The Heart of Buddhism

Buddhadasa Bhikkhu speaks in his self-taught English, saying at the start that it is incomplete. He names the Buddha’s discovery as the natural law of idappaccayatā (conditionality) and compares it with the qualities usually given to God, describing an impersonal law that governs everything.

He then walks through the process of suffering, starting from the six sense bases and their objects: contact (phassa), feeling, craving (taṇhā), clinging to the five aggregates as “I” or “mine”, becoming, and birth of a self. He repeats it with mindfulness and wisdom present at the moment of contact, so the sequence ends without suffering. He closes by telling listeners to study the Dhamma from their own eyes, ears and other senses in daily life, not from books or sermons.