The Four Noble Truths
As the Buddha sat underneath the tree, he saw how the world really is very clearly. He saw the truth
that he had been searching for. He found enlightenment.
He saw that one of the main problems for humans is that we don’t see things clearly. We live in
cloudy ignorance, constantly distracted and restless. No matter what we do, and how much we
have, we still seem to want more and more. We find it difficult to rest in the present.
The Buddha meditated long and hard on the cause of suffering for people. He said that if we look
deeply into the cause of suffering we see that all suffering is generated by the mind.
Fill out the first two columns of table below. Ignore the third one for now.
Recent Experience of Suffering
Hungry
Cause of Suffering
How do we want things to
be different to how they
are?
Lack of food in tummy
You will notice that the ways in which you suffer are caused by different things. We would think it
very strange to think that the cause of hunger is the same as the cause of a grief.
But the Buddha looked very deeply into this. He saw that all suffering is caused by the same thing. It
can summarised be as:All experiences of suffering are
caused by attachment to the
desire for things to be different
to how they are.
Craving, clinging, wanting
Now fill out the third column of the table above to understand what the Buddha meant by this.
The more we crave for things to be different to how they are, the more we suffer. If you are
suffering because you want a new computer game, it’s not the lack of computer game that is causing
you to suffer. It is your mind craving the computer game. The more you want it, the more it occupies
your thoughts, the more you attach yourself to wanting the game and the more you suffer.
‘Let go of the desire and your suffering will ease’, said the Buddha.