The Four Noble Truths
How to Reduce and Eliminate Suffering in Our Lives
By following Buddha Shakyamuni's four steps, it is possible to identify what causes us to suffer and train our minds to bring our suffering to an end
The reason Prince Siddhartha renounced all his earthly possessions and became a monk was to set off on a quest to discover how to eliminate suffering in the world. First he learned how to eliminate his own suffering, thus becoming The Enlightened One; Buddha Shakyamini. He realized that there were four steps – or noble truths as he called them which when understood and earnestly practiced could stop people from suffering. Soon after his Enlightenment, he taught others how to do what he had done.
- The first step – or truth – is to recognize the suffering within our own life and define the exact things that cause us to suffer. This seems silly. What’s to recognize? Everyone suffers. But, the more clearly we identify what makes us suffer, the more quickly suffering can be eliminated from our lives. This is a journey of self discovery. As we think about what makes us suffer, we should make a list of them.
- The second step is to take the sufferings we identified and to understand where they come from. The answers may surprise us. Suffering doesn’t come from outside sources – not from our car, our parents or our partners – it comes from inside; our own desires. More specifically, it comes from our anger, our lack of understanding the way our mind actually functions and our attachment to our desires.
When our desires are not met, we suffer. For example; our car does not cause suffering, our attachment to it taking us wherever we want to go, whenever we want to go there, however does. We desire to go to the beach. When the car breaks and we can’t get there, we get angry because we had attached ourselves to the outcome of getting to the beach. But, if our car does take us to the beach, we can also become angry because we got sunstroke while we were there and had to miss our date. To paraphrase the wise playwright, George Bernard Shaw; ‘There are two major tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it.’ Each produces suffering.
- The third step brings good news. It teaches us how to eliminate this suffering. All of it. Since all these emotions, desires and attachments come from how our minds perceive the world, we learn to eliminate these by training our mind to perceive the world in a different way. We realize that we can eliminate them because we created them within our minds to begin with.
We, therefore train our minds on how to live in the present moment, thus eliminating desires (which only exist in the future) and our attachments to them, which cause our suffering. We stop living one knee-jerk reaction to the next. We find peace in living without expectations – just being; letting go of anger, ignorance and fear and instead, living in peace, with calmness and compassion for all others who, just like us also want to be happy and instead find suffering everywhere they look.
- The last step helps us learn to live in a lifestyle that keeps suffering from returning. Once we have truly mastered and eliminated suffering, staying mindful throughout the day and practicing the eightfold path will bring us lasting happiness and keep suffering away forever. These steps include choosing jobs that do not bring harm to the world; avoiding actions such as stealing and killing (even insects and bugs); being mindful of the words we use in our conversations with people; working at keeping our mind calm, steady and attentive at all times; being mindful of our mind – watching to make sure negative thoughts such as the wish to harm others and old, negative thought processes do no arise again.
By practicing these four steps, it is completely possible to find happiness by eliminating our own suffering and the suffering of others in the world.
References:
The Four Noble Truths by His Holiness the Fourteenth Dalai Lama
