This little article presents a very practical, non-dogmatic assessment of the Four Noble Truths, a cornerstone of Buddhist teaching, especially of the Theravada, the Buddhist tradition of Southeast Asia. I have accompanied the discussion of each of the truths with a photo from the natural world.
Written with the general reader in mind, the article aspires not only to inform, but to inspire the reader to adopt a course of action that inevitably leads to a better life.
First, a (very) brief background regarding the origination of the Four Noble Truths.
Gautama Siddhartha, known as the Buddha after his enlightenment, was born some time during the reign of King Bimbisara (558-491 BCE). At the time of the child's birth, Asita, a sage, predicted that Gautama would either be a king or a great sage. His father, Suddhodana, a chief of the Sakya clan, wanted to assure that he grew up to be a king. He did his very best to shelter his son from all signs of suffering. Venturing out of the palace on several occasions, Gautama, now a young man, encountered a sick man, a decaying corpse, and, finally, a sage. He was shocked to the core, coming face to face with suffering for the first time in his life. The peaceful expression of the sage, however, inspired him to leave the palace to discover the meaning of life, especially how to avoid suffering. He was 29; after searching for 6 years, he became enlightened after meditating 49 days under a pipal tree, which thereafter has been known as the Bodhi tree. Traditionally, the Four Noble Truths became apparent to him in a flash of insight at the time of this enlightenment.
The First Noble Truth, Dukkha, Suffering
Does the First Truth proclaim that "life is suffering?" If this were its chief message, Buddhism would be a miserable religion. People want to be challenged by truth; they want to be consoled by truth as well. And Buddhist truth is very much able to serve both functions. There must be, therefore, more to dukkha than suffering. There is indeed.
A monk from Sri Lanka once told me that in Pali--the dialect of Sanskrit which Buddha spoke and in which much of the ancient scriptures are written, one word can mean many things. I will explain by analogy.
The English language, has a very large vocabulary; each word tends to have a specific meaning. This is not true for German, which is an imagistic language.. (You generally don't need a dictionary, once you know the basics.) For instance, the word, "Vorstellung"--which is composed of "stellen" "to put," and of "vor," "before." If you put a concept before your mind, it's an idea. Hence, the title of Schopenhauer's famous treatise, "The World as Will and Idea," that is, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. If you put something before an audience, it is a performance, hence "Vorstellung" also means a performance at the theater If you place someone before others, you are introducing that person Hence, "Vorstellung" also means a social introduction. One word, Vorstellung, means performance, introduction as well as idea. You can figure the meaning out from the component parts and from the context in which it is used; this almost never occurs in English.
Pali is probably not as imagistic as German, but the word dukkha definitely has many shades of meaning. Suffering is one of them, but only as a secondary meaning. The principal meaning of dukkha is insufficiency. What Buddha is telling us is that nothing in the phenomenal world is going to satisfy your heart's desire. Are you old enough to remember the old hit of the Rolling Stones, "You Can't Always Get What You Want?" What Buddha taught is that you're never going to get what you want if you're searching in the wrong place. And nearly everyone, especially if young, is searching in the wrong place. For instance, if you're trying to be happy through money and power, you might feel satisfied for a while, but you will eventually fail, Happiness, ultimately, is not found in material things. This is the truth of dukkha.
2. The Second Noble Truth, Samudaya, the Origination of Suffering
In medicine, ascertaining the cause of a disease is an essential step in determining how the disease is best treated. Without a diagnosis, a doctor is much less likely to effect a cure. Similarly with Buddhism: the first step in curing life's dis-ease is understanding what causes it. This is the subject of the Second Noble Truth, the origination of dukkha. According to the Buddha, the cause of dukkha is tanha, thirst, that is, desire. With a little reflection, this truth is easily acknowledged. This view is nevertheless of crucial importance in modern, competitive societies in which excessive desire is rampant, A good example is a study which shows that if a C.E.O. determines that a C.E. O. in a similar field makes more money, he is unhappy until his salary is increased accordingly, even though he has more--usually much more--money to meet all reasonable needs. A positive example of the relation of desire to happiness is the case of Denmark. Denmark, based on objective criteria, has been determined to be the happiest country in the world. Why? When a Dane was asked that question, she replied that Danes don't expect much. When something good happens, it is more or less unexpected which results in, well, happiness.
The modern world seems to be singing a new version of the Rolling Stones classic, "We must always get what we want!" The unfairness of society and disparities in the natural distribution of talent and of intelligence makes "getting what you want" almost impossible. And even if one should, briefly, get what one wants, the First Truth assures that this would not be ultimately satisfactory.
What are we to do then? That is the subject of the Third Noble Truth.
3. The Third Noble Truth, Nirodha, the cessation of Dukkha
Suffering is fueled by wants; it drives the vehicle of body/mind around and around in vicious circles. We don't have to drive or be driven on an inevitable crash course from birth to death. There is a way out. This is Good News, the joyful tiding of the Third Truth.
Buddha taught that the ultimate goal in life is to escape it. Individualism must be completely transcended. Every desire is a hindrance; every desire must go. I--you see, I'm still using the pronoun "I"-- don't agree.
In ancient India, only an absolute answer to the problem of life would do. It was an (un)breeding ground for sages; those who remain in the world yet try to make it a better place are classical Buddhism's second-class citizens. Buddhism is of course right in asserting that we don't have to drive ourselves to death. However, the body/mind vehicle, the product of Darwinian evolution, assures that nearly all of us will remain on the road. So what are we to do? Slow down; enjoy the scenery; become a better driver; take pleasure in sharing the road.
For me, the teaching of Buddhism is absolutely right only when it is given a relative interpretation. I will explain, using an analogy from the quintessential American sport, baseball. Let's say you're out in left field. Let's say that left field is a very dangerous place and you're completely unaware of the danger. Let us imagine that the Buddha is out in right field; he wants you to return safely to home plate. He knows that the path from right field to home plate is arduous enough, and that the path from home plate to right field can only be traversed by an all-star sage. The call of the Buddha, however, is infectious. The man lost in left field is now on the path to Nirvana, the abode of Buddha. Through much hard work, he reaches home plate. This is more than enough!
To use a more traditional analogy: the message of Buddhism is to take those in a burning house to relative safety.
This aspect of Buddhism is similar to a teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. If one really turned the other cheek on all occasions, one wouldn't be able to survive for long. Who turns his cheek to a fanatic is apt to lose his head. I think Jesus was making a necessary exaggeration here. He realized that most humans are much more apt to punch each cheek of a neighbor rather than to meekly expose their own cheeks to the wrath of a neighbor. By using an exaggeration, Jesus perhaps hoped that he would his listeners to act in a less self-centered manner. The teaching is, therefore, not to be taken literally.
So let us practice Buddhism in a practical manner. One of the chief causes of misery in the world is indeed inordinate desire. If those in power had better insight into the harm inordinate desire causes, they would realize that they're on the wrong path; once on the right path, rampant inequality, the bane of modern civilization, would soon be vastly reduced. How can one act selfishly once one knows the truth?
Let's begin by tamping down our own inordinate desires in order to help not only ourselves, but everyone else as well. We will thus leave most worries and anxieties behind.
4. The Fourth Noble Truth, The Noble Eightfold Path
The Eightfold Path is represented here by the eight-petaled flower of the clematis. This photo was taken in our back yard.
The purpose of this article is to introduce the unfamiliar reader to a practical interpretation of Buddhism. A thorough understanding of the eight steps of the path is very useful, but this is not the place for it. (There are many excellent references, such as "What the Buddha Taught," by Walpola Rahula and "Buddhism: An Introduction and Guide," by Christmas Humphreys.) I will therefore gloss over all of steps but two, the ones I consider to be of crucial importance.
First Petal: Right View--Acknowledging that the Buddhist path is the right one on which to travel.
Second Petal: Right Resolve--One firmly decides to travel along this path, and begins immediately.
Third Path: Right Speech: Speech that demonstrates kindness and wisdom; avoidance of chatter and gossip.
Fourth Petal: Right Conduct: Unselfish actions based on kindness and love--including kindness and love for oneself.
Fifth Petal: Right Livelihood--The avoidance of livelihoods that cause harm; the practice of socially beneficial livelihoods.
Sixth Petal: Right Effort: walking the path with unflagging zeal,
The above is, of course, an exceedingly non-exhaustive summary. We will now briefly turn to the final two petals, Right Mindfulness and Right Samadhi (concentration)--these are the petals of meditation.
Everyone should meditate! The benefits are legion. For instance, functional MRIs (fMRIs) of the brain reveal that meditation lights up the entire brain, while non-meditative thought only causes firings of neurons locally. During meditation, as it were, your brain is jogging and receives benefits at least as salubrious as the ones one obtains by exercising the body. (In my own experience, which is admittedly anecdotal, I have seen Buddhist monks who, in their eighties and nineties, are still very much alert and vigorous.)
In the West, the health benefits of meditation are stressed: reduction of stress, lower blood pressure, reduction in anxiety and worry, etc. In the East, the emphasis is on the purpose of meditation: the attainment of wisdom, the experiential knowledge that everything is connected. I am a strong advocate of the Eastern view, which, of course, includes all the health benefits of stress reduction as well.
Talking about meditation is useful only if it results in practice.
Here is what Buddha taught about the petal of contemplation:
Herein the monk remains contemplating the body as body...; he remains contemplating feeling as feeling...; he remains contemplating mental states as mental states...; he remains contemplating mental objects as mental objects.
--from the Satipatthana Sutta
What is essential to note here is the absence of personal pronouns. In the stream of consciousness there are no yours and mines. These imaginary "yours" and "mines" are like debris which can obstruct the flow of consciousness and cause stagnation.
The seventh part of the eightfold path, mindfulness, teaches us that contemplation must be much more than practicing formal meditation twice daily. Mindfulness must be brought into our daily lives. If one, on the cusp of getting angry, says to oneself, "This is mind plus anger," the personal element dissolves and the anger dissipates.
Meditation, in the broadest sense, is a proven way to have, as it were, a salutary out-of-body experience while remaining in the body; a proven way to have a near-death experience, as it were, while increasing one's vitality. Recall the etymology of the word 'ecstasy'--being beside oneself, that is, transcending the self. It is, as it were, an infectious ease.
Words, words, words. To one who has never heard piano music, praise for it rings hollow. But if this praise inspires one to get a CD of, say, Chopin's ballades by, say, Evegeny Kissen, and to listen, really listen, the praise will have served its purpose.
Summary
I advocate a practical Buddhism. Darwinian evolution assures that very few of us will be able to completely transcend our selves--most of us, including me, don't even want to. As Ramana Maharshi, the greatest Hindu sage of the twentieth century, taught, once complete transcendence is obtained, there is nothing more to do. This is indeed a beautiful phenomenon when it occurs, but it is exceedingly rare. I, for one, and most likely you, as well, find much in the phenomenal world worth experiencing and doing--for one's own sake as well as for the sake of others.
It is obvious that there is much narcissism around--and within-us. Mediation is a proven way to find balance, a way of eliminating excess desire without destroying one's sense of individuality. For you, who consist of thoughts ultimately impersonal as the air you breathe; for you, who will remain convinced that you are much more than air; for you for whom thoughts are sometimes like live crabs scurrying about in increasing desperation in a pan of water on a lit stove --for you there is a practical method to manage the inevitable difficulties and failures of life. Buddhism provides it. What are you waiting for?
Gautama Siddhartha, known as the Buddha after his enlightenment, was born some time during the reign of King Bimbisara (558-491 BCE). At the time of the child's birth, Asita, a sage, predicted that Gautama would either be a king or a great sage. His father, Suddhodana, a chief of the Sakya clan, wanted to assure that he grew up to be a king. He did his very best to shelter his son from all signs of suffering. Venturing out of the palace on several occasions, Gautama, now a young man, encountered a sick man, a decaying corpse, and, finally, a sage. He was shocked to the core, coming face to face with suffering for the first time in his life. The peaceful expression of the sage, however, inspired him to leave the palace to discover the meaning of life, especially how to avoid suffering. He was 29; after searching for 6 years, he became enlightened after meditating 49 days under a pipal tree, which thereafter has been known as the Bodhi tree. Traditionally, the Four Noble Truths became apparent to him in a flash of insight at the time of this enlightenment.
The First Noble Truth, Dukkha, Suffering
Does the First Truth proclaim that "life is suffering?" If this were its chief message, Buddhism would be a miserable religion. People want to be challenged by truth; they want to be consoled by truth as well. And Buddhist truth is very much able to serve both functions. There must be, therefore, more to dukkha than suffering. There is indeed.
A monk from Sri Lanka once told me that in Pali--the dialect of Sanskrit which Buddha spoke and in which much of the ancient scriptures are written, one word can mean many things. I will explain by analogy.
The English language, has a very large vocabulary; each word tends to have a specific meaning. This is not true for German, which is an imagistic language.. (You generally don't need a dictionary, once you know the basics.) For instance, the word, "Vorstellung"--which is composed of "stellen" "to put," and of "vor," "before." If you put a concept before your mind, it's an idea. Hence, the title of Schopenhauer's famous treatise, "The World as Will and Idea," that is, Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. If you put something before an audience, it is a performance, hence "Vorstellung" also means a performance at the theater If you place someone before others, you are introducing that person Hence, "Vorstellung" also means a social introduction. One word, Vorstellung, means performance, introduction as well as idea. You can figure the meaning out from the component parts and from the context in which it is used; this almost never occurs in English.
Pali is probably not as imagistic as German, but the word dukkha definitely has many shades of meaning. Suffering is one of them, but only as a secondary meaning. The principal meaning of dukkha is insufficiency. What Buddha is telling us is that nothing in the phenomenal world is going to satisfy your heart's desire. Are you old enough to remember the old hit of the Rolling Stones, "You Can't Always Get What You Want?" What Buddha taught is that you're never going to get what you want if you're searching in the wrong place. And nearly everyone, especially if young, is searching in the wrong place. For instance, if you're trying to be happy through money and power, you might feel satisfied for a while, but you will eventually fail, Happiness, ultimately, is not found in material things. This is the truth of dukkha.
2. The Second Noble Truth, Samudaya, the Origination of Suffering
In medicine, ascertaining the cause of a disease is an essential step in determining how the disease is best treated. Without a diagnosis, a doctor is much less likely to effect a cure. Similarly with Buddhism: the first step in curing life's dis-ease is understanding what causes it. This is the subject of the Second Noble Truth, the origination of dukkha. According to the Buddha, the cause of dukkha is tanha, thirst, that is, desire. With a little reflection, this truth is easily acknowledged. This view is nevertheless of crucial importance in modern, competitive societies in which excessive desire is rampant, A good example is a study which shows that if a C.E.O. determines that a C.E. O. in a similar field makes more money, he is unhappy until his salary is increased accordingly, even though he has more--usually much more--money to meet all reasonable needs. A positive example of the relation of desire to happiness is the case of Denmark. Denmark, based on objective criteria, has been determined to be the happiest country in the world. Why? When a Dane was asked that question, she replied that Danes don't expect much. When something good happens, it is more or less unexpected which results in, well, happiness.
The modern world seems to be singing a new version of the Rolling Stones classic, "We must always get what we want!" The unfairness of society and disparities in the natural distribution of talent and of intelligence makes "getting what you want" almost impossible. And even if one should, briefly, get what one wants, the First Truth assures that this would not be ultimately satisfactory.
What are we to do then? That is the subject of the Third Noble Truth.
3. The Third Noble Truth, Nirodha, the cessation of Dukkha
Suffering is fueled by wants; it drives the vehicle of body/mind around and around in vicious circles. We don't have to drive or be driven on an inevitable crash course from birth to death. There is a way out. This is Good News, the joyful tiding of the Third Truth.
Buddha taught that the ultimate goal in life is to escape it. Individualism must be completely transcended. Every desire is a hindrance; every desire must go. I--you see, I'm still using the pronoun "I"-- don't agree.
In ancient India, only an absolute answer to the problem of life would do. It was an (un)breeding ground for sages; those who remain in the world yet try to make it a better place are classical Buddhism's second-class citizens. Buddhism is of course right in asserting that we don't have to drive ourselves to death. However, the body/mind vehicle, the product of Darwinian evolution, assures that nearly all of us will remain on the road. So what are we to do? Slow down; enjoy the scenery; become a better driver; take pleasure in sharing the road.
For me, the teaching of Buddhism is absolutely right only when it is given a relative interpretation. I will explain, using an analogy from the quintessential American sport, baseball. Let's say you're out in left field. Let's say that left field is a very dangerous place and you're completely unaware of the danger. Let us imagine that the Buddha is out in right field; he wants you to return safely to home plate. He knows that the path from right field to home plate is arduous enough, and that the path from home plate to right field can only be traversed by an all-star sage. The call of the Buddha, however, is infectious. The man lost in left field is now on the path to Nirvana, the abode of Buddha. Through much hard work, he reaches home plate. This is more than enough!
To use a more traditional analogy: the message of Buddhism is to take those in a burning house to relative safety.
This aspect of Buddhism is similar to a teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. If one really turned the other cheek on all occasions, one wouldn't be able to survive for long. Who turns his cheek to a fanatic is apt to lose his head. I think Jesus was making a necessary exaggeration here. He realized that most humans are much more apt to punch each cheek of a neighbor rather than to meekly expose their own cheeks to the wrath of a neighbor. By using an exaggeration, Jesus perhaps hoped that he would his listeners to act in a less self-centered manner. The teaching is, therefore, not to be taken literally.
So let us practice Buddhism in a practical manner. One of the chief causes of misery in the world is indeed inordinate desire. If those in power had better insight into the harm inordinate desire causes, they would realize that they're on the wrong path; once on the right path, rampant inequality, the bane of modern civilization, would soon be vastly reduced. How can one act selfishly once one knows the truth?
Let's begin by tamping down our own inordinate desires in order to help not only ourselves, but everyone else as well. We will thus leave most worries and anxieties behind.
4. The Fourth Noble Truth, The Noble Eightfold Path
The Eightfold Path is represented here by the eight-petaled flower of the clematis. This photo was taken in our back yard.
The purpose of this article is to introduce the unfamiliar reader to a practical interpretation of Buddhism. A thorough understanding of the eight steps of the path is very useful, but this is not the place for it. (There are many excellent references, such as "What the Buddha Taught," by Walpola Rahula and "Buddhism: An Introduction and Guide," by Christmas Humphreys.) I will therefore gloss over all of steps but two, the ones I consider to be of crucial importance.
First Petal: Right View--Acknowledging that the Buddhist path is the right one on which to travel.
Second Petal: Right Resolve--One firmly decides to travel along this path, and begins immediately.
Third Path: Right Speech: Speech that demonstrates kindness and wisdom; avoidance of chatter and gossip.
Fourth Petal: Right Conduct: Unselfish actions based on kindness and love--including kindness and love for oneself.
Fifth Petal: Right Livelihood--The avoidance of livelihoods that cause harm; the practice of socially beneficial livelihoods.
Sixth Petal: Right Effort: walking the path with unflagging zeal,
The above is, of course, an exceedingly non-exhaustive summary. We will now briefly turn to the final two petals, Right Mindfulness and Right Samadhi (concentration)--these are the petals of meditation.
Everyone should meditate! The benefits are legion. For instance, functional MRIs (fMRIs) of the brain reveal that meditation lights up the entire brain, while non-meditative thought only causes firings of neurons locally. During meditation, as it were, your brain is jogging and receives benefits at least as salubrious as the ones one obtains by exercising the body. (In my own experience, which is admittedly anecdotal, I have seen Buddhist monks who, in their eighties and nineties, are still very much alert and vigorous.)
In the West, the health benefits of meditation are stressed: reduction of stress, lower blood pressure, reduction in anxiety and worry, etc. In the East, the emphasis is on the purpose of meditation: the attainment of wisdom, the experiential knowledge that everything is connected. I am a strong advocate of the Eastern view, which, of course, includes all the health benefits of stress reduction as well.
Talking about meditation is useful only if it results in practice.
Here is what Buddha taught about the petal of contemplation:
Herein the monk remains contemplating the body as body...; he remains contemplating feeling as feeling...; he remains contemplating mental states as mental states...; he remains contemplating mental objects as mental objects.
--from the Satipatthana Sutta
What is essential to note here is the absence of personal pronouns. In the stream of consciousness there are no yours and mines. These imaginary "yours" and "mines" are like debris which can obstruct the flow of consciousness and cause stagnation.
The seventh part of the eightfold path, mindfulness, teaches us that contemplation must be much more than practicing formal meditation twice daily. Mindfulness must be brought into our daily lives. If one, on the cusp of getting angry, says to oneself, "This is mind plus anger," the personal element dissolves and the anger dissipates.
Meditation, in the broadest sense, is a proven way to have, as it were, a salutary out-of-body experience while remaining in the body; a proven way to have a near-death experience, as it were, while increasing one's vitality. Recall the etymology of the word 'ecstasy'--being beside oneself, that is, transcending the self. It is, as it were, an infectious ease.
Words, words, words. To one who has never heard piano music, praise for it rings hollow. But if this praise inspires one to get a CD of, say, Chopin's ballades by, say, Evegeny Kissen, and to listen, really listen, the praise will have served its purpose.
Summary
I advocate a practical Buddhism. Darwinian evolution assures that very few of us will be able to completely transcend our selves--most of us, including me, don't even want to. As Ramana Maharshi, the greatest Hindu sage of the twentieth century, taught, once complete transcendence is obtained, there is nothing more to do. This is indeed a beautiful phenomenon when it occurs, but it is exceedingly rare. I, for one, and most likely you, as well, find much in the phenomenal world worth experiencing and doing--for one's own sake as well as for the sake of others.
It is obvious that there is much narcissism around--and within-us. Mediation is a proven way to find balance, a way of eliminating excess desire without destroying one's sense of individuality. For you, who consist of thoughts ultimately impersonal as the air you breathe; for you, who will remain convinced that you are much more than air; for you for whom thoughts are sometimes like live crabs scurrying about in increasing desperation in a pan of water on a lit stove --for you there is a practical method to manage the inevitable difficulties and failures of life. Buddhism provides it. What are you waiting for?
Yes. Excellent and informative.
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