Four Noble Truths Quotes

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.

The Buddha's original teaching is essentially a matter of four points -- the Four Noble Truths: 1. Anguish is everywhere. 2. We desire permanent existence of ourselves and for our loved ones, and we desire to prove ourselves independent of others and superior to them. These desires conflict with the way things are: nothing abides, and everything and everyone depends upon everything and everyone else. This conflict causes our anguish, and we project this anguish on those we meet. 3. Release from anguish comes with the personal acknowledgment and resolve: we are here together very briefly, so let us accept reality fully and take care of one another while we can. 4. This acknowledgement and resolve are realized by following the Eightfold Path: Right Views, Right Thinking, Right Speech, Right Conduct, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Recollection, and Right Meditation. Here "Right" means "correct" or "accurate" -- in keeping with the reality of impermanence and interdependence.

Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they're evil or sinful, it's that they're unconscious. They are default settings. They're the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that's what you're doing.

It is not the outer objects that entangle us. It is the inner clinging that entangles us." - Tilopa

The Four Noble Truths are pragmatic rather than dogmatic. They suggest a course of action to be followed rather than a set of dogmas to be believed. The four truths are prescriptions for behavior rather than descriptions of reality. The Buddha compares himself to a doctor who offers a course of therapeutic treatment to heal one’s ills. To embark on such a therapy is not designed to bring one any closer to ‘the Truth’ but to enable one’s life to flourish here and now, hopefully leaving a legacy that will continue to have beneficial repercussions after one’s death. (154)

These Sutras are reminiscent of the Four Noble Truths of Lord Buddha: the misery of the world, the cause of misery, the removal of that misery, and the method used to remove it. Patanjali tells us that pain can be avoided. He further tells us that its cause is ignorance. (115)

There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship--be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles--is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

... the four noble truths: that there is suffering, that it has an origin, that there is a cessation of suffering, and that there is a path to that cessation.

THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS I. Suffering does exist. II. Suffering arises from "attachment" to desires. III. Suffering ceases when "attachment" to desire ceases. IV. Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the eightfold path: 1. Right understanding (view). 2. Right intention (thought). 3. Right speach. 4. Right action. 5. Right livelihood. 6. Right effort. 7. Right mindfulness. 8. Rght meditation (concentration). Buddha's fourfold consolation: With a mind free from greed and unfriendliness, incorruptible, and purified, the noble disciple is already during this lifetime assure of a fourfold consolation: “If there is another world (heaven), and a cause and effect (Karma) of good and bad actions, then it may be that, at the dissolution of the body, after death, I shall be reborn in a happy realm, a heavenly world.” Of this first consolation (s)he is assured. “And if there is no other world, no reward and no punishment of good and bad actions, then I live at least here, in this world, an untroubled and happy life, free from hate and unfriendliness.” Of this second consolation (s)he is assured. “And if bad things happen to bad people, but I do not do anything bad (or have unfriendliness against anyone), how can I, who am doing no bad things, meet with bad things?” Of this third consolation (s)he is assured. “And if no bad things happen to bad people, then I know myself in both ways pure.” Of this fourth consolation (s)he is assured.

There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on.

The Four Noble Truths for writers. 1. Writers write. 2. Writing is a process. 3. You don't know what your writing will be until the end of the process. 4. If writing is your practice, the only way to fail is not to write.

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship---be it Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles---is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

Our problems do not exist outside our mind.

It is very important to identify the actual cause of whatever unhappiness we feel. If we are forever blaming our difficulties on others, this is a sure sign that there are still many problems and faults within our own mind.

Because here’s something else that’s weird but true: in the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship–be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles–is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It’s been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness. Worship power, you will end up feeling weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to numb you to your own fear. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart, you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. But the insidious thing about these forms of worship is not that they’re evil or sinful, it’s that they’re unconscious. They are default settings. They’re the kind of worship you just gradually slip into, day after day, getting more and more selective about what you see and how you measure value without ever being fully aware that that’s what you’re doing.

Problems arise only if we respond to difficulties with a negative state of mind. Therefore, if we want to be free from problems, we must transform our mind.

For pragmatist philosophers such as these, a belief is valued as true because it is useful, because it works, because it brings tangible benefits to human beings and other creatures. Siddhattha Gotama’s Four Noble Truths are “true” not because they correspond to something real somewhere, but because, when put into practice, they can enhance the quality of your life. In

...The spiritual Oriental teachers say a person has three forms of mind,'' Beatrice was explaining to him once, while they were on break between one lesson and another at university, ''which are the dense mind, the subtle level and the ultra-subtle mind. Primary Consciousness, or the dense mind, is that existential, Sartrean mind which is related to our senses and so it is guided directly by human primitive instincts; in Sanskrit, this is referred to as ālaya-vijñāna which is directly tied to the brain. The subtle mind comes into effect when we begin to be aware of our true nature or that which in Sanskrit is called Ātman or self-existent essence that eventually leads us to the spiritual dimension. Ultimately there is the Consciousness-Only or the Vijñapti-Mātra, an ultra-subtle mind which goes beyond what the other two levels of mind can fabricate, precisely because this particular mind is not a by-product of the human brain but a part of the Cosmic Consciousness of the Absolute, known in Sanskrit as Tathāgatagarbha, and it is at this profound level of Consciousness that we are able to achieve access to the Divine Wisdom and become one with it in an Enlightened State.'' ''This spiritual subject really fascinates me,'' the Professor would declare, amazed at the extraordinary knowledge that Beatrice possessed.'' ''In other words, a human being recognises itself from its eternal essence and not from its existence,'' Beatrice replied, smiling, as she gently touched the tip of his nose with the tip of her finger, as if she was making a symbolic gesture like when children are corrected by their teachers. ''See, here,'' she had said once, pulling at the sleeve of his t-shirt to make him look at her book. ''For example, in the Preface to the 1960 Notes on Dhamma, the Buddhist philosopher from the University of Cambridge, Ñāṇavīra Thera, maintains those that have understood Buddhist teachings have gone way beyond Existential Thought. And on this same theme, the German scholar of Buddhist texts, Edward Conze, said that the possible similarity that exists between Buddhist and Existential Thought lies only on the preliminary level. He said that in terms of the Four Noble Truths, or in Sanskrit Catvāri Āryasatyāni, the Existentialists have only the first, which teaches everything is ill. Of the second - which assigns the origin of ill to craving - they have a very imperfect grasp. As for the third and fourth, which consist of letting go of craving, and the Noble Eightfold Path that leads to liberation from the cycle of rebirth in the form of Nirvāṇa - these are unheard of. Knowing no way out, the Existentialists are manufacturers of their own woes...

Four Noble Truths: the truth of the universality of suffering, the truth of the origin of suffering, the truth of the cessation of suffering, and the truth of the path leading to its cessation.

Perhaps the four noble truths were culture-bound. Perhaps they were truths for 2,500 years ago in a land with overwhelming poverty, overcrowding, starvation, disease, class oppression, and lack of any hope for a better future.

what makes religious folks religious today is not so much that they believe in Jesus’ divinity or Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths but that they hold certain moral positions on bedroom issues such as premarital sex, homosexuality, and abortion.

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. I

Buddha's four noble truths: 1. Life is suffering. 2. Suffering is caused by attachments (to objects, ideas, individuals, to survival itself). 3. There is an antidote to suffering: the cessation of desire, of attachment, of the self. 4. There is a specific pathway to a suffering-free existence: the eight step path to enlightenment.

Being patient means to welcome wholeheartedly whatever arises,

If we practise the patience of voluntarily accepting suffering, we can maintain a peaceful mind even when experiencing suffering and pain.

To enter a relationship for the long term is to enter the space of not knowing. While this is so brave and beautiful, exhilarating even, it is not particularly comfortable.

Rather than sweeping romantic gestures or grand overtures, it is these tiny courtesies that create the foundation for the love we seek. If they are missing, the foundation will weaken over time.

Let us use Buddhism as a specific example. It is a system that is gaining a following among many in Hollywood. It is often very simplistically defined as a religion of compassion and ethics. The truth is that there is probably no system of belief more complex than Buddhism. While it starts off with the four noble truths on suffering and its cessation, it then moves to the eightfold path on how to end suffering. But as one enters the eightfold path, there emerge hundreds upon hundreds of other rules to deal with contingencies. From a simple base of four offenses that result in a loss of one’s discipleship status is built an incredible edifice of ways to restoration. Those who follow Buddha’s teachings are given thirty rules on how to ward off those pitfalls. But before one even deals with those, there are ninety-two rules that apply to just one of the offenses. There are seventy-five rules for those entering the order. There are rules of discipline to be applied—two hundred and twenty-seven for men, three hundred and eleven for women. (Readers of Buddhism know that Buddha had to be persuaded before women were even permitted into a disciple’s status. After much pleading and cajoling by one of his disciples, he finally acceded to the request but laid down extra rules for them.) Whatever one may make of all of this, we must be clear that in a nontheistic system, which Buddhism is, ethics become central and rules are added ad infinitum. Buddha and his followers are the originators of these rules. The most common prayer for forgiveness in Buddhism, from the Buddhist Common Prayer, reflects this numerical maze: I beg leave! I beg leave, I beg leave. . . . May I be freed at all times from the four states of Woe, the Three Scourges, the Eight Wrong Circumstances, the Five Enemies, the Four Deficiencies, the Five Misfortunes, and quickly attain the Path, the Fruition, and the Noble Law of Nirvana, Lord.4 Teaching

In virtually every spiritual tradition, suffering is seen as a doorway to awakening. In the West, this connection can be seen in the biblical story of Job, as well as the dark night of the soul in medieval mysticism. The transformative power of suffering finds perhaps its clearest expression in the Four Noble Truths espoused by the Buddha. Though suffering and trauma are not identical, the Buddha’s insight into the nature of suffering can provide a powerful mirror for examining the effects of trauma in your life.

commencement address at Kenyon College: In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things—if they are where you tap real meaning in life—then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you….Worship power—you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart—you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. The

The cultivation of Right View is about applying the four noble truths in your life, taking them from an abstract idea into a living reality. The enlightened person sees the truth of the world, recognising the flawed and temporary nature of objects and ideas. They see the cause and effect relationships that connect the events of the world (karma). Because all ideas and concepts are ultimately impermanent, the enlightened person does not rely on ideologies and other external explanations of the world in order to practice Right View. Instead they cultivate their Intuition and use it to build a deeper, more complete understanding of the world beyond the level of appearances.

In reality, all the problems we experience day to day come from our self-cherishing and self-grasping – misconceptions that exaggerate our own importance. However, because we do not understand this, we usually blame others for our problems, and this just makes them worse. From these two basic misconceptions arise all our other delusions, such as anger and attachment, causing us to experience endless problems.

THE FOUR TRUTHS OF SUFFERING Over 2,500 years ago, seven weeks after attaining enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, the Buddha gave his first teaching in the Deer Park outside Varanasi. There he taught the Four Noble Truths. The first is the truth of suffering—not only the kind of suffering that is obvious to the eye, but also the kind, as we have seen, that exists in subtler forms. The second is the truth of the causes of suffering—ignorance that engenders craving, malice, pride, and many other thoughts that poison our lives and those of others. Since these mental poisons can be eliminated, an end to suffering—the third truth—is therefore possible. The fourth truth is the path that turns that potential into reality. The path is the process of using all available means to eliminate the fundamental causes of suffering. In brief, we must: Recognize suffering, Eliminate its source, End it By practicing the path.

Joy The Pali word sukkha (Sanskrit su-kha) is usually translated as happiness. As the opposite of duhkha, however, it connotes the end of all suffering, a state of being that is not subject to the ups and downs of change – that is, abiding joy. It would be difficult to find a more thoroughly researched definition of joy than the Buddha’s. If we can trust that at least the outline of truth remains in the legends of his life, then his questionings just before going forth to the Four Noble Sights were chiefly concerned with the search for absolute joy. What anyone could want of worldly happiness, Prince Siddhartha surely had, with the promise of much more. But the young prince scrutinized the content of worldly happiness much more closely than the rest of us, and his conclusion was that what people called joy was a house of cards perched precariously on certain preconditions. When these preconditions are fulfilled, the pleasure we feel lasts but a moment, for the nature of human experience is to change. And when they are not fulfilled, there is longing and a frustratingly elusive sense of loss; we grasp for what we do not have and nurse the gnawing desire to have it again. To try to hold on to anything – a thing, a person, an event, a position – merely exposes us to its loss. Anything that changes, the Buddha concluded, anything in our experience that consists of or is conditioned by component sensations – the Buddha’s word was samskaras – produces sorrow, not joy. Experience promises happiness, but it delivers only

Have no anxiety about anything,' Paul writes to the Philippians. In one sense it is like telling a woman with a bad head cold not to sniffle and sneeze so much or a lame man to stop dragging his feet. Or maybe it is more like telling a wino to lay off the booze or a compulsive gambler to stay away from the track. Is anxiety a disease or an addiction? Perhaps it is something of both. Partly, perhaps, because you can't help it, and partly because for some dark reason you choose not to help it, you torment yourself with detailed visions of the worst that can possibly happen. The nagging headache turns out to be a malignant brain tumor. When your teenage son fails to get off the plane you've gone to meet, you see his picture being tacked up in the post office among the missing and his disappearance never accounted for. As the latest mid-East crisis boils, you wait for the TV game show to be interrupted by a special bulletin to the effect that major cities all over the country are being evacuated in anticipation of a nuclear attack. If Woody Allen were to play your part on the screen, you would roll in the aisles with the rest of them, but you're not so much as cracking a smile at the screen inside your own head. Does the terrible fear of disaster conceal an even more terrible hankering for it? Do the accelerated pulse and the knot in the stomach mean that, beneath whatever their immediate cause, you are acting out some ancient and unresolved drama of childhood? Since the worst things that happen are apt to be the things you don't see coming, do you think there is a kind of magic whereby, if you only can see them coming, you will be able somehow to prevent them from happening? Who knows the answer? In addition to Novocain and indoor plumbing, one of the few advantages of living in the twentieth century is the existence of psychotherapists, and if you can locate a good one, maybe one day you will manage to dig up an answer that helps. But answer or no answer, the worst things will happen at last even so. 'All life is suffering' says the first and truest of the Buddha's Four Noble Truths, by which he means that sorrow, loss, death await us all and everybody we love. Yet "the Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything," Paul writes, who was evidently in prison at the time and with good reason to be anxious about everything, 'but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.' He does not deny that the worst things will happen finally to all of us, as indeed he must have had a strong suspicion they were soon to happen to him. He does not try to minimize them. He does not try to explain them away as God's will or God's judgment or God's method of testing our spiritual fiber. He simply tells the Philippians that in spite of them—even in the thick of them—they are to keep in constant touch with the One who unimaginably transcends the worst things as he also unimaginably transcends the best. 'In everything,' Paul says, they are to keep on praying. Come Hell or high water, they are to keep on asking, keep on thanking, above all keep on making themselves known. He does not promise them that as a result they will be delivered from the worst things any more than Jesus himself was delivered from them. What he promises them instead is that 'the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.' The worst things will surely happen no matter what—that is to be understood—but beyond all our power to understand, he writes, we will have peace both in heart and in mind. We are as sure to be in trouble as the sparks fly upward, but we will also be "in Christ," as he puts it. Ultimately not even sorrow, loss, death can get at us there. That is the sense in which he dares say without risk of occasioning ironic laughter, "Have no anxiety about anything." Or, as he puts it a few lines earlier, 'Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say, Rejoice!

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

Buddhism is an agnostic religion. It neither acknowledges the existence of a god nor denies it. It simply teaches that we must live by a moral code because it is our nature to do so, regardless of whether a god exists or not. To choose good in the hopes of reward, while avoiding evil out of fear of punishment, is not true goodness. It is sheer hypocrisy — a selfish desire to do something in return for our own benefit.

WE HAVE, if we’re lucky, about thirty thousand days to play the game of life. How we play it will be determined by what we value. Or, as David Foster Wallace put it, “Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritualtype thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.” We now

we will always be at the mercy of the world and of circumstances beyond our control.

Buddha's goal was to help people avoid suffering by teaching them to live according to four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. The truths are that the world is full of suffering; that desire and attachment are the causes ofworldly life; that worldly life can be stopped if we destroy desire and attachment; and that to do this we must learn the way. The way is the Eightfold Path: right speech, right action; right living; right effort; right thinking; right meditation; right hopes; and right view. The Eightfold Path leads us to "Nirvana," a state of eternal bliss and peace.

These four noble truths are the truth of suffering, the truth of its origin, the truth of cessation and the path leading to cessation.

Since there is never a time when worldly activities come to an end, limit your activities.

This is the noble truth of the Way. Any person who says that the Three Treasures are non-eternal and holds this view of life, then this is a false way of practice and is not the noble truth of the Way. If a person practises the Way thus and has it [sees it] as Eternal, such a person is my disciple. He abides in the true view of life and practises the teaching of the Four Noble Truths.

Люди устроены так, что для правильного метаболизма души они должны таиться и трепетать, как делали это миллионы лет, поедая падаль в темных пещерах. Жизнь человека не должна быть слишком легкой, потому что он научится находить в любом комфорте положенную кармой муку, и чем мягче будет перина, тем сильнее станет впиваться в бок закатившаяся под нее горошина.

The first training, ethics (also called ethical conduct or moral discipline) is crucial in developing the second and the third, concentration and wisdom, and as such is really the foundation for the other two.

The second of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths states that the root of suffering is attachment. Everything in the world is transient, so it’s wise not to get attached to anything or the way anything currently is. The Buddha

In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship—be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly.

the individual is the key to all the rest. For change to happen in any community, the initiative must come from the individual. If the individual can become a good, calm, peaceful person, this automatically brings a positive atmosphere to the family around him or her. When parents are warm-hearted, peaceful and calm people, generally speaking their children will also develop that attitude and behaviour.

What of the case of someone who has no religious faith? Whether we follow a religion or not is a matter of individual right. It is possible to manage without religion, and in some cases it may make life simpler! But when you no longer have any interest in religion, you should not neglect the value of good human qualities.

The Buddha also taught the way to free ourselves from this suffering. The heart of these teachings (which we call the Dharma) is the Four Noble Truths. These truths, and the corresponding commitments,  are the foundation of our program: There is suffering. We commit to understanding the truth of suffering. There is a cause of suffering. We commit to understanding that craving leads to suffering. There is an end to suffering. We commit to understanding and experiencing that less craving leads to less suffering. There is a path that leads to the end of suffering. We commit to cultivating the path.

However, there are certain aspects of the spiritual path which have less to do with experiences related to knowledge, and more to do with the enhancement of our good heart.

achieving enlightenment, Siddhartha had cleansed himself of all the cravings, delusions, ill will, and desires and had founded the technique of living a harmonious life. From that time onwards, Siddharta was referred

One of the epithets the Buddha acquired over the years was “the Doctor of the World.” A reason for this is that the central insight and framework that he taught, known as the Four Noble Truths, is cast in the formulation of a classical Indian medical diagnosis. The format begins with the nature of the symptom. In this particular kind of psychological or spiritual disease, the symptom is dukkha, the experience of dissatisfaction; this is the First Noble Truth. The second element in this diagnostic format is the cause of that symptom, which the Buddha outlined as being self-centered craving, greed, hatred, and delusion. These are the toxins that Matthieu referred to, the negative afflictive emotions, habits, and qualities that the mind gets caught up in and that poison the heart; this is the Second Noble Truth. The third element is the prognosis, and the good news is that it is curable. This is the Third Noble Truth, that the experience of dissatisfaction can end; we can be free from it. The fourth element—and the Fourth Noble Truth—is the methodology of treatment: what the Buddha laid out as the way to heal this wound. It’s known in some expressions as the Eightfold Path, but it can be outlined in three fundamental elements: first, responsible behavior or virtue, living a moral and ethical life; second, mental collectedness, meditation, and mind training; and third, the development of insightful understanding in accordance with reality, or wisdom. These three elements are the fundamental treatment for this psychological, spiritual ailment of dissatisfaction. I should underline that the Buddha didn’t make any claim to have a monopoly on truth. When somebody once asked him, “Is it the case that you’re the only one who really understands the way things are, and that all other spiritual teachings are incorrect, all other paths are erroneous?” He said, “No, by no means.” It’s not a matter of the way the teachings are framed, the language or symbolism that one uses. It is simply the presence or absence of these three central qualities: ethical behavior, mental collectedness, and wisdom. If any spiritual path contains those three elements, then it will certainly lead to the possibility and the actuality of freedom, peace, a harmony within oneself, and an easefulness in life. If it doesn’t contain those elements, then it cannot lead to easefulness, peace, and liberation.

In cases where being honest might hurt someone else, the Buddha suggests keeping quiet, or approaching the person when the situation is less sensitive. It’s all about truth, timing, and whether or not something can do any good.

The Buddha devised a practical guide—the Four Noble Truths—for dealing with these troublesome attachments. Noble Truth 1. Life is suffering (dukkha in Sanskrit), due to chronic dissatisfaction. Noble Truth 2. The cause of this suffering is craving, desire, and attachment for worldly things. Noble Truth 3. Suffering can be defeated by eliminating this craving, desire, and attachment. Noble Truth 4. The way to eliminate craving, desire, and attachment is by following the magga, the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism.

The practice of Right Speech is to try to change our habits so that our speech arises from the seed of Buddha that is in us, and not from our unresolved, unwholesome seeds.

Feeling the support of the whole Earth to realize the way, Shakyamuni was able to remain upright. During the night he attained various shamanic, or occult, powers: the divine eye (the ability to see what is out of sight); the divine ear (the ability to hear the inaudible); the knowledge of past lives; and the knowledge of other people’s minds. Finally, in the middle of the night, he realized the nature of suffering, which he later expressed in the teaching known as the Four Noble Truths: This is suffering as it has come to be. This is the origin of suffering as it has come to be. This is the cessation of suffering as it has come to be. This is the path leading to the cessation of suffering as it has come to be. As Shakyamuni meditated on the nature of suffering, his wisdom eye gradually opened. He saw that all things in the universe are deeply connected, mutually create one another, and therefore have no inherent, independent existence.

Buddha was not a god. He was a human being like you and me, and he suffered just as we do.

The Buddha wanted his five friends to be free from the idea that austerity is the only correct practice. He had learned firsthand that if you destroy your health, you have no energy left to realize the path. The other extreme to be avoided, he said, is indulgence in sense pleasures — being possessed by sexual desire, running after fame, eating immoderately, sleeping too much, or chasing after possessions.

The Chinese translate Four Noble Truths as "Four Wonderful Truths" or "Four Holy Truths." Our suffering is holy if we embrace it and look deeply into it. If we don't, it isn't holy at all.

The eyes of a dying patient are the clearest mirrors I have ever looked into. They show me myself in a way that nothing else can." -Frank Ostaseski

As Sai Baba says, you will not achieve God-realization unless you die to the negative ego, which is fearful, separative, and selfish. When you die to the lower self’s way of thinking and are reborn to your higher self’s way of thinking, then you will realize God. This is the main curriculum of the spiritual path, regardless of which particular route or teacher you choose to follow. Contrary to what other people might say, you do not need negative emotions. They are created by the mind. They do not come from outside of yourself or from your instincts. They come from your interpretations, perceptions, and beliefs about reality. Did not Buddha say, in the four noble truths, that all suffering comes from “wrong points of view.

The light which could dispel this darkness and give liberation from suffering was proclaimed by Gotama Buddha as the knowledge of the Four Noble Truths: The pain of embodied existence, caused by constantly recurring births and deaths. The cause of these sufferings lies in ignorance, in the thirst for self-gratification through earthly possessions which drag after them the perpetual repetition of imperfect existence. The cessation of sufferings lies in the attainment of a state of enlightened all-inclusiveness, thus creating the possibility of conscious interception of the circle of earthly existence. The path to cessation of these pains consists in gradual strengthening of the elements necessary to be perfected for the annihilation of the causes of earthly existence and for approaching the great truth. The path to this truth was divided by Gotama into eight parts: Right understanding (that which concerns the law of causes). Right thinking. Right speech. Right action. Right living. Right labor. Right vigilance and self-discipline. Right concentration.

the four Noble Truths. These are— that all life is sorrowful ; that suffering is caused by ignorant craving ; that the end of suffering can indeed be achieved ; and that the way to that end is through the noble eight-fold path of right view, right aspiration, right speech, right conduct, right means of livelihood, right endeavour, right mindfulness and right contemplation.

We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.’- Buddha

The core teachings of Buddhism stand in distinct contradiction to Hinduism. Whereas Hinduism believes that evil does not exist and is an illusion, Buddhism embraces evil, and the solution for evil is summarized in the Four Noble Truths.

For, although the Buddhas themselves do not cling to such notions as purity and impurity or truth and untruth, they assist the beings who are to be trained and ignorant about true reality with justifications of purity and impurity or truth and untruth just as these are acknowledged by those attached beings themselves. Likewise, the noble ones are completely free from any words, thoughts, and expressions of existence, nonexistence, both, or neither with respect to arising from the four extremes. Nevertheless, for the sake of opponents who conceive of any kind of arising in terms of the four extremes, they negate such arising by relying on the functions of valid cognition as these are established through the opponents' own valid cognition.

So when you work on correcting what goes in your mind, you are able to get rid of all sorts of negativity and pessimism and are able to think positively. The moment positive thoughts inhabit your mind, everything in your life starts straightening up. Your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and behaviors- all become right and as a result, you are able to live a comfortable life clear of all sufferings.

Za prvu plemenitu istinu, "Postoji patnja" je prvi uvid. Kakav je to uvid? Ne moramo od toga praviti ništa grandiozno; to je samo jedno priznavanje: "Postoji patnja". To je osnovni uvid. Neznalica kaže: "Ja patim. Ne želim da patim. Meditiram i idem na kurseve meditacije da bih se oslobodio patnje, ali ja još uvek patim iako to ne želim... Kako da se oslobodim patnje? Šta da uradim da je se oslobodim?" Ali to nije prva plemenita istina; ona nije: "Ja patim i želim to da okončam." Uvid je: "Postoji patnja.

Sada na bol ili tesklobu koju osećate ne gledate iz perspektive "To je moje" već kroz misao: "Postoji ova patnja, ova dukkha ." Ova misao javlja se iz stava refleksije "Bude koji vidi Dhammu". Ovaj uvid je jednostavno priznavanje da postoji ta patnja, ali je ne činimo ličnom. To priznanje je jedan važan uvid; jednostavno posmatramo mentalnu teskobu ili fizički bol i vidimo ih kao dukkhu a ne kao nešto lično – vidimo ih kao dukkhu i ne reagujemo na njih na stari, već naviknuti način. Drugi uvid prve plemenite istine je: "Patnju treba razumeti." Drugi uvid ili aspekt svake od plemenitih istina ima u sebi reč "treba": "Treba je razumeti." Drugi uvid je, tako, da dukkha jeste nešto što treba razumeti. Treba da razumemo dukkhu a ne samo da pokušavamo da je se otresemo. Možemo uzeti reč "razumeti". To je sasvim uobičajena reč, ali na jeziku pali "razumeti" znači zaista prihvatiti patnju, prigrliti je, a ne samo reagovati na nju. Na svaki oblik patnje – fizički ili mentalni – mi obično samo reagujemo, ali kroz razumevanje možemo zaista da pogledamo tu patnju, da je zaista prihvatimo kao činjenicu, da je prigrlimo. I to je drugi aspekt: "Treba da razumemo patnju." Treći aspekt prve plemenite istine je: "Patnja je shvaćena

the four sacred and wonderful truths of Buddhism. The Four Noble Truths are: first, there is suffering; second, there is a path or a series of conditions that has produced the suffering; third, suffering can be ended—happiness is always possible; and fourth, there is a path that leads to the cessation of suffering, to happiness.

To practice the Four Noble Truths, you yourself have to touch deeply the things that bring you peace and joy. When you do, you realize that walking on the Earth is a miracle, washing the dishes is a miracle, and practicing with a community of friends is a miracle. The greatest miracle is to be alive.

The Buddha’s Four Noble Truths are: there is suffering; there is a course of action that generates suffering; suffering ceases (i.e., there is happiness); and there is a course of action leading to the cessation of suffering (the arising of happiness).

To understand the Dharma, you are encouraged to learn about the Buddhist doctrines. These are: The Four Noble Truths,

What we learn in meditation isn’t so much to stop thoughts, but to change our relationship to them. We learn to be less reactive, less ruled by our thoughts, and to see that they aren’t all true. “You don’t have to believe your thoughts,” one of my teachers says. What a revelation! When I see my thoughts more clearly, I’m able to make choices to act or not act based on what I see; I can exercise Right Intention to steer my life in the direction I want to go. Sometimes thoughts and emotions seem overwhelming, even in the context of mindfulness. At these times you might fall back on compassion—not pity—for yourself, for the great task you are attempting: facing down the demons of the heart and mind. Perhaps then you can begin to forgive yourself and your failures. THE FOUR NOBLE TRUTHS The Four Noble Truths are at the core of all Buddhist teachings.

The idea that life is suffering is a relatively universal truism of religious thinking. This is the first of the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism as well as a key Hindu concept.

In Sutra of the Four Noble Truths Buddha says: ‘You should know sufferings.’ In saying this Buddha is advising us that we should know about the unbearable sufferings that we shall experience in our countless future lives, and therefore develop renunciation, the determination to liberate ourself permanently from these sufferings.

Among the most fundamental Buddhist teachings are the four noble truths: Life leads to suffering and pain in one way or another; Our suffering is the result of our desire and craving for worldly pleasures; Our suffering ends only when we liberate ourselves from our desires and cravings; To reach this liberated state, we must follow the path provided by Buddha.

The news consists of exposing the first Noble Truth (‘There is suffering’), but makes little reference to the other three. Wisdom concerns itself with all Four Noble Truths equally. It

You, a human being, who possess an animal’s mind, please listen to my song. Normally

He understands the truth of misery.' The truth of Duhkha, or misery, is the first of the four Noble Satyas, or Truths, that ought to be realized by the Hinayanists. According to the Hinayana doctrine, misery is a necessary concomitant of sentient life.' [FN#351]

Moreover, painful feelings can only arise and remain in our mind because of our present self-grasping.

The Four Noble Truths The Dharma teaches the Buddhists the ways to progress or reach nirvana.  In this light, the Dharma teaches that the journey to nirvana should involve following the Four Noble Truths referred to as Pativedhanana or the “wisdom of realization.”  According to the Buddha, the four truths center around the following concepts: 1) universality of suffering; 2) origin of suffering; 3) overcoming of suffering; and 4) the suppression of suffering. The

To be completely objective we must say: All men are mortal. Lionel Samaratunga's son is a man. Therefore Lionel Samaratunga's son is mortal. So stated, it is quite generally true, and is the concern of no-one in particular. It is so generally true that it would serve in a textbook of logic as an example of a syllogism in Barbara (though usually, instead of Lionel Samaratunga's son, it is Socrates whose mortality is logically demonstrated). But how many students of logic are going to shed tears when they read that Lionel Samaratunga's son is destined to die? How many have so much as heard of Lionel Samaratunga, let alone of his son? (And anyway, how many students of logic shed a tear even over the death of Socrates, of whom they may perhaps have heard?) But if you were to come across this syllogism unexpectedly, it is not impossible that you might feel emotionally moved (as perhaps at this very moment you may be feeling a little uncomfortable at my having chosen an example so near home). And why should this be so? Because you are fond of Lionel Samaratunga's son and cannot regard this syllogism in Barbara, which speaks of his mortality, quite so objectively as a student of logic. In other words, as soon as feeling comes in at the door objectivity flies out the window. Feeling, being private and not public, is subjective and not objective. And the Buddha has said (A. III,61: i,176) that it is 'to one who feels' that he teaches the Four Noble Truths. So, then, the Dhamma must essentially refer to a subjective aniccatā—i.e. one that entails dukkha—and not, in any fundamental sense, to an objective aniccatā, which we can leave to students of logic and their professors. (Feeling is not a logical category at all.)

The Four Noble Truths The Dharma teaches the Buddhists the ways to progress or reach nirvana.  In this light, the Dharma teaches that the journey to nirvana should involve following the Four Noble Truths referred to as Pativedhanana or the “wisdom of realization.”  According to the Buddha, the four truths center around the following concepts: 1) universality of suffering; 2) origin of suffering; 3) overcoming of suffering; and 4) the suppression of suffering. The First Noble Truth: Dukkha  The Buddha proclaimed that

The bad news is, you’re falling through the air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is, there is no ground. Chögyam Trungpa

A simple example from the field of medicine can help illustrate the Four Noble Truths. Let’s say you are diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (First Noble Truth), which was likely brought on by eating a poor diet and becoming very overweight (Second Noble Truth). Your doctor tells you the situation does not need to be like that and can be controlled (confirming the Third Noble Truth). You follow the doctor’s prescription—taking your medicine, eating better, and exercising more—which is your route to healing (Fourth Noble Truth).

As Shantideva writes in this beautiful prayer: As long as space endures As long as sentient beings remain, Until then may I too remain To dispel the miseries of the world.

So ethical conduct, practicing a moral life, is not something that can effectively be enforced from the outside but must grow out of a subjective understanding of what helps and what harms others.

We avoid harming others not simply because the actions themselves might have obviously negative repercussions, but because the mind that generates an unethical action will cause suffering for ourselves and others in less discernable ways in the future.

look at the company you work for and see what effect they are having on the environment and the people in that environment; see what damage is being done. Even if we personally are not doing anything wrong, if our livelihood is based on something even slightly harmful, subconsciously something happens. That mental state will always disturb our mind.

just because mindfulness is simple does not mean that it is easy.

So what I’ve done is taken the four noble truths and torqued them into another shape. This reconfiguration enables us to revise the standard understanding of causality that underpins them. So instead of seeing craving as the cause of suffering, and the noble eightfold path as what leads to the end of suffering, I’ve turned that on its head. The experience of dukkha is actually what gives rise to reactivity. And the experience of nirvana is what allows the possibility of another way of life in this world. Now

In a 1982 paper entitled “The Four Noble Truths,” Norman offers a detailed, philological analysis of The First Discourse and arrives at the startling conclusion that “the earliest form of this sutta did not include the word ariya-saccaṃ [noble truth].”2 On grammatical and syntactical grounds, he shows how the expression “noble truth” was inexpertly interpolated into the text at a later date than its original compositioṇ But since no such original text has come down to us, we cannot know what it did say. All that can reasonably be deduced is that instead of talking of four noble truths, the text spoke merely of “four.” The

Yet this unlearning is precisely what needs to be done if we are to make the shift from a belief-based Buddhism (version 1.0) to a praxis-based Buddhism (version 2.0). We have to train ourselves to the point where on hearing or reading a text from the canon our initial response is no longer “Is that true?” but “Does this work?” At the same time, we also need to undertake a critical analysis of the texts themselves in order to uncover, as best we can at this distance in time, the core terms and narrative strategies that inform a particular passage or discourse. If we subtract the words “noble truth” from the phrase “four noble truths,” we are simply left with “four.” And the most economic formulation of the Four, to be found throughout Buddhist traditions, is this: Suffering (dukkha) Arising (samudaya) Ceasing (nirodha) Path (magga) Once deprived of the epithet “noble truth” and no longer phrased in propositional language, we arrive at the four keystones on which both Buddhism 1.0 and Buddhism 2.0 are erected. Just as there are four nucleobases (cytosine, guanine, adenine, and thymine) that make up DNA, the nucleic acid that contains the genetic instructions for all living organisms, one might say that suffering, arising, ceasing, and path are the four nucleobases that make up the dharma, the body of instructive ideas, values, and practices that give rise to all forms of Buddhism. ( 9 ) Craving is repetitive, it wallows in attachment and greed, obsessively indulging in this and that: the craving of sensory desire, craving for being, craving for non-being. —THE FIRST DISCOURSE Following Carol S. Anderson (1999), I translate samudaya as “arising” rather than the more familiar “origiṇ” I also

The Buddha uses the framework of the four noble truths to formulate this insight: the first truth, the truth of suffering, is the illness. The second truth, the truth of the origin of suffering, refers to the cause of the illness. The third truth, the truth of cessation, is the understanding that a complete cure is possible. And the fourth truth, the truth of the path that leads to cessation, is the cure.

We are ignorant of the fundamental nature of the way things exist, and we feel anxiety because of this.

We see things as existing permanently and cling to anything that reinforces our concept of permanence, pushing away anything that threatens it. Attachment and aversion are the roots of all other problems, and they themselves are caused by ignorance. Thus ignorance, attachment, and aversion—what Buddhism calls the three poisons—are the origin (the second noble truth) of suffering (the first noble truth).

the test of our practice is how we handle problems.

Clinging to a problem does not make it disappear, but rather just makes it worse, aggravating the problem and leading to frustration and anger in relation to the problem and even in relation to ourselves.