From a teaching by Dr. Miles Neale, held at the ID Project, Monday, July 13th, 2009....
The Four Noble Truths, the first and fundamental teaching of the Buddha:
1. Suffering exists
2. This suffering has a cause
3. This suffering can be ended, ie, we can attain freedom
4. There is a path to end this suffering
The First Noble Truth: Suffering
-we mask and hide the realities of life in our society-old age, sickness, death, disease; we refuse to admit to ourselves that we will all get old, will all die
-the suffering of change tells us that all moments of happiness come to an end; they are never lasting, only ephemeral; everything is impermanent; in our modern society, the more buying power that we have achieved, the more we have realized that that the satisfaction wrought through giving into our selfish desires is completely non-lasting; the desire will simple be replaced
-the suffering of conditioning discusses the fight/flight tendency of humans; this has evolved over the millenia as an appropriate response to threat; however, this reactivity of the mind has also led to our downfall-it has been shown to atrophy the brain, and is slowly killing us-we must become conscious of the mind and its reactive nature, and stop living like zombies
The Second Noble Truth: The Cause of Suffering
Suffering is caused by attachment, aversion, and misperception
-Attachment: an exaggeration in the positive qualities of the object we seek; we magnify the positive qualities and filter out the negative qualities
-Aversion: an exaggeration of the negative qualities in the object we wish to repulse
-Misperception: not recognizing our innate quality of happiness; this already exists inside of us, as out Buddha Nature; we perceive, due to societal influences, that we do not contain the ability to be truly happy in this life by looking within
The Third Noble Truth: The Possibility of Freedom
We can control the fight/flight reactive nature of the mind. We have the ability to consciously override the habitual nature of the mind and gain awareness to override the the factors causing us suffering. This is a choice in the mind, to cultivate what causes happiness, and to be aware of the causes of suffering.
The Fourth Noble Truth: The Path
We can achieve freedom by following the classic Eightfold Path, simplified into The Three Educations by Nalanda: ethics, mental training, and wisdom.
-Ethics: right living; not harming ourselves and others
-Mental Training: to reverse the tendencies of our mind that cause great suffering takes great discipline; we have been inundated by our societal influences our entire lives; to reverse this takes a lot of hard work, to embrace the Dharma, to calm the mind, to make the mind receptive.
-Wisdom: sitting is not enough; the mind needs substance and needs to know what this reality is for; we must feed our minds with reality instead of the garbage that society pushes at us. We need to learn to restrain the impulses in a society of excesses; this can be done through the learning of reading & listening, the learning of personal reflection, and the learning of practice.
