The Four Noble Truths Dharma

The Four Noble Truths Dharma
JUL/22/ 2023—JUL / 23/ 2023

Hello everyone, welcome to our Dharma talk at Dharma Rain Meditation Center.

Two thousand and five hundred years ago, the prince of Kapilavastu, whose name was Siddhāttha Gotama attained the enlightenment after seven days of sitting meditation under the Bodhi tree. He became the well-known Buddha Sakyamuni. After his enlightenment, he kept silent for seven weeks. Finally, he walked to saraṅga-nāthá from Bodhgaya and taught the Four Noble Truths Dharma for the five bhiksu.

What exactly is “the Four Noble Truth”? Why did the Buddha taught it at the first turning of the Dharma wheel?

Dukkha, samudaya (“arising,” “coming together”), nirodha (“cessation,” “confinement”), and marga, the path leading to cessation, which was called the Four Noble Truths. Truth means the things which are true and has no false meaning.

Dukkha: The Buddha’s experience proves that all survival is dukkha, or we call it suffering. Of course, there is joy in life, but what makes people unbearable is impermanence. Life, old age and disease are the must-have for all beings. “I” is composed of five kinds of material and spirit (five skandhas). It is only a short and accidental product. There is no long-lasting, permanent, and eternal thing. The Buddha sums up the eight major pains of life: birth, ageing, sickness, and death, the suffering of having to part from those whom one loves, the suffering of having to meet with those whom one hates, the suffering of being unable to obtain what one desires and the suffering arising from the five components that constitute one’s body and mind. Everyone in the world is painful, so we call it dukkha.

Birth refers to all kind of birth, reincarnate, rebirth and appear in five skandhas in six realms and the feelings, contents, etc. From the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and consciousness. Birth is the foundation of many sufferings.

Ageing means various ageing phenomena, tooth damage, whitening hair, skin ageing, and maturity of six roots.

The suffering of the meet with those one hates means people havehavesentment of dissidents, unlovable colours, sounds, fragrances, tastes, touches or, gatherings with people who have bad intentions, unintentional, and restlessness.

The suffering of having to part from those whom one loves means for those people we like, lovely colours, sounds, fragrances, tastes, touches, or those who are hopeful, helpful, happy, and safe, family, friends, or relatives cannot be with them forever. We have also known it as part of forever suffering.
The suffering of being unable to obtain what one desires refers to the demands from sentient beings of the six realms; they ask that all the above-mentioned suffering do not come to them however they are unavoidable, which means their wish can not be realized, it also rises the suffering.

Samudaya means “arising,” “coming together”), it was believed as the cause of suffering, also known as the suffering Samudaya. Samudaya is the reason for suffering. The suffering of a human being comes from the eternal desire for survival because life and death are never forever; people have to worry about that all day long. This kind of pain is that there are root causes of suffering are mainly greed, hatred and ignorance.

Nirodha means that if people want to escape from the suffering, it is necessary to eliminate the cause of suffering “greed, hatred and ignorance”, which is “nirodha.” These painful stops are also called Nirvana, that is, they collect the nirodha truth, get rid of the troubles and eventually relived.

The marga truth is also known as eliminating the suffering truth. It is a practice method that breaks the suffering and makes the suffering no longer accumulate, even destroying the impermanent. It is necessary to cultivate the eight righteous ways, avoid all evils, and do all good deeds. This is how the “marga” points to the Nirvana and is refined into thirty-seven rules.

Although the Four Noble Truth are the begging of Buddha’s teaching, they covered the Buddha’s Dharma’s basic meaning. However, it is not easy to understand and believe the Four Noble Truth.
There is a story from Agama Sutra: The Buddha travelled to the Vaiśālī, Sayādaw Ananda went to the city for food in the morning. When he came back told Buddha that he saw a group of children from the city, using the small door hole of the vihara Gate as an archery target. We are all shooters, arrows and arrows are accurately injected into the small lock hole, without a deviation.

The Buddha thus asked the Ananda: “Which one do you think it’s difficult? these children’s arrows to shoot into the small hole in the door or divide a hair into a hundred segments, take out one of them as an archery target, and each arrow shoots an arrow?”

“World Respect! Of course, it is difficult to shoot the hair.”

The Buddha said: “Ananda! Even so, this is not difficult for the people to believe and enlighten the Dukkha, samudaya, nirodha (“cessation,” “confinement”), and marga, which was called the Four Noble Truths.

It is well known that the Buddha turning of the wheel of Dharma, one of turning is demonstration turning, which was a testimony, the Buddha testified with his own experience: I have been suffering from all kinds of life, I already know the truth, and my life experience can testify. I have already broken the Samuday because of my cultivation, I have broken all the afflictions, and I have escaped from birth and death, enlightened the Nirvana.

The scientificity and equality of the Buddha’s Dharma can be seen here: First, the Buddha’s teaching is to appeal to the Buddha’s experience as a human being before he became a Buddha. It is a common experience with people. Instead of It can only rely on imagination or only a few people’s mysterious experience, all sentient beings can have those experience and can personally confirm by themselves; second, the Dharma is a fact that appeals to all beings, such as impermanence, suffering, and no self-ego, all sentient beings can feel that not different because of a different person. Third, rather than a realm that the average person cannot experience or imagine, the Dharma is a solution that deals with our daily life. Those truths from imagination cannot be explored in-depth, do not mention to guild us in daily life, no matter how mysterious, can only be a myth or theory.

Thank you for the listening!