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Four Noble Truths: Samudaya (1 of 5) The Cause of Suffering

So with this Monday, we begin the second week on the topic of the Four Noble Truths, and this week the topic is the second noble truth: the noble truth of the arising of suffering. So there's the noble truth of suffering, the noble truth of the arising of suffering, the noble truth of the cessation of suffering, and the noble truth of the practice leading to the cessation of suffering.

These Four Noble Truths are often considered to be central teachings of Buddhism, maybe even the central teachings of the Buddha. The myth or the lore of Buddhism is that the first sermon, the first teaching the Buddha gave, was on the Four Noble Truths. There's a long history in all the different schools of Buddhism of making a claim about what is the first teaching of the Buddha, as being probably what's very important for that school of Buddhism, and so forth. In Theravada Buddhism, these Four Noble Truths are really kind of at the center of it all. I take that with tremendous appreciation and respect, that there's this Buddhist tradition, the Theravada tradition, that has this wonderful dynamic teaching of the Four Noble Truths, which we can use as a framework to understand our life better.

One of the advantages of this framework, especially as the foundation of a whole religious tradition, is that it doesn't assume or require one to believe in something that cannot be proven, cannot be seen, and experienced for oneself. There's not a supernatural belief; it's not an abstract metaphysical belief that we have to believe in something, a tenet that comes down from the Buddha or from Buddhism saying, "This cannot be proven, but you have to believe this." This is something that we can really discover for ourselves in our experience. These are eminently practical frameworks, the Four Noble Truths, with which we can then look at our lives.

The Theravada tradition says it's most essential, most simple. It's kind of pared down to where the heart of it is. The heart of it really has to do with the third noble truth—the topic for next week—the possibility of the cessation of suffering, the nirodha^[1] of suffering. One of the meanings we'll talk about next week of nirodha is non-obstruction: to come to a place where we're no longer obstructed by suffering. We are no longer obstructed by all the different aspects and ecology of suffering that might exist, so that who we are and how we are can unfold, can move and develop, and can grow on the path to a greater and greater freedom. That's kind of the core aspect of Buddhism. So it's kind of like the good news of Buddhism, and it does it by this very simple framework that doesn't require a lot of study, doesn't require a lot of metaphysics or supernatural things. It's just, this is the essence of it, and if you stay close to that essence, all the Buddhism will unfold.

That said, one ancient teaching is that all the footprints of all the animals in the forest can be placed inside the footprint of an elephant. So, all teachings of Buddhism can be put inside of the Four Noble Truths. Everything else kind of follows from this.

Now, the Four Noble Truths, being such a very important central teaching, has been interpreted in many, many ways. It's changed now, but ten years ago I looked at Wikipedia on the Four Noble Truths, and there were some eight different modern explanations, definitions of what the Four Noble Truths were. They were wildly different from each other. Some of them I never even recognized as part of Buddhism, and there were all kinds of modern explications. So I was a little surprised by this, and then a little bit surprised too that they didn't attribute any of them to anyone, but one of them was mine! [Laughter] I thought that was kind of interesting that something I had said in some little paper would end up into Wikipedia.

So it's been interpreted in many different ways, and probably all the different interpretations have value for the people who've come up with them down through the centuries in Asia. I'll talk over the next few days about some of the interpretations or some of the applications of the second noble truth, the truth of the arising of suffering. Sometimes the literal meaning is arising, but probably one of the most common understandings, especially in the modern world but maybe also behind much of Theravada Buddhism, is that the second noble truth has to do with the cause of suffering. We want to understand what's causing it, what's bringing it about, what's the source of it. Some translators call it the origination of it, but often modern books will say there's suffering and that there's a cause of suffering.

Now, this is also a very practical and useful teaching in some ways. It's applicable to so many different areas of our life that are available to us every day. It doesn't require meditation; it doesn't require the mind getting still. Some of the other deeper interpretations of the second noble truth really require a depth of meditative experience, but here, looking at the cause in everyday life, we can see that we get impatient. You can ask, what's the cause of that impatience? Oh, I'm in a hurry to get somewhere. Maybe I don't have to be in a hurry. Wanting to get somewhere very quickly is making tension in the system. So the very question, "What's the cause of this distress I'm feeling?" opens the field and reveals something that we can do something about. Sometimes we can have a different relationship with the causes; we can let go of it, we can let it be, we can not pick it up, we could put it aside. So whatever the cause is, it no longer becomes a cause; it just becomes something else.

Now, it's very popular also to say in modern interpretations that the cause of suffering is desire, and that makes all desire seem like a problem. We need to understand that not all desires are the problem. If there is going to be suffering, there is some desire behind it, and there can be desire, perhaps, without any suffering. But if there's suffering, the cause is some kind of desire. Rather than making all desire a problem, in the teachings of the Buddha, there's a word that is used to characterize the kind of desire that is the emphasis. A lot of Buddhist teachings are metaphor, and the metaphor that's being used literally in English means "thirst" (taṇhā^[2]). So it's a kind of desire that has the characteristics of being thirsty. Imagine someone's parched, someone's really thirsty, really desperate for water. The compulsion, that drive, the preoccupation with getting something to drink can be quite strong; it could be all the person thinks about. This thirst is the cause of suffering.

Thirst means the suffering has some kind of compulsive quality. There's a drivenness, where it's not a "take it or leave it," or "it doesn't really matter to me." There's a force, an addictive force, that is almost sometimes impossible not to give into when desires are really strong. That's part of the reason why there's suffering involved, because the desires have tension and a loss of freedom in this kind of compulsive desire. Anytime we lose our freedom, we suffer. We feel less, we're limited, we have a burden, a challenge. There's an inner kind of painful burning going on, feeling that we have to have this.

And so in mindfulness practice, then, we learn to look at the nature of desire, look at the nature of our suffering. We look at what is the cause. Can we identify anything that's conventionally called the cause? And then if it's desire, or whatever it might be, we learn to look at it more carefully. This is where the meditation this morning of letting things be is so useful. Because when you learn to let it be, you begin to see it more clearly, and you let it evolve and show itself. Not all cravings are only problematic. Sometimes what we crave and what we are addicted to represent a deeper need. We might have a deeper desire for something good, actually, even if it's directed in the wrong direction, but the deep need we have gives it a compulsion: "We have to have this." If we let go of the unwholesome desire without taking our time to let it be, and study and see it and let it kind of relax, then we might not discover the deeper things going on—the deeper, maybe wholesome desire that's there. Not always, but sometimes.

So to stop and take a good look, to ask the question: "What is the cause of my distress, my sorrow, my grief?" Appreciating that there might be multiple causes, multiple reasons. The cause that the Four Noble Truths is interested in is our contribution to our suffering. How do we thirst? How do we have compulsion? How do we have very strong desire for something to exist, to have or to want, or a very strong compulsion to have something not exist, to push away, to get rid of it? That deep drive of desire that human beings have takes many forms; some of them quite beautiful and necessary and profound. Buddhist practice—the freedom from suffering, the cessation of suffering, the non-obstruction of suffering—has this beautiful thing where it releases more and more the wholesome desires within us. The Four Noble Truths are not an abandonment or a release of all desire^[3], but as we go through and live our lives, it does purify our desires. Anything which is compulsive, anything addictive, any desire we have in which we lose our freedom is shed, and it's such a beautiful thing.

So the first task with the Four Noble Truths is to just carry with us the question. As we recognize our suffering, recognize our stress and distress that we might experience, to ask ourselves: "What am I contributing to this suffering? What is my contribution?" There might be other people who conventionally can be said are the cause of your suffering, but the place where you can have the most impact—not to ignore that, but the place of Buddhist practice—is to ask: "What is my contribution to it?" And then to take a good look at that, and hold it in awareness, and understand it deeply, and in doing so, find your freedom. Tomorrow we'll continue with other meanings of the second noble truth. Thank you.