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The Four Noble Truths Essay

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The Four Noble Truths One of the most important sharing in the Buddha’s first sermon is the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth is the truth of duhkha that life is dissatisfactory. The Buddha explained it from four aspects—physical changing, mental-emotional process, unpleasant things, and not processing the things one wants. The Second Noble Truth illustrates the cause of duhkha. It seems that “craving” is the cause of all sufferings. Actually, it is the idea of selfness which produces ignorance, the first constituent of the twelve nidhana, and leads to craving and thirst. The Third Noble Truth demonstrates the cessation of unsatisfactory state. According to the twelve nidhana, removing ignorance will eliminate craving and finally cease…show more content…
In Buddha’s view, impermanence, dissatisfactoriness, and selflessness are three characteristics of life, and understanding the nature of these three characteristics will lead to Awakening and Nirvana (Mitchell 34). As for impermanence, the Buddha believes that “everything except for Nirvana is in constant flux and change” (Mitchell 34). Some constituents rise together and form an object. Then the arisen object starts to grow and decay, and finally passes away. Changes happen every time after its existence. And the constituents will exist and wait for an opportunity to rise together again and form another object. Because all things are compounded by constituents that arise together and then fall apart, everything is impermanent, including the six realm and the…show more content…
Buddha explained it from three aspects. First of all, we can’t prevent the changing condition of physical life. We can’t stop from growing old, can’t get rid of getting sick, and can’t control dying or giving birth in the six realms. The physical changing itself already lets people down. Lack of ability to manage the physical changing makes us even more unsatisfied about lives. The second point is that we can’t get permanent happiness. Although no one will deny that we feel happy sometimes, all pleasure we get will not last forever. For example, during the time I applied for universities and colleges for undergraduate study, I was so happy when I received the offer from UNC. But, one month later, I can’t feel the same level of happiness as the day I saw the congratulations on the letter. We always believe that we will get lasting happiness after we realize something, however, we won’t. Therefore, the gap between what we want and what we actually get causes the dissatisfactoriness. The last aspect is that personal and social duhkha are caused by changing states of human. If one has the negative emotions like angry, hatred, greed, and delusion, he or she will project these personal feelings to family and friends, and even cause war, political repression or other social turbulences. All three points demonstrate that life is dissatisfactory, which is exactly the truth of
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