The Buddha's 'Factory Settings'
It's not what you think at all.
We've spent eleven episodes
tracing the source of Indian thought 3,500 years ago,
to the Buddha's passing, the first council, and 400 years of oral tradition.
But if someone asked you the simplest question right now:
What exactly did the Buddha teach?
Could you explain it clearly in three sentences?
Hello,
everyone,
I am Wang Lijie.
You might say,
the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths,
the Eightfold Path,
and Dependent Origination.
That's correct.
But if you ask a Pure Land practitioner,
they'll say he taught 'Nianfo' to reach the Pure Land.
Ask a Zen practitioner,
and they'll say he taught realizing one's true nature,
attaining Buddhahood through insight.
Ask a Tibetan practitioner,
and they might say he taught attaining Buddhahood in this very body.
Ask a Huayan scholar,
and they'll say he taught the origination of the Dharmadhatu,
where 'one is all.'
How could the same Buddha
teach so many different things?
The answer is:
He didn't.
Some of these later doctrines
are deep expansions of the original teachings,
while others are creative adaptations for different eras and cultures.
And some,
to be honest,
were added by later generations themselves.
Now that 2,500 years have passed,
these layers of additions have merged with the original teachings
to the point of being inseparable.
It's hard to tell what was a 'factory setting'
and what was 'aftermarket software.'
So, in today's episode,
we are going to do one thing:
Before we enter the era of Buddhist schisms,
we will firmly anchor
the 'factory settings' of the Buddha's teachings.
This isn't for academic research
or to argue about who is 'authentic.'
It's because
if you don't have a yardstick in hand,
you'll have no way to judge the next 2,500 years of evolution.
You won't know
what is a deepening of the message,
what is a deviation,
and what has completely lost its way.
Alright.
So, what are the Buddha's factory settings?
I've condensed them into five core modules.
Not just five facts,
but five nested layers of an operating system.
Module one:
Dependent Origination.
This is the foundation of all Buddhist teaching.
The core insight the Buddha saw under the Bodhi tree,
in a single sentence, is:
Nothing in this world exists independently.
Everything is a collection of conditions.
A flower blooms
because there are seeds, soil, and water;
sunlight, temperature, and time.
Lacking any one condition,
this flower would not appear in this place in this way.
Sounds like common sense, right?
But the Buddha pushed this principle to the limit.
He said,
'It's not just the flower.'
Your body is dependently originated.
Your feelings are dependently originated.
Your thoughts are dependently originated.
Even this 'self' that you believe in.
is also dependently arisen.
Nothing possesses an independent, fixed, or unchanging essence.
And he wasn't just speaking vaguely.
He expanded dependent arising into a complete chain—
the Twelve Links,
from ignorance to aging and death.
Ignorance conditions volitional action,
Action conditions consciousness,
Consciousness conditions name and form,
Name and form condition the six sense bases,
The six sense bases condition contact,
Contact conditions feeling,
Feeling conditions craving,
Craving conditions clinging,
Clinging conditions becoming,
Becoming conditions birth,
Birth conditions aging and death.
This isn't a linear chain of cause and effect,
but a cycle.
Your ignorance drives behavioral patterns.
Patterns shape conscious tendencies.
Tendencies construct how you perceive the world.
Perception determines your feelings.
Feeling triggers craving.
Craving leads to clinging.
Clinging creates new states of existence,
and then the whole cycle starts over.
The Buddha said,
you don't need to break every link.
You only need to see through it at any one link,
and the chain loosens.
This leads directly to the second pillar:
Non-self.
Now, pay attention.
By "non-self,"
the Buddha didn't mean you don't exist.
Of course you exist,
but not in the way you think you do.
You think there is a fixed, unchanging, independent "I"
sitting inside your body,
controlling this physical form,
remaining the same from birth to death.
The Buddha said,
you won't find such a thing.
The "I" you imagine
is a combination of the Five Aggregates:
form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness.
Five processes constantly flowing, changing, and interacting.
What you call "me"
is the vortex formed where these five rivers meet.
A vortex looks like a stable object,
but not a single drop of water in it is still.
You can try it now.
Close your eyes for three seconds.
Ask yourself:
the "me" that is listening to these words,
where exactly is it?
You'll find you can find a sound,
you can find a thought,
you can find a physical sensation,
but you cannot find a pure "self"
independent of these processes.
This isn't a philosophical game.
It's an experiment the Buddha wants you to perform yourself.
When you put these two pillars together,
you'll understand why the Buddha taught the third:
The Four Noble Truths.
Suffering, Cause, Cessation, and Path.
These aren't moralizing lectures,
but a precise diagnostic framework.
"Suffering" (Dukkha)
is a description of the phenomenon.
I should mention,
the Pali word the Buddha used was "dukkha."
Translating it as "suffering" is actually too narrow.
The original meaning refers to an off-center axle hole on a wheel,
making the ride constanty bumpy.
It lacks smoothness.
It doesn't just describe intense pain,
but that fundamental sense of "wrongness" in life.
You have the things you want,
yet you still feel something is missing.
You reach your goal,
but the excitement quickly fades.
Everything seems fine,
but waking up at midnight, you feel an inexplicable unease.
This is dukkha.
It isn't caused by external circumstances;
it's a structural misalignment in how you interact with the world.
Samudaya (Origin):
the diagnosis.
This dissatisfaction comes from craving;
from constantly trying to grasp things that are inherently ungraspable.
Nirodha (Cessation):
the prognosis.
This illness can be cured;
suffering can be ended.
Magga (Path):
the treatment plan.
This is the Noble Eightfold Path.
Notice the brilliance of this structure.
The Buddha didn't say what you should believe;
he said,
"This is the structure of reality."
You can verify it for yourself.
You can check right now:
the most painful moments of your life—
do they all share a common underlying pattern?
You were trying to hold onto something destined to change.
A relationship, an identity, a feeling, a promise.
The tighter you grip,
the more it hurts when change comes.
So, how is it cured?
The Noble Eightfold Path:
Right View, Resolve, Speech, Action,
Livelihood, Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration.
I detailed these in Episode 3, but today,
I'll emphasize two points people often overlook.
First point:
The Eightfold Path isn't eight separate requirements.
It's a system.
It's no accident that Right View comes first.
You must see the truth first
to give all subsequent actions direction.
If you haven't seen the nature of suffering,
your Right Speech, Action, and Livelihood
are just blindly following rules of conduct,
no different from a student reciting school rules.
Second point:
The architecture is the Threefold Training: Sila, Samadhi, and Prajna.
Speech, Action, and Livelihood are Sila (Ethics),
governing your behavioral output.
Effort, Mindfulness, and Concentration are Samadhi (Meditation),
governing your attention management.
View and Resolve are Prajna (Wisdom),
governing your cognitive calibration.
These aren't three stages,
but three co-running subsystems.
When your behavior isn't chaotic,
your attention can focus.
When your attention focuses,
you can see the truth clearly.
When you see the truth clearly,
your behavior naturally stabilizes.
It's a self-reinforcing loop.
The brilliance of the Buddha's system
lies in the fact that
you can enter from any point.
Once it starts turning,
the whole system auto-calibrates.
This brings us to the fourth module:
the Three Criteria.
Later scholars called them the "Three Marks of Existence,"
but the core is in the earliest scriptures.
What is true Dharma?
Any teaching—
whether claimed to be from the Buddha or a Master—
can be tested against these three criteria.
First:
All compounded things are impermanent.
All conditioned phenomena are changing.
Second,
Anatman (Non-self).
All phenomena lack an independent, fixed essence.
Third,
Nirvana is peace.
When you stop fighting impermanence and clinging to self,
suffering ceases.
These are not just three doctrines,
but three criteria for verification.
It is like buying a bottle of medicine;
if there is no regulatory approval number on the bottle,
you know it is unreliable.
The three criteria Buddha gave you
are the regulatory certifications of the Dharma.
In the 2,500 years since, countless sects, theories, and practices have emerged.
Compare them against these three.
What matches is an extension of the core teachings;
what doesn't fits warrants a question mark.
The fifth module,
and the most easily forgotten,
is the Middle Way.
When the Buddha first turned the wheel of Dharma,
the first thing he taught was not the Four Noble Truths,
but the Middle Way.
He first rejected two extremes:
indulging in pleasure won't work,
and extreme asceticism won't work either.
This isn't about being wishy-washy,
nor is it eclecticism.
The essence of the Middle Way is that
any attachment itself is the source of suffering,
whether you are attached to pleasure or pain.
Extreme ascetics are attached to self-torment,
believing pain can bring liberation.
Hedonists are attached to sensory stimulation,
believing pleasure can bring satisfaction.
The Buddha said,
these two directions may look opposite,
but their underlying logic is the same:
attachment.
Think about how precise this is.
Do you know someone extremely disciplined?
So disciplined they've become addicted to discipline itself.
They check-in, meditate, run, and read every day,
getting incredibly anxious if they miss a single task.
Their discipline is no longer a tool;
it has become a new form of attachment.
The Buddha saw this 2,500 years ago.
The Middle Way is not a route;
it is a principle.
In any situation,
when you find yourself clinging to an extreme,
you have strayed.
Alright,
that covers the five core modules:
Dependent Origination, Non-self, Four Noble Truths, Three Marks, and the Middle Way.
These are the "factory settings" of the Buddha's teachings.
But just knowing what is in the factory settings
is not enough.
You also need to know
what is NOT in the factory settings.
This list might make some people uncomfortable.
The Bodhisattva Path is not in the factory settings.
In his original teachings, the Buddha didn't say to vow to save all sentient beings.
He said,
first see the nature of suffering,
walk the Eightfold Path,
and attain liberation.
The Bodhisattva Path was a later creative development of Mahayana Buddhism.
It is magnificent,
but it's not in the factory settings.
Buddha-nature is not in the factory settings.
The Buddha did not say all sentient beings have Buddha-nature.
That idea first appeared in Mahayana sutras.
Original Buddhism teaches that
everyone has the potential for enlightenment.
But that is a different proposition from saying
everyone has a fixed, inherently complete Buddha-nature within.
Pure Land is not in the factory settings.
No Western Paradise (Sukhavati),
no Amitabha Buddha,
and no rebirth through chanting his name.
These are belief systems that developed entirely later on.
The 'factory settings' had no mantras or rituals.
The Buddha taught no dharanis,
no esoteric tantra,
and no mandala visualizations.
These were products of the Tantric period.
The original settings lacked a systematized sudden enlightenment method.
The path described by the Buddha was a complete training system:
the Eightfold Path and the Threefold Training (Ethics, Concentration, Wisdom).
It was meant to be followed step-by-step.
While early scriptures record people awakening on the spot
after hearing the Buddha speak,
emphasizing sudden enlightenment as an independent path,
pitted against gradual practice,
was a creation of Chinese Zen over a millennium later.
I say this
not to dismiss subsequent developments.
Later episodes will cover the historical context
and internal logic of these evolutions in depth.
Many indeed possess profound insights
and have helped countless people.
But you must distinguish what is 'original equipment'
from what was 'after-market' addition.
Otherwise, you'll fall into a trap,
confusing products from 2,500 years later with the founder's original intent.
Furthermore,
two more things were in the factory settings
but are often overlooked.
One is the monastic system (Sangha).
The Buddha wasn't just a thinker;
he was an organizational architect.
He established community protocols based on the Vinaya (precepts).
Sangha decisions relied on collective consensus, not personal authority.
Finances were transparent,
and major matters required unanimous approval.
This system emerged around the same time as Ancient Greek democratic reforms,
making it one of history's earliest democratic experiments.
The Buddha knew
that even the best teaching
would eventually degrade
without a sustainable organizational structure.
The other was his methodology of 'expedient means' (Upaya).
The Buddha never spoke the same way to everyone.
He spoke of the Middle Way to ascetics,
Non-self to Brahmins,
Karma to kings,
and Impermanence to a grieving mother.
He could translate the same core insight
into completely different versions.
This wasn't contradiction;
it was a masterclass in pedagogy.
However, this very characteristic
sowed the seeds for later schisms.
Because different people heard different versions,
they easily mistook the version they heard
for the sole, absolute truth.
It's like an Android phone today.
The features are rich,
with countless apps
and custom interfaces.
But if you don't know what the underlying Linux kernel looks like,
you can't distinguish essential OS components
from the bloatware pre-installed by a specific brand.
Pre-installed software isn't necessarily bad;
some can be quite useful.
But you must know it's pre-installed,
rather than mistaking it for the operating system itself.
So,
returning to the original question:
What did the Buddha actually teach?
If I had to explain it in just three sentences,
I would say this:
First,
all phenomena are a convergence of conditions;
nothing possesses an independent, unchanging essence.
Second,
your suffering stems from trying to find stability
grasp it as something permanent,
and this urge to grasp itself
can be observed, understood, and ceased.
Sentence three:
The way to see is the Middle Way,
neither escaping
nor indulging,
but observing things as they truly are.
These three sentences
are what the Buddha realized under the Bodhi tree.
Translated into human language in the first Turning of the Wheel,
expanded through forty-five years of teaching,
they remain the core preserved by his disciples' oral tradition.
Is it simple?
Too simple.
So simple you might doubt it,
thinking, "Is that it?"
But this is exactly what's worth reflecting on.
If the Buddha's core teaching is just these three sentences,
then how did the vast theoretical systems,
complex rituals, and intricate philosophical debates
grow out of these three simple ideas?
How much do they relate to these sentences?
How much is an expansion?
How much is a modification?
And how much of it
is actually telling a completely different story?
Do you know?
Many practitioners study Buddhism for decades,
reading dozens of scriptures,
only to ending up more confused than ever.
It's not for a lack of effort,
but because they never did what we are doing today:
Checking the default settings first.
They dive straight into a specific sect,
a certain teacher,
or a specific practice,
then define Buddhism based on that narrow standard.
It's like using a Samsung phone for twenty years
from the day you were born;
you'd think the Samsung interface is Android itself.
When someone shows you Stock Android,
you find it strange instead.
In this episode,
I'm showing you the "Stock System."
Remember this picture.
Whatever sect, theory, or master you encounter later,
you can use this as a reference point.
Not to deny anything,
but to know where you stand.
Alright.
This marks the end of Act One.
Starting from the next episode,
we enter Act Two,
one of the most dramatic stages in Buddhist history:
The Schism of the Schools.
The Buddha passed away,
leaving behind this elegantly simple seed.
Less than a hundred years after he left,
this seed split open.
The cause of this first split
wasn't some profound philosophical debate;
it was a seemingly trivial matter
regarding money.
What kind of issue do you think
could cause a spiritual community to splinter completely?
Share your guesses in the comments below.
We'll reveal it in the next episode.
I am Wang Lijie,
see you next time.