Buddhism Trivia
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120 free Buddhism trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Buddhism trivia quiz covers the world's fourth-largest religion from the life of Siddhartha Gautama in the Ganges plain 2,500 years ago to Buddhism in the modern world. It begins with the Buddha himself: his birth at Lumbini, the Bodhi Tree at Bodh Gaya, the first sermon in the Deer Park at Sarnath, the last meal from the blacksmith Cunda and his death at Kushinagar. Then it turns to the core teachings: the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, the three marks of existence, karma, rebirth, nirvana and the Three Jewels. You will also find questions on history and geography: Ashoka's conversion after Kalinga, the councils and schisms, the Pali Canon, the Silk Road, Nalanda, the spread of Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, Borobudur and Angkor, Zen and Pure Land in East Asia, the four schools of Tibetan Buddhism and the Dalai Lamas, Vesak, Ambedkar's Navayana and today's demographics. Some questions are answerable by anyone who has taken a world religions class; others will test long-time practitioners. Every answer has been checked against primary sources, chiefly the Wikipedia articles on Buddhism, the Buddha and the major sites and schools, and each explanation adds one further detail. Play, see your score, and share it with the seekers in your group chat.
30 of 120 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Pew found Buddhists were the only major religious group whose numbers did what between 2010 and 2020?
Shrank
Shrank: more people left Buddhism than joined it, and Buddhists are concentrated in slow-growing countries such as China and Japan.
Q 02Where was the Buddha born?
Lumbini, in present-day Nepal
Lumbini, in present-day Nepal: the emperor Ashoka later made a pilgrimage there and set up a stone pillar inscribed as marking the Buddha's birthplace.
Q 03The Buddha was born into which community, governed by a small oligarchy or republic-like council?
The Shakya
The Shakya: his father is described as an elected chief of the clan, rather than the king that later tellings made him.
Q 04In legend, what did Queen Maya dream entered her side when the Buddha was conceived?
A white elephant with six tusks
A white elephant with six tusks: the legend adds that seers foretold the child would become either a great king or a great spiritual leader.
Q 05What were the names of the Buddha's wife and son according to the early texts?
Yasodhara and Rahula
Rahula later joined the monastic order his father founded.
Q 06Under which two meditation teachers did Gautama first study before abandoning their methods?
Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta
Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta each offered him leadership of their followers, but Gautama walked away, finding their meditation fell short of awakening.
Q 07What kind of tree is the Bodhi Tree, under which the Buddha attained awakening?
A fig tree
A fig tree, the sacred fig: Ashoka's queen, jealous of his devotion to the Bodhi Tree, is said to have had it killed.
Q 08A village girl named Sujata is remembered for offering the Buddha what before his awakening?
Milk and rice pudding
Milk and rice pudding revived the starving Gautama, and in the popular telling Sujata offered it because she mistook him for a tree spirit.
Q 09In the legendary biographies, which ruler of the desire realm tried to stop the Buddha's awakening?
Mara
Mara sent an army and alluring women against him, and the Buddha is said to have touched the ground to call the earth as witness, the pose of many Buddha statues.
Q 10Where did the Buddha give his first sermon after enlightenment?
Sarnath, the Deer Park near Varanasi
At Sarnath, the Deer Park near Varanasi, he taught the five monks who had walked out on him, and one of them, Kondanna, grasped the teaching as he listened.
Q 11In his last words, the Buddha urged his monks to strive with what?
Diligence
Diligence, since all conditioned things decay, he said; he had refused to name a successor, leaving his teaching and discipline as their teacher.
Q 12Which of the Buddha's cousins tried to seize leadership of his monks and formed a rival sect?
Devadatta
Devadatta, the Pali texts say, even plotted to kill the Buddha, but every attempt failed, and the Buddha sent two disciples to win back the monks who had followed him.
Q 13According to the second Noble Truth, dukkha arises with tanha, a word literally meaning what?
Thirst
Thirst is the literal sense of tanha, usually rendered craving, and the third truth says dukkha ends once that craving is let go.
Q 21What are the Three Jewels in which all Buddhists take refuge?
Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
Buddha, Dharma and Sangha: reciting the formula of refuge in them is traditionally the first step in becoming a Buddhist.
Q 22Which object did the Buddha liken his teaching to, useful for crossing over and then let go?
A raft
A raft is left behind once the river is crossed, and even good teachings, he said, should be let go, to say nothing of bad ones.
Q 23What is the Sangha?
The monastic community of monks and nuns
The monastic community of monks and nuns relies on laypeople, who earn merit by giving food and cloth for robes, while monks offer teachings.
Q 14Which practice belongs to the Buddha's Noble Eightfold Path?
Right livelihood
Right livelihood rules out harmful trades, such as dealing in weapons, human beings, meat or poison.
Q 15What does the word nirvana literally mean?
Blowing out
Blowing out, as of a flame: early texts picture greed, hatred and delusion as fires, and nirvana as their going out.
Q 16The Buddha compared a straining monk's effort to what?
Tuning an instrument
Tuning an instrument: Sona, once a skilled player, learned that strings too tight or too slack won't play in tune, balanced his effort and became an arahant.
Q 17Anicca, dukkha and anatta are collectively known as what?
The three marks of existence
The three marks of existence are impermanence, unsatisfactoriness and non-self, and seeing them with insight is said to bring suffering to an end.
Q 18The Buddha compared the rarity of human birth to a turtle, surfacing once a century, doing what?
Putting its neck through a yoke
Putting its neck through a yoke, and so, he told the monks, those who have won a human birth should now contemplate the four noble truths.
Q 19What is the literal meaning of samsara?
Wandering
Wandering is samsara's literal sense, and one sutta has the Buddha teach that the tears shed while wandering from life to life exceed the water of the four great seas.
Q 20In Buddhist karma theory, what is essential to bring about a karmic result?
Intent
Intent, and in the same spirit the Buddha taught that no one is a brahmin or an outcaste by birth, only by their deeds.
Q 24Which is one of Buddhism's five lay precepts?
No intoxicants
No intoxicants: laypeople vow to avoid drink and drugs that lead to heedlessness, and on holy days the devout keep eight precepts, adding no afternoon meals.
Q 25What is the meaning of the term Tripitaka, used for the canonical collections of Buddhist texts?
Three baskets
Three baskets: the name is thought to recall the containers in which palm-leaf manuscripts of the teachings were kept.
Q 26The Four Noble Truths are often likened to the method of which professional?
A doctor
A doctor: the first two truths diagnose suffering and its cause, the third says a cure exists, and the fourth prescribes the path to it.
Q 27Which group destroyed the giant Buddha statues carved into the cliffs at Bamiyan, Afghanistan?
The Taliban
The Taliban destroyed them in 2001, though the statues had survived Genghis Khan's sack of Bamiyan in 1221.
Q 28In what form does the Dhammapada present the Buddha's teachings?
Short verses
Short verses, among them the teaching that hatred never ends through hatred, only through non-hatred.
Q 29Which brutal war, fought in his eighth regnal year, preceded Ashoka's turn toward Buddhism?
Kalinga
Kalinga's conquest, by Ashoka's own edict, killed 100,000 people and uprooted 150,000, and the same edict voices his deep remorse.
Q 30What did Ashoka's envoy Sanghamitta found in Sri Lanka?
An order of nuns
An order of nuns: Queen Anula and the women of her court had asked to be ordained, and Sanghamitta ordained them.