Study Guide for Exam 1
REL 1103, Sections 02 and 03
The first exam will require you to match each one of the 30 terms listed below with its
corresponding definition/description. These terms—together with the page numbers where the
terms’ definitions are given—are listed in the “Chapter Review” sections at the end of the
chapters on Hinduism, Buddhism, and Sikhism in our textbook, Religion Matters.
Hinduism
Atman: individual self-soul that experiences reincarnation
Avatar:
Bhagavad Gita: pays more attention to epics.
Bhakti: devotion
brahman: divine principle underlying all reality.
Caste: Jati = birth
Dharma:
Karma: right/moral action
mantra
moksha: “freedom” … release from this cycle
samsara: “wandering through” … the unsatisfactory cycle of life, death, rebirth, and redeath.
Upanishads
Vedas
Yoga: Discipline
Buddhism
Buddha: the enlighten one.
Bodhisattva:
Dalai Lama
Dukkha: suffering caused by desire and ignorance.
koan: a paradoxical word puzzle that’s meant to open a pathway to sudden enlightenment by
frustrating and exhausting the mind.
Mahayana: emerged between 50 BCE – 50 CE, regards newer sutras that began to emerge ca.
50 BCE – 50 CE as authoritative, is a more devotional form of Buddhism that prays to
enlightened beings, regards nirvana as a gift that can be received (from bodhisattvas), and
generally holds that all sentient beings will become buddhas.
Mandala: Circle
Nirvana:
Theravada: is the earliest surviving form of Buddhism (emerging ca. 380 BCE), only accepts the
Pali canon as authoritative, is generally unconcerned with the existence of divine beings (i.e.,
