Stopping the Flow of Dependent Origination
Photo: Buddhadāsa Indapañño Archives C03766
“My first exposure to Buddhism was through Tibetan Buddhism. Could you please comment on what you think are the essential differences between Tibetan and Thai, or Suan Mokkh, Buddhism? Would reading books on Tibetan Buddhism only confuse what we have learned here?”
~ Response by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu ~
The question we must ask you is have you gotten to the essence, the heart or nucleus, of Theravāda Buddhism, the Buddhism presented here? Have you recognized, have you found, have you gotten to the essence, the heart, of Tibetan Buddhism? If you’ve gotten to the heart or essence of both, you’ll see that they’re the same. We’re talking about the true essence, the genuine essence, not illusions or our own guesses. But if one has gotten to the real essence or heart of Theravāda Buddhism, of Mahāyāna Buddhism, of Vajrayāna Buddhism as they teach in Tibet, then one sees that they are all the same.
The essence of Buddhism is to see anattā, to realize not-self, to realize the fact that life is not-self, to see the not-selfness of life – the selflessness of life. This is the heart of all forms of Buddhism, whether Thai Buddhism, Sri Lankan Buddhism, Burmese Buddhism, Vietnamese Buddhism, Tibetan Buddhism, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Western Buddhism. Whatever kind of Buddhism it is, the heart, the essence is just this one thing, to realize the selflessness, the anattā, of life. All the schools of Buddhism teach this. This is the only true or genuine heart of Buddhism.
Now you can get confused if you take superficial matters, some of the outer or external things such as the ceremonies or the language used, or the way the monks dress or shave their heads or the rules they follow. If you take the language or the specific meditation techniques or any of the externals, then this can lead to confusion, discrimination, and even a lot of arguing, who’s right, who’s better, and all that kind of rubbish. But if one gets to the heart of it, then one sees that all schools, all forms of Buddhism are the same. They teach that life is not-self.
This is usually taught in the form that the five heaps (the five khandhas) – or in Sanskrit skandhas – are not-self. The body aggregate, the feeling aggregate, the perceptions aggregate, the thoughts aggregate, and the consciousness aggregate, each of these is not-self, all together they’re not-self, outside of them there is nothing which is self. Seeing thoroughly that life, or these five khandhas, these five subsystems of life are not-self, this is the heart of all of Buddhism. Once one recognizes, realizes this essence of Buddhism then there won’t be any confusion.
We have to accept the necessity that new ceremonies, new rituals, new practices, new teachings, and explanations will have to be created. There will always be a need for more of these in order to serve the needs of people of, we could say, weak minded people. Or people who aren’t very intelligent, people without very much wisdom. In order to help them there will always be a need to think up new ceremonies and so on.
There will always be a need for the people who have already gone very far in a certain direction, in a certain line of study, in order to correct the misunderstandings involved with that, it will be necessary to adapt new teachings to that situation. So this need will always exist, and so it’s inevitable that there will be constantly arising new ceremonies, new methods, new teachings, and new explanations. For example if you look at some of the great Mahāyāna suttas, they are all very, very long. The Theravāda suttas or discourses are rather short. But all the famous Mahāyāna ones, almost all are very long; they begin with lots of devotional and magical stuff to get the attention of people who aren’t very wise, and then slowly raise their level of understanding. Then there is a lot of philosophical stuff to deal with, people who’ve gotten off the track into philosophical speculations about all kinds of different things. So these very large Mahāyāna suttas are having to deal with these different needs, but in the end the purpose is to draw all of that to the essence of Buddhism. All the really great Mahāyāna suttas end with the fact that the five khandhas are not-self, with the fact of the voidness of the five khandhas, that life is not-self. The different techniques and methods will keep varying according to the needs, but the essence is always the not-selfness of life.
To help certain people who are spiritually immature, it gets even more difficult, so there’s the need for the so called Pure Land Schools, or Paradise Schools, to get people some kind of heaven or paradise to look for in the next life. This sukhāvatī, this approach, is also necessary. We need to recognize that this is the way things are in order to help people of different levels of intelligence from different backgrounds, but we shouldn’t get distracted or confused by that. We should see that the heart, the essence of every school of Buddhism, every sect, and every sub-sect, is that the five khandhas are not-self, life is not-self.
Certain methods are just techniques to stimulate the wisdom to leap out quickly. There are certain approaches which are solely designed to spark a sudden leap of wisdom. For example Zen has some of these. So there are approaches that emphasize this attempt to scare or spark wisdom suddenly.
From the retreat “Stopping the Flow of Dependent Origination,” as translated from the Thai by Santikaro
Dhamma Questions & Responses sessions were offered by Buddhadāsa Bhikkhu in 1990-1991 to foreign meditators attending Suan Mokkh International Dharma Hermitage courses.
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