Buddhadasa strove for a simple, pristine practice in an attempt to emulate
Gautama Buddha's core teaching, "Do good, avoid bad, and purify the mind." He therefore avoided the customary ritualism and internal politics that dominated Siamese clerical life. His ability to explain complex philosophical and religious ideas in his native
Southern Thai attracted many people to his wooded retreat. His primary teaching mainly focused on the quiet awareness of one's breathing pattern called
anapanasati. However, his personal practice was very much grounded in advanced research and interpretation of early Pali texts on the one hand and on his radical private experimentation on the other.
Rejection of rebirth Buddhadasa rejected the traditional
rebirth and
karma doctrine, since he thought it to be incompatible with
sunyata, and not conducive to the extinction of
dukkha. Buddhadasa, states
John Powers – a professor of Asian Studies and Buddhism, offered a "rationalist interpretation" and thought "the whole question of rebirth to be foolish". According to Buddhadasa, the Buddha taught
'no-self' (, ), which denies any substantial, ongoing entity or soul. and rejected by many of his fellow Theravada Buddhist monks with a more orthodox view of the Buddhist Dhamma. For example,
Bhikkhu Bodhi states that Buddhadasa's approach of jettisoning the rebirth doctrine "would virtually reduce the Dhamma to tatters [...] the conception of rebirth is an essential plank to its ethical theory, providing an incentive for avoiding all evil and doing good", summarizes Powers. Through such a methodology he came to adopt a religious world-view wherein he stated, "those who have penetrated to the essential nature of religion will regard all religions as being the same. Although they may say there is Buddhism, Judaism, Taoism, Islam, or whatever, they will also say that all religions are inwardly the same." In his
No Religion (1993) Buddhadasa further famously remarked: ==Influence==