How the Universe Works...According to the Buddha: The Four Noble Truths

photo courtesy of saamiblog on Flickr

Once he made up his mind to teach, the Buddha had to get down to the business of explaining what he learned. The first sermon he gave is referred to as The First Turning of the Dharma Wheel...by people who give flowery names to things. In this talk, he expounded upon the truth of impermanence, the 12 Fold Chain of Dependent Origination, the Noble Eightfold Path, and the Four Noble Truths. All of these make up the core of Buddhism, but the Four Noble Truths really set the framework for Life, the Universe, and Everything. 

These four simple ideas have been expounded upon, debated, and reinterpreted by Buddhist scholars, monks, and lay practitioners for millenia. In this article, I don't plan on trying to come up with some new version. Instead, I want to talk about two different interpretations that I find compelling in different ways. As always, take from each what you find meaningful and leave the rest. 

The first version I’d like to tackle is the more or less standard interpretation that many people come across in Comparative Religion Class. According to this translation the Four Noble Truths are:

1. Suffering or Life is Suffering

2. The Cause of Suffering or The Cause of Suffering is Attachment or The Cause of Suffering is Desire

3. The End of Suffering or Nirvana or Enlightenment

4. The Path or The Noble Eight Fold Path

I want to start by acknowledging the obvious which is that number two has a couple of different versions right there. As I was writing this, I started thinking of all the different ways I’ve heard this one and just started writing them down...not entirely sure why, but I think they are each meaningful in their own way. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The First Noble Truth in this version is a translation of the Sanskrit word dukkha which means suffering. Basically, the Buddha is saying that in this world of Samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth, there is suffering.

The Second Noble Truth is the cause of suffering which is a translation of the Sanskrit term samudaya. Most folks will go on to say something like what I’ve added to Number Two which is that this cause is our attachments or desires or cravings. 

The Third Noble Truth is that there is an end of suffering which is Nirvana or Enlightenment. Here the Sanskrit word being translated is nirodha which means cessation. In this case, the Buddha was most likely pointing to the cessation of the cycle of endless death and rebirth.

And lastly, the Fourth Noble Truth is the Noble Eightfold path which is how we get to Nirvana. Just for the record, the Sanskrit term here is magga meaning path.

This is the way that most of us first hear the Four Noble Truths and this version leads many especially from the outside to label the Buddha as a nihilist and Buddhism as a nihilistic religion that basically says life sucks and then you die. I would argue that what is happening is an issue of language rather than nihilism. This is especially true for the Second Noble Truth which seems to be telling us that the very act of caring about anything causes suffering. The two problematic words here are “suffering” and “attachment”.

Suffering is a problem because we tend to attach a lot of weight to this word that I don’t feel like was in the original meaning the Buddha intended. We say things like “He’s suffering from depression” or “Children in third world countries suffer from malnutrition". I don’t think this is quite what the Buddha was driving at. 

Attachment is also an issue because we think it means that we can’t like or love something. In my opinion, the Buddha was pointing to our desire for things to stay exactly as they are and never change. We don’t want the good things to end or the bad things to come and so we suffer. We want our new Harley to never get a scratch and so we suffer. With all this in mind, here is the version that I tend to use:

1. Life is inherently unsatisfactory.

2. It is unsatisfactory because we want it to be different than it is.

3. The way to be less dissatisfied is to accept things as they are.

4. The Noble Eightfold Path is a way to make all this easier.

This version of Number One comes from an alternate translation of the words the Buddha actually used. Dukkha could be read as suffering, but it could also be thought of as unsatisfactoriness. So maybe the Buddha was trying to get across the point that we will be disappointed in our lives and here’s why. It’s also important to note that the Buddha was also pointing to “unnecessary” suffering. As the t-shirts and coffee mugs like to say “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”. 

Life is unsatisfactory because we can’t accept how it is. We want all the nice things and none of the bad. We want all the bright shiny things in our lives to never lose their luster. My favorite line on this idea comes from Dogen’s Shobogenzo. In the essay entitled “Genjo Koan” he says that “flowers while loved fall, weeds while hated flourish”. We can’t accept the weeds and so we suffer. 

Number Three points to the need for acceptance of things as they are. This doesn’t mean that we just stand idly by while bad things happen and do nothing. That mentality is one of the most irksome things that wannabe Buddhist try to adopt. They will attempt to have no preferences about anything because they think that’s what the Buddha meant. I believe that he meant for us to accept that things are the way they are and then do something about it. If someone brings me a shit sandwich instead of my tasty burger, I can suffer by getting all wound up about the situation or I can accept that this has occurred and then send the shit sandwich back with a demand for a better meal. Being Buddhist does not mean you have to be some kind of radical pacifist with no preferences.

Lastly, the Buddha gave us a path to follow in order to have less suffering and more peace or to put it in a more flowery way, to end suffering and attain Enlightenment. I personally don’t like to talk in these terms because A. I’m not entirely sure that there is anything that we can really call Enlightenment and even if there is, I don’t think it is something we can attain in the way you might attain a new car and B. when you start throwing around words like the big E, people get all confused and start coming up with all kinds of ideas and conceptions. Instead, I prefer to look at the Noble Eightfold Path as a guide for leading a life that facilitates Buddhist practice. When you follow the path, you simplify your life and remove the things that get in the way of practice. The same goes for the precepts. As Daiho likes to point out, the Buddha was only concerned with the end of suffering so if something didn’t help toward that end then it wasn’t worth doing.

So there you go. Two different versions of the foundational principle of Buddhism. Take a quick trip around the internet and you’ll find many more. As always though, what really matters is the version that you find meaningful and that has an impact on your life. Until you can make them your own, they are just words on paper spoken by someone who died 2500 hundred years ago. Once you make them your own, they become a living and vital part of your practice.

Gassho,

Daishin