Abstract

Contemporary proponents of modern Buddhism argue that the Buddha’s teaching, in contrast to later Buddhist-inspired philosophies and folklore, is of a fundamentally therapeutic or experiential character. In response, other scholars have objected that this amounts to an inadequate protestantization that neglects soteriology and the broader religious or cultural context. In this paper, by critically engaging with therapeutic readings (as proposed by Stephen Batchelor) and experiential readings (as proposed by Alan Wallace and D. T. Suzuki) and by drawing from a few significant early Pāli discourses, I reconstruct the Buddha’s teaching in a way that, like many modern interpretations, does not rely on belief in magical powers and spirits but that, unlike many modern interpretations, does not exhaust itself in mere therapeutics or experiential knowledge. My interpretation is grounded in a notion of negative self-knowledge that takes two distinct forms. On the one hand, there is the self-knowledge of not-self as an antecedent recognition of the possibility of awakening that defines the Buddhist seeker. On the other hand, there is the acquired self-knowledge of not-self of the awakened. The latter—that is, the completed insight into what we are not—is not just one experience among others but the transformation of any possible experience. Thus, the Buddha speaks to us of his self-knowledge that exceeds experiential knowledge. This imbalance between the Buddha and his real or potential interlocutors explains why his teaching remains inaccessible to many, in spite of modern attempts to rationalize it.