Tradition

Theravada

The Way of the Elders. The Buddhism of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos. The tradition that preserves the Pali Canon.

Knowledge8

Sites2

Teachings4

Products2

Knowledge

TraditionsTheravada

Theravada

The oldest surviving school of Buddhism — the way of the elders. The tradition that preserved the Pali Canon, the monastic rule, and the path of the arahant across twenty-three centuries from Sri Lanka through Southeast Asia.

Sinhalese palm-leaf Buddhist manuscript bound with cord

TextsTheravada

The Pali Canon (Tipitaka)

The earliest complete Buddhist canon — preserved in Pali by the Theravada tradition and committed to writing in Sri Lanka in the first century BCE. Three baskets: discourses, monastic rules, and higher doctrine.

Thai palm-leaf manuscript with gilded covers and an iron incising stylus

TextsTheravada

The Sutta Pitaka

The second basket of the Pali Canon — the Buddha's discourses, organized into five great collections (nikayas) preserving over ten thousand teachings.

Portrait of Mahasi Sayadaw, founder of the modern noting method of vipassana

PracticesTheravada

Vipassana — Insight Meditation

The practice of seeing the three marks of existence — impermanence, suffering, non-self — directly in moment-to-moment experience. The Buddha's central method.

FiguresTheravada

Ajahn Chah

Thai Theravada monk in the forest tradition of Ajahn Mun. Founder of Wat Pah Pong in Ubon Ratchathani and Wat Pah Nanachat, the international forest monastery that trained a generation of Western Theravada teachers.

FiguresTheravada

Ajahn Sumedho

American Theravada monk, senior disciple of Ajahn Chah, and founding abbot of Amaravati and Chithurst monasteries in England. The first Westerner to establish the Thai forest tradition in the West.

FiguresTheravada

Bhikkhu Bodhi

American Theravada monk, Pali scholar, and translator. Editor of the Buddhist Publication Society in Kandy, Sri Lanka, for over twenty years. Translator of the Majjhima Nikaya, Samyutta Nikaya, and Anguttara Nikaya. Founder of Buddhist Global Relief.

FiguresTheravada

Mahasi Sayadaw

Twentieth-century Burmese monk whose noting method — the moment-by-moment labeling of mental and physical phenomena — is the most widely-taught modern vipassana technique in the Theravada world.

Sacred Sites

nepal core

Lumbini

The Birth.

india arc

Sarnath

The First Sermon.

Teachings

dhammapada

The Dhammapada in Daily Life — Episode 01

The opening episode of a serial reading and commentary on the Dhammapada — the Buddha's collected sayings, the most widely-read text in the Theravada world, rendered into a daily contemplation.

Ven. Kondanya Mahathero

A Discourse at Buddha Vihara, Bhrikutimandap

A Dharma Desana by the senior Theravada teacher of the Kathmandu Valley, given at Buddha Vihara, Bhrikutimandap. The slow, careful exposition of the householder's path.

Dr. Dhammavati Guruma

A Discourse at Dharmakirti Vihar

A teaching by the founder of Dharmakirti Vihar — the senior Theravada bhikkhuni of Nepal — delivered to her own community at Srigha.

circuit

How to Free Oneself from Depression

The opening day of the vassa (rains-retreat) discourse series at Rajkiya Buddha Vihara, Lumbini — a teaching on the inner work of recovering from depression.

Products

Sama Publication

The Dhammapada · Pali + English

423 verses across 26 chapters. Pali on the left page, English on the right. Soft cover, 288 pages, hand-bound in Kathmandu. The reference edition for the Daily Dhammapada practice in the app.

$28 Mahabodhi Society

The Satipatthana Sutta · with commentary

320 pages. The Buddha's foundational discourse on the four foundations of mindfulness. Annotated by Sayadaw U. Pandita lineage teachers.

$42

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