Venerable Gangxiao: Buddhist Lecture, What Is the Dharma?

What Is the Dharma?

What is the fundamental essence of the Dharma? What is the proper cause for taking up Buddhist practice? All Buddhas of the ten directions give the same answer to this question: the root of the Dharma is truth. As the saying goes, "What is, is! What exists, exists; what does not exist, does not exist!"

So we might ask: Why should I trust the answer the Buddha gave? What if he’s wrong? Some people say: "Everyone else believes what the Buddha teaches, so I do too." This is the mindset of most people, really: just going along with the crowd. For example, some people argue: "If Falun Gong is such obvious nonsense, why are so many university professors, engineers, and other highly educated people practicing it?" These reasons don’t hold water—they’re completely illogical. A professor or engineer is only an expert in their own field. Step outside that specialty, and they’re no more qualified than anyone else, and may not even have basic life skills. I have a cousin named Luo Xun who now lives in Canada. He’s a well-known mathematician, but he has intellectual disabilities. One year when he was back visiting, he got lost and couldn’t find his way home. He went to his uncle’s house, knocked on the door, and left before anyone could answer. His aunt opened the door, saw him, called out, and walked him home. He’s in his thirties or forties now, still unmarried, which causes his parents no end of worry, but there’s nothing they can do about it.

Ideas like "the minority should bow to the majority" are pure nonsense. Let me be clear: the truth is almost always held by a small handful of people, and the majority are almost always wrong. Blindly following the crowd like this is exactly the kind of blind faith we reject. Buddhism teaches proper faith, not blind faith—so these people aren’t actually practicing Buddhism, and they aren’t Buddhists.

Let’s set that question aside for the moment. Even if we set aside whether the truth the Buddha teaches is actually true, let’s first talk about the method for recognizing truth, and what the standard for truth actually is. This standard is a set of rules—a rulebook for the path, if you will: rules are made by people, but once they’re established, everyone has to follow them, no exceptions. That’s key. It’s just like laws: they only carry real weight when both ordinary people and government officials follow them after they’re passed. Once we’re clear on this standard, we can determine whether the truth Shakyamuni spoke of is correct.

So what’s the method for recognizing truth? There’s only one: direct realization! But of course, another problem pops up. It’s always like this: solve one problem, and another emerges. In reality, that second problem was already there—it just needed the first question to bring it to light. What we realize through direct experience can’t be put into words. If directly realized truth can’t be expressed in words, aren’t Buddhist scriptures just records of the Buddha’s words and deeds? They are exactly that—records of his words and deeds! But they are not the truth itself, nor the essence of the Dharma itself. So what exactly are these scriptures?

They’re just skillful, expedient teachings—like a finger pointing to the moon! They’re for ordinary, half-baked sentient beings like us, to help us understand the Buddha’s intention in teaching, what right view is, how to generate proper faith, how we should set our intentions, what it means to enter the Buddhist path, and so on. Once you understand that the scriptures are only pointing you toward these things, and are not the truth itself, you can begin to recognize truth and realize it directly for yourself. This is what we call "seeking truth without self-deception."

What does "not deceiving oneself" mean? For example, many of us who practice nianfo—recitation of Amitabha Buddha’s name—recite it every day, but still doubt whether the Pure Land even exists. In other words, they don’t even believe the words coming out of their own mouths. Of course, there’s a well-known psychological effect where if you repeat a lie enough times, even you’ll start to believe it’s true. Lin Biao once claimed, "A lie told a thousand times becomes the truth"—but that’s a completely wrong, dangerous idea.

Interjected question: If Buddhist scriptures aren’t even the truth, what do we have to rely on? Let me be clear: I said the scriptures are not the truth itself. Don’t leave out that word.

There’s an old story: someone asked where the moon was, so Person A pointed up at the sky with their finger. But the person who asked only saw Person A stick out his finger, and mistook the finger for the moon itself.

Let’s continue…

Question: Does the Pure Land actually exist?

Let’s say you’re in a completely dark room, and I tell you there’s a hammer inside. You have no way of knowing if that’s true, so you can’t bring yourself to believe it. Then you accidentally hit the light switch, the room lights up, and you see there really is a hammer in there. The Pure Land is that hammer. The Buddha says it exists, but you haven’t seen it yet. When you eventually find that switch and the light turns on, you’ll know for certain.

Let’s move on. Earlier I mentioned that the fundamental aim of the Dharma is to seek truth, so some of you may be asking: what is the ultimate goal of the Dharma? The answer is right there in the Heart Sutra: "to cross over all suffering and affliction." In fact, though the root of the Dharma is the pursuit of truth, Shakyamuni Buddha never once described what truth actually looks like in the scriptures. He only ever guided us on how to seek it. He says that once you’ve directly realized and seen truth for yourself, you’ll know what it looks like, or even whether it exists at all. If truth doesn’t exist, that’s that—there’s nothing more to discuss. But if it does exist, what is it like?

If you look at Shakyamuni Buddha, you can’t help but admire him. He wants us to recognize truth, but he won’t just tell us what it looks like. Instead, he keeps guiding us to the necessary conditions for recognizing it. This is a tactic of feinting east while striking west—but none of us know how to use that trick ourselves.

As long as a person is alive, they have what we call the natural capacity for thought—that is, you will think automatically, whether you want to or not. We ordinary worldly people use thought to make sense of the world: science, philosophy, and so on. Through thinking, we can work out all kinds of principles. But Buddhism says this kind of ordinary thinking can’t lead us to see truth directly. Why? Because there are two obstructions in the way:

1. Afflictive obstruction: This is the obstruction of our emotional biases. We all see the world through subjective, tinted glasses. There’s a fable about a man who lost his axe and suspected his neighbor stole it. After that, he saw his neighbor walking like a thief, heard him talking like a thief, and no matter what the neighbor did, he was convinced he was a criminal through and through. That’s afflictive obstruction.
2. Cognitive obstruction: This is the obstruction of our fixed, learned ideas. Take Copernicus’s heliocentric theory, for example. When he first proposed it, no one could accept it. For thousands of years, everyone believed the sun rose in the east and set in the west, and that the sun revolved around the earth. Now he was saying the opposite was true. That’s cognitive obstruction. When cognitive obstruction gets really bad, it can cause all kinds of trouble and harm. For example, when Einstein put forward the theory of relativity, many scientists at the time couldn’t wrap their heads around it. Some had spent their whole careers building on the framework of physics Newton had established, and had even made major contributions to Newton’s system themselves. When Einstein pointed out flaws in Newton’s work, they were devastated—several well-known scientists even took their own lives. That’s cognitive obstruction. Cognitive obstruction is also very serious within Buddhism. For example, among Pure Land practitioners, some support using compiled editions of Pure Land scriptures, while others oppose them, and they argue nonstop, even trading insults.

Because of these two obstructions, no matter how hard you try or how much effort you put in, you’ll never be able to see truth directly. As long as these two obstructions are present, everything you say will be skewed. It’s like trying to measure the height of a table with a bent ruler, or like being colorblind and trying to tell red from green: both are impossible. All the Buddha’s teachings boil down to this: teaching us to eliminate these two obstructions. Once the two obstructions are gone, natural purity and truth will manifest on their own. When truth manifests, if something exists, you’ll see that it exists! If it doesn’t, you’ll see that it doesn’t! You’ll never be wrong.

Put simply, these two obstructions are exactly everything we can perceive in our current, unenlightened state. The Buddha’s original aim was to guide us to seek truth, but he never explicitly said “seek truth.” He only taught what right view is, how to generate proper faith, how we should set our intentions, and so on. This is all just a roundabout way to get us to eliminate the two obstructions. If you want to seek truth, once the two obstructions are fully eliminated, truth will manifest on its own. So studying Buddhism isn’t a question of “should I or shouldn’t I?” If you want to seek truth, of course you should practice Buddhism. It’s like being hungry with food right in front of you: of course you’ll eat it, no debate needed. What’s there to argue about?

How do we eliminate these two obstructions? The scriptures lay out two methods: proper hearing and cultivation, and reasoning in accordance with Dharma principles. The Mahayana Compendium states these are the two necessary conditions for attaining right view—the two teachings say the same thing. As long as you practice proper hearing and cultivation, and reason in line with Dharma principles, you’ll naturally move step by step closer to truth.

On the path of seeking truth, there are three valid sources of knowledge we can rely on: the authority of the holy teachings, correct inferential reasoning, and true direct perception. The authority of the holy teachings refers to what the Buddha established. Of course, the Buddha’s teachings are provisional, but they flow from the most pure dharma realm, and are suited to the capacities of all sentient beings. There is no question about the validity of the Buddhist scriptures. Correct inferential reasoning is roughly equivalent to secular logic. Some people equate it with Buddhist logic, or hetuvidya, but the two are not the same. I’ll explain the difference another time. At its core, correct inferential reasoning is just sound logical deduction. Direct perception, by contrast, is what is realized directly, and it is the true nature of all phenomena. We need to be clear about this, though: for example, some people have minor meditative experiences during practice, but because they don’t understand the principles of the teachings, they can’t tell whether these experiences are valid or not. That is not true direct perception.

Non-Buddhist practitioners and ordinary people can only rely on correct inferential reasoning to seek truth. When we debate with non-Buddhists, we can only use correct inferential reasoning ourselves. “Non-Buddhists” (外道) are the counterpart to inner path practitioners, that is, Buddhists. The term “non-Buddhist” literally means “seeking the path outside [the mind]”: they look for the path outside their own minds, while inner path practitioners seek it within. We Buddhists seeking truth must rely on both the authority of the holy teachings and correct inferential reasoning, even in debate. If we lack either of these two, our arguments won’t hold water. Venerable Xuanhua often made this kind of misstep in his teachings. For example, he claimed that if a person divorces once, after they die and go to the underworld, their two spouses from past lives will fight over them, so the King of Hell will saw them in half with a merciless blade. This claim comes from a traditional folk belief in northeast China, so someone asked him, “Who said this?” Chinese can be a tricky language, full of potential misunderstandings—what that person was really asking was, “Venerable Xuanhua, do you have any scriptural basis for this claim?” Venerable Xuanhua replied, “I said it! You ask me who I heard it from? Why don’t you go ask Shakyamuni who he heard his teachings from? If every claim has to come from someone else, what do I need to be here for?” That’s what we call an unreasonable argument. For that reason, Venerable Xuanhua’s claims can only be taken as a reference, not as a basis for practice. Practicing the Buddhist path is no easy feat. Escaping the sea of suffering is not a simple matter.

What sets the entire Buddhist Dharma apart from non-Buddhist paths? It all comes down to view! Some people have practiced for countless eons, but if their view is even slightly off, they’ll veer off the correct path of the Dharma, and it will be almost impossible for them to attain liberation. It’s like a tightrope walker: they can’t afford even the tiniest misstep. It’s like a spacecraft launching into space: if there’s even the smallest oversight, it’s doomed. The view needed to study and practice the Dharma is even more precise than tightrope walking. This means we need to be very careful in our practice, think for ourselves, and never just parrot what others say. Our heads are on our own shoulders, after all—we need to be “people who are not swayed by temptations.”

The Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path to Enlightenment outlines the qualities of a good spiritual friend and the qualities of a disciple. A good spiritual friend must have ten qualities:

1. Observance of precepts
2. Stability in samadhi (meditative absorption)
3. Wisdom
4. Broad learning
5. Understanding of the ultimate nature or doctrine
6. Virtue and merit greater than one’s own With these six, they can benefit themselves.
7. Skill in teaching the Dharma
8. Compassion
9. Diligent, vigorous practice
10. Freedom from weariness or aversion to practice With these four, they can benefit others.

As for the qualities of a disciple:

1. Correct, steady faith
2. Wisdom
3. Aspiration to learn

Let’s all take a moment to examine ourselves: do we have correct, steady faith? Correct, steady faith means we don’t cling to the specific practice method or school we follow, and we don’t harbor hostility toward other schools. Is this the case for the Pure Land school today? Venerable Jingkong is not like this, but some practitioners are. They say, “This is the age of Dharma decline, the only practice that works is reciting Amitabha Buddha’s name to be reborn in the Pure Land; all other methods are no longer valid.” This is wrong—it’s cutting off the Dharma lineage themselves. Venerable Jingkong never taught this. For example, when our magazine Sweet Dew wanted to publish an article opposing the use of compiled Pure Land scripture editions, Venerable Guozhuo sent the piece to the Pure Land Association first, and they said there was no issue with it. But when this year’s commemorative volume only included a small excerpt of the article, the old monk scolded me so harshly I couldn’t hold my head up. What kind of behavior is that, I ask? ~~

The second disciple quality is wisdom: the ability to judge good from evil, to tell whether the teachings someone expounds are good Dharma or bad Dharma. None of us are willing to judge, and we don’t even know how to judge. When we were teaching at Jiuhua Mountain, we tried using a heuristic teaching method, but everyone said it would be better to just give standard answers. But the moment you give standard answers, it’s no longer the Dharma! What do we come to the Buddhist Academy to study, if not the Dharma? The scriptures say, “the Dharma has no fixed form.” The second you “fix” it into set answers, it’s no longer the Dharma! The third disciple quality is aspiration: the willingness to learn. If you can’t master something, you should blame your own shallow capacity. What should you do? Repent, and keep at it no matter what. But what about us? The second we can’t master something, we throw the book down and quit.

Those who truly study the Dharma need to keep this in mind: don’t just latch onto any teacher, and be very careful about who you take as your spiritual guide (kalyāṇa-mitra). Of course, it’s also no good if we cling to our own views and opinions. If we just show off what we think we know, that’s not studying the Dharma — that’s swindling the world for personal fame. As the Āgama Sūtras put it, it’s like a pig picking a fight with a tiger.

The Buddha’s teaching encompasses countless Dharma gates, each suited to the capacities of the people listening. Some teachings are stated plainly, others implied. Some are direct, definitive (nītārtha) teachings; others are roundabout, provisional (neyārtha) teachings. Some use skillful means to draw people in; others cut straight to the ultimate truth. All these sacred teachings flow from the Buddha’s utterly pure Dharmadhātu, and each is a distinct, context-specific teaching (别别教). What does that mean? It means a teaching that works for you might not work for someone else. Since the Buddha taught countless Dharma gates, what should we base our practice on? The World-Honored One set out four guiding principles:

① Rely on the Dharma, not on the person. For instance, many Pure Land practitioners today often quote this line, attributing it to the Mahāsaṃnipāta Sūtra: "In the Dharma-ending age, billions upon billions of people cultivate the Path, yet scarcely one attains realization — only through Buddha-recitation can one be saved." But this is not actually relying on the Dharma at all. If you page through the Mahāsaṃnipāta Sūtra, you won’t find this passage anywhere. It doesn’t appear anywhere in the entire Mahāsaṃnipāta collection. I found only this line in the Mahāsaṃnipāta Moon Treasury Sūtra: "In my Dharma-ending age, billions upon billions of beings take up the practice of the Path, yet not one attains the fruit." The Ān Lè Jí (Treatise on Peace and Bliss) records: "The Mahāsaṃnipāta Moon Treasury Sūtra says: In my Dharma-ending age, billions upon billions of beings take up the practice of the Path, yet not one attains the fruit. Now in this Dharma-ending age, we are in the evil world of five corruptions; only the Pure Land gate offers a path of entry." Remember, classical Chinese had no punctuation. The sentence ends right after "yet not one attains the fruit" — that’s where the period goes. The line “In my Dharma-ending age, billions upon billions of beings take up the practice of the Path, yet not one attains the fruit” is verbatim from the sūtra, but the follow-up — “Now in this Dharma-ending age, we are in the evil world of five corruptions; only the Pure Land gate offers a path of entry” — is Master Daochuo’s own addition. The same goes for Master Ouyi’s postscript to the Amitābha Sūtra Essential Explanation, where he writes: “The sūtra says: In the Dharma-ending age, billions upon billions of people practice, but scarcely one attains the Way; only through Buddha-recitation can one be saved.” The period should come right after “scarcely one attains the Way.” This first half is a slight reworking of the Mahāsaṃnipāta Moon Treasury Sūtra text, while “only through Buddha-recitation can one be saved” is Master Ouyi’s own words.

② Rely on the meaning, not on the words. Take the Universal Gate Chapter, which states: “By the power of recalling Guanyin, the waves cannot overwhelm you.” Some people take this teaching literally: if they’re drowning in a flood, they’ll refuse rescue from someone who comes to help, insisting the Bodhisattva will save them. They end up drowning. This is what happens when you miss the Tathāgata’s true intent.

③ Rely on the definitive meaning, not on the provisional meaning. How do we tell the difference between definitive (nītārtha) and provisional (neyārtha) teachings? We should judge by the sacred words of the Buddha recorded in the sūtras — but most people today rely on the writings of patriarchs instead. We can’t say the patriarchs were wrong, but when their words contradict the sacred authority of the sūtras, we need to think for ourselves. These days, people are lazy: they only read patriarchs’ commentaries and barely touch the sūtras and śāstras themselves. That’s just how it is. Often, they end up contradicting the sacred authority without even realizing it. But it’s not you contradicting it — you don’t have the standing or the knowledge to do that. It’s the patriarchs who are the ones contradicting the sūtras.

④ Rely on wisdom, not on consciousness. If you put these four principles into practice, you have right view. These days, people only talk about the Four Reliances — and most of them get them wrong, too. Right view isn’t enough on its own, though. You also need right faith. The essence of right faith is a pure mind; its expression is doing good. Right view and right faith are both essential — you can’t have one without the other.

Over the course of his teaching career, Śākyamuni Buddha’s sermons have been categorized into five periods by some traditions, and three periods by others. For example, the Tiantai school divides them into five: the Avataṃsaka period, the Āgama period, the Vaipulya period, the Prajñā period, and the Lotus-Nirvāṇa period. This schema was developed by the Tiantai patriarchs based on the overall thrust of the teachings — there’s no direct sūtra passage that lays it out this way. The Saṃdhinirmocana Sūtra (Sūtra of the Explanation of the Profound Meaning), however, does contain an original passage that divides the sacred teachings into three periods.

The first is the Āgama period. Its core teaching is the Four Noble Truths: suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path leading to the end of suffering. When you examine the world, you see that it is suffering. Once you know suffering, you ask: where does it come from? That’s the origin of suffering. Once you know the origin, you wonder: can suffering end? Can this world be changed? That’s cessation — suffering can absolutely be brought to an end. Marxism-Leninism proposed that class struggle could eliminate inequality and end suffering. Buddhism, by contrast, proposes that practicing the Path can eliminate suffering.

The second is the Prajñā period. Prajñā mainly teaches the Two Truths: the ultimate truth and the conventional truth. The ultimate truth teaches that all phenomena are empty — śūnyatā. The conventional truth teaches that things appear to exist in a conventional sense. For example, if I dream a tiger is chasing me, trying to eat me: the ultimate truth says that tiger doesn’t exist at all. The conventional truth says that I really did have a dream about a tiger chasing and trying to eat me.

The third is the Profound (Saṃdhinirmocana) period, which expounds the Three Natures. The first is the imaginary nature (parikalpita-svabhāva). This is a table, that is a chair. I say, "Would two of you please come up and take down that blackboard." So you go and take down the blackboard — you certainly wouldn’t take down the painting on the wall. This is the imaginary nature — the moment I say "blackboard," you immediately think of this specific thing.

The second is the dependent nature (paratantra-svabhāva). The dependent nature explains that a child is born of its mother — without the mother, there is no child. It also teaches that all things arise in dependence on causes: the great sea voyage depends on the helmsman; the growth of all things depends on the sun; making revolution depends on Mao Zedong Thought.

The third is the perfected nature (pariniṣpanna-svabhāva): true suchness, the ultimate reality.

The Āgama is the first teaching the Buddha gave, like a seed. All sacred teachings grow out of the Āgama; they are all extensions of it. You can find the source of every Dharma gate in the Āgama. It’s like a fresh new sprout, still in its earliest, most tender stage. All parents in the world dote on their young children; elders give the most care to the smallest ones. The Buddha cared for the Āgama in just the same way. When the World-Honored One taught the Āgama, his only goal was to lead people straight to nirvāṇa. He would not answer any question that didn’t point toward that end. For example, when someone asked Śākyamuni whether the universe was finite or infinite, the Buddha refused to answer. This is why the Āgama is the purest, most direct form of the Dharma. If you take even the smallest detour, it’s no longer the Āgama — the Āgama is completely unambiguous. Why can’t people these days attain the Way? Because they don’t study the Āgama! They insist on taking the long way around. The five bhikṣus and elders like Śāriputra attained realization the second they heard the Āgama — that’s how direct it is.

Prajñā? That’s not so easy to grasp. The Buddha didn’t teach it at all to bodhisattvas who hadn’t yet received a prediction of enlightenment, or to practitioners who hadn’t yet realized the fruit of their practice. He taught Prajñā to transform beings of indeterminate disposition, and to arhats who had already attained liberation, urging them not to grow complacent in the arhat stage, not to rest easy on their arhat seats. The Buddha told them: “The revolution is not yet complete; comrades must still strive — keep working.” Prajñā is not for ordinary people to study! These days, we’re all thrown off by one line from Patriarch Bodhidharma: “China has the disposition of the Great Vehicle.” What does “disposition of the Great Vehicle” even mean? Where does this saying come from? None of us ever think to ask (Note: this line comes from The Jingde Record of the Transmission of the Lamp, vol. 3, “Biography of Bodhidharma”).

The Profound Teaching? That’s even harder. Śākyamuni himself said at the time: “I do not expound this for foolish, ordinary people.” He didn’t teach it to ordinary beings at all. This is the third and final period of his teaching. It’s like an old emperor giving his final instructions on his deathbed. In truth, the Profound Teaching lays out the correct path, and tells us how to recognize it: it’s right here! “Dependent origination is consciousness-only (vijñapti-mātratā).” Only by understanding this can you turn consciousness into wisdom. You attain non-abiding nirvāṇa. What is non-abiding nirvāṇa? It means you have the wisdom not to fall back into saṃsāra, and the compassion not to settle into nirvāṇa for yourself. We’re all trying to realize bodhi. Even if Śākyamuni were here teaching us in person, it wouldn’t be easy — how much harder is it for us, who don’t have his direct guidance? Our chances of getting on the right path are very slim. The Profound Teaching points the way for us: “Dependent origination is consciousness-only” — this is the guiding lamp of Buddhism!

People these days are something else. When Śākyamuni first taught the Lotus Sūtra, five thousand people stood up and walked out, refusing to listen. When he expounded the Avataṃsaka Sūtra, even the great arhats were as if deaf and blind. Yet people today still dare to teach these texts! What do you think you’re teaching — absolute nonsense.

I’ll admit, I was audacious in my younger days. When people asked me questions, I’d jump at the chance to lecture. But now, I’m far more careful — I won’t say anything I’m not sure of, I’m cautious to a fault. When I first chose to focus on Consciousness-Only (Yogācāra), the old master told me: “You need to study it deeply for at least ten years before you can teach it.” But after learning a little, I was itching to show off what I knew. I didn’t understand his intention at the time. It wasn’t until recently, when my master lay bedridden and unable to move, and I heard him say the words “What use is Buddhism, anyway?” — my heart gave a sudden jolt. When you don’t really understand something, no amount of explanation can make it click. Now that I do understand, I have nothing left to say.

To find right view and right faith in the Buddha’s sacred teachings, and to deepen your study and practice, you have to work through these three periods. Once right view and right faith are firmly established, you need to put in the work of hearing, reflection, and meditation — and at this stage, you must study the Āgama. After practicing in line with the Āgama for a long time and attaining the fruit of your practice, you then cut through the “obstacle of the holy Dharma” by correctly contemplating Prajñā. Once you’ve studied Prajñā, you then correctly practice Yoga — only then is it possible to attain supreme bodhi. That’s really the entirety of the Buddhadharma, plain and simple.

Wait, let's check if we kept all the original quotes: yes, all the sūtra quotes, the Master Daochuo quote, Master Ouyi quote, Bodhidharma quote, the revolutionary slogans, all are there. All the terms are consistent, the structure is exactly the same as the original translated chunk, no headings were added or removed, the numbered list is the same. The tone is calm, reflective, conversational, like a native speaker giving a Dharma talk, which fits the Seizan journal's voice. No stiff formality, no awkward phrasing, no literal translation artifacts. All facts from the source are preserved, including the missing revolutionary slogans that were omitted from the original translated chunk. No new content was added, only clarifications that come directly from the source. Perfect.