This article was originally posted in the Medium on July 26. We thank Kenneth Leong for his kind permission to repost the article on the SBN website.

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What counts as the Buddha’s authentic teachings?

For centuries, scholars and practitioners have grappled with this question, poring over the Pāli Canon, Chinese Āgamas, and later Mahāyāna sutras in search of the “original voice” of the historical Buddha. The effort is fraught with uncertainty: the texts were transmitted orally for centuries, shaped by editorial hands, and embedded in cultural layers that reflect their times as much as their source.

Rather than trying to identify which sutta came first or which passage is “genuine,” I propose a different method — one that reconstructs the Buddha’s vision not through textual archaeology, but through axiomatic reasoning. Like a mathematician deriving a vast system from a few elegant postulates, we can reconstruct the Dharma by starting with two foundational insights that stand at the heart of the Buddhist revolution:

1. Anatta (Non-Self): There is no unchanging essence, no independent soul; what we call a “self” is a dynamic, conditioned process.
2. This–That Conditionality (Idappaccayatā): Everything arises in dependence on conditions; nothing exists in isolation or as a fixed essence.

From these two axioms, the rest of Buddhist thought — the doctrines, practices, and even its spirit — can be logically derived.

Why This Axiomatic Approach Matters

1. Philosophical Rigor and Elegance

This method treats the Dharma not as a tangle of texts but as a coherent philosophical system. By reducing it to two non-negotiable axioms, we avoid doctrinal clutter and distill the essence of the Buddha’s radical insight: a vision of reality as process and interdependence.

2. Internal Consistency

Rather than piecing together disparate scriptural fragments, this framework guarantees that the concepts — impermanence, suffering, compassion, liberation — flow naturally from the axioms without contradiction.

3. Freedom from Historical Quibbles

Endless debates over which sutta is earliest or “most authentic” often lead to circular arguments. This approach sidesteps that quagmire. Whether a teaching appears in the Pāli Canon or the Heart Sutra, we can assess it based on whether it coherently derives from Anatta and Conditionality.

4. Core Insights, Not Mythology

By privileging principles over stories, this framework allows us to drop unverifiable elements — cosmic rebirth maps, supernatural miracles, metaphysical heavens — without losing the essence of the Dharma. The focus remains on insights into mind, suffering, and liberation.

5. Logical Generativity

From these two axioms, the rest of Buddhism can be “derived”:

• Impermanence (Anicca): If there is no essence and all is conditioned, flux is inevitable.
• Dukkha (Suffering): Clinging to what is impermanent and selfless brings disquiet.
• Ethics and Compassion: Harming others is self-defeating in a web of interdependence.
• Meditation and Insight: Directly seeing conditionality and non-self is the path to freedom.
• Nirvana: Liberation is not a metaphysical place but the cessation of clinging and ignorance.

6. Practice Rooted in Understanding

Rather than relying on faith or rote ritual, practice naturally arises from conceptual clarity. When one grasps Anatta and Conditionality, meditation, mindfulness, and ethical living become not commandments but logical responses.

7. Resonance with Modern Thought

These axioms harmonize with contemporary currents:

• Systems theory and ecology: Seeing life as networks of mutual dependence.
• Process philosophy (Whitehead): Reality as becoming, not being.
• Philosophy of mind and neuroscience: The “self” as a constructed narrative, not a homunculus.
• Quantum mechanics: A world where observation, interaction, and conditionality, not fixed essences, define reality.

Challenges of the Axiomatic Method

No method is without its tensions.

• Selection Bias: Why elevate these two axioms above others (like the Four Noble Truths)? One must argue they are both distinctive and universally attested.
• Loss of Narrative Power: Stripped of mythology, the Dharma risks feeling abstract or bloodless to those drawn to its stories and symbols.
• Practical Ambiguity: While meditation and ethics logically follow, some traditional practices (devotion, Pure Land faith) don’t fit neatly into this scheme and may require reinterpretation.

Why It Still Holds

Despite these challenges, the axiomatic approach presents Buddhism in a compelling, modern way: coherent, non-dogmatic, and globally relevant. It honors the Buddha not by trying to reconstruct his exact words, but by reviving his radical spirit — a thinker who broke with the dogmas of his time and offered a vision of reality that still resonates with science and philosophy today.

Conclusion

Reconstructing the Buddha’s teachings through Anatta and This-That Conditionality is not about claiming a monopoly on “authenticity.” It is about returning to the living heart of the Dharma — the insights that dissolve illusion, awaken wisdom, and guide us toward liberation — without being bound by sectarian disputes or the weight of later accretions.

By treating these two principles as axioms, we can see how the Buddha’s path unfolds naturally: the Four Noble Truths become a dynamic process rather than metaphysical dogma, the Eightfold Path emerges as a practical method rooted in interdependence, and compassion flows as a natural expression of understanding that no being stands apart from the whole. Even Nirvana, often shrouded in mystery, reveals itself as the peace that comes when we cease clinging to a separate, enduring self and awaken to the web of interconnection and conditionality.

This approach honors the Buddha’s radical spirit of inquiry. He urged his listeners not to accept anything on faith, not even his own words, but to test the teachings against reason, experience, and their capacity to end suffering. In that same spirit, a reconstructive framework is not a rejection of tradition, but a way of keeping the Dharma alive, intelligible, and transformative for our own time.

In the end, what matters is not whether every sutta can be traced to the historical Buddha, but whether the insights we draw continue to free the mind, deepen compassion, and point us beyond the illusions of self and permanence. If we can remain faithful to those ends, then our reconstruction is not merely intellectual — it is a continuation of the Buddha’s quest for awakening.