This week, many Buddhists around the world are celebrating Vesak, a festival that commemorates the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death. It’s a great opportunity to consider a central question for Buddhism: namely what did the Buddha actually teach?
Buddhism today is remarkably diverse. There are many schools, practices, and interpretations that range from meditation-focused communities to those that are rich in ritual. So, when someone claims to be returning to the “original teachings” of the Buddha, it raises questions about what that might mean and whether it is even possible?
Recently at Encounter, we connected with a new Buddhist centre in Toronto, The Agama Meditation Centre, whose founders are deeply committed to studying and teaching what they understand to be the earliest forms of the Buddha’s teachings. Their focus and the seriousness of their study really stood out and so I spoke with Mona Zhang, a key volunteer at the Centre, to learn more about their approach.
Not all Buddhists would agree with this emphasis, and that diversity is part of what makes Buddhism so fascinating. But this conversation offers a window into one way of understanding the tradition and provides an opportunity to reflect more deeply on the roots of one of the world’s oldest religions.
Image: Agama Meditation Centre, Source: Agama Meditation Centre
What Makes the Agama Centre Distinct?
In our conversation, Mona identified three key differences between their approach and both contemporary mindfulness culture and other forms of Buddhism.
1. A Focus on the Earliest Teachings
Central to their work is a commitment to what they see as the earliest layers of Buddhist tradition found in texts like the Pali Canon and the Chinese Agamas.
As Mona put it, Buddhism has developed in many directions over time. Growing up in China, she encountered some Buddhist traditions which she says emphasize devotional practices and more metaphysical texts, something we have written about before. The Agama Centre, by contrast, tries to get back earlier in history to recover what they believe the historical Buddha may have taught before those later developments. The broader path the Agama Centre participates in is sometimes called in Buddhism the path of self-effort in contrast to the devotional path (called other-effort) that seeks help from celestial beings.
This desire to go back to the roots is a common pattern in religion as practitioners often wish to return to the original message and that spirit is very alive at the Agama Centre.
Image: Old Buddhism religious painting, Source: Canva.com
2. Ethics Before Meditation
A key emphasis in our conversation was a distinction Mona drew not with other forms of Buddhism but with how mindfulness is often practiced today.
Many people, she noted, turn to meditation when they feel overwhelmed. They sit, feel some relief, and then return to their daily lives. But oftentimes, they then find the same patterns re-emerging days later.
She contends that the main issue here is simply that meditation alone isn’t enough.
In early Buddhist teaching, she explained, ethics comes first. How we speak, act, and relate to others shapes the mind we bring into meditation. Or, as she put it:
“The way you live your life during the day becomes the mind you sit with in meditation.”
Source: Canva.com
The Buddha, Mona shared, did not begin with meditation techniques. He began with questions about lived experience:
- What happens in your mind when you lie or speak harshly?
- How do you feel when you act generously or kindly?
Ethics from this perspective then, is not about abstract moral philosophizing but instead a kind of practical training of the mind.
It also reframes mindfulness itself. Rather than being confined to a 20-minute practice, mindfulness becomes something woven into daily life: paying attention to speech, intention, and impact before, during, and after interactions.
The conversation with Mona reminded me of how the Buddha is sometimes described as a scientist of the mind, specifically because of his empirical approach. By empirical, I mean the practice of testing things out, observing, and drawing conclusions. This forms the heart of the scientific method but it outlines his basic approach. The texts describe his enlightenment as stemming from this iterative process and that he in turn encouraged others to do the same. Mona’s description of mindfulness seemed to fit this concept of careful observation which in turn generates insight. But both the starting point and the measuring stick is ethics – are we being compassionate and kind to others, to all sentient beings, and to ourselves?
3. Calm Is Not the Goal
A third distinction concerns how we understand calmness.
In much of contemporary mindfulness culture, calmness is often treated as the goal. But in early Buddhist teaching, Mona emphasized, calm is only a means.
She offered a helpful image describing the mind as like a pair of glasses. For most of us, the lenses are dirty and unsteady. Mindfulness is so valuable because it helps clean and stabilize those lenses. However, the purpose is not clean glasses for their own sake – it is to see clearly.
And that clarity allows us to pay attention, to observe things as they are, and thus, to develop wisdom. This wisdom is what ultimately helps us to address suffering.
Source: Canva.com
Study and Practice: Both Matter
If ethics shapes how we live and meditation sharpens the mind, the next question is: how do we actually learn this path?
Another theme that emerged in our conversation was the relationship between study and practice.
In some modern contexts, Buddhism is presented as something you simply “do” – sit, breathe, observe. In others, it becomes heavily intellectual. The early tradition, Mona suggested, insists on both.
Listening was something she emphasized as central in the Buddha’s teaching. We begin by studying and hearing the Dharma (the Buddha’s teachings). We then reflect on it – thinking it through, questioning it, and trying to understand it more deeply.
But understanding, in this tradition, is never meant to remain theoretical. It must be tested and embodied. Practice, then, is the process by which teachings are examined in lived experience and gradually internalized.
Source: Canva.com
Through this interplay of study, reflection, and practice, knowledge ideally becomes something deeper. It moves from information in our heads to insights we live. Ultimately, this is what allows for transformation or what Buddhists call liberation from suffering.
Mona shared a Chinese saying that translates roughly as: “We may know many things, yet still struggle to live well/be happy.” It points to a critical gap many of us recognize – the difference between knowing something and actually living it.
The early Buddhist path, as she describes it, is an attempt to close that gap.
A Few Words About the Centre
The Agama Meditation Centre operates on a donation basis, reflecting the Buddhist practice of dāna (generosity). They offer both in-person programs and online resources, in English and Chinese.
Images: Agama Mediation Centre Photo, Agama Mediation Centre Logo, and Buddhist Donation, Source: Agama Meditation Centre, and Canva.com
The centre takes its name from the Agama texts, early collections of Buddhist teachings that were preserved through careful memorization and communal recitation long before being written down. These texts are structured in ways that made them easier to remember and harder to alter, a reminder of how seriously early communities took the preservation of these teachings.
Final Thoughts
Not all Buddhists would agree with the Agama Centre’s emphasis on returning to early sources. Others might read those sources differently. Buddhism has always been diverse, and its many forms reflect different cultural and philosophical developments.
But the earnestness of the search by Mona and her colleagues to locate and tap into the wisdom of the Buddha’s path is evident both in their website and in the interview. Their foregrounding of ethics as foundational can get missed when Buddhism is framed around stress relief and mental health, valuable as those outcomes are. And the Agama Centre’s emphasis on fusing practice with study and learning would be recognized by any Buddhist scholar as true to the original path that Siddhartha Gautama (aka the Buddha) taught.
They believe, ultimately, that the Buddha’s teachings are not merely a historical curiosity but that they are relatable and relevant to help people today alleviate suffering and live more compassionately.
Image: Mona Zhang of the Agama Mediation Centre, Source: Mona Zhang
Mona’s perspective is a helpful reminder that, at least in one influential strand of the tradition, the path begins not with techniques but with how we live.
I want to thank Mona and the Agama Meditation Centre for sharing their passion and their vision. She has kindly opened their doors to Encounter, inviting us to bring some of our groups there which we will absolutely be doing.
