From Seeker to Teacher
The Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha.
What are the Three Jewels?
“To live is to experience suffering” begins this central teaching of Buddhism.
What are the Four Noble Truths?
Binding on every Buddhist, monk or layperson alike, the five precepts begin with this first one.
What is "do not kill" (or "abstain from taking a life").
Prevalent in Tibet, this division is called “the Diamond Vehicle.”
What is Vajrayana?
Sanskrit for “blowing out,” this liberation from samsara is the goal of Buddhism.
What is nirvana?
This community of Buddhist monks and nuns began with the Buddha’s first followers.
What is the Sangha?
The Pali word for suffering, it runs from outright pain to the low-grade sense that life is never quite satisfying.
What is dukkha?
Keeping the twenty-dollar bill a classmate dropped breaks the precept against this.
What is taking what is not given?
This title belongs to the most prominent spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism.
What is the Dalai Lama?
This term is for complete awareness of the true nature of the human condition and of the way to escape it.
What is enlightenment?
The Buddha gave his first sermon here, at Sarnath near Benares.
What is the Deer Park?
A man finally buys the phone he wanted for months, and a week later he is restless again. The second Noble Truth names this Pali word for craving or selfish desire as the cause.
What is tanha?
Declining the drinks at a party keeps the precept against these, which are said to cloud the mind.
What are intoxicants (like alcohol)?
Many Vajrayana Buddhists believe nirvana can be reached within this span of time.
What is a single lifetime?
This Theravada ideal is one of the "worthy ones."
What is an arhat?
They left Gautama in disgust when he accepted a bowl of milk-rice, convinced he had given up.
Who are the five ascetics?
If the Four Noble Truths are the diagnosis work of a doctor or physician, the Noble Eightfold Path is this step.
What is the prescription?
When any given action is judged against the precepts, Buddhism says this counts most.
What is intention?
Tibet’s most prominent spiritual leader is regarded as an incarnation of this bodhisattva of compassion.
Who is Avalokiteshvara?
In Buddhism’s “blowing out,” the person is not extinguished. These two things are.
What is tanha (desire) and the sense of self?
Not the same as “everything in moderation,” this teaching says luxury and starvation fail for the same reason: both keep attention fixed on the body and the self.
What is the Middle Way?
Critics call Buddhism pessimistic because it starts with suffering. This third Noble Truth is the optimistic reply.
What is suffering can be brought to an end.
This part of the Noble Eightfold Path asks a Buddhist to live by the Five Precepts.
What is Right Action?
A Tibetan monk gazes at one in meditation, shapes one with his hands, and chants one. Name all three, in that order.
What are a mandala, a mudra, and a mantra?
Buddhists picture liberation as crossing a river on a raft. This is the reason the raft gets left on the far shore.
What is to avoid clinging (or avoid attachment)--even to the teachings of Buddhism itself?