THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS
(Catur ariya saccani)
Truth 1. presents the content of the first Three Sights.
Truths 2 - 4 derive from the experience of Bodhi.
1. The Truth of Suffering: Samsara is Duhkha -- life is unsatisfactory
The Three marks of Samsara: duhkha, anicca, anatta
Duhkha
= unsatisfactory: suffering, physical and
mental, disease, rebirth,
decay, death, conjunction with the hated, separation from the dear. We want what
we cannot have, we attach the selves we think we are. We do not understand the
nature of things Anicca, impermanence, anatta, no”soul” -- ignorance/avidya
2. The Truth of the Cause of Suffering: Duhkha iscaused by Tanha
(trishna, Skt., lit. thirst)
Tanha/Trishna: Ignorant craving, inordinate desire. The desire to pull apart from
the rest of life, to seek fulfillment in the isolated ego. The will to private fulfillment.
All the inclinations which tend to continue or increase separateness of the self. All
forms of selfishness at the expense of all other forms of life.
What's wrong with desire?
Tanha/trishna is the source of duhkha because there is no-thing out there which
can be possessed and no one to do the possessing. All is "boundless openness".
Anicca -- impermanence. What begins, ends. Everything changes, moves, slips
away. The world is not composed of things, of objective essences which could
possibly be posed. But this also means that there is an end to duhkha, as well:
"Because there is an unborn, an unmade, an uncompounded, there is liberation from
the born, the made, the compounded."
Anatta -- no 'atman', no 'soul'. We are not who/what we think we are. We are
not soul-substances with "own-being".
Illustrations: Questions of King Milinda: the Lamp, the Chariot; memory,
Oliver Sachs' "Lost Mariner", Regarding Henry
The empirical, conventional self/ego is illusory. Buddhist analysis of the
empirical self discloses it as an energetic, momentarily configured entity
composed of the interaction of five skandhas (strands, grasping bundles)
of:
-- body, our material component
-- feelings/affective states
-- perceptions, physical and
mental
-- karmic dispositions
-- consciousness
Pratitya-samutpada -- co-dependent arising,
universal relativity, no 'own-being'.
Everything depends on everything else.
Also, pratitya samutpada refers to the 12-fold chain of causation:
dispositions, consciousness,
ignorance,
name and form, the six sense fields, contact, feeling,
craving, appropriation, becoming,
birth, aging and dying, and on to ignorance
again.
3. The Truth of the Cessation of Suffering: Removing Tanha removes Duhkha. Pull out
the poisoned arrow, the wound heals.
4. The Truth of the Way to the Cessation of Suffering:
the Eightfold Path
The way to remove Tanha is
THE EIGHTFOLD PATH (ATHANGIKA MARGA)
"Right" here has the connotation of "perfect". Right, "perfect" comprehension of the
Eightfold Path comes only with Bodhi.
1 & 2 are Prajna - wisdom
1. Right Views -- a, for now provisional, acceptance of the Buddhadharma as true.
2. Right Intention -- one intends to follow the path to its fruition in nirvana.
3, 4, & 5 are Sila - morality
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Occupation
Buddhist ethics are partly "Consequentialist", specifically, right and wrong are judged in
terms of whether the speech, action, occupation lead toward or away from Bodhi, but the
intention of the agent is also a factor in gauging its rightness. Key here is the
fundamental notion of Ahimsa -- Harmlessness
THE FIVE PRECEPTS
All Buddhists are enjoined to take the Five Precepts:
1. not to kill,
2. not to lie,
3. not to take anything that is not given
(or bought, for laity),
4. to abstain from sexual impropriety,
5. to avoid intoxicants.
THE TEN PRECEPTS
Monks and nuns take five further vows (Ten Precepts)
6. -- eating only at prescribed times
7. -- refraining from music, dancing, singing, and stage plays
(movies these days).
Exceptions are possible, depending on whether attendance at such
events conduces or not to Bodhi.
8. -- no fancy perfumes
9. -- no "high" bed
10. -- no handling money. This prohibition is now considerably modified,
due to the cash economies of current societies, as opposed to the barter
economies of 5th cent bce. India.
6, 7, & 8 are Samadhi - spiritual practices. Mindfulness meditation and Vipassana are
specifically enjoined here.
6. Right Effort: There are four types of Right Effort:
-- to prevent evil, unwholesome (mental)
states from arising
-- to abandon them if they should arise
-- to generate wholesome states not yet
existing
-- to maintain wholesome states without lapse,
causing them to develop and reach full
growth and perfection
7. Right Mindfulness
This is mindfulness meditation, or vipassana, anchored in awareness of breathing,
and progressing through awareness of mind states and their associations with
vedana, bodily sensations.
8. Right Concentration
Further cultivation of specific trance states – the Buddha enumerates eight -beginning with awareness of the breath and progressing through ever more subtle
and important levels of the mind.