The Four Noble Truths

The Four Noble Truths Week 1 (4/29/25) Homework:

1. Daily formal practice (see below for instructions if you need them)
   • Basic meditation instructions: https://sundaysangha.net/resources/beginners/
2. This week, in addition to your daily practice and living life as practice, the invitation is to observe dukkha when it is present for you, to investigate it as a naturalist would, observing how it manifests in your life (mind) the variety of flavors it can take, to see what conditions (inner and outer) amplify it, and what conditions seem to alleviate or undermine it. If the first noble truth is to be fully understood, we need to be willing to look at dukkha directly so that we can learn about its nature. When dukkha is not present in the mind, no need to go searching for it, just enjoy whatever is happening. If you are simply being aware, practicing formal and informal meditation throughout your day, you will surely notice times when it is present. The key is not to turn away from dukkha reflexively as is so often our habit, or to deny or attempt to transcend or pass over dukkha before we understand it. We want to observe this aspect of experience and see what we can learn. In addition to observing the movements of dukkha, you will likely notice the habitual strategies you employ (often unconsciously) to avoid feeling or perceiving dukkha. Don’t judge these but simply notice.

Class 1 Notes:

There are two aspects to this four week practice period.  The first is treating these four weeks as a layperson’s retreat in which we commit to daily formal meditation practice as well as relating to the rest of our time off the cushion as “informal” practice, bringing mindfulness and clear comprehension to our daily movements, commitments, and activities.  Our only “job” on a residential retreat is to be aware of our direct experience and to learn from it.  In our daily life retreat, we practice being aware while doing our other jobs and engaging in everyday activities.  

I already sent you a link to some basic meditation instructions for those who need it and I am including it again here: https://sundaysangha.net/resources/beginners/  When we practice formal and informal meditation we are already cultivating the path that leads to the cessation of Dukkha (4th noble truth), by living ethically and cultivating samadhi (concentration/unification of mind) and wisdom through mindfulness and clear seeing into the nature of our moment-to-moment experience.

This practice commitment and living our life as a daily life retreat can exist independent of the theme of our class.  The investigation and experiential inquiry into the four noble truths will complement our daily practice.

The Pali:

I gave an overview yesterday of the Four Noble Truths including the Pali (the language that the early texts are written in) to give you a feel for how the Buddha spoke about these. The Pali can give a different flavor than the English translations.  

Dukkham ariya-saccam       Dukkha noble truth

Dukkha-samudayam ariya-saccam    Dukkha origin (cause) noble truth

Dukkha-nirodah ariya-saccam     Dukkha cessation noble truth

Dukkha-nirodah-gamini-patipada ariya-saccam Dukkha cessation path leading to Noble Truth

What to Do With these Truths?:

Dukkha is to be fully understood

The origin of dukkha, craving, is to be abandoned

The cessation of dukkha is to be realized

The path leading to the cessation of dukkha is to be cultivated (developed)

I gave a brief overview of each of the noble truths and then we went a bit deeper on the first as that will be our theme of exploration for the coming week.  

In the Dhamma-Cakkappavattana Sutta (Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion) the Buddha describes Dukkha as:

“Now this bhikkhus is the noble truth of dukkha, birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, illness is dukkha, death is dukkha; union with what is displeasing is dukkha, separation from what is pleasing is dukkha, not to get what one wants is dukkha, in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging is dukkha.”

Here is an alternate translation of the complete text if you are interested, you will see it differs a bit from what I have above:  https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.than.html

Dukkha Definition:

The translator of the linked text translates dukkha as “stress”, a good but not sufficient translation as there is no single English word that can encompass its full meaning.   Some other words that can be used and suggest even more subtle layers of experience would be, tension, incompleteness, unsatisfactoriness, unsettledness, dis-ease, distress, agitation, mental suffering. 

What is the type of Dukkha that can cease?

Dukkha as a noble truth that is also subject to cessation (third noble truth) is a mental experience, it is not physical birth, aging, illness, death, or the aggregates (form, feeling, perception, thoughts, consciousness) in and of themselves that is dukkha.  It is how our minds respond to these aspects of experience when under the influence of ignorance that produces the mental stress and distress of dukkha.  If aging, illness and death were inherently dukkha then we could not say that the Buddha had realized the end of dukkha because like all of us he got old, experienced physical pain, and died.  His life in that sense was subject to all the physical challenges that we also face.  But to say that the Buddha realized the cessation of dukkha, and that other great masters did as well, in addition to the many who have realized a great reduction in mental stress and distress suggests that they somehow radically transformed their relationship with these universal aspects of life. This is the territory we will be exploring in our first-person investigation of the four noble truths.  

This week, in addition to your daily practice and living life as practice, the invitation is to observe dukkha when it is present for you, to investigate it as a naturalist would, observing how it manifests in your life (mind) the variety of flavors it can take, to see what conditions (inner and outer) amplify it, and what conditions seem to alleviate or undermine it.  If the first noble truth is to be fully understood, we need to be willing to look at dukkha directly so that we can learn about its nature. When dukkha is not present in the mind, no need to go searching for it, just enjoy whatever is happening.  If you are simply being aware, practicing formal and informal meditation throughout your day, you will surely notice times when it is present.  The key is not to turn away from dukkha reflexively as is so often our habit, or to deny or attempt to transcend or pass over dukkha before we understand it.  We want to observe this aspect of experience and see what we can learn.  In addition to observing the movements of dukkha, you will likely notice the habitual strategies you employ (often unconsciously) to avoid feeling or perceiving dukkha.  Don’t judge these but simply notice.  

Please do not engage in activities that you know are harmful to you in order to investigate dukkha.  In addition to this, certain mind-states that you know are harmful for you to hang out in are to be avoided for now.  For example, I would not encourage people to sit and meditate or investigate within a very depressive state or state of feeling hopeless.  In these situations, we need to use our present-moment awareness, wisdom, and agency, to steer toward an object, experience, or activity that is more supportive and useful for us. 

Let’s look at small dukkha to start so we can learn about its mechanics in a way that is not overwhelming.  When concentration and mindfulness are more fully developed we can then observe much stronger states without being overcome by them.  

Inquiry Questions (to be investigated in your direct experience, not just thought about):

1. Is Dukkha (stress, tension, unsatisfactoriness, dis-ease, mental suffering) inherent in outer conditions or is it in the mind?
2. Is Dukkah as an inner experience a fixed quantity in relation to experience?  In other words do the same outer (or inner) conditions always produce the same amount and type of dukkha in you or does it vary?  If it varies can you observe anything about the conditions (internally or externally) that affect this variation?
3. What are some of the more subtle flavors of Dukkha that you can notice in your experience as you move through the day? 
4. How does being mindfully aware of dukkha and observing it with interest in real time affect your experience of it?

I will be practicing along with you over these weeks.  I look forward to seeing you next week and to hearing about what you discover in your daily practice and inquiry into the first noble truth.  

The Four Noble Truths Week 2 (5/6/25) Homework:

The noble truth of the origin of dukkha:

This week we are looking more deeply into the causes and conditions both external and internal that give rise to dukkha, mental dis-ease, unsatisfactoriness, inner instability, and mental suffering.  

“Idam kho pana bikkhave dukkha-samudayam ariya-saccam:”  

“Now this, bhikkhus is the noble truth of the origin of dukkha: It is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there, that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for non-existence.”

the Dhamma-Cakkapavattana Sutta

“Now this, bhikkhus is the noble truth of the origin of dukkha: It is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there, that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, craving for non-existence.”

We unpacked the three types of craving in a bit more detail

1. Craving for sense pleasures (sense experience)
2. Craving for existence (becoming some-thing)
3. Craving for non-existence (unbecoming)

Each of these types of craving is rooted in ignorance, in not understanding the nature of things and not understanding what conditions lead to happiness and what conditions lead to suffering.  More on this later.

Craving for sense pleasures: As part of our experiential exploration this week I invite you to notice the difference between enjoying something pleasant, liking something, even wanting something desirable to you, and the quality of craving/clinging.  These two, wanting and craving are not the same thing.  Sometimes to know what you want and to be in touch with what is true for you makes you feel more present, connected, and aligned internally.  It enhances your experience of being present here and now.  You can notice this cause-and-effect relationship in your own experience.  Craving has a different quality.  Craving enhances the feeling of separation, you feel less complete when in the grip of craving, more desperate, compulsive, unsettled.  We all must get to know and feel this difference between healthy and empowering desire and craving (tanha) as the origin of dukkha.   

Notice during the day that when craving and clinging are present in the mind (and not taken as the object of mindful awareness), how there is a sense of dis-ease, of unsatisfactoriness in this very moment, here and now.  Fulfillment is out ahead of you in the imagined future.  Being taken over by craving gives rise to dukkha whether you get what you are craving or not!  Notice the difference between enjoying something pleasant on its own terms and the craving for more of it, craving to keep it going, or clinging and trying to hold on to the experience of it.  The premise here is that we don’t see that our very process of craving and clinging produces suffering.  In our habitual state of unawareness, we think that going after what we crave is leading us on the very path to happiness. This is called delusion.

A further note on desire vs craving.  If you try to stop yourself from wanting things, imagining that this is the way to end suffering, you will only cut yourself off from your own life force.  This will make you depressed and drain your vitality for life and practice.   Again, pay attention to the difference, notice when connecting with your desire makes you feel more present and connected in the here and now, and when being pulled by desire makes you feel more separate, inadequate, and unstable.  This is a useful way to begin to distinguish between desire and craving.  Wanting to practice, wanting to understand more, wanting to help other beings, wanting to become a doctor or a carpenter, to make art, to connect with someone more deeply, doesn’t have to be dukkha or the cause of dukkha.  It can be energy-enhancing and life-enhancing.  Pay attention to the subtle shifts in your own experience as you move between these two and see what you learn.  

We are not trying to stop the mind from craving or seeking to get rid of craving.  We want to see how craving operates and to take it as an object in awareness.  See what you can learn, see what happens.  We are studying the mechanism of dukkha creation here.  Be open to what you might learn outside of what you read or heard in the teachings.  

Craving for existence/becoming: This type of craving, like all other forms, is rooted in a misperception.  We are not in touch with being on its own terms, presence, awareness, so we crave to be some-thing, some idea or ideal that we think we are not and want to attach ourselves to, to become.  This type of craving is rooted in a misperception of who we are that gives rise to sense of fundamental lack, a sense of inner not-enoughness.  Our quest then is to become something we think is more worthy, stable, or fulfilling.  Because of this misperception, we look for fulfillment and stability outside of the fullness of our own being, awareness, presence.  We end up seeking something much less stable or fulfilling than what we already are.  We look for fulfillment where it can’t be found. Because we don’t see this clearly, we go from one becoming project to another, never arriving at genuine peace or lasting security.   

In one class I taught, a participant shared that while they were meditating a thought arose about how people who are very committed to this path often do long, silent retreats over many years.  The next thought was about how in this person’s life they aren’t able to go on retreat and how perhaps those things are necessary to really make progress on the path.  Then there was some more thinking about me as a teacher and how I likely did these things and how my mind must now be a certain way as a result.  Can you see how this person went from non-dukkha, just breathing in and out and being with things as they are, things being full and complete as they are, to all of a sudden having a sense of fulfillment or enoughness be located way out in the future only when (and if) they complete many months of silent retreat or completely change the conditions of their life?  This is how we create a sense of inner separation and reveals the mechanisms of craving for becoming.   There is clearly nothing wrong with silent retreat or meditating a lot but in the moment, the gap is created by thinking, the craving is for an imagined future state of being, and the dukkha is present here and now.  Do you see how this gap, this separateness is created by thinking (by believing the thought)?  Do you see how the craving fills the gap between what is present and the imagined future?   The mental creation even involved a constructed (imagined) image of Will and what his mind must be like as an ideal or goal to be matched or aspired to.  Of course, Will has an experience, but it is not whatever is being imagined.  I think many of you can relate to this process either in this or some other context.  Notice how you place the goal of being fulfilled, enough, complete, ahead of you into an imagined future, and then feel a sense of lack or incompleteness as a result.  Notice how craving fills that gap and you get caught in the project of becoming.  I could say much more about this but for now, let’s simply observe this process in our own minds over the next week or two for the online folks.  

Craving for non-existence/unbecoming:   This is the flipside of the previous type of craving.  Identifying with some quality or experience as me or mine and then wanting to be rid of it.  Can you see how it is the very identification with natural conditions as I, me, or mine that gives rise to the felt need for unbecoming?  If I don’t want to be angry, judgmental, lonely, or mean but I identify with these conditions as me, then I have to engage in an unbecoming project.  I have to unbecome what I (mistakenly) think I am.  If you take yourself to be what you are not, then you will have a long project at hand to undo that identity.  This is the mirror image of becoming and the very mistaken perception that creates the goal is what gives rise to the dukkha, the sense of lack, unsatisfactoriness, stress, incompleteness.  Another version of this is a simple desire to not exist, to not be, and this can arise whenever our experience feels too much to bear.  This can lead to many types of behavior that enhance dukkha, stress, and dis-ease including strong forms of denial, disconnecting, numbing out, and dissociation in ways that compound our inner distress.  Again, some of these coping mechanisms or psychological defenses can be useful in helping us momentarily but in the aggregate, we want to see what is at the root because these modes of being work well for short periods but can be very harmful and disorienting when they become default modes of living and relating (or not relating).

Craving, clinging, and psychological birth:

Do you remember in our first week, in the Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion Sutta, the last part of the definition of dukkha it says, “in brief, the five aggregates affected by clinging are dukkha”. This means that form, feeling, perception, mental formations (thoughts), and consciousness when identified with and clung to are dukkha.  Let’s look at how clinging gives rise to what we might call psychological or ego-identity birth.

I mentioned the powerful perspective offered by the late Thai monk Ajahn Buddhdassa on the role of psychological birth as a cause of dukkha.  As we read the texts we see again and again that birth is the proximate cause for aging, illness, and death.  In many readings of the tradition and of Buddhism more generally people often think about and relate to physical birth as the cause of suffering.  Not a very life-positive attitude! Let’s remember that the buddha also got old, got sick, and died and at the same time we say he realized the end of dukkha.  So can we mean that physical birth, aging, illness, and death are dukkha inherently?

Ajahn Buddhadassa offers a perspective aligns with my experience.  He conceived of “birth” as the Buddha meant it as a type of psychological birth that happens many, many times in a given day or even within a few minutes!  This type of birth happens anytime we identify with a momentary state or condition, a thought, a feeling, a perception, a view, an emotion, a mind-state, as I, me, or mine.  This type of identity clinging shapes our perspective for the time that it lasts, and it shapes how we see the world and ourselves. It is this momentary identity that ages, breaks down, and passes away often after a very short time, and lays the groundwork for the next birth which follows along on its heels.  

I wanted to offer this perspective so that you can investigate this process in your own experience.  Craving, clinging, and identification happen very quickly and in rapid succession.  You may experience it as simply being taken over by an experience, or as having a thought shape your sense of self and the world.  In the teachings, the proximate cause for dukkha is not just craving.  It is craving which leads to renewed existence, “ponobhavika,” identifying with experience as I, me, and mine in such a way that our sense of personal identity becomes based on what we are experiencing.  All of our experiences, our form, feelings, perceptions, thought formations, and consciousness, when we see them clearly, are impermanent, conditioned, and not subject to our control.  And yet without training, we don’t see them this way.  Without mindfulness and wisdom being present we automatically get taken over by whatever arises in our body and mind, and that experience shapes both our perception and sense of personal identity in a total (if momentary) way.  This is why the presence of mindfulness and wisdom are so important, they change the whole process, and they change what happens downstream.

I encouraged you to watch this process as it unfolds in your own mind and experience.  Notice when mindfulness is present and strong and you can see a thought as a thought, a feeling as a feeling, an emotion as an emotion, and are not taken over by them. This is equivalent to not taking birth in a limited or momentary identity.  Notice too when you do identify or get taken over by what arises when your perception is shaped by an experience and you identify with it.  This is what it is like to take birth with some thought or feeling as the basis.  Be aware throughout this process, be interested in observing and learning, and notice how your perception is affected and what happens next. Notice how the past and future appear to you (in your thoughts) when you are identified in this way.  Trying not to take birth or craving to not take birth is just another form of craving and will cause stress, and inner tension. We can be aware in and throughout both experiences of taking birth and not taking birth in this way.  I think if you explore this territory even a little it will be very revealing.  This is subtle stuff so don’t worry if it is not clear right away.

There is an old TV show called Quantum Leap where due to a botched time travel experiment, the main character begins each episode in someone else’s body, and during each half-hour episode he has to figure out who’s body he is in and what problem he has been put there to solve.  I want to invite you to be present in your own momentary identity births in this same way, not to solve them or escape from them, but to be present with awareness so you can learn from them.   Notice when you take birth in a fear identity how you experience yourself, how the world looks to you.  Notice when that identity passes away naturally and what arises in its place, some new sense of self, some new way the world seems or feels.  Notice how this can happen with a thought as the basis?  This momentary ego-birth comes from attaching to or being identified with some new arising thought, feeling, or perception.  The great irony is that this is happening all day long and we don’t even notice it.  We relate each momentary identity and perception as if it were true, real, and total.  It is this constructed identity that feels partial and incomplete that feels unsatisfactory and unstable because it is.  

A note on thoughts as clues to unwise view: Do you remember wise view as the first link in the eightfold path, the path that leads to the end of dukkha?  Wise-view is both the beginning of the path, we orient toward experience in a new way, and what gets refined through insight and clear seeing.  It is both a cause and a result of the path.  It deepens and refines along the way.  Because it is our unwise view that causes us to perceive things in ways that amplify dukkha, sometimes when we experience dukkha we can look to see what thought is present that is shaping they we experience and react.  Often when we are suffering, there is some thought (view) present that does not align with reality.  The dukkha we suffer is the experiential feedback we get from this misalignment.   For example, if I am thinking something should take only a short time but it is taking a long time, I may feel impatient and upset.  My impatience is not directly related to the time I am waiting, or to some fixed capacity I have, it has a lot to do with my hidden expectations.  If I can investigate and see that there is a hidden “should” present, then I can get a sense of what is causing the dukkha. Not only do I not want it to take this long, I somehow think it shouldn’t take this long!  Can you find examples of this in your experience?  If you did not have the “should” or “shouldn’t” thought, how might this affect your experience and your reaction in the moment?  Not only do we often crave attention, responsiveness, love, validation, or affection but often there is a hidden idea that people should give these things to us or that we should be able to do something or be some way that would make people give them to us.  Can you see the relationship between craving, suffering, and view/thought here?  What if you did not hold the view that people should give you love, affection, or validation or that you should be able to be or do something that would make them give it to you?  How would you see and relate to people differently if you did not hold this mistaken view?  Would you be more open to them, loving toward them, or even connected to them as they are?  This may be going too far for us this early in the intensive but why not?

You have a lot to explore this week.  As I have said many times, it is enough to do the daily practice, to live with awareness, and to observe the process and experience of dukkha when it makes itself known.  The above notes are just invitations to explore some of the mechanisms that give rise to dukkha, there is no should here in terms of what you should see or experience.  See what is true for you in your experience.  This is onward leading.