Four Noble Truths

Buddhism is not a religion. It is something disguised as a religion. It has religious qualities but generally what people think religion is, is not what Buddhism is talking about. I think that there are many people that say that they are Buddhist who do not understand that it is not a religion. Like there is no blind faith or surrendering to an outside force or ethical prescriptions in terms of do it this way and you will be rewarded and do it that way and you will be punished. So if Buddhism is not a religion, then what is it? That is a Koan. What is Buddhism? There are some common things said about it. It is a system to alleviate suffering. It is a way of knowing reality without any mistakes. It is the way that you become a Buddha. If we put down all our crap, then what is left is Buddha Nature. This nature is fundamentally pure and clear. Because it is already present, it does not depend on anything to be established. Buddhism is a way to clear away the things that obscure that basic sanity of Buddha. Buddha could be said to mean basic sanity. This is the fully enlightened mind – because it is not dependent it can not ever be completely lost. It exists as a potential in all sentient beings. So I still think that I haven’t said what Buddhsim is. So let me just show you a little bit of the basics and maybe you will be able to see what it is more directly.

Four Noble Truths
1. Life is suffering
2. The cause of suffering is grasping at a true self
3. There is a way out of this suffering
4. The eight fold path

Life is Suffering
Suffering is regarded as a strong word in this society. People think, “I’m not suffering, life is fine”, they think, “I can deal, I’m not suffering”. But suffering here is very subtle and saturating. This kind of suffering is involved with the way we live our lives of comfort – everything is changing and so we will not have something that we really like forever. A time will come when we get sick and while we are sick we will hope that we will get better soon and then afterwards we will hope that we don’t get sick again. When we eat a meal we can’t just keep eating because we will feel sick and stuffed. Things can’t just go on and on in a satisfying way – there are constant adjustments. There are constant things blocking the attainment of what we would like. You are late to work, you want to be on time, and someone cuts you off and drives very slowly. You are very frustrated because you would like to get there on time. So you vow to leave earlier, so you have to go to bed earlier, so you have to stop staying up so late and you can’t spend as much time with friends. Of course there are little victories mixed in there, but they are temporary – so while you are experiencing them you might already be thinking, “I wish this could just last forever, I’m so relaxed – everything makes sense.” That thought is in full acknowledgement of the unsatisfying nature of life. Life is suffering is a strong way of saying that life is not satisfying. Another thing that might make sense in this country is that life is stressful. The point of this first noble truth is not to get down though – it is not meant to be depressing, we are going to move on from here. But the first thing to do is to acknowledge that life is kind of hard and kind of irritating. That irritation can range from getting cut off in traffic to losing your family in a plane crash – there are different levels of intensity and the suffering nature is always there, like a spark that can blaze up into a big fire before you know it. There’s a lot more to say here – suffering can be broken down like this:

The suffering of suffering -This is getting kicked in the balls or dropping your wallet in a storm drain. In terms of shit happening, this is the shit itself. It is the straight up life sucks type of suffering.

The suffering of change - This is like nothing stays in place – things are constantly changing and decaying. Your brand new sports car with the doors that go swoosh when you close them will in a few years be a big problem for you and you will have to sell it but it won’t be worth so much. Things change. A beautiful sunset ends – it doesn’t extend forever. Our bodies get old and we get weaker. Everything is always changing, changing, changing.

All Pervasive suffering - This is the general unsatisfactoryness that is in every moment that is experienced with ignorance. Ignorance is another strong word for a pervasive, subtle level of unknowingness. Because we do not know how things are going really, because we have bought into our own press about who we are and where we are going and what we are doing, we act out of unknowingness and so we experience a world that is the result of that. Buddhism is aiming at the transcendence of that ignorance.

(One More)

Much, much more could be said . . . but I think this covers it. This is what is meant by “Life is suffering” and this is the first noble truth – it is true.

The cause of suffering is grasping at an inherently existing self nature
The way that change is experienced as suffering is through disappointment. We expect something to go a certain way and then things change. When we expect something to stay a certain way we are thinking that there is a self-nature of that thing being satisfying. But then things change, inevitably things change and so there is experience of disappointment. Thinking that a changing thing is not going to change is called ‘expectation’ and disappointment is the resulting state of dissatisfaction that occurs when the thing is seen to change. That’s kind of simple. We are dissatisfied when our expectations are not met. But we are constantly setting our expectations outside of what we have control over. We don’t want our car to break down, we expect our new car to just go and not have any problems, then it breaks and we say, “Fuck” and our face gets crazy. So thinking that a thing is a certain way – like “My wife is beautiful” will lead to disappointment when later your wife is old and wrinkly. So that is the second noble truth. The cause of suffering is grasping at an inherently existing self nature. If you don’t know this to be true then you will think that some positive quality of an object is coming from it’s own side – like it is being beamed at you. But really you have projected that quality onto the object. It does not exist inherently in the way that you think – it is much more subtle than you think.

There is freedom from the cause of suffering
Because there is a cause of suffering then removal of that cause will remove suffering. If we gain the wisdom to see that there is not inherently existent self nature, then we will not grasp and therefore we will not experience the result of suffering.

There are pathways to remove the cause of suffering
There are true stoppings of suffering. These stoppings are generally listed as “The Noble Eightfold Path” and represents the basic framework of the dharma – of the instructions to help us to uncover our own Buddha nature. Here is the eightfold path –

Right View
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration

I’ll write more about each of these later.

So that’s some basic stuff – some of what Buddhism is. This doesn’t lead to devoting yourself to a God, it does not go beyond what is being said here. This is the nugget of it. So there is no need to convert to Buddhism. All that is needed is that one think on these things. Your own Buddha nature will respond to this, there will be something familiar, comforting and honest in it. This is the Buddha Dharma – this is what the Buddha has to offer.