Four Noble Truths Talks

In Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths (Sanskrit: चत्वार्यार्यसत्यान, romanized: catvāryāryasatyāni; Pali: cattāri ariyasaccāni; "The Four arya satya") are "the truths of the noble one (the Buddha)," which state how things really are when they are seen correctly.

The four truths are:

dukkha (lit. "suffering", also rendered as 'unsatisfactoriness', 'not being at ease'; from dush-stha, 'standing unstable'; also translated as "unreliable", "precarity, instability, an unreliable place to stand";). Dukkha (precariousness) is an innate characteristic of transient existence; samudaya (origin, arising, combination; 'cause'): in conjunction with this unsteadiness there is thirst (desire, longing, craving) for, attachment to, and repulsion towards transient, unsatisfactory things and feelings; nirodha (cessation, ending, confinement): this whole mass of attachment to non-controllable things can be 'blown out' (nirvana) or contained by the confinement or letting go of this craving and revulsion; marga (road, path, way): the Noble Eightfold Path is the path leading to the confinement of this desire, attachment, and revulsion, and the release from dukkha.

The four truths are stated in various ways in the ancient Buddhist texts and are traditionally identified as the first teaching given by the Buddha. They are often regarded as the most important teaching in Buddhism where they have both a symbolic and a propositional function. As symbols, they represent the awakening and liberation of the Buddha and the potential for his followers to reach the same liberation and freedom that he did. As propositions, the Four Truths are a conceptual framework that appear in the Pali canon and early Hybrid Sanskrit Buddhist scriptures as a part of the broader "network of teachings" (the "dhamma matrix") which have to be taken together. They provide a conceptual framework for introducing and explaining Buddhist thought, which has to be personally understood or "experienced".

As propositions, the Four Truths resist precise definition but refer to and express the basic orientation of Buddhism: unguarded sensory contact gives rise to craving and clinging to impermanent states and things, which are dukkha, "unsatisfactory," "incapable of satisfying" and painful. This craving keeps us caught in saṃsāra, "wandering", usually interpreted as the endless cycle of repeated rebirth, and the continued dukkha that comes with it, but also referring to the endless cycle of attraction and rejection that perpetuates the ego-mind. There is a way to end this cycle, namely by attaining nirvana, cessation of craving, whereafter rebirth and the accompanying dukkha will no longer arise again. This can be accomplished by following the eightfold path, confining our automatic responses to sensory contact by restraining oneself, cultivating discipline and wholesome states, and practicing mindfulness and dhyana (meditation).

Since the 19th century, scholars have argued that the formulation of the four truths were a later development in Buddhism. According to Carol S. Anderson, the function of the four truths, and their importance, developed over time and the Buddhist tradition slowly recognized them as the Buddha's first teaching. According to orientalist Johannes Bronkhorst and Anderson this tradition was established when prajñā, or "liberating insight", came to be regarded as liberating in itself, instead of or in addition to the practice of dhyana. This "liberating insight" gained a prominent place in the sutras, and the four truths came to represent this liberating insight, as a part of the enlightenment story of the Buddha.

Anderson proposes that the four truths grew to be of central importance in the Theravāda tradition of Buddhism by about the 5th-century CE, with the composition of the commentaries, with the Theravāda tradition claiming that the insight into the four truths is liberating in itself. The four truths are less prominent in the Mahāyāna tradition, which sees the higher aims of insight into śūnyatā, emptiness, and following the Bodhisattva path as central elements in their teachings and practice. The Mahāyāna tradition reinterpreted the four truths to explain how a liberated being can still be "pervasively operative in this world". Beginning with the exploration of Buddhism by western colonialists in the 19th century and the development of Buddhist modernism, they came to be often presented in the west as the central teaching of Buddhism, sometimes with novel modernistic reinterpretations very different from the historic Buddhist traditions in Asia.

From Four Noble Truths on Wikipedia