Abbot's Teaching
A Chapter from The Original Frontier
by Michael Zenkai Taiun Elliston Sensei
Click to return to the index >
The Four Noble Truths
Buddha’s best-known teaching is also said to have been his first. Usually translated as Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Law, or The Four Noble Truths, it is a concise summary of insight gained the night of his awakening. This was the official culmination of six years or so of seeking, ranging from extreme asceticism to debauchery. In it he expressed his rejection of those approaches. In this first sermon he defines the Middle Way, and attempts to translate his direct, revelatory experience through a formulation of four inter-related principles (see illustration).
This teaching contradicted the prevalent views of his time. Buddha was a reformer. He was not satisfied by the teachings he had received. Following his intuitive realization of the true condition of existence, he opted to teach others, though he had doubts that his insight could be taught, or that anyone could or would follow his way.
It is sometimes said that Buddha was the first psychologist, in that he was concerned with suffering. Like a medical doctor, he conducted a diagnosis of our existential illness, offered a prognosis, and developed the treatment for alleviating suffering (dukkha).
This downside to Buddha's teaching—that life is suffering—leads many people to regard Buddhism as a pessimistic worldview. But that life is suffering is not what Buddha taught. This popular interpretation betrays a misunderstanding of dukkha, and a misconstruing of Buddha's intent.
Buddhism is neither pessimistic nor optimistic. Buddha does not teach that suffering is all that exists. Nor does he lead us down an overly optimistic, primrose path. His Path is realistic, not falling into either extreme of pessimism or optimism, or nihilism versus eternalism. This is the Middle Way.
The upside to Buddha's teaching is that it is possible to come to fully understand the existence of suffering, to abandon our craving, to realize cessation, and to fully follow the Path, all in this lifetime. This does not necessarily buy us out of consequences in future lives, but it is a start.
The Four Noble Truths, in brief, declare and define the existence, origin or cause, cessation, and the path leading to cessation, of suffering. For each of these four, Buddha prescribed the appropriate effort to be made: to fully understand the existence of suffering; to abandon its cause, thirst or craving; to realize its cessation, hopefully in this lifetime; and to follow the Noble Eightfold Path fully, as the way to complete cessation of suffering.
The first Noble Truth states that there is undeniably the Existence of suffering (dukkha), in the world. Buddha instructs that we are to fully understand this existence of suffering. Since we tend to interpret “understand” in an intellectual way, let us substitute the phrase “penetrate through and through,” sometimes used to describe koan practice. To penetrate the suffering of the world means not just accepting or understanding it, but fully embracing it, penetrating to its essence, which is emptiness.
Suffering is of at least two main kinds: natural, and self-inflicted. Natural suffering is inherent; but self-inflicted suffering—the man-made sort—involves a choice. “Choice-less awareness” and “Wisdom of no escape,” phrases you may have come across, hint of this. While perhaps pessimistic or fatalistic on the surface, they are intended to convey a proactive, aggressive acceptance in the face of reality. This aggressive acceptance becomes possible only once one has relinquished attachment to cherished, self-centered opinions.
Dukkha is not just the physical and emotional pain that human and other sentient beings suffer, though that is included. Dukkha is the great operating principle of the universe, by which all beings arise, abide and decay, allowing for the arising of future beings. Allowing is a main attribute of suffering, as in “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” This attitude of allowing—for it to be just as it is, without interference, resistance, or rancor—is the view that naturally develops from Zen practice. This is somewhat akin to the state of grace in Christianity, I think. But it takes time. And effort.
In the Heart Sutra, which was published long after the Four Noble Truths, the line that completes the recitation of attributes of emptiness (shunyatta): “In emptiness…no suffering (sickness old age and death), no end to suffering…no Path” refers to this first sermon. The Heart Sutra’s main point is the transcendence—through direct experience of emptiness—of all of Buddha’s provisional teachings, including those set out in the first sermon. This phrase also indicates the dualistic nature of suffering: that it both ends and does not end. Suffering caused by our own ignorance, and inflicted upon oneself and others, can come to an end. Natural suffering—that of sickness, old age and death, does not. As long as there is existence, there is existence of natural suffering. It is the way existence exists. In its most universal manifestation, suffering is simply change. This universal suffering is no respecter of persons, and yet the existence of the human person is, inevitably, one with it.
The second Noble Truth, the Origin of suffering, Buddha explained, is our craving (trishna)–our own thirst for the pleasures of existence. The image associated with this is that of the “hungry ghosts”, human spirits whose bodies are distorted into an extreme caricature of craving, with long, terribly skinny necks leading down to horribly distended bellies, their mouths wide open, seeking to consume any and all food they can, which is never enough to fill their bellies because it will not go through their necks, so they are perpetually dissatisfied, hungry. We can all feel this to a degree, though it is probably rare that anyone reading this ever really feels hunger in the physical sense. Our hungers are of another kind; we have the cravings we can afford to have. Craving also includes the thirst for non-existence, as manifested in suicide.
What the Buddha taught is that we are to abandon, to relinquish, this craving. Not only the physical kind, but also the sticking, clinging mind of attachment. People today often interpret this as the New Age self-help cliché of “letting go.” But Buddha’s relinquishment is not just the letting go of our attachments in the conventional sense, of improving our behavior and attitude—that is, becoming better people. His involves the letting go of our precious opinions, even our opinion of attachment, accepting our natural tendency to feel attached. We can relinquish attachments only when we clearly see them for what they are, not by ignoring or suppressing them. We might prefer a simpler prescription, such as to abandon any and all attachments, and not suffer from them anymore. Would it were so simple.
The third Noble Truth is that there is a cessation (nirodha) of suffering, the great promise of Buddhism—and that we are to realize it, in this lifetime. As opposed, for example, to futilely hoping to be reborn into paradise after death. Buddha was nothing if not practical, and encouraged his followers not to gamble their future based on the beliefs and promises of others. He claimed, on his personal authority, to have experienced cessation itself, for himself. And he taught, essentially, Do thou likewise.
The fourth Noble Truth is the Path, the Way (marga), an all-encompassing method to actualize the cessation of suffering in everyday life, to transcend suffering in the midst of it. Articulated in eight dimensions, usually referred to as “right” this and “right” that—right view and thought; right speech, action, and livelihood; right effort, mindfulness and right meditation—Buddha taught that we are to cultivate, or follow, this Path, and through it to authenticate the cessation of suffering in our life.
Buddha prescribed the most bitter, but wonderful, medicine of all. We are to recognize and relinquish our monkey-mind, knee-jerk reaction, suspending the habitual tendency to judge and condemn in terms of self and other. We are to examine this self which is the victim of suffering to see its true nature. This is the nobility of the Four Truths.
Let’s review them again briefly to see if this discussion has amplified their true meaning for us. Paraphrasing for brevity, Buddha taught that we are to fully understand the existence of suffering in this world, as treated in the context of society today. We are to recognize and abandon its true source, which is our own personal craving or desire which brings us into this world, by virtue which fact we are at least partially responsible for all that happens to us. We are to realize the cessation of this kind of self- and mutually-inflicted suffering in this lifetime, knowing that natural suffering of sickness, old age and death does not end. We are to realize this through the cultivation of the Noble Eightfold Path, namely correcting or completing our own personal worldview and thought; speech, action and livelihood; practicing complete mindfulness, effort, and contemplation. This is the Buddha’s Way to the compassionate Wisdom that surpasses understanding.
All of Buddha’s later teaching was founded on the Four Noble Truths. It is said that if we fully penetrate the meaning of any one of these truths, we thereby grasp the others, since they are intricately interwoven. Growing out of this elegantly simple exposition are the nearly limitless logical and poetic extensions of buddhadharma into all aspects of existence, like the roots, trunks, branches, leaves and blossoms of a magnificent, all-encompassing tree. The tree is nourished by the balanced qualities of compassion and wisdom, which require the dissolution of the duality of self and other. The fruit of the tree is realized when we do what Buddha did—awaken our way-seeking mind, fully embrace the Teaching, find the conviction to follow it completely to the source, and experience it directly as the truth. Thereby we remove all barriers that are impeding us, and succeed finally to the original self-nature, which is inconceivable, and beyond definition or limitation. This is the true person, the citizen of the original frontier.
Discovering this true person in your life is the animating purpose of this, yet another book about Zen.