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Concepts
Every idea on the site, and where it lives.
One place for every key idea the traditions name. Each tradition has its own words for the same handful of truths; the cards below link to where each idea lives in full. Where a concept's home is elsewhere in the framework (a limb, the Layered Self, the Convergence), you'll see it noted.
Buddhism
- The four noble truths Buddhism's starting point: suffering exists, has a cause, can end, and there is a way.
- The middle path The road between harsh self-denial and chasing pleasure.
- The three marks of existence Three things true of all life: it changes, it can't fully satisfy, it has no fixed self.
- The three poisons The three roots of suffering: greed, hatred, and confusion.
- The five skandhas The five bundles that together make up what we call a self.
- Dependent origination Nothing stands alone: everything arises from causes and conditions.
- Indra's net / interbeing Reality as an endless net where every part reflects all the others.
- The noble eightfold path Eight areas of life to train, from how we see to how we focus.
- The five precepts Five everyday commitments, like not harming and not lying, that steady the mind.
- Calm abiding and insight The two halves of meditation: calm settling, and clear seeing.
- The five hindrances Five states of mind that get in a sitting's way: sensory desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt.
- The four divine abodes (Brahmaviharas) Four hearts to grow: kindness, compassion, joy for others, and calm.
- Nirvana The cool peace that remains when craving and suffering burn out. Lives in Absorption · Samadhi
Psychology
- Self-actualisation Becoming the fullest version of who you can be: the butterfly that was in the caterpillar all along.
- Self-transcendence Reaching past yourself, toward others and something larger: a bridge from your own bank to the far one.
- Peak experience Rare moments of awe when you feel wholly alive and connected. Like a shooting star, they come unbidden and cannot be ordered.
- Flow Being so absorbed in what you're doing that time falls away, like a painter who looks up from the canvas to find the afternoon gone. Lives in Concentration · Dharana
- The four stages of meditative depth How meditation deepens, like a bucket lowered into a well, in four steps: settling on one thing, opening to the whole field, dropping the watcher, and falling still.
- The hedonic treadmill Why new pleasures fade fast, leaving us chasing the next one.
- Logotherapy and the will to meaning Frankl's idea that what drives us most is a need for meaning: like a sail, we go nowhere until something beyond us fills us.
- The attention economy How modern technology competes to capture and sell your focus, a cage that keeps the bird for its keeper's profit.
- Maslow's hierarchy of needs Human needs as a ladder, from food and safety up to fulfilment.
Stoicism
- The dichotomy of control Sorting what is up to you from what isn't, and letting the rest go.
- The four cardinal virtues The Stoic core: wisdom, courage, justice, and self-control.
- Stoic mindfulness (Prosoche) Steady attention to how you are thinking and acting, right now. As Epictetus put it, guard your mind as you would watch your step for a nail.
- Equanimity (Apatheia) Freedom from being ruled by turbulent emotion, not coldness: the mind as a citadel, calm and untroubled (ataraxia).
- Negative visualisation (Praemeditatio malorum) Quietly picturing loss in advance, as you might picture a loved jug cracked, so you treasure what you have.
- Logos The rational order running through all of nature, the way the plan for a whole oak tree is already inside an acorn.
- Eudaimonia A life well lived: flourishing like a tree in fruit, not just feeling good. Lives in The Convergence
Yoga Philosophy
- Chitta vritti nirodhah Yoga in one line: the quieting of the mind's restless activity; stilled, the mind is Patanjali's clear jewel, taking the colour of whatever it rests on.
- The Layered Self You seen as nested layers: body, senses, ego, intellect, and the still awareness at the centre. Lives in The Layered Self
- The five sheaths (Koshas) Five nested coverings over the self, from the physical body inward, each sitting inside the last like nesting dolls.
- Consciousness and its fluctuations (Chitta and vrittis) The mind, and the constant ripples of thought that move across it.
- Imprints and tendencies (Samskara and vasana) The grooves past actions leave, quietly shaping what we do next.
- The five afflictions (kleshas) The five root troubles that cloud the mind and cause suffering.
- Karma Action and the fruit it bears: every intentional act leaves a trace that shapes what follows.
- The order of things (Rta and dharma) One order running through cosmos, rite and conduct, the Rigveda's rta, whose work later passes to dharma: the order that holds things up, like the stones of an arch.
- Purusha and Prakriti The still witness within, and the ever-changing nature it observes.
- Three aspects of self-realisation The one awareness seen three ways, beyond all things, as all things, and within you: three leaves on one stem.
- The universal sound (AUM) The sound the universe is said to hum with: A, U, M and the silence after, one syllable holding all of consciousness.
- Prana Life-force: the vital energy the breath carries through you, unseen, like the wind that holds a kite up. Lives in Breath · Pranayama
- Practice and non-attachment (Abhyasa and Vairagya) Yoga's two wings: steady practice, and letting go of the results. Lives in Absorption · Samadhi
- The nine obstacles (antarayas) Patanjali's list of what scatters a sitting, from sickness and doubt to absorption reached and lost.
- The three qualities (Gunas) Three threads woven through everything: clarity, activity, and inertia.
- Four ways of knowing A reflection map for Svadhyaya: what you know you know, what you know you don't, what you don't know you know, and what you can't yet see, though someone at the keyhole can.
- The four paths of yoga Action, devotion, knowledge, meditation: four disciplines fitted to four temperaments, all aimed at the same still mind.
Companion traditions
Ayurveda
- The five elements Earth, water, fire, air, and space: the building blocks of body and world.
- The three doshas (Vata, Pitta, Kapha) Three energies that shape your nature, and tip you in and out of balance.
- Constitution and imbalance (Prakruti and vikruti) The mix you were born with, like a pomegranate's seeds in one skin, and how far you have drifted from it.
- Digestive fire and residue (Agni and ama) The body's digestive fire, and the residue left when it burns low.
- The six tastes Sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter, astringent: each acts on the body.
- Settled in the self (Swastha) Ayurveda's word for health: at home and at ease in yourself, like a bird in the nest it made.
- Dinacharya A daily rhythm of small routines that keep you in balance, the way banks give a river its course.
Reiki
- Ki (vital energy) The body's vital life-energy, in the Japanese tradition: unseen, like the wind that holds a kite up.
- The five principles (the Gokai) Five gentle daily intentions, each beginning 'just for today', kept in sight like words on a hanging scroll.
- The three bodies Body, mind, and spirit, the three layers Reiki tends, like the three roofs of one pagoda.
- Balanced cleansing (Heikin joka) Clearing and rebalancing the body's energy, evenly on both sides, the way a rake leaves gravel level.
Traditional Chinese Medicine
- Qi (vital energy) The vital energy that animates the body and keeps it working, unseen, like the wind that holds a kite up.
- Yin and yang Two opposite, balancing forces present in everything.
- The five phases Five stages (wood, fire, earth, metal, water) mapping how energy moves and changes.
- Meridians The pathways qi travels through the body, branching out like the veins of a leaf.
- Free flow is health The core idea: energy moving freely is health, as a fish thrives in running water; energy stuck is where illness begins.