The essence of the Buddha's teaching can be summed up in two principles:
the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. The first covers 
the side of doctrine, and the primary response it elicits is 
understanding; the second covers the side of discipline, in the broadest
sense of that word, and the primary response it calls for is practice. 
In the structure of the teaching these two principles lock together into
an indivisible unity called the dhamma-vinaya, the 
doctrine-and-discipline, or, in brief, the Dhamma. The internal unity of
the Dhamma is guaranteed by the fact that the last of the Four Noble 
Truths, the truth of the way, is the Noble Eightfold Path, while the 
first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, right view, is the 
understanding of the Four Noble Truths. Thus the two principles 
penetrate and include one another, the formula of the Four Noble Truths 
containing the Eightfold Path and the Noble Eightfold Path containing 
the Four Truths.