The Three Turnings of Four Noble Truths

The Three Turnings of Four Noble Truths
AUG/05/ 2023—AUG / 06/ 2023

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

When we talk about the Four Noble Truth, we have to mention the three turning and twelve behaviors, which are:
Experiencing the suffering, should know that is suffering and understood the suffering;
Experiencing the samudaya coming together should cut off the samudaya, to break the samudaya;
This is nirodha, should attain the enlightenment and nirodha, attain the nirodha.

This is the marga, should cultivate the by following the marga(path), cultivating.
We knew that Buddha first turned the Dharma wheel at saraṅga-nāthá, he taught five Bhiksu the Four Noble Truth, but what exactly the three turnings of the Four Noble Truth?

After his enlightenment, Buddha taught the Bodhisattvas” the Flower Adornment Sutra” in samadhi, considering the roots of the five Bhiksu and the sentient beings, the Buddha then talked about the Four Noble Truth by three methods, which was called the “three-turning .” The “Dharma wheel” means that the Buddha’s teaching will not stagnate in one person or one place, but to turn to other people or other beings, it will spread worldwide. Buddhism originated from India spread to China and then spread to Asian countries such as Japan, now we can see Buddhist temple all over the world, we can find the Buddhism sutra in all kinds of languages. It is like a wheel keep turning. What is turning? It means that the Buddha’s teaching can make all the beings turn the suffering into the happiness, turn the evil into the kindness, turn the afflictions into Bodhi and turn the continuous death and birth into Nirvana. What are the three turnings? One is presence turning; the second turn is persuading turning; the third one is testifying turning.

The first turning is presence turning; Buddha told us that suffering is persecution. Because we have a fresh body, we have to maintain it then we can survive, it needs all kinds of necessities of life. To meet the needs of basic necessities of life, we have to work all day long, keep busy, and make money. It pushes people to all kinds of sufferings, mental sufferings and physical sufferings, that’s the reason we say suffering has persecution. Going into the whys and wherefores, where did the suffering come from? They all from ourselves. Because of our confession karma, we have to taste the suffering fruit. How we urge the samudaya? Because of desire, anger, ignorance, jealousy and pride, six kinds of fundamental troubles.
In short, because we can not keep our self-nature, avidya rises and covered our own wisdom, turn our thoughts into idiot thoughts. We took a little land, water, fire and wind element as the root of our body; therefore our crucial trouble is because we have a body. As long as we have our body, we are easily attached to it; we have to maintain it, keep it well, take care of food and clothing, etc. We never satisfied. As for the extraterrestrial land, water, fire and wind element outside of our body, we can have so many delusions and a vain hope, to make the bad karma and taste the suffering fruit. Therefore, all the suffering fruit is self-inflicted, nothing about the god or ghost.

If we can see our original wisdom, we will understand that the whole world and our body is an illusion made by our idiot thought. Since the body is gone, who will care about birth and death? If we know that the body is only a temporary house, not the master, the real master is our true Buddhahood; then we will not obsessing with this body and value it too much; we won’t have endless, constantly rising desires, we will easy to according to the situation and feel ease. Moreover, the demand for living conditions such as food, clothing, housing and transportation is also the habits of people; most of them are long-term cultivated, doesn’t mean that’s necessary. For example, if we live in a house for a long time, we are kind of not used to it once we move to an apartment. But for those living in the apartments, they feel OK with that; they won’t feel uncomfortable. So this is just a problem of habit.

Suffering(Dukkha) is persecution, samudaka has charisma, then what is nirodha? Nirvana is provable; it is not an empty talk; we can successfully attain the enlightenment as Buddha, which is true and provable. Buddha Shakyamuni came into our world as a human being, attain the enlightenment by cultivation, because of the compassion of Buddha, he wanted to tell all beings that they can attain Nirvana and used his own experiences to improve that.

The marga( path) is cultivatable. Everyone in the world likes happy and hate the sufferings. Then, to get out of the three realms, to get out the bitter fruit of birth and death, escape from the pain of suffering, we have to cultivate thirty-seven bodhipakṣa Dharma. The basic practice is to start from the precepts, samadhi and wisdom. In order to quit the greedy and evil, we have to keep the precepts then attain the samadhi, as long as we can attain the samadhi, our original wisdom will naturally show up and guide us. We will not make the bad karma and taste the bitter fruit.

The above is the first turning of the Four Noble Truth from Buddha’s teaching; the second turning is persuading turning, persuading people to cultivate. The Buddha told us that that suffering is persecution, you should know it and try to escape from it, by how? Cultivate. Because if you don’t feel suffering, you will not be interested in the cultivation, only those who taste the suffering from birth and death will eagle to be free and willing to cultivate. Since we already know that samuduka is urged, we have to suffer from our own actions, to taste the suffering from birth to death. We should then cultivate, cut off all the sufferings and afflictions, escape from the realm of birth and death and attain the Nirvana. This is the compassionate persuasion from Buddha.

The third turning is to testify turning, and the Buddha testified with his own experience of suffering and cultivation. The Buddha said that I have been suffering from all kinds of suffering from my life, I already know the truth, and my life experience can testify. I have already broken the samudaka. Because of my cultivation, I cut off all my afflictions and nirodha, so I have already been released from birth and death and attained the marga and Nirvana.

Thank you for the listening!