While several scholars have explored the Christian themes of Buffy, noting the importance of Christian iconography and symbolism in the Buffyverse, this presentation argues that the show's heart is profoundly (albeit unconsciously) more Buddhist than Christian. Buffy and Buddhism both begin with the same understanding: that, as the First Noble Truth states, "life is suffering" (or, as Buffy puts it, life can sometimes suck beyond the telling of it). While Buffy appeals to general Buddhist principles such as the primacy of direct experience and the law of karma, it also calls upon specific Buddhist traditions in eclectic ways, representing a selective pastiche of various Buddhist ideas. For example, as in Tibetan Buddhism, Buffy employs an elaborate pantheon of supernatural beings, an emphasis on tantric knowledge, and a notion of inherited supernatural abilities in certain "chosen" individuals. And like all Mahayana and Vajrayana Buddhist traditions, the concept of the bodhisattva–-“an individual who renounces personal nirvana in the interest of extending enlightenment to all sentient beings”--is paramount on both Buffy and Angel. Drawing on the work of James William Coleman, this paper analyzes the Buddhist themes in the Buffyverse, with special attention to where Buffy departs from Buddhist tradition in keeping with the mores of what Lopez calls the "new American Buddhism" (e.g. its rejection of the guru-disciple hierarchy in favor of a more egalitarian mentoring relationship between Buffy and Giles, or its subordination of the traditional Buddhist notion of reincarnation in favor of more typical American ideas of heaven and hell).