The Four Noble Truths (catvāri āryasatyāni) is the central doctrine of Buddhism. The Four Truths explain the nature of suffering (dukkha), its causes, its cessation, and the path to its cessation. Our suffering, or unsatisfactoriness, has three main aspects: 1) physical and mental suffering of birth, aging, sickness, and death; 2) attachment to things that are constantly changing; 3) and the dissatisfaction of everything that is impermanent, transitory, and not meeting our expectations.
The First Noble Truth is that life is suffering (Dukkha). For non-Buddhists or those new to it might take a dramatic reaction to the word “suffering,” because they might think of suffering in its literal sense of pain, gore, and torture. But suffering here means “dissatisfaction.” One thing to remember here is that our own mind causes it. So what is suffering? In the physical sense, suffering is physical pain, injury, sickness, old age, and of course death. Mentally, suffering is disappointment, jealousy, depression, sadness, fear, anger, frustration, etc. There are many degrees of suffering, but life in its totality is imperfect and incomplete. “But life isn’t always suffering – there are moments of happiness and contentness,” we might say. That’s exactly what it is! MOMENTS! They are imperfect, impermanent moments that will eventually fade away. TheBuddha taught that unless we can gain insight into truth of reality and what is able to give us happiness and was is unable to give us happiness, the experience of unsatisfactoriness will continue.
The Second Noble Truth is the cause, origin, roots, creation, or arising of suffering (Samudaya). The main cause of suffering is attachment and desire. It’s the attachment to transient things, not only physical transient objects, but also objects of our perception. Ignorance is the lack of understanding of how our mind is attached to impermanent things. Other reasons for suffering are craving, as well as striving for fame or glory, and pursuit of wealth and prestige. Because there is attachment to these transient objects, their loss is inevitable, thus causing suffering. The three main causes for suffering are the Three Poisons: ignorance (avidya), greed/attachment (raga), and anger/aversion (dvesha).
The Third Noble Truth is the cessation of creating suffering by refraining from doing the things that make us suffer (Nirodha). Cessation is the spiritual goal in Buddhism. Once we have truly understood the causes of our suffering, we can then eradicate these causes and be free from suffering. The cessation of these sufferings can be attained through nirodha; the unclinging to sensual craving and conceptual attachment. This means that suffering can be ended by extinguishing all forms of clinging and attachment.
The Fourth Noble Truth is the path that leads to refraining from doing the things that cause us to suffer –The Noble Eightfold Path (Marga). It is the path of the Middle Way between the two extremes of excessive sensual self-indulgence (hedonism) and excessive self-mortification (asceticism), and will lead to the end of Samsara (the cycle of rebirth). The Noble Eightfold Path is a practical guide, that when developed together, leads to the cessation of our suffering. The path are not “stages” that we can move from one to another, instead, they are dependent on one another to work as one complete path or way of living.