This podcast is offered by the San Francisco Zen Center on the web at www.sfzc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. So the topic is the Four Noble Truths, which I think almost everyone who's read anything about Buddhist teachings have probably come across the Four Noble Truths. Anybody here never heard of them? So why are they important Buddhism? What role do they have? Yes? Recognizes the problem and then shows us a way out. So recognize the problem and then shows us the way out. Shows us the way out. Okay. Any other ideas why these things are important, what role they have?

[01:02]

They're among the first teachings of the Buddha. They're among the first teachings of the Buddha, so first must be good. Okay. Yes? Take a second. You just said that It's a description of a path. It's a description of a path. So the Four Noble Truths provide a path. Okay? Thank you. It tells us what the problem is with being born a human being. It tells us what the problem is with being a born a human being. Ready?

[02:13]

Quiet group. Is your hand over? Oh, yes? They're relaxing. I find them relaxing. Oh, the 412s are relaxing. Not always, but sometimes when I hear something in the So just hearing the teachings helps you relax. Very nice. Yes? I think something extraordinary about them is that they boil it all down to something so simple. All of our struggles can be summarized in such a very small amount of language. Okay, great. That's nice. So what are these Four Noble Truths? Who wants to try to explain what they are? I'm sorry if you're expecting a class from me.

[03:13]

But sometimes a teacher has to test the students, find out what they know. And it's very interesting to know. What do you know? What are these Four Noble Truths? Yes. The truth of suffering. Can you repeat that? Yeah, please, all four. I can remember the truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the path of grief. Okay, so suffering, the cause of suffering, the cessation of suffering, the path to the cessation of suffering, right? Okay, someone else want to try? You all heard about the Four Noble Twos, but you don't know what they are. Yes? Life is filled with suffering. Suffering is followed by clinging or attachment.

[04:20]

The way to end suffering is to stop clinging or being attached, and the way to learn to stop being attached or clinging is through the Noble Eightfold Path. Okay, so a little different. Still, the idea there's suffering, but life is full of suffering, and it's caused by, you mentioned, clinging and attachment. It's a way to come to an end, and then there's an eightfold path to do that. Okay? Someone else want to try? I think about... I don't think about as much as suffering anymore, even though that's the common translation, and I think that... Can you hear him back there? You speak louder, too. I think of it as... sometimes this ease or stress or just unsatisfactoriness, sometimes you can do a very subtle thing, it seems, that it's not just like subtle, but it's sad. And I always kind of attach it to this idea that the nature of conditioned phenomena are that it's just easy to do good.

[05:29]

So he said that he doesn't really like maybe the translation of suffering, the Hali word is dukkha, so he maybe prefers unease, dis-ease, unsatisfactoriness, and he associates with the nature of conditioned reality, which is basically our reality we live in all the time, that somehow it's associated with this unsatisfactory quality. That's the first noble truth. Yeah, and that it's hard to experience ease without letting all that go, without letting all the conditions go. Without detaching from us to some degree. There's that clinging, that desire, that's number two that we're talking about now. There's a super grasping or an aversion towards any of the conditions. And we don't experience ease until we let go of that. I see. So in order to have some ease in our life, we have to let go of the clinging to the conditions, situations, the events, things of our life.

[06:31]

Or the aversion, right? Or aversion is maybe a form of clinging, maybe. Okay? Any protests about anything you heard? You seem like all reasonable, or any problems with what you heard? I think the third noble truth was the cessation of suffering. So the third noble truth is the cessation of suffering. So some of the people pointed that out, talked about the cessation. He only got to this first two. I thought... I kind of got to the third. You kind of did. Yeah, you did. I'm sorry. Yes? It seems like the very first statement that life is suffering in a way is almost enough because when we say yes to that rather than no against it, you get freed. So if we say yes to the concept that life is suffering, then we can get free.

[07:34]

If we say no, then we're not free. So for you, the First Noble Truth says that life is suffering, but not completely suffering because if you're free, you're not suffering, right? Otherwise, so it's not quite true that life is suffering. It's a certain kind of life is suffering. I guess the kind of life that has your clinging, right? So a life that's not clinging doesn't have to suffer? Well, things happen that might be painful, but it's my thought about it and my no against it added on top of what's happened that actually causes what I call suffering. I see. So the no, for you, it's not clinging, but rather the no to suffering, the no to the... difficulties of life that really adds piles on the suffering on top of it. And so I guess it's a lot easier. Okay? Okay. So thank you.

[08:34]

I wanted to hear some of the ideas that are floating around there. There's a lot of ideas floating around in this world of ours for what the Four Noble Truths are. If you read some of the popular books on Buddhism, you'll find some very creative interpretations of the Four Noble Truths. And usually Dharma teachers have this wonderful capacity to be definitive in what they say. This is what it is. And it's interesting to see all the different ways it's presented. And one of the nice things about the Four Noble Truths is that it's a very, very simple statement, very simple statements that lend themselves to, or must require, some kind of interpretation to understand. And so you could, I don't know if people have done this too much, but people could do a study on the history of the interpretation of the Four Noble Truths. And one person who did a little bit of that pointed out how in the 1800s, when Europeans and Americans were first encountering Buddhism, the Europeans and Americans had a very strong... People interested in Buddhism were really rationalists.

[09:40]

They wanted rational, humanistic forms of religion, in contrast to the kind of magic and superstition or supernatural of Christianity of the time. And they highlighted the importance of the Four Noble Truths as being completely irrational, you know, kind of cause and effect that you understand. And it took much bigger prominence in the doctrine of books on Buddhism in the West than it probably ever had in Buddhism itself. How many of you are familiar with Dogen? Dogen is important for Tassajara, right? Does he ever talk about the Four Noble Truths? Certainly. Certainly? I would imagine. Imagine. Imagine. There's a lot of Dharma teachers who imagine all kinds of things. You ask me, nothing comes to mind. Nothing comes to mind. Yeah? When I studied with the Chinese monastery in America, the big monks were made in China.

[10:42]

They'd never heard of the Four Noble Truths or the Eightfold Path. So she studied in America with monks coming from Chinese Buddhist tradition. They said they'd never heard of the Four Noble Truths. Or the Noble Eightfold Path. Or the Noble Eightfold Path. I think they'd heard of it, but they didn't. They didn't have it. Does Dogen ever talk about the Eightfold Path? I might not be your guy. Who's my guy or my gal? Anybody? Does Dogen talk about the Four Noble Truths? I think he does. What? I think he does, but not so directly. Not so directly. How do you talk about it indirectly? I'm pretty sure in Japan they were chanting the Hatsu, too, right? Hatsu's not from Dogen. I know, but he was probably chanting it, right? He was referring to it at times. Maybe. And it talks about the Four Noble Truths. Well, mostly he negates them. No suffering, no cause. Because I'm saying this is this indirect way of dealing with it. He negates them, but he also acknowledges that all these things are real from certain perspectives.

[11:46]

You know, when I was introduced to Buddhism here at Zen Center, I used to chant the Heart Sutra all the time. So all those negations, no eyes, no ears, no nose, you know, all these things, you know, form, sensations, perceptions, formations, consciences are all empty, all right? And because they're empty and go like, no, no, no, no, I figured I didn't have to learn what they were. And so it wasn't until I went to Thailand, where they, it's a very important part of the teachings there, these things, that I actually started learning what it was that the Heart Sutra was negating. And that changed the whole, it made it much richer for me. I understood it much better. So whether, I can't, I can't tell you for sure whether Dogen talks about the Four Noble Truths. I doubt it. I've read a fair amount of Dogen and I can't remember anywhere where he talks about it. And if he does talk about it, it's probably just a little kind of aside, very brief.

[12:50]

So you have whole schools of Buddhism there where Four Noble Truths don't have a role. And so some people claim that the Four Noble Truths began with the Buddha. And some people make the claim that this is what the Buddha realized the night of his awakening, and this is what he taught. And he taught it over and over again. This was a central aspect of the teaching. If you want to understand early Buddhism, the core of it is the Four Noble Truths. And the Buddha had a disciple named Sariputta who made the very emphatic statement that all of the Dharma Just like the footprints of all the animals can be put inside the footprint of an elephant, an elephant has a big footprint, right? It's the biggest, I guess, footprint in the jungle, in India. So all animals' footprints fit inside the footprint of the elephant. All teachings of the Dharma fit inside the Four Noble Truths. So Sariputta, one generation after the Buddha, is making them, you know, the Four Noble Truths, really at the heart of what the Buddha had to teach.

[13:59]

So I want to talk a little bit about how the teachings of Four Noble Truths appear in the suttas, in the early discourses. And in doing that, point out the care that you go into understanding some of the terms used in how we translate the Pali and how the translation choices make a big difference in how we understand it. So one of the common places that people say the Buddha... associated the Buddha with the Four Noble Truths is with his awakening. With his awakening, he discovered the Four Noble Truths. And in fact, we have some suttas, some of the discourses, which describe a process of awakening for the Buddha that involves something that looks like the Four Noble Truths. And so it says, in the passage describing this, it's in the first person, and the Buddha says, I directed my mind, I directed it, my mind, to knowledge and destruction of the taints.

[15:06]

It's the destruction of the taints, which in the early tradition, taints are called the asavas, which is the primary definition of becoming fully awakened. There's a certain kind of defilement, a certain kind of attachment. I directed my mind to knowledge and destruction of the taints. I directly knew, as it actually is, this is suffering. I directly knew as it actually is, this is the arising of suffering. I directly knew as it actually is, this is the cessation of suffering. I directly knew as it actually is, this is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. So, that kind of sounds like the Four Noble Truths, right? So that's reasonable to make that conclusion. Nowhere in this text, in this passage, there's an expression, four noble truths occur. So maybe that's just an incidental thing, not to make too much of it. But just note, it just describes these things.

[16:08]

So there's two interesting word choices here. The second, what's seemingly the second noble truth, it says, this is the arising of suffering. What's the difference between saying this is the arising of suffering and this is the cause of suffering? Arising sounds more like it's out there rather than something like you're physically experiencing. I see. So arising seems like it's out there, separate, not something you're physically experiencing? Okay. Yes? Maybe the difference between a causal relationship This made that happen in a coincidental relationship. These things came to be at the same time. There may be some probable relationship. So arising may or may not have a causal relationship, but that cause is not being emphasized. You're saying there might be a co-arising of different factors, just a rise.

[17:13]

And with cause, there's clearly a cause, right? Yes. To me, it sounds more like... This is the arising of suffering, that thing that is arising that is suffering. That is the cause of suffering. It's like there's a cause and there's suffering. There are two different things. Yes. So with the arising of suffering, it's almost synonymous with suffering. But if you see the arising of suffering, how is that different than just suffering? Yes. Well, it suggests that it can be stopped before it moves. Ah, before it... Blooms, I guess. Blooms. So it suggests it can be stopped before it blooms. Good. What are other implications of that? It also means that there's a dynamism to it in the sense that suffering is not necessarily a familiar condition, but in order to notice the arising of suffering, there had to be a state in which suffering did not exist or at least it's not apprehended. Great. So it represents a dynamism. It's not always there. And so it rises and passes much more. Good. Yes. It sort of seems like it's the awareness that's aware, potentially aware, of the birth of the thought.

[18:18]

Say it one more time, please. I think you said it was great, just for my sake. Let's do it again. Let's do it again. Like that the suffering is not necessarily suffered. It's the observer that watches the birth of the thought. Ah, so when you see the arising, you're kind of observing the arising of something. The potential for it to be suffering, but it's not yet suffering. Ah, if you're right there at the genesis of it, you're not really in the thick of it, and you can just maybe let it go, let it be. Yes? I get this flavor of blame when you say this is the cause of suffering, like I want to reject whatever caused my suffering. as opposed to like, oh, this is the arising or something that he was talking about. Three very different forms in life, experience. Good, good. Thank you. So, remember at the beginning when I asked you, some of you, what to describe this?

[19:23]

A number of you described the Second Noble Truth as cause. Remember that? And here it says arising. So there's a difference, right? So that's one thing to be aware of. Maybe it doesn't talk about cause, maybe it says something else arising. The third double truth, this is the cessation of suffering. So if you see the arising, and you see the cessation, the rising and passing, how is that beneficial to see something arise and pass, arise and pass? Yes. We gain insight into its impermanent nature. We gain insight into its impermanent nature. And why is that useful? Impermanence means things are unstable. It's kind of scary. It's hard to want to cling to anything when we know that it's not going to be around. And if clinging is a source of our difficulty, then it can help us let go. So it's hard to want to cling to something arising and passing.

[20:25]

Yes. If we are suffering, we won't always be suffering. Ah, so suffering is not like a permanent thing. It's not a permanent state. We don't have to make an identity out of it. We don't have to make an identity out of it. We just see there rising and passing something, just no self there, right? Just suffering. Okay, these are all good answers. So then we have the third noble truth. No, I'm sorry, the fourth statement in Buddha's awakening. This is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. So the word that most translators... Most translators choose the word way as a translation of the Pali. Some of you know Sanskrit and Pali. What would your guess is that they're translating? You know just enough words. You know key words. What do you think the word is? What?

[21:26]

Dhamma. Dhamma? No. What? Maga. That's what I was hoping someone would say. Maga or marga means path or, you know, means path. And in English, the word way and the word path could mean the same thing, right? But they don't have to mean the same thing. Because, what are some, so, away, you know, we say, you know, some places are called, I don't know, way or something, right? Instead of saying road, they say way. But what's another meaning of the English word way? The way to do something. So like a method, right? So the word that's being translated as way is patipada. And patipada means a method or practice. It's often translated simply as practice. But it also means method.

[22:28]

So here, the Buddha's enlightenment says, I directly knew. It decided directly. And then it's very emphatic. The beginning of these statements says this. And I kind of think that directly know and the word this means something really immediate. Immediate seeing right here. It's not so conceptual. And so this is suffering. you know it, you see it for what it is. And if your insight, if your ability to focus is really strong, really be therefore present, you won't see it as just kind of enduring, it's stuck, it's just there. You see that it's actually, like you used the word, dynamic. It's arising and passive. In fact, all our experiences, when we drop below the conceptual level, our concepts tend to give the illusion of permanence to things. When we stop seeing things through concepts, what we tend to do is to see how they're constantly coming into being and constantly passing away.

[23:35]

And so this, so again, I'm pointing something immediate to it, this is the arising of suffering. The earliest Chinese translations of this statement here translated the word arising by the Chinese word repetition. It's repeatedly arising and passing and arising and passing. And it's quite something to have your mind focused enough to see that suffering or distress is actually arising and passing all the time. And this is a cessation of it. It's quite something to see the arising and passing and arising and passing. And then the Buddha says, this method, this practice is the way to the cessation of suffering. And what is this practice? That to be able to observe the arising and passing of phenomena. And we see repeatedly in the early scriptures that this is one of the key insights that is being pointed to, is deep insight into the arising and passing of things.

[24:43]

Many other things are described the same way. You see things arise and they pass. Some of you know the ancient text called the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. There's a refrain in that a very important practice text. And the refrain that's repeated over and over again emphasizes that you want to see the arising and passing of phenomena in the moment. That's why the emphasis on being really, really present and being really mindful and concentrated is so you can be right there to see the arising and passing before you have a concept of what's going on. This is one of the key insights. So here in the Buddha's Awakening, He's talking about this insight, this experience, arising and ceasing, and that this is the method, this is the practice for liberation, is to see this. You following me? Okay. There's a text in the ancient world called Turning the Wheel of the Dharma.

[25:46]

And the tradition claims it's the first sermon of the Buddha, the first teachings that he gave after he was enlightened. And this is what this text says. Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering. Birth is suffering. Aging is suffering. Illness is suffering. Death is suffering. Union with what is displeasing is suffering. Not to get when one wants is suffering. In grief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering. So it starts by making a very similar statement as the first one. This is the noble truth of suffering. But then it explains, it kind of defines what suffering is in this list. Now this bhikkhus is a noble truth of the origin of suffering. It is this craving which leads to renewed existence, accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there, that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, and craving for extermination.

[26:53]

It's slightly different with the first statement, right? First, in the Buddha's awakening, was this is the arising of suffering. Here, in this translation, the second noble truth is, this is the noble truth of the origin of suffering. So it's a little bit different, right? Origin and arising. But here's an interesting question for you. What's the difference between origin and cause. We still don't have a cause, right? But we have the origin of it. What's the difference? Origins first. First. So it had to be there first. It was maybe the first cause, right? But it could have been years ago, the origin of something, right? It didn't have to be like a minute ago. Any other?

[28:01]

Usually cause is purposive or too illogical. It's louder for me. Usually cause entails some kind of purposive element, like some agent did this. Ah, so cause implies some agent. So origin could be conditionals. The original condition that made something happen is not really the cause. That's a nice one. So, in both these versions of what could be called the Four Noble Truths, there's nothing about cause. The first has arising, and the second has origin. Denissar Bhikkhu translates this word as origination. Here's something interesting. The word that's translated as arising and the word that's translated as origin is the same word. It's samudaya. So the question is, in the second discussion here, should it really be translated as origin, or should it be translated as arising as well?

[29:16]

And you get a different reading if you say arising. Because origin kind of lends itself to this idea of a cause, or a first cause, or something, you know, it's going back. But then this is interesting. It's very particular, if it's cause, if that's what origin here, it's very particular what the origin is. Now most of you, if you know something about the second noble truth and want to say it in a very, very brief way, you would say something like craving or desire or thirsting or clinging is the cause of suffering. And you leave it at that. And then you can, you know, all kinds of craving is concluded, right? This statement here is very particular. It describes it this way. It is this craving which leads to renewed existence. Isn't that very particular?

[30:21]

It's the kind of craving which leads to rebirth. So it's not talking about all craving. It's not so useful if you're craving ice cream. You know, you're not saying, you know, if you're a little bit, you know, suffering because you don't get enough ice cream in Tassajara. You know, look at the cause, look at the clinging, and let go of it. You know, that's what the Four Noble Truths are about. Here it's very particular. It says, here the definition of the Second Noble Truth is a particular kind of craving that leads to rebirth. And this kind of craving is accompanied by delight and lust. There's not much room for aversion there. You know, delight and lust. Seeking delight here and there. That is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for existence, and craving for extermination. So, in what's supposed to be the Buddha's first sermon, suffering is defined in a very particular way.

[31:25]

I mean, that's kind of craving, or this second noble thing, in a very particular way. As we get into later histories of Buddhism, really later, especially into the modern West, we're really fond of interpreting this second noble truth as cause. And we leave it just as the cause is craving. Very simple. I think it's very wise to do this. I think it's a great teaching. It's really helpful to keep it that simple. But it's not what was taught early on. It's very interesting what we've done early on. And it's a little bit hard to understand the grammar of these early sentences. But if this word samadhyaya does not mean origin, which it's really a stretch in the Pali language to get origin out of samadhyaya. And it leads to a variety of philosophical challenges to understand. Because as you said, origin can be in the distant past.

[32:29]

So you understand the origin of something. It's conceptual. It requires memory and conceptual analysis. What was the origin? Where did it all come from? And if it's only the kind of, you know, and one way that people interpret this, people who really try to explain this particular, the Buddha's own explanation of the second noble truth, say the real issue, the real existential issue is the craving you had after you died about craving you want to get born again. And that's the craving you want to uproot because then you won't get people reborn again. That's the real issue. That's how they want to interpret this. Make some sense? Yes? What about craving for extinction? Yes. Craving for extinction is still craving. It gets you reborn. Because any kind of craving gets you reborn. So you want to be extinguished, but it doesn't work.

[33:30]

Yes? How is craving for extinction different than aversion? I don't know. Maybe it's the same. So almost no one seems to take this rest of the explanation seriously. If we were interested in what the Buddha had to say about the Four Noble Truths, shouldn't we really study how he really described it? What happens when we take it seriously? So one of the problems is if you take it too seriously, then you have to learn the Pali language. And then you have to worry about the syntax and the grammar of the sentence. And one way of reading this sentence is that this is the noble truth of the arising of suffering. It is the craving for continued rebirth, which is the suffering. It is not describing a cause or an origin

[34:33]

It's saying that craving in and of itself is suffering. And you find a lot of Dharma teachers emphasize the Four Noble Truths will say that. Just craving itself is suffering. It's painful to crave. It's not a cause of suffering. It is suffering. Make some sense? So, one way of translating this statement of the Buddha's so-called First Sermon is this is the noble truth of the arising of suffering It is this craving that is suffering. This particular kind of craving. So if you're following me at all, or hardly following me, it's okay. But what I'm trying to do for you is to create a problem for you. And the problem is that you don't take the received interpretations of the Four Noble Truths as being definitive. but rather begin questioning them and looking back.

[35:34]

Your teachers who teach the Four Noble Truths are invariably teaching something really wise. It's okay to listen to them. But they might not be teaching what the original teachings was around the Four Noble Truths. And if you're interested in their origins, beginnings, then you want to be a little careful about this. But yes? It sounds almost like we're just talking about reincarnation. Here, yes. Are we sure, though? Of course, we're not sure. Sorry, I can't hear. I said, are we sure, but then I said, of course, we're not sure. The question is, can this rebirth not be a monetary thing? Ah, so that's what some interpreters like to say, is that birth and death happen each moment. Rising and passing happens every moment. So probably this was just a metaphoric statement. I'm... Probably or probably not. There's only two ways of deciding this, I think.

[36:37]

One is to interpret it and settle on interpretation. And the other is to do a very extensive survey of this huge body of early literature to see if there's any pattern in how things are taught, to see if there's enough places where it's an allegory or a metaphor that we can safely say this is a metaphor. No one's done that work? No one's done that work. So I want to go on. Then we come to the last of these, the fourth one. And this is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering. So that's the same as the earlier version of the Buddha's awakening experience. But then it can explain what this is, the way. It is the Noble Eightfold Path that is right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

[37:42]

So here, clearly the Fourth Noble Truth is clearly connected to the word marga, magga, a path. That's the Eightfold Path. And then the text goes on, not this text, but another text goes on and describes what the Eightfold Path is. It's a very complicated discussion. You know the Russian dolls where you open them up and there's another doll inside. You open up another doll inside. If you look at how the Eightfold Path is described, it's like that. You have the Fourth Noble Truth. Open that up, you get the Eightfold Path. Open that up, you get something like the right concentration. Open that up, you get the four jhanas. Open that up, and you get a more detailed description of the four jhanas. It's just all these layers and layers of concepts that goes on. So it's nice, but it's pretty elaborate.

[38:48]

If we go back to the experience the Buddha had the night of his awakening, what he says there... This is the way... So he said, I became liberated, and he saw in his liberation, and one of the things he saw is, this is the way leading to the cessation of suffering. Did he suddenly realize, night of his awakening, ah, there's suffering, there's a cause, it's possible to end the cause, and I'd better get to work on the hateful path. I'd better get my livelihood in order, get my speech in order, And I better kind of go through and understand all these different kind of six layers of categories. Was it that complex? Or is realization something that's more direct and immediate rather than this complicated thing that he has to do? So my premise is that if the Four Noble Truths are associated with Buddha's awakening experiments, it's not the Eightfold Path.

[39:54]

the fourth statement. It's not, the word path is not there, it's patipara, it means the method. And the method is to see directly, to have insight in the moment to a rising and passing. And in the Theravon tradition, in the modern world, this also is the key insight that leads to liberation, is a clear, precise insight into the rising and passing of phenomena. the non-conceptual experience. But that is kind of the, you know, that's the stepping stone for liberation. And that's where you find Dogen. Dogen also puts tremendous emphasis on impermanence. The bodhicitta, he associates, the mind of the bodhicitta, is the mind of impermanence, it sees something directly. So my proposal to you is that in the early teachings, the fourth noble truth, or the fourth statement, has nothing to do with the Eightfold Path.

[40:57]

And then you protest and say, wait a minute, the Buddha's first sermon, he said, he associates it with the Eightfold Path. So there's been a tremendous amount of scholarship on this text called the Buddha's First Sermon. And there's many versions of it in different languages that survive. And the people who have done the most careful study of all the different versions, and looked at the, you know, text critical studies of it, all come to the conclusion that this part of the text is a later interpolation. It doesn't belong in the, if this is really some record of the Buddha's earliest sermon, this interpolation of the Four Noble Truths, this is an interpolation that was added in later. So maybe, so that's okay, that's okay, you know, Four Noble Truths were like the central teachings of the Buddha. This is so important for the Buddha. So we'll find it elsewhere in the Theravada canon.

[42:01]

Guess what? You have a hard time finding it. The expression Four Noble Truths in the mouth of the Buddha is pretty rare. in this early text. You expect it to be over and over and over again. But in most of this canon, there's 18,000 suttas, they say. Eight, that's a lot of scriptures. In 18,000 scriptures, except for one particular chapter, we'll put that chapter aside for a moment, the Buddha only says the expression four noble truths eight times. Eight times in 18,000 scriptures. Not very many, right? And if you look at those eight times, one of them is this one that scholars say of inter-interpolation. Another one is in the text called The Four Foundations of Mindfulness, where the Four Noble Truths are included.

[43:05]

And the scholars who have done careful study there, comparing the different versions, come to the same conclusion. The Four Noble Truths are later inter-interpolations. It appears once in the sutta called, the last discourse, it's called the Paranibbana Sutta, the discourse in the final days of the Buddha's life. It just happens, it's just stated there in passing, for noble truths. But that text also, scholars say, has a lot of interpolations, things added. No one has said the definition of things, interpolation, but it's not reliably attributed to the Buddha. So it begins, in the other places where it appears, the word Four Noble Truths, it just seems like in passing, it's hardly any emphasis. It's not like this is it, right? And so, you know, just a name, just a title, Four Noble Truths.

[44:08]

What's a name? A rose by any other name is still a rose, smells as good as a rose, right? So who cares about that? This term, Four Noble Truths, doesn't appear so often. More interesting is that if you look through this whole canon, to look to see what the Buddha actually taught about the Four Noble Truths, explain them, you have a very hard time finding any. You find a few. One of them is this one here that I just read to you, his first sermon. But as I've told you, scholars think that's a later interpolation. In the Maha Satipatthana Sutta, in the great discourse on the foundation of mindfulness, there's a long explanation of the Four Noble Truths. But that long explanation stands out as a sore thumb to a very different style of writing than the rest of that discourse. It's a style of writing that is Abhidharma. And scholars think that they pulled it out of the Abhidharma commentaries and just stuck it in to the text.

[45:10]

It doesn't belong there. there's one place where the Buddha explains the Four Noble Truths, but everyone ignores that discourse. No one pays any attention to it. You'd think that the Buddha, you know, the Buddha hardly talks about the Four Noble Truths, explains it. You'd think that it would go to the place where the Buddha said and explained. And he doesn't explain it anywhere like this. And no one talks about it. Why? Partly because it doesn't fit the standard explanation that we have. So where did this Four Noble Truths come from, as the Noble Truths? So this is where I think it's important to distinguish between the Four Noble, if we want to use the Four Noble Truths as a realization, as an awakening to liberation experience, insight, and the Four Noble Truths as teachings.

[46:11]

And it tends to be that in here, in the first discourse, it's the first teachings of the Buddha that he teaches about the Four Noble Truths, supposedly. In the description of his awakening, it's his realization. As an experience of realization, this expression, this is suffering, this is the arising, this is cessation, this is the way, appears many, many times in the suttas. That's there a lot. But it's never, almost never called the Four Noble Truths because the Four Noble Truth, that expression only appears so rarely in the text. The key, and if this first sermon, the part of the Four Noble Truths is an interpolation, there is one other place that stands out as being very clearly stated where it really clearly explained the classical explanation of the Four Noble Truths. It's very similar to what I read to you here.

[47:15]

Explanation. And that is in a text where the Buddha starts teaching and he says in very flowery kind of emphatic language, just a little bit out of style of much of the other language of the early discourses, saying that when I became, when I first started turning the wheel to the Dharma, my first sermon, I expounded the Four Noble Truths. And the person who can best expound the Four Noble Truths is my disciple Sariputta. And I'm going to go take a rest. I'm going to my cabin. And Sariputta then is left alone, so he teaches the Four Noble Truths. And he gives an explanation of the Four Noble Truths that's very similar to what he has here that I read to you.

[48:16]

And if you, remember at the beginning of this talk I said that it was Sariputta who said that all the dharmas could fit inside the Four Noble Truths just like all the footprints of the animals could fit into the footprint of the elephant. If there is a more complicated understanding of the Four Noble Truths with all this thing about all these definitions of what suffering is, explanations, all this definition of what The second noble truth is what the Eightfold Path is the third noble truth. It's Sariputta who makes those connections. And as far as I can tell in the search that I've done through the suttas, nowhere reliable, because some texts are interpolations and stuff, nowhere reliable does the Buddha connect the Eightfold Path to this fourth noble truth. It's Sariputta who does this. So the four double truths that we have today, as we understand it, we can't reliably, confidently say a rose came from the Buddha.

[49:32]

It more likely came from the Buddha's disciple. Now, we owe him maybe a great debt of gratitude because it's a very wonderful teaching that we have. But the teaching there too for him is different than how most of us understand it. Because even if we say origin, origin is not quite cause. But I think it's still, he was saying arising. That's what he was meaning. It's not cause. And if you go into the later literature of the Theravadan Buddhism, like the Abhidharma, the commentaries, they do not explain the Second Noble Truth as cause. This is something that came much later, with emphasis on a cause. And then once we got into the idea of cause, then people connected it to dependent origination. Can you say that again? Once people could define the second noble truth as cause, then it got connected to dependent origination.

[50:36]

And the four noble truths are a variation of dependent origination. Now guess who is the person who is most closely associated with dependent origination in the suttas? Sariputta. Sariputta. So maybe, and this is a radical statement, you get laughed out of the Buddha's world, shunned. Maybe the Four Noble Truths, as we've come to understand them, does not come from the Buddha. Isn't that radical? I think why it's significant, this statement, is to tease apart. If you do this kind of careful study and you tease apart, I think what's happened is there's been a confusion and a conflation, a bringing together, merging of two different ideas. There's Sariputta's explanation of the Four Noble Truths, where they're called the Four Noble Truths, and there's a Buddha's description of his awakening, which is not called the Four Noble Truths, but looks similar in wording, right?

[51:55]

And people that assume that they're the same thing. And when we assume that they're the same thing, then it's much harder to see the nature of what the Buddha's awakening was. People then will explain, oh, what he understood was the ethical path, he understood the cause. Great. But the key insight, the key liberating insight, is not this complicated causal thing, which is conceptual. and ideas and memories have to operate, and all kinds of things have to operate to get cause and effect. It has to do with non-conceptual direct seeing and insight into reality here and now, where you see the arising and passing and see impermanence. So by saying that the Buddha discovered the Four Noble Truths with his awakening, it's too easy then to misunderstand what his experience was like because he gets confused by the later explanation.

[52:59]

And that, I think, is the most interesting thing. I think we start kind of seeing more clearly what it was that was liberating in the Buddhist experience. Make sense? Yes? It sounds a little like what Sariputra is doing is trying to make sense of the Buddhist experience for the bhikkhus, for the people coming to Buddhism, that to just hear the Buddha's description of his awakening, maybe in Sariputra's mind, wasn't enough that he needed to elaborate on it. Right. Yeah, so it's possible. Certainly he was teaching the monks, and maybe he was elaborating on it. But in doing that, he took the teachings, he took the experience of the Four Noble Truths and moved it to a different direction. Another interesting place that's a little footnote, there are a few places in these early scriptures where the Buddha, the narrator of the text says the Buddha gave a Dharma talk and when the Buddha realized that people's minds were soft, pliable, ready and clear,

[54:20]

Then he gave the teachings special to the Buddha. He gave the teachings on suffering, arising, cessation, and magga, path. When he gave those teachings, then the dharma eye arose in the listener. And with the rising of dharma eyes, the listener realized whatever is subject to arising is subject to cessation. Opening the Dharma eyes to become awakened. But what they realized was not, again, this complicated cause and effect and the Eightfold Path. They realized arising and passing. Whatever is subject to arising is subject to passing. This is really the key insight. But... what's interesting here, it's the narrator of the text who says suffering, arising, cessation, and path.

[55:30]

So this lends itself again to this confusion between the two. The Buddha doesn't say path. The Buddha says method. And I think that very early on, the first centuries, this became confused in people's minds. And the explanation of that Sariputta gave, of connecting the Fourth Noble Truth to the Eightfold Path, started to kind of weave its way into people's kind of... It became kind of automatic. People started seeing Patipada's path and started using Magga rather than Patipada. And that's continued down to our time, and this is how it's often taught. You know, it's the Eightfold Path. Aren't there several other discourses to where the Buddha makes a connection between... such craving and suffering? Well, the eye is plain, you know, it's plain. The fire secret. The fire secret. Oh, yeah. There's many places. The Buddha says a lot of different things.

[56:33]

There are all kinds of things. So the idea that clinging is the problem and we have to let go of clinging, that's quite common. So it's reasonable to interpret it causal. It's reasonable enough. I mean, I think it's a good teaching to teach it the way that we've come down to us. I don't want to say any kind of way that seeing it causal is not good. It's really helpful to a lot of people. Wow, I'm really suffering. What am I clinging to? And you look, and you find out, and you realize, and you let go. Isn't that nice? Good news. It's a good thing. It's a good, it's a wise thing, you know, in your life. On the far, Suman doesn't mentally hold that. Doesn't mentally hold that. The Buddha talks a lot about the April Path and the suttas, but he does not connect it to the fourth noble truth. And so then in the modern West, we have a lot of interpretations of the Four Noble Truths. And one of the most common ones that's interesting is this idea of cause.

[57:39]

We see it as cause. And that, for people who are philosophically inclined, That raises a lot of interesting philosophical issues. Some of you touched on those earlier, you know, when we talk about cause. And the idea of origin also raises philosophical questions, issues. And then, you know, and then arising also. All very interesting, right? So it's 4.30. Someone's going to suffer if we don't stop seeing. You're a supervisor if you're in some kind of crew. And then you show up and say, well, you're just clingy. let it go let it go and so I wish I had more time for questions both yesterday and today but I hope this was a little bit interesting and showed a little bit they showed the value of really reading very carefully what it says because it's very easy to receive in all your Buddhism whether it's Dogen or anybody it's very easy to hear the teachers who teach to you

[58:44]

And they make generalizations, they make interpretations. And then you go back and read the original texts and to see what's actually there. And you find it's a little bit different. And after we chanted the Heart Sutra this morning, I immediately went to the library. Because the way the Heart Sutra is chanted, someone mentioned the Four Noble Truths, right? And who wants to recite the Four Noble Truths part of the Heart Sutra to me? No, it says no. Right. It says cause. So I went and looked at the Chinese to see, is it really cause? Nope. It's not cause. The Chinese doesn't say cause. One of the best translators, scholarly translators, who studied the Heart Sutra, translated as a rising. But I think she didn't quite know what she was doing because it's a very strange Chinese word that's used. Some of the best Buddhist scholars have scratched their head, what is this?

[59:47]

It doesn't make any sense, this word. And then a month ago, a Chinese scholar, we were talking about all this, Buddhist scholar, said, oh, in ancient Buddhism, like in the second century, this word that they're using for arising or cause means repetition. So the repeated arising. Anyway, so you guys, so you think that what you're chanting is the truth, right? And so I said, here it's cause. I was going to teach this today, so I better go find out. And it doesn't say cause. So we have a very strong predilection, is that the right word, in the West to want to try and see the cause. Which translation used Arising? Oh, it's a woman named, a translation is Jan Netier. There's a book or a manuscript in the library called The Compendium of the Heart Sutra that Kokai Shinshu Roberts put together.

[60:53]

And it's a big fat book. And in that book, there's her article about the Heart Sutra. It's a brilliant piece of detective work that she does. And what she shows about the Heart Sutra is that the Heart Sutra had its origin in China. And someone brought it to India and translated it to Sanskrit. And then eventually it was translated back into Chinese. But the Heart Sutra had its origins in China. What do you think of that? Wow. Wow. So, Jan, J-A-N, N-A-T-T-I-E-R. Things aren't what they see. Thank you for listening to this podcast offered by the San Francisco Zen Center. Our Dharma Talks are offered free of charge, and this is made possible by the donations we receive.

[61:54]

Your financial support helps us to continue to offer the Dharma. For more information, visit sfcc.org and click giving.

[62:02]

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