The Four Noble Truths

The four noble truths is the very first teaching that the Buddha gave after he became liberated.  He basically taught that Life is marked by suffering; Suffering has a cause; There is a way to escape the suffering, and the noble eightfold path is a way to escape it.

Many people think Buddhism is a negative spiritual path because it talks about suffering so much.  I've heard some people comment that they don't suffer that much, that their life is pretty good, so why would they want to listen to all this talk about suffering?  Its negative, and depressing, and aren't there enough depressing things in the world? Why not talk about the bliss of Nirvana, or the rapture of heaven?  The reason why the Buddha's first teaching was about suffering was because he was just being honest.  He saw very clearly just how much we are all suffering, and he saw what the root of that suffering was. He realized that the place to start was to admit with complete honesty, exactly where we are as humans.  He wasn't saying that 100% of our existence was suffering. He wasn't complaining or commiserating about this fact of life, he was pointing it out clearly so that there would be a starting point based in honest clarity.  Just like at an AA meeting people stand, state their name and then say: "I am an alcoholic"  They don't say that because they are asking for pity, or help from some government agency. They state that because they have come to realize that starting from a place of clear honesty is the only way to escape the cycle of suffering they have created for themselves.

When the Buddha became free of his ego, he realized very deeply that there are three types of suffering.  The first type he called the suffering of pain. We all know what this one is.  When we stub our toe, it hurts.  When we walk outside in the winter our hands may ache with the pain of being cold.  Our brains have evolved to let us know when there is a problem with our bodies.  If our hand hurts, the organism needs to know it.  If we are hungry, we need to eat. If we are cold, we need to seek out warmth. If we are sick, we need to seek help, or at least lay down, so our body can use its energy reserves to fight the illness.  We feel the suffering of pain because of the conditioning of our DNA.  Some organisms which lived long ago may not have felt pain, and were at a grave disadvantage. Those species became extinct because they weren't able to feel the pain when something wasn't right.  There are people born today which by a fluke of nature can not feel pain.  These people usually don't live long.

The second  type of suffering that the Buddha saw was the suffering of change.  We feel this kind of suffering whenever we feel that something shouldn't be the way it is. If we had been used to it being that way, and we accepted how it was, then we wouldn't have perceived a change. Sometimes I see myself feeling resentful that its so cold in the winter.  If I let my reasoning come to words it might sound something like this: "How come its so cold. My hands hurt, my toes hurt, I have to wear bulky clothing and even that doesn't keep my body warm enough.  Six months ago it was warm, so why is it cold now?!?  I don't want it to be cold!"  I don't actually say those words, but my emotional reaction is the same as if I had.

This resistance to the present situation is based in the notion that it shouldn't be that way, that it should be better, or more fun, or more nourishing, or more comfortable. There is a comparison going on.  If I had been born on an Ice planet which was always cold, and I had never knew warmth, then I would not resist being cold.  I would not suffer from the change. Another example of the suffering of change is when someone we love doesn't love us anymore.  Oh how painful the suffering of change is. Whether they never actually loved us the whole time, or whether they did and their feelings for us changed, its just as painful because we see it as a change.  Its a change in how we thought our world was.  As human beings we resist change at every turn, unless we see the change as an improvement of some condition we had already been resisting.  For example, in the spring it is so blissful to be able to go outside in a T-shirt and feel warmth.

The suffering of pain and the suffering of change are linked.  For instance when we burn our finger, we feel pain, and our minds may think. It shouldn't be this way, and then we shout. "WHO LEFT THE STOVE ON!"
We had a finger that was doing just fine, and then our world was disrupted and now it hurts. We want to know how to fix the situation so it won't happen ever again, and so our anger rises to help us fix that situation. We look for a reason that we can focus our laser beam eyes on and we usually find someone or something to blame.  Sometimes we blame ourselves and in these cases we turn our anger inward.  Guilt is anger turned inward.

Politics is a great example of the suffering of change.  People get so upset when they learn that their government is corrupt. "It shouldn't be this way!" they shout.  They believed for the longest time that there was no corruption, or at least that there wasn't much. How upsetting it is to find out that the reality of the situation is different from what they believed it to be.  Their anger is based in their feeling that "it shouldn't be this way" which is based in the notion that it used to be different.

One could argue that getting angry and protesting is an effective way to change an unjust situation.  This may be sometimes true in a relative sense, but the fact remains that people suffer from their resistance to what is.  This isn't to say that we should all just lay down and be doormats to every power hungry sociopath that walks into office.  This acceptance of a situation is an acknowledgement of what life is right now.  Its not a statement that that is the way it should or will stay, it is simply a complete honest assessment and acceptance of what is.  People who work for change from a place of calm acceptance of what is, often are far more effective at changing the situation than people who are suffering from the dashed beliefs of finding out that their world is not what they thought it was.

Acceptance of what is, is acceptance of the fact that life is change. Change is always there, in every aspect of life.  Being disappointed with every wrinkle is a resistance to the fact that our bodies are constantly changing. Resistance to the fact that life is a process of birth, aging, sickness and ultimately death is a fundamental source of suffering for us all.

You couldn't have life without change. You couldn't be born if there were no death because change is the foundation of life and death is a necessary aspect of change.  Complete acceptance of this fact will bring you great peace, because you will probably no longer fear death.   Complete acceptance of the impermanence of existence, is the realization of the true nature of life.  This is not bad news.  The "bad" part of this fact is based in the resistance to change; the feeling that "it shouldn't be this way."

This leads to the third type of suffering that the Buddha spoke of in his first lesson.  That is, the all pervasive suffering of ego.  The Buddhas of all the times have said that we are suffering and we don't even know it.   We may get a glimpse of that suffering when we are quiet and we feel the hum of boredom pulsing through our body. Or we may realize the nature and intensity of that all pervasive suffering when we find ourselves in total bliss because everything has worked out the way we want it, and we relax deeply into the present moment. Its like just after great sex, when we lie in bed next to the one we love with a big smile on our face. When the ego calms down and slows down, the all pervasive suffering or wanting clears from the sky and we can know the peace which lies underneath.  We often attribute the experience to the event or person who we were with when we had it.  We may find our selves saying someday: "They are so important because they make me so happy! How could I live without that kind of peace? I have to convince them not to leave me." Another example is perhaps the morning of the third day of a "perfect" vacation on a quiet beach where we just had a great breakfast and we sit watching the beautiful sun rise cresting up from the purple horizon.  Our satisfaction runs deep, and our ego rests. Underneath lies the bliss and peace which is our birthright. We may come to conclude that that beach is magical rather then realizing it is our own ego which is keeping that peace covered over with fears, and hopes, and anger, and jealousy, and desire, and ......

I once had a very deep experience of egolessness at a meditation retreat. It lasted several hours, and I understood what it meant when the Buddhas say "there is no self".  I can say from personal experience that without the constant hum of ego's vigilant wanting, there is a peace that runs to the bottom of your being.  A peace that goes beyond the imagination.  It is not something that has to be created by aligning the causes and conditions of our life. It is not something that we need to "make" happen. It is not something that we might win like the lottery.  It is actually the fundamental nature of our awareness.  It is what is underneath all the dissatisfaction which we experience almost constantly.   I believe that this dissatisfaction stems from our ego's evolutionary programming to constantly and vigilantly be in charge.  If it weren't in charge it might die, and if it died then there is an underlying belief that we would die.  But that belief is false. Without this program which hums along day and night, the awareness which underlies who we think we are, would continue.  But that's a whole other topic.

So, suffering is what we have as humans; and there are reasons why we suffer. If there were no reasons why we suffer, if we suffered simply because of the toss of cosmic dice, then it would be really bad news. The Buddhas message was actually a very positive one because he said that there is a cause behind our suffering, and if we can learn what that cause is, we can also learn to transcend our suffering.  Good news!

I think we all instinctively know that suffering has a cause, because we have invented so many techniques and beliefs to escape it; to "make life better"  so to speak.  Almost all of our techniques involve changing some aspect of our environment in order to "fix" whats wrong.  If we have an old car and it keeps breaking down, we are motivated to get a new car which won't change like the old car did; it will be "reliable".  In many ways our solutions temporarily work by eliminating what we perceived to be the problem. The new car doesn't break down as often, or not at all initially.   But for every solution, more problems come up.  For instance, in order to buy a new car, we have to take out a loan, which means we have to work more to pay for it.  We also worry that we will lose this new car we are so proud of, so we install a security system. We worry when we park it, for fear someone will scratch the paint.  We don't want it to change in anyway. The suffering we fixed by buying a new car, is replaced by new suffering.  Its like the whack-a-mole game. You hit one mole down into its hole, and another one or two pops up.

The older we get in life, the more complicated everything becomes because we have to maintain all these "fixes".  The more we have to work and toil over the minutia of life in order to maintain the complex web we have created, the more we suffer.  Life can reach a frenzied pace because of all these efforts.  We may, in a moment of clarity want it all to go away. We may decide one day that its all ridiculous, and we just are tired of playing this game.  We may go off and live in a cabin in the woods.  But that solution has problems of its own.  

The real problem underneath it all is that we think that the problem is "out there", when in fact it isn't.  Its actually inside.  Inside our psyche.  Inside our way of thinking and seeing the world.  There is an old teaching that says, its better to cover your feet in leather than to try to cover all the rocky surfaces of the planet in leather.   This is not to say that the solution to suffering is to harden ourselves against it by our strength of will.  It is saying that the source of our suffering is in our resistance to what is.

Out of that resistance three root emotions have evolved; passion, aggression and ignorance.  We don't like our old car breaking down, so we get angry at it (aggression).  When that doesn't work we long (or have passion) for a new car. When our friends tell us that we can't afford one, we ignore them. So, we go out and buy the new car, and it creates more suffering.   Out of passion, aggression and ignorance our actions create more and more suffering.  We don't like a co-worker and feel upset that they get special treatment by the boss, so we try to alleviate the feeling by talking trash about them to our other friends at work.  Eventually we create a world of drama at work where we are constantly having to watch our back in fear that others might be trash talking about us when we aren't there.  What we thought would alleviate our yukky feelings of jealousy, have actually created more problems and more yukky feelings.  The examples are endless.

When we are feeling negatively towards our coworkers, instead of jumping right into our pattern of talking trash about them (covering the rocks with leather), what if we looked clearly and honestly at why we felt the way we did.  What if we decided not to talk badly about them? This is what they meant by covering your feet with leather.

The Buddha said that the path out of suffering is called the noble eightfold path.  It consists of:

1. Right speech
2. Right action
3. Right view
4. Right intention
5. Right livelihood
6. Right effort
7. Right mindfulness
8. Right meditation (or sometimes called concentration)

He said that the way out of the cycle of suffering starts by ending the causes of our suffering. He didn't say... "God won't like you if you sin, and he will smite you, so you better be good!" He said, we create our own suffering and if and when we realize this, and want to stop suffering, here are some basic changes we need to make in ourselves so that we won't create any more negative consequences which we will suffer from in the future.  He said, take charge of your own happiness!  Here's how to do it.  If you don't, all that will happen is that you will continue to suffer.  Some have said that this is why we suffer, so we can come to a better realization of how to live in better harmony with ourselves and others.  Its like learning the hard way.  If we don't learn the lesson, we will go through the cycle of suffering until we do.  In other words, we can suffer as much as we want.

When I first read the noble eightfold path list I thought, "Oh no... another set of rules to follow. Geezsh!" However, its not like that at all.  We don't have to be perfect, we can be a hypocrite and still escape suffering.  In reality it is impossible not to be a hypocrite in this world. There are too many compromises in life not to contradict your self.  Having the notion that you should not change your opinions or beliefs is just as ridiculous as thinking that you will not grow old, and die.  Life is a work in progress, not a test of our perfection. So, the important thing is not to fear making mistakes but to learn from them.

So, what do each of the eight changes mean in terms of our lives?  What does it mean to have right speech, and right intention, and right effort, and right action?  I could probably write a book describing all the details of what you should and shouldn't do, but then I wouldn't be very helpful because you would be trying to live your life by a rule book, and it would be a complicated, disappointing, stressful experience.  All I can say about this is what so many have said before. If you live your life predominantly caring about others, and you don't do things or say things to them that you would not want done or said to you in a reverse situation, then you really can't go wrong.  This is what is meant by right intention and right effort.  Live your life from a broader perspective, not from a small me centered view.  If you do that, if you make that your daily practice, then in the long run, you will be so much more happy than you are right now, you will look back and think... Wow... it was that easy all along, and I didn't even have a clue. :-)