Buddhism

The core teaching

The four noble truths

Not pessimistic — empirical. The Buddha as diagnostician: here is the condition, here is the cause, here is the prognosis, here is the treatment.

• Dukkha — the truth of suffering: unsatisfactoriness, the pervasive instability of conditioned existence.
• Samudaya — the origin: craving (tanha) and clinging (upadana).
• Nirodha — cessation: suffering can end.
• Magga — the path: the noble eightfold path leads to cessation.

A modern saying — often placed in the Buddha's mouth, though it appears nowhere in the early texts — catches the diagnosis exactly: asked what he had gained from meditation, the teacher replies, "Nothing. But let me tell you what I have lost: anger, anxiety, depression, insecurity, fear of old age and death." Not his words — but faithful to his teaching.

The middle path

Avoid the two extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification. One binds you to craving; the other weakens the instrument of practice. The sustainable path runs between them.

The teaching of all Buddhas, in three lines

Refrain from the unwholesome. Cultivate the good. Purify the mind.

The nature of existence

The three marks of existence (Tilakkhana)

Three characteristics of conditioned experience — not beliefs to adopt, but things to verify directly:

• Anicca — impermanence: everything that arises passes.
• Anatta — non-self: what we take to be a fixed, permanent self is a process, not a thing.
• Dukkha — unsatisfactoriness: woven into conditioned existence.

Anatta is the point of genuine difference with the yogic Purusha — held honestly, not smoothed over. See The Convergence.

The three poisons

The roots of suffering — Raga (greed), Dvesha (hatred), and Moha (delusion) — traditionally pictured as a rooster, a snake, and a pig. Their opposites are the cure: wisdom (paññā), generosity (dāna), and loving-kindness (mettā).

The five skandhas

The five aggregates we mistake for a self: Rupa (form), Vedana (sensation), Samjna (perception), Sanskara (mental formations), and Vijnana (consciousness). "Under no circumstances attach to anything as me or mine."

Dependent origination (Pratītyasamutpāda)

Everything in conditioned existence arises from prior conditions and in turn conditions what follows; nothing exists independently or permanently. This is the structural basis for both Anicca and Anatta. Closely paired is Śūnyatā (emptiness) — not nihilism, but the absence of inherent, independent existence in all things.

Indra's net (interbeing)

Later Buddhist thought gave dependent origination its most beautiful image: an infinite net stretching in every direction, a jewel at each knot, every jewel reflecting all the others. Touch one, and the whole net trembles. Nothing stands alone.

The Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh gave it a modern word — interbeing. A sheet of paper, he wrote, holds the cloud that became the rain, the sun, the forest, the logger and the bread that fed him: to be is to inter-be. The plainest secular name for the same insight is systems thinking — you cannot understand a part in isolation, because what a thing is includes its relationships.

This is why YogoLogo is built as a web, not a checklist: the eight limbs are jewels in one net, each reflecting and strengthening the others. (An honest edge: interbeing describes a world with no separate, permanent self — the same ground as Anatta, and a real difference from the yogic Purusha*, the witness at the centre of the Layered Self. Both agree the isolated self is an illusion; they describe what remains differently.)*

Papañca and the three distortions

Papañca is conceptual proliferation — the mind spinning out from a simple sensation into narrative and reactivity, a primary obstacle to clear seeing. The Buddha named three layers of distortion: of perception (misreading a rope as a snake), of mind (the feelings that follow the misreading), and of view (a fixed belief that evidence cannot shift — the deepest, and the most transformative to uproot).

The path

The noble eightfold path

Three trainings — wisdom, ethical conduct, and mental discipline:

• Pañña (wisdom): Right View, Right Intention.
• Sīla (ethical conduct): Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood.
• Samādhi (mental discipline): Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration.

The five precepts (Pañcasīla)

The ethical foundation for lay practice: not killing, not stealing, not misusing the senses, not speaking falsely, and not clouding the mind with intoxicants.

The three jewels (Triratna)

Buddha (the teacher), Dharma (the teaching), and Sangha (the community). Taking refuge in them is also taking refuge in one's own potential for liberation.

Practice

The four foundations of mindfulness (Satipaṭṭhāna)

The primary framework for meditation in early Buddhism: mindfulness of the body (kāyānupassanā), of feeling-tone (vedanānupassanā), of mind-states (cittānupassanā), and of mental objects (dhammānupassanā). The Satipaṭṭhāna and Ānāpānasati (mindfulness of breathing) Suttas are the source texts.

The seven factors of awakening

Ripened through mindfulness: Sati (mindfulness), Dhamma vicaya (investigation), Viriya (energy), Pīti (joy), Passaddhi (tranquillity), Samādhi (concentration), and Upekkhā (equanimity).

Samatha and Vipassana

Samatha — calm abiding; the cultivation of stillness, the Buddhist parallel to chitta vritti nirodhah. Vipassana — insight; clear seeing into the three marks. Stillness and seeing, usually practised together. → Applied as concentration on Dharana and as inquiry on Dhyana.

The five hindrances

The classic obstacles to practice: sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt. Patanjali's antarayas name the same territory.

Key terms

• Dukkha — suffering, unsatisfactoriness; the sense that conditioned experience is not quite right.
• Sukha — well-being, joy; the lasting ease that arises when the afflictions are freed.
• Tanha — thirst, craving; the second noble truth, the engine of samsara.
• Upadana — clinging; tanha hardened into attachment.
• Nirvana — liberation; the cessation of craving and clinging, the end of the conditions for suffering. Part of the core equation. → Full treatment on Samadhi.
• Samsara — the cycle of conditioned existence driven by craving and ignorance; the state the path leads out of.
• Sīla — ethical conduct, the moral foundation; the Buddhist parallel to Yama and Niyama.
• Pañña (Sanskrit Prajna) — wisdom; direct, experiential insight, not conceptual knowledge.
• Indriya-samvara — sense restraint, guarding the sense-gates; the Buddhist parallel to Pratyahara.
• Samāpatti — deep meditative absorption leading to peace and wisdom.

The Brahmaviharas — love in action

The four divine abodes: Mettā (loving-kindness), Karuṇā (compassion), Muditā (sympathetic joy), and Upekkhā (equanimity). → Applied fully on the Love priority page.