A cluster of ideas around duty, order, and right conduct that is understood differently across Indian traditions.
The principle linking action to consequence, understood differently across Indian traditions.
Liberation or release, framed as the ultimate aim in several Indian traditions — with each defining what it means differently.
A term for ultimate reality developed in the Upanishads and central to later Vedanta — understood very differently across schools.
A term for the innermost self explored in the Upanishads — its nature, and its relation to ultimate reality, are debated across traditions.
The idea of a cycle of birth, death, and rebirth — a shared framework across several traditions that nonetheless interpret it differently.
The principle of non-harm or non-violence — developed with particular rigor in some traditions and adapted into modern political thought.
A term for appearance, illusion, or the world's deceptive surface — central to Vedanta and interpreted very differently across schools.
A path of loving devotion to the divine — one of the most influential and socially far-reaching currents in Indian religious thought.
Knowledge or insight as a path to liberation — not information, but a transforming realization of how things ultimately are.
A family of disciplines of body and mind aimed at restraint, integration, and liberation — far broader than the modern exercise sense.
The Buddhist term for liberation — the "blowing out" of the fires of craving — distinct from, though often confused with, moksha.
The Buddhist idea of "emptiness" — that things lack independent, self-standing existence — often misread as nihilism.
The classical scheme of four legitimate aims of human life — duty, prosperity, pleasure, and liberation — held in tension.
An early Vedic term for cosmic order — the deep regularity of nature and truth that later concepts of dharma partly inherit.
Ascetic discipline or "inner heat" — self-imposed austerity understood as a source of spiritual power and purification.
The Buddhist diagnosis that ordinary existence is pervaded by unsatisfactoriness — often flattened, misleadingly, into the single word "suffering."
The technical name for non-dualism within Vedanta, asserting that self and ultimate reality are, at the deepest level, not two.
The technical name for strict dualism within Vedanta, asserting permanent and irreducible difference between the self and ultimate reality.
The technical name for qualified non-dualism, asserting that self and ultimate reality form a real unity that nonetheless preserves genuine internal distinction.
A Samkhya-derived scheme of three fundamental qualities held to underlie all activity and matter, widely used across later texts to analyze temperament and action.
A concept of a personal, guiding divine principle, treated very differently across traditions - as central devotional reality in some, and as an optional, subordinate feature in others.
The culminating stage of disciplined contemplative absorption in classical yoga, where the distinction between the meditator and the object of meditation is said to dissolve.
Cultivated dispassion toward craving and aversion, treated across several traditions as a necessary discipline for clear seeing rather than emotional withdrawal from life.
Bliss or fullness treated as a defining feature of ultimate reality in some traditions, importantly distinct from ordinary pleasure or emotional happiness.
The principle of an authoritative teacher who transmits realized understanding rather than mere information, central across many of the traditions this archive covers despite their otherwise significant differences.
A modern political philosophy of truth-force and non-violent resistance, developed as a considered reworking of ahimsa rather than a straightforward restatement of ancient sources.
The Samkhya term for pure, inactive consciousness, standing in permanent contrast to the active material principle it observes but never merges with.
The Samkhya term for the single, dynamic material principle whose activity accounts for the entire observable world, including mind and mental activity.
The doctrine of divine descent into the world in tangible form, most fully developed within Vaishnavism and directly stated within the Bhagavad Gita itself.
A classical scheme of four life stages, each with its own appropriate duties, meant to organize the pursuit of the four aims of life across a full lifespan.
A sacred syllable treated in the Upanishads as a symbolic and meditative representation of ultimate reality, considerably more philosophically loaded than its popular decorative use suggests.