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Four Noble Truths at Three Different Levels - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 14, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Welcome to IMC for all of you who are here in person, and welcome to those of you who are online. As Hillary said, when we finish here, we'll have a tea or social time to hang out and chat. Then at 11:30, those of you who would like to stay will have the beginning of the year Refuge ceremony. I'll talk a little bit about refuges and the precepts, and we'll chant them together. It will include a refuge cord, like the little red cord I have here on my wrist, that you tie on your wrist or some people put it around their neck. So that will be given to you, and if you want to stay for that ceremony, you're welcome to stay.

Four Noble Truths at Three Different Levels

It is the custom for me at the first Dharma talk of the year here at IMC to talk about the Four Noble Truths. This is my first full Dharma talk here, and I found myself quite happy walking down here today thinking about this topic. It's a little bit of a paradox to be happy to be talking about suffering. Because it is such a deep part of the Buddhist tradition, some people say it's really at the heart of it.

I want to say the central words of the Four Noble Truths in Pali¹, then say them in English, and then give a talk about it. In Pali, it's dukkha, samudaya, nirodha, and magga.² In English, I translate this as: suffering (the First Noble Truth), the arising of suffering (the Second Noble Truth), the cessation of suffering (the Third Noble Truth), and the practice leading to the cessation of suffering (the Fourth Noble Truth).

These Four Noble Truths are both a teaching and a practice. Because they are a teaching meant to be practiced, and practice is very personal, it's our task to understand the teachings, practice them, and personalize them. We need to understand how they apply to us, to our circumstances, to our life, and how they can support us. There are as many different meanings or applications of the Four Noble Truths as there are people here today. They are quite rich and can be understood on many levels and in many ways. What I'd like to do today is talk about three levels of understanding the Four Noble Truths. They are the mind level, the heart level, and the belly level. We'll go through this. They all work together; one is not supposed to be better than the other, but they integrate together.

There was a Buddhist monk at the time of the Buddha who came to the Buddha complaining that he had not demonstrated any miracles. Any self-respecting guru back in ancient times was supposed to demonstrate miracles because that was somehow proof of something wonderful. The Buddha basically said, "Well, I don't do this, and not for this purpose." He asked the monk, "Did I ever tell you to become a monk for the sake of miracles?" And he said no.

At some point, this monk disrobed because he was so discouraged. He went to the city and went around disparaging the Buddha. He would tell the townspeople that all the Buddha teaches is the end of suffering. News of this came back to the Buddha, and he said, "Even though he thinks he's disparaging me, he's actually praising me."

The end of suffering is really the heart of Buddhism. There might be other worthwhile endeavors in life, and there might be other worthwhile spiritual experiences and attainments to be had in this life. But from a Buddhist point of view, don't shortchange yourself around suffering. Really get to the bottom, to the heart of suffering, and bring it to an end. Don't let other experiences or attainments distract from this fundamentally deep thing. Let these other possibilities, if they're important for you, be the icing on the cake, but the cake is this wonderful, phenomenal thing: the peace, the well-being, the joy, and the happiness that can come when we're free of suffering. Knowing this is possible is a happiness-producing thing.

Many years ago, when I was a new Zen student, I knew another Zen student who was a stained glass artist. She had very bad knees and was supposed to get knee replacements. But what she did was she started paying very careful attention to her knees and the pain in them. By tracking the pain—the slightest little ache, the slightest little something that felt off—she started walking differently. Slowly, the pain and the challenges around her knees went away, and she didn't have surgery. Maybe that sounds like a miracle story, but it's a story of someone who paid really careful attention to pain. She gave it attention rather than trying to avoid it or trying to fix it in a medical way, which is sometimes necessary. I was really struck by that. That was the first time I met someone who used pain as a teacher and a guide, and it really taught me something deep. As a result of this, she decided to become a doctor, applied to medical school, and was accepted. I lost touch with her, but I thought it was fantastic that someone like this is a doctor.

Then I have a friend who, many years ago, was teaching Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). It is a wonderful protocol that comes out of this practice and out of Buddhism in America, and was applied clinically to people, mostly in hospital settings, with acute pain. When the medical world couldn't really help them with their pain, they adapted this practice so it could address people's pain, and they had a high success rate. My friend was teaching it here in a small town in California. There was this burly, macho, older police officer who had a lot of back pain that was not helped by medicine or doctors. He was assigned by his doctor to take this eight-week mindfulness course. He came to the first lesson, and my friend gave the instructions: "Bring your attention to the pain." The guy got furious. He said, "I'm here to not experience the pain, not to feel it!" He left and never came back.

So one person focused on the pain and found a way out of it; the other person ignored the pain and certainly wasn't helped that way. In Buddhism, we want to be wise about our pain. When the time is right, it's really important to be honest about it, to face it, to study it, and to be present for it.

I use the word "pain" purposefully because the Pali word dukkha³, which is usually translated as "suffering" in our circles, literally means "pain." It has a slightly different feeling if you think of it as pain, but it is used to apply to the deepest existential sufferings we have, the deepest emotional sufferings, and the slightest little irritations we have. The whole range of everything that is a pain.

I've certainly considered that my laptop is a pain. It's not literally a physical pain, and the laptop is not doing anything for me to blame it for. To say that the computer is a pain is to miss my responsibility, my role, my frustration, my attachments, and my desires—all kinds of things going on in me. If I spend my whole day blaming my computer, shaking it, throwing it against the wall, hoping to get it to work, or yelling at it, the computer is not going to care. It's not going to listen to that, and I might even break it. If I want to stop suffering, I have to stop blaming the computer. I have to take a good look at myself. I have to feel that pain, feel that discomfort, and really get to know it. I have to study it and find out what's going on—find out what I'm doing that's extra, what's not needed, and what my role is in what I call "the computer is a pain."

In Buddhism, the Four Noble Truths are a call for us to be honest that there is suffering in this world, there is suffering in ourselves, and there is suffering in others. Some people get so happy when they hear that Buddhism teaches this because they grew up in circumstances—maybe in families or communities—where there was a lot of avoiding of suffering and pretending it wasn't there. They felt very confused; they felt like there was all this suffering, but no one was admitting it. Everyone was putting on a smile, everyone was being distracted all the time. It doesn't seem right to live in this kind of lie. Then they come to Buddhism and hear, "Yes, there is suffering. Categorically yes." There is no desire to avoid it; we want to name it. We want to say it's here, it's part and parcel of the human condition.

So much so that one of the orientations we have in Buddhism is to understand that we don't have to take it so personally. It is personal in a way—the pain of the computer is personal, I'm involved with causing that pain—but it's just so human to have this frustration. It's such a common phenomenon that we're built in certain ways to have frustration, pain, suffering, and grief. There's a way in which we can be honest about it and begin studying it without identifying with it too closely, without defining ourselves by it. Rather, what we do is begin to look at suffering and stop. If I had a bumper sticker, it would read: "I brake for suffering." Okay, let's take a look at this. Let's really be with this emotional pain that we have.

What we're doing partly here in Buddhist practice is learning how to do this in a wise way. It's not easy to be with our suffering. It's not easy to be with suffering that, conventionally and reasonably, has been caused by the world around us. People grow up in war zones, and war zones are a pain. To say, "Well, you've got to look at yourself. The bombs are going off, look at your frustration, look at your fear"—that's disrespectful and harmful to do. So we want to be very careful about the time and place. But at some point, sooner or later, we have to turn and look inside.

For some people, there clearly were conventional causes of suffering in the external world, but at some point, all that was left for them to do was to look at themselves. That was the only way forward. I've known people who thought they were dying, and the conditions that were causing them to die were clearly outside themselves, but at some point they just realized, "I give up." I remember one man who told me this many years ago. He was in the mountains, caught in an avalanche, buried under layers of snow. At some point, he realized, "I'm going to die here. No one knows I'm here." And when he let go, when he admitted this and really saw it—he wasn't blaming the snow—he experienced this profound peace. Then he says a strange thing happened: his arm punched upwards, broke through the snow, and he was rescued. That was life-changing for him, to have this profound letting go that happened because he thought he was dying.

When we are finally ready to stop and look at our suffering in a deep way, it is something we need to consider well. One of the purposes of meditation, mindfulness practice, loving-kindness practices, and concentration practice in Buddhism is to provide us with the inner resources, stamina, and skills so that we can really turn towards our suffering in a useful and meaningful way. We can turn towards it to find freedom from it and find our way through it. Some people are ready for that right away; some people are ready for that after a while of practice.

Then a very special thing happens. At some point, when we don't take the suffering personally in an attached way, when we stop blaming the world outside of us, when we stop complaining, and when we stop to really take a good look, the way that we look becomes the secret. It becomes the treasure to be able to see and recognize suffering without attachment, without identification, and without resistance. To have a clarity of seeing where, in the seeing, there's a kind of freedom. In the seeing, there's a kind of delight. It can exist sometimes like on a clear, blue-sky day when your windshield gets completely clean. You think you can put your hand through it, it's so clear and nice after a long time of having smudges. To have the ability to say, "Oh, this is suffering. This is my suffering," with that kind of clarity, ease, and lack of clinging provides a very different reference point for how to go forward in life.

Freedom is possible. It's possible not to be defined by suffering. It's possible not to have the challenges and difficulties of our life, which can be huge, be a burden we carry. They are things we have to address, but they don't have to be addressed as a burden, as a wind drag.

So the Four Noble Truths are: suffering, which we want to turn toward and understand deeply; the arising of suffering (often called the cause of suffering), to be present for the appearance of it; the cessation of the suffering; and the path of practice which leads to that cessation.

The Mind Level

The three levels begin with the mind. The mind is more of the cognitive level, and that's where we can study the cause of suffering. This is a brilliant thing to do—to understand that suffering is not without a cause, and to understand that suffering is not just something we have to live with because it's inherent in human existence. When we're able to see the particularity of our suffering, we'll see that it always has a cause. Sometimes the cause is external, and sometimes we can address the external cause if it's appropriate. Sometimes we can't address the external cause. But what we're trying to do in Buddhist practice is to take responsibility for our contribution to our emotional pain.

Chances are, often there is a contribution you make. Even if 90% of it comes from an external cause, the 10% that you contribute is the part you probably have the most ability to change. Sometimes it's hard to change the external world and make it behave properly, but maybe you can do something about yourself. That's where the work of Buddhism really lies.

One of those things is to look at the cause. A fascinating way of understanding suffering and the cause of suffering is to switch it around. In Buddhism, the cause is always seen to be a certain kind of thirsting for something (taṇhā)⁴. They use the word "thirst" in the ancient language, so it's a metaphor. Usually, people who want to be less metaphorical will translate it as craving or clinging. There's some kind of compulsion of thirsting, a compulsion of craving that goes on. Sometimes I like to translate it as compulsion because it has a life of its own; you can't drop it easily. Once that compulsion has taken over, we're addicted. We're driven. No wonder we can't end our suffering, because there's this powerful drive that keeps it going.

To look at the cause is to look at that drive. To turn the First and Second Noble Truths around, I like to say: if you cling, you will suffer. Or, for the bumper sticker: Clinging is suffering. Craving is suffering. Compulsion and addiction are suffering.

Looking at the cause is to look at: Where is my compulsion? Where is my drivenness? What am I attached to here? As soon as we get attached, we're fragile. As soon as we're attached, we're stuck, contracted, and we start contributing stress to our whole psychophysical system. I would probably suggest—I've never done the statistics—that probably 90% of human stress has its genesis in this clinging, thirsting, and compulsion of the mind. Maybe I'm wrong about the exact percentage, but I think it's a very significant statement to make. When you feel stress, don't blame the world. Take a look at yourself to see what can be done.

People who meditate a lot will often find that meditation is one of those things that can quiet, calm, and relax the mind. As the mind relaxes, the physical stresses we carry begin to settle away. After a while, it becomes a very clear connection: what goes on in the mind causes physical stress, like tension headaches.

To look at the cause is what the mind can do. The mind is bright, sometimes it's clear. Your mind only has to be as intelligent as it actually is; you don't have to have any more. Whatever intelligence you have that brought you your suffering is enough intelligence to find your freedom from it.

Once we see our suffering is born from clinging, it isn't that we can let go of it easily (which is the Third Noble Truth). But there are practices we can do that support us and prepare us for the day when something can be released and let go. These are ethical practices—living an ethical life is central to this. There are practices where we begin paying attention to our mind and training our mind to be focused, mindful, clear, and to see what's going on. There are practices of intentionality and purpose. There are practices of choosing to focus on the perspective of ending suffering.

The Heart Level

The second level is to drop down deeper into the heart. For the heart to register your suffering. One of the surprises for me in doing Buddhist practice was that in the beginning of practice, I suffered a lot. Every meditation session was a session of suffering. But the practice I was taught in Zen was to just sit with your experience, don't do anything about it. That worked out really well for me because I didn't complicate it with analysis, and I didn't complicate it with fixing.

What happened slowly was that as I relaxed and settled into my suffering, my heart woke up. It was kind of like the meditation was a meat tenderizer for my heart. I had this hard crust around it, and it began to soften and soften. At some point, what awoke in me was compassion (karuṇā)⁵. I was able to meet my suffering with compassion, to meet it with love and care, and to soften. The capacity to be open to suffering and meet it with compassion, care, and not with anger, resistance, or fear, but with this beautiful quality of the heart, is profound.

So the second phase of the Four Noble Truths is turning towards it and allowing yourself to not just study it, but to feel it. Maybe you even want to stop analyzing it because that gets in the way of allowing yourself to feel what's going on in some deeper way. Feel below the reactivity you have, or maybe you have to feel the reactivity as part of the complex of suffering. Make room to allow yourself to be how you are, warts and all, suffering and all, and just learn to breathe with it and make space for it. Do not try to fix it, do not try to make it go away, just be patient with it.

This beautiful thing can happen where the heart can meet it. Maybe you feel it's too hard for you to do, but your heart has the capacity. This emotional center that I call the heart is a wise part of us. It's part of our deeper subconscious, operating as a mammalian function. We share with other mammals this care for their young and care for others. There are beautiful stories of animals coming to the rescue of humans—I'm particularly fond of the dolphin ones where people are drowning at sea and dolphins come and carry them. Occasionally, you hear stories of predators helping prey, or at least taking care of their young.

This mammalian capacity to feel suffering and let the heart respond is built into our genes almost. You'll be surprised how much the heart knows how to process this and be with it, and the benefits will come.

The Belly Level

Then we have the third level. I like thinking of this as going deeper and deeper into yourself, and I call it the belly. In Buddhism, it's sometimes called the source. The literal word in Pali is yoni⁶. Sometimes that's translated as "womb," but it doesn't quite mean womb; it means the source where something is born. For example, the egg is the yoni for the chicken, and there are things that are water-born in Buddhism, so water is their yoni.

Dropping down to some deep place where there's an operating knowing, a way of perceiving, a way of feeling, a creativity, an intelligence that has a more emergent quality. It is something that's emerging from deep inside, as opposed to coming from the usual thinking mind, the egotistical mind, the self-centered mind that says "I have to do something" or "This is happening to me." That kind of "I," which is usually caught up in its own little drama, dissolves as we drop down. We're not trying to make something happen, but we're beginning to allow something to happen.

There's a big difference between making and allowing. By dropping really deep down, we have an opportunity now to allow all experiences to just be there without interfering with them and without overlaying our judgments, our concepts, and our stories on top of our experience. This is a phenomenal thing to do—to quiet the projections we have on life. It's a very wonderful thing to do for your friends, to quiet your projections and be able to see others unfiltered by all the bias or preferences we might have. But to do it for ourselves and towards ourselves, and be there in the rawness of the present-moment experience, is liberating.

In the place where we're allowing things to unfold, things are appearing and disappearing. They're coming and going. This is where the meaning of the Second Noble Truth being "arising"—the word samudaya means the arising—comes in. Now we see the appearing, the coming and going of our suffering. We see the rawness of it, just like the surfer sees the coming and going of the waves. The surfer doesn't get attached to any one wave; that's just the wave of the moment. And in that, the surfer is able to ride the wave.

So we ride the experiences that are coming and going within us. We get very close to see, to feel, to experience the rawness of experience moment-to-moment. In that, there's more than just suffering. There's also the ending of suffering. There's a coming and going, an appearing and disappearing. Nothing is static, nothing is constant, nothing is stuck. That's the advantage of dropping down to this deep, emergent place: to find the way of being unstuck, where everything is flowing.

Buddhism uses the metaphor of a river where everything is flowing. Most people have been to the river with a bucket or two—or a thousand—and scooped up the water in their buckets. They go around saying, "Look, I have the river! It's my river." You don't have the river anymore if you have a bucket full of water. If we cling, we've lost the flow of the River of Life.

Drop down to the place where the River of Life is flowing. Watch the coming and going, the rising and passing of the waves of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and clinging. Experience the gaps there. The gaps where we're not thinking thoughts, the gaps where we're not in our anger, the gaps where we're not in our craving and desires. The gaps where we're not holding on or resisting. The gaps where we see, "Oh, there's a peace here. There's a freedom here. There's a well-being here."

Begin seeing that and relaxing, seeing that and letting go. Allow this emergent possibility of peace to show itself at such a point where nirodha⁷, the cessation of suffering, is not a letting go we are doing. The Third Noble Truth is a profound releasing that you can't take credit for. Something deep inside releases and lets go.

Then this belly, this source, this emergent quality within us begins to have a greater life for us. This is part of the great potential that Buddhist practice can bring us to. It brings us to the point where the release is strong enough that the Eightfold Path⁸ begins to emerge. The Eightfold Path is no longer so much a practice we do, but rather a state of being that we begin to make room for and live by more and more. If we're not practicing ethics, we become ethical, and ethics doesn't become a choice, but rather an expression of the freedom we have. Mindfulness is no longer something we have to do, but it feels more like something we allow for; it's part and parcel of who we are in a deep, emergent way. Even concentration can feel like it's not something we have to strain for, but a letting go and allowing of something to settle. Something begins to grow within us, and we start to really feel like we're flowing in a river that's moving through us.

Conclusion

The Four Noble Truths are invaluable teachings. They're more than teachings; they're a framework to explore our life. It's an orientation, a perspective with which to step in and see ourselves in a new way. Not to see ourselves through the usual concepts that society wants us to live by, but to see ourselves through the framework of our suffering, the cause of it, how it arises, the letting go of it, and the cessation of it. And to understand that there are practices to engage in and states to allow for that really make room for this freedom, joy, and happiness to become part of our life.

This is the Four Noble Truths of the Buddha. It's a happy thing. Don't get so happy that you don't look at the suffering, but maybe get happy enough that you say, "Okay, I'm ready to take a good look at this suffering now. Be honest and be present for it."

Thank you. In a few minutes, there has to be some setup still for the tea. Whether you're planning to stay for the tea or not, if you'd be willing to turn to a couple of people next to you and say hello, and welcome them to IMC. Even if it's your first time, welcome them. Maybe there's something about this talk that touched you that you might share with them, or at least break the ice so you know somebody here. Thank you.