Introduction
I started meditating for the wholly pragmatic reason that several people had suggested it might help to reduce stress. After a little while, it occurred to me that understanding the thinking behind meditation might be useful too, and I ended up reading Robert Wright’s book Why Buddhism is True. In my view it is a very good book, both insightful and well-written (sadly not all books display both characteristics!), and I have recommended it to several friends. Among other things, it demonstrates convincingly how some of the insights of Buddhism marry up with evolutionary psychology.
Anyhow, beyond this book, I knew almost nothing about Buddhism beyond a very superficial understanding of reincarnation, karma and nirvana that went no further than pop culture, and the fact that the Buddha was a historical person in a similar way to Christ. So I started to explore further, and quickly found the Four Noble Truths. These had been mentioned only briefly in Wright’s book, but are given a lot of weight in other presentations of Buddhism, to the extent of being regarded as foundational. They are identified as the first of the Buddha’s teachings and were present in what is traditionally regarded as his first sermon after he achieved enlightenment.
(There are other ideas regarded as foundational in most Buddhist traditions, for example interdependence, emptiness, impermanence, and no-self, and I will return to these ideas in future posts.)
The Four Noble Truths
The Four Noble Truths are commonly translated into English as follows:
- the truth of suffering;
- the truth of the origin of suffering;
- the truth of the cessation of suffering; and
- the truth of the path to the cessation of suffering.
In short, suffering exists; it has an origin and an end; and there is a path leading to its end. From a Western standpoint that regards any suffering as unacceptable, this can come across as quite pessimistic. I prefer to think of it as a realistic assessment of life as it is, and if one accepts the fourth Truth, there is a lot of cause for optimism.
Let’s now unpack each of the four Truths in turn.
1. The Truth of Suffering
Here we encounter an immediate problem with studying Buddhism in English: the lack of direct English referents for the original terms in Pali or Sanskrit. (Both are Indo-Aryan languages in which ancient Buddhist texts are written, and they are generally quite similar to each other. For example nirvana is Sanskrit and the Pali equivalent is nibbana.)
The primary term being discussed is ‘suffering’. This is a translation of the Pali dukkha, which is being used not in the general English sense but to refer to a specific kind of suffering sometimes translated as ‘unsatisfactoriness’. This is a single-word compression of the idea that there are things incapable of satisfying, of providing permanent satisfaction. Even where we can satisfy our desires, the resulting pleasure is fleeting, or if not fleeting then the pleasure dissipates through monotony. As Wright puts it:
“I can’t get no satisfaction” is, according to Buddhism, the human condition.
Robert Wright, Why Buddhism is True
2. The Truth of the Origin of Suffering
This Truth goes beyond the bare idea that there is an origin of suffering to say what it is. (In Buddhist thinking, almost everything arises from one or more causes and conditions, so it is self-evident that there is an origin of suffering.)
According to the Buddha, the root cause of dukkha is tanha, translated variously as (unwholesome) desire, thirst, or craving. Tanha itself arises from the Three Poisons (kleshas):
In summary, ignorance of the true nature of things and how to live a wholesome life lead us to attachment to pleasure, and aversion from pain. Both attachment and aversion are forms of craving; one is craving for something, the other is craving for the absence of something. tanha embodies the feeling that things can always be made better by adding something or taking something away, and having done so, there is always more to be added or removed, and no satisfaction can be attained.
Again the inexact nature of the translations leads to difficulties. Personally I think of ‘desire’ as a neutral term, which can be unattached or attached, or equivalently wholesome or unwholesome, harmonious or discordant. In my understanding, the second Truth is not saying that desire in itself is a bad thing, but that attachment to the desire is. Attached desire is the main reason people keep checking their phones, in anticipation of a message from someone, or a ‘like’ on social media. Most of the pleasure is in the anticipation, not in the message or the ‘like’ itself. This is very different to the pleasure from watching the beauty of a sunset, or from spending time with a loved one, or from a fulfilling job.
The second Truth is sometimes misconstrued as saying people should not desire or fear things, and an argument is then developed that Buddhism contains contradictions because it says people should simultaneously both (1) not desire anything and (2) desire the end of suffering, for example by acting with compassion towards oneself and others. The distinction between attached and unattached desire is the key to disentangling this and seeing there is no contradiction.
There are sound evolutionary reasons for tanha. Wright again:
Natural selection doesn’t “want” us to be happy, after all; it just “wants” us to be productive, in its narrow sense of productive. And the way to make us productive is to make the anticipation of pleasure very strong but the pleasure itself not very long-lasting.
This is linked to the idea of the hedonic treadmill from psychology.
3. The Truth of the Cessation of Suffering
The Third Truth says that dukkha will cease if we can renounce tanha. This is verging on tautological in English: satisfaction is achieved by letting go of the things that make it impossible to achieve satisfaction. It is also self-evident in terms of interdependence: if all the causes and conditions of something cease, then that thing will also cease, as illustrated in the diagram at the top of this page. Deeper insight comes from the more precise meaning of the Buddhist terms.
Nirvana refers to the state that arises when suffering ceases. The Three Poisons that give rise to tanha are sometimes represented as fires, and nirvana literally means extinguishment, i.e. putting out these fires. Nirvana is often used in a metaphysical sense meaning ending the cycle of death and reincarnation. There is a more grounded sense in which nirvana refers to the ongoing cycle of perpetuated suffering and unsatisfactoriness within a life, rather than across lives. (The connection between the metaphyscial and more grounded senses makes use of the concepts of no-self and interdependence, which would take us too far out of our way in this post.) Personally I find it easier to accept this more grounded interpretation of the Truth than to believe in reincarnation.
Wright has a lot to say about nirvana in chapter 14 of Why Buddhism is True.
4. The Truth of the Path to the End of Suffering
The fourth Truth tells us how achieve the Third, how to renounce tanha, become liberated from dukkha and achieve nirvana. This is by following the Noble Eightfold Path, which has eight elements:
- Right Understanding or View: accepting Buddhist thinking.
- Right Intention or Resolve: commitment to the Path.
- Right Speech: speaking the truth courteously, without gossip, slander or abuse.
- Right Action or Conduct: peaceful and harmonious behaviour, without stealing, killing or sexual misconduct.
- Right Livelihood: making a living in a way that benefits others and avoids specific harms including trading in weapons, poisons or intoxicants.
- Right Effort: cultivating positive and wholesome states of mind, and renouncing negative and unwholesome states.
- Right Mindfulness: developing fully conscious awareness of the body, sensations, feelings and states of mind, without being absent-minded.
- Right Concentration or Samadhi: developing the one-pointed and tranquil mental focus necessary for this awareness.
The eight elements are sometimes grouped into Wisdom (1 and 2), Ethical Conduct (3, 4 and 5) and Meditation (6, 7 and 8). They mutually support and reinforce each other, rather than operating sequentially, and are often represented as a wheel with eight spokes:
The Buddha described the noble eightfold path as like a raft used to cross a river: once on the far side, the raft is no longer needed. This can be interpreted as saying that, once reached, nirvana is a permanent state.
The first five elements are relatively straightforward in essence and no more (or less) difficult than following similar precepts in other religions, for example there is a fair degree of overlap between Right Action and some of the Ten Commandments. The meditation elements are quite different, requiring a rigorous commitment to an ongoing practice and very likely the support of more experienced practitioners.
Personally I have not yet found enough resolve to develop a daily meditation practice, but even moderate and irregular meditation is very beneficial, and has been sufficient for me to have made some progress with Right Mindfulness. For example, I can now usually catch myself reaching for my phone to check it for messages, and can decide consciously not to look at it. With more practice I’m sure I will be able to weaken the attachment further so that I don’t even have to catch myself before acting. Wright reports similar experiences in his book from the early stages of his practice.
Conclusion
The Four Noble Truths are foundational to Buddhist thought, realistically setting out fundamental challenges faced in life in a way that is borne out by evolutionary psychology. Even better, the Truths explain what the issues are, and and how to deal with them, in a way that ultimately leads to the blissful peace of nirvana, whether that’s within this life or across lives.