Chapter Two

An Ancient Path

The Buddha did not invent the Dhamma. As he said, he discovered an ancient path that Buddhas of the past had discovered, but that had since become overgrown. His job was simply to clear the path again and teach others to follow it (§1).

In describing the Dhamma as a path, he was pointing to the fact that he was not teaching a philosophical system. Instead, he focused all his instructions on how to solve a single problem: the problem of dukkha, which can be translated as “suffering” or “stress” (§2). His solution of this problem—a path leading to total freedom or release from suffering—he treated as a skill to be mastered (§3). All of his teachings converge on this topic; any issues irrelevant to the mastery of this skill he put aside.

Because a proper understanding of the problem of suffering is an important part of the skill he taught, he did address a number of philosophical issues, but only to the extent that they were relevant to his focus. This is one of the most distinctive features of his Dhamma: his careful choice of which questions he was willing to answer and which ones he was not. In fact, the skill of knowing which questions to address and which to put aside was an integral part of the skill required to reach freedom and release (§4).

Contrary to a popular misunderstanding, the issues the Buddha chose to address were not determined by his cultural environment. His focus on the issue of suffering was entirely new and distinctive to him, as was his unwillingness to address many of the hot philosophical issues of his day, such as whether the world was infinite or not (§5; §7). Even when taking on issues that were avidly discussed by his contemporaries—such as the question of the power of action (kamma) and its relationship to rebirth (DN 2)—he provided an answer that was unlike anything anyone else in ancient India had taught.

So, instead of being determined by his cultural surroundings, the range of his teaching was entirely determined by the problem of suffering itself. To understand his choice of which topics to address and how far to address them, it’s important to understand his analysis of what suffering was, how it was caused, and how it could be brought to an end.

Suffering, Its Cause, Its Cessation

According to the Pāli suttas—the oldest extant record of the Buddha’s teachings—there are three kinds of suffering and stress: the stress of pain, the stress of fabrication, and the stress of change (SN 38:14). The second of these—the stress of fabrication—is the stress that actually weighs on the mind, and so that is the stress that the Buddha’s teachings aim to solve. Once it is solved, the other two types of stress do not burden the mind at all.

“Fabrication” (saṅkhāra) is a technical term that literally means, “putting together.” It carries many meanings in the Buddha’s teachings, but the meaning most relevant to our purposes is that of the intentional activity of the mind through which it shapes its experience.

In the Buddhist view, the mind is not passive. Because it is responsible for a body with many hungers and needs, it has to take an active approach in satisfying those needs. Even prior to sensory contact, it conditions itself through its intentions to shape those contacts toward satisfying whatever needs it wants to fulfill (§25). Because it is active, it needs to keep itself nourished as well (§26).

This means that the mind is driven by hungers both physical and mental. To identify and satisfy these hungers, it fabricates five types of activities:

These five activities, called aggregates (khandha), are always at play in the mind’s search for food. It inhabits and uses the form of the body to find food; it tries to avoid feelings of hunger and to create feelings of satisfaction; it learns to perceive what kinds of hunger it has and what foods will assuage them; it has to fabricate raw experiences into a form that can be consumed as food; and it has to be conscious of all these activities for them to succeed.

Because these activities are so essential to feeding, the mind tends to feed on them as well (§19). This second level of feeding is called upādāna, a word that can mean both “sustenance” and “clinging.” Clinging can take four forms: clinging to sensual passion, clinging to habits and practices, clinging to views, and clinging to doctrines on the topic of the self.

The act of clinging to the five aggregates is the Buddha’s definition of the suffering of fabrication (§3), and for two reasons: the act of clinging itself is stressful, and the things clung-to are constantly changing—alternating between pleasant and painful—so that the mind can find no rest.

The Buddha identified the cause of this clinging as the craving that leads to becoming (§3). “Becoming” (bhava) is another word with a technical meaning. It refers to the act of taking on an identity in a particular world of experience for the sake of satisfying a desire—“world,” here, meaning either a physical world or a mental world, on a large or small scale. Examples of large-scale becoming would include your sense of your place in human society or of your place in the universe at large. A small-scale becoming would arise in response to a particular desire. For instance, if a person desires an ice cream cone, the relevant world consists of whatever might enable him to get the ice cream or stand in the way of his getting it. Other aspects of the physical world would be irrelevant to that particular craving. His identity here would take two forms: identifying with a sense of self that will enjoy the pleasure once it’s obtained (the consumer), and with the sense of self composed of one’s range of skills or possessions that will either facilitate one’s desire or get in the way of its satisfaction (the producer). Other skills or possessions are, for that particular becoming, irrelevant.

What this means is that becomings can change frequently, even from moment to moment, depending on the desires on which the mind focuses. Even large-scale becomings are fleeting, in that the mind is not always concerned with its larger place in the universe—as when chocolate gelato becomes an all-consuming desire.

However, becoming does not occur only on the internal, psychological level, because what starts as a psychological process can lead to rebirth on any of the many external worlds found in the cosmos. In fact, if the processes of becoming are not stopped, they provide the sustenance that can cause you to keep taking on different identities in different rebirths—in sensual realms, realms of form, and formless realms—indefinitely (§§9–10).

There are three types of craving that lead to becoming. One is the craving for becoming itself. Another is craving for sensuality, which means the mind’s passion for making plans for sensual pleasures. In other words, the pleasures themselves don’t cause suffering, nor do they lead to becoming. The mind’s obsession with thinking about how to gain sensual pleasure is the cause for both.

The third type of craving that leads to becoming is, paradoxically, craving for non-becoming, i.e., the desire to destroy a particular becoming once it has arisen. This actually leads to further becoming because, in pursuing this craving, you take on the identity of a destroyer. On the macro level, this kind of craving can lead to rebirth in an unconscious realm from which you will eventually return to consciousness and the processes of craving (DN 1).

The cessation of suffering comes with the complete abandoning of the three kinds of craving. The resulting freedom is called nibbāna. This word, in common Pāli parlance, means the extinguishing of a fire. In the time of the Buddha, a burning fire was said to cling to its fuel (again, upādāna). When it let go of its fuel and went out, it was said to be released or unbound into a state of calm, coolness, and peace. Thus the best translation for nibbāna is unbinding. At the same time, the imagery implicit in the word “unbinding” connects directly to the image of feeding, and makes an important point: You are not trapped by your food. Instead, you are trapped by your own act of clinging and feeding. Freedom comes from letting go of the objects on which you feed.

Although unbinding is the ultimate happiness, it cannot be classed as a feeling, for it shows none of the signs that feelings exhibit of arising or passing away (§51; §§53–54). Nor is it a state of Oneness or non-duality, for—as the Buddha observed from practice—even the highest non-duality arises and passes away (§23). In fact, unbinding is not even classified as a world within the cosmos. Instead, it’s an elementary property (dhātu) or dimension (āyatana) that lies outside of space and time but can be touched by the mind (§52; §§47–48).

Furthermore, unbinding is not a return to the source of all things, for two reasons: (1) As the Buddha said, all phenomena originate, not in purity, but in desire. In fact, unbinding is the end of all things (§11). (2) If unbinding were a return to a source, then it wouldn’t be final: It could become a source again for further becomings. Similarly, unbinding is not a return to a supposedly innocent state of childhood. Because a child’s mind is ignorant and driven by desire, there would be no value in returning to that state (§34).

Instead, unbinding is totally unfabricated (§§50–51), so it totally transcends becoming. In fact, one of the first realizations on reaching full awakening is that there is no further becoming. This is why it entails total release from suffering and stress. Given that all fabrication entails suffering, only an unfabricated dimension free from becoming could provide that release.

Because unbinding is unfabricated, it cannot be caused by any acts of mind, but it can be reached through a path of practice, in the same way that a road to a mountain, even though it doesn’t cause the mountain to exist, can still enable you to get there. This is another reason why the practice is called a path. It consists of skills that strengthen the mind to the point where it no longer needs to feed, enabling it to develop a sense of dispassion for all forms of clinging and craving. Because passion is what drives the mind to fabricate, dispassion brings all fabrications to an end (§30).

The Path

The path to the cessation of suffering is called the noble eightfold path because it leads to a noble happiness—free from aging, illness, and death—and because it is composed of eight factors: right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration (§58). Each of these factors is “right” in the sense that it actually works to put an end to suffering. Each is clearly distinguished from its wrong counterpart. A canonical analogy compares the factors of the wrong path to the attempt to get milk from a cow by twisting its horn. Following the right path is like trying to get milk from a cow by pulling on the teats of its udder (§59).

Because the path to the cessation of suffering is something fabricated, whereas unbinding is unfabricated, the path has to be approached strategically (§50). It requires desire and even clinging—to skillful habits and practices and to skillful views—that give rise to skillful states of becoming (§§11–13). Once these activities have done their work, though, they have to be abandoned. An image in the Canon compares this strategy to the act of going to a park: Desire is required to make the effort to go to the park, but when the park is reached, the desire is abandoned. Another image is of taking a raft across a river: You hold onto the raft while crossing the river, but when you reach the further shore you leave the raft there as you go on your way.

For this reason, there are many stages in the path, a fact reflected in the two factors of the path that, under the heading of discernment or wisdom, most directly concern us here: right view and right resolve.

Right view consists of the hypotheses that need to be adopted to follow the path. These fall into three main levels.

The first level, called mundane right view, adopts the principles that pleasure and pain result from your actions, that these actions can have results that carry from one lifetime to subsequent lifetimes, and that there are people who have practiced well to the point where they know these principles through direct knowledge, and not just through hearsay (§62).

These principles fulfill two functions. They explain how the path can work and they also give motivation for following it.

In their function of explaining, they take stands on three major philosophical issues: the nature of action, the workings of causality, and the question of freedom of choice.

Action, or kamma, the Buddha identified with the intention motivating thoughts, words, and deeds (AN 6:63). This is why any attempt to solve the problem of suffering and stress must focus on the mind’s intentions.

In terms of causality, the Buddha taught that each person’s happiness and pain result from past actions and from present actions. If everything came from past actions, nothing could be changed in the present, and there would be no possibility of following a new path of action (§8). There has to be freedom in choosing what one’s present actions will be. For there to be such a possibility, causality cannot be linear or mechanical. The Buddha’s depiction of causality is a more complex process—he compares it to the flow of water—in which results can turn around and have an impact on their causes, just as streams can have eddies and counter-currents.

From the aspiring student’s point of view, freedom of choice has to be accepted as a working hypothesis, for otherwise there would be no motivation to make the effort required by the practice, or even to believe that one course of action was more skillful than another. Only with the attainment of awakening, and the total freedom that results, does one confirm that relative freedom of choice within the realm of causality is real.

These principles on kamma, combined with the teaching that kamma has an impact on the processes of rebirth, also provide the motivation for following the path to the cessation of suffering by fostering two emotions.

The first emotion is heedfulness: the realization that, because one’s actions—even one’s intentional thoughts—can lead either to long-term suffering or long-term pleasure, one must be careful in choosing to follow the skillful course of action at all times. As the Buddha notes, this realization is what lies at the basis of all skillful thoughts, words, and deeds (§33). In other words, he does not take a stand on whether the mind is innately good or bad. As he notes, the mind is capable of all kinds of actions, and can change so quickly that there is no adequate analogy for how quick it is to change (§§31–32). The only thing that keeps it acting skillfully is a sense of heedfulness: that its actions matter, and that happiness depends on choosing them wisely.

The second emotion elicited by mundane right view is saṁvega, a term that means terror, urgency, or dismay. When feeling saṁvega, you see that the round of rebirth is potentially endless, and that it provides no guarantee of safety—a person can work many lifetimes on skillful actions and attain a pleasant rebirth as a result, but then become complacent and heedless, falling back into unskillful ways. This sense of the overwhelming dangers of repeated births and rebirths is what provides the motivation for seeking a way out of the round entirely (§§27–28; AN 5:57).

Because these principles about kamma and rebirth are necessary for understanding how the path to the end of suffering could work, they constitute the main area in which the Buddha directly addressed metaphysical issues: the reality of causality, the reality of action, the power of action to shape experience and the power of craving to sustain acts of consciousness as they drop the body at the end of one life and head to another one for the next.

As noted above, the Buddha’s treatment of these issues did not simply follow the beliefs of his time. Questions of kamma and rebirth were hotly contested by his contemporaries. Some philosophical schools doubted the reality of both kamma and rebirth. Others, maintaining that both were real, denied that kamma had any impact on rebirth. Even among the schools that did teach that kamma determined rebirth, the understanding of the causal relationship between the two was linear and deterministic. Once you had done something, there was no way to mitigate or shape the results you’d experience (DN 2). You had no freedom of choice. Thus the Buddha’s teachings on these topics, and their relationship to the process of becoming within the mind, were totally new and distinctive.

It’s important to note that mundane right view deals in terms of becoming: people acting in ways that lead them to take on identities in one world after another.

The second level of right view, transcendent right view, drops these terms entirely. This is how it avoids the conundrum posed by the fact that both craving for becoming and craving for no becoming act as causes of suffering: It entirely drops all questions and concepts dealing with worlds and identities. Instead, it directs attention to viewing experience in terms of the four noble truths about stress and suffering outlined above: that suffering consists of clinging to the five aggregates, that the three forms of craving are the cause of suffering, that the abandoning of those forms of craving is the cessation of suffering, and that the noble eightfold path is the path to the cessation of suffering. None of these truths involves issues of identity or worlds at all.

Right view on this level not only divides experience into these four categories, but also gives directions as to what to do with each: Suffering is to be comprehended, its cause abandoned, its cessation realized, and the path to its cessation developed (§3).

The third and ultimate level of right view is adopted when all these duties have been fulfilled and the only duty remaining for the mind is to let go of everything that arises and passes away, even the path, even right view (§63). In this way, the levels of right view lead to their own transcendence (§7). This is how a fabricated path leads to the unfabricated. It’s also what makes right view right.

Right resolve, the second factor of the path dealing with discernment, also operates on mundane and transcendent levels, as it resolves to act on the mundane and transcendent insights of right view. On the mundane level, this means the resolve to abandon three types of unskillful resolves—sensuality, ill will, and harmfulness—and to replace them with their skillful alternatives: renunciation, goodwill, and compassion. These skillful resolves then provide the motivation for carrying out the remaining factors of the path.

Here it’s important to notice two features of mundane right resolve: (1) As indicated by the first item in the list of unskillful resolves, there is no room for sensual passion in the path to the end of suffering. (2) Goodwill and compassion are no more innate to the mind than are their opposites, given that the mind is so changeable and has potentials for both skillful and unskillful actions. Thus there has to be the resolve to develop goodwill and compassion, and this resolve has to be motivated by the insights of mundane right view: that unskillful intentions will lead to suffering, and skillful ones to happiness. In other words, these skillful resolves all have to be motivated by heedfulness, the desire to act carefully so as to avoid suffering.

At the same time—again, given the changeable nature of the mind—the Buddha did not trust that skillful resolves, without further direction, would always lead to skillful actions. After all, an attitude of goodwill may be ignorant of the long-term consequences of actions that appear skillful on the surface. For this reason, he formulated specific precepts to define right speech and right action, precepts that he recommended be intentionally followed in all circumstances (SN 42:8; AN 4:99). He also described the good and bad consequences of actions that did not lend themselves to being formulated in absolute precepts (MN 135). And he advocated ways of training the mind in integrity, so that his followers could learn how to observe carefully the results of their actions on their own (MN 61), and in mindfulness—the ability to hold things in mind—so that they could keep applying the lessons they learned to all future actions (§35).

In this way, mundane right resolve does not end simply with good intentions. Through the training of the path, it aims at carrying out those intentions skillfully in everyday life.

Once mundane right resolve has succeeded in dropping all three unskillful resolves, it leads on to its transcendent level: resolving on the mental qualities that allow the mind to enter and remain in right concentration (MN 117). Right concentration is a type of becoming, on a non-sensual level of form or formlessness, but because of its stillness and clarity it allows right view to ferret out ever more subtle levels of clinging and craving until all that remains is the act of clinging to the path itself. That is when the ultimate level of right view can do its work in abandoning all forms of fabrication, leading to release.

How the Buddha Taught

When we understand the way in which the Buddha approached and solved the problem of suffering, it’s easy to see why he was selective in choosing which issues to address and which to put aside. The primary issues he had to address concerned issues of action and freedom of choice, for these were central premises for any path of action that would lead to the end of suffering. He also had to address the ways in which the mind, as an active process, arrived at knowledge and views, and clung to its knowledge and views, for these issues were central to understanding how it creates suffering for itself and how that suffering can be undone from within. In other words, the solution did not require outside intervention. It required using skillful mental processes to abandon unskillful mental processes, and then refining those skillful processes until they opened the way to an experience beyond processes of every sort—physical or mental.

In this way, his approach can be called radically phenomenological, which means that it deals with your experience as you experience it directly—the part of your experience that no one else can look in to see, and that you can’t share with anyone else. The main problem on this level is the suffering you experience directly, something that no one else can either feel or comprehend for you. The same holds true for the hunger that causes suffering: You alone experience it, so you alone can abandon it. The path for solving the problem also consists of processes you experience directly, which is why each person has to develop the path for him or herself alone. And the solution, when it comes, is also experienced on this level, which is why one person’s experience of unbinding is something that no one else can directly know.

Because the Buddha’s Dhamma is focused on this level, he had to develop a special vocabulary to describe it. He dealt with questions dealing with people’s shared reality only when these questions helped to focus attention back to solving the problem of suffering on the phenomenological level.

For instance, in the case of questions framed in terms of becoming—the identity of the self, the nature or origin of the world—he treated these provisionally on the level of mundane right view. He made use of concepts of self on this level, always focusing, however, on issues of what the self could do, rather than what it was. This was so that he could convince his listeners that they had it in their power to follow the path. Similarly, he delineated the worlds to which actions could lead, so that people would be stirred to heedfulness around their actions. He observed that all worlds lacked an intrinsic purpose (DN 1), so that people—realizing that their sufferings served no higher plan—would feel free to make it their own purpose to put suffering to an end. But he never got involved in questions of where the universe came from or what its ultimate dimensions in space and time might be (DN 11; AN 4:45; AN 4:77).

On the level of transcendent right view, however, the Buddha refused to address issues framed in terms of self and world entirely—aside from dismantling them—because the simple act of thinking in those terms, regardless of how you answered the questions they elicited, would get in the way of the end of suffering.

This was why he put aside many questions that obsessed the philosophers and theologians of his day, and that have obsessed thinkers throughout recorded history: What is the self? Does it exist? Does it not exist? Is it the same thing as the body? Is it separate from the body? How is it known? Directly? Indirectly? Is it essentially good? Essentially bad? Is the world eternal? Is it not? Is it finite? Infinite? Is everything a Oneness? Is everything a plurality? (§5; §11; §§15–17; §25)

The Buddha’s way around these questions was to recommend that his listeners look at the actions and intentions through which concepts of “self” and “world” are formed in the mind, to see that these actions necessarily involve clinging and becoming—and thus suffering. His most complex expression of the causal principle underlying these actions and intentions—dependent co-arising (paṭicca samuppāda)—explains how “self” and “world” are formed through processes that don’t have to be framed in terms of “self” and “world.” In this way, he showed how these terms are not basic to experience, and that experience can be usefully understood without having to fall back on them (§25).

As noted above, he also showed how the causal relations that give rise to these terms are neither deterministic nor purposeful. In other words, they don’t have to happen, and they don’t serve any larger purpose that takes precedence over the mind that creates them. This means that people are free not to create them. They are free to understand experience simply as actions leading to suffering or away from it, and free to decide which direction they want their actions to go. The purpose of this analysis was that once his students saw (1) the connection between the actions and intentions leading to concepts of “self” and “world,” (2) the suffering that resulted, and (3) the fact that they didn’t have to keep producing those actions and intentions, they would naturally want to develop acts leading in the other direction, away from suffering.

Acts of this sort begin with the practices designed to develop dispassion for the clinging and craving that ideas of “self” and “world” entailed. Because clinging to notions of self is one of the most fundamental forms of clinging, the Buddha focused particular attention on showing how any possible assumption about self—that it possesses form or is formless, that it is finite or infinite—is ultimately not worth holding to (§§18–19). In particular, he singled out the idea that the self is identical with the cosmos as especially foolish, perhaps because it totally distracted attention from focusing on the sense of self as a mere fabrication or action (§§21–22). It also distracted attention from seeing this act of “selfing” on the phenomenological level, which is the level where the suffering entailed in selfing can most directly be seen. The purpose of all this analysis was not to come to the conclusion that there is no self, but simply to develop dispassion for any attempt to identify anything as oneself, because dispassion is what leads the mind to release.

In this way, both the content of the Buddha’s teachings—what he taught—and their tactical approach—how he taught—keep pointing to what he called the “unprovoked release of awareness.” This release is total and final in that it frees the mind from every possible burden or limitation (§39). It is unprovoked in two senses of the term: (1) It is not caused by the provocation of any causal factor. (2) It cannot be provoked to cause anything else. Once it is attained, there is no more kamma, no more hunger, and so no need for desire. This leaves no means by which the mind could ever return to becoming.

Because this release is neither cause nor result, it lies beyond all conditioned or fabricated nature (§§48–49). Because it is not a state of becoming, it does not belong to the realm of “world” or “cosmos” or any place in physical or mental space at all. This is why those who attain this release are “everywhere released” (§§42–44). Outside of time as well, it is not subject to changes in culture or human society, or even to the evolution or devolution of the cosmos as a whole. Thus the Buddha identified it as the essence of the teaching—the word “essence” (sāra) also meaning heartwood, the part of the tree that remains standing even when the less permanent parts of the tree die away (§11; §§39–41).

Keeping the Path Open

Although the Buddha did not class the path to release as part of the essence of the teaching, he did see the path as having a special relationship to the essence, just as the softwood of a tree is directly connected to the heartwood. In this way, the freedom of this release is the common taste of all his teachings (§41).

One of the realizations that first occurs to a meditator upon the first taste of awakening is that there is no other path that can lead there, for the noble eightfold path is the only way by which the fabrications that stand in the way of release can be dismantled (§57). This is why the Buddha classed right view as a categorical teaching—true across the board—because it deals with mental processes in a way that transcends culture (§46).

Another realization following on the first taste of awakening is that this path is not found outside the teachings of the Buddhas (§§55–56). Other religious teachings may contain elements of the noble eightfold path, such as the practice of virtue or strong concentration, but because they lack right view—and thus fail to ask the right questions that would induce total dispassion for even the subtlest levels of fabrication in the highest states of concentration—they remain stuck in states of becoming.

The Buddha’s claims for the exceptional nature of his Dhamma did not spring from pride or ignorance. After all, as we have noted, he did not claim to have invented the Dhamma, or even to have been the first to find it. The path is not true because it is “his.” It’s true because it’s the only path that works in leading to full release.

In this way, the Buddha’s authority is that, not of a creator god, but of an expert who has discovered and perfected a skill, and who wants to pass it on intact. And because this skill was not simply an education in understanding words, but a training of the entire character, he recognized that it had to be transmitted through friendship and frequent association with those who had already mastered those skills. In fact, he cited admirable friendship—with people endowed with conviction, generosity, virtue, and discernment—as the most effective external factor in leading to awakening (§§64–65).

For these reasons, the Buddha not only taught a body of teachings, but also set up a system of apprenticeship in the monastic orders he founded so that the skills could be passed on from generation to generation. Because sensual desire was an obstacle to the path (§§13–14)—and because he wanted these orders to be unburdensome to their supporters—he formulated rules to make sure that these orders were celibate. And to ensure that the teachings were clearly understood, he established within these orders a culture of cross-questioning, where students were encouraged to ask questions about all the teachings so as to clarify any unclear points that would prevent their being put into practice. The Buddha contrasted this culture with that of a culture of “bombast,” where the teachings aimed more at poetic and expressive beauty, and students were not encouraged to question exactly what they meant (§66).

The Buddha knew that the ability to pass on his skills would be subject to the vagaries of time and civilization, so he established standards for judging whether teachers were reliable mentors, and whether the texts handed down were really genuine (§67). He also established standards showing students how to measure themselves as to whether they were worthy to pass judgment on these matters (MN 110; MN 113).

Even then, he knew that there would eventually be those who would want to change his teachings. He did not regard this as a positive development, because the skills he taught were ones that transcended the conditions of time. Although he encouraged his listeners not to simply believe what he said, but to put his teachings to the test (§61), he also knew that any fair judgment of them would require that they be maintained intact.

So, to discourage and delay changes in the Dhamma, he criticized in no uncertain terms people who misquoted him, calling them slanderers (§68). And in particular, he warned the monks—the primary custodians of his teachings—that any changes in the Dhamma would make people doubt the legitimacy of the true Dhamma, just as the existence of counterfeit money makes people dubious even of genuine money. Because false Dhamma could not give the same results as true Dhamma, it would eventually cause people to lose interest in Dhamma altogether. Thus the true Dhamma would disappear (§69).

This is why the Buddha stated, toward the end of his life, that the practice of the Dhamma in accordance with the Dhamma is what would keep the true Dhamma alive (§60; §70; §73). As long as people continue to gain the genuine freedom that results from Dhamma practice, they will do their best—out of gratitude, loyalty, and respect—to keep the Buddha’s teachings intact to help leave open the possibility that future generations will find genuine freedom, too.

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