This isn’t a formal glossary. It’s more like a set of working definitions—the kind I wish I’d had when I first started reading about emptiness and practice. The terms below show up throughout the blog series, often without much explanation. Here’s a little orientation in case you want it.
Emptiness (suññatā)
Not “nothingness.” Not nihilism. Not even a claim about what exists.
Emptiness is the idea that things—including your self, your thoughts, your reactions—don’t exist independently, in a fixed way. They’re empty of inherent identity because they arise based on conditions. They’re fluid. Constructed. Dependently originated.
It’s not a belief. It’s a way of looking that changes how you experience the world.
Anattā (not-self)
This is the insight that what we usually call “me” or “I” is not a fixed, permanent entity—but a process. A swirl of changing perceptions, habits, memories, sensations, and stories.
Not-self doesn’t mean “you don’t exist.” It means the thing you think of as “you” is more like a weather pattern than a statue. Always shifting. Not findable in any one part.
Dukkha (unsatisfactoriness, friction, suffering)
Dukkha is the basic rub of human experience—the unease that comes from craving, resisting, or clinging to what can’t stay the same. It includes pain, but also anxiety, disappointment, and the subtle feeling that something isn’t quite right.
A key insight of practice is that dukkha doesn’t come from the world itself—but from how we relate to it.
Samādhi (collectedness, absorption)
A state of gathered attention. Not spacing out. Not zoning in. More like falling inward into a stable, intimate quiet.
Samādhi can be gentle (just staying with the breath) or deep (absorptive jhāna states). It’s not the goal—but it’s often the ground that makes insight possible.
Jhāna (meditative absorption)
Highly concentrated meditative states where the mind becomes still, joyful, and unified. In early Buddhism, these are stages of deep stability and bliss.
I reference jhāna as part of my early practice revival—particularly the lighter forms encouraged by Rob Burbea, which emphasize accessibility and imagination over hard concentration.
View
Not opinion. View, in this context, means the lens you’re holding up to experience.
In insight practice, you can deliberately take on a view—like impermanence, or not-self—to see how that view reveals something new. Views aren’t ends in themselves. They’re tools. And once they’ve done their job, they can be set down.
The Aggregates (skandhas)
A classical Buddhist breakdown of what we think of as a “self,” divided into five interacting parts:
- Form (your body and senses)
- Feeling tone (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral)
- Perception (labels and pattern recognition)
- Mental formations (intentions, reactions, habits)
- Consciousness (awareness itself)
You don’t need to memorize these. Just know: the “self” is made of parts, and those parts can be watched. When you do, the illusion of a solid “me” starts to soften.
Sangha
A community of practitioners. Traditionally, it refers to the Buddhist monastic community, but in modern contexts it often means any group of people practicing together.
I mention sangha a few times in the blog because I practiced with one during this study year—and it made all the difference.