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Four Noble Truths All at Once

So, the custom here at IMC is to dedicate the first Dharma talk of the year to the Four Noble Truths. And it's said sometimes that all of the Dharma, all of Buddhism, can be found within the Four Noble Truths. And so, in a sense, all the rest of the teaching that's going to come in the course of the year is a continuation, or an expression, or an aspect of these Four Noble Truths. They're really a wonderful rubric, wonderful four little phrases called truths, pragmatic truths, that are interpreted in a number of different ways. And that's part of the richness of these Four Noble Truths, is that they can be applied in different ways, understood in different ways, and they help us reflect and think about our lives and offer a new perspective for understanding what's going on for us. I celebrate the various different interpretations that have occurred in Buddhism down through the ages and also the various ones that exist here in the modern world. I think of them as the inexhaustible Noble Truths. There's no exhausting all the different ways they can be applied and understood for our lives.

I'll offer you a little bit of interpretation, a little bit of understanding of them as we go along. As I said in the beginning of the meditation, the primary characteristic of the Dharma is harmlessness, is non-harming. One of the forms that takes is the desire to not harm anyone, including oneself. To understand how we harm ourselves, how we inflict or bring about suffering on ourselves, is one of the great tasks of a lifetime. Dharma practice is really getting to the bottom of the ways that we unnecessarily inflict suffering on ourselves, stress on ourselves, and come to the other side of that where, instead of suffering, we experience happiness and peace.

It's a challenging statement, of course, to say that we're trying to get underneath or really work through the place in which we inflict suffering on ourselves, because the very idea that we would do that seems counterintuitive, and for some people maybe even a little insulting, that they think that they're causing harm for themselves, especially when there are so many people around you who may be causing harm. A whole society could be causing harm towards you in the way that societies do so many terrible things. But the specialty of Buddhism is to really understand what we're doing, what's happening within us, what is our contribution to our suffering, because that's where we have the most ability to make a change. Whether or not we can change society and the world around us or other people, certainly at times we should, sometimes passionately, but whether we're successful or not, that's just an open question^[1].

To think that Buddhism has some ultimate teachings or better teachings than other spiritual traditions, or better philosophies, is such a big trap that we fall into as human beings. We want to be part of the best and really be better than others, because we want to be involved with the best, the most helpful. We see in the earliest teachings of the Buddha very clear, explicit teachings to not do this. Don't hold up your philosophy, your religion, your spirituality as being better. Don't demean others. Don't diminish their value. Just don't play the comparison game. Just let these teachings be what they are for you. And if they're beneficial, great, and that's wonderful. There's no need to consider them the best going.

So, in this regard, it might be useful, rather than beginning with saying what they are—and maybe I'll say briefly what they are, the fours, if you've never heard of what they are—to talk about what they're not.

The Four Noble Truths are four statements having to do with the nature and the potential around suffering that we inflict on ourselves, suffering that we somehow contribute to ourselves, that happens within us in our own little psychophysical ecosystem.

The first statement is that there is suffering. There is personal suffering. There is stress and distress in this system that we have.

The Second Noble Truth says that suffering has an arising. It arises. It's a very strange statement in English, just as it would be in Pali^[2], that it's the Noble Truth of the arising of suffering. But what this arising implies is that suffering is not permanent. It has a beginning. It arises. It gets born. It comes out of something. Sometimes the Four Noble Truths puts a lot of emphasis on what it comes out of. Sometimes the emphasis is the very fact of its impermanent nature, inconstant nature, insubstantial nature. But also, what does it arise out of, which is often described as the cause? People will look at the cause as part of the Second Noble Truth.

The Third Noble Truth is kind of the good news of Buddhism, and that is the cessation of suffering. This internal suffering, the inner ways in which we inflict suffering on ourselves, comes to an end, and a radical, thorough kind of ending. That's the good news.

And then the Fourth Noble Truth is described as the way leading to that end. There's more to be said about that way, and I'll do that later. But these are the four statements of them.

So, what it is not. Sometimes in popular English writings about the Four Noble Truths, there's a statement that the first Noble Truth says, "Life is suffering." Now, this is a very depressing statement. And the Buddha never said that life is suffering. What he said was that there is suffering. But that doesn't mean that that's all there is. "Life is suffering" kind of implies that you have to just live with a suffering life because there's no alternative. But there is suffering, and there is an alternative. There is a possibility of bringing suffering to an end. The statement "there is suffering" is meant to be an encouragement to stop and look at it, to stop and take it seriously, to really recognize the suffering, the stresses we live under, live with, in order not to suffer better, but to really see it all the way through to the other side. But it requires admitting it, stopping for it, recognizing it.

The other thing that the Four Noble Truths are not: they are not a belief system. It's not like you have to now believe these Four Noble Truths as a tenet, a part of the creed of Buddhism. They're more like a frame of reference. They're more like a perspective that we adopt. It's an alternative perspective to some perspectives that we commonly go through life with that don't really serve us too well.

One of the most common perspectives that people have is the perspective of me, myself, and mine, of self. That everything that goes on, what happens to us, how we experience things, what goes on inside, what we do and don't do, is seen from the point of view of me. I, the self. I'm the one who's experiencing something. They said something to me, and it affects me and my sense of self. I want something. I have an opinion. This is my opinion. This is my experience.

So all this me, myself—and of course it's not an unreasonable category to use the ideas of me, myself, and mine, or be concerned with oneself. But if that's the sole perspective we use to understand our lives, then we end up in the trap that self-help psychology sometimes gets into. Sometimes there's no end to fixing the self, because the self ends up being primarily a construct of the mind. The story of the self that we live by is a story that's constantly changing, never-ending, never can be perfect, never can be finished. And if we're always looking and measuring our life from the point of view of what it means for me and the impact on me, it's a rather limited perspective.

The alternative to that is the perspective of these Four Noble Truths. Rather than looking at experience through the vantage point of self, looking at it through the vantage point of suffering and the end of suffering. Whether there is or is not a self is really incidental, not that important to this new perspective. What's important is to really be able to point to the real issue, what's really at the heart of suffering, if we want to find the heart of freedom from suffering. Sometimes if we look through the vantage point of self—me, myself, and mine—it actually limits our ability to see the underlying nature of suffering itself. We're kind of one step removed. We've interpreted it, we've applied it, we've essentialized it in relationship to a self. It turns out that it's just a lot easier to not take things so personally, to not measure things around me, myself, and mine.

There's a strong, almost addictive habit of seeing things through the vantage point of self. It can seem so second nature, so natural to do it. But in fact, it's possible to have a whole different perspective, and to ask, "Where is the suffering? What's the suffering right here?" Not "How am I suffering?" or "What's my suffering?", but just "What is the suffering?" And the complications of self and self-consciousness and self-definition kind of get loosened up. So, it's a framework for understanding our experience that's simpler than the framework of self.

Another idea that some people have is that the Four Noble Truths are a rather limited or narrow perspective to use as a teaching. You know, there's so much more to life than the Four Noble Truths. And certainly that's true. But they're not so narrow and so limited. What they do is bring us very close in to see suffering itself. It turns out that when we suffer, suffering is intimately related to so much of our psychology, so much of who we are, so much of what goes on in the world, that it's a fascinating and important doorway to deep self-understanding, to understand the full range of who we are. Suffering is connected to so much of our inner life, our personality, our psychology, our emotions, our body, that studying suffering really opens up a real wealth and richness of who we are in a fantastic way.

Or we discover, by turning into suffering, that the issues we're looking at that we think are important turn out to be not so important after all. So for example—I don't know if this is a good example—but the question, "What is the meaning of life?" That seems like it may be a good question on the surface. But if we ask ourselves, and if we explore in asking that question, where does that question come from inside of me? Does that question arise out of fear? Does the question arise out of greed, or out of some kind of anxiety? Am I uncomfortable in some way? Is that why I'm asking the question? If there is any inner discomfort that's prompting the question, then Buddhism would say, settle that inner fear, anxiety, or discomfort. Whatever inner turmoil there is that might give birth to that question, "What is the meaning of life?", that can be settled without answering the question. That's why this deep insight into the Four Noble Truths is so helpful.

And if there is no inner turmoil, if there is no anxiety and fear or suffering related to the question, "What is the meaning of life?", it's good to know that. And then you can continue exploring what the meaning of life is, but do so happily and with ease, and without a lot of weight and a lot of conceit looking for the ultimate so that you can know the ultimate better than other people knowing the ultimate. It just becomes a nice project to understand that.

Some people complain about the Four Noble Truths that it's a selfish teaching, because it's kind of looking at your own experience, turning attention inward to see your suffering, the cause of suffering, and the way out of the suffering. But it's not really selfish. Partly because it's really taking a very different paradigm than me, myself, and mine, that self-preoccupation. But also because selfishness itself is a form of suffering, is a form of stress and distress. As we study the Four Noble Truths, we'll root out selfishness. The self-interest of wanting to be involved in a great religion, in the best religion, and have the best religious teachings, the best spirituality, the best spiritual experience of anybody on your block. All these ways in which we want to be special. All the ways that we're easily threatened—our sense of self, our sense of conceit, our sense of selfishness is threatened by what goes on in the world—is questioned by the Four Noble Truths, because we question the underlying malaise, the underlying tension that gives birth to any kind of selfishness, including the kind of selfishness which is to demean oneself and to limit oneself and think oneself is less than others. It is a kind of self-preoccupation.

All these come out of our forms of suffering, and the Four Noble Truths hopefully gently pop their bubble. It probably shows that this is not really so interesting and so useful. There is another way of living that doesn't have the suffering of selfishness, of self-preoccupation. And if we pop that bubble, then it becomes more natural to come into that perspective of the Four Noble Truths, which are four perspectives that in and of themselves are free of the perspective of taking things personally. So they're not selfish.

The other thing is some people say, "Well, it's kind of a party pooper, these Four Noble Truths, because we're supposed to look at suffering. We're supposed to really get to know our suffering, and the bumper sticker for Buddhists would be, 'I stop for suffering.'" It doesn't seem like a great advertisement, you know, to come to Buddhism and get to look at your suffering better. I mean, not too many people would come off the street to a Buddhist center if that was the main teaching that they heard.

But the classic teaching around these Four Noble Truths is that all four truths are—even though they're talked about one at a time, the first, second, third, and fourth, because that's the limitation of language—the deeper insight into the Four Noble Truths is you see all four altogether. They're seen simultaneously. That means that as we see suffering, we see the cause for suffering. As we see suffering, we see it as insubstantial, as something arising and passing, as something that's not permanent and solid and stuck. We also see the cessation of suffering. It's a little strange, but in the very suffering that we have, we also see the possibility or the actuality of the end of that suffering, of the freedom from that suffering. And we see what it takes. And it takes a radical letting go, not clinging to anything.

To see all those four together makes it more of a happy occasion to see the Four Noble Truths. If we're only looking at our suffering, it can be a little bit depressing. It can be a little bit distressing. But if we remember, if we learn to understand these Four Noble Truths as a unitary perspective, then the very encounter with suffering shows us a path and a possibility that's quite inspiring and encouraging to us. There is a possibility to get to the other side of it.

Now, it also means though that this idea of calling each of these Four Noble Truths "noble truths" gives a certain kind of sacredness to each. Not that suffering is sacred. I never want to say that. But there's something sacred about bringing our mindful, caring attention to how we suffer. To stop and really be there for it. There's something sacred about stopping and taking a good look to see the cause of it, what's been giving rise to it. There's something very sacred about seeing the cessation of it, seeing the possibility of freedom from it. It's kind of like seeing the space that's around the suffering and realizing we can live in that space rather than living in the suffering. And there is something sacred about the way leading to it because it's noble.

What makes it sacred for me—it's not exactly a Buddhist word, sacred, they use the word noble, which I associate with being dignified, very dignified or highly valued—is that it's fundamental to all of our life. It applies to all of our life. It's all-pervasive, this idea of the Four Noble Truths, because either we're touching into all the different ways in which we feel suffering, or we also discover a sense of peace, a sense of cessation of suffering that also relates to all the different ways that we live our lives. So, it's comprehensive. It's completely inclusive of all of our lives.

So there's something very dignified and valued and noble, sacred, in learning the capacity to take a good, honest look at our suffering. But doing so knowing that this is not the end of the story, knowing that this very looking, this very stopping and being present for it, is a special act. It's not being lost in the suffering or caught in it. It's actually the beginning of finding an alternative to the suffering, the freedom from it. And so that we don't simply just kind of fall into some spiritual bypass of just not suffering in some way because we're holding ourselves away from the world, the Second Noble Truth is so important because it includes looking at the underlying cause of the suffering.

One of the primary causes that the Buddhist tradition emphasizes is something that's called in Pali taṇhā^[3], t-a-n-h-a. It's usually translated into English as thirst. But I kind of like to think of it as hunger. That we're trying to consume something. The mind, in order to feel good, the heart, in order to feel good, wants to consume things, to hold things, and it has a certain kind of compulsion, a drivenness to consume, to want, to have. And there are four things that the mind will consume in order to feed itself. And it's feeding itself a certain kind of suffering when it does this. It's the thirst or the hunger for sensual desire and sensual comfort. The hunger for our stories, our views, our opinions, our philosophies. Certainly our stories, many of the stories of our lives and what happened to us. The hunger to hold on to that, to make a better story, to assert that story, to tell everyone the story, to live that story. The hunger to do so. And there's a hunger for anything and everything that's going to help us get over our suffering. A hunger for practices and rituals and, you know, all kinds of things. This drive for practices, spiritual practices.

It's very kind of paradoxical that Buddhism offers spiritual practice. But not only does it not want us to take anything Buddhist as being ultimate, it also doesn't want us to hunger for or be attached to the very practices Buddhism teaches. Partly because the practices are just a means, they're not the end. So this hunger for spirituality, for being right.

And then the fourth of these consumables that we're hungry for is identification. Identifying, creating, defining a sense of self for ourselves, having a view, an idea of who I am or what the self is. Now, it can be innocent enough to have these ideas of self and views of self, but there can also be a hunger for it or a drive for it, a compulsion, a need for it in order to feel safe or complete or fulfilled.

So, these four hungers are often seen as the primary cause for suffering. Understanding how they might be the cause—limited to these four—takes some kind of reflection and thinking and looking deeply into the nature of what motivates and from which our suffering arises. To look deeply at suffering, to look at it as something that's insubstantial that's arising, that has a cause, that arises from something, to see that it's possible to lay down the compulsions, to have them cease completely. And so the very roots for the suffering wither up, dry up, dissolve, and the suffering itself vanishes. It's a fantastic thing to discover how thoroughly and completely it's possible to have a suffering-free heart, a heart that's deeply at ease, at peace with itself, content, not needing to consume anything to get more, to change anything for its own well-being.

And then there's the path. The final thing I'll say is the path, the Fourth Noble Truth, has two essential meanings. One is those practices and means that help us let go of our suffering, let go of our clinging. The other thing it means is that it's the wide-open path that opens up when we realize the freedom from clinging, freedom from suffering. When we realize that this is possible, it's possible to have a heart that's at ease and free and suffering-free. And then to have a feeling for that, have a vision for that, have a sense of that, and see that this is the way forward. It's kind of like now the path forward from this freedom is an expression of the freedom. So a path to freedom and a path that expresses that freedom in our life.

And so all these four can, as we mature in the Four Noble Truths, be seen simultaneously, at the same time. Doing so is inspiring and hopefully brings you a sense of happiness and maybe a smile on your face. A wonderful smile that you might have living with the Four Noble Truths, the smile of being content and happy not to take Buddhism as being ultimate and special and wonderful and better than anything else. And also this wonderful smile you can have when you don't take yourself as being ultimate and special and the most wonderful thing going. We just can be alive. Just alive. Just alive, peaceful, content, happy. Perhaps, hopefully, living for the welfare of all beings. May all beings benefit from the Four Noble Truths. Thank you.