What the Buddha Taught
With Texts from Suttas and Dhammapada
A scholar-monk lays out the original teaching without decoration: no sin, no god, no speculation — ignorance and craving, and the way out of both.
Walpola Rahula was a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk and scholar who taught at universities in Ceylon, France, and the US. Published in 1959, this book lays out the Buddha’s teaching straight from the Pali Canon — the suttas and the Dhammapada — without sectarian interpretation layered on top. It covers the four noble truths, the eightfold path, and anatta (no-self) as Rahula reads them in the original texts.
A few lines worth keeping:
There is no ‘sin’ in Buddhism. The root of all evil is ignorance and false views.
One of the well-known synonyms for Nirvana is ‘Freedom’ — freedom from craving, hatred and ignorance, from all terms of duality, relativity, time and space.
The Buddha was not interested in discussing unnecessary metaphysical questions which are purely speculative and which create imaginary problems.
Truth needs no label.
There is no unmoving mover behind the movement. It is only movement. It is not correct to say that life is moving, but life is movement itself… there is no thinker behind the thought. Thought itself is the thinker. If you remove the thought, there is no thinker to be found.
Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. If anything at all, it is realistic… It tells you exactly and objectively what you are and what the world around you is, and shows you the way to perfect freedom, peace, tranquillity and happiness.
You cannot escape life however you may try. As long as you live, whether in a town or in a cave, you have to face it and live it. Real life is the present moment — not the memories of the past which is dead and gone, nor the dreams of the future which is not yet born.
That is the moment when you lose yourself completely in your mindfulness of breathing. As long as you are conscious of yourself you can never concentrate on anything.
The Buddha’s teaching on Anatta, No-Soul, or No-Self, should not be considered as negative or annihilistic. Like Nirvana, it is Truth, Reality; and Reality cannot be negative. It is the false belief in a non-existing imaginary self that is negative.
To meet hatred with kindness one must have tremendous courage, boldness, faith and confidence in moral force.
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