The Buddha's Teaching: A Buddhistic Analysis

Abstract

The book approaches the Dhamma, the Buddha's teaching, from a Buddhistic perspective, viewing various individual teachings presented in hundreds of early discourses of the Pali Canon, comprehending them under a single systemic thought of a single individual called the Buddha. It explicates the structure of this thought, going through various contextual teachings and teaching categories of the discourses, treating them as necessary parts of a liberating thought that constitutes the right view of one who embraces the Buddha's teaching as his or her sole philosophy of life. It interprets the diverse individual dramas as being in congruence with each other; and as contributory to forming the whole of the Buddha's teaching, the Dhamma. By exploring some selected topics such as ignorance, configurations, not-self and nibbana in thirteen chapters, the book enables readers to understand the whole (the Dhamma) in relation to the parts (the dramas), and the parts in relation to the whole, while realising the importance of studying every single Dhamma category or topic not for its own sake but for understanding the the entirety of the teaching. This way of viewing and explaining the teaching of the discourses enables readers to clearly comprehend the teaching of the Buddha in early Buddhism.