What Is The Essence Of Buddha’s Teaching?

Just back from walking Bodhi. The path today was shimmering. Unfortunately (but appropriately), the photo didn’t quite capture it.

The question about the essence of Buddha’s teaching has stuck in my craw since yesterday’s post. This was the question I posed to several teachers while on pilgrimage in the early 90’s and I’ll come back to how Harada Shodo Roshi responded in a future post.

Imv, it is pretty darn important because dharma freedom lies in practicing, manifesting, realizing, and actualizing this essence.

One of my concerns with the present American dharma scene is that we appear to be putting the essence on the back burner rather than front and center. Anyway, it is always available and yet always very close to disappearing. What can be done about falling into the secondary? It is truly a wild wild fox.

And as a friend recently joked, “Without the dumb-it-downers what would we zealots do for a life?”

Here’s a dialogue with Katagiri Roshi and an unknown student that points to some of the issues that come up when taking this question seriously. This dialogue was in my trove of possible stories for Keep Me In Your Heart that didn’t make the book, mostly because Wisdom thought that there was already enough material.

A student asked, “You say to practice Buddhism one must have strong faith. I think it is the same in other religious groups. People know the teaching but don’t know for themselves. How can we judge if we are doing the right or wrong practice?”

Katagiri-roshi said, “I’m not selling religious faith and I don’t mean that I can give you faith. Please move toward the source of existence. If you don’t know what is right or wrong practice, why don’t you follow my guidance? Instead of confining yourself into a certain shell, ‘I like faith, I don’t like faith or I have faith or I don’t have faith’ – why don’t you open yourself? Then you can have enough space to listen to Buddha’s teaching. In the process, understanding will occur.”

One interesting aspect of this dialogue is that the student is pretty sharp. He is caught in the pickle of knowing that he doesn’t know and also knowing that if he doesn’t know, how can he trust what will lead him to knowing?

Another interesting aspect is Katagiri Roshi’s treatment of faith, opening, and following. For many of us, the question of power in the teacher-student relationship is very tricky. How can we be adults, living now in the West, and meet the teaching (and our teachers) without pretending to be someone we’re not (i.e., medieval, male, teen-aged Japanese monks)?

A really strong spirit is very important.

What is the Essence of Buddha’s Teaching?