2
The Word of the Buddha
Buddhist Scriptures and Schools
Dharma: texts, practice, and realizationThe Buddha is author of no books or treatises. Moreover it is
extremely unlikely that any of his immediate disciples wrote any-thing of his teachings down. And yet we are told that the Buddha
devoted some forty-five years of his life entirely to teaching
and that by the end of his life he was quite satisfied that he had
succeeded in passing on his teachings carefully and exactly, such
that they would long be of benefit and help to the world.^1 This
state of affairs is worth reflecting on, for it reveals something of
the nature of Buddhism.
Buddhism cannot be reduced to a collection of theoretical writ-ings nor a philosophical system of thought-although both these
form an important part of its tradition. What lies at the heart of
Buddhism, according to its own understanding of the matter, is
dharma. Dharma is not an exclusively Buddhist concept, but
one which is common to Indian philosophical, religious, social,
and political thought in its entirety. According to Indian thought
Dharma is that which is the basis of things, the underlying nature
of things, the way things are; in short, it is the truth about things,
the truth about the world. More than this, Dharma is the way we
should act, for if we are to avoid bringing harm to both ourselves
and others we should strive to act in a way that is true to the way
things are, that accords with the underlying truth ()f things. Ulti-
mately the only true way to act is in conformity with Dharma.
The notion of Dharma in Indian thought thus has both a
descriptive and a prescriptive aspect: it is the way things are and
the way to act. The various schools of Indian religious and philo-
sophical thought and practice all offer slightly different visions