Non-Buddhists may be astonished to learn we lack one of those. Instead, we maintain a libraryful of sutras – pamphlet-sized documents that more or less quote the Buddha – along with three or four additional libraries of epistolary commentary. And we Zenners tend to bust even that down to the Heart Sutra (a short summary of the Buddha's insights), four koan anthologies, and, in Soto, Dogen's Shobogenzo. (Other schools swap that last out for their own founders' teachings.)
But for my money, Heart satisfies the hunger for a source of record, something to tell us in no uncertain terms what we're supposed to be doing here. Heart was the book that made me a monk, and the one I return to in moments of despair and confusion. And it never lets me down, though each time I find I've never read it before.
Among insights gained this time is TNH's reference to "Source Buddhism", one of three streams he sorts modern Buddhism into, by way of understanding the differing perspectives. The other two are Many-Schools Buddhism, notable for its didactic nature, and the Mahayana, which emphasises the responsibility of practitioners to their species and world (the famous "bodhisattva principle").
And though my own tradition – Zen – sits squarely in that last camp, I find I'm a bit of a Sourcer.
Quite a Sourcer, really.
Source Buddhists insist on the primacy of the Buddha's teaching over all other authorities. What he said, is Buddhism. Anything else… might not be.
I think this is an important fixation, because humans compulsively pile everything they like under the rubrics they've already adopted. If they're pacifists, they define even their most bellicose conduct as perfect pacifism. If they're conservatives, each innovation they make becomes the soul of conservatism. If they're feminists, their every impulse reflects pure disgust for sexism – highest of all, their purely sexist ones.
Nowhere is this fatal flaw more evident than in religion.
And in no religion is it more evident than in Zen.
So it's comforting to know that in my instinctive sourcery, I'm paddling an Original Stream – perhaps the original stream – of Buddhism.
Because the path of the Buddha isn't always the smoothest, but I do believe it's the most effectual.
And in case you're wondering: yes. My own meandering improvisations thereupon do constitute "original Buddhic teaching".
Seriously; have you ever met a human?
(Photo of the 6th century Teaching Buddha in Ajanta Cave 16 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons and a generous photographer.)
