The World of the Noble Truths

When I was in school, I was taught that if you wanted to understand somebody’s thinking, you had to look for the structure—the underlying framework in which all the points this person was discussing found their meaning, found their place.

In the Buddha’s teachings, you have two structures. One is the four noble truths, the other is the noble eightfold path, and they contain each other. The fourth noble truth is the noble eightfold path. And the first factor of the noble eightfold path, right view, consists of the four noble truths. This makes the point that the four noble truths are not just a theory. They are a way of looking at the world but they play a role in a path of action—determining how you’re going to act.

For most thinkers, the underlying structures start with first principles and then argue from those first principles to build a structure, like building a building based on a foundation.

But the image the Buddha gives is of a path. What ties all his teachings together is not where you’re coming from, but where you’re going.

He teaches that it is possible to put an end to suffering, and everything in his teachings has meaning in the quest to put an end to suffering. He’s not just offering four interesting facts about suffering. He’s saying this is the important issue to focus on. As you focus on this issue, everything else makes sense, everything else finds its meaning.

That’s because the truths don’t just sit there. They have duties. The truth of suffering—What is suffering? It’s clinging to the aggregates—that’s to be comprehended. We don’t usually comprehend our sufferings in that way. We think, “Why is this pain afflicting me?” “Why is this situation in the world outside afflicting me?”

But the Buddha is saying that suffering is the act of clinging to form, feelings, perceptions, fabrications, or consciousness. It’s something we do. It’s not something we’re just on the receiving end of. We’re actively doing the suffering.

He then defines the clinging as desire and passion for these things. The word he uses for “clinging” can also mean feeding—we like to feed on these things.

This is where the analysis gets really counter-intuitive. We think that feeding is one of our main pleasures of life, but the Buddha is saying that feeding is really suffering—you’re dependent on something, you’ve got a hunger, and it’s not yet satisfied.

The cause of that suffering, he says again, is desire and passion. But in this case, it’s desire and passion that would lead to a state of becoming. This is reflected in the fact that the word for craving that he identifies here can also mean thirst.

So you see the basic analogy he’s got here. You’re thirsting for something, you’re hungering for something—that’s going to cause you to suffer. As you find what you want to eat, you think you’re happy. But he says, actually, the feeding in itself means that we’re still feeling a lack, that we’re really dependent on something that we’re feeding on: That’s the suffering.

Now, the cessation of suffering would be to put an end to that desire and passion, that craving. He offers the noble eightfold path as the path to follow to reach that end.

Now, as I said, each of these truths has a duty: Suffering is to be comprehended; the cause or origination, as the Buddha calls it, is to be abandoned; the cessation is to be realized, and you do that by developing the path. So understanding of the four noble truths is something to be developed as part of a larger path of action.

You can see that the Buddha analyzes things in ways that go against the current of our ordinary thinking. It’s almost as if you go into another world when you’re taking on his teachings—because he offers these four truths, as I said, not just as interesting facts, but as a structure, a framework for deciding what to do.

If you know anything about the Buddha’s teachings on becoming, you realize he’s putting you into a certain state of becoming.

Becoming is an identity that you take in a world of experience, centered on a particular desire. The desire here, of course, is to put an end to suffering. And these becomings the Buddha talks about can happen in the mind. The world outside that we know is also a state of becoming. We’re in it because of becomings in the mind.

We take on many different becomings in the mind in the course of the day. You focus on wanting something and then you take on an identity within the world where that thing is located.

The world has its customs, its laws about what works and what doesn’t work. It also has a sense of what’s relevant and what’s not relevant to the desire on which it’s based. And it’s the same way with the state of becoming that the Buddha is having you take on, as you take the four noble truths as your framework. This is why the Buddha says that, in the context of this world, some questions should be answered because they’re relevant to the end of suffering, and others should be put aside because they’re not.

This world, like other worlds, is also based on the act of clinging. There are four types of clinging that he identifies as leading to becomngs in general. One is clinging to sensuality. Another is clinging to habits and practices. Another is clinging to views. And another is clinging to a sense of yourself.

As we take on the path, we actually use these last three kinds of clinging that create this world of the four noble truths.

The one kind of clinging the Buddha doesn’t recommend here, of course, is clinging to sensuality. But to make up for the fact that we ordinarily look for our pleasure in sensual fantasies, the Buddha says there’s a better place to look for pleasure. He offers the practice of right mindfulness and right concentration as a way of feeding the mind’s need for pleasure. It’s your nourishment on the path.

In this world of the four noble truths, your views, of course, are shaped by the four noble truths themselves. And the duties they give go into our clinging to habits and practices. These are the practices we should do: We should try to comprehend suffering. We should try to abandon its cause.

This, again, goes against a lot of thinking in the world. We usually think that we want to get rid of suffering and just start pushing it away. As for the cause of suffering—the different kinds of craving, desire and passion—those are things we like. We actually cultivate them.

But here the Buddha’s saying, in this world—the world of the four noble truths—that’s going to lead you to the end of suffering, you have to see craving, not as your friend, but as your enemy. Instead of palling around with your cravings, you have to start looking at them askance, to see that they are really the problem.

As for your sense of self along the path, it mainly comes down to feeling that you’re competent to do this practice that will get you to the end of suffering: you as the agent, and you as the experiencer.

Then, there’s the you in there that can keep this framework in mind and look at your actions to see where they measure up and where they don’t measure up. Those are the roles that you play in this world of the four noble truths.

But as I said, it’s so easy to forget this particular world and start going back to your old world, which has its other ideas, other shoulds and views and ways of finding pleasure.

Ajaan Fuang tells the story of when he suffered from chronic headaches. He tried Western medicine, he tried Chinese medicine, he tried Thai medicine, and nothing was working. It got so that sometimes he couldn’t even sleep at night—the pain was so bad he actually had to have a couple monks or novices staying in the room with him, in case he woke up in the middle of the night and needed hot compresses or whatever.

But then, there was one night when he happened to wake up in the middle of the night, sat up, and the monks who were supposed to be looking after him were asleep. The first thought that went through his mind was, “Who’s looking after whom here?”

Then he said to himself, “Well, that’s their business. I’ve got my business I’ve got to take care of.”

And suddenly he realized—he’d been trying to get rid of the pain, get rid of the suffering of the headache, which is not the duty in the context of the world of the four noble truths. The duty, there, was to comprehend it.

Okay, what was he clinging to? Where were his desires and passions aimed? What was he craving? When he looked at it from that point of view, things opened up in his mind. He didn’t make any claims about what happened there, but the way he described it, it sounded like stream entry—when you gain your first glimpse of the deathless. He came out of that experience and realized that simply engaging with the senses is stressful, for he’d found something that had nothing to do with the senses at all and was totally free of stress.

That’s a case of putting yourself into the world of the four noble truths and realizing, “What are my duties within this context?”

So when you’re suffering from something, ask yourself, “Am I actually trying to comprehend my suffering or am I doing something else with it? Am I developing it? Am I trying to abandon it?”

You can abandon the cause, but the suffering itself has to be comprehended first, so that you understand: What are you clinging to? What are you feeding on? Why? What’s the allure? And what are the drawbacks?

It’s in this context of trying to comprehend suffering and abandon its cause that the Buddha teaches those three characteristics or three perceptions—the perceptions of inconstancy, suffering, not-self. That’s where they fit into this larger framework.

All too often you hear it the other way around, that the world is described by these three characteristics, and the four noble truths are true because they admit the truth of the three characteristics.

But that’s getting things backwards—because the three characteristics, on their own, don’t have any duties.

You can say, “The world is inconstant,” and you can do all kinds of things with that idea. You can decide that you simply have to accept things, and not try to desire anything better or more reliable. Or you can decide to grasp at any pleasure that comes your way before it disappears.

“The world is stressful”: Again, you can decide that you simply have to accept that fact. And from there, many people conclude, “Well, there is no self."

But if there’s no self, who’s going to do the practice? Who’s going to benefit? Who’s going to be able to analyze what’s going well and what’s not? If there’s no self, there’s nobody doing anything.

You hear some people teaching, “There’s no choice at all. We have no free will at all, the path just happens on its own”—which is totally opposed to what the Buddha actually taught.

He taught truths that are a call to action. He says, basically, that with these truths, you can know what to do, you’re capable of doing it, and they’ll take you to something beyond them.

Remember, the four noble truths are part of the path. The path goes to the cessation of suffering. It’s not the same thing. The factors of the path are means.

You’re in this world of the four noble truths, which is a kind of becoming, but we’re here to put an end to becoming—which means that the four noble truths have to point to their abandoning. And they do.

Right view looks at things in terms of how they’re put together, and everything that’s put together has its drawbacks, so you want to let it go. Then you realize, well, right view itself is put together, so it has similar drawbacks. You don’t let it go, though, until the very last step of the path.

All the factors of the path, then, are things you have to abandon—because they’ve delivered you to where you want to go. That’s what gives them meaning—which is why I say this is a structure that’s built not on first principles, but on final principles, on goals, attainments.

We’re talking about how the Dhamma has an attha, which is a Pāḷi word that means “meaning,” “goal,” “benefit.” This world of the four noble truths delivers you to that attha, that benefit, that goal. They find their meaning in taking you there.

So try to look at your actions in the context of that view, that world—because then you know what to do.

Of course, you can decide to take on other worlds. The Buddha’s not forcing this on you. But he is saying this is an opportunity—you can put an end to suffering, a total end to suffering. It would be good to take him up on that offer.