User:Ninly/SentientStub

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Sentient beings is a technical term in Buddhist discourse. Broadly speaking, it denotes beings constituted by consciousness or, in some contexts, by life itself, although there is debate even within Buddhist discourse as to what exactly constitutes sentience and how it is to be recognized. While distinctions in usage and potential subdivisions or classes of sentient beings vary from one school, teacher, or thinker to another, it generally refers to beings in contrast with buddhahood. That is, sentient beings are characteristically not awakened in the sense of bodhi, and are thus confined to the death, rebirth, and suffering characteristic of samsara.

In Mahayana Buddhism, it is to sentient beings that the Bodhisattva vow of compassion is pledged. Furthermore, in Tibetan Buddhism all beings (including plant life and even inanimate objects or entities considered "spiritual" or "metaphysical" by conventional Western thought) are or may be considered sentient beings and, as such, contain Buddha-nature and the innate potential to attain, or at least pursue, enlightenment.

Classification
Early Buddhist scriptures in the Pali Canon and the conventions of the Tibetan Bhavachakra classify sentient beings into five categories—divinities, humans, animals, tormented spirits, and denizens of hell—although sometimes the classification adds another category of demonic beings between divinities and humans.