Key Concepts

The Buddha left behind a set of core ideas, recorded in both the Theravada and Mahayana canons, which characterize Buddhist teachings in all regions. These ideas, along with the amazing resiliency of the sangha (monastic) organizational form, ensure Buddhism’s essential identity, despite extreme diversity, over its vast geographic reach. What are the key concepts? First is the idea that samsara,

the cycle of earthly existence, can be removed through personal cultivation. Second, the idea that the world is ever-changing and impermanent. There is, then, nothing in the world of phenomena that possesses eternal existence; all phenomena are characterized by impermanence and lack of essential nature. Individuals become enmeshed in the cycle of existence through the chain of conditioned arising. Overcoming this cycle, one can experience nirvana, final release from the chain of suffering. The Buddha summarized these teachings in the formulations known as the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the 12-fold Chain of Causation. The Buddha is often compared to a physician, who diagnoses the patient’s ills, finds the source of the illness, prescribes countermeasures, and applies the cure. The Four Noble Truths nicely summarize a doctor’s method: the diagnosis is that life is suffering (dukkha). The cause of that suffering is determined to be attachment. However,

there is an antidote: release through nirvana. The prescription applied is called the Eightfold Path, or, in simplified form, the three elements of morality, concentration, and wisdom (sila, samadhi, prajna). The 12-fold Chain of Causation is a model which illustrates the major teaching of codependent origination (pratitya samutpada). This teaching shows the sequence of events by which phenomena form and decay; they do not occur simply at random or as a result of the will of some individuals. This means there is an infinite web of relations among what we perceive in everyday reality to be separate events or things.

The cycle begins with ignorance (stage 1) and runs through predispositions

(2) to cause consciousness

(3) of the present. With consciousness arise name and form

4), as well as the senses

(5) capable of perceiving things. With the senses there are contact

(6) and sensation

(7). Sensation in turn leads to craving

(8), then becoming

(9), and, eventually, birth

(10), old age

(11), and death

(12). The Buddhist practitioner, aware of this sequence, attempts to cut the link at any point that will break the cycle.

Another key teaching concerns the doctrine of non-self, or anatman. The everyday assumption of an everlasting soul is a delusion, the Buddha taught, a powerful and dangerous delusion, because it leads to attachment, egoism, cravings, and, ultimately, suffering. The Buddhist must observe his/her own nature and untangle the five skandhas, or aggregates (body, feelings, perceptions, dispositions, and consciousness), which we commonly misunderstand to be the individual soul. The Buddhist will not only perceive this, s/he will also see beyond this state to the underlying truth of nirvana, the cessation of all desires and karma. These foundational concepts were augmented over the centuries with many additional ideas, such as emptiness (sunyata) and Buddha nature, which are described in individual articles.