What Buddhists Believe

Buddhist teaching is often summed up in the Four Noble Truths: suffering, its cause, its end, and the path that leads to its end. The scholar John Ross Carter notes that every strand of Buddhism recognizes the four truths, though in the Mahayana they became less central while still revered.¹ Beyond that core, this page names the branch wherever teaching differs.

Theravada, the "teaching of the elders", is strongest in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia, and Laos.²³ It recognizes only the Pali canon, and holds that the canon's discourses, called here the Pali discourses, record the Buddha's sermons.³ Mahayana's main homes today are China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, and it includes East Asian schools such as Zen and Pure Land.⁴⁵ Vajrayana is the "vehicle of the thunderbolt". In one traditional scheme it is a branch of Mahayana, the way of mantras, said to bring Buddhahood in a single lifetime.⁶ Tibetan Buddhism, which draws on Indian tantric Buddhism, is the major religion in Tibet, Bhutan, and Mongolia.⁷ See the Branches page.

What is ultimate reality?

Buddhist teaching holds that there is no creator God; its teachers point instead to nirvana, and in the Mahayana to emptiness and Buddha-nature.⁸⁹³¹⁰ From its earliest texts, the scholar Jacob Kinnard writes, Buddhism recognized gods, but as beings subject to death and rebirth. The early tradition stressed that the Buddha was human, not divine, though later traditions gave him increasingly divine qualities.⁵ In the Mahayana Lotus Sutra, the Buddha reveals that he reached awakening an immeasurably long time ago, not in his life in India.¹¹

One of the Pali discourses tells how a great god comes to believe he created other beings. When the cosmos expands after a long age, the first being reborn in an empty heavenly mansion thinks: These beings were created by me! (DN 1)¹² The discourse says later arrivals believe it only because he came first.¹² The Indian logician Dharmakirti argued that something permanent and unchanging cannot be the real cause of a series of new effects. The philosopher Tom Tillemans notes that this reasoning extends to the idea of a permanent creator God.⁸

Theravada teachers most often describe nirvana (nibbana in Pali) as the one unconditioned reality, unborn and undying.³ Bhikkhu Bodhi, an American Theravada monk and scholar, calls it a state of perfect peace, experienced in this life when the fires of greed, aversion, and delusion go out.¹³ In a Pali discourse, the disciple Sariputta defines it: the ending of greed, hate, and delusion is called extinguishment. (SN 38.1)¹²

Mahayana teachers stress emptiness: the teaching that nothing has a permanent, independent existence of its own. The scholar Roger Jackson calls it no-self extended to all things. The Indian philosopher Nagarjuna (about the second century CE) taught that things are empty in the ultimate sense, yet exist and function in the everyday sense.⁹ The Dalai Lama, a teacher of the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism, puts it this way: Emptiness isn't about nothingness; it indicates that things depend on other factors.¹⁴¹⁵

Many Mahayana schools also teach Buddha-nature: that all beings can become Buddhas. The scholar William Grosnick notes that this teaching was far more popular in East Asia than in India or Tibet, and became a focal point of Chan, the Chinese school known in Japan as Zen.¹⁰⁴ In Jodo Shinshu, a Japanese Pure Land school, the object of reverence is Amida Buddha, whose Primal Vow, the school's Hongwanji branch teaches, brings beings to awakening.¹⁶ The Buddhist Churches of America, a Shin body in the United States, describes Amida not as a being or deity but as a symbol of the wisdom and compassion of enlightenment.¹⁷

What is a human being?

Buddhist teaching holds that a person has no lasting self or soul, but is a changing process of body and mind. In the Pali discourses, the Buddha examines each part of a person and finds no self in any of them: Mendicants, form is not-self. (SN 22.59)¹² Since the body changes and brings pain, it should be seen with right understanding: 'This is not mine, I am not this, this is not my self.' (SN 22.59)¹²

The scholar K. T. S. Sarao names the parts: five aggregates (skandhas), the body, sensation, perception, habitual tendencies, and consciousness. Like a chariot, which is only a set of parts, a person is a process. What the Buddha rejected, Sarao writes, was belief in a permanent, eternal self, not the ordinary feeling of being someone.¹⁸

Mahayana teaching adds that each being carries the potential for awakening. The Nirvana Sutra states that all beings possess Buddha-nature. The Tathagatagarbha Sutra, a third-century scripture, compares this potential to treasure buried beneath a poor man's house, covered over by defilements. Grosnick notes that some have asked whether the teaching fits with impermanence and non-self.¹⁰ The constitution of the Soto school of Zen states that its doctrine is to realize shikantaza (just sitting) and sokushinzebutsu (Mind itself is Buddha)¹⁹. The Dalai Lama teaches that destructive emotions are temporary, while the true nature of the mind is clear light, unaffected by them.²⁰

What is wrong with the world?

Buddhist teaching holds that life as usually lived is marked by dukkha, suffering or unsatisfactoriness, caused by craving and ignorance. In the Buddha's first sermon, as the Pali discourses record it, the first noble truth begins: Rebirth is suffering; old age is suffering; illness is suffering; death is suffering (SN 56.11)¹². The second names the cause: craving for sensual pleasure, for continued existence, and for nonexistence.¹²³¹

Craving keeps beings in samsara, the beginningless cycle of birth and death that the scholar Bryan Cuevas describes as driven by ignorance, desire, and hatred.²¹ A Pali discourse says: Mendicants, this transmigration has no known beginning. (SN 15.3)¹²

In Tibetan teaching, the Dalai Lama holds, following Nagarjuna, that the ignorance at the root of the mental afflictions is the misconception that things truly exist on their own.²² Jodo Shinshu stresses the grip of the ego.¹⁷ It quotes Shinran (1173 to 1263), the school's founder,¹⁶ who wrote that passions obstruct my eyes and I cannot see the light¹⁷.

What is the way forward?

Buddhist teachers hold that suffering can end, though the branches picture the goal and the road differently. The Pali discourses present the Noble Eightfold Path as a middle way between indulgence in pleasure and harsh self-denial.¹² It is simply this noble eightfold path, that is: right view, right purpose, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right immersion. (SN 56.11)¹²

Theravada teachers group the eight factors into ethics, stability of mind, and wisdom. Following the Path of Purification, a Theravada work, they describe four stages of awakening, beginning with "stream entry". At the last, a person is fully awakened and, at death, will never be reborn.³

Mahayana teaching holds up the bodhisattva, one who aims to become a Buddha for the sake of all beings. The scholar Leslie Kawamura describes its path as perfections such as generosity, patience, and wisdom, joined to compassion.²³ Mahayana teachers set this ideal above that of the arhat, a fully awakened being, and they take the path to span many lifetimes.⁴²³³

Soto Zen teaches shikantaza, just sitting, and follows the teacher Dogen, founder of Eiheiji Monastery, who held that meditation is not a means to a later awakening: In Buddha Dharma they are inseparable.¹⁹¹⁹ Jodo Shinshu teaches receiving rather than striving.¹⁷ The Nishi Hongwanji, head temple of its Hongwanji branch, teaches that a person awakens to Amida's compassion through the working of the Primal Vow and recites Amida's name. At the end of life, it teaches, the person is born in the Pure Land, becomes a Buddha, and returns at once to guide others.¹⁶

Vajrayana adds tantric methods. In them, the scholar Ronald Davidson explains, the practitioner visualizes Buddhas, bodhisattvas, or esoteric deities and comes to identify with them, using mantras and breathing practices. In an ultimate sense, Kinnard writes, such figures are creations of the mind, like everything else empty.⁶⁵

The Dalai Lama, who practices deity yoga daily alongside meditation on emptiness, teaches that tantra rests on Buddha-nature and the clear light nature of the mind. In Highest Yoga Tantra, he explains, the stage of visualizing deities also involves taking the Buddha's three bodies into the path.²⁴ In Tibetan Buddhism, a lama, or teacher, gives initiation into successively higher levels of secret teachings.⁷

What happens after death?

Buddhist teaching holds that until liberation, beings are reborn according to their karma, though no soul passes from one life to the next. Cuevas describes rebirth as a belief common to all Buddhist traditions. Good actions lead to rebirth as gods, demigods, or humans; harmful ones, as animals, ghosts, or hell beings.²¹

Karma is a matter of intention. The Buddha says in a Pali discourse: It is intention that I call deeds. (AN 6.63)¹² If there is no self, what is reborn? Sarao explains that the new being is neither the same as the old nor wholly different, but part of one continuing stream, and Buddhists compare rebirth to lighting one candle from another.¹⁸²¹ The Strongest Case page sets out this question in full.

Classical Theravada teaching denies any in-between state: the last moment of consciousness in one life directly conditions the first moment of the next.²¹ East Asian and Tibetan teaching describe an intermediate state, in Tibet called the bardo. The standard account, from the Indian scholar Vasubandhu, gives it up to forty-nine days, and Tibetan rites guide the dead person's consciousness through it.²⁵²¹ In China and Japan, Cuevas notes, much emphasis falls on rebirth in a Buddha's pure land, such as that of Amida (Amitabha).²¹

The Dalai Lama holds that a Buddhist must accept past and future rebirth.²⁶ Not every Buddhist does. The philosopher Mark Siderits writes that the evidence that the Buddha himself accepted it seems strong, yet rejecting it was not unknown among East Asian Buddhists and is not rare among Western Buddhists today.²⁷

How should a person live?

Buddhists teach a life of ethical restraint, meditation, and wisdom, guided by the Five Precepts and by goodwill toward all beings. The scholar Daniel Getz describes the five precepts as the basic duties of all lay Buddhists: to abstain from taking life, stealing, sexual misconduct, lying, and intoxicants.²⁸ A verse of the Dhammapada, a collection of the Buddha's sayings, sums up the aim: Not to do any evil; to embrace the good; to purify one's mind: this is the instruction of the Buddhas. (Dhammapada 183)¹²

Theravada teachers count metta, loving-kindness toward all beings, among the ten perfections a person develops.³ The Discourse on Love, in the Pali canon, asks: Even as a mother would protect with her life her child, her only child, so too for all creatures unfold a boundless heart. (Sutta Nipata 1.8)¹²

Mahayana ethics centers on the bodhisattva's care for others. Getz notes that the Brahma's Net Sutra adds bodhisattva precepts stressing care for all beings.²⁸ Thich Nhat Hanh (1926 to 2022), a Zen teacher ordained in Vietnam, restated the five precepts for modern times as the Five Mindfulness Trainings.²⁹³⁰ Practiced mindfully, he wrote, they lead each person to our own unique insight³⁰, not something imposed on us by an outside authority³⁰. The Dalai Lama pairs wisdom, which counters belief in a self that exists on its own, with great compassion, which counters self-cherishing.¹⁴

Jodo Shinshu frames ethics as gratitude. The Buddhist Churches of America teaches that it has no monastic precepts, and that everyday life becomes the place of practice.¹⁷ The Hongwanji's statement of the way of life asks followers to recite Amida's name and to live expressing gratitude, without depending on petitionary prayer and superstition¹⁶.

Key terms

Term	Meaning
Dukkha	Suffering or unsatisfactoriness, the first noble truth.1
Non-self (anatta)	The teaching that no lasting self or soul exists in a person.18
Karma	Intentional action and its results in this life and future lives.1221
Nirvana (nibbana)	The end of craving and suffering, and of rebirth.133
Bodhisattva	In Mahayana, one who seeks to become a Buddha for the sake of all beings.23
Emptiness	The Mahayana teaching that nothing has a permanent, independent existence of its own.9
Buddha-nature	The Mahayana teaching that all beings can become Buddhas.10