Buddhist Resources

Contact/Listing

Home

 

The Buddha & the Four Noble Truths

buddha

The Buddha

  The Buddha was born over 2500 years ago in Lumbini (in present day Nepal). He was born into a wealthy family and until the age of 29 lived a life of luxury and pleasure. He came to realize, however, that such pleasure was temporary and would never bring him lasting happiness. Whatever happiness you found in life would eventually be undermined by old age, sickness and death.

 

 So the Buddha left his life in his father's palace, his own wife and child and became a wandering mendicant, bent on finding a way that would lead him to perfect contentment and peace.

 

For six years, sometimes working with other seekers, sometimes alone, he experimented with various practices, often starving the body in the belief that by ignoring his bodily needs, his spiritual faculties would be enhanced. He achieved some measure of success but not the ultimate peace he was seeking.

 

 Then he recalled a time in his youth when sitting under a rose-apple tree he had experienced a moment of illumination which had nothing to do with harming the body at all. And so he took another direction, realizing that what he sought did not rely on starving the body.

 

 At the age of thirty-five he came to a place called Bodh Gaya and sat beneath a tree, determined not to get up until he had attained enlightenment. As he meditated, he came to understand the nature of existence and a path that led to release from the inherent suffering we all experience. He also saw that we are all born many times and the conditions we are born into are depend on our deeds - good actions leading to happy states, bad deeds leading to unhappy ones. He also realized that the idea of a permanent self or soul was an illusion.

 

 The Buddha now had a choice. Should he share his teaching with the world - a teaching that he believed many would not understand - or keep it to himself? Out of compassion, the Buddha chose the former and soon began teaching to all those who were willing to listen. For the next forty-five years or so, he lived as a wandering monk, amassing many followers. He died at the age of eighty, leaving the following instruction: 'Strive on with diligence'.

 

 The Buddha was not a God and did not profess to be one. He was a very special human being who succeeded in finding a way to end suffering. Buddhism is often referred to as a religion without a God. This is true in that the supreme figure is the Buddha rather than a creator god such as the one in Christianity. Buddhists believe that all sentient beings have an innate spiritual component which they call "buddha nature" and try to avoid hurting or killing it in others.

 

 

The Four Noble Truths

 

1. Life is suffering.

Suffering is perhaps the most common translation for the Sanskrit word duhkha, which can also be translated as imperfect, stressful, or filled with anguish. Contributing to the anguish is anitya -- the fact that all things are impermanent, including living things like ourselves.

Furthermore, there is the concept of anatman -- literally, "no soul". Anatman means that all things are interconnected and interdependent, so that no thing -- including ourselves -- has a separate existence.

 

2. Suffering is due to attachment .

Attachment is a common translation for the word trishna, which literally means thirst and is also translated as desire, clinging, greed, craving, or lust. Because we and the world are imperfect, impermanent, and not separate, we are forever "clinging" to things, each other, and ourselves, in a mistaken effort at permanence. Besides attachment,  there is aversion/ avoidance / hatred. Hatred is its own kind of clinging. And finally there is ignorance or the refusal to see. Not fully understanding the impermanence of things is what leads us to cling in the first place.

 

3. Attachment can be overcome .

Perhaps the most misunderstood term in Buddhism is the one which refers to the overcoming of attachment: nirvana. It literally means "blowing out," but is often thought to refer to either a Buddhist heaven or complete nothingness. Actually, it refers to the letting go of clinging, hatred, and ignorance, and the full acceptance of imperfection, impermanence, and interconnectedness.

 

4. There is a path for accomplishing this.

And then there is the path,  called dharma. Buddha called it the middle way, which is understood as meaning the middle way between such competing philosophies as materialism and idealism, or hedonism and asceticism.  This path, this middle way, is elaborated as the eightfold path.

 

The Eightfold Path

 

1. Right view is the true understanding of the four noble truths.

2. Right aspiration is the true desire to free oneself from attachment, ignorance, and hatefulness.

These two are referred to as prajña, or wisdom.

 

3. Right speech involves abstaining from lying, gossiping, or hurtful talk.

4. Right action involves abstaining from hurtful behaviors, such as killing, stealing, and careless sex.

5. Right livelihood means making your living in such a way as to avoid dishonesty and hurting others, including animals.

 

These three focus on  morality.

 

6. Right effort is a matter of exerting oneself in regards to the content of one's mind: Bad qualities should be abandoned and prevented from arising again; Good qualities should be enacted and nurtured.

7. Right mindfulness is the focusing of one's attention on one's body, feelings, thoughts, and consciousness in such a way as to overcome craving, hatred, and ignorance.

8. Right concentration is meditating in such a way as to progressively realize a true understanding of imperfection, impermanence, and non-separateness.

 

The last three have to do with meditation.

 

 

Quotable Quote from Rodney Smith's Stepping Out of Self Deception

" The Buddha never promoted one step such as mindfulness above the others or isolated one step from the entire Eightfold Path, but rather encouraged mindfulness to be used within the entire Eightfold Path, each step
complementing and adding to the next until freedom is realized. He did not teach mindfulness and concentration for their own sake but rather within a system for awakening. He says, 'Mindfulness is established to the extent necessary for bare knowledge, and [the yogi] abides independent, not clinging to anything in the world.'"

  The Three Jewels

Buddha – historical Sakyamuni Buddha

 

Dharma – teachings of the Buddha; the way things are.

 

Sangha – originally a Buddhist monastic community, today in the West a group of people who practice buddhadharma together, usually as part of the same dharma center. 

 

Return to Buddhist Background Reading