Topic summary

Namarupa

Nāmarūpa (Sanskrit: नामरूप) is used in Buddhism and Hinduism to refer to the constituents of a living being: nāma is typically considered to refer to the mental component of the person, while rūpa refers to the physical.

In Buddhism, nāmarūpa is most often found as a single compound word understood literally as mind-and-matter or mentality-and-materiality.

In Hinduism, nāma (name) and rūpa (form) is the simple worldly identity of any form by a name both of which are considered temporal and not true identity with the nameless and formless ‘reality’ or ‘Absolute’ in Hinduism that has manifested as maya.