The First Noble Truth

This is the first of the four noble truths. This is the first talk in a four-part series. We begin with understanding that there is suffering. There is dissatisfaction.

Transcript

So today I would like to start a series of talks that are the foundational teachings of Buddhism.

And when we look at these teachings,

When we really look,

We see that they're not even associated with the ism.

They're not even associated with an ism.

And these are the teachings of the Four Noble Truths.

And the word noble,

It means arising from a dignified and generous nature.

And what's interesting is its opposite means humble and ordinary.

And these truths of life contain both the humility and the dignity,

The grand and the ordinary.

There is a Pali phrase from the time of the Buddha that has a lot of meaning for me.

It's continually been my experience,

Like that piece of writing from Mark Napo.

And the phrase is in Pali,

Ehi Pasiko.

Ehi Pasiko.

And it means come and see for yourself.

We can't just listen and believe what you're told,

Like that doesn't work.

As a teacher,

As a facilitator of this practice,

I'm like the door person.

You know,

I can welcome you.

I can share with you what I've experienced.

But don't take my word for it.

See for yourself,

Ehi Pasiko.

What's your experience of things?

You know,

What do you know?

Or what have you experienced of your mind?

You know,

Maybe,

Maybe the practice,

It starts with you seeing how your mind just spins,

Where it habitually goes,

The stories that it clings to.

And maybe eventually you don't believe your thoughts so much.

You watch the show more.

You know,

Perhaps a sense of humor develops.

Now a little bit around those stories or those habit patterns.

Or you start to give them a little bit more care.

You know,

Like you would a child who's upset.

Maybe you just love them a little bit more.

Ehi Pasiko.

Come and see for yourself.

It really speaks about investigation.

When we investigate and look at our experience within ourselves,

That's when we see what is true.

When the Buddha started to wander around India,

Shortly after his enlightenment,

He encountered several men who recognized him as being,

You know,

Kind of an extraordinary being.

And they asked him,

Are you a god?

And he said,

No.

Are you a reincarnation of a god?

No,

He replied.

Are you a wizard then?

No.

Well,

Are you a man?

No.

So what are you?

And they were very perplexed.

And the Buddha simply replied,

I am awake.

I am awake.

Buddha means the awakened one.

And how to awaken is all he taught.

So in these next four weeks of practice,

We'll look at each of these teachings,

These first teachings after the Buddha's realization.

And the Buddha,

He was sometimes referred to as the great physician.

In realizing these four endeavors or tasks,

His diagnosis of the human condition was that there is suffering.

There is pain in this life.

There is an oppressive nature of experience.

And the cause is reactivity,

Grasping,

Contention with our moment to moment experience.

The prognosis is that there is a possible end to this affliction of suffering and reactivity.

The prescription is that there is a path out of out of this.

There's a way out of this endless cycle of reactivity and contention with experience.

So the first of these tasks were asked to see the truth of suffering.

Suffering is to be understood.

Suffering is to be understood there is suffering it is to be understood.

The word that's most commonly well in the Pali the word for suffering or it's translated quite often as suffering is Dukkha.

Dukkha is a really great word I think it really sums it up.

So,

But the more direct translation of Dukkha is it's more like dissatisfaction or unsatisfactoriness,

Stress stress is Dukkha,

Oppression we've seen some of that lately.

But really it's the psychological experience when we're confronted with impermanence,

When we're confronted with change.

Dukkha is the basic anxiety and frustration that we move through the world with conscious or not.

I've shared this before with some of you so you may remember it.

It's how one of my teachers Norman Fisher describes the truth of suffering of Dukkha.

He says it like this,

Anxiety is suffering,

Simply not getting what you want is suffering,

Being angry is suffering,

Having to put up with what you don't like is suffering,

Understanding that you have to die even though you don't want to is suffering,

Wanting to be loved in a certain way is suffering,

Feeling lonely is suffering,

Being too cold is suffering,

The food is too salty is suffering,

Being on hold on the phone is suffering,

That suffering is a minor problem that can be overcome with a positive attitude is one of the greatest human self-deceptions.

I'd like to repeat that because it's so important that suffering is a minor problem that can be overcome with a positive attitude is one of the greatest human self-deceptions.

Or more simply put,

This is from Gloria Steinem,

The truth will set you free,

But first it will piss you off.

So sometimes our suffering is small.

Snow in June,

Right?

Small.

And sometimes it's great.

Loss of job,

COVID,

Racism.

Sometimes it's simple and sometimes it's complicated.

But these opposing energies in our practice,

They are Dukkha too.

The tensions of opposites.

How can we have so much joy and gratitude in our life in the middle of what's presenting in the world?

You know,

The helplessness against this invisible virus and the joy of watching the rivers rise.

So joy and fear,

Gratitude and helplessness,

The tensions,

These paradoxes.

They are suffering too.

How do we hold the tensions of being pulled in these different directions without being pulled apart?

The being versus the doing.

The stillness versus the activity or activism.

Personal versus collective.

Understanding Dukkha.

Understanding suffering.

Thich Nhat Hanh writes,

Since I was a young man,

I tried to learn the nature of compassion.

But what little compassion I've learned has not come from intellectual investigation,

But from my actual experience of suffering.

The direct experience.

So we can experience joy and sorrow sometimes in the same moments.

And in some way,

What I'm experiencing is we see it now more than ever.

You know,

We're living in an extraordinary time.

Like we can be on a beautiful hike in one hour of our day and,

You know,

In another be in a mask and quickly trying to get out of the grocery store.

So there's this expansion and this contraction.

We can be out with,

You know,

Friends,

Out for dinner for the first time in months.

But first,

We go and we take a knee in the park for racism and the abuse of power that's happening in our country.

Expansion and contraction.

So these seemingly opposing experiences aren't really separate at all.

They're just more highlighted now than they've previously been.

So to hold these practices of this paradox is to open fully to life's experience.

We wouldn't be sitting here together without experiencing everything that has happened in our lives.

Compassion itself wouldn't exist without suffering.

It's that close.

Compassion wouldn't exist without suffering.

Birth doesn't happen without pain.

It's that close.

So these very concepts of duality,

These pairs of opposites,

Self and other,

It has suffering embedded in it.

And in the coming weeks,

After this series,

We'll dive deeper into these non-dual teachings.

It's an important understanding and I feel that it's really what we're seeing more and more of.

So need to be addressed and looked at.

So dukkha,

Uneasiness,

Dissatisfaction,

This uneasiness and vulnerability,

It's universal.

It's all of us.

Mainly,

It's just our human nervous system registering existence.

So it feels a little shaky.

There is a background anxiety in the human nervous system.

It's on high alert,

Like something's around the corner.

It's carried over from the time we were living in caves.

There's this keeping an eye out for whatever's threatening.

But if we can remember this first fundamental truth,

There is dissatisfaction.

It's not so personal.

Then there's not so much suffering around it,

When it's not so personal.

But usually what happens for us is we complain and we are a victim to what's happening around us.

We react to it or we resist it.

And what does that do?

It creates more suffering,

Right?

And the Buddha,

He also pointed out that no one escapes dukkha.

Whether you're wealthy,

Or you're poor,

Educated or not,

Whatever your gender,

Whatever your age,

Everyone,

Everyone experiences dukkha.

We're all in it together.

So it's important to open to this truth of dissatisfaction.

Because if we don't,

Like if we don't acknowledge the fact,

What happens is,

We minimize it,

We deny it,

We put our head in the sand,

We avoid it,

We blame somebody else for the problems that are happening.

So we don't deal with it ourselves.

So the first noble truth,

There is dissatisfaction,

And it's to be investigated.

What do we do every week?

We sit down together and we investigate the ways in which we suffer.

And some people complain that by talking about suffering,

And putting that as like the first,

That's the first noble truth,

Really.

It seems like Buddhism is kind of a pessimistic path,

Right?

A party pooper religion.

But the purpose on focusing on suffering is to understand it so that we can be free from the causes of suffering,

So that we can be really happy.

If we understand that it's there,

That it's embedded in our life,

We don't get so pulled around by it.

We have to understand the illness in order to understand what the cure is going to be.

That's how it's laid out.

And this is a terminal illness.

It's going with us all the way to the end.

So understanding suffering is an act of compassion.

I think it's helpful to evoke a sense of compassion as we begin exploring the Four Noble Truths.

One of my teachers Gil Fronsdal says that meditation is the springboard for applying the Four Noble Truths.

So you get yourself into your meditation practice,

You establish a sense of calm and stability,

And even maybe it's a happiness,

A place when you're meditating,

You're very much at ease.

And then from that perspective of happiness and calm,

That's the ideal time to begin looking at Dukkha,

At suffering.

So the last thing that I want to say about the exploration of the Four Noble Truths in the coming weeks is that in the classical text,

It has no pronouns.

In the wording of it,

It doesn't say you or I or we.

Those are left out.

It says there is suffering.

There is a cause of suffering.

There is a possible end of suffering.

And there's a path to the end of suffering.

So what this points to is that this practice is sensitive to our own suffering and the suffering of others.

There's no separation.

We can only take responsibility for our own contribution to suffering.

But we can be compassionate to the suffering around us.

It's equally important,

Equally important to have the compassionate concern going in both directions for self and other.

Again,

Looking at that,

That piece of how we have inserted duality,

Self and other,

There's really no separation,

But we'll hold that for later.

We can have the compassionate concern for ourselves and our own suffering.

And we can start to treat ourselves with compassion or at least care.

With care,

When we see our suffering when we're suffering,

Can we care for it?

By looking at the suffering in ourselves and trying to resolve it.

It's a really compassionate act for ourselves,

Towards ourselves.

And being sensitive and open to seeing the suffering in the world around us.

It's a compassionate act that extends out away from us and towards the world.

So not having pronouns in the Four Noble Truths.

It really,

In my view,

It's talking about the flow of compassion going both ways equally.

Self and other,

Equal.

And that to me is really a central part of what is possible to mature spiritual life,

Which is to have this compassion flowing in all directions fully,

Without preference,

But for all beings.

So the first truth,

Ehipassiko,

There is suffering.

Is it true?

There is difficulty.

Reviews

Beautiful way to talk on the first truth. Thank you ❤️

I finally have the foundation of what will follow. Can’t wait! Namaste 🙏🏼

Nice and clear

Hi. I just wanted to say I think your pod casts are wonderful. You are so clear and explain things in a beautiful easy to understand manner. I'm going to listen to all your work in order. Your a very engaging teacher. Thank you 🙏

Excellent clear sighted explanation. Thank you 🙏

Thank you Lisa - so simple, so true! EHIPASSIKO ... 🫶🏻

Thank You. 🙏🙏🙏

Wonderful instruction. I really needed to hear this. There is some noise/feedback going on throughout. It would be great if that could be edited out.