Buddha Shakyamuni taught the Dharma for the first time at Deer Park in Sarnath, India. It was during this teaching that the Buddha expounded the Four Noble Truths. The common imagery of the dharma wheel and two deer found atop almost every Tibetan Buddhist temple or monastery symbolises this event.

The Four Noble Truths (Tibetan: Pakpei Denpa Shi, Sanskrit: Catvari Arya Satyani) form the utmost foundation of the Buddhist faith. In fact, every other Buddhist teaching is based upon these truths, because they form the framework of how to practice. These truths were first expounded by the historical Buddha Shakyamuni, also known as Gautama Buddha; and no matter which tradition or lineage of Buddhism you follow, knowledge and understanding of the Four Noble Truths is the key to enable you to put the Buddha’s transformational teachings into practice.

In April 2020, when the world was gripped by the first global wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kechara’s pastors and senior students decided to go online to share our knowledge of the Dharma and our personal experiences. Our classes and sessions had, up until that point, been mainly carried out in person, but with the global situation we decided to intensify our activities to share the Dharma online. One of the very first topics that I spoke about during my sharing sessions was the Four Noble Truths.

This post contains the videos recorded for the online sharing, but at the same time, since I have the liberty here to elaborate further in writing, I have expanded upon each truth to be a little more informative.

Happiness vs. Suffering

“Happiness is a state that everyone, everywhere
constantly strives for. Everybody wants happiness
and everybody deserves real happiness.”
~ H.E. Tsem Rinpoche

The historical Buddha based his explanation of the Four Noble Truths on two concepts that resonate with everyone – happiness and suffering. No matter who we are, where we come from, our background, race, culture, or way of thinking, deep down inside we all want happiness and do not want to suffer. However, despite our intense wish to be happy and avoid suffering, real happiness and real suffering remain vague concepts to us.

When asked what happiness is, most people give checklists. “If I have one million dollars, I will be happy.” “If I get married, I will be happy.” “If I have a good career, I will be happy.” But if these things really give us happiness, why is it that over time we become dissatisfied?

When the one million dollars gets used up, we become unhappy. When the marriage doesn’t turn out the way we envisioned it, we become unhappy. It’s a lot of hard work to get a good career, and once we get it, it isn’t what we thought it would be as we are burdened with more responsibility, so we become unhappy.

Most people think that being materially successful equates to happiness. However, it is very common to hear about people like global celebrities or public figures being secretly unhappy and depressed, despite their outer appearance of happiness.

Happiness, therefore, comes hand-in-hand with unhappiness or suffering. We suffer tremendously to acquire things we think will bring us happiness, from a career to wealth, relationships, reputation, etc. Not only that but when we achieve our goals, our happiness is not constant and it fades.

Buddha Shakyamuni taught the Four Noble Truths to shake us out of our lack of understanding with regards to happiness and suffering. The Buddha taught us how to achieve true and lasting happiness – enlightenment – while at the same time overcoming all forms of suffering that we face within samsara, or cyclic existence. Therefore, these truths are not just about the end goal of achieving enlightenment; they also explain how we should practise along our spiritual journey to improve our lives on the way there.

The Ultimate Panacea

A commonly used metaphor for the Four Noble Truths is that of visiting a doctor:

1. The doctor diagnoses your illness – this is akin to the Buddha teaching you about the forms of suffering.
2. The doctor gives you a prognosis of your illness – this is akin to the Buddha telling you where suffering comes from and what will happen if you don’t do something about it.
3. The doctor gives you a prescription to overcome your illness – this is akin to the Buddha teaching you that all suffering ultimately ends when you achieve enlightenment, and that this happens in stages as you progress on your spiritual path.
4. Following the doctor’s advice and taking the relevant medication – this is akin to actually practising the Dharma and transforming your mind.

Using the Four Noble Truths as a roadmap for your spiritual journey, it is said that you will not only overcome all forms of suffering, but attain the highest spiritual state, that of enlightenment. Once you know the Four Noble Truths, you can identify any of the Buddhist teachings and classify them under one or more of these truths, and then you can understand just how any teaching helps you along your spiritual path.

First Noble Truth – There is Suffering

Unfortunately, since the topic of suffering is the first of the Noble Truths, this leads a lot of people to be put off their pursuit of Buddhism. This is because people tend to avoid suffering at all costs, and only seek happiness. So, when they hear that the first truth is about suffering, they no longer want to find out more. However, the Buddha taught in this sequence for a reason. If you keep learning and understanding the Noble Truths, you will arrive at the really transformational aspects of the Buddha’s teachings.

Buddha Shakyamuni teaching the Dharma to his disciples. The very foundation of the Dharma is the Four Noble Truths. If you understand and put them into practice, they will transform your life for the better. Click on image to enlarge or click here for more beautiful thangka images.

With this first truth, Buddha shook spiritual practitioners out of their tendency to avoid even talking about suffering. Yes, you want ultimate happiness, but first you must understand suffering – what it actually is and that you are actually suffering even when you think you are not. We must have a conscious understanding that we suffer. We must recognise it.

The word Buddha used, in Sanskrit, is ‘dukha’. This word actually means more than simply ‘suffering’; it also covers things like ‘instability and dis-satisfactoriness’. These words all point to the fact that no phenomena within existence can provide true and lasting happiness. So, the first step within the Buddhist spiritual process is to look closely and honestly at our own lives and see that suffering or dis-satisfactoriness exists.

We have the habit of overlooking, ignoring, or reacting blindly to the various forms of suffering we face on a day to day level, and so it continues to haunt us. Even though physical suffering is an aspect of life that we cannot overcome, out of this we can learn to transcend mental suffering, and that is why Buddha’s teachings are so unique. By targeting the transformation of the mind, no matter what physical suffering we go through, our minds will be at peace.

Some may argue that Buddha taught these truths 2,600 years ago and that the world and society have since evolved. This is true, but although the types of suffering we go through today may be different compared to the time of the Buddha, the fact is that suffering still exists. Buddha classified all suffering into three types, all of which are still very relevant to us today:

1. The Suffering of Suffering

This is the easiest form of suffering that we can identify in our lives. It refers to the physical and emotional states that we go through daily. Traditionally, this classification covers seven examples of suffering, which include both physical and emotional elements:

1. Birth: the process of birth is suffering for all involved, especially the child and the mother. This also includes the suffering from the time of conception, and even after childbirth.
2. Old age: our bodies no longer work the way they did and we find it harder to do things that we used to. This manifests as not only physical pain, but extreme emotional pain.
3. Sickness: we suffer physically and we suffer emotionally due to the physical pain.
4. Death: This is not only the physical suffering of being parted from loved ones, but involves tremendous emotional suffering when we think of our mortality and also when those we love pass on.
5. Having to part with what we like: when we lose something that we are attached to, the suffering that is caused is more emotional than physical.
6. Having to meet with what we do not like: this not only involves physically coming across something that we do not like, but also emotional states that we tend to avoid.
7. Not getting what we want: driven by the need to be happy, we all desire things in life but more often than not, we do not get what we want in the way we want it. This obviously leads to some form of suffering.

2. The Suffering of Change

This suffering comes from the fact that when we think about things, we do not take into consideration that things change and are impermanent. For example, think of being in a room with no windows in a tropical country; there is no movement of air and it is very stuffy inside. At this point, we are suffering. But if we turn the air-conditioning on and all of a sudden there is a gust of cold air, which brings down the temperature in the room, then we feel like we are not suffering and are content with the environment that we are in. But over time, the room cools down to the point that it is too cold. Then we start to suffer again because it is too cold. We yearn to go outside into the sun. When we go outside and feel the sun warming our bodies, we feel like we are no longer suffering but happy. However, over time it gets too hot and we start sweating and we get uneasy. We wish we were back in the air-conditioned room.

Therefore, when things change, we begin to suffer, because our notion of being happy is static, but the environment we live in, all of existence in fact, is constantly in a state of flux. When these do not align with each other, we suffer.

This type of suffering includes aging, sickness, and other types of physical suffering, but also includes varied states of emotional suffering too. For instance, the realisation that you are getting old, or that you are sick, when you have an argument with your partner or friend, when you realise that things are not going to be the same as they have been, or that situations in life are changing.

3. All-Pervasive Suffering

This type of suffering is difficult to understand, and very philosophical in nature. Therefore, I won’t talk about it too much here. In essence, all experiences within existence are conditioned to lead us to suffering. This is due to the very fact that our present Five Aggregates (Form, Feeling, Discrimination, Compositional Factors, and Consciousness) are the causes for these Five Aggregates in the future, which only support future suffering. Our present experiences of suffering lead to future experiences of suffering. Existence is, therefore, bound by all-pervasive suffering.

VIDEO: The First Noble Truth

Or view the video on the server at:
https://video.tsemtulku.com/videos/PNPFourNobleTruths1.mp4

Second Noble Truth – Suffering Has Its Causes

Traditionally, the Second Noble Truth is explained through the 12 Links of Dependent Origination; however, discussion of these is outside the scope of this article. Therefore, I will provide a simplified explanation. Suffering arises from karma. Karma arises from the Three Poisons, which in turn arise from the concept of the “I”.

KARMA: this is the force or law of existence that states whatever we do will have results. Similarly, in science it is said every action has a reaction. Actually, the word ‘karma’ itself only means ‘action’. That action has a result and this is known as ‘vipaka’ in Sanskrit. If the action is a truly beneficial one, then the result will be good, and if the action is harmful (either to others or ourselves), then the result will be a negative one. Suffering arises because the conditions are conducive for our negative karma to ripen and we feel its effects. Therefore, suffering arises from our previous actions.

Since we are mercilessly affected by karma, we take rebirth again and again. In each lifetime we accumulate more karma, which propels us to once again take future rebirths. It is karma that keeps us bound to this cycle of existence. Hence, the Buddhist term ‘samsara’ literally means ‘cyclic existence’. You can watch a fantastic teaching about karma by H.E. Tsem Rinpoche here.

THREE POISONS: ignorance, attachment, and hatred. It is through these primary mental conditions that we act out using our body, speech, and mind, which leads to the creation of karma, and this keeps us bound to existence. We go about our daily lives ignorant of the way the world really works, this leads us to create attachment for things, and this in turn leads to the creation of hatred. All three affect how we think, speak, and act. You can read more about this in Rinpoche’s book titled ‘Snakes, Roosters and Pigs‘.

THE CONCEPT OF THE “I”: this is the concept of the self, which does not exist inherently. It is through a lack of understanding of the nature of reality that we create, recreate, and reinforce the concept of the inherently existing “I” or self. Since our experience of reality is viewed through this flawed sense of “I”, we go about acting out of the Three Poisons. This leads to the creation of karma and ultimately any suffering we face.

VIDEO: The Second Noble Truth

Or view the video on the server at:
https://video.tsemtulku.com/videos/PNPFourNobleTruths2.mp4

Third Noble Truth – Suffering Can Cease

The Four Noble Truths can be divided into two groups. The first two Truths are negative, while the last two Truths are positive in nature. Here, the Third Noble Truth begins to bring in the truly transformative aspects of the Buddha’s teachings by giving us an understanding that all is not lost, that there is cessation of suffering. Suffering can finish, it can end.

The cessation of suffering here means that all mental, physical, and emotional experiences end, which stops you from creating more karma which keeps you bound to cyclic existence. It means that the First and Second Noble Truths have ceased to exist. Traditionally, this state is described as:

1. A state in which craving has ceased.
2. A state free from endless rebirth.
3. A state that is not subject to the laws of birth, old age, sickness, and death.
4. A state that is the total exhaustion of mental, physical, and emotional suffering.
5. A state in which one develops a type of joy or bliss that has never known suffering.

Following the teachings further from this state will lead to full and complete enlightenment, when one is not only free from suffering, but one no longer operates from dualist concepts, such as happiness versus suffering. Therefore, the ultimate state of the end of suffering is achieving enlightenment itself.

VIDEO: The Third Noble Truth

Or view the video on the server at:
https://video.tsemtulku.com/videos/PNPFourNobleTruths3.mp4

Fourth Noble Truth – the Path of Spiritual Transformation Leads to Enlightenment

The question everyone asks then, is how to achieve this state where suffering has ended, and following that, how to achieve enlightenment. H.E. Tsem Rinpoche summed this up well when he said the following:

“The only way to get out of this suffering is a wholesome, undivided, sincere effort to root out these delusions [ignorance, attachment & hatred]… Suffering can be destroyed by rooting out its causes.”

“…the way to separate yourself from these delusions and this state of mind is to start thinking, contemplating, meditating, and analysing the faults of these delusions and the unhappiness they have already brought you with a logical mind… It is hard to get rid of these delusions. It is hard to get rid of our attachments and all the extensions of the ten non-virtuous actions…”

“Take one step at a time. Work on one delusion at a time. It is an inner war, an inner battle. But it is a battle worth fighting because it will bring you peace of mind.”

The path of spiritual transformation out of suffering is exactly what all the Buddhist teachings are about, in some form or another. The most traditional of these is the abandonment of the Ten Non-Virtues, which are:

1. Killing
2. Stealing
3. Sexual misconduct
4. Lying
5. Divisive speech
6. Harsh words
7. Idle chatter or gossiping
8. Covetousness
9. Ill will (the wish to harm others)
10. Wrong views

If we refrain from these actions, we automatically reduce acts which accrue very negative karma. Then we go on to practise what is known as the Noble Eightfold Path (Tibetan: Phaglam Gyi Yenla Gye, Sanskrit: Arya Asthanga Marg):

1. Right view
2. Right thought
3. Right speech
4. Right action
5. Right livelihood
6. Right effort
7. Right mindfulness
8. Right concentration

These eight actions generate three virtuous traits within our minds, known as the Three Higher Trainings:

1. Morality, which stops us from creating bad karma.
2. Meditative concentration, which allows us to look into our minds so that we can abandon those qualities that lead us to create negative actions, and to develop a calm and stable mind.
3. Wisdom, which allows us to realise the true nature of existence, impermanence, dis-satisfaction and that the concept of the “I” does not exist in the way we believe it to.

Building upon these and other fundamental teachings, the founder of the Gelug tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, Lama Tsongkhapa, emphasised the practice of the Three Principal Aspects of the Path (Tibetan: Lamtso Namsum):

1. Renunciation: the strong wish to be free from cyclic existence and to attain permanent freedom from suffering – the state of enlightenment. This is based on the realisation that samsaric pleasures are not capable of providing lasting happiness and that karma, the Three Poisons, and the concept of the “I” are what cause our suffering.
2. Bodhicitta: The compassionate motivation to achieve enlightenment, not just for ourselves, but so that we can benefit all sentient beings, by helping them out of suffering when we have reached that state.
3. Emptiness: The realisation of the ultimate nature of phenomena that nothing inherently exists.

VIDEO: The Fourth Noble Truth

Or view the video on the server at:
https://video.tsemtulku.com/videos/PNPFourNobleTruths4.mp4

Foundation of the Buddhist Spiritual Path

Anyone who claims to be a Buddhist should have at least a basic understanding of the Four Noble Truths as they are the foundation of the Buddhist spiritual path. Hopefully, this article and the accompanying videos have given you a better understanding of what they are. This is by no means an exhaustive or even middling level explanation of the Four Noble Truths, because each truth can actually be explained in 16 aspects, each very detailed in their elucidations.

However, I hope this introduction to the topic allows a little more understanding for those who are considering or practising the Buddhist path. So, what’s next? Well… you start by putting the Four Noble Truths into practice. How? Think of it in this way:

1. First Noble Truth: something which you need to try and comprehend
2. Second Noble Truth: things that you need to abandon on your spiritual path
3. Third Noble Truth: the state you need to realise or actualise on your spiritual path
4. Fourth Noble Truth: the things you need to develop and practise on your spiritual path

For more interesting information:

• Commentary on the Fascinating Concept of Emanation
• Applicable Dharma Talks from Around the World
• Five ways to love more by Tsem Rinpoche
• Praise to Manjusri Explanation by Geshe Rabten
• Tendencies
• Discovering Yourself: A Teaching on Karma & Mindstream
• The Body of a Buddha: A Road Map to Liberation
• The Farm of Your Mind | 你的“心田”
• Beginner’s Introduction to Dorje Shugden
• Updated: Dorje Shugden Teaching Videos

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