THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

Buddhism was developed as a teaching path, rather than a religion. The first teaching the Buddha gave was to his five friends who used to practice self-mortification with him. That teaching, called the Setting in Motion of the Dharma Wheel, was to become the foundation of a new ethics and morality that consists of the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. Ethics are principles of action that will reduce suffering and nourish happiness.

THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

In his first teaching, the Buddha spoke of the Four Noble Truths. These are ill-being, the path leading to ill-being, well-being, and the path leading to well-being. The Fourth Noble Truth, the path leading to well-being, is called the Noble Eightfold Path. This is the path of the Eight Right Practices: Right View, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Action (of the body), Right Livelihood, Right Diligence, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration. If we look deeply enough, these four truths contain everything we need to know about the nature of being human and the nature of the world around us. If we see the true nature of the Four Noble Truths, we shall see the true nature of the cosmos.

One thing you can always be sure of is that there is suffering in us and in the world. The Buddha built his teaching and practice based on that truth. We know that if suffering is there, something else must also be there and that is happiness. Just understanding and accepting this truth can bring us some relief. Our ill-being, our suffering, is not exactly our fault. It’s the result of many causes and conditions, both collective and individual—such as wrong perceptions, confusion, and strong emotions, which lead to unskillful actions of body, speech, and mind. That doesn’t mean that happiness can’t exist. We don’t have to destroy suffering in order to have happiness.

When we accept the First Noble Truth (there is ill-being), we can practice two things. First, we can acknowledge the real suffering in us and around us. Second, we can learn to handle the suffering that we have acknowledged.

Acknowledging suffering doesn’t mean that we have to see everything as suffering or that it’s enough to intellectually see that there is suffering. Identifying suffering as it is means that we don’t run away from it and we take steps to be able to transform it. In order to transform suffering, we have to look deeply into it and find its roots. If there’s tension in the body, we can identify it and discover its roots in order to ease it. If we know that the stress comes from the fact that we work too hard, for example, and are too distracted to dwell in the present moment, we can find a way to bring ease and rest into our day. If instead we ignore our stress, and just think that if we only work more we can take care of everything, then every day we add stress to stress and store it up in our body. If we continue like this, we make ourselves sick. If we start by being gentle with ourselves, giving ourselves time to return to ourselves in the present moment, we can begin to heal.

When we look into the First Noble Truth, the Second Noble Truth appears. The Second Noble Truth is the causes of our ill-being. When we look into ill-being deeply, we can see how it has developed. The Second Noble Truth illuminates the path that has led us to suffering.

One of the deepest causes of our suffering is our insistence on seeing reality in a dualistic way and our attachment to our beliefs. Ethics is the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong. Often, we’re caught in our beliefs about what’s right and wrong. We get stuck in wrong views and lose our way. We may think, for example, “That person wants to kill us. If we don’t kill him first, he will certainly kill us. So we have to find a way to kill him first.” But this kind of thinking may be based entirely on suspicion, fear, and wrong perceptions.

Wrong views lead to wrong thinking, and wrong thinking leads to wrong speech and wrong bodily action, whereby we bring violence to ourselves and to others. With wrong view, we may find ourselves living with wrong livelihood, earning our living by destroying the natural environment; by depriving others of the chance to live; or by lying and persuading others to buy our merchandise although we know that it’s harmful for their health. Wrong view also leads to wrong diligence, whereby we may work very hard day and night thinking that will bring us success and happiness, and we leave no time for our families and ourselves. In this way, we store up stress in our bodies and anxiety in our minds. Wrong view leads to wrong mindfulness. For example we may spend our days preoccupied with how to make more money or have more power and fame. We are never present in the here and the now because we’re always running after the object of our desire. Wrong view can also lead to wrong concentration, which means we focus on ideas and notions that cause us ill-being and we think of others as being completely unconnected to us.

When we think of the Second Noble Truth, the causes of suffering, many of us think of the external causes and structures of poverty, disease, unemployment, social injustice, slavery, and discrimination. These are real causes that beget enormous suffering. If we look deeply, we shall see that this kind of suffering is not separate from the personal suffering of individuals. Even if there were no poverty, disease, unemployment, and social injustice, it wouldn’t mean there would be no more stress, worry, fear, and violence. There would still be suffering. But if we knew how to handle our stress, worry, fear, and anger, then violence would diminish. We have to look deeply to know the real roots of our suffering. Some people come from poverty and violence and find financial success. But if there is still worry, stress, fear, and anger they will continue to suffer even though they have been successful in the worldly sense.

Our societies are organized in such a way that every day the stress becomes greater. The majority of our suffering comes about because of stress. When there is no stress we can resolve things in a peaceful way, without irritation. Stress is an element that can be found wherever there is poverty, fear, anxiety, violence, broken families, divorce, suicide, war, conflict, and environmental pollution. Stress is also linked to the personal suffering in people’s hearts, including our relationships with our ancestors, our descendants, and our loved ones, which is a suffering that is so great that it’s not possible to recount it all. Suffering has many faces. If we discover the roots of one suffering, we are at the same time discovering the roots of other suffering, and we’ll start to see that each suffering has many causes and not just one root. When we recognize the origins of our suffering, we are able to transform that suffering.

The Third Noble Truth is that there is an end of ill-being. This means that suffering can be transformed into happiness. The Third Truth is the confirmation that well-being is possible, happiness is possible, peace is possible. The Third Noble Truth implies that there’s a path that leads to well-being. This in itself is a very significant statement. Transformation and happiness are possible. We don’t have to stay stuck.

The Fourth Noble Truth is the path leading to well-being, When we look into the nature of ill-being, we may begin to see not only the path that led to our suffering, but the path leading away from our suffering, the path that leads to well-being. You need only to look into one truth in order to see all the other three truths. In the Buddhist tradition, the path that leads to well-being is called the Noble Eightfold Path. It is noble because it leads us to peace, compassion, love, and happiness. The practice of the Noble Eightfold Path can transform ill-being into well-being.