The all-too-common extent of understanding of Buddhism is some variant on "Life is suffering"\—including a bumper-sticker variant not suitable for polite company\—which tends to elicit the response "Like hey, that's a real downer man, why'd you want to believe that??" + end of discussion. Buddhism is in fact considerably more complex, but generally revolves around about a half-dozen core concepts\—rather, collections of concepts\—which we hope to an least introduce in 40 minutes

• The Four Noble Truths. https://www.lionsroar.com/what-are-the-four-noble-truths/
• The Eightfold Path: the route for escaping suffering. https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-eightfold-path/
• the Precepts: the guides to ethical behavior, and we'll look at both
• the classical five: https://www.lionsroar.com/what-are-the-five-precepts/
• Thich Nhat Hanh's list of fourteen "mindfulness trainings", which are apparently typical of a number of Zen extensions of the precepts: https://plumvillage.org/mindfulness-practice/the-14-mindfulness-trainings/
• The three poisons: anger, greed, and delusion. Also known as Silicon Valley's business model. https://www.lionsroar.com/what-are-the-three-poisons/
• The Brahmaviharas. https://www.lionsroar.com/what-are-the-four-brahmaviharas
• dukkha (stress, suffering, reactivity), annica (impermanence), and anata (no-self, almost always the single most difficult concept of the three to explain)
• Nine teachers (Sam Littlefair, editor) on dukkha: https://www.lionsroar.com/what-is-suffering-10-buddhist-teachers-weigh-in/
• Norman Fischer on impermanence: https://www.lionsroar.com/impermanence-is-buddha-nature-embrace-changemay-2012/
• Reginald Ray on no-self: first of a four part series, and a bit of a slog\—we told you this was complicated\—with links to the remaining articles: https://www.lionsroar.com/who-me/
• The Three Jewels: Buddha, dhamma, sangha: https://tricycle.org/magazine/the-three-gems/ (TNH)
• Also see:https://www.lionsroar.com/the-practice-of-sangha/ (TNH on sangha).
• For a sutta version, try https://suttacentral.net/an6.10/en/sujato (Mahanama Sutta)

Quite a chunk for forty minutes, but gets us beyond the bumper sticker.

Link to slides from talk (PDF)

Suggested reading:

The wonderful people at Lion's Roar have put together many readings on each of these and there will be a collection of these on the web : pick a couple you find interesting and/or may wish to become more familiar with.

Other resources

• Stephen Batchelor. After Buddhism: Rethinking the dharma for a secular age. (2015) (Batchelor's on-going synthesis of a secular Buddhism; also see the earlier efforts in his Buddhism Without Beliefs: A Contemporary Guide to Awakening (1997))
• Thich Nhat Hanh. Oh, pretty much everything he has written, but Being Peace (1987) tends to be one of the most popular.
• Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse, What Makes You Not a Buddhist (2008) (per the title, a bit of a polemic but a good guide to core tenets)
• Jack Kornfield. After the Ecstasy, the Laundry: How the Heart Grows Wise on the Spiritual Path (2001) (Not sure this goes in this section, but this one is on everyone's list of favorite books)
• Phillip Moffit. Dancing With Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering (2012)
• Rodney Smith. Stepping Out of Self-Deception: The Buddha's Liberating Teaching of No-Self (2010) (I'm now reading this through for the fifth time and still seeing things I missed.)
• Robert Wright. Why Buddhism Is True: The Science and Philosophy of Meditation and Enlightenment (2017)