Reflections
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The ethical code of early Buddhism is to be found mainly in the strands of the Eightfold Path concerned with Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood (sīla), together with the Five Precepts for laypeople. They present an ancient blueprint for avoiding harm (ahimsa). But beneath this clarity lies a framework that is both ingenious…
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Emptiness (sūnyatā) explains the nature of everything. The explanation was already implicit in the earliest teaching of no-self (anattā) – that humans have no permanent, unchanging ‘self’ (or soul), but instead consist of five aggregates: the body, feelings, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. Another early teaching looks to the origin of all things, concluding that…
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We are usually taught that the Four Noble Truths are Buddhism’s starting point – a compact diagnosis of the human condition outlining dissatisfaction/suffering (dukkha), its causes (samudaya), its cessation (nirodha), and the path forward (magga). But I am not interested in defending their metaphysical status or rehearsing old doctrinal explanations. What matters to me is how they…
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A while ago, I asked Google Gemini (AI) about the easiest way to grasp Buddhism’s Three Marks of Existence. The answer started well, ‘a way of looking at reality exactly as it is, without illusions’, and then all seemed to go downhill, and rapidly. Perhaps I had hoped for some deep and profound insight into…
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If karma is the observation that intention shapes action, and action shapes experience, then a further question naturally follows: how do we live in a way that supports clarity rather than confusion, ease rather than friction? The Buddha places this question at the very beginning of the Eightfold Path. Not as a moral demand, not…
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In early Buddhism, karma was defined as volitional intention (cetanā), where the moral weight of an action lay in the psychological impulse behind it. Intentional acts of body, speech, and mind functioned as seeds that ‘ripened’ into specific results within the cycle of suffering and rebirth (saṃsāra). Rather than being a system of divine judgment,…
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Vietnamese Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh paraphrased the Five Remembrances (found in the Upajjhatthana Sutta) like this: On a first reading, the Five Remembrances can seem very bleak statements that describe unavoidable human suffering. They certainly challenge our tendency to live in denial of ageing and death. We don’t feel very comfortable facing our own…
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Buddhism’s ‘Two Truths’ doctrine sounds like a summation of its highest-level insights – a realisation reserved for the end of a life spent in practice, perhaps. Yet, the doctrine is introduced very early on, almost as a foundational teaching, not a final or ultimate one. There is a profound irony here: the doctrine teaches us…
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Whether you look upon Buddhism as a religion or as a way of life underpinned by a philosophy – which is my way – you will probably take the ‘Four Noble Truths’ and the ‘Noble Eightfold Path’ as the foundations of your practice. By way of analogy, the Noble Truths are often presented as the medical diagnosis of an…
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I look at the different schools of Buddhism and differentiate them partly by lines of accountability for stewardship of the dharma. The traditional schools rely heavily on the authority of institutional weight, the monastic code (vinaya) and lineage. The practitioner is accountable to thousands of years of precedent, and an honest enquirer can easily feel…
