Introducing the Four Noble Truths
The Four Noble Truths were the Buddha’s first body of teachings and outline the dharma altogether. For now, I’ll just go over them all briefly as a general introduction, then through the course, we’ll go into each in more depth.
They are:
1) There is suffering in life
2) That suffering arises from causes
3) There is total freedom from suffering
4) There is a path to that freedom
In technical terms, we’ll often hear “the truth of suffering”, “the truth of the origins of suffering”, “the truth of the cessation of suffering”, and “the truth of the path”.
The teachings of the Four Noble Truths are expressions of, and a call back home to, our true nature---the Buddha nature.
Many of us say that this infinite wisdom, openness, and compassion within us is like “Noble Truth Zero” in that it’s the ground of life altogether, whether shining through as freedom, or temporarily ensnared in cycles of suffering we call samsara, or “cyclic existence”.
It was the Buddha’s full blown buddha nature which was giving the teaching of the Four Noble Truths to guide others, and it is the buddha nature of any of us learning Buddhism that recognizes the teachings and puts them into practice.
It’s important to really appreciate this basis, or all the emphasis on how we suffer in the teachings can become gloomy in a way that isn’t the meaning. Rather, they’re a roadmap of how we recognize our suffering, heal and release it, and come home to our buddha nature, which is always free.
In fact, it’s our own buddha nature in action which has brought us this far already. It’s our buddha nature that brought us to meditation to begin with, often because we’d experienced some form of suffering and longed to heal. This brings us to the first noble truth.
This first noble truth is called “the truth of suffering”. It means that we do in fact experience suffering in life. It’s helpful to relate with this as a loving invitation to embrace our suffering exactly the way it is. It’s saying that it’s OK that we’re suffering, because that’s part of life. Accepting our suffering is the beginning of how it’s healed. Otherwise, our efforts at practice can be a struggle against reality, or a spiritual bypass of our own pain.
Buddhism describes three main forms of suffering. One is the “suffering of suffering” which means things that are inherently difficult, especially being born, aging, getting sick, and dying. These are things we all experience.
The next is the “suffering of change”, which means either getting what we wanted and then losing it, not being able to get it at all, or getting what we didn’t want.
The suffering of change is one of those delightfully simplistic ways that Buddhism encapsulates an enormous variety of the difficult circumstances we experience. For example, losing a job, having a fulfilling career situation then getting overworked and burning out, a bad break up, an inability to find “the right” partner, getting stuck in a bad job, etc., etc., etc, would all be the suffering of change.
The third is “all-pervasive suffering” which means that due to the constant state of impermanence or change in life, and our own partial disconnection from the freedom of our buddha nature, we experience a constant state of varying levels of anxiety or unease. It’s that quality of always trying to get or hold things together, but it never completely working out all the way. Wherever we are, something’s not quite working. Or, we can’t totally just relax.
The second noble truth is called “the truth of the origins of suffering”. This means that suffering only arises because it has causes and conditions. (The implication being, as we’ll see in the third noble truth, that as those are removed, no more suffering)
While the most basic grasping and solidification of the mind is at the most subtle root, it plays out and develops into two broader origins of suffering described in the second noble truth: kleshas or “afflictive emotions”, and karma, which refers to actions based on them that create cycles of suffering both personally, and also societally.
Kleshas, or “afflictive emotions” are literally defined as emotional states which disturb the peace and well-being of our minds and bodies. For example, Buddhism highlights craving, aggression, ignorance, arrogance, and jealousy. That said, the actual variety of kleshas we experience can be infinite, as we all have our own unique emotional landscape. Anxiety, self-hatred, depressive thinking, overwhelm, exhaustion or burnout, etc, etc., would all be kleshas---any emotional state which disturbs our well-being.
It's very important here that not all emotions are kleshas. There are also all manner of healthy, flowing emotional states that do not cause suffering (or if they do, very subtle). For instance, creativity, love, gratitude, sadness which moves us, etc., etc.
Karma refers to actions, especially those that arise from kleshas, which create cycles of suffering in our own lives, and also become systematized in societies. For example, acting out lots of anger hurts our own hearts, usually hurts other people, and puts into place the causes for more negative things to happen in the future, especially cycles of conflict and even violence.
Or, as many of us well know, centuries of too much societal greed has created an unsustainable way and pace of life, our environment is unbalanced, and many of us are burnt out just trying to keep up, our energy is depleted, we’re stressed out all the time, etc, etc., etc.
We’ll discuss this a lot more as we progress through the course.
The third noble truth is that there is freedom from suffering. This is extremely important, and it’s saying that none of our problems “go all the way down” so to speak, but that it’s possible to be completely free.
In fact, it’s true to form, as we are the buddha nature innately. We didn’t actually improve anything, nor remove any fundamental fault from our core. All we did was remove the temporary causes of suffering and come home to what’s there.
This is beautifully described in one of the main texts about buddha nature, the Uttaratantra, or the “sublime continuum”:
“Nothing whatsoever is to be removed.
Not the slightest thing is to be added.
Truly looking at truth, truth is seen.
When seen, this is complete liberation.”
This third noble truth is coming home completely and forever to our buddha nature, and to the sacredness of all of life.
In full blown form, we’d call this “enlightenment” and it means no more kleshas, no more karma, but just complete freedom. As we realize that freedom, we can help others more and more.
The fourth noble truth describes the path of how we do this.
The path is shila, or conduct, samadhi, or meditation, and prajna, or wisdom. Those are Sanskrit terms.
(As an aside, many of us have heard a more extended presentation called “the eightfold path”, which we’ll also talk about. Tibetan Buddhism tends to condense it into shila, samadhi, and prajna).
Shila or conduct means how we actually live our lives. Buddhism encourages us to cause as little harm as possible, to work towards the benefit and freedom of everyone, and ultimately to live in alignment with the sacredness or buddha nature of everyone. We can do this in all manner of ways.
Meditation or samadhi, is, well, meditation. It refers to all the various meditation practices that help us along.
Wisdom or prajna is cultivated by hearing or studying various dharma teachings, contemplating their meaning, and meditating within that meaning so that we realize it experientially.
The most precious wisdom is the buddha nature itself, which we can hear about, be guided towards, and realize in our practice.
Yet as we’ve discussed, it’s actually what’s been guiding us all along.