Bhagavad Gita

Words used here

Plain meanings for words on this page.

• dharma

  In Hindu settings, dharma often means the right order of things and the particular duty of a life—what is yours to do, given who you are and where you stand. It is not a generic slogan, and it is not identical with every use of the related Buddhist word dhamma.

• karma

  Intentional action and the way such action shapes what follows. In the Bhagavad Gita, the point is not cosmic revenge for a traffic slight. It is how clinging to results binds a person, and how action without that clinging can be a path.

  A little deeper

  Popular speech often treats karma as payback. Classical Hindu and Buddhist uses are more precise: they concern intention, consequence, and continuity across a life—and, in traditional teaching, across rebirth. Those are religious and philosophical claims, not laboratory measurements.

• Atman

  In many Hindu philosophical contexts, Atman names the deepest Self. In Advaita, this Self is understood as not separate from Brahman.

• avatar

  In Hindu theology, an avatar is a descent or incarnation of a god into the world. Many Hindus understand Krishna as an avatar of Vishnu. That is a traditional religious claim, not a historical proof that a god walked the earth.