The Four Noble Truths

The Four Noble Truths is the traditional starting point for a study of
Buddhist philosophy. When the Buddha was 35 years old, several weeks
after his great enlightenment he gave his first formal discourse in
Deer Park in Isipatanna, in northeastern India. He gave it to his five
former ascetic friends who had practiced with him before. They stepped
onto the pages of history when they became the Buddha's first monks,
and the Buddha's first teaching to them was the four noble truths,
which are:

There is dukkha, suffering.
The cause of suffering is clinging, thirst, unwholesome desire.
There is an end to suffering, nirvana.
There is a way to the end of suffering, which is the noble eightfold path.

"Noble," as it is used here, means an all pervasive truth that is as
true as the law of gravity. Gravity is true whether you believe in it
or not. Whether you understand gravity or not, or agree with gravity,
or if it is not convenient for you at this time, if you jump off a
ten-story building, you will go splat on the pavement, whether you
like it or not. Anywhere in the universe there is gravity and the four
noble truths. That is what is meant by a noble truth.

Dukkha is one of those Pali and Sanskrit terms that cannot be properly
translated into English. Pali is the oldest Buddhist language.
Theravada Buddhists (the southern school) like to think that the
Buddha spoke in Pali, but no one is sure about that. Dukkha translates
as suffering, but it has a much wider meaning than that. It also means
impermanence, insubstantiality, changeability, unsatisfactoriness and
transitoriness. Everything in the entire universe is of the nature of
dukkha. Anything that is made will fall apart and crumble and die,
including the entire universe. The first noble truth is that life is
suffering, dukkha. The Buddha's point is-accept it. Accept reality.
This is the nature of reality. Even the surface of the earth is
impermanent. The idea that planet Earth has a natural balance, an
inherent harmony, which always gently brings it back to normal, is
just bad science! The evidence proves that Earth has gone through
radical changes constantly, and the last 10,000 years is just one snap
shot during this brief period of relative calm. So, even the crust of
the earth where we live is impermanent in its short term stability and
reliability!

There was a famous American philosopher in the 1970s who eloquently
described the first noble truth. She said "There's always something!"
This was when Gilda Radner would dress up as Rosane Rosanadana on
Saturday Night Live. As the years rolled by, long after she died, I
finally realized what Rosane Rosanadana meant for us to understand.
Her teaching is that there's always something messing up. There's
always something going wrong. When Rosane Rosanadana contemplated the
reality of all of the suffering in the world, she often remarked, "I
thought I was gonna die!" Rosana was telling us to face the facts of
the first noble truth of dukkha: no matter how beautiful and wonderful
you are, something is going to fall apart in your life. Wiser words
were never spoken.

Another great philosopher was Shaw, who said "There are two great
disappointments in life. One is not getting what you want, and the
other is getting it." The second noble truth taught by the Buddha is
that the cause of our suffering is desire, which translates to mean
thirst, clinging, attachment, grasping, craving, addiction, obsessive
compulsive behaviours of all kinds. The root of suffering is "the
pursuit of happiness." We each have a nagging itch that is a constant
pull away from the present moment. That is desire. Desire itself does
not have to be painful but when desire becomes attachment it is
painful. The pleasure of what we enjoy is lost by coveting more.
Desire persists. An example of clinging can be found in monkeys in
Africa. Foreign zoos and zoological societies buy monkeys that are
caught by people who put nuts in glass jars. The jars have very narrow
openings and are weighed down so heavily that monkeys can't move them.
They come in the morning and spread out many of these jars on the
jungle floor, then they go back and play cards all day. At the end of
the day they come and find many monkeys trapped by the jars. The
monkeys reach in for the nuts but they can't take their hands out with
their fists full. Their monkey brains don't tell them that they just
have to let go of their clinging to be free. So unharmed, they are
captured and sent away. When people go to see their best friend to
talk about their problems, it's like they are holding on to a jar with
one hand. Their best friend may tell them to let go of their problem,
or their friend may polish their jar and nurture their clinging, or
they may do something else. This demonstrates the second noble truth –
the cause of suffering is clinging.

One common criticism of the Buddha is the question, "If the Buddha
didn't have any desires, then why did he teach? Isn't that a desire?
Isn't doing compassionate action for people a form of desire?" The
issue is unwholesome desire. It is alright to have wholesome desire,
like right effort. One way to understand right effort, number six in
the eightfold path is that it is opposite of desire. Effort means to
rub up against your habitual desires, to go against your habitual
desires. For example, a married man may have the habitual pattern of
pursuing sexually arousing women which results in extramarital
affairs. But then he heeds the Buddha's precept to not engage in
sexual misconduct. He's at a client's office party and he meets a
woman who's presence causes him to trigger his habitual glandular
response. But his effort in this case is to look at his own lust, to
look at his own mind. He slowly turns away from her and reaches for
some broccoli and dip. He holds himself back, then later goes home to
his wife and kids. So, in this example, the man's sexual desire arose
and then it was his effort that broke him out of his instinctual
habitual pattern. So unwholesome desire is bad, effort is good. When
the Buddha chose to get up and teach he was not acting out of
clinging, attachment or craving desire. He chose to apply effort to
extend his compassion to others. That is why the Buddha taught the
dhamma.

The third noble truth is that there is a cessation to suffering. It is
called nirvana, the final ultimate enlightenment. Unless someone told
you, how would you know? There actually is such a thing. A state of no
suffering, a state beyond suffering. A permanent deathless state
beyond the struggles of samsara. Enlightenment is the transcendence of
the self, or self limitation. It is the discarding of the ego. The
word nirvana translates literally as 'blown out.' Meaning, the ego is
blown out. After that, there is no longer any possibility of ever
slipping back into the sleep of ego ever again. You are awake!
Enlightenment is the extinction of greed, hatred and delusion.

The fourth noble truth is that there is a path which will lead a
practitioner to the end of suffering. This path is what the Buddha
taught. He described it as the eightfold path because there are eight
aspects to the path. They are practiced together, not in any
particular order. The most universal symbol of the Buddhist religion
is the wheel. It is represented with eight spokes, so it is said that
the Buddha first turned the wheel of dharma during that discourse to
the five monks in Deer Park. That was called the dharmachakra sutra,
which means the turning of the wheel discourse. Just about everything
the Buddha taught for 45 years was aspects of this eightfold path
which is divided into the three stages of virtue, mental purification
and insight or wisdom. The eight are: right view, right intention,
right speech, right discipline, right livelihood, right effort, right
mindfulness and right absorption.

Those are the four noble truths, which is a concise description of the
Buddha's message. He summed up his entire life's message in that first
discourse. The rest of the time he kept repeating the same message in
different formats and patterns to a diverse assortment of people but
it was that same message of liberation.

Brian Ruhe

From http://www.theravada.ca/the-four-nobel-truths/