What are the Four Noble Truths?

so the Four Noble Truths are the heart of Buddhist philosophy what are they we'll discuss that coming up [Music] so I'm Doug Smith I'm study director at the secular Buddhist Association that's secular Buddhism org and if you're new to the channel and interested in helping to promote a wiser and a kinder and a less stress filled world consider subscribing so the Four Noble Truths are arguably the the heart of what is philosophy that the thing that that makes it what it is that said the Buddha would not tend to begin a discussion of his own teaching with the Four Noble Truths in fact it was really within the buddha zayday considered an advanced teaching which is not to say that it was secret or anything he certainly did teach it to laypeople for example but it wasn't the first thing and it wasn't even the second thing it was something that he would teach somewhere down the road so I think we have to keep that in mind when we're listening to what the Four Noble Truths are so for example if we look at a suit - like the Impala suta where the Buddha discusses it starts discussing the his teaching the Dhamma with a householder that is not a monk not a monastic but somebody who was relatively new he began with a discussion of giving of generosity that's usually his first teaching and next he would discuss virtue or sila which usually comes under the headline of the the five precepts now have a discussion of the private five precepts in a different video which you can see if you're interested in that he would also discuss the danger and getting too involved in sense pleasures or sensory enjoyment with the world which he believed is one of the one of the big dangers is that we tend to get too involved in how beautiful things are or the pleasures involved in things and this tends to take our minds away from what is most wise and and most kind really because it is in striving for both the sense pleasures themselves and let's say the wherewithal the money and so on the power that allows us to achieve these sense pleasures that we tend to do the most harm in the world but then after that discussion and a discussion about the benefits of renunciation of sense pleasures in particular and the benefits of doing meditation and so on he would then continue on to a discussion of the Four Noble Truths Italy for those shall we say a small number of lay people or householders who are interested in going further with the discussion now I should say a word or two about the worthy phrase for Noble Truths many scholars believe that that's not really an adequate translation of the term out of pali that shouldn't really concern us too much but for example one very famous scholar a Peter Harvey has translated it as for true realities for the noble ones which is a mouthful and there's a reason why that kind of translation hasn't made it into the mainstream it's a little bit too long and clunky but what a Peter Harvey is trying to get at is that these aren't just truths in the sense of being sentences or propositions their true realities that is to say they reflect something true about the way the world is and the truths themselves aren't Noble it's rather that these are truths or aware and this is an awareness of a reality that belongs to the noble ones are the people who are made noble by their conduct and we should say the purity of their mental operation if you like their wisdom in in a word now probably the most famous description of the Four Noble Truths is in the Buddha's first so-called first sermon the dumb Akaka Parvati no tsuita and here is where I mean of course the first sermon is probably is is probably something of a misnomer because although it may who knows have been the content of his first talk to his first followers it certainly as a talk would not have looked anything like the the sermon that we have now because the sermon we have now has got too much packed into it that nobody would have understood at the time so clearly it has been it has been retold over the over the years over the ages and packing more into that sermon that wouldn't have been told at least in that way at the time nevertheless the first noble truth is the truth of suffering and in that sermon he describes it this way he says that birth is suffering aging is suffering illness is suffering death is suffering union with what is displeased is suffering separation from what is pleasing is suffering not to get what one wants is suffering in brief the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering and now that one word here is suffering which is repeated over and over again other people such as let's say the great scholar Analia translates that or understands that it more as unsatisfactoriness which i think is a better understanding at least for a contemporary audience because it isn't suffering in a sense of well when we think of the word suffering we think of something that involves physical pain or or mental pain but a high level of mental pain what's at issue here involves such pain of course but it also involves a wider sense of the unsatisfactory nature of reality that we really never get what we want now of course we get we want what we think we want but oftentimes what we think we want isn't what we really want because we realize that you know we weren't really so wise in looking for this particular thing we want a new car and we feel we want a new car let's say that this is gonna solve all our problems there tends to be a sense that if we get this new thing if we get this particular vacation we get this particular husband or wife or whatever it happens to be that everything will be right and we realize pretty quickly after having achieved this this goal that in fact everything hasn't gone right that there that life still impinges and that this thing that we wanted let's say a car or a house or a new job it has its own lifespan at the beginning it's in good condition perhaps it's shiny and new it's something that we really look forward to getting to know better but you know in soon a short order it's it's rusty it needs repair it breaks down we realized that it has its drawbacks the next new thing is coming out and boy that next new car looks really good too we know we all know this kind of process intimately in our own lives and the last line there they he says in brief the the five aggregates subject to clinging or suffering that that is a very technical kind of term of a phrase of up sentence which it would take quite a while to unpack here but basically what he's saying is the five a 12 the five aggregates are what make up the human person for them for the Buddha we there are form feeling that is a feeling of pleasant or painful consciousness perception and Volition's and those five make up who we are it's basically our mind and our body and when he says that they are that they are themselves suffering what you're saying is basically that there is no aspect of the human person that is not bound up in the sense of continual recycling of continual unsatisfactoriness that there's no aspect of it that is perfect and of course none of this is to deny that there aren't also pleasant things in the world the point is that whatever is pleasant will inevitably pass so it can't be relied upon and that's the sense in which an ally oh and other people have said this should be translated as unsatisfactoriness so even pleasure pleavin pleasure is unsatisfactory in that sense so that's the first noble truth and that's really what kicks us off on the path to the extent that we don't see this the extent that we don't realize the nature of lived reality as unsatisfactory we're never really going to get on the path to the extent that we sort of see past that and think life is good we're never gonna think that anything needs to be changed because if life is good what's the point in changing anything and I think many people live their lives this way the second noble truth is the origin of this suffering where does this suffering come from and you know in many part in many different philosophies and religious systems around the world there is this notion that life is unsatisfactory in some sense now even within the traditional monotheistic religions of the West there's a notion that life on Earth is unsatisfactory that there isn't any final satisfaction during this life so this kind of first noble truth or that aspect of life being unsatisfactory is not something particularly unique to Buddhism but I think one of the unique things to Buddhism is the notion that the origin of this unsatisfactory nature of reality is craving he discusses this in the first sermon by saying that the the origin of suffering or origin of this kind of unsatisfactoriness he says is this craving which leads to renewed existence accompanied by delight and lust seeking the light here and there that is craving for sensual pleasures craving for existence craving for extermination so these are this is quite a quite a mouthful quite a lot to take on board because there's many different aspects to craving we craves many of us crave sensual pleasures we crave the pleasures of the eye of the nose but we also crave existence that is to say we don't want to die and Wars and some of us may crave non existence that is they may want to die they may not want to live so there's different kinds of craving depending on where we are in our lives and what kinds of histories we've had and this notion of as he says seeking delight here and there I think this will be familiar to many of us in the kind of striving that is typical in the west of what is considered the good life the good life is a lie life I think from any of us of striving of trying to find different kinds of delight here and there of trying to find different kinds of sense pleasures this vacation you're gonna go here the next vacation you're gonna go somewhere else you know which interesting places have you gone to which interesting a concerts have you heard which interesting art shows have you been to which interesting movies have you seen all of this is the seeking delight here and there and yet for the Buddha this is literally the origin of suffering and we may ask how and why that could be the origin of suffering and answer that question well it takes a lifetime to really understand that because I think even if I was to describe it to you intellectually you really need to see it I think from an experiential level and I think that that's what happens during meditation partly is to is to see how this kind of striving this kind of seeking of delight here and there actually leads to a level of unsatisfactoriness or at least a sense of unsatisfactoriness with with the world we come into touch with because the extent to which we actually were to see life as satisfactory we wouldn't be seeking delight here and there it simply would be satisfactory the fact that we see it as as unsatisfactory or what leads us to look somewhere else than where we are we tend to look to the next vacation we tend to look to the next show to the next movie to the next weekend wherever it happens to be to solve our problems and we begin to realize that none of those things actually will solve the problem that we're when we're on the vacation we are in a sense equally dissatisfied with the way things are it's just that we're distracted by what's surrounding us because it's so new and different and interesting let's say that we tend not to think about those things and so what we're doing is a constant series of diversionary tactics to keep us away from the reality now the third noble truth the noble truth of cessation is basically the truth that there is a potential end to all of this trouble that this unsatisfactory nature the the way we see the world is unsatisfactory that can come to an end and that it comes to end by the cessation of this kind of craving as he says in in the first sermon he says it's the remainder less fading away and cessation of that same craving the giving up and relinquish enough it freedom from it and non reliance on it so basically what what the Buddha is saying here is that the escape from this kind of unsatisfactory feeling of the feeling of unsatisfactoriness is to begin to give up this craving we have for seeking new and different things and finally the fourth noble truth is the way towards that end it is in a word the Noble Eightfold Path and I have a playlist that I can put up here on the on the screen somewhere that will go through the Eightfold Path in some detail because each of the stages along the Eightfold Path has its own place I also have an introductory video that you can find if you look around for it it's a little it's obviously it takes the whole a full path into one video so it's it's quite a bit more compact but the point of the Eightfold Path is simply one of wisdom that is to say right for you and right intention one of ethics that is right action right speech right livelihood and one of we would say rate meditation that is to say right effort right mindfulness and right concentration those are the eight limbs of the Eightfold Path and the basic idea is that you want to be an ethical person in your life you want to approach your life with a certain kind of wisdom and finally you want to have a kind of meditative practice that allows you to incorporate that wisdom into your life I think it's it's worth saying very much worth saying that the Four Noble Truths again as most typically stated involve the notion of truths or as Peter Harvey says true realities that is they tend to come across to us as sentences as phrases as aspects of the world but within that early first sermon he also describes them in a different way a way that Steven bachelor and actually Justin Whittaker and I independently we all sort of came across we all sort of came on this and it from different angles as being really the more important formulation of the Four Noble Truths which is to understand these Noble Truths not so much as realities although they are and not so much as truths although they are but as tasks to do that is to say practices so in that first sermon he says that the truth of suffering or the truth of unsatisfactoriness is to be understood that is it's not simply that there is that it just happens to be that the world is unsatisfactory or whatever but the point of that first part of the four truth is is that we have to understand it so so it's almost like the first task we had that we have it's almost like we have four tasks and the first of those is to understand the unsatisfactory nature of reality to come to terms with it to come to bring it face to face with ourselves because oftentimes I think we sort of blithely go through life dealing with things that are in fact understand satisfactory for us without really noticing that and so this causes a great deal of I think underlying pain and suffering that we're just not as much aware of and that when we bring that to the surface and become aware and it becomes a spurred action the second task is that the origin of suffering is to be abandoned that is to say that once we understand this that we begin to try to abandon this clinging and craving that we have for things to be other than they are and that happens of course partly through an intellectual understanding but not very much mostly it happens because we as we've come face to face with this unsatisfactory nature of the way things are and we begin to see in a visceral level through meditate meditative practice and other practices we just naturally begin to relax around the craving because we realize that's not to our own benefit and we realize that again not intellectually but on a on a more visceral level the third task is that the cessation of suffering is to be realized that is to say we are to try to get ourselves to a position where we can begin to realize that cessation of suffering and it's you know at the beginning of practice and our first as we're starting out and of course I myself am only really just beginning on this path but you begin to see it in small ways you begin to see it maybe for a moment here or when you're in meditation and something's bugging you and you can see this really how your craving is doing that suddenly you'll see that the craving just disappears for a moment or ten minutes or whatever even for forever I mean even that particular particular part of craving may just not recur in that guise of course it's come back somewhere else but the point is that you can see moments of this and as you realize this cessation of craving in moments or in ways in small ways you can see a way towards bringing it out in bigger ways in your life and the fourth the fourth task would be that you realize this way to the cessation of suffering through the Eightfold Path you realize the path by by putting it into action by by putting it into practice and that then really does show how the Four Noble Truths or if you like the four tasks and the Eightfold Path interpenetrate with each other because of course the first part of the Eightfold Path is is right view and right view in its highest sense is a visceral understanding of the Four Noble Truths so in a sense the first part the Eightfold Path is the four noble truths and the four noble truths we'll need to write in a fateful path because the last one is the path so these are these these four noble truths in the same fold path interpenetrate they're they're sort of reciprocally referential to each other so I hope that that's been a useful introduction to the Four Noble Truths for you or the four true realities for the noble ones if you prefer that that translation from Peter Harvey thanks so much for your comments and questions that I always love reading them if you have any comments about the Four Noble Truths I'd be really interested to hear them and read them and I'm sure everyone else would as well so thanks so much for watching and we'll catch you on the next video bye bye

Channel: Doug's Dharma

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Keywords: buddhism, secularism, buddhist, buddha, secular buddhism, secularbuddhism, secularbuddhism.org, secular buddhist association, doug's secular dharma, secular dharma, four noble truths, what are the four noble truths?, 4NT, Intro to the four noble truths, introduction to the four noble truths, Four tasks, early buddhism, peter harvey

Id: 9WXCyqdP7s8

Length: 18min 27sec (1107 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 15 2018