What is Buddha's teaching?

What is Buddha's teaching? There are manifold ways to answer this question. To give an answer to this question, I am going to tell an anecdote connected with his lifetime. One day, Buddha travelled with a group of monks. They passed in front of a monk who was giving a teaching. He was a very skilful speaker. Buddha then asked the monks: "Monks, can you hear this monk giving a teaching so skilfully?" The monks answered: "Yes, Respectable Buddha, we hear him". Buddha continued by uttering a very important sentence. He says: "Monks, when a monk expounds the teaching, it is not "my" teaching that he expounds – that is to say the one of Buddha. Monks, when a monk expounds a teaching, it is not "his" teaching that he expounds – that is to say his personal teaching. Monks, when a monk expounds the teaching, it is only the reality of things as they are, which he expounds". This sentence takes part among small key sentences that Buddha, during his life, left to us here and there. Crudely speaking, his teaching is a "lesson about things" (the word "dhamma", moreover, means "thing", "phenomenon"), and nothing is to be added to it. Admittedly, nothing is to be removed from it too. Owing to monks (or people) who will add to or remove things from this teaching, this later will regrettably get lost. There will only remain the empty shell, that is to say: ceremonies, recitations, big doctrinal studies in the university, etc. Moreover, this is the way it already is at the present moment. However, we still find nowadays, particularly in Burma, monks who do stick to the essence of the teaching. They are monks who truly experienced this teaching, or in all cases, monks who put it into practice. Little by little, it is going to disappear. Buddha's teaching is an endangered species.