No-Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners: Clear Answers to Burning Questions About Core Buddhist Teachings

by Noah Rasheta

Liberation is the moment you don’t react to being cut off in traffic—because you don’t know what actually happened, so there’s nothing to react to. Liberation is experiencing reality as it is.

Buddhism teaches that there’s reality as it is, and then there’s reality as we humans perceive or understand it. Our perception of reality is influenced by how our minds are conditioned; in other words, our ideas, cultural beliefs, concepts, and opinions all directly affect how we see reality.

In fact, in one Buddhist scripture, the Buddha seems to be critical of god worship, telling a young man that it’s far more important to live ethically than it is to worship anything.

Instead of determining whether these teachings are true or not, we are encouraged to verify if they work or not. In other words, do these teachings really lead to the reduction, and ultimately the cessation, of suffering?

“the secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself.”

The Buddha taught that we are essentially prisoners of our own minds, bound by our beliefs, perceptions, and ideas. We see an inaccurate version of reality—a version, not coincidentally, that causes us unnecessary suffering. We tend to go through life thinking that external circumstances are to blame for our suffering and our lack of contentment. The Buddha’s teachings help us alter that perspective and learn that the unnecessary suffering we experience has more to do with how we see things than with what we see.

For example, the oldest collection of Buddhist writings, the Tipitaka (known in English as the Pali Canon) is the standard collection of scriptures for Theravada Buddhists.

Buddhist teachings are not something you’re meant to believe; they’re something you do—you put them into practice.

To be enlightened is to be liberated from our habitual reactivity, freed from our perceptions and ideas in order to see reality as it is without wanting it to be different.

The Buddha taught that there are three universal characteristics of life, also known as the three marks of existence: dukkha (suffering), anicca (impermanence), and anattā (nonself). These three concepts form the core of what could be considered the truth in Buddhism.

suddenly easy to lose a job or a loved one. It just means that the suffering of loss will go more smoothly

The Buddhist teaching of nonself says that there is no permanent or fixed you—there’s only a complex web of inseparable, impermanent causes and effects.

This is emptiness. It’s the understanding that as life unfolds, it doesn’t mean anything. It is neither positive nor negative. All things simply are as they are.

The you that’s reading this page is literally not the same you who will be reading the last page of the book.

Many Buddhists are agnostic not only about God but also about many of life’s existential questions. This is what the Zen tradition calls a beginner’s, or open, mind.

“Do not try to use what you learn from Buddhism to be a Buddhist; use it to be a better whatever-you-already-are.”

The next time you experience suffering or distress, instead of saying, “Life’s not fair” or, “Why is this happening to me?” tell yourself, “I was aware that this could happen. I’m not alone. Others are also experiencing this same thing.”

Should a person do good, let him do it again and again. Let him find pleasure therein, for blissful is the accumulation of good. THE BUDDHA, THE DHAMMAPADA

“When you have a toothache, the feeling is very unpleasant, and when you do not have a toothache, you usually have a neutral feeling. However, if you can be mindful of the non-toothache, the non-toothache will become a feeling of peace and joy. Mindfulness gives rise to and nourishes happiness.”