Alan Watts

[Reefs]

Thing-ifying (4) – Satori Magic & Dehypnotization

AW: So this is—what I'm saying is, watch out—for your social conditioning, and how your constant commerce in language with other people shapes the way in which you actually sense the world. Now, we say “seeing is believing.” But it is truer to say that believing is seeing.

There was a very marvelous scientist of optics by the name of Adelbert Ames, who devised a whole series of experiments where you could go into a big room, say with booths all around, and in these booths there were exhibits that defied the laws of logic—or seemed to. So there are all kinds of things. I mean, Ames only scratched the surface of what we see because we believe in it. We see what we want to see, or what we are supposed to see, and are not really aware of what's going on.

Now, all stage magic is based on this. And this is why one can learn a great deal about mysticism from stage magic. What the magician does is, he persuades you to see what you expect to see, but in the meantime does something completely unexpected. Your attention has been misdirected. He says, “Look at this. I want you to look at it very carefully because we don't want any hocus pocus around here.” See? “I want you to examine this thing I'm showing you and be sure there is no hocus pocus.” Meanwhile, he's doing something that you don't notice at all, and laying a trap. So that when you understand the nature of stage magic, you think goddamnit, how simple that was. Why didn't I see? Why was I such a fool as I overlooked this idiotically simple trick? And the best tricks are the simplest, and don't involve complicated apparatus at all. The best stage magicians are the ones who will stand in the middle of a crowd of people, you know—with no stage hocus pocus, all wires, or trapdoors; anything like that—and right under your nose will use a deck of cards or a few coins to do things that flabbergast people totally. And all those things are extremely simple—once you know. And so that's very much like being enlightened. Having satori (悟り). When you get it, you think oh, for heaven's sake, why didn't I see that? I mean, how obvious?

But the difficulty in communication here is that satori, or enlightenment, is very much like seeing a joke. And then you laugh. You laugh genuinely, from here. But if somebody explains it to you, you don't get the same laugh as if you saw it right off. You get a throat-laugh instead of a belly-laugh. So that's why people are reluctant to explain too much about it, and rather use the method whereby you will see it for yourself, and then laugh—or what is the cosmic equivalent. So therefore, we are, most of us, in a state of hypnosis induced by the incantation of language. The enchantment, the spellbinding. And when one speaks of awakening—as, say, in Buddhism one speaks of the Buddha as the “enlightened one”—it means, therefore, “dehypnotization.” Coming to your senses. But of course, to do that, you have to go out of your mind. Well, then, what that involves—among other things—is an awakening to the true structure of your common sense.

[Reefs]

Ecological Awareness (1) – The Ground of Being

AW: When I talk in academic and scientific circles about mystical experience, I have to be very careful of my terminology. And so I alter the phrase ‘mystical experience’ and call it ‘ecological awareness’ because it really amounts to the same thing. But the terminology is much more acceptable in the scholarly environment because, after all, mysticism is a dirty word associated with mist and vagueness.

It is—you see—obvious to a Taoist, to Buddhists, to Hindus, that this universe is a single system of energy, but there is no way of defining and putting your finger on that particular one energy. And even energy is not quite the right word to use because energy indicates something in motion, and we do not know or realize motion except in relation to stillness and vice versa. So, whatever energy-stillness is, fundamentally, cannot be thought about, defined, or talked about in any way.

From a logical point of view, it is absolutely meaningless to talk about anything which is common to everything, which is the substratum, or ground of being. But the categories of logic do not embrace all knowledge. And it is possible for human beings, once again, to become aware in a certain way of this substratum.

Not, however, as an object—not as something you can take out and look at—but nevertheless to be very strongly and almost sensuously aware of it and, in so doing, regain a new sense of one’s own identity, one’s own being: not as one of many things, one little event among many events that are all coming and going and temporary, but a sense of one’s actual self as being this single energy field—which can’t be, however, defined or identified—and, through realizing that, to take away the frantic anxiety that we have to secure ourselves as separate organisms, and to fight with other organisms, and play these elaborate games of one-upmanship, and—above all—to overcome the anxiety which leads us to regard nature itself as our enemy that has to be conquered and subjugated.

[stardustpilgrim]

Aug 19, 2020 12:19:39 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Ecological Awareness (1) – The Ground of Being

AW: When I talk in academic and scientific circles about mystical experience, I have to be very careful of my terminology. And so I alter the phrase ‘mystical experience’ and call it ‘ecological awareness’ because it really amounts to the same thing. But the terminology is much more acceptable in the scholarly environment because, after all, mysticism is a dirty word associated with mist and vagueness.

It is—you see—obvious to a Taoist, to Buddhists, to Hindus, that this universe is a single system of energy, but there is no way of defining and putting your finger on that particular one energy. And even energy is not quite the right word to use because energy indicates something in motion, and we do not know or realize motion except in relation to stillness and vice versa. So, whatever energy-stillness is, fundamentally, cannot be thought about, defined, or talked about in any way.

From a logical point of view, it is absolutely meaningless to talk about anything which is common to everything, which is the substratum, or ground of being. But the categories of logic do not embrace all knowledge. And it is possible for human beings, once again, to become aware in a certain way of this substratum.

Not, however, as an object—not as something you can take out and look at—but nevertheless to be very strongly and almost sensuously aware of it and, in so doing, regain a new sense of one’s own identity, one’s own being: not as one of many things, one little event among many events that are all coming and going and temporary, but a sense of one’s actual self as being this single energy field—which can’t be, however, defined or identified—and, through realizing that, to take away the frantic anxiety that we have to secure ourselves as separate organisms, and to fight with other organisms, and play these elaborate games of one-upmanship, and—above all—to overcome the anxiety which leads us to regard nature itself as our enemy that has to be conquered and subjugated.

No problem with any of that...

[Reefs]

Ecological Awareness (2) – Realization vs. Belief

AW: The realization I’m speaking of is not something like a belief. It is not an idea for the simple reason that the fundamental energy of the universe cannot be embraced in an idea. It cannot be embraced in a concept, in a form of words, in an explanation, because it eludes all classification. Because it is the which than which there is no whicher, and therefore is not in any class. Secondly, if you try to catch hold of it and somehow possess it, you are doing what is called in Zen “putting legs on a snake.” Because there is no need to possess it: you are it, and if you try to possess it you imply that you’re not. So by trying to catch hold of it you—as it were—push it away; although you can’t really push it away because the very pushing is all it.

So there are people who are divided into two schools of thought: those who believe that by exerting their energies to get hold of it they can achieve something, and the opposite people who think that by doing nothing at all one achieves it. But both are wrong because both the attempt to get it and the attempt to try not to get it are actually attempts to get it! And there is no need to. But nevertheless, by going into this—by meditation and so on—it is possible to realize that we are identical with the fundamental energy of the universe, that that is our real self—and although it doesn’t make a difference because all differences are, in a way, made by it, therefore it makes no difference to differences—nevertheless it’s completely basic.

[shadowplay]

Aug 19, 2020 12:19:39 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Ecological Awareness (1) – The Ground of Being

AW: When I talk in academic and scientific circles about mystical experience, I have to be very careful of my terminology. And so I alter the phrase ‘mystical experience’ and call it ‘ecological awareness’ because it really amounts to the same thing. But the terminology is much more acceptable in the scholarly environment because, after all, mysticism is a dirty word associated with mist and vagueness.

It is—you see—obvious to a Taoist, to Buddhists, to Hindus, that this universe is a single system of energy, but there is no way of defining and putting your finger on that particular one energy. And even energy is not quite the right word to use because energy indicates something in motion, and we do not know or realize motion except in relation to stillness and vice versa. So, whatever energy-stillness is, fundamentally, cannot be thought about, defined, or talked about in any way.

From a logical point of view, it is absolutely meaningless to talk about anything which is common to everything, which is the substratum, or ground of being. But the categories of logic do not embrace all knowledge. And it is possible for human beings, once again, to become aware in a certain way of this substratum.

Not, however, as an object—not as something you can take out and look at—but nevertheless to be very strongly and almost sensuously aware of it and, in so doing, regain a new sense of one’s own identity, one’s own being: not as one of many things, one little event among many events that are all coming and going and temporary, but a sense of one’s actual self as being this single energy field—which can’t be, however, defined or identified—and, through realizing that, to take away the frantic anxiety that we have to secure ourselves as separate organisms, and to fight with other organisms, and play these elaborate games of one-upmanship, and—above all—to overcome the anxiety which leads us to regard nature itself as our enemy that has to be conquered and subjugated.

Yes! Watts straddles that no man’s land between Realism and Idealism - and implicitly rejects both. My kind of guy.

[Reefs]

Ecological Awareness (3) – Hypnotized

AW: You see, it’s as if what has happened to us is: supposing you’re a gambler, and you’ve got involved in a game where you’re playing, actually, for peanuts, and you are immensely wealthy. When you get extremely absorbed in the game, even though you’re only playing for peanuts, you can lose your temper and you can be anxious as to who’s going to win, who’s going to lose, am I going to lose my peanuts, you see? Whereas you really have nothing to worry about at all, but you got so absorbed in the details of this game that you’ve forgotten the larger context in which the game is happening.

So, in exactly the same way, every individual is so absorbed—myopically, with his mind—in the details of his birth and death that he’s completely forgotten the context in which birth and death is occurring. And so, just as the chicken—when you put his beak to a chalk line—can’t get off it and is hypnotized, so we have been systematically and progressively hypnotized by our whole upbringing into the sensation that we are only this particular ego in this body. And we believe that and feel it so firmly that the context in which all this has happened is completely repressed.

[Reefs]

Aug 20, 2020 5:58:25 GMT -5 shadowplay said:

Yes! Watts straddles that no man’s land between Realism and Idealism - and implicitly rejects both. My kind of guy.

Yes, he's a brilliant teacher! People in the West who are new to non-duality should read AW instead of Niz or Ramana. It could save them a lot of unnecessary mental detours. I actually had to laugh when he said that he had to choose his words very carefully because he was among academics - sounds so familiar!

[Reefs]

Ecological Awareness (4) – Fate vs. Free Will

AW: I want to start with a consideration of our ancient ideas about the relation of the individual to the world in terms of fate and free will—or determinism and free will—because if we actually were aware of all the information that is coming to us through our senses, we would have a very curious sensation which would bug us because we wouldn’t be able to find words for it. It would be like this: you would first of all realize that if you didn’t be so selective—in other words, if you didn’t pay attention to this detail and that detail, but were just simply aware of it all in general—you would get the funny feeling, in the first place, that you were just a puppet, that you were automatically responding to all kinds of physical and social influences around you, and that you couldn’t help yourself. You might object to that, or you might alternatively enjoy it. You might get a sensation that you were just floating. You didn’t have to do anything, you didn’t have to think about any problems, you didn’t have to worry about what you ought to do, you would just feel yourself responding, and that would be a very pleasant feeling if you liked it.

But, on the other hand—depending on your personal constitution—you might feel terribly threatened by it, and you would interpret this sensation as a feeling of un-reality. Have you ever suddenly felt that you were dreaming everyday life, that it wasn’t quite real, and it spooked you? So you say, “Gee, it ought to be happening!” See? And I feel like I’m going around in a dream. Because occasionally, our mind slips. It’s like the tuning dial of a radio: it occasionally wanders off and you get another station. And so, in the same way, our minds occasionally slip into another way of seeing things, and people get accidental illuminations, and psychoses, and all sorts of funny things.

But you would get this as a preliminary sensation, and you would interpret it as feeling that you are a puppet on the end of strings being manipulated by events only because of your previous background, wherein we have—all of us—been conditioned to believe that part of our life is not under our control and part of it is.

[justlikeyou]

."When we examine our bloodstreams under a microscope we see there’s one hell of a fight going on. All sorts of microorganisms are chewing each other up. And if we got overly fascinated with our view of our own bloodstreams in the microscope, we should start taking sides, which would be fatal, because the health of our organism depends on the continuance of this battle. What is, in other words, conflict at one level of magnification, is harmony at a higher level. Now could it possibly be then that we, with all our problems, conflicts, neurosis, sicknesses, political outrages, wars, tortures, and everything that goes on in human life are a state of conflict which can be seen in a larger perspective as a situation of harmony?” ~Alan Watts

[Reefs]

Ecological Awareness (5) – Determinism vs. Voluntarism

AW: There is this distinction between the voluntary and the involuntary. The voluntary: what we do; the involuntary: what we have to accept passively. The borderline between them is not at all clear. Breathing, for example, is something we have to go on doing, and yet you can acquire the sensation that you are doing the breathing and controlling it according to your will. It’s a very vague distinction here. But if you took in all the information—see, you can feel yourself making a decision out of the blue. You say, “I’m going to do that!” Like that, you see? And you don’t have any awareness of anything that leads up to it. It just happens, you see?

And because that awareness is screened out you interpret this act of making a decision as a different kind of act from breathing or from growing hair. Well, actually, it isn’t different, but we think it’s different because of unawareness. When you make a decision it happens—as the Chinese say, ziran (tzu-jan); shisen—“of itself,” “naturally,” “spontaneously.” But we feel that there are things that happen of themselves in contrast to certain things that I do, and that is because of incomplete awareness.

But then, if that awareness were to change—and you were to realize that everything is happening of itself, including your decisions—because of your background, you would then veer over to the opposite point of view: everything is happening involuntarily and I am left out; I am a puppet, I simply have to obey.

But this would be incorrect. The point is, rather, this: we don’t have a system of nature which is either deterministic or voluntaristic. The relationship of the individual to the environment is not one of the individual as some little thing in the environment, which is moved by the environment and responds to the environment passively. Nor, oppositely, do we have a situation in which the individual is a center of activity that, all of its own, to some extent alters and changes the environment.

Both of these opinions are based on lack of awareness or ignorance—ignore-ance—that the behavior of the individual and the behavior of the environment are the same process. And you can look at the process from two points of view. You can look at it from the point of view of “It’s all happening to me,” or you can look at it from the point of view “I’m doing it.” These are just two poles of two ways of looking at the same thing.

If, for example, you realize that your neurological organization is creating the external world—in other words, there is no such thing as light, weight, heat, color, shape, except in terms of the human nervous system or some other animal nervous system—then, from that point of view, you can see your nervous system as evoking the whole universe. But you can take an opposite point of view which is equally true, which is that the human nervous system is something in the external world and is entirely dependent on sun, and air, and light, and temperature, and so on and so forth. Both points of view are true, but we have not yet—especially in the West—become aware of a logic which can integrate them.

And so, when we first come to experience this thing as being so, we tend to interpret it in terms of our old logics and our old ways of thinking, so that one person may say on feeling this, “I feel as if I’m just floating around, passively responding to the operations of nature,” and another person going to the opposite extreme will interpret this experience as saying, “I suddenly realize I’m God. That I actually govern and control everything that happens.” These are two ways of looking at exactly the same thing. The point being, then, that there is just the one process which is equally the behavior of the organism and the behavior of the environment; that you can look at this process from many points of view, define it in many ways, but you can’t really split it up.

[stardustpilgrim]

Aug 22, 2020 13:06:00 GMT -5 Reefs said:

Ecological Awareness (5) – Determinism vs. Voluntarism

AW: There is this distinction between the voluntary and the involuntary. The voluntary: what we do; the involuntary: what we have to accept passively. The borderline between them is not at all clear. Breathing, for example, is something we have to go on doing, and yet you can acquire the sensation that you are doing the breathing and controlling it according to your will. It’s a very vague distinction here. But if you took in all the information—see, you can feel yourself making a decision out of the blue. You say, “I’m going to do that!” Like that, you see? And you don’t have any awareness of anything that leads up to it. It just happens, you see?

And because that awareness is screened out you interpret this act of making a decision as a different kind of act from breathing or from growing hair. Well, actually, it isn’t different, but we think it’s different because of unawareness. When you make a decision it happens—as the Chinese say, ziran (tzu-jan); shisen—“of itself,” “naturally,” “spontaneously.” But we feel that there are things that happen of themselves in contrast to certain things that I do, and that is because of incomplete awareness.

But then, if that awareness were to change—and you were to realize that everything is happening of itself, including your decisions—because of your background, you would then veer over to the opposite point of view: everything is happening involuntarily and I am left out; I am a puppet, I simply have to obey.

But this would be incorrect. The point is, rather, this: we don’t have a system of nature which is either deterministic or voluntaristic. The relationship of the individual to the environment is not one of the individual as some little thing in the environment, which is moved by the environment and responds to the environment passively. Nor, oppositely, do we have a situation in which the individual is a center of activity that, all of its own, to some extent alters and changes the environment.

Both of these opinions are based on lack of awareness or ignorance—ignore-ance—that the behavior of the individual and the behavior of the environment are the same process. And you can look at the process from two points of view. You can look at it from the point of view of “It’s all happening to me,” or you can look at it from the point of view “I’m doing it.” These are just two poles of two ways of looking at the same thing.

If, for example, you realize that your neurological organization is creating the external world—in other words, there is no such thing as light, weight, heat, color, shape, except in terms of the human nervous system or some other animal nervous system—then, from that point of view, you can see your nervous system as evoking the whole universe. But you can take an opposite point of view which is equally true, which is that the human nervous system is something in the external world and is entirely dependent on sun, and air, and light, and temperature, and so on and so forth. Both points of view are true, but we have not yet—especially in the West—become aware of a logic which can integrate them.

And so, when we first come to experience this thing as being so, we tend to interpret it in terms of our old logics and our old ways of thinking, so that one person may say on feeling this, “I feel as if I’m just floating around, passively responding to the operations of nature,” and another person going to the opposite extreme will interpret this experience as saying, “I suddenly realize I’m God. That I actually govern and control everything that happens.” These are two ways of looking at exactly the same thing. The point being, then, that there is just the one process which is equally the behavior of the organism and the behavior of the environment; that you can look at this process from many points of view, define it in many ways, but you can’t really split it up.

I saw this as a teenager. I don't recall specifically, but it was probably during Introduction to Philosophy as a Freshman, 1970. It was totally cool, I tried to explain it to a few people but nobody got it. Almost 30 years later seeing The Matrix, I remember thinking, yea, that. It's possible I could have read Alan Watts by then, but more than likely that came later. My interests exploded about this time. We had a most excellent independent bookstore in Charlotte called The East House Bookshop which sold all kinds of esoteric stuff and Eastern philosophy stuff. And also at 17 I discovered The New Age Foundation, an organization in Charlotte which had speakers come in, held in a mall banquet room. It was not unusual for 200 people to attend lectures by various people, some local, most from afar. But then I compared everybody to J Krishnamurti, who was IT for me. From JK I learned that attention is the key to it all, and he wasn't surpassed until 1976. A most excellent book I chanced upon a few years ago that explains this well is by Chris Firth, Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates Our Mental World. www.amazon.com/Making-Mind-Brain-Creates-Mental/dp/1405160225/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1VBZF0L5VOITD&dchild=1&keywords=chris+frith&qid=1598912956&sprefix=chris+frith%2Caps%2C170&sr=8-1 Also I read Bertrand Russell a few years ago who also most excellently understood this, the title of the book has Matter in it, don't recall the full title. He explained there are neural pathways into the brain, but none leaving the brain back out into the world. (There are motor neurons leaving the brain, giving signals to the muscles). So all perception takes place in your brain. This is very curious as it is very dark inside the brain.

It's like a Russian doll inside another Russian doll, except the smaller Russian doll has a bigger Russian doll inside it, kind of TARDIS-wise. Emily D!ckinson also understood it as from her poem, The brain is wider than the sky... yalebooks.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/TOC/edelman_wider.pdf

[stardustpilgrim]

Whenever I think of AW I think of his term for a search for self, a futile search. The which of which there is no whicher.

[Reefs]

The World as Emptiness (1) - The Essence of Hinduism

AW: It should be said first that there is a sense in which Buddhism is Hinduism stripped for export. Hinduism is not merely what we call a religion; it’s a whole culture. It’s a legal system, it’s a social system, it’s a system of etiquette, and it includes everything. It includes housing, it includes food, it includes art. Because the Hindus—and many other ancient peoples—do not make, as we do, a division between religion and everything else. Religion is not a department of life, it is something that enters into the whole of it. But when a religion and a culture are inseparable, it’s very difficult to export a culture because it comes into conflict with the established traditions, manners, and customs of other people.

So the question arises: what are the essentials of Hinduism that could be exported? And when you answer that, approximately, you get Buddhism. The essential of Hinduism—the real, deep root—isn’t any kind of doctrine. It isn’t really any special kind of discipline—although, of course, disciplines are involved. The center of Hinduism is an experience called mokṣa—‘liberation’—in which, through the dissipation of the illusion that each man and each woman is a separate thing in a world consisting of nothing but a collection of separate things, you discover that you are, on one level, an illusion, but on another level, you are what they call the Self, the one Self, which is all that there is. The universe is the game of the Self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever. When it plays ‘hide,’ it plays it so well, hides so cleverly, that it pretends to be all of us, and all things whatsoever. And we don’t know it because it’s playing ‘hide.’ But when it plays ‘seek,’ it enters onto a path of yoga, and—through following this path—it wakes up, and the scales fall from one’s eyes.

[Reefs]

The World as Emptiness (2) - The Buddha

AW: Now, in just the same way, the center of Buddhism—the only really important thing about Buddhism—is the experience which they call ‘awakening.’ Buddha is a title and not a proper name. It comes from a Sanskrit root budh, and that sometimes means ‘to know,’ but better, ‘waking.’ And so you get from this root bodhi; that is the state of being awakened. And so buddha, ‘the awakened one,’ ‘the awakened person.’

And so there can, of course—in Buddhist ideas—be very many buddhas. The person called the Buddha is only one of myriads. Because they, like the Hindus, are quite sure that our world is only one among billions, and that buddhas come and go in all the worlds. But sometimes there comes into the world what you might call a big buddha; a very important one. And such a one is said to have been Gautama, the son of a prince living in northern India, in the part of the world we now call Nepal, living shortly after 600 BC. All dates in Indian history are vague, and so I never try to get you to remember any precise date—like 564, which some people think it was—but just after 600 BC is probably right.

Most of you, I’m sure, know the story of his life. But the point is that when, in India, a man was called a buddha—or the Buddha—this is a title of a very exalted nature. It is, first of all, necessary for a buddha to be human. He can’t be any other kind of being, whether—in the Hindu scale of beings—he’s above the human state or below it. He is superior to all gods, because according to Indian ideas, gods and angels—or, angels would probably a better name for them than gods—all those exalted beings are still in the wheel of becoming, still in the chains of karma; that is, action which requires the need for more action to complete it, and goes on requiring the need for more action. They’re still, according to popular ideas, going ‘round the wheel from life, after life, after life, after life, because they still have the thirst for existence. Or, to put it in a Hindu way: in them, the Self is still playing the game of not being itself.

But the Buddha’s doctrine, based on his own experience of awakening, which occurred after seven years of attempts to study with the various yogis of the time, all of whom used the method of extreme asceticism; fasting, doing all sorts of exercises, lying on beds of nails, sleeping on broken rocks, any kind of thing to break down egocentricity, to become unselfish, to become detached, to exterminate desire for life. But Buddha found that all that was futile; that was not the Way. And one day he broke his ascetic discipline and accepted a bowl of some kind of milk soup from a girl who was looking after cattle. And suddenly, in this tremendous relaxation, he went and sat down under a tree, and the burden lifted. He saw, completely, that what he had been doing was on the wrong track. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear. And no amount of effort will make a person who believes himself to be an ego be really unselfish. So long as you think and feel that you are a somewhat contained in your bag of skin, and that’s all, there is no way, whatsoever, of your behaving unselfishly. Oh yes, you can imitate unselfishness. You can go through all sorts of highly refined forms of selfishness, but you’re still tied to the wheel of becoming by the golden chains of your good deeds, as the obviously bad people are tied to it by the iron chains of their misbehaviors.

[Reefs]

The World as Emptiness (3) – The Method of Buddhism

AW: So Buddha saw that all his yoga exercises and ascetic disciplines had just been ways of trying to get himself out of the trap in order to save his own skin, in order to find peace for himself. And he realized that that is an impossible thing to do, because the motivation ruins the project. He found out that there was no trap to get out of except himself. Trap and trapped are one, and when you understand that, there isn’t any trap left.

So, as a result of this experience, he formulated what is called the dharma, that is the Sanskrit word for ‘method.’ You will get a certain confusion when you read books on Buddhism because they switch between Sanskrit and Pali words. The earliest Buddhist scriptures that we know of are written in the Pali language, and Pali is a softened form of Sanskrit. So that, for example, whereas the doctrine of the Buddha is called in Sanskrit the dharma, but in Pali—and in many books in Buddhism—you’ll find that the Buddha’s doctrine described as the dhamma. And so, in the same way, karma in Sanskrit, becomes in Pali, kamma. Buddha remains the same. The dharma, then, is the method.

Now, the method of Buddhism—and this is absolutely important to remember—is dialectic. That is to say, it doesn’t teach a doctrine. You cannot find anywhere what Buddhism teaches, as you can find out what Christianity or Judaism or Islam teaches. Because all Buddhism is a discourse, and what most people suppose to be its teachings are only the opening stages of the dialogue.