The Four Noble Truth (Part 1 of 4) - Dharma Talk By Lama Phuntsho

The Four Noble Truth (Day One)

Today I will talk on the Four Noble Truth. When Buddha Sakyamuni gained enlightenment, for 49 days he did not give any teaching. The first teaching he gave ofter that is the Four Noble Truth. From that teaching, it represents Buddha’s teachings from the very foundation to the highest tantric level. The Four Noble Truth is taught in three ways. The first one is to explain the basic or fundamental of the Four Noble Truth, then the path and the fruit Buddha taught on the truth of Suffering, the truth on the Origin of Suffering, the truth of the Cessation of Suffering and the truth of the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering. These are the basic Four Noble Truth explaining the various kinds of Sufferings, the various kinds of Origination of Suffering, the various kinds of Cessation of Suffering and the various Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering.

In the same version, the truth of suffering must be recognised, the truth of origination of suffering must be eliminated, the truth of the cessation of suffering must be achieved. To achieve that one must follow the path leading to the cessation of suffering. One can overcome that by practicing.

The Four Noble Truth is also taught in another way. The truth of suffering must be recognised, but there is nothing to recognise, the truth of origination of suffering must be eliminated but there is nothing to eliminate, the truth of cessation of suffering must be achieved but there is nothing to achieve, the truth of the path has to be practiced but there is nothing to practice. This is emptiness which is the ultimate achievement. It will be difficult to understand if I were to explain it in brief.

The second way shows how it functions and the third way is the fruit. Today we only go into the Truth of Suffering. In the truth of suffering, there are many types of sufferings, but today we will only talk about the three major types of sufferings which we normally experience in our daily lives. The suffering of sufferings which we all experience are headache, stomach pain etc. the second type of suffering is the suffering of change. Due to our greed and attachment, we think we will feel happy if we could get the something we wanted but things changed and we couldn’t get what we wanted, so we suffer and that is the suffering of change. When I feel cold in the house, I want to get out of the house to get some sunshine, thinking that the sunshine will relieve me of the cold. If it is only for a moment under the sun my coldness may be relieved but over a long period of time I may get burnt and then experience suffering. Such thinking is contaminated and never been a true source of happiness. When the degree of cold is higher than the heat we feel cold and suffer from cold but that doesn’t mean there is no heat, just that the heat is lower. When the degree of heat is higher we will also suffer. That is why we say there is no two souces of happiness in this contaminate world. It is subject to change in it’s form. Because of our ignorance, we think that we will be happy if we grasp at something we like but at the end it only gives us more sufferings. It is our hatred, desire, attachment, and ignorance the major delusion that trick us to think that it will make us happy, but it changes into sufferings instead. The nature of attachment and desire is never be satisfied. If we try to add more to it, it only can grow. So the nature of desire is never be satisfied and hatred is the same. The more we express our hatred the more it grows. Like fire, it we use more gas or more wood it will grow bigger and bigger. That is why we have to control that and we have to practice contentment and patience in order to control it. That is the suffering of change.

The third way is pervasive conditioning suffering which is the one that we really suffers. As long as we have the physical body we cannot run away from that, because our whole body is born out of the influence of our karma. This itself is a form of suffering. So, the suffering of suffering, the suffering of change and the pervasive conditioning suffering are the three major sufferings. Who lead us to these three sufferings is the five poisons out of which three are major poison. The five poison are ignorance, anger, hatred, desire and attachment. In the wheel of life, a picture is seen in the centre showing a pig, a snake and a rooster. Pig represents ignorance, snake represents hatred and anger and rooster represents desire and attachment. It is drawn in such a manner that the tails of the snake and rooster are coming out from the pig’s mouth, as if the snake and rooster are eater by the pig. Actually they are intertwined, going round and round, which means the ignorance of the pig can give rise to desire and hatred and from desire hatred can arise and from hatred, desire can arise.

Ignorance or sometime is called beginning-less ignorance or unknowing afflicted emotion but is actually not unknown, is the cause of suffering. In order to overcome such suffering, we need to have the wisdom. There are two ways to overcome such sufferings. We have to go back to dependent origination. The first is acceptable by all Buddhists in general which is base on dependent origination through cause and effect. Everything arises is due to cause and effect including Karma. Because of Karma the suffering of delusion arise. Karma as we all know arise out of our own action, the result or fruit of our actions. Negative actions produce negative Karma and if we cut down negative actions, negative Karmas will also reduced accordingly. To overcome sufferings, we need to learn more about dependent origination. Dependent origination base on cause and effect is accepted by all schools of Buddhism and when you practice higher into Mahayana and Vajrayana, the same dependent origination is turned to dependent designation, depending on each other like part and parcel, and become interrelated dependent origination. Dependent origination base on cause and effect will enable one to understand the meaning of emptiness and also impermanence. If one were to meditate on dependent origination on cause and effect, one will find the meaning of impermanence because if you get deeper and deeper until one reaches at a very subtle level of cause and effect it will show that cause is not creating the effect as a result of impermanence, but the very cause itself has the potential to be impermanence. When you mention cause and effect, it is as if the main cause is producing the effect and that is impermanence. When we think about impermanence base on cause and effect and really go deeper to analyse it, the very cause itself has the potential to exhaust in the very moment, not in a subtle moment. Meditation will help us to understand that we should not create negativities to suffer, so we should not get attached, because we know the very cause itself is impermanence and only an illusion helping us, to engage in negative actions.

The second way to meditate is on interdependent. Everything exists depending on something and nothing exists on it’s own. It is interrelated. For example “myself”, it is not related to cause and effect but interrelated to my aggregates of form and perception. All my five aggregates, such as aggregates of consciousness and combination of senses of the eyes, ears, nose, tonque, body and mind which are all interdependent. Such is not dependent origination on cause and effect. It is interdependent and finally it is called me.

When I crave for something, that craving is interrelated to my desire of an illusion. The object of desire is illusion. Because of my desire and attachment it leads me to crave for something which is only illusionary and will not give me the real happiness because it is contaminated. It is ignorance that cause one action to arise and leading to another action which are interrelated. One must cut down one’s ignorance, because at the end it is only inherent phenomena.

On the subject of suffering, Buddha taught in different ways, but in general it is base on dependent origination of cause and effect. The higher you practice, this same topic become dependent designation or interrelated or dependent origination. Try on your own to analyse and go further into it.

(end of Day 1)

[this talk was given by Lama Phuntsho on 17 Oct 2009

and it has transcribed courtesy of Bro HP Lim]