Back to Basics: Buddha's First Teaching - the Four Noble Truths

[Janet Gilmore]

Dear Sangha,

Happy spring everyone!  Hope everyone is enjoying the flowers and the maybe-a-little-too-warm start to our spring.   Here's an exploration of the teaching on the Four Noble Truths. It turned out to be a big subject (insert haha emoji here).   But it was fun to write and I'm turning in my assignment just minutes before my self-imposed deadline.  Hopefully we'll have a chance to discuss the Four Noble Truths after  meditation this morning.

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Once upon a time around 2500 years ago, Siddhartha of the Shakya clan was born somewhere near the border of India and Nepal.  His father was the elected chieftain of a relatively small kingdom. When Siddhartha was just an infant, as legend goes, an advisor to his father prophesied that the boy would become a great leader and have an enormous impact -- either as a king or as a spiritual leader. The king wanted an heir to the kingdom and didn't want him to become a religious fanatic so he basically spoiled him and the young boy had all the material comforts available at the time. He lived  mostly confined to the castle walls, had servants and knew only luxury. He grew up,  he married, he had a child and as was the custom for royals of the time, a harem of women to serve and entertain him.

As the story goes, at around age 29, Siddhartha went to survey his future kingdom and saw people on the street that were old, sick, dying and then he  just gave it all up and became a wandering ascetic determined to find the key to happiness or at least the end of suffering.   The way the story is told, its as if he didn't know there was suffering until he witnessed old age, sickness and death outside the castle walls. I'm pretty sure it's a bit more complicated.  The suffering he already knew was the unhappiness of having everything provided for him and it not being enough. The poor little rich boy type of suffering.  And age 29 no less!  In modern times, that's when many of us have what we call an identity crisis, spinning out, asking ourselves,   "What am I supposed to be doing with my life?" " Why am I so unhappy?"

For the following six years, Siddhartha became a spiritual seeker, trying to find the cause of suffering or the meaning of life or whatever way you want to say it.  And meeting many so-called masters and teachers and trying self-mortification and asceticism (because he had already tried the hedonism for the first 29 years of his life and knew that wasn't the answer),  and still not finding the answer he sought, he gave up those extreme measures, had something to eat and just sat under the Bodhi tree, determined not to get up until he discovered the cause and cure for suffering.

Through a combination of all of his efforts and experience, and after giving up all effort and preconceptions, the Buddha woke up to his true nature and knew the cause and the end of suffering. Because, as logic would have it,  these two go together: if you know the cause of something, remove the cause and you can eliminate the result.

At first, he thought this discovery was too subtle and he couldn't figure out a way to teach it to others  and that everyone else would have to go through their own version of what he had just done and discover it for themselves. So he would just take his discovery and  enjoy the rest of his life. Then the story goes, Brahma, maybe Indra too, appeared in a fanfare and instructed him to teach anyway, saying, "There are those with only a little dust in their eyes." 

The Four Noble Truths

The Four Noble Truths (suffering, the cause, cessation and path to the cessation) was the Buddha's first teaching after his enlightenment. His first sermon was given in Deer Park to his former fellow seekers, a group of ascetics who were at that point feeling betrayed and skeptical because Buddha had abandoned their techniques of asceticism.  Throughout the sutras, he gave teachings on the four noble truths over and over again. So maybe this is the most basic of all basic teachings or at least it is the one  that he felt would and could connect with an audience of spiritual seekers in his time.

The First Noble Truth - There is Suffering

"The first noble truth... is that when we feel suffering, it doesn't mean that something is wrong. What a relief. Finally, somebody told the truth." - Pema Chodron

The assertion that there is suffering is the first noble truth.  This seems pretty obvious and not at all profound. As Robert Thurman says, "any fool can experience suffering just by stubbing your toe."   In fact, this is what started Buddha on this journey to awakening.  Maybe it is what started many of us on our journey as well, if we are honest about it.  Hardly anyone (no one?) says to themselves, "My life is completely perfect and I'm happy all the time, so I think I'll go to great lengths and difficulty, spend a lot of time meditating, studying and seeking the meaning of life."   To begin to understand what the Buddha discovered, one has to admit and get on board with this reality that there is suffering.  And as Pema Chodron points out, for many of us this is a relief to hear -- someone finally telling it like it is.  This is the basic human condition that we all experience.

The truth of suffering teaching goes on to elaborate on the three types of suffering to help us understand why this truth is worth pointing out.  

Suffering of suffering. This is the one we’re most familiar with: the pain of birth, old age, sickness, and death, as the Buddha described it.  It's the range of "life sucks" experiences abject from poverty to stumping our toe or having a car wreck.  It may even be the suffering of having to watch our children, grandchildren, loved ones and friends go through the three kinds of suffering themselves.

Suffering of change. When you do get what you want, you can’t hold onto it. Even if things are going great now, it’s just a matter of time. The richest, most successful or powerful person in the world will eventually lose it all.  A side note: some of us take so-called pleasure in this idea and that is schadenfreude, taking pleasure in another's misfortune, the far enemy of joy, which actually cuts into our own capacity for joy and happiness so let's don't take the bait on that.  The suffering of change is better illustrated for most of us by what I'll call "restaurant suffering."  We go out to eat and we are hungry and desperate for the waitress or waiter to come and take our order. It seems to take forever and we suffer because the food takes too long to cook. Finally we get our food and take a bite and another and a few minutes later, we are sick of the food, the messy plate with a few bites left looks disgusting and we can't wait for someone to come bus the table and bring our check so we can get out of there.  This is closely related to the next category of suffering.

All-pervasive suffering. This is the type of suffering we are most likely not to recognize, yet the most instructive when we do. It’s the general background of anxiety and insecurity that colors even our happiest moments. Deep down, we fear that life doesn’t offer us solid ground and that our very existence is questionable. There is this constant grass-is-always-greener feeling, a general discontent with reality. We don't want what we have and we don't have what we want.  Our thoughts and stories have created a prison and a hell that we can't escape from because we don't even really slow down to notice it.  From a Buddhist point of view, all these doubts are well-founded, and exploring them offers us glimpses of wisdom. The Buddha said this third type of suffering is the root of the other two.

The Second Noble Truth- The Cause of Suffering

"The cause of all suffering is what we are thinking and believing" - Buddha

The second noble truth is that there is a cause of this suffering and it pretty much boils down to our own thoughts, feelings, beliefs and the stories that our minds wrap around our experience.

We may think we are suffering because of conditions or because other people are causing problems for us. Or we may think life is pretty good and we aren't suffering at all most of the time.  We suffer from all the usual human stuff, some of us suffer more than others, cause suffering for ourselves and cause harm for others (note that I don't say CAUSE suffering for others).  Buddha teaches that suffering originates in our own mind -- no matter what precipitating conditions may seem to be the cause.

Biologically, we want to survive and we want pleasant experiences. Psychologically, we want praise and we want meaning, relevance. We are the central character in our own epic Homerian story.  Our minds are our secret weapon and that weapon can be used for or against us.  Or as my father-in-law wisely put it, life is about 1% how you make it and 99% how you take it.  The proof of this lies in the pudding.  We have all noticed -- probably notice it every day -- that circumstances don't have to change for our mood to shift from happiness to unhappiness or vice versa.  That should be our first clue that the cause of suffering is how we look at things, our own perception, our own thoughts are the cause of suffering.

The Buddha said we all have 83 problems in life (the number is a random representation). These problems include all the normal ones:  illness, aging, death, our kids misbehaving or blaming us or ignoring us, losing loved ones, not having food in the fridge, having to fix the fridge or buy a new one,  talking to AT&T customer support, other people not being enlightened, not getting a vacation, being exhausted from having a vacation... etc.  He says we will all have 83 problems because when we get rid of one another will take its place. The only problem we can solve is the 84th one. The 84th problem is the problem of not wanting to have any problems.

Another way of saying this is that the cause of suffering is our constant trying to get what we (the self) wants (attachment) and get rid of what we don't want (aversion), so basically it is our belief in the solid self that is the cause of our suffering.

The Third Noble Truth -Cessation of Suffering

"Imagine if our negative feelings, or at least lots of them, turned out to be illusions, and we could dispel them by just contemplating them from a particular vantage point."- Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True

Suffering may be what brings us to the path but the possibility of cessation of suffering is what keeps us here. this is the real crux of the teaching.   Cessation of suffering is possible once we realize its cause, let go of the delusion of self, recognize the true nature of vast interdependence and impermanence. There is no self to feed or protect, so we can abandon our constant grasping and aversion.

The Fourth Noble Truth - EIghtfold Path to Awakening

"The truth of the path is like the medicine" — Buddhaghosa.

The Buddha recognized that how we view things, how we act and speak and what we spend our time cultivating (practice) matter and he taught that there is a practical, day to day, path to awakening called the Eightfold Path, which is about living a mindful life to benefit and not harm others.  The fourth noble truth gives us a way to approach day to day living that helps foster an environment where our mind can free itself.

The Eightfold Path are eight non-linear steps/approaches that we can cultivate:

Right View (view of wisdom, understanding, interdependence, impermanence, no self)

Right intention (to benefit and not harm, to live with presence and mindfulness)

RIght Speech (honest and helpful speech, not lying, gossiping or spreading hate or wasting speech on idle chatter)

Right Action (action and conduct that helps, not harms, others_

RIght Livelihood (earning a living in a way that does not harm others)

RIght Effort (directing our effort towards awakening and living an ethical life)

Right Mindfulness (being present and conscious in each moment - on and off the meditation cushion)

Right Concentration (practicing meditation and non-distraction)

The eightfold path is a practical system for transforming one's life and cultivating the middle way that the Buddha discovered. He is teaching us from the beginning not to be simply goal-oriented about grasping happiness or getting rid of suffering but to see every moment of our lives as the path and as a means and opportunity for awakening.