Early Buddhism - Words of the Buddha

More than two thousand five hundred years have passed since our kind teacher, Buddha Śākyamuni, taught in India. He offered advice to all who wished to heed it, inviting them to listen, reflect, and critically examine what he had to say. He addressed different individuals and groups of people over a period of more than forty years.

After the Buddha's passing, a record of what he said was maintained as an oral tradition. Those who heard the teachings would periodically meet with others for communal recitations of what they had heard and memorized. In due course, these recitations from memory were written down, laying the basis for all subsequent Buddhist literature. The Pāli Canon is one of the earliest of these written records and the only complete early version that has survived intact. Within the Pāli Canon, the texts known as the Nikāyas have the special value of being a single cohesive collection of the Buddha's teachings in his own words. These teachings cover a wide range of topics; they deal not only with renunciation and liberation, but also with the proper relations between husbands and wives, the management of the household, and the way countries should be governed. They explain the path of spiritual development—from generosity and ethics, through mind training and the realization of wisdom, all the way up to the attainment of liberation.

— Venerable Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama's forward to In the Buddha's Words

The Buddha’s discourses preserved in the Pāli Canon are called suttas, the Pāli equivalent of the Sanskrit word sūtras. Although the Pāli Canon belongs to a particular Buddhist school—the Theravāda, or School of the Elders—the suttas are by no means exclusively Theravāda Buddhist texts. They stem from the earliest period of Buddhist literary history, a period lasting roughly a hundred years after the Buddha’s death, before the original Buddhist community divided into different schools. The Pāli suttas have counterparts from other early Buddhist schools now extinct, texts sometimes strikingly similar to the Pāli version, differing mainly in settings and arrangements but not in points of doctrine. The suttas, along with their counterparts, thus constitute the most ancient records of the Buddha’s teachings available to us; they are the closest we can come to what the historical Buddha Gotama himself actually taught. The teachings found in them have served as the fountainhead, the primal source, for all the evolving streams of Buddhist doctrine and practice through the centuries. For this reason, they constitute the common heritage of the entire Buddhist tradition, and Buddhists of all schools who wish to understand the taproot of Buddhism should make a close and careful study of them a priority.

— Bhikkhu Bodhi in In the Buddha's Words

"AT PRESENT, ALL THAT IS LEFT of Buddhism are the words of the Buddha."

— Venerable Ācariya Mahā Boowa in Arahattamagga ArahattaPhala

"Therefore, Ānanda, dwell with yourselves as your own island, with yourselves as your own refuge, with no other refuge; dwell with the Dhamma as your island, with the Dhamma as your refuge, with no other refuge.

Whoever, Ānanda, now or after my passing, dwells as an island unto themselves, with themselves as their own refuge, not dependent on another as a refuge; with the Dhamma as their island, with the Dhamma as their refuge, not dependent on another as a refuge; they, Ānanda, will be the foremost of those who are keen on the training."

— The Buddha's advise to Ānanda in Cundasutta SN 47.13

"Please, venerable sir, teach me the Dhamma in brief, so that having heard the Dhamma from the Blessed One, I might dwell alone, diligent, ardent, and resolute."

"Gotamī, you should know the Dhamma to be abandoned if you find:

1. 'These teachings lead to passion, not to dispassion;

2. to being bound, not to being unbound;

3. to accumulating, not to shedding;

4. to wanting more, not to wanting less;

5. to discontentment, not to contentment;

6. to company, not to solitude; to laziness,

7. not to the arousal of energy (decline in application of right effort);

8. to being burdensome, not to being unburdensome.'

In this way, Gotamī, you should conclude: 'This is not the Dhamma, this is not the Vinaya, this is not the Teacher's instruction.'

And, Gotamī, you should know the Dhamma to be embraced if you find:

1. 'These teachings lead to dispassion, not to passion;

2. to being unbound, not to being bound;

3. to shedding, not to accumulating;

4. to wanting less, not to wanting more;

5. to contentment, not to discontentment;

6. to solitude, not to company;

7. to the arousal of energy, not to laziness (growth in application of right effort);

8. to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome.'

In this way, Gotamī, you should conclude: 'This is the Dhamma, this is the Vinaya, this is the Teacher's instruction.'"

— The Buddha's advise to Mahāpajāpatī Gotamī in Saṁkhittasutta AN 8.53

One doesn't need a belief or faith in the Buddha's teachings to benefit from them. Rather, one can harness any skepticism by developing an inquisitive mind, to diligently learn, reflect, and then independently verify the teachings by applying them in practice for a period of time, observing for:

• development and growth in the mental qualities associated with enlightenment such as mindfulness, persistence, joy, tranquility, collectedness; and

• improvements in one's personal and professional relationships.