Sources of wisdom and authority

Buddhism looks not to a creator God but to the Buddha ("the awakened one", Siddhartha Gautama) and his teaching, the Dharma (Pali: Dhamma).

• The Tipitaka ("three baskets") is the earliest collection of scriptures, central to Theravada Buddhism.
• Mahayana traditions add further sutras.
• Authority also rests on personal experience and insight gained through practice — the Buddha urged followers to test the teaching for themselves.

Ultimate reality and the Three Marks

Buddhism is non-theistic: there is no creator God. Reality is marked by the Three Marks of Existence:

• Anicca — impermanence: everything is in flux.
• Dukkha — suffering / unsatisfactoriness.
• Anatta — no fixed, permanent self or soul.

All things arise interdependently (dependent origination). The goal is Nibbana (Nirvana) — the blowing-out of craving and release from samsara (the cycle of rebirth).

The three marks

The Four Noble Truths and the Path

The Buddha's core teaching is the Four Noble Truths:

• There is dukkha (suffering).
• Its origin is craving (tanha).
• Suffering can cease (Nibbana).
• The way is the Noble Eightfold Path.

The Eightfold Path — right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration — is grouped into wisdom, ethics and meditation, and is the Middle Way between indulgence and asceticism.

Self, death and rebirth

Because there is no permanent self (anatta), Buddhism speaks of rebirth rather than the reincarnation of a soul: it is a continuity of process, shaped by karma (intentional action), that continues across lives.

Liberation is escape from this cycle into Nibbana. Different traditions picture the goal differently — the arhat ideal in Theravada, the bodhisattva (who delays their own liberation to help all beings) in Mahayana.

Note: rebirth without a soul is a distinctive and much-discussed idea — what is "reborn" is a stream of consciousness, not an enduring self.

Theravada or Mahayana?

Good conduct and moral principles

Buddhist ethics centres on intention (cetana) and its effect on the mind and on karma. Key principles:

• The Five Precepts — to refrain from harming living beings, taking what is not given, sexual misconduct, false speech, and intoxicants.
• Ahimsa (non-harm), metta (loving-kindness) and karuna (compassion).

Practice is supported by meditation (e.g. samatha and vipassana) and by the Sangha (community), summed up in the Three Refuges: the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha.

Science, gender, society, secularism

• Science: Buddhism is often seen as broadly compatible with science; the current Dalai Lama has actively engaged with scientists on the mind and cosmology.
• Society: engaged Buddhism (e.g. Thich Nhat Hanh) applies Buddhist practice to social and political action.
• Gender: debate over the status and ordination of nuns (the bhikkhuni order) continues across traditions.
• Secularism: mindfulness has spread as a secular practice, raising questions about religion, culture and appropriation.

The Five Precepts

Weighing it up

• Is rebirth without a soul coherent, and what carries karma across lives?
• Is Buddhism a religion, a philosophy, or both?
• Does its compatibility with science strengthen or dilute it?
• How should tradition respond to modern debates about gender and secular mindfulness?

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The big ideas to hold together

You can now survey Buddhism across the Component 2 themes and evaluate its distinctive teachings. Press Finish to see your score.