What Is Your Understanding Of The First Noble Truth?

[tc101]

What is your understanding of the First Noble Truth? It is sometimes translated as "Life is Suffering". Some people say this is a bad translation.

The way I think of the Four Noble Truths myself is:

"There is suffering" - but there is much more

"There is a cause of suffering"

"There is an end of suffering" - Good News

"There is a path that leads to the end of suffering" - Lets go

How do you understand it?

[jumnien]

Big question for so early in the morning...

I guess Step One on the path is vipassana (seeing things as they really are) or acceptance of conditions and experience. Taking note of the difficulty or unsatisfactory nature of life. The imperfection as perceived by the ego (the perfector). Step One is noticing the discomfort, the pain, the annoyance, the agony and noticing the inability not to constantly ask the questions "Why is it this way, why is life unfair, who is responsible, if I were God I would have designed this whole life thing differently, If only they'd do this, it's too hot, the food's too greasy, why's my back hurt, that mosquito is bummin' my high, what do you mean I'm not going to live forever, life's hard, I like the orgasm part but the rest of it sucks, ???.

Good question, I'll think about it some more and get back to you; better yet, I'll read what others have to say. No intellectualizing please!

[chownah]

I believe that the First Noble Truth is that all things are impermanent.

Chownah

[tc101]

This is a take on it that rings true to me and has been very helpful,

Life Isn't Just Suffering

by

Thanissaro Bhikkhu

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors...o/lifeisnt.html

[lannarebirth]

What is your understanding of the First Noble Truth? It is sometimes translated as "Life is Suffering". Some people say this is a bad translation.

The way I think of the Four Noble Truths myself is:

"There is suffering" - but there is much more

"There is a cause of suffering"

"There is an end of suffering" - Good News

"There is a path that leads to the end of suffering" - Lets go

How do you understand it?

My understanding is that there is unsatisfactoriness in the way we perceive and respond to our world. Not that the world is unsatisfactory, but only our reactions. Our perceptions and responses are the root of dukkha.

Something like that.

[sabaijai]

Some discussions of the 1st Noble Truth revolve around the translation and etymology of the Pali dukkha Is the best English translation really 'suffering', or should it be ''dis-ease', 'non-satisfaction' or other terms that have been proposed?

One thing worth noting is that dukkha is the antonym for sukkha, 'happiness'. I had a Buddhist studies professor (an Indian with extensive knowledge of Pali and Sanskrit) at university who explained that the internal etymology of dukkha refers to a wheel that is out of round, so that it can't roll smoothly. Conversely sukkha relates to a calibrated wheel that rolls smoothly. As described in Wikipedia:

Dukkha (Pāli दुक्ख ; according to grammatical tradition from Sanskrit dus-kha "uneasy", but according to Monier-Williams more likely a Prakritized form of dus-stha "unsteady, disquieted") is a central concept in Buddhism, the word roughly corresponding to a number of terms in English including sorrow, suffering, affliction, pain, anxiety, dissatisfaction, discomfort, anguish, stress, misery, and aversion. The word frustration is probably a better synonym than suffering. The term is probably derived from duḥstha, "standing badly," "unsteady," "uneasy."

In classic Sanskrit, the term dukkha was often compared to a large potter's wheel that would screech as it was spun around, and did not turn smoothly. The opposite of dukkha was the term sukkha which brought to mind a potter's wheel that turned smoothly and noiselessly. In other Buddhist-influenced cultures, similar imagery was used to describe dukkha. An example from China is the cart with one wheel that is slightly broken, so that the rider is jolted now and again as the wheel rolls over the broken spot.

As to whether there is 'more' than dukkha, the Pali verse is pretty straightforward:

Sabbe pi dukkham = All is dukkha.

A slightly expanded version of this axiom appears in Anguttara III, the Dhammapada and other Tipitaka citations:

Sabbe sankhárá dukkhá = All sankhárá [formed things] are dukkha.

So the only thing excluded from dukkha is asankhárá, or the unformed, i.e., nibbana. I don't see that dukkha can thus be regarded as just 'part' of conditioned life, rather it's the whole of it. That's not to say there aren't moments of perceived happiness, only that even those perceived moments of happiness are subject to decay (anicca/impermanence) and can't be owned (anatta/non-self) and are thus dukkha by nature.

If the message ended with the first Noble Truth, then one could regard Buddhism as nihilistic, pessimistic, etc. But the prescription contains the cure for dukkha, and thus the cloud has a bright silver lining (a point Ven Thanissaro elaborates beautifully).

[Suthep_Steve]

I don't know about the Thai tradition but in the Tibetan it’s common to look at the suffering or dis-ease of the First Noble Truth in 3 ways.

1 Gross Suffering: this is easy to understand and is things like the pain of illness or the mental suffering of constantly making typing mistakes. It's easy to understand.

2 Suffering of Change: harder to understand but basically it refers to our normal pleasures such as eating and the like and how they are in reality sufferings. So for example at the moment I'm in the UK visiting my parents for Christmas it's cold here and I have a strong wish to be back in the warmth of Thailand. However after a short time of being back in Thailand I'll be too hot and sweaty and looking for somewhere to cool down. You can tell that something is a suffering of change and not a cause of happiness if the more you experience it the less happy you become. Therefore if warmth was a cause of happiness then the warmer it was the happier we would be. Also if pizza was a cause of happiness the more we ate it the happier we would be.

3 Pervasive Suffering: this is very hard to understand. It refers to the fact that we have contaminated aggregates and are bound to Samsaric rebirth. Even our neutral actions are tainted with ignorance and lead us to contaminated rebirth. We lack freedom and this lack of freedom is a suffering.

[chownah]

I believe that the First Noble Truth is that all things are impermanent.

Chownah

OOOOOps!!! Got that one wrong!

Chownah

[tc101]

I believe that the First Noble Truth is that all things are impermanent.

Chownah

OOOOOps!!! Got that one wrong!

Chownah

I thought you would eventually realize that.

[rikpa]

What is your understanding of the First Noble Truth?

Erm, life sucks and then you die. And then get reborn and have to do it all over again. And again.

[sabaijai]

What is your understanding of the First Noble Truth?

Erm, life sucks and then you die. And then get reborn and have to do it all over again. And again.

[tycann]

Erm, life sucks and then you die. And then get reborn and have to do it all over again. And again.

Rikpa, I think that is the single finest exposition of the Truth of dukkha that I have ever heard. No kidding.