The First Noble Truth: If you are alive, you will suffer.
Everything is impermanent. Everything. We are no different. We come into manifestation, we live and breathe in this human form for a time, then we stop breathing and we decay, reconnecting with the base forces of life from which we came. And in this human form, we cannot escape physical suffering like pain, sickness, injury, old age and death. We also can’t escape psychological suffering like sadness, fear, frustration, disappointment and depression.
Duhkha is the Pali Sanskrit word for this kind of generalized suffering. I
The Second Noble Truth: The origin of your suffering is attachment.
The main reasons for our suffering are craving and clinging. We usually express these things as desire, lust and striving. It is in our nature as human beings to push away the things we don’t like and hold onto the things we do like. As babies, we find that we like this kind of food and we don’t like that kind of food. We like dogs but we don’t like cats. And we continue to make these judgments about the things we encounter in the world throughout our entire lives. And all of these judgments that we make about our day-to-day experience create our Ego. But all of those judgments are just thoughts. They are transient, impermanent. They aren’t real. So when we fight to maintain our preferences, our attachments, our Ego, in a world of impermanence, we suffer. It’s as simple as that.
The Third Noble Truth: You can overcome this suffering.
To end duhkha, we need to learn how to give up our attachment to our Ego, or our idea of self. When we can learn how to cease our sensual craving and attachment to the ideas and discriminations of our thinking minds, we can be free of duhkha and enter the state of Nirvana, a state of being free of worry, fear and conflict. I personally know this to be true.
The Fourth Noble Truth: The Eightfold Path will show you the way.
The Buddha described the Way to ceasing our sensual craving and attachment to our Egos as The Eightfold Path. The Path is also known as The Middle Way to Nirvana, a path that cuts through the extremes of hedonism on one hand and asceticism on the other. But unlike a religious pursuit, the practice of Buddhism emphasizes living the Path. It in no way promotes blind faith in doctrine or counting on some reward after death.
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