GAUTAMA BUDDHA - FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS

2014-49 Gautama Buddha - Four Noble Truths

Gautama Buddha

4 NOBLE TRUTHS: The First Discourse of the Buddha

[For seven weeks immediately following the enlightenment, the Buddha spent his time in lonely retreat. At the close of this period he decided to proclaim the doctrine (Dhamma), he had realized, to those five ascetics who were once struggling with him for enlightenment. The Buddha left Gaya, where he attained enlightenment, for distant Varanasi. There at the Deer Park he addressed the group of five monks (Bhikkhus):

'Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced by one who has gone forth from the household life. What are the two? There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy and unprofitable. Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata (The Perfect One) has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana.] 

There are four noble truths:

1] The Noble Truth of Suffering (Dukkha), is this: Birth is suffering, ageing is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, association with the unpleasant is suffering, dissociation from the pleasant is suffering, not to receive what one desires is suffering - in brief the five aggregates subject to grasping are suffering.

2] The Noble Truth of the Origin (cause) of Suffering is this: It is this craving (thirst) which produces re-becoming (rebirth) accompanied by passionate greed, and finding fresh delight now here, and now there, namely craving for sense pleasure, craving for existence and craving for non-existence (self-annihilation).

3] The Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering is this: It is the complete cessation of that very craving, giving it up, relinquishing it, liberating oneself from it, and detaching oneself from it.

4] The Noble Truth of the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering is this: It is the Noble Eightfold Path, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration. 

This the Blessed One said. The group of five monks was glad, and they rejoiced at the words of the Blessed One.

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