Essential Zen Teachings
There are enough Zen and Buddhist teachings to fill a very large library, so where do you begin? In Part 3 I offer some of the most fundamental Zen teachings, and a few of the Buddhist (pre-Zen) teachings they are based on. These include the Four Noble Truths, the concepts of dukkha and impermanence, and the teachings of no-self, emptiness, and buddha-nature.
Teachings are statements about the way things are. They can be very useful if you use them to guide your investigation of your own mind and experience. Zen teachings are not meant to simply be accepted or believed, even though they may seem like statements about reality that seem to leave no room for discussion. It’s better to think of them as hypotheses to be tested. You still need to achieve the results in your own body-mind lab in order to verify the truth of each teaching and really know it for yourself.