The Four Noble Truths’ Cause and Effect

The Four Noble Truths Cause and Effect
JUL/29/ 2023—JUL / 30/ 2023

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

The Four Noble Truths include two parts of causes and effects: one is the cause and effect in the world, that is, dukkha and samudaya. Dukkha is the fruit of this world, and samudaya is the cause of the world. The second is the causes and effects that help people to renunciate the worldly engagements, which is, nirodha and marga. Nirodha is the fruit of renouncing the world and marga is the cause of renunciation of the world engagements. Suppose we understand the teachings of the Four Noble Truths. In that case, we will realize that the dukkha then breaks the samudaya, admire nirodha then into the marga, beyond the Three Realms, attain the Nirvana from nirodha.

Why is dukkha is the worldly fruit? Because it is a combination of the sufferings from all sentient beings in the Three Realms, from birth until death. It is summarized into three kinds of sufferings: the suffering of pain, the suffering of joy and suffering of impermanence. The suffering of pain means the suffering of physical and mental was vandalized, one suffering after another, one disaster after another, people feeling distressing, and losing hope in life. The sufferings that the beings experienced from hell realm, hungry ghosts’ realm and animal realm, three sufferings, suffering, that is suffering from pain. The suffering of joy is the suffering that people experience when they lose the joyful or pleasant realm.

Pleasant realm is not eternal, as long as the joyful realm gone, the suffering will naturally rise, so it is called the suffering of joy, also known as changing suffering. For example, the heavenly beings are much more comfortable and happier than us, and their lifespan is much longer than ours; however, there is an end, they still have to face death. After their death, according to the pros and cons of their behaviours, they have to experience the pain and suffering one day; this is the suffering of joy. The suffering of impermanence means all kinds of being are impermanent, things change as time goes by, people feel no pain and no happiness, but it is constantly changing, not stable, impermanence is suffering. There are three sufferings in the desire realm; there are suffering from joy and suffering of impermanence in the form realm while the formless realm just has the suffering of impermanence. There are so many sufferings in the Three Realms that we have to bear three sufferings as a human being, where did the suffering come from exactly? They are all made by the heart and suffering from one’s actions. In other words, it comes from the “samudaya.”

Why is the samudaya called the worldly cause? First, we have no heart initially, samudaya made it, nothing product from the heart only the different realms. That is to say, because of the material, sound and other circumstances, we read the image from all angles and try to distinguish them, find the choice of love and hate, like, dislike, etc. These are a combination of heart and realms, not from the heart only and they are not one-sided, alone, isolated. Second, the samudaka gathered all the troubles and affliction from the Three Realms, that is, we create bad karma because the affliction is confusing, and we are suffering from what we did. From the self-made “set” Because we did that samuduka cause, we have to taste the dukkha fruit, that’s the cause and effect in theory.

Nirodha is the fruit of renunciation the worldly engagements, why? Nirodha means annihilated. Keeping annihilated and doing nothing, people can beyond the world. There is one kind of sentient beings who understood the origin of suffering are from themselves; they envy those beings can renunciate the three realms and attain the non-production and non-extinction Nirvana. Therefore, they are independent, keeping cultivation by themselves, trying to attain the Arahantuo fruit, breaking all troubles and karma, escape from birth and death from the six great divisions in the wheel of karma nirodha.

The marga is the cause of renunciation the worldly engagements. Why? Because people admire the joy fruit of annihilated, they will understand that the dukkha , break the samudaya, expect to the nirodha and cultivate the marga. In other words, people want to break and destroy the samudya cause; they will eventually cultivate the marga. When we understand that all realms are moon and flowers in an empty mirror, everything is inaccessible; we won’t have tanha and greedy, then heart and realm won’t combine naturally, nirodha will be broken. For example, we reciting Buddha’s name is an effective way to get rid of nirodha. A mind rises, a simply reciting “Namo Amitabha” cut it off and cut off the nirodha also.

Similarly, in the zen investigate a topic, a deep zen suspect rises, the idiot thoughts are gone; a stick and shout from the master, the idiot thoughts gone, nirodha was gone. Same theory from the secret Dharma cultivation, body, language and mind are blessed, thus breaking all the idiot thoughts and material phases in the world. Therefore, if a being admires the joy fruit of renouncing the worldly engagements, he has to break the worldly cause nirodha and cultivate for the marga. This is the cause of enlightenment.

In summary, the dukkha and samudaya from Buddha’s teaching tell us the source of suffering, which is the cause and effect of this world. The Buddha explained the cause and effect of the world and let us know where exactly the suffering comes from. More importantly, it demonstrated the cause and effect of renunciation the worldly engagements, that is, the way to relieve from all the sufferings. The two truths nirodha and marga told us are necessary to cultivate to break the samudaya to escape from sufferings. Therefore, the four noble truths can be summarized as knowing the dukkha, breaking the samudaya, admire the nirodha and cultivate the marga. Therefore, all the Buddha teachings, no matter the four noble truth or the 12-linked causal formula are the same; they are from the same theory. Buddha wanted to teach all beings from six realms the origin of all the sufferings; more importantly, Buddha told us how to get rid of suffering is to cultivate the marga. It can be seen from this that the Buddha is such mercy to expressed the same principle in different ways the enlighten the beings from different cultivation roots. This is the Buddha’s compassion who taught different Dharma to different beings’ root, with 84,000 Dharma gates to enlighten 84000 beings.

Thank you for the listening!