“Ajahn Lee often made the point that our practice is a skill. The Dhamma is all about skill. The words are there to help us master the skill, to understand the problems we face in mastering the skill, and understand the various approaches we might take to solve those problems. But the words are not the Dhamma; the words point to the Dhamma. The genuine Dhamma is something we have to do. One of the old meanings of the word Dhamma is ‘action’. To see Dhamma in this sense, we have to look at our actions very directly, very carefully, to see where they’re skillful and where they’re not.”
-Ven. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, ‘Meditations 6’.