--- ai_generation_date: '2026-10-25' ai_model: gemini-3.1-pro-preview ai_prompt_hash: 2d625dd6 audiodharma: talks: - date: '2020-05-13' is_meditation: false mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/11382/20200513-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-four_noble_truths_samudaya_3_of_5_the_inconstancy_of_suffering.mp3 section_slug: four-noble-truths-samudaya-3-of-5-the-inconstancy-of-suffering speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: 'Four Noble Truths: Samudaya (3 of 5) The Inconstancy of Suffering' url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11382 video_unavailable: false collapsed_sections: [] location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: 7KX4ZztA3N0 imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: 'Dharmette: Four Noble Truths: Samudaya (3 of 5) The Inconstancy of Suffering' upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KX4ZztA3N0 --- # Four Noble Truths: Samudaya (3 of 5) The Inconstancy of Suffering - [Gil Fronsdal](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1) _This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._ ## [Four Noble Truths: Samudaya (3 of 5) The Inconstancy of Suffering](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11382) Today I'll take a little detour first. There was a Japanese priest in Japantown in San Francisco in the early 1960s, belonging to a sect of Japanese Buddhism that was different than Zen. But he went to visit the Zen master nearby. This priest was young, and he went to visit Suzuki Roshi[^1], the founder of the San Francisco Zen Center. Since he was a Buddhist priest, he had studied Buddhism, and so at some point, Suzuki Roshi asked him if he would give a talk at his Zen temple in English. The other priest said, "No, no, my English is not good enough." The next time the priest came to listen to Suzuki Roshi give a Dharma talk, Suzuki Roshi's talk went like this: "Today is today. Today is not yesterday. Today is not tomorrow. Today is today." I don't know, maybe he used seven or eight words in English, and that was the entire Dharma talk. The priest who was there—who told me the story—believed Suzuki Roshi[^2] gave him an example of how to give a Dharma talk with very little English. I share this today because of this way of letting each thing be discrete. Today is today, just today. Today is not yesterday; it's not tomorrow. This moment can be just this moment. It's not two minutes ago, or two seconds ago. It's not two minutes in the future, or two seconds in the future. There is a discreteness there, a uniqueness to each moment. Of course, there is a past and a future, but there is a way in which the past and the future belong to, or are reconstructed in, our memory, our ideas, and our stories. We sew it together. Once the present moment is gone, it exists as a kind of memory, ideas, and stories to a great extent. ## Developing Concentration As the meditative mind becomes quieter, we are more and more living just in the present. As the meditative mind stops the activity of making stories, it's more and more just this experience of the moment that happens. Going deeper and deeper, at some point, what we start seeing is that all the experiences we have are coming and going, appearing and disappearing. This happens not because we're searching for it or looking for it, but because the mind is very quiet, very still. The Buddha instructed his monks: "Develop concentration. For those who have concentration will see things as they are. They will see suffering, the arising of suffering, the ceasing of suffering, and the practice leading to the ceasing of suffering." That looks like the wording that we're familiar with in the Four Noble Truths: the truth of suffering, the truth of the arising of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, and the truth of the practice leading to the cessation of suffering. But what's interesting is that the Buddha begins by saying, "Develop concentration," which means samādhi[^3]—a meditative mind. With that concentrated, clear, quiet mind that is not sewing things together or constructing things with thinking, then we'll see things as they are. We'll see the inconstant nature of phenomena. We'll see how things come and go, arise and pass. We'll see into the nature of impermanence (anicca[^4])—the inconstancy and change of phenomena. ## Liberating Insight into Impermanence The Buddha repeated this in many ways. Sometimes it was explicit. He said, "Develop concentration, and you'll see things as they are. Then you'll see inconstancy or impermanence, the coming and going of experience." He also had this expression: "You'll see suffering, the arising, the ceasing, and the practice leading to the ceasing." The Buddha said this about the insight, the understanding, the deep knowledge of this experience of suffering—its arising, its ceasing—and realizing this is the practice for the cessation of suffering. Hundreds of times in the suttas[^5], it refers to seeing moment to moment. In the discrete moments of just experiencing, we see how experiences come and go, arise and pass. Nothing in our experience is constant. It might be continuous in that it keeps reappearing, but it's like ants marching in a line—each one is discrete. So, the insight into whatever suffering we have, whatever distress or discomfort we have, is to see it in a meditative mind. To see moment to moment the way it unfolds before we overlay our ideas on top of it to sew it together. It's actually not so solid; it comes and goes, arises and passes. This, the Buddha described, is the insight that leads to liberation. I call it liberating insight. He talks about this over and over again. ## Reinterpreting the Four Noble Truths Generally, when people read the suttas, they think that when the Buddha talks about suffering, the arising of suffering, the ceasing of it, and the practice leading to the ceasing of it, he is talking about what we traditionally think of as the Four Noble Truths. There are all these teachings that suffering is the aggregates of clinging, that there is a cause for suffering which is craving, that there is the cessation of suffering, and then the Eightfold Path leading to its cessation. That is the common understanding. Surprisingly, given the strong emphasis on this standard explanation as the central teaching of the Buddha, the Buddha almost never taught about the Four Noble Truths that way in the ancient texts. If it was so central to his teaching, you would expect him to teach it a lot. However, he only explains the Four Noble Truths in this formulaic way five times in the ancient texts. Five times. And each time, three of them are very, very similar with only minor differences. It's surprising how little the Buddha teaches it. It is given pride of place because it is said to be the Buddha's first sermon, but what is recorded as his first sermon likely wasn't. It teaches complex Buddhist ideas and terminology that would have been completely unfamiliar to people who were brand new to Buddhism. As a first sermon, it probably wouldn't have made sense. It also belongs to a genre of texts that dates to about a hundred years after the Buddha died, so scholars generally believe that that so-called "first sermon" doesn't actually go back to the Buddha himself. It is very possible that what the Buddha _did_ emphasize over and over again was this deep insight into impermanence. Seeing things come and go is deeply liberating. When an experience arises and passes, we have a much clearer sense of how we tie it together, how we hold on to it, and how we resist it. We see that in the appearing and disappearing of things, there is space around them. There are times when they're simply not there. They are unique phenomena; they are not anything to hold on to. Allowing them to just be there supports the movement of the mind in meditation—learning not to sew things together, to keep letting go. That cultivates a very deep equanimity, a profound non-reactivity to experience. This non-reactivity—simply seeing phenomena coming and going—leads the mind to let go in the deepest possible ways. Therefore, one of the understandings of what is called the Four Noble Truths is not about identifying the conditions that lead to suffering, but rather cultivating a deep insight into the nature of suffering itself. Whatever it is that we call the experience of suffering, its nature is a process of inconstancy, of change, of coming and going. Seeing into the nature of that process is deeply liberating. It doesn't require us to find the cause or the conditions of our distress. Through this insight, a very deep letting go of clinging and craving naturally occurs. We let go not because we intellectually understand that craving is the cause of suffering, but because we have directly understood the changing, inconstant, impermanent nature of that suffering. We realize that suffering is not an inherent, permanent part of human experience, and that we have the capacity to let go. This was the Buddha's great insight. ## Expanding Our Framework What I am offering here today is a variety of different understandings of the Four Noble Truths. All of these understandings are valuable. We are expanding the range of how we can use this framework to understand our lives. In different circumstances, different approaches are useful. By maturing and growing, we learn to understand our lives better through all the possible ways of interpreting the Four Noble Truths. They are the central framework to organize our human experience on the path to freedom. Thank you very much. Tomorrow, I am going to cover the well-known, most classic explanation of the Four Noble Truths as found in the first sermon of the Buddha, and it is fascinating to see how it works out. Thank you all very much, and I look forward to our time tomorrow. --- [^1]: **Shunryu Suzuki Roshi:** A highly influential Japanese Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States and founded the San Francisco Zen Center. [^2]: Original transcript said "zucrow she", corrected to "Suzuki Roshi" based on context. [^3]: **Samādhi:** A Pali and Sanskrit term generally translated as "concentration" or a state of meditative, one-pointed focus and unification of the mind. [^4]: **Anicca:** The Buddhist concept of impermanence or inconstancy; the understanding that all conditioned phenomena are in a constant state of change. [^5]: **Suttas:** The discourses or teachings of the Buddha. Original transcript said "suitors", corrected to "suttas" based on context.