8: The 4 Noble Truths

So when we last left our hero, he had just become enlightened after meditating under the Bodhi tree. That's cool, but just what is it the Buddha learned in his meditations that was so special that not only did it enlighten him, but he felt he had a responsibility to teach the world?

What Buddha realized is the four noble truths. These are still THE central ideas of Buddhism and pretty much everything else in Buddhism is a commentary or elaboration on these ideas. Therefore, if you leave this class with a basic knowledge of the truths and how they relate to your meditation, I will be extremely happy. Here are the truths:

1) Life is suffering

2) The cause of suffering is craving (sometimes translated as "attachment")

3) It is possible to end suffering by mastering your craving.

4) the way to make this happen is to follow the 8-fold path.

I'd like to spend today talking about the first truth and then I will discuss the others over the next few classes.

Sometimes people hear the first noble truth and they say, "Gosh, Buddhism is a real bummer of a belief system!" But this really isn't fair. The Buddha was not saying it's good that we suffer or that we should learn to enjoy our suffering, he is simply stating what he takes to be a basic fact of human psychology. Indeed, the whole point of Buddhism is to find a way to avoid suffering. The problem is that you can't fix your problem until you clearly realize that you have a problem, just like an alcoholic who refuses to admit that he is an alcoholic will never be free of his addiction. No doubt it is a painful thing to admit something like that, but it's certainly better than remaining a slave to alcoholism. If Buddha were alive today, he might well say that we are all addicted to suffering.

Right, so the Buddha says that life is suffering. What exactly does that mean? When I ask students if they are suffering, most of the time they say something like, "No, I'm good." That's weird - how could someone be suffering and not know it? There are two things going on here. First, the Buddha did not mean we are suffering at every single point in time. Everyone has moments in their lives when they are not suffering, and maybe when I asked a particular student they just happened to be thinking what a wonderful day they are having. The second dynamic is more subtle: what we mean when we say we are suffering is that the negative feelings we are experiencing at that moment far exceed the norm. But what if they norm is pretty bad? If so, then in a sense we are suffering most of the time, we just save the term "suffering" for situations which are especially bad. This is exactly what Buddha means - suffering is such a common and pervasive aspect of life that it's more accurate to say that life is suffering than to say that life is happiness. Put another way, suffering is a constant backdrop against which we experience relatively brief moments of happiness.

Consider this: how much of your time is spent worrying about things? At your age, probably a good bit. You worry about your classes. You worry about your love life. You worry about what will happen to you after you graduate. Many of you worry about your family or friends who have problems of their own. This is clearly a form of suffering, but you take it so for granted that you wouldn't normally label it as such. The basic fact, however, is that worrying it not enjoyable and you would certainly do without it if you could. And we can do this with all sorts of mental events. How much time do you spend wanting things you don't have? How much do you spend missing something, whether it's an ice cream sundae that didn't last long enough, a weekend or a boyfriend? If you think about it this way, you can see how much time you spend suffering in one way or another. Even having a pleasant experience causes suffering when you know it must end - have you ever had trouble getting out of our warm bed in the morning? As Buddha puts it:

"This is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering..."

If you didn't think it before, you are probably now saying to yourself something like, "Ok, this really is depressing. I don't want to think this way." But consider what you are doing as you say that. You find yourself suffering (by thinking about suffering) and your first instinct is to run away from it and pretend it's not an issue. In one sense, this sort of accommodation is necessary - if people who suffer all the time (as we do) constantly dwelt on their suffering, they would probably kill themselves. But being able to convince yourselves not to pay attention to your suffering is not the same as not suffering. It's a bit like other psychological accommodations - if you are in a room with a really bad smell, after a while your brain will learn not to pay attention to it. But the smell is still there, whether you admit it or not...

If Buddha stopped here, this would just be a depressing piece of philosophy and not the basis for a new religion. But what Buddha realized is that this suffering is something we cause. We create the suffering that surrounds us. What's more, we do not have to do this. If we can only learn the true nature of our situation, we can train ourselves so that we do not suffer. This takes some effort, but considering what is at stake, can you say it's not worth it? We hold the keys to our own prison - if we just realize this, we can all escape.

Ok, now on to the meditation. Today we will repeat what we did last class: 20 minutes of vipassana meditation.

After you finish and leave class, really try to pay attention to your body while you are doing ordinary, everyday activities (washing the dishes, walking across campus, sitting in class). Your body is always there and it's always sending signals to your brain, we have just ignore those signals most of the time. But if you learn instead to listen to them, you will find in them a real source of enjoyment. This is part of what Buddhist mean when they say you need to live in the moment - you need to pay attention to everything that is happening instead of using all sorts of mental filters to cut your conscious experience off from the world. If you can learn to do this, you will appreciate things - yourself, other people, the world around you - much more.