Four Noble Truths: Step by Step to the Truth (Part Three)

Part Three: The Four Noble Truths: Step by Step to the Truth.
   • Four Noble Truths: Step by Step to th...  
Part Two: The Four Noble Truths: The Buddha - A True Teacher.
   • Four Noble Truths: The Buddha - A Tru...  
Part One: The Four Noble Truths - The Central Core of Everything the Buddha Taught.
   • Four Noble Truths: The Central Core o...  
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For many people at present, the four noble truths are among the first things they learn about Buddhism. This is ironic, because the Buddha himself often found that he first had to prepare his listeners to develop the right frame of mind for properly receiving the four noble truths. After all, he wasn’t concerned with teaching people about Buddhism. He was more focused on speaking to their needs—to overcome suffering—and to put them in the best frame of mind to receive and accept his teachings on the topic so that they would be willing to act on them and to reap their benefits. He did that by teaching them other topics beforehand. Only when they accepted his preliminary teachings and allowed their hearts and minds to be moved by them would they be willing to accept the four truths and to act on them.

This is because the four truths point out a duality about desire that many people find hard to accept: Their common desires—the ones they tend to follow willingly and happily—are actually the causes of suffering, whereas the desires that lead to the end of suffering require training.

The central role of desire in shaping the four noble truths can be seen in the similes the Buddha uses to illustrate his teachings as a whole. They’re all images of people acting on desire in a skillful way. We’ve already noted the image of the raft: Desiring safety, you want to escape from the dangers on this shore of the river, so you put together a raft that you can hold on to as you paddle across the river to the safety of the far shore. The words of the Dhamma are instructions on how to build the raft; the practice of the Dhamma is the raft itself.

Another image is that of a search: People search for objects—such as a strong bull elephant to do work, or the heartwood of a tree to build something solid—and the Dhamma shows them how to find the objects they desire.

Another image is that the Dhamma is your guide for how to act in battle so that you can attain a desired victory.

However, the image most relevant to the four noble truths is one in which the Buddha compares himself to a doctor desiring the health of his patient, and the Dhamma to medicine (Iti 100; AN 10:108). Many people over the centuries have noted how the four noble truths are like a doctor’s approach to a disease: The truth of suffering describes the disease’s symptoms, the truth of the origination of suffering diagnoses its cause, the truth of cessation gives the prognosis that the disease can be totally cured, and the truth of the path charts out the course of treatment to bring about that cure.

Given that the four noble truths are so focused on the issue of desire, the Buddha saw the need to urge his listeners to understand the value of abandoning the desires he criticized as ignoble and to develop noble desires in their place. As we’ll see, the first ignoble desire in his list of the causes of suffering is the craving for sensuality. Most of his listeners, though, saw this craving as their dearest friend and companion. As far as they could see, sensuality was their only avenue to escape pain. So he couldn’t simply instruct his listeners about the dangers of that friend. He first had to encourage them to change their feelings of allegiance. To induce this change of heart, he had to use performative truths that would expand their imagination to see that it was both possible and advisable to develop new and more reliable inner friends.

In short: He had to rouse within them the desire to adopt a nobler attitude in their search for happiness.