Buddhism: The Noble Truth Of Suffering

Suffering. All of us have encountered suffering and many of us wish we never would have to again; however, what many people do not see is that since we have suffering, we have happiness. One can not exist without the other. Without this feeling of suffering or unhappiness, we would not be able to understand happiness or even know it as a pleasant feeling, since we would never have experienced a life of unhappiness. Journalist David Brooks in “What Suffering Does” and Buddhist Monk Matthieu Ricard in “The Alchemy of Suffering” gave their own input upon the relationship between suffering and happiness. They seem to mention how every person endures suffering, but what is important is not the suffering itself, but the way a person changes or reacts to the suffering. While one may hate suffering, we have to understand that one can not be happy without having suffered. The characterization of emotional suffering as “rewarding” to people fails to account for individuals who have undergone the death of their spouse and have come out of it a changed person. In fact, in the 21st century, pervasive media advertising through television advances western cultural expectations of “perfection”, that in part advance suffering.

A normale egg would become ninety-six people. “One egg, one embryo, one adult” (Brave New World, page 7). The egg would with a spesial process called “Bokanovsky's Process be able to grow to become more human begins “the egg will bud, will proliferate, will divide. From eight to ninety-sex buds, and every bud will grow into a perfectly formed embryo, and every embryo into a full-sizes adult. Making ninety-six human begins grow where only one grew before. Progress” (Brave New World, page 7).

Lastly Suffering or Sorrow. According to the text, this refers to the fact that life, when lived in a typical manner can never be fully satisfying because of its constant change. Even in the midst of pleasure, we are always aware that pleasure is short-lived. The Sanskrit word for this is duhkha. Buddha rejected the notion of a permanent soul but believed in rebirth. Buddhism proposes that certain elements of personality (not necessarily a soul) that make up an individual can recombine and continue from one lifetime to another while karma determines how an individual will be reborn and his/her life’s circumstances. (pages 131-132)

Buddhism is a religion that first emerged in northeastern India by a man named Buddha sometime between the late 6th century and the early 4th century B. C. There are many different tribes of Buddhism, but all forms of Buddhism share respect for the teachings of the Buddha and the goal of ending suffering and the cycle of rebirth. According to an ancient treatise on medicine, inhaling smoke is good as a purgative, a cure for tiredness, depression, throat and nose problems, and is also beneficial for pregnant women.

The Buddha himself had to suffer spiritually while he tried to find his enlightened path. The Four Noble Truths teaches and explores human suffering and have been describe as simplistic but useful. Dukkha is the first of the Four Noble Truths. Dukkha teaches that suffering exists, it is real and universal and has many causes, pain, and failure. Samudaya is number two of The Four Noble Truths. Samudaya teaches that there is a reason for suffering. The belief is Suffering is wanting to control things and can take multiple forms like, wanting sensual pleasures, the need for fame, and wanting to avoid unpleasant sensations. Just as Samudaya teaches that there is a reason for suffering, Nirodha teaches that suffering will end. Suffering will end with final liberation of nirvana, the mind will experience complete freedom. The fourth and final Noble Truth is Magga which teaches that in order to completely end all suffering you must follow the Eightfold Path (Johnson, J. M. 2015). Buddhists do not believe in flashiness, money, and worldly possessions bringing you ultimate

Buddha had learned that all people have one thing in common: if they think about their own life, or look at the world around them, they will see that life is full of suffering. The first noble truth is the truth of suffering, which is also called Dukkha. Buddha had said that suffering may be physical or mental. Suffering includes when someone is suffering of birth, old age, sickness, and death are all unavoidable, it is something that comes with life. Physical suffering can come in many forms, but it is part of us as human to endure the suffering. As we become older all of us find that life can become more

Buddha called the pleasurable feelings that result from worldly enjoyments ‘changing suffering’ because they are simply the experience of a temporary reduction of manifest suffering. In other words, we experience pleasure due to the relief of our previous pain. The pleasure we derive from eating is really just a temporary reduction of our hunger just as the pleasure we derive from ordinary relationships is merely a temporary reduction of our underlying loneliness. If we increase the cause of our worldly happiness, our happiness will gradually change into suffering. For example, when we eat our favorite food it tastes wonderful, but if we were to continue plateful after plateful our enjoyment would soon change into discomfort, disgust,

In the early portion of the story of Buddha’s life, there is a notion that if one is not made aware of the concept of suffering,

Siddharta Gautama was twenty-nine years old when he abandoned his family to search for a means to bring to an end his and other’s suffering after studying meditation for many years. At age thirty-five, Siddharta Gautama sat down under the shade of a fig tree to meditate and he determined to meditate until he reached enlightenment. After seven weeks he received the Great Enlightenment which he referred to as the Four Noble Truths and the Eight-fold Path. Henceforth he became known as the Buddha.

After setting the Wheel of Dharma in motion in a Deer Park near Benares (Varanasi), the Buddha began his sermon by teaching his disciples the universality of dukkha. As the Buddha stated, “birth is dukkha, decay is dukkha, disease is dukkha, death is dukkha…the five aggregates of attachment are dukkha” (Willaims & Tribe, 2010, p. 42). In this sense, ‘dukkha’ which is translated as suffering, pain, dissatisfaction, or unease, permeates reality. It is birth. Giving birth, coming-forth, the appearance of the aggregates (Bodhi, 1980). This is dukkha. Similarly, what is considered ageing, death, sorrow, despair and even happiness are all dukkha. To understand this teaching, it is important to recognise the Buddhist idea of anicca, which is expressed in the maxim: sarvam duhkham, sarvam anityam (all is suffering, all is

Life is not permanent and thus is should be relished and desire for life must be held in high regard. However, in Buddhism, one’s death is not truly the end. It is only the end for the body or vessel that the spirit inhabits at that time. After death, the spirit will seek out and attach to a new body as discussed earlier in the conception of life. Past good deeds and negative alike are seen as major sources of determination of where that spirit will end up in the new body it has newly attached to.

According to the online article Buddhist View on Death and Rebirth, “In the teaching of the Buddha, all of us will pass away eventually as a part in the natural process of birth, old-age and death and that we should always keep in mind the impermanence of life. The life that we all cherish and wish to hold on. To Buddhism, however, death is not the end of life, it is merely the end of the body we inhabit in this life, but our spirit will still remain and seek out through the need of attachment, attachment to a new body and new life.” (“Buddhist View on Death and Rebirth,

The Second Noble Truth discusses the cause of suffering, and that all of our sufferings are from attachments. Buddhist often say that humans are the most capable of being enlightened and reach nirvana. The reason we are able to is because we have desires. All our desires come from our ability to perceive the world through different senses. However, one cannot escape feeling these desires. It is the ultimate craving that forces us to desire non-stop. Every human gets one life and gets reincarnated when they die. The length of one’s life differs, but is long enough to understand what suffering is. If one was to reincarnate into something that is not human, their form of being might cause them to die every ten minutes. The short lifespan limits

The Second Noble Truth (Samudaya) of the Buddha explains the cause of suffering, as everything in the world falls under the law of cause and effect. Buddhist teachings see the cause of all suffering in desire, aversion, and delusion, all of which emerge from people’s ignorance and clinging. In order for suffering to occur, there must be attachment or clinging to a certain object of desire, aversion, or delusion. Suffering is often self-inflicted by grasping after the illusions of an “I, me, and mine. “Buddhism recognizes that there is no real self, but

The First Noble Truth of Buddhism is also referred to as the truth about suffering or dukkha, which posits that suffering, comes in various forms such as pain, desire and or deaths. However, the three types of sufferings coincide with the ones the Buddha witnesses on his journey outside his palace: they were sickness, old age, and death (Hardy, 2005; Young, 2013). Buddha argued that human beings are exposed to cravings and desires and even if they are able to satisfy these particular desires that satisfaction is merely temporary. In that case, pleasure is ephemeral and whenever it lasts it results into monotony (Velasquez, 2011; Besser-Jones & Slote, 2015).