Buddha, Dharma, Sangha
Refuge is oriented toward awakening, teaching and community. Traditions understand each refuge at several historical and devotional levels.
Learn · Six connected teaching maps
Core Buddhist wisdom
Explore one map at a time. These summaries describe Buddhist traditions; they are not universal scientific or clinical claims.
Editorial teaching map
Terms and emphases differ across Theravāda, Mahāyāna, and Vajrayāna lineages.
Impermanence, distress, not-self
Conditioned phenomena change; grasping cannot produce lasting security; no independent permanent self is found in the conditioned processes examined.
A framework for distress and freedom
The fourfold map investigates distress, its arising, its cessation and a path of practice.
Wisdom, ethics and collectedness
Eight mutually supporting factors are commonly grouped as wisdom, ethical conduct and mental cultivation.
Dependent origination
Experience arises through conditions. The teaching resists both a completely independent self and a simplistic claim that nothing matters.
The cessation taught by Buddhist traditions
Nirvāṇa is approached through doctrine and practice, not reduced here to a mood, product or scientific measurement.
Source boundary
All six panels are site-authored summaries. They reproduce no proprietary translation and should be paired with primary texts and lineage-qualified teaching.