Theme

Suffering

Dukkha — the unsatisfactoriness the Buddha named as the first noble truth. Not pessimism but a precise diagnosis.

Knowledge3

Sites2

Teachings3

Products0

Knowledge

Gandharan relief of the Buddha's first sermon at Sarnath

Core Teachings

The Four Noble Truths

The Buddha's first teaching after awakening — delivered at Sarnath to the five ascetics — laid out the diagnosis of suffering, its cause, its cessation, and the path that leads beyond it. Every later teaching is a commentary on these four.

A stone Buddha head at Wat Mahathat, Ayutthaya, entwined and reclaimed by the roots of a Bodhi tree

Core Teachings

The Three Marks of Existence

Three characteristics belong to all conditioned phenomena: impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and non-self. To see them clearly in one's own experience is the precondition of liberating insight.

Antique ink drawing of the Bhavacakra — the Wheel of Life — held by Yama, Lord of Death, from the Wellcome Collection

Concepts

Samsara

The beginningless round of birth, aging, death, and rebirth, driven by ignorance and craving. Samsara is the predicament from which the dharma offers release.