Four Noble Truths | Wikipedia audio article
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Date: 2018-11-25

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Four Noble Truths

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"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
- Socrates



SUMMARY
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The Four Noble Truths refer to and express the basic orientation of Buddhism in a short expression: we crave and cling to impermanent states and things, which are dukkha, "incapable of satisfying" and painful. This craving keeps us caught in samsara, the endless cycle of repeated bhava ("becoming") and jāti (literally: "birth"), rebirth, and the continued dukkha that comes with it. There is, however, a way to end this cycle, namely by attaining nirvana, cessation of craving, whereafter rebirth and associated dukkha will no longer arise again. This can be accomplished by following the eightfold path, restraining oneself, cultivating discipline and wholesome states, and practicing mindfulness and dhyana.In short form, the four truths are dukkha, samudaya ("arising," "coming together"), nirodha ("cessation," "confinement"), and marga, the path leading to cessation. As the "Four Noble Truths" (Sanskrit: catvāri āryasatyāni; Pali: cattāri ariyasaccāni), they are "the truths of the Noble Ones," the truths or realities which are understood by the "worthy ones" who have attained nirvana.In the sutras, Buddhist religious texts, the four truths have both a symbolic and a propositional function. They represent the awakening and liberation of the Buddha, but also the possibility of liberation for all sentient beings, describing how release from craving is to be reached. In the Pali canon scriptures, the four truths appear in a "network of teachings," as part of "the entire dhamma matrix," which have to be taken together. They provide a conceptual framework for introducing and explaining Buddhist thought, which has to be personally understood or "experienced". The function of the four truths, and their importance, developed over time, when prajna, or "liberating insight," came to be regarded as liberating in itself, instead of or in addition to the practice of dhyana, meditation. This "liberating insight" gained a prominent place in the sutras, and the four truths came to represent this liberating insight, as part of the enlightenment story of the Buddha.The four truths became of central importance in the Theravada tradition of Buddhism, which holds to the idea that insight into the four truths is liberating in itself. They are less prominent in the Mahayana tradition, which sees the higher aims of insight into sunyata, emptiness, and following the Bodhisattva path as central elements in their teachings and practice. The Mahayana tradition reinterpreted the four truths to explain how a liberated being can still be "pervasively operative in this world." Beginning with the exploration of Buddhism by western colonialists in the 19th century and the development of Buddhist modernism, they came to be often presented in the west as the central teaching of Buddhism.