sententia

This article was originally published in February 2007, and has been republished from the original Sententia.net.

Among students of religion, it is commonly joked that if you like well organized lists, you ought to be a Buddhist. After all, some of the most central concepts to Buddhism are enumerated in lists.

Take, for example, the Four Noble Truths. You can’t understand Buddhism, Buddhist thought, Buddhist worldviews, or Buddhist anything, really, without understanding the Four Noble Truths. These four principles are what make up the foundation for the Buddhist life.

So, without further ado, a brief overview of Buddhist philosophy, by way of explanation of the Four Noble Truths: suffering, craving, cessasion and the eight-fold path (sublists of sublists — I told you there were lots of lists!)

Suffering

The first truth is that suffering is inevitable. Sooner or later, everyone will suffer pain or loss — this is something that we see and experience every day.

Death, aging, illness all involve some sort of pain or suffering. Saddness, fear, frustration, or just “feeling blue” are also forms of suffering.

Not all suffering is equal, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is there. This is commonly acknowledged by many of the world’s religions — and each one has its own explanation as to the question of why there is suffering in the first place.

The Buddhist tradition teaches that suffering is a natural part of life, not because of any fault with humanity (as is believed in so-called “Western” religions) but because of impermanence.

A key component of Buddhism is an understanding that our world, and everything in it (including our own selves), is inherently impermanent. Impermanence on its own isn’t what causes suffering, though; it is the human response to impermanence that causes it.

Craving

Have you ever tried to hold a handful of really fine sand and keep every grain in your hand, with none slipping through your fingers? The Buddhist would say that this is what life is like.

In life, we desire to hold onto things which are impermanent, and so we always have that feeling of sand falling through our fingers. Even trying to hold onto an idea of self leads to suffering, since there is no permanent self.

All of that holding-on leads us to suffer — because we are trying to grasp something that can’t be grasped. Buddhists say that we try to cling to things as if we could actually hold onto anything, but because we can’t, we suffer. We crave things that we can hold on to — permanent, lasting things. But there are no such things.

This second noble truth can also be called “desire,” because Buddhists believe that humans have a deep desire to hold on to things, people — even our sense of self. This desire for impermanent things that causes human suffering, because we are guaranteed to be disappointed. It is the nature of the world.

Inevitably, we will lose the things we desire, and so we suffer.

Cessation

To this point, the four noble truths of Buddhism would seem like a real downer. It is only when you reach the third noble truth that you see the Buddhist hope: cessasstion of suffering

Again, like many world religions, Buddhism teaches that there is a way to stop suffering. Unlike familiar religions such as Christianity, though, Buddhists in general do not believe that there is a saviour figure who helps the individual escape suffering — either now or in the afterlife.

Instead, Buddhists place the responsibility for stopping suffering in the able hands of the individual. The third noble truth explains how there can be a cessation of suffering, by drawing on the first two noble truths: suffering ceases as soon as you remove the cause of suffering.

In other words, get rid of craving and attachment to impermanent things (even the idea of self!), and you will get rid of suffering. If instead of grabbing at things that you can’t hold onto, you should cultivate dispassion and non-attachment. By doing this, you will no longer crave or desire anything, and suffering will no longer be a factor in your life.

The Eight-Fold Path

Now that may sound all well and good, but it doesn’t exactly tell you how. Impermanence is everywhere, craving is our natural tendency, and each person is responsible for eliminating their own suffering — it doesn’t exactly make it seem easy.

The question becomes how is the Buddhist to live, if everything is impermanent, and the goal is not not cling to anything? How does one go about cultivating non-attachment and dispassion

The answer is the fourth noble truth: living a life in accordance with the eight-fold path. The tenets of the path are intended to keep the individual from widely vacillating between extremes — which is why it is described as the middle path.

The eight aspects of the fourth noble truth are: right view, right thought, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right meditation. The details of how one goes about this differs by school of thought.

In general, though, Buddhists believe that by cultivating all these things simultaneously, one takes the middle path. It’s a life of never going to an extreme of indulgence, nor the extreme of withholding necessities from oneself.

Living according to this path leads one to the end of suffering, and ultimately, to the end of the cycle of rebirth. That is the ultimate goal for Buddhists — it’s not a matter of being reborn in a better life, but to simply cease being reborn at all.