Four Noble Truths
Jun. 20th, 2004 09:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcepsaOne of the most important teachings of the Buddha, and one of the most often cited, is that "Life Is Suffering." This is the first of what are described as the Four Noble Truths. However, most people tend to focus on that one and not bother with the other three. Whenever something unpleasant happens to them, they just say "life is suffering," and go on their way. What was designed as the opening to a series of statements about how to live happily has become, ironically, an excuse to remain in misery. The exchange goes something like this:
A: "I'm miserable."
B: "Why don't you do something to change that?"
A: "Because life is suffering, so even if I did do something about my current situation, something else would just come along to make me unhappy. In fact, it might even make me more unhappy than I am now. No, I might as well just stay where I am and save my energy."
The thing I don't understand about that is, for what are they saving their energy? To suffer more later?
Many people don't even realize that there are three other statements that go with that one to make up the full teaching. I didn't until very recently know that myself. I had heard about Buddhism, but like most people I had only associated that first statement with it, and so I thought, "Wow, one of their core teachings is that life is suffering? No, that doesn't sound like the way I want my life to be. I don't buy it!" And I went on my painful way. Because whether I wanted to admit it or not, a lot of my life has been suffering.
Which brings us to the second Noble Truth: Suffering is caused by attachments. This one I actually arrived at independently. Between looking at what made me unhappy and seeing how bent out of shape people get when they don't get what they want, it seemed pretty obvious that their attachments were what caused them to suffer. By the time that I found out that this was the second Noble Truth, I was able to say "Oh, yeah, definitely." The tricky part of this one, for me, was to realize that morality is an attachment. (See entry: Thinking Makes It So)
It's easy to see that people have attachments to things. It's the basis for most of our culture, after all. "Get a job selling stuff to people so you can afford to buy stuff for yourself" is basically the philosophy that drives the western world. If you were to stop buying anything except for the bare minimum that you need to stay alive, and possibly entertain yourself a little bit, the economy would almost certainly crash. We don't really need almost all of the products created these days. However, they don't want to crash, so they have to convince you otherwise. This is the primary if not single purpose of advertising: to tell you that you are incomplete and insufficient without their product. We have an attachment to the idea of being complete and sufficient, so if we buy into the advertising, then we suffer. To alleviate the suffering, we go out and buy the product, expecting that it will make us whole and worthy of happiness.
"Grr!" We think, "Those greedy, money-grubbing corporation CEOs! How dare they take advantage of us like that?!" Well, as far as I can tell, it's because they're stuck in the trap of their own making: they believe that they need this stuff to be happy, too! So they're suffering also.
In addition, we have the attachments to ideas of how circumstances should be. If they aren't, then we're not happy. "If only," we think, "I was living in a different place, I could be happy." "If only I had a better lover, I would be happy." "If only I had done things differently when I was younger, but now it's too late for me to be happy." "That guy just cut me off in traffic! How rude! People just shouldn't do that! Doesn't he understand that because of him, we're all going to be that much later getting to where we need to get to? People should think of each other more often! Who does he think he is? That jerk could have caused an accident! I'm running late enough as it is without getting caught in a fender-bender caused by some idiot!" And before you know it, you've got a nice big seething ball of hate in your gut sending tendrils of misery up your spine to wrap tightly around your brain. Why? Because of your attachment to a fantasy world that doesn't exist. Reality is that he cut you off; everything after that is something that you created.
Which brings us to the third and, for me, most important Noble Truth: It is possible to end suffering. That's right. The first observation, that life is suffering, is a statement about how things are right now. Pretty much everyone has these attachments, and thus they suffer. But it's not set in stone. It is possible to end the suffering. That's what most people don't get. Or refuse to believe. After all, it sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? Where's the catch, huh? Where's the little string attached? TANSTAAFL, we've been taught: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." Well, yeah, I suppose in this case, you're right. You do have to give up something to end your suffering. You have to give up suffering. You have to consciously say, "Hey! If I did that, I'd be miserable! I don't want to be miserable, so I'm not going to do that!"
That is, as far as I can tell, what Buddhism is really about: figuring out what you suffer over, how it happens, and how to avoid it or get out of it. What are your particular attachments, and how can you let go of them?
Which brings us to the Fourth Noble Truth. I haven't gotten to this stage too much myself, but it basically says that the way to end suffering is by following the Eightfold Path. This might be true; I'll admit right now that I haven't consciously deliberately tried it, so I can't say. I can say, however, that loving yourself exactly how you are seems to work pretty well. However, it's probably one of the hardest things you can do to really love yourself.
I think that what pretty much everyone wants more than anything is love, understanding, compassion. We're conditioned from a very young age that we aren't deserving of those things just the way we are. Advertising tells us that we need these products before we can be loved. Even bigger, religions tell us that unless we act accordingly (i.e. the way they tell us), not only will we not be worth of love from each other, we will not be worthy of love from our Creator. Scary and scarring. To make matters worse, the two are constantly sending mixed messages.
Advertising screams, "Buy our stuff! Make yourself beautiful so that people will love you! If you don't, you can't be happy!"
Preachers scream, "Shun all worldly pleasures, for God forbids you to partake of them! Renounce desire! Renounce passion! Renounce this life, so that you will be worthy of the next!"
Is it really any wonder that people are so confused?
Today's quotation is brought to you from Bertrand Russell:
"If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years."
I'll leave you with this invitation: Consider for a moment the possibility that you are, underneath all your conditioning, still worthy. You don't need to buy anything to prove it, and you don't need to do anything to prove it.
What would you do then?
A: "I'm miserable."
B: "Why don't you do something to change that?"
A: "Because life is suffering, so even if I did do something about my current situation, something else would just come along to make me unhappy. In fact, it might even make me more unhappy than I am now. No, I might as well just stay where I am and save my energy."
The thing I don't understand about that is, for what are they saving their energy? To suffer more later?
Many people don't even realize that there are three other statements that go with that one to make up the full teaching. I didn't until very recently know that myself. I had heard about Buddhism, but like most people I had only associated that first statement with it, and so I thought, "Wow, one of their core teachings is that life is suffering? No, that doesn't sound like the way I want my life to be. I don't buy it!" And I went on my painful way. Because whether I wanted to admit it or not, a lot of my life has been suffering.
Which brings us to the second Noble Truth: Suffering is caused by attachments. This one I actually arrived at independently. Between looking at what made me unhappy and seeing how bent out of shape people get when they don't get what they want, it seemed pretty obvious that their attachments were what caused them to suffer. By the time that I found out that this was the second Noble Truth, I was able to say "Oh, yeah, definitely." The tricky part of this one, for me, was to realize that morality is an attachment. (See entry: Thinking Makes It So)
It's easy to see that people have attachments to things. It's the basis for most of our culture, after all. "Get a job selling stuff to people so you can afford to buy stuff for yourself" is basically the philosophy that drives the western world. If you were to stop buying anything except for the bare minimum that you need to stay alive, and possibly entertain yourself a little bit, the economy would almost certainly crash. We don't really need almost all of the products created these days. However, they don't want to crash, so they have to convince you otherwise. This is the primary if not single purpose of advertising: to tell you that you are incomplete and insufficient without their product. We have an attachment to the idea of being complete and sufficient, so if we buy into the advertising, then we suffer. To alleviate the suffering, we go out and buy the product, expecting that it will make us whole and worthy of happiness.
"Grr!" We think, "Those greedy, money-grubbing corporation CEOs! How dare they take advantage of us like that?!" Well, as far as I can tell, it's because they're stuck in the trap of their own making: they believe that they need this stuff to be happy, too! So they're suffering also.
In addition, we have the attachments to ideas of how circumstances should be. If they aren't, then we're not happy. "If only," we think, "I was living in a different place, I could be happy." "If only I had a better lover, I would be happy." "If only I had done things differently when I was younger, but now it's too late for me to be happy." "That guy just cut me off in traffic! How rude! People just shouldn't do that! Doesn't he understand that because of him, we're all going to be that much later getting to where we need to get to? People should think of each other more often! Who does he think he is? That jerk could have caused an accident! I'm running late enough as it is without getting caught in a fender-bender caused by some idiot!" And before you know it, you've got a nice big seething ball of hate in your gut sending tendrils of misery up your spine to wrap tightly around your brain. Why? Because of your attachment to a fantasy world that doesn't exist. Reality is that he cut you off; everything after that is something that you created.
Which brings us to the third and, for me, most important Noble Truth: It is possible to end suffering. That's right. The first observation, that life is suffering, is a statement about how things are right now. Pretty much everyone has these attachments, and thus they suffer. But it's not set in stone. It is possible to end the suffering. That's what most people don't get. Or refuse to believe. After all, it sounds too good to be true, doesn't it? Where's the catch, huh? Where's the little string attached? TANSTAAFL, we've been taught: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch." Well, yeah, I suppose in this case, you're right. You do have to give up something to end your suffering. You have to give up suffering. You have to consciously say, "Hey! If I did that, I'd be miserable! I don't want to be miserable, so I'm not going to do that!"
That is, as far as I can tell, what Buddhism is really about: figuring out what you suffer over, how it happens, and how to avoid it or get out of it. What are your particular attachments, and how can you let go of them?
Which brings us to the Fourth Noble Truth. I haven't gotten to this stage too much myself, but it basically says that the way to end suffering is by following the Eightfold Path. This might be true; I'll admit right now that I haven't consciously deliberately tried it, so I can't say. I can say, however, that loving yourself exactly how you are seems to work pretty well. However, it's probably one of the hardest things you can do to really love yourself.
I think that what pretty much everyone wants more than anything is love, understanding, compassion. We're conditioned from a very young age that we aren't deserving of those things just the way we are. Advertising tells us that we need these products before we can be loved. Even bigger, religions tell us that unless we act accordingly (i.e. the way they tell us), not only will we not be worth of love from each other, we will not be worthy of love from our Creator. Scary and scarring. To make matters worse, the two are constantly sending mixed messages.
Advertising screams, "Buy our stuff! Make yourself beautiful so that people will love you! If you don't, you can't be happy!"
Preachers scream, "Shun all worldly pleasures, for God forbids you to partake of them! Renounce desire! Renounce passion! Renounce this life, so that you will be worthy of the next!"
Is it really any wonder that people are so confused?
Today's quotation is brought to you from Bertrand Russell:
"If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise in a few years."
I'll leave you with this invitation: Consider for a moment the possibility that you are, underneath all your conditioning, still worthy. You don't need to buy anything to prove it, and you don't need to do anything to prove it.
What would you do then?
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4 noble truths
Date: 2004-10-01 09:52 am (UTC)1) Life if suffering
2) We suffer because of our attachments
3) Anatmen (sp?) no-self...we must realize that there is no 'self' (or at least that's what my notes say)
Re: 4 noble truths
Date: 2004-10-01 04:31 pm (UTC)That having been said, I am curious about which part irritated you. From some of the information that I have found (see links below) the Four Noble Truths are:
1) Life is suffering
2) We suffer because of our attachments
3) It is possible to end suffering/cause the suffering to cease (one of the ways that has been taught for doing this is by realizing that that which we perceive of as our selves is illusion, which seems to be what your notes refer to)
4) The way to end suffering is by following the Eightfold Path. (Though I prefer to think of it as "One" instead of "The" because I'm not convinced that there aren't others ;)
The first step of the Eightfold Path seems to me to be referring to an understanding of the Noble Truths, as opposed to actually implementing them (and causing the circular problem that you observed). Given that the Truths address the matter of becoming free from suffering, it makes sense to me that the first step of becoming free from that suffering would be to develop a deep understanding of what it means to suffer, what attachments are, how they develop, and what is meant by the idea of becoming free from suffering. It does me no good to be traveling very quickly if I am mistakenly traveling in a direction other than the one in which my destination lies.
Links:
http://www.nyimc.org/articles/truths.htm
http://www.buddhaweb.org/
http://www.rinpoche.com/fornob.html
http://www.4truths.com/