Theology

The Buddha

c. 563 to 483 BCE, India and Nepal

The Four Noble Truths, no-self, and the end of suffering.

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Lessons

The Four Noble Truths

The Buddha presented his entire teaching as a kind of medicine: a diagnosis of the human condition, its cause, the news that it can be cured, and the treatment. These are the Four Noble Truths - the foundation of everyt…

No-Self

The Buddha’s most radical teaching is that there is no permanent, unchanging self at the centre of your experience. The ‘I’ you take for granted is, he argues, a bundle of ever-changing processes - and seein…

Everything Flows

Beneath all the Buddha’s teachings lies a single vision: that everything, without exception, is impermanent - arising and passing in an unbroken flow. To see this clearly, he taught, is to stop fighting reality and to f…

The Eightfold Path

The Buddha did not just diagnose suffering; he prescribed a cure - the Noble Eightfold Path, a practical programme of wisdom, ethics, and mental discipline that forms the ‘Middle Way’ between self-indulgence…

Nirvana

The goal of the entire Buddhist path is nirvana - but the Buddha described it almost entirely by what it is not . Understanding this strange, central word means grasping both the deepest promise and the deepest mystery…

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