dhamma with eight spokes (the Dhammachakra). Buddhism borrowed the image from Indian culture and filled it with new meaning. Originally it was the emblem of the chakravartin - the ideal universal monarch turning the wheel of law and justice. The turning of the wheel of the Dhamma came to symbolise the exposition and spread of the teaching of the Buddha, which opens the path to release from suffering.

Where to read: MN 141, MN 117, MN 44.

The Middle Way (majjhimā paṭipadā) is the name the Buddha gave in his first discourse to the Noble Eightfold Path (the set of practices and views leading to final liberation, Nibbana). The name “middle way” was chosen because the practices the Buddha proposed lay between two extremes popular in his time:

• indulgence in sensual pleasures (kāmasukhallikānuyoga);
• extreme asceticism and self-torment (attakilamathānuyoga).

The first extreme the Buddha calls low, coarse and ignoble, the second painful and ignoble; neither leads to the goal (SN 56.11). The Middle Way itself leads to the cessation of suffering and to nibbana, and it constitutes the fourth noble truth (“there is a path of release from suffering”).

In MN 36 this approach is unfolded through Gotama’s account of his own search for awakening. The future buddha pushed his body to the limit: he starved, practised intense and life-threatening breathing exercises, up to the state where “the skin of his belly clung to his spine”. It brought him no awakening at all, only exhaustion. Then he remembered a special and pleasant state of concentration he had experienced in his youth (the first jhana), and asked himself whether that pleasure was to be feared. The answer was no - it has nothing to do with sensual desires or unwholesome states.

The Middle Way consists of the following eight aspects - factors (see SN 56.11 and MN 139):

• right view;
• right intention;
• right speech;
• right action;
• right livelihood;
• right effort;
• right mindfulness;
• right concentration.

This is where its other name comes from - the Noble Eightfold Path.

The word “middle” has another sense as well - with regard to views. There are the views “everything exists” and “nothing exists” (SN 12.15), eternalism (the “self” is eternal) and annihilationism (the “self” is destroyed completely at death) (DN 1). The view that corresponds to the Middle Way also lies midway between these extremes and rests on the principle of dependent origination: suffering takes shape when its conditions are present and ceases when they cease.

Where to read: MN 36, MN 139, SN 56.11.

Karma (karma) is the Sanskrit word; in Pali it sounds as kamma. Literally it translates as “action, deed”.

What is kamma?

In AN 6.63 the Buddha says: “It is intention, monks, that I call kamma. Intending, one acts by body, speech and mind”. The key word here is intention (cetanā) - the volitional impulse that expresses itself in a deed of body, speech or mind. So the more precise meaning of “karma” in the Buddhist context is intention, or intentional action. The result of an intentional action, in turn, is the so-called vipāka, the “kammic fruit”. For example, cruel words said in anger and with the intention to insult will lead to obvious “negative” kammic fruits. A mosquito crushed by accident, though, will not turn into a kammic fruit based on killing: the person had no intention to kill.

Also, from the fact that deeds have consequences it does not follow that everything that happens is a consequence of deeds. The view “every experience is caused by past kamma” the Pali canon rejects outright (AN 3.61), and the suttas give no grounds for explaining other people’s illness or poverty by “their kamma”.

The kammic chain can be pictured like this:

• intention (cetanā) sets off a kammic action (kamma-patha);
• the action forms or reinforces a habit and a causal tendency;
• given the right conditions, the tendency bears fruit (vipāka).

The canon (in particular AN 6.63) distinguishes fruits experienced in this life, at the next birth and in a later existence. Sometimes this is spoken of as ripened kamma, whose fruit has already shown up in experience, and as unripened kamma - kammic potential already created but not yet fruiting. One could say it is a “seed” that has not yet met all the conditions needed to sprout.

Since kammic fruits are effectively determined by intention, Buddhism distinguishes two types of it:

• Unwholesome (akusala) intention - an intention born of one of the following:
  1. lobha - greed, clinging;
  2. dosa - hatred, aversion;
  3. moha - ignorance, delusion.
• Wholesome (kusala) intention - an intention born outside these defilements. An unwholesome intention will not yield a wholesome fruit, just as an apple tree will not grow from hogweed seeds.

What karma will a deed produce?

Karma is not retribution under whatever version of morality a society currently holds - that is, rather, a concept of Western religions. The law of kamma is a regularity of conditionality that shapes consequences:

• outwardly - as circumstances;
• inwardly - as inclinations, experiences, habits, clarity or cloudedness of mind;
• in the long run - as the direction of a future rebirth, to speak within the traditional Buddhist frame.

Nor does the canon give an exact calculus of the ripening of kamma. It is one of the four things the Buddha advised not to speculate about, lest one drive oneself to distress (AN 4.77). MN 136 warns that the whole of one’s kamma cannot be judged by the observed outcome: it happens that a person kills all his life and is reborn in a happy world, while another abstains and lands in a bad destination through a deed from the distant past.

What affects the kammic fruit?

The canon holds that the final kammic fruit and its “strength” are determined by a whole set of factors. Taking the killing of an animal as an example, for the act of killing to count as fully completed one usually lists:

1. there is a living being;
2. there is recognition of it as a living being;
3. there is the intention to kill;
4. there is effort directed at killing;
5. death occurs as the result of this action.

If some link is missing, the kamma may be incomplete or weaker. The same principle can be applied to other actions: object, recognition, motive, action, completion.

The courses of action

Clarifying how the law of kamma works, the suttas describe ten wholesome and unwholesome courses of action - kamma-patha (AN 10.176, MN 41). This is a list of deeds that lead to the formation of unwholesome kamma. Accordingly, if one does not commit these deeds (that is, follows the wholesome courses), no unwholesome fruits will form.

The wholesome courses are:

• bodily actions: not to kill, not to take what is not given, not to act wrongly in sensual pleasures (kāmesu micchācāra - first of all sexual misconduct: sex with those under the care of relatives, married, betrothed or protected by law);
• actions of speech: not to lie, not to divide people, not to speak harshly, not to chatter idly;
• intentions of mind: not to nurse covetous longing for anything, or enmity and ill will, and not to hold wrong views (denial of the law of kamma, of rebirth, of the Four Noble Truths).

Can karma or its fruits be changed?

A done deed cannot be rewritten, nor can karma be cancelled. But one can influence how it will manifest - for example, through remorse (not to be confused with self-flagellation out of guilt) and ceasing to repeat unwholesome deeds, as well as through acquiring wholesome merit.

If the wholesome courses of action are mostly about what not to do, the three bases for making merit (puñña-kiriya-vatthu, DN 33) define the formation of wholesome kamma:

• giving (dāna);
• virtue (sīla);
• development of mind (bhāvanā).

Such actions in the present do not erase the past, but they weaken its effect on us. A handful of salt makes a cup of water undrinkable, yet the same salt thrown into a full river will not change the taste of its water at all (AN 3.100).

The cessation of kamma

For all this attention to wholesome deeds and intentions, the goal of Buddhism is not to improve a person’s karma. Kamma is one of the factors of samsara - in essence, the motor that generates endless suffering. That is why a better rebirth cannot be the goal of a teaching that has set itself the task of ending that suffering. Wholesome karma and its fruits are seen only as necessary means for purifying the mind to the degree needed for the practice that leads to liberation.

That is why AN 6.63 calls the Noble Eightfold Path the way to the cessation of kamma. And arahants, beings who have fully realised the path, are described in the suttas as those who create no more new kamma and will have no new birth, which inevitably leads to suffering.

Where to read: MN 135, MN 136, MN 61.

The principle of non-self, anatta (anattā), does not claim that you do not exist. It claims that neither in the body nor in the mind is there a permanent owner - someone who directs the body, thoughts, emotions, feelings, consciousness and sensations, and does not change in the process.

Arguments appear in many suttas of the canon - for example, these two from SN 22.59:

• if the “self” were equivalent to our body, we could dispose of it completely: “let my body be thus”; it does not work that way;
• the body is impermanent, and what is subject to change inevitably leads to suffering (painfulness is not required here; the sense is closer to the absence of reliability, of a stable support). So it cannot be equated with an eternal and unchanging inner essence, taken as “this is mine, this I am, this is my self”.

The same logic is then applied to feelings (more precisely, their tone, vedanā), perception (saññā), volitional formations (saṅkhārā) and consciousness (viññāṇa). The Buddha breaks down what we call ourselves into these five aggregates (khandhā).

The question “is there a self or not” itself the Buddha leaves unanswered. For example, he stays silent at the direct question in the conversation with the wanderer Vacchagotta in one of the suttas. Answering “there is” would side with the teaching of an eternal essence; answering “there is not” would leave the questioner worrying that he existed and has now been destroyed (SN 44.10). In other words, anatta, non-self, is not so much the doctrine “I do not exist” as a way of looking at the whole of our experience.

But what, then, is the object of the law of kamma?

• In MN 109 a monk has exactly this thought: if form, feeling and the rest are not-self, then what “self” will be affected by deeds done by not-self? The Buddha replies that this is how a person trying to outwit the teaching might think, and returns the conversation to what can be checked: is form impermanent, is the impermanent reliable, is it reasonable to take such a thing as yourself.
• In SN 12.12, asked “who consumes the nutriment of consciousness?”, the Buddha says he does not claim that “someone consumes”; the right question is what consciousness serves as nutriment for, and the answer: for the future renewal of existence.

MN 38 opens up the theme of rebirth well. The monk Sāti decided that what is reborn is “the same consciousness, wandering from life to life”. That is entirely wrong, the Buddha corrects. Consciousness arises in dependence on conditions and is named after them, the way a fire is named after its fuel - a wood fire, a grass fire. In dependent origination, becoming (bhava) serves as the condition for birth (jāti). The conviction that the one who does the deed and the one who experiences its fruit in the next life are the same person leads to eternalism; the thought that they are different - to annihilationism. In place of both extremes stands dependent origination (SN 12.17).

Where to read: MN 109, MN 38, MN 22.

Dependent origination is the fundamental law of causality in Buddhism. It explains why any phenomenon exists and arises only owing to the presence of certain conditions - and with the cessation of those conditions, the processes and phenomena dependent on them cease to exist as well. First of all the Buddha applies this principle to the arising and cessation of suffering. The general formula runs: “When this is, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this is not, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases” (SN 12.37). It is not a linear chain but, rather, a dynamic web of mutual conditionality, explaining how the experience of individual existence unfolds within samsara.

It is one of the key teachings describing why suffering arises and how it can be brought to an end. MN 28 says: “One who sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma. One who sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination”.

The Buddha set out the scheme of dependent origination as a chain of 12 links (SN 12.2):

1. Ignorance (Avijjā) - not knowing the nature of reality, and specifically the Four Noble Truths.
2. Formative factors (Saṅkhārā) - kammically conditioned impulses in the form of intentions, emotions, thoughts - everything that shapes the space of the mind and is born of ignorance.
3. Consciousness (Viññāṇa) - awareness of the “objects” arising in the space of the mind.
4. Name-and-form, or Mind and Body (Nāma-rūpa) - the mental and physical constituents of a being, arising in the presence of consciousness. “Name” (the mental) - feeling tone, perception, attention; “form” (the material) - the four great elements and what derives from them.
5. The six sense bases (Saḷāyatana) - the sources of sense perception: eye, ear, nose, tongue, body and mind.
6. Contact (Phassa) - the coming together of a sense organ, its object and consciousness.
7. Feeling (Vedanā) - the tone of experience: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
8. Craving (Taṇhā) - passionate desire (attraction) or aversion (rejection) arising towards the feeling.
9. Clinging (Upādāna) - intensified craving grown into attachment to sensual pleasures, the “appropriation” of objects, views and notions of a “self”.
10. Becoming (Bhava) - the process of forming new kamma and a predisposition to a certain kind of existence.
11. Birth (Jāti) - appearance in a new form of existence (not necessarily physical birth, but also the arising of a new identity, a state of mind).
12. Ageing and death (Jarā-maraṇa) - the inevitable decay, suffering and dissolution that follow birth (and with them sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection and despair).

The main point: suffering exists because of the chain of conditioned links. If the chain is broken - especially at the stage of craving and clinging - the cycle stops, and dukkha (suffering) disappears.

In the canon Sariputta takes the chain apart link by link (MN 9): feeling tone arises with contact, craving - with feeling tone (vedanā); and as the path to the cessation of craving he names the Noble Eightfold Path. It is at the junction of feeling tone and craving that habit operates: the pleasant pulls us to hold on, the painful - to push away. The feeling tone itself - pleasant, unpleasant, neutral - does not go anywhere even for the trained disciple: he still experiences all three kinds of vedanā, but without clinging and without the “second arrow” (SN 36.6).

The standard formula as a sequence does not exhaust all the relations of conditionality. DN 15, for example, points to mutual conditioning: consciousness rests on name-and-form, and name-and-form - on consciousness. The formula of cessation runs in the same order: with the complete fading of ignorance the volitional actions cease, and so on to the end of the whole mass of suffering. Brief expositions begin the cessation with the fading of craving (SN 12.43).

Main interpretations

The classical commentarial explanation spreads the chain over three lives: past, present and future. Taken this way, it shows how ignorance, kamma and craving sustain samsara - precisely as the round of births and deaths - without an unchanging soul passing from body to body.

There is also an interpretation through present experience. Its emphasis is on how conditionality shows itself now: feeling supports craving, craving - clinging and suffering. Some teachers read the whole chain psychologically, including the “birth” of the sense of “I” at every moment - a new identity of sorts, with characteristic manifestations conditioned by this whole chain. On Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s interpretation, small psychological becomings and the large becoming that leads to a new birth are one and the same mechanism at different scales.

The Mahayana tradition, especially Madhyamaka, ties dependent origination to the understanding of emptiness (śūnyatā): since all things depend on conditions, on other phenomena and on designation, they have no independent, self-existent nature. “Empty” does not mean “non-existent” altogether; it means “existing dependently”.

Dependent origination makes it possible to avoid two extreme views - “I have an unchanging essence” and “everything is random, my actions change nothing”. Everything is conditioned, but conditions can change. Virtue, attention, wisdom and goodwill become new conditions that weaken suffering. Dependent origination is also the middle between eternalism (“everything always exists”) and annihilationism (“nothing exists and everything vanishes without trace”), which the Buddha frequently criticises in the canon.

In place of these polar views the Buddha describes new birth through an agrarian metaphor of creating the conditions for a seed to sprout (AN 3.76):

• kamma is the field: intentional actions that create the range of possibilities for experience and birth;
• consciousness is the seed: if passion, delight and craving are present, consciousness gets established and grows;
• craving is the moisture, without which consciousness cannot take hold and grow.

Under these conditions “a new becoming in the future” is produced. Upādāna, grasping, is built here into the mechanics of the interplay of kamma, consciousness and craving. Clinging directs our intentions (cetanā) and deeds (kamma), which in turn condition the “establishing and growth” of consciousness. So “rebirth” can be described as a process of forming a new mode of existence that has gathered momentum - the direction in which the next literal new birth ripens.

Such an account of rebirth implies no personal transmigrating soul. And that is why the Buddha objects to the monk Sāti, who decided that “the same consciousness” wanders on: consciousness arises in dependence on conditions and is distinguished by them (MN 38).

Where to read: MN 9, MN 38, DN 15.

Samsara (saṁsāra) is the continuing round of births, deaths and further births, in which beings are held by ignorance (avijjā) and craving (taṇhā). The word literally means “wandering on”. The way out is nibbāna: craving fades, ignorance ends, and with them the whole chain that produces suffering.

Samsara is not a place or a separate world you can enter or leave. It is a name for a process: one conditioned state gives rise to the next, with no discoverable beginning. The Buddha said the first point of this wandering cannot be found, however long you look for it (SN 15.3). The early texts list five destinations (gati) where rebirth can occur: hell, animals, ghosts (pettivisaya), humans, gods (MN 12). Rebirth among the gods is pleasant and lasts a long time, but it is no exit - it also ends in another birth.

None of this is driven by fate or by an outside power. In dependent origination (paṭicca-samuppāda), ignorance is the condition for the links that follow: craving leads to clinging, clinging to becoming (bhava), becoming to birth. Kamma is intention (cetanā), not a substance that drags us around the circle. Nothing transmigrates through death - no self, no unchanging consciousness. The monk Sāti, who thought otherwise, was corrected by the Buddha in sharp terms (MN 38). What continues is causal connection, not an entity.

The way out is set out in the second and third noble truths: craving that leads to renewed becoming produces suffering, and its complete fading brings that suffering to an end (MN 141). The means is the noble eightfold path, grouped as virtue, concentration and wisdom (MN 44). When craving and ignorance are pulled up by the root, no fuel is left for another birth. That is arahantship.

Two points cause most of the confusion. Leaving samsara does not mean relocating to a better part of it: MN 106 shows that even the refined formless attainments do not liberate while clinging remains. And the end of rebirth is not the annihilation of a person. Asked whether a Tathāgata exists after death, the Buddha answered neither yes nor no - those options do not apply here, any more than it applies to ask which direction a flame went when it went out (MN 72).

Awakening also comes in stages. A stream-enterer (sotāpanna) is still reborn, but the number of remaining births is now limited; the complete absence of further birth comes with arahantship.

Where to read: MN 38, MN 141, MN 72; on the undiscoverable beginning of samsara, SN 15.3.

Nibbāna (Sanskrit nirvāṇa) is the complete fading away and abandoning of craving, and with it of suffering (dukkha) and of renewed becoming. It is not non-existence, and not a trance. It should not be confused with emptiness either: in the early texts emptiness (suññatā) means that phenomena are empty of “I” and “mine” (SN 35.85, MN 121), while the base of nothingness (ākiñcaññāyatana) is a separate meditative attainment, itself conditioned (MN 140).

Nibbāna is the third of the Four Noble Truths (MN 141) and the final goal of the Noble Eightfold Path - final liberation from ignorance and from that same craving (for sense pleasures, for becoming and for non-becoming), going beyond saṃsāric existence and conditionality.

The word means “going out and cooling down” - the way a fire goes out when its fuel runs out. SN 43.12 defines the unconditioned (asaṅkhata) as the state in which passion (rāga), aversion (dosa) and delusion (moha) are completely destroyed. This is not a temporary calm in which these states simply do not show up, but their final uprooting.

The suttas give nibbāna many epithets, both negative and positive: the unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned (Ud 8.3), the deathless (amata), the highest happiness, peace, the island (dīpa), the shelter (leṇa), the refuge (saraṇa) - a long list is collected in SN 43.14-43. These are epithets, not an exact definition. It cannot truly be compared with anything we know, because ordinary experiences arise thanks to conditions and then pass away. Even deep meditative concentration is conditioned and impermanent, unlike the “unconditioned” nibbāna. That is why it cannot be described precisely in words, and the Buddha preferred to speak about the Path rather than about Awakening itself.

The canon distinguishes two elements of nibbāna (Iti 44). “With residue” (saupādisesa) is the liberation of an arahant while alive: craving is exhausted, but the five sense faculties are intact, and they still experience the pleasant and the painful. “Without residue” (anupādisesa) is the final going out at the arahant’s death: there is no new birth, and the conditioned process of experience is no longer fed by anything and does not start up again. The word parinibbāna usually points to the second case, as in the account of the Buddha’s passing (DN 16), though in the early texts it is not always kept strictly apart from plain “nibbāna”.

Hence the usual worry: does all this amount to annihilation? When Vacchagotta asked whether a Tathāgata exists after death, the Buddha replied that none of the four alternatives applies (he exists, he does not exist, both, neither), and compared it to a fire: once a fire has gone out for lack of fuel, asking which direction it went is meaningless (MN 72). The Buddha does not say that the Tathāgata simply vanished - he sets aside a wrongly posed question.

Nibbāna is not an object that can be obtained, not a place one can arrive at, not an analogue of paradise and not the annihilation of the person, but the end of identifying with the illusion of an unchanging “I” and going beyond conceptual structures, an unconditioned state of mind reached when all defilements are uprooted.

The canon does not invite speculation about nibbāna. The Buddha compared the going out to an oil lamp that burns while oil and wick last and goes out when they are gone (MN 140), and described the liberated person’s knowledge in a dry formula repeated across the canon: birth is ended, the holy life has been lived, what had to be done has been done, there will be no more new becoming.

Where to read: MN 140, MN 141, MN 72; on the two elements of nibbāna, Iti 44.

Samatha (samatha) is the practice of concentration and calming of the mind; vipassana (vipassanā) is the practice of insight. In the suttas these are two complementary lines of development: samatha develops the mind and helps cling less to habitual sensual pleasures, while vipassana develops wisdom and leads to the ending of ignorance (AN 2.31). Both practices are needed for final liberation (the attainment of Nibbana).

• Samatha techniques (as a rule, various kinds of meditation are meant) gather and settle the mind through concentration on a chosen object - the breath, goodwill, a kasina (a special visual object for meditation, for example a coloured disc, earth, water or fire). As a result the practitioner reaches one-pointedness of mind, a steady sharp focus of attention. That focus then makes it possible to reach the state of utmost concentration - samadhi (samādhi). Within such concentration four levels of absorption are distinguished, the so-called jhanas (jhāna).
• Vipassana observes experience so that its conditioning by the five aggregates of clinging becomes noticeable, along with impermanence (anicca), unsatisfactoriness (dukkha) and not-self (anattā). As a result the practitioner develops wisdom (paññā), which leads to insights into the qualities of perceived experience.

How the two practices are combined is often individual. A developed state of concentration, samadhi, does not by itself lead to insights and Nibbana. At the same time, insight practices also need a sufficiently steady, calm mind. So the question “where to start” is most often settled by temperament and by a teacher. In AN 4.170 Ananda says that all the monks and nuns who declared the attainment of arahantship in his presence had gone one of four ways: samatha before vipassana; vipassana before samatha; the two developed in tandem (yuganaddha); and the case where the mind is first seized by agitation about the Dhamma and then settles, becomes unified and enters samadhi. Mindfulness of breathing, for example, described in MN 118, joins samatha and vipassana. Splitting practice into a “samatha course” and a “vipassana course” is mostly a later and modern way of organising teaching.

Where to read: MN 118, MN 149; on the four routes - AN 4.170, on the pair itself - AN 2.31.

A jhāna is a stable state of deep concentration in which the mind is collected and lets go, step by step, of the components of experience (starting with the coarser ones and moving on to ever subtler ones). The canon describes four levels of depth of such states (that is, the first to the fourth jhāna). The practice of jhāna is part of right concentration (sammā-samādhi), the eighth factor of the path (SN 45.8). In jhānic concentration the practitioner does not fall asleep, does not enter a trance with loss of consciousness and does not suppress thoughts. The practice of jhāna is meant to make the mind less scattered and more fit for knowing (for the realisation of wisdom, paññā).

Entering jhāna is preceded by abandoning the so-called five hindrances to practice:

1. sensual desire (kāmacchanda),
2. ill will (byāpāda),
3. dullness and drowsiness (thīna-middha),
4. restlessness and remorse (uddhacca-kukkucca),
5. doubt that obstructs practice (vicikicchā).

Most often this is a temporary liberation from the hindrances, enough to reach the necessary level of concentration. They are overcome for good only by an arahant.

The definition of the jhānas (what happens in them and which factors can be observed while abiding in these states) recurs throughout the canon, for instance in MN 39:

• First jhāna: seclusion from sensual pleasures and unwholesome states, applied and sustained attention (vitakka, vicāra), rapture (pīti) and pleasant feeling (sukha) born of seclusion.
• Second: applying and sustaining attention cease; there remain inner confidence, unification of mind, rapture and pleasure (pīti and sukha) born of concentration.
• Third: rapture fades; there remain equanimity (upekkhā), mindfulness, clear comprehension and a still pleasant sukha.
• Fourth: with joy and grief already gone, both pleasant and painful feeling are abandoned; the state is neither pleasant nor painful, with purity of mindfulness due to equanimity.

After the jhānas the canon lists the four formless bases (arūpa-āyatana): infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, neither-perception-nor-non-perception (MN 111). Later literature sometimes calls them formless jhānas, but the suttas use precisely the term “bases”.

Why are the jhānas needed?

The jhānas:

• give a well-being that does not depend on the usual sensual pleasures. This makes it easier to loosen the dependence on a constant search for sensual stimulation.
• make the mind steady: it can investigate experience without distraction and without interruption.
• themselves become an object of insight. The practitioner sees that even an exalted meditative experience is conditioned, impermanent and not “I” or “mine”. MN 111 describes the investigation of the factors of meditative attainments. In MN 36 the Buddha recalls the first jhāna and recognises it as part of the path to awakening, rejecting fruitless self-mortification.

For all the importance of the jhānas, the canon states no rule such as “first master at least the first jhāna, and only then take up insight”. Commentarial Theravāda also allows a path of dry insight (sukkhavipassaka), without first mastering the absorptions, but not without concentration altogether. In this approach, steadiness of attention is considered to develop within the practice of insight itself. At the same time, jhāna practice is mentioned in the canon very often, right concentration is defined through the jhānas (SN 45.8), and they are regarded as a basis for the destruction of the defilements (AN 9.36).

Different traditions and teachers do not agree on how deep concentration has to be to be called jhāna. They also read the strict necessity of attaining jhāna differently: some consider it obligatory, others allow liberation on the basis of some other sufficient collectedness of mind.

A conditioned attainment

The jhānas remain a conditioned attainment and are not enough for liberation on their own. In MN 111 Sāriputta goes through the jhānas and the formless bases, discerning their components one by one: these states, not having been, come to be; having been, they vanish. He is neither drawn to them nor repelled by them, and he sees that there is an escape beyond. Happiness can be experienced in the jhānas - MN 59 sets out a series of ever subtler kinds of it. Yet the formless bases stand above the jhānas, and at the top is the cessation of perception and feeling. Final liberation means not just a special experience, but direct knowledge of the nature of reality and complete freedom from the defilements of the mind.

Hence a practical guideline: develop virtue, mindfulness and steadiness of attention together; judge your practice not only by unusual states, but also by a decrease in greed, hostility and clinging.

Where to read: MN 39, MN 111, MN 59.

Mindfulness (sati; the Sanskrit counterpart is smṛti, “memory”) is recollection: the ability to keep in mind what is happening and what you are doing, without slipping into forgetfulness. In the suttas the term sati carries several different senses:

• Memory and recall (MN 53): the ability to remember what was said or done long ago (for example, “to remember deeds of the past”).
• Keeping in mind: reminding oneself of the important principles of the Dhamma, holding on to the reference points of practice.
• Presence of mind and awareness (mindfulness / awareness): direct perception of what is happening in the present moment without distraction, clarity of mind.

Sati is the first of the seven factors of awakening. In the Noble Eightfold Path right mindfulness (sammā-sati) is the seventh factor. In this context it is defined not as presence in the moment in general, but through the practice of the four foundations-domains of mindfulness (satipatthanas - body, feelings, mind, mental constructs - MN 141, MN 10). The full formula runs: the practitioner contemplates the domain “ardent (ātāpī), clearly comprehending (sampajāno), mindful (satimā), having put away covetousness and displeasure towards the world” (MN 10). So “non-judgemental observation” is not quite an accurate translation. The practice includes telling the wholesome from the unwholesome: in the section on dhammas, for example, the contemplator knows how a hindrance arose, how it is abandoned and how it does not arise again.

One can start practising recollection with the first steps of MN 118 (the Anapanasati Sutta), taking the breath as the domain of the body: sit down, straighten the back, know a long breath as long and a short one as short, then experience the whole body and calm bodily activity. The mind will keep switching to various other inner phenomena (emotions, sensations, thoughts). Noticing this, one should bring recollection back to the chosen object. In everyday affairs - walking, eating, talking - the same coupling works, but the emphasis shifts to sampajañña, clear comprehension of what you are doing.

Sati has its own image in the canon - the gatekeeper. In SN 35.245 the gatekeeper of the city is explicitly called a designation for mindfulness, and in AN 7.67 the disciple “with mindfulness as gatekeeper” abandons the unwholesome and develops the wholesome. The gatekeeper-sati, in the end, decides what to let into our life.

Where to read: MN 10, MN 118, MN 141.

We read the Majjhima Nikaya, part of the Pali Canon, which is the canon of Theravada. So yes, textually we work inside the Theravada corpus, though the club is not sectarian and people come with all sorts of backgrounds.

The names in the question refer to different kinds of things, which is where the confusion starts. Theravada (Theravāda, “the teaching of the elders”) is a living Buddhist tradition of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, historically descended from the Sri Lankan Mahāvihāra lineage; later tradition traces it back to the Vibhajjavāda. Mahayana (Mahāyāna, “the great vehicle”) is a broad body of texts and teachings that took shape gradually around the turn of the era. Vajrayana (Vajrayāna, “the diamond vehicle”) is the tantric layer within Mahayana: the first Buddhist tantras appear in the 6th-7th centuries, and the corpus grows through the 7th-12th.

Those regions overlap: the Tibetan tradition includes sutric Mahayana as well, and in Japan the Vajrayana school Shingon sits alongside other Mahayana schools. All three keep the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path and the goal of freedom from suffering.

Theravada is not the same thing as “early Buddhism”. There were many early schools - the traditional lists count eighteen, though the names and genealogies vary from source to source. Early texts are reconstructed by comparing the Pali nikayas with the Chinese agamas and with fragments from other schools. The Pali Canon is the only complete surviving canon in a Middle Indic language and one of our most important sources, but it is not a transcript of the Buddha’s words and not the only witness.

The ladder “first Theravada, then Mahayana, then Vajrayana” is wrong, and the picture of three simultaneous branches off a common root also flattens the history: the inheritance is shared and early Buddhist, but the three took shape at different times and influenced each other.

On “Hinayana”. The Sanskrit hīnayāna, literally “inferior” or “deficient vehicle”, is a polemical label from Mahayana texts. No known school ever used it of itself, and it does not name any single historical tradition. The First General Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists passed a resolution in 1950 to replace it with “Theravada” - an ecumenical recommendation about present-day traditions, not a name for all the early schools. Scholars write “early Buddhist schools” or “Nikaya Buddhism”, and where the doctrinal classification of the disciple’s path is specifically meant, śrāvakayāna. We do not use the term.

“Pratyekayana” in the question means pratyekabuddhayāna (Pali paccekabuddhayāna), the path of the pratyekabuddha, who awakens on their own but founds no teaching. It is neither a movement nor a school, but one of the three vehicles in a common Mahayana scheme (śrāvakayāna, pratyekabuddhayāna, bodhisattvayāna), which some Mahayana texts then collapse into one. Theravada commentarial systematics likewise distinguishes three kinds of awakening: sāvakabodhi, paccekabodhi, sammāsambodhi.

An arahant, by the way, is not half-liberated: an arahant and a sammāsambuddha are equally free of the defilements. The difference is that a sammāsambuddha discovers a path nobody had found and makes it known to others, while an arahant walks it as a disciple.

Emptiness is not a Mahayana invention either: the Pali suññatā is there in the early suttas - the world is empty of self and of what belongs to a self. The Mahayana śūnyatā, above all Nāgārjuna’s Madhyamaka with its critique of intrinsic nature (svabhāva), takes the theme further and in a different direction.

Where to read: MN 121 and MN 122 on the practice of emptiness; SN 35.85 on the world being empty of self and of what belongs to a self; SN 22.58 on how a Buddha differs from liberated disciples.

An arahant is already free of the defilements; a bodhisattva is still on the way - to buddhahood, that is, to the state of one who rediscovers and proclaims the path. The two categories are hard to compare: “arahant” names an attained result, while “bodhisattva” is rather the name of a path.

First, the terms. Arahant (Pali - arahant; Sanskrit - arhat) comes from the root √arh, “to be worthy”. It is the highest attainment (short of a buddha) from the point of view of Theravada Buddhism.

An arahant has completely uprooted greed, hatred and delusion. He realises Nibbana already in this life, produces no new kamma and is not reborn after death.

Nibbana as the final spiritual attainment is exactly the same for an arahant and for the Buddha. But describing the Buddha as “the very first arahant” is not correct. SN 22.58 puts the difference this way: the Buddha discovers the previously undiscovered path and teaches it to other living beings, while the disciples gain it after him, becoming arahants. This does not mean, of course, that an arahant cannot teach the Dhamma to others; the difference is only that the Buddha is its discoverer.

Bodhisatta (bodhisatta, Sanskrit bodhisattva) as a term in the Pali canon means, as a rule, Gotama himself before his awakening, or more broadly any being on the way to awakening. There is no bodhisattva vow to save all beings yet.

Mahayana (Mahāyāna) made the bodhisattva path its central ideal and developed it, adding the practice of cultivating the so-called bodhichitta (bodhicitta, “the mind of awakening”) and the aspiration to bring all living beings to unsurpassed perfect awakening (anuttarā samyaksaṃbodhi). The bodhisattva path takes many lives and is mapped out in stages (bhūmi; ten in the Daśabhūmika-sūtra, with other schemes in other texts).

The formula “a bodhisattva postpones his own nirvana” is a popular simplification. In the developed Mahayana systems apratiṣṭhita-nirvāṇa means abiding neither in samsara (saṃsāra) nor in a nirvana understood as departure from the world: wisdom does not let one settle in samsara, and compassion does not let one rest in the peace of nirvana.

Besides the arahant and the bodhisattva there is a third class of spiritual seekers: the paccekabuddha (paccekabuddha, Sanskrit pratyekabuddha). This is a being who, without having met the Dhamma, awakens on his own, through his own work and merit, but does not found a teaching or a community.

Assessments of these paths differ across traditions. Some Mahayana sutras treat the arahant’s path as preliminary: the Lotus Sutra in chapters 2-3 predicts buddhahood for Sariputta, and the Śrīmālādevīsiṃhanāda-sūtra denies that the nirvana of arahants and pratyekabuddhas is final. Other Mahayana traditions venerate arahants. Late Theravadin literature, for its part, distinguishes:

• sāvakabodhi - the awakening of a disciple who reaches liberation thanks to the Buddha’s teaching (in essence, the arahant’s path);
• paccekabodhi - the independent awakening of a paccekabuddha, who finds the path without a teacher but does not open the teaching to the world;
• sammāsambodhi - the perfect independent awakening of a Buddha, who rediscovers the path to liberation and is able to pass it on to others.

Medieval Lankan and Southeast Asian texts and inscriptions testify to the aspiration to buddhahood among some monks, rulers and lay people.

Where to read: MN 26 and MN 36 - Gotama the bodhisatta before awakening; SN 22.58 - how the Tathagata differs from liberated disciples.

In a creator God, no: the early texts say so directly. Devas (deva, plural devā), celestial beings, are numerous in Buddhist cosmology. Even so, they all remain in saṃsāra: although they live extremely long and have supernatural powers beyond human reach, these gods are subject to change and to the law of kamma, like any other beings. They are regarded neither as the sole almighty creators nor as a source of liberation.

• DN 1 describes the appearance of the first Brahmā, the god of the Indian pantheon closest to an “almighty creator”. As a world-period unfolds again, one being is reborn first in an empty palace of Brahmā; others appear there later, and it concludes that it made them itself, while they take its word for it. Brahmā in the Pali Canon, by the way, is not one being but the name of a class of extremely powerful celestial beings (Baka the Brahmā is one of them). The term is quite different from the impersonal brahman of the Upanishads.
• In MN 49 Baka the Brahmā holds his world to be eternal and beyond death, and the Buddha takes that delusion apart in detail.
• In DN 11 a monk tours the heavens asking where the four great elements cease without remainder; the Great Brahmā, in front of his retinue, first recites his titles of creator and lord, then draws the monk aside and admits he does not know.
• AN 3.61 rejects issaranimmānahetu (literally, “the creation of a lord as the cause”, close to the European “divine design”), the explanation of everything a person feels - pleasant, painful or neutral - as the creation of a lord; it also rejects total karmic determinism and pure causelessness.

Devas (the deities of the canon) live long, have great powers and access to almost endless pleasures. But their lifespan ends too: they die and are reborn according to their kamma, sometimes in lower worlds. So although the suttas call rebirth among the devas a good fruit of virtue (MN 41), it is not the end of the path: a heaven is not final nibbāna and no guarantee of liberation (and may even be an obstacle to it). Iti 83 describes the five signs by which other devas recognise that one of them is about to die, and calls a human birth a good destination for the one departing, since it is in the human world that the conditions for practising the Dhamma are right.

Accordingly, the Buddhist refuge formula is refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, not in a particular deva. And none of the three is an object of blind faith.

To sum up, Buddhism is non-theistic with respect to a creator God. It does not deny that deities exist, it just does not give them the roles of creator of the whole universe and saviour. Whether or not a single God or Deity exists, the canon states the basic principle unambiguously: there is no point in relying on any god or God in your practice.

“You yourselves must make the effort; the Tathāgatas only point the way” (Dhp 276).

Exceptions

Everything above applies mostly to the Theravāda tradition and the Pali Canon. By contrast, many Mahayana traditions have well-developed theistic practices of worship and of turning to Amitābha, the Buddha of the Pure Land schools, and to Guanyin, the Chinese form of the bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara, usually depicted as female.

Where to read: MN 49 on the Buddha and Baka the Brahmā; DN 11 on the Brahmā with no answer; AN 3.61 on the doctrine of creation by a lord.

The early suttas do not forbid care and goodwill, but they warn against craving, appropriation and the fear of loss. Love can turn into one of these. At the same time, not every bond and not every desire falls under the ban.

The suttas have no direct terms for “love” and “attachment”, let alone an opposition between them. Pali has several different words for the shades of these notions. What one is instructed to develop is:

• metta (mettā, active friendliness);
• and karuna (karuṇā, compassion - the active wish to lessen another’s suffering).

These are two of the four so-called immeasurable qualities (the brahmaviharas; the other two are sympathetic joy, muditā, and equanimity, upekkhā). These qualities are to be extended “immeasurably”, to all beings.

The different shades of what we often put into the word “love” look like this in Pali:

• taṇhā - craving, thirst;
• rāga - passion, lust;
• pema - tender affection;
• piya - “dear”, “beloved”.

Of the feeling for someone close one would rather say pema, and the person himself would be called piya. Buddhism and the Pali canon speak of pema with utter clarity (Dhp 213): from pema sorrow is born, from pema fear is born. In MN 87 and Ud 8.8 the theme of attachment is developed more fully still: sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection and despair are born from what is dear. The more dear ones, the more suffering. It is worth noting, at the same time, that Snp 1.8, for example, takes a mother’s readiness to protect her only child as the image of the strength with which one should develop a boundlessly kind heart towards all beings.

Besides the various senses of love and attachment above, there is also upādāna, which is literally translated as “attachment”, but in the Pali canon it is, rather, a technical term: one of the links of dependent origination, coming after taṇhā and before bhava. Buddhism distinguishes four kinds of clinging:

• kāmupādāna - to sensual pleasures;
• diṭṭhupādāna - to views;
• sīlabbatupādāna - to rules and observances;
• attavādupādāna - to the notion of a “self”.

What we call love is usually a bundle of different feelings. In parental care there is genuine care and there is anxious holding on. Romantic love often starts well and degenerates into jealousy and control. We say “I love this person” and mean “I need this person, I am afraid to lose him, I feel bad without him”. That is exactly how the other becomes “mine”.

Is attachment always bad? For taṇhā and upādāna the answer is unambiguous: they are to be abandoned. But not every desire is taṇhā. For example, chanda (chanda - wholesome desire, interest, readiness to act) is one of the four bases of spiritual power (iddhipāda). In a certain sense a paradox arises: leaning on desire, one abandons craving - a person hears of another’s liberation, wants the same, and in the end abandons that desire too (AN 4.159). When Ananda calls good friendship (kalyāṇamitta) half of the holy life, the Buddha corrects him: it is the whole of the holy life (SN 45.2). And even the Buddhist teaching itself is compared to a raft: after crossing to the other shore (reaching awakening), one does not carry it further on one’s head or shoulder (MN 22).

Where to read: MN 87 - on how sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection and despair are born from what is dear; Snp 1.8 - the Karaṇīyametta-sutta, on boundless goodwill; MN 22 - the simile of the raft.

To start practising, no: the Theravāda suttas require no special oath and no unconditional faith. The moral precepts (sīla) coincide with ordinary human morality, and the practices of concentration and mindfulness are meant for this present life. But the ideas of rebirth and kamma are firmly built into the early teaching. They cannot be removed without damaging the rest of the structure. It would be harder still to do so for Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhism.

Faith and kamma

Kamma in the suttas is first of all intentional action (cetanā): some of its results are visible already in this life, and some only after it. So the ideas of kamma, of rebirth and of faith in both are closely intertwined. But “faith” in Buddhism is noticeably different from what Western readers are used to. In MN 95 the young brahmin Kāpaṭhika asks the Buddha about the Vedic tradition, which the brahmins consider the only truth because of its antiquity. In reply the Buddha introduces the idea of “preserving the truth” (saccānurakkhaṇā): if a practitioner has faith (saddhā) in some conviction, adding the phrase “this is my faith” makes the speaker’s words true. But saying of a conviction “only this is true, everything else is false” can easily be a mistake. So Buddhist faith, saddhā, is rather informed and conscious trust. This is exactly how Buddhism invites you to believe in kamma and rebirth - simply because it pays off. In AN 3.65, for example, a noble disciple (ariyasāvaka) whose mind is cleansed of hostility and ill will gains four assurances:

• his position remains a winning one if there is another world with the fruit of deeds (kamma);
• his position remains a winning one even if there is no other world;
• if evil befalls the one who does evil, then suffering does not threaten the one who does no evil;
• and if evil does not befall the one who does it, the one who does no evil remains pure all the same.

Rebirth

The idea of rebirth is built into the canon as firmly as kamma and other worlds. MN 117 distinguishes two kinds of right view:

• The mundane kind (sāsavaṃ puññabhāgiyaṃ upadhivepakkaṃ - “affected by taints, partaking of merit, ripening in the acquisitions”): there is what is given and what is offered, there is fruit of good and bad actions, there is this world and the other world, there is mother and father, there are beings reborn spontaneously, there are ascetics who have realised both worlds themselves.
• The noble and supramundane kind - a factor of the path, the wisdom that discriminates.

Despite all of the above, we do not know what awaits us after death. So it makes sense to work (and to work now!) with what can be checked - greed, hatred, attention, actions and their consequences. At the same time, it is worth remembering that the four truths in the Pali Canon are not confined to one life. Suffering there is defined through birth, ageing and death, and the goal is the ending of further becoming. So early Buddhism is by no means neutral about rebirth.

Where to read: MN 60, AN 3.65, MN 95, MN 117.

Sit down, straighten your back, focus attention on the breath and bring the mind back to it whenever you notice it has wandered. Part of the “attention to breathing” technique is described in detail in the suttas; part consists of modern practical details. Below we sort out which is which.

From the suttas

MN 118 (called, precisely, the Anapanasati Sutta, that is, “Mindfulness of Breathing”) defines the practice like this:

• the practitioner goes to a forest, to the foot of a tree or to an empty dwelling;
• sits down cross-legged, straightens the body, establishes mindfulness;
• breathes in and out mindfully;
• taking a long in-breath, knows the in-breath is long; the same for a short one;
• trains, breathing in and out, to experience the whole body (a phrase sometimes read as the physical body and sometimes as the whole process of breathing);
• trains to calm the breath.

The sutta sets no duration; it only insists on developing this skill of observation and on repeating it many times.

The modern interpretation

Assorted recommendations useful for practice:

• You can start with ten minutes on a timer, preferably at the same time of day, in a quiet, calm place. The amount of time is not canonical - it is simply convenient at the start.
• A chair is fine, but not required. Any stable posture with a straight back will do, one you can sit in calmly for long enough. If pain arises, you may change the position of the body, arms and legs. Feet on the floor, hands on the knees or folded one over the other, eyes fully closed or half-closed, gaze lowered.
• Find the spot where the breath is most noticeable - it may be the nostrils, the area just below them above the upper lip, the chest or the belly - and focus attention there. MN 118 names no such point; it is a later device.
• It is important to steer the breath as little as possible - ideally not at all, without adjusting it. It is enough simply to notice, as it goes, what it is like.
• After a while the mind will most likely jump to other thoughts, memories, plans, inner dialogue. What matters is to notice this moment and bring attention back to the breath, praising yourself for having caught the jump and by no means getting upset. It is exactly this noticing of the shift of attention and calmly returning it to the breath that forms the core of the work in this practice. The sutta itself has no such details, but this is what makes up the practice of the first weeks, passed on as instruction for beginning meditators in many old traditions.

What to expect

Manifestations of one or more of the five hindrances (pañca nīvaraṇāni):

• sensual desire (kāmacchanda);
• ill will (vyāpāda);
• dullness and drowsiness (thīna-middha);
• restlessness and remorse (uddhacca-kukkucca);
• doubt (vicikicchā).

MN 10 prescribes, for each of them, being aware whether it is present now or not, how it arose, how it is abandoned and how it does not arise again. And it matters that drowsiness or restlessness on the cushion is not, for example, a sign of failure. It is the material the meditator works with directly, right in meditation. The collected mind at the end is the result of the practice.

The breath is not the only option. In MN 62, for example, before the practice of mindfulness of breathing the Buddha gives his son Rāhula a whole range of practices with meditation objects:

• earth, water, fire, wind and space;
• the four “immeasurable” qualities - goodwill, compassion, sympathetic joy, equanimity;
• contemplation of the unattractive;
• perception of impermanence.

If meditation on the breath brings anxiety or tension, a common later move is to start with goodwill (mettā): wishing well-being to yourself, then to people you know.

On safety

Meditation does not replace treatment. In acute psychosis, mania or a suicidal crisis, urgent professional help is needed; if your condition noticeably worsens, stop practising on your own and see your treating specialist. With panic attacks, bipolar disorder, the aftermath of trauma or severe depression, agree the format with your treating specialist and avoid intensive solo sessions and long retreats. Our club reads suttas; it replaces neither a doctor nor a meditation teacher.

Where to read: MN 118, MN 10, MN 62.

The Vinaya prescribes no disciplinary penalty for a lay person who breaks these rules (secular law is a separate matter). The five rules / precepts (pañcasīla) are a training (pañca sikkhāpadāni): tasks a person takes on voluntarily. AN 8.39 calls these five precepts great gifts: whoever keeps them gives limitless beings freedom from fear and hostility and gains a share in that freedom themselves.

The canonical five precepts are abstention from:

• killing living beings (pāṇātipātā veramaṇī);
• taking what is not given (adinnādānā veramaṇī);
• unwholesome sexual conduct (kāmesu micchācārā veramaṇī);
• false speech (musāvādā veramaṇī);
• intoxicating drinks that are a ground for heedlessness (surāmerayamajjapamādaṭṭhānā veramaṇī).

On uposatha days a lay person may take eight precepts for a day and a night (AN 8.41), including complete abstention from sex for that period. Such a temporary vow lets lay people get a better feel for how monks live, and further purifies the mind.

Sex. Unlike monks, lay people are not bound by a vow of celibacy. The third precept only requires avoiding (see MN 41) relations with women protected by mother, father, brother, sister, relatives or the Dhamma, women who are betrothed or married, and those with whom a relationship breaks the law.

Alcohol. Surā, meraya and majja are names of intoxicating drinks mentioned in ancient Indian texts; extending the rule to modern substances is reasonable, but the Pali formula contains no literal list of them. What is meant is complete abstention: intoxication weakens mindfulness, and with it the ability to keep the other precepts. DN 31 lists six everyday consequences of addiction to intoxicants: loss of money, quarrels, illness, a bad reputation, indecent exposure, weakened wisdom.

Meat. The early texts prescribe no general vegetarianism. MN 55 sets out the threefold rule, binding on monks who receive almsfood: meat may not be eaten if you have

• seen,
• heard,
• or suspect

that the animal was killed specifically for you. The Vinaya relates that one of Devadatta’s main demands was precisely to make five ascetic points compulsory for monks, including lifelong abstention from fish and meat; the Buddha refused and confirmed the allowance of meat pure by the three conditions (Kd 17). Killing itself and the meat trade are, of course, forbidden to monks and considered undesirable for lay people (see AN 5.177, MN 55).

Where to read: AN 8.39, MN 41, MN 55.

The Pali canon (Tipiṭaka, “three baskets”) is the canonical collection of Theravada, preserved in the Pali language. The canon consists of three parts-baskets:

• the basket of suttas (Sutta Piṭaka) - the collection of discourses given by the Buddha or by other monks;
• the basket of the monastic code (Vinaya Piṭaka) - the rule with the stories of how each precept appeared, sections on the structure of the community and its procedures (Khandhaka), and a late reference compendium (Parivāra);
• the basket of systematised teaching (Abhidhamma Piṭaka) - a technical analysis of the material of the sutta basket; it is assigned to a later layer than the sutta corpus, though early versions may have taken shape quite early.

The Sutta Piṭaka, in turn, consists of five books, the so-called Nikayas:

• Digha Nikaya - 34 long discourses;
• Majjhima Nikaya - 152 discourses of middle length;
• Samyutta Nikaya - thousands of short suttas grouped by themes, persons and doctrinal headings;
• Anguttara Nikaya - suttas in numerical groups, from one item up to eleven;
• Khuddaka Nikaya - a miscellaneous collection with the Dhammapada, the Sutta Nipata, the Theragatha and other texts; its contents differ between Theravadin recensions.

The first four Nikayas, together with their parallels in the Chinese and Sanskrit versions of the canon, form the main core of the early Buddhist texts. Not everything inside them is of the same age, though - there are also much later additions.

Why the Majjhima

The middle length of the suttas makes it possible to read one in a single evening. And the protagonists are of all kinds - brahmins, ascetics of other schools, kings, monks, doubting lay people; alongside doctrine there are descriptions of practice and biographical episodes.

Translations

The club relies on the English translation from Pali by Bhikkhu Bodhi (The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha - Ñāṇamoli’s draft translation edited by Bodhi, with his introduction and notes) and on Bhikkhu Sujato’s open translation on SuttaCentral. In Russian the main corpus is SV’s translations on SuttaCentral and theravada.ru; they are made from Bhikkhu Bodhi’s English translation.

How far can the texts be trusted

All Buddhist texts were transmitted orally for several centuries - in lineages of specialist reciters (bhāṇaka) and through group recitation; they are believed to have been first written down in Sri Lanka, according to the Lankan chronicles, at the end of the 1st century BCE. The repetitions and set formulas in the suttas are at once a mnemonic device and a mark of oral transmission. This approach makes it possible to keep the original formulations intact, but divergences between transmission lineages are, of course, still possible. Modern scholars often compare the Sanskrit version of the same suttas with the parallel Chinese collection, the Madhyama Agama (Taishō 26, translated in 397-398 CE).

Accordingly, one can distinguish different levels of trust in the Buddhist texts of the Pali canon. The preservation of a large part of the shared early material across independent transmission lineages is quite high (judging by textual comparison). But such comparison cannot precisely reconstruct the teaching as it existed before the early Buddhist schools split. Nor is it possible to establish how verbatim the words of the historical Buddha are conveyed in any particular sutta (by historical and comparative methods).

Where to read: MN 95, AN 4.180.

All three words are European categories, and none of them covers Buddhism completely. The Buddha himself calls his teaching the sum of the Dhamma (one might say, theory and practice) and the Vinaya (the code of discipline).

In its structure Buddhism is closest to a religion. There is a formal phrase of entry, the so-called “refuge in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha”; a monastic community with its rule; a multi-level cosmology with various worlds and the concept of rebirth; veneration and offerings; and there is a final goal - nibbana, the fading of craving, hatred and delusion, the final cessation of suffering. One could dismiss this whole list as a cultural-historical shell, yet the Buddhist suttas (MN 117, for example) explicitly count the denial of the fruit of deeds (that is, of the law of kamma), of other worlds and of spontaneously born beings as wrong view.

There is plenty of philosophy in Buddhism too (and even psychology: modern cognitive behavioural therapy overlaps with Buddhism in many ways). The suttas argue, take apart other positions, warn that faith, tradition and reasoning are not enough by themselves for categorical certainty (MN 95). Yet reasoning for reasoning’s sake is not particularly welcomed. In MN 63 the monk Malunkyaputta threatens to leave unless the Buddha answers ten questions: whether the world is eternal or not, finite or infinite, whether the life principle and the body are identical, and four options about the existence of the Tathagata after death. The Buddha compares him to a wounded man who will not let the surgeon pull out the poisoned arrow until he learns the caste, name, clan and height of the shooter and the make of the weapon and the arrow: he will die without ever finding out. Many philosophical and existential questions the Buddha deliberately leaves undeclared - without, however, pronouncing them meaningless. It all comes down to the main goal of Buddhism - release from suffering. If some questions or discussions do not lead to dispassion, peace, cessation, direct knowledge, awakening and nibbana, then spending the time of a limited human life on them is not particularly efficient.

A detailed analysis of the contents of the mind and of its training is in the suttas as well - for example, the well-known triad on thoughts (MN 18, 19 and 20):

• MN 18 introduces the notion of mental proliferation, or rumination;
• MN 19 describes how the bodhisatta before his awakening divided thoughts into two classes - sensual, ill-willed and cruel ones versus thoughts of renunciation, goodwill and harmlessness - and drew the rule: whatever a person frequently thinks about, to that his mind inclines;
• MN 20 then gives five remedies against unwholesome thoughts: switch to a wholesome object, consider their danger, pay them no attention, still the very production of thoughts and, as a last resort, suppress the mind by force of will.

Identifying all this with modern psychology is not warranted, but the overlaps are obvious.

Borrowing individual Buddhist practices without the framing content is entirely possible - moreover, it will often be helpful in working with strong emotions, developing compassion, concentration and sensitivity. What matters is to understand that in this form they will not amount to the full Buddhist path. Virtue, concentration and wisdom (sīla, samādhi, paññā) are three parts of the Noble Eightfold Path and three parts of one and the same indivisible training. Without kamma and rebirth, for example, the word “liberation” does not instantly lose its meaning: the fading of craving, hatred and delusion the suttas describe here-and-now as well. But the scale, and our attitude to the practice, will obviously change. And it is precisely with mind, intention and faith that Buddhism works. A teaching wrongly grasped can wound, like a snake held ineptly.

Where to read: MN 63, MN 22, MN 117; on working with thoughts - MN 19 and MN 20; on the grounds of confidence - MN 95.