[hablyShappY]

How is it that one should go about investigating and testing the teachings?

JS, I started (as far as I recall) with the 4NT.

1st NT: dukkha.

As I reflected on my experience, I could see that life had indeed included suffering, and that all of my previous efforts at avoiding or ending it had failed. Over time, as I continued investigating the nuances of dukkha, I could see how even pleasurable experiences contain the seed of stress.

2nd NT: dukkha samudaya.

Reflecting on experience, I could see how my struggles to gain pleasurable experiences and avoid unpleasant experiences fueled much of the stresses I felt. Wanting this, and wanting it permantently; wanting to be rid of that, and wanting to be rid of it permanently. It kept me chasing and chasing after things I was clinging to, while running and running from things I couldn't accept.

3rd NT: dukkha niroda.

Given 1 and 2, it's not rocket surgery to see that the solution is to stop chasing after this and running from that. Easier said than done, of course, but I could see the truth in it.

4th NT: dukkha nirodha gamini patipada magga.

After reviewing the 8 things that one is advised to work on daily and starting to put them into practice, it seems to me that those 8 things are sufficient. None of the 8 is unnecessary, and I can't find anything to add to them.

anatta: non-self, no-self (or however you prefer to translate it)

Search the totality of your being and see if you can find anything that remains identical over time. I couldn't.

paticca samuppada: conditioned, co-dependent arising of phenomena.

The details of the formula as presented in the Pali and subsequent analyses still give me trouble. I can, through analysis of experience, see how, first of all, all experience is phenomenal (definitional, really), and that what we presume to be real, discrete, enduring entities "out there" is really a mental reification of phenomena (that's connected to anatta). None of these phenomena that I have experienced popped up ex nihilo; upon examination I could see how they depended upon previous conditions in order to come into being. It gets a lot more complicated, but that's the basic framework that I could see.

Of course, JS, you shouldn't take my word for it, or anyone else's. The proof is in the pudding, as they say. Examine the core teachings, investigate them through your own experience and see how much sense they make to you. That's investigating the dhamma.