Mastering the Core Teachings of Buddha - An Unusually Hardcore Dharma Book

Plenty of people balk at this, and say that they do lots of things because of reasons other than suffering. I suppose that to be really correct I should add in ignorance and habit, but these are intimately connected to suffering. This is worth investigating in depth. Perhaps there is something more to this first truth that they may have missed on first inspection, as it is a deep and subtle teaching. Actually, to understand this first truth is to understand the whole of the spiritual path, so take the time to investigate it.

The basic gist of the truth from a relative point of view is that we want things to be other than they are, and this causes pain. We want things that are nice to be permanent, we want to get what we want and avoid what we don't want. We wish bad things would go faster than they do, and these are all contrary to reality. We all die, get sick, have conflicts, and constantly seem to be running around either trying to get something (greed), get away from something (hatred), or tune out from reality all together (delusion). We are never perfectly happy with things just as they are. These are the traditional, relative ways in which suffering is explained, but these definitions can only take us so far.

At the most fundamental level, the level that is the most useful for doing insight practices, we wish desperately that there was some

The Four Noble Truths

separate, permanent self, and we spend huge amounts of time doing our best to prop up this illusion. In order to do this, we habitually ignore lots of useful information about our reality and give our mental impressions and simplifications of reality much more importance than they are necessarily due. It is this illusion that adds a problematic element to the normal and understandable ways in which we go about trying to be happy. We constantly struggle with reality because we misunderstand it, i.e. because reality misunderstands itself.

“So what's new?” one might say. Good point! It isn't new, is it? This has been the whole of our life! The big question is “Is there some understanding which makes a difference?” Yes, or we wouldn't be bothering with all of this spirituality stuff. Somewhere down in our being there is a little voice that cries, “There is another way!” We can find this other way.

Connecting with the truth of suffering can actually be very motivating for spiritual practice. Most traditional talks on the Buddha's teachings begin with this. More than just being motivating for spiritual practice, tuning into suffering is spiritual practice! Many people start meditating and then get frustrated with how much suffering and pain they experience, never knowing that they are actually starting to understand something. They cling to the ideal that insight practices will produce peace and bliss and yet much of what they find is suffering. They don’t realize that things on the cushion tend to get worse before they get better. Thus, they reject the very truths they must deeply understand to obtain the peace they were looking for and thus get nowhere. They reject their own valid insights that they have obtained through valid practice. I suspect that this is one of the greatest and most common stumbling blocks on the spiritual path.

There is a flip side to suffering which can help, and that is compassion, the wish for there to not be suffering. Wherever there is suffering there is compassion, though most of the time somewhat twisted by the confused logic of the process of ego. More on this in a bit, but it leads directly to the second Noble Truth, the cause of suffering.

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The Four Noble Truths

TRUTH NUMBER TWO: “DESIRE”

The Second Noble Truth is that the cause of suffe rin g is

desire , also rendered as craving or attachment. We want things to be other than they are because we perceive the world through the odd logic of the process of ego, through the illusion of the split of the perceiver and the perceived. We might say, “Of course we want things to be great and not unpleasant! What do you expect?” The problem isn't actually quite in the desire for things to be good and not be bad in the way that we might think; it is, in fact, just a bit subtler than that.

This is a really slippery business, and many people can get all into craving for non-craving and desiring non-attachment. This can be useful if it is done wisely and it is actually all we have to work with. If common sense is ignored, however, desiring non-attachment may produce neurotic, self-righteous, repressed ascetics instead of balanced, kind meditators. A tour of any monastery or spiritual community will likely expose you to clear examples of both sides of this delicate balance. So, don't make too much of a problem out of the fact that it seems that one must desire something in order to seek it. This paradox will resolve itself if we are able to experience reality in this moment clearly.

“Craving,” “attachment,” and “desire” are some of the most