Many people have tried to explain what Gotama taught using the language of philosophy. Buddhist philosophers have argued over the centuries about the best interpretation of his teachings, resulting in many well-intended but confusing distinctions. But Gotama sought to avoid clinging to views: fixed, rigid ideas, absolutes, ideals, and so on. He taught a way of training oneself to understand human experience directly, based on developing one’s powers of attention & awareness, analyzing experience introspectively, as it arises. For example, observing forms, affective feelings (pleasant or unpleasant sensations), perception (recognizing things, persons, other phenomena), rapid automatic mental patterns—habits (saṅkhāra), & consciousness (responses to the six senses, with thinking as the sixth). All this & more is to be observed intensely, at as small a scale as possible. The point is to see how all experience comprises only these sorts of activities, & not any solid self, & nothing that does not change very rapidly & continuously. This is a training, an understanding achieved by careful observation of what is actually arising in experience. It is practical, based on trying & learning, designed to show how dukkha arises, & how it can be overcome. Gotama’s teachings are a training manual, just like learning a musical instrument or a sport: the best way to learn how to do something—live without dukkha.