section_path: Teachings and views/Core teachings
section_name: Core teachings
paragraph_text: Core teachings
  
  A number of teachings and practices are deemed essential to Buddhism, including: the samyojana (fetters, chains or bounds), that is, the sankharas ("formations"), the kleshas (unwholesome mental states), including the three poisons, and the āsavas ("influx, canker"), that perpetuate sa ṃ sāra, the repeated cycle of becoming; the six sense bases and the five aggregates, which describe the process from sense contact to consciousness which lead to this bondage to sa ṃ sāra; dependent origination, which describes this process, and its reversal, in detail; and the Middle Way, with the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path, which prescribes how this bondage can be reversed.
  
  According to N. Ross Reat, the Theravada Pali texts and the Mahasamghika school's Śālistamba Sūtra sharethese basic teachings and practices. Bhikkhu Analayo concludes that the Theravada Majjhima Nikaya and Sarvastivada Madhyama Agama contain mostly the same major doctrines. Likewise, Richard Salomon has written that the doctrines found in the Gandharan Manuscripts are "consistent with non-Mahayana Buddhism, which survives today in the Theravada school of Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, but which in ancient times was represented by eighteen separate schools".