Monday, October 3, 2011

The Four Noble Truths and the Three Marks of Existence.


So what, after all, does Buddhism actually entail?  The philosophical tenets of Buddhism can be summed up with what it calls the 4 noble truths and the three marks of existence.  What follows is my own understanding of these “truths”.

1.  Sapient beings experience dissatisfaction.
2.  Dissatisfaction arises from craving, be it things, sensations, etc.
3.  Craving ceases when one realizes that everything is impermanent.
4.  One can realize the impermanence of everything by following the Eightfold Path.

I have used the word dissatisfaction because it seems to be a more accurate translation of the actual word, dukkha, than the more commonly used "suffering."  Suffering has a connotation of pain, and while that is related to dissatisfaction, it's not precise enough.  Dissatisfaction itself is pretty obvious, I think, it's a state of not being content with what one has.  This is seen most often when one contemplates unpleasant experiences, but it also happens with pleasant ones.  It's not that pleasant experiences are an illusion or that they aren’t actually pleasant.  It’s that they contain the seeds of dissatisfaction when one forgets that they, like the unpleasant experiences, are impermanent.  The good, the bad, there is no eternal.  There's nothing actually grim about this, it's just a fact of the universe.  It's part of the reality of everything being in flux, as I mentioned in my last post.  The fact of impermanence (annica) is neutral, but we humans have a habit of forgetting it, of craving (tanha) for the eternal, of expecting things to last forever.  This is what causes our sense of dissatisfaction with the universe we live in, and causes us to seek artificial illusions of permanence in things like religion, politics, superstition, drugs, hedonism, and all kinds of other diversions.  

None of these things are necessarily bad in and of themselves, what’s bad about them is the part of them that feed our self-delusion, the part that tricks us into thinking that they might last forever.  We spend so much time craving an eternity that doesn’t exist, and that keeps us from fully enjoying the pleasant experiences when they are going on and also wallowing in the fear of eternal suffering when we are in the midst of an unpleasant experience that will subside sooner or later.  

Siddhattha Gotama realized this somewhere around 2500 years ago.  “Buddha” is not a name, but a title.  It comes from the word bodhi, which is usually translated “enlightenment”, but really means awakened.  Buddha means “the awakened one”, someone with awareness, who notices and understands things.  He’s not a god, not a wizard, not any kind of supernatural entity, as later traditions portray him.  

Sid was just a guy who did the hedonistic thing and then spent years after doing the ascetic thing, pursuing spiritual fulfillment and attainment.  He finally realized that neither hedonism or asceticism were satisfactory, so he kicked back under a tree for a while until he realized that we humans sure spend a lot of time chasing after bullshit, and we don’t really need to do that.  Once he awoke to this realization, he decided he wanted to help others realize it too.  But what exactly is it that he realized?

Sid realized that we lie to ourselves constantly about the truths of reality, which is made up of the three marks of existence.  I’ve already mentioned two of the marks, impermanence and dissatisfaction.  The third is not-self (anatta).

In the Indian Vedic religion, there is a concept of an unchanging, permanent soul, called atman.  It’s kind of like a form, in the Platonic sense.  The idea is very similar, for things to exist, there needs to be an ideal in some other realm for it to be a reflection of, otherwise there would be nothing.  Sid rejected this notion due to his recognition of impermanence and of applying it to the very concept of self itself, plus the fact that no one can directly observe a form.

This isn’t actually that hard to figure out.  As with all things, we change and evolve over time.  We gain new knowledge, we forget things, we change deeply held convictions.  The me that exists today is very different from the me that existed when I was 7 years old.  The me that exists today is different than the me from yesterday in many respects, and the me that exists in 20 years will be more different still.  You can’t step in the same river twice, the ship of Theseus, grandfather’s axe, and other similar philosophical notions are related.  So there is not a permanent self, there is a continuous process of becoming the new self, which goes on to become a new self, etc, from moment to moment (this process is called punabbhava, or just bhava, often incorrectly translated as rebirth).  Now, in the Vedic religion that was dominant in Sid’s time, this was a supernatural notion related to transmigration of souls and reincarnation, and to be fair, Sid didn’t really bother dismissing it as nonsense, he just figured it was unimportant, since the same process goes on within someone’s life, and he was nothing if not focused on trying to help people live better lives.  

The reason not-self is an important concept is that the popular notion of the self is made up of 5 aggregate attributes and those are causes of craving, but I will go into those in another post.  The point is that Sid developed the eightfold path as a way to help people realize the causes of dissatisfaction, realize the impermanent nature of things, and to help them stop grasping at illusions.  

Next post, the eightfold path, and possibly the 5 aggregates.

6 comments:

  1. "I have used the word dissatisfaction because it seems
    to be a more accurate translation of the actual word, dukkha,
    than the more commonly used "suffering."


    Do you think it is viable to use terms 'ennui',
    or 'existential angst for the word dukkha ?
    Or does that undermine and undervalue
    the transcendence of actual physical suffering?

    I ask because I wonder to what degree the translation into
    "suffering" has been based on cultural and economic stratification.
    IIRC : Sid was Kshatriya- warrior caste. He was a noble.
    So 'suffering' for Sid likely wasn't maiming, starvation and disease, no?

    More akin to:
    http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/health-matters/200901/the-cultural-context-depression

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm going to answer this when I get a chance, but I'm at work and on my phone. As soon as I have the time to read the link, I'll get back to you.

    ReplyDelete
  3. No worries;
    the link is more an indicator, a touchstone
    of the more general concept:
    The title of the link is sufficient to relay the concept.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't think that ennui or angst are bad, I just don't think that they are manifestation of dukkha, not the totality. Same with depression. Here's a link to an article that helped me grok it:
    http://thesecularbuddhist.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/what-is-dukkha/

    ReplyDelete
  5. Good introductory article here; I like it. Just a few notes, one kind of random, one not so much so -- maybe I'm quibbling too much about an article that is introductory (one can't be exact about the Buddha's teaching when speaking in brief about it) but here goes anyway:

    Do you know that the name "Siddhartha" is a later invention? There is no evidence for this being Gotama's name in the early works we have. It seems to mean "One who has achieved his goals" which is also a hint that it was applied after, though I could imagine parents naming their kids like that in a hopeful way, like naming a daughter "Chastity".

    More important than that bit of trivia is the convergence of these two things:

    "In the Indian Vedic religion, there is a concept of an unchanging, permanent soul, called atman... Sid rejected this notion due to his recognition of impermanence and of applying it to the very concept of self itself..."

    and

    "Now, in the Vedic religion that was dominant in Sid’s time, this was a supernatural notion related to transmigration of souls and reincarnation, and to be fair, Sid didn’t really bother dismissing it as nonsense, he just figured it was unimportant, since the same process goes on within someone’s life, and he was nothing if not focused on trying to help people live better lives."

    I can support the second statement as mostly accurate (I don't think he completely dismissed it as unimportant), but the first statement -- that he *rejected* the unchanging, eternal self -- I'm going to suggest is missing the mark by small amount: he did with the eternal self the same thing he did with the Cosmic Questions (which were often answered in his day by rebirth and karma) -- he set it aside. You will never find him saying in the early sermons "There is no eternal, changeless self". He'll ask if you can find it; he'll question those who think they have found it to get them to notice that they haven't, really -- but he doesn't say it doesn't exist, just like he doesn't say that karma and rebirth aren't true. His entire philosophy and system works on paying attention to what we can see, and working with *that* rather than basing our choices on speculation about things we have no evidence for. The first challenge is getting us to notice that we often do this last thing: think we know what's going on when we have little evidence for it (and our evidence isn't as solid as we think it is if we don't examine it closely -- that's where your 5 aggregates come in, isn't it).

    He's not going to deny an eternal, changeless self because there sure could be one that we have no evidence in this life for -- he's a stickler for not making statements without being able to back them up with evidence any of us can see (with one consistent exception).

    Oh, heck, just one more thing. Dukkha: It seems to me that what he teaches is that what dukkha is, is subtle. By the time one really understands what dukkha is, how it happens, and how to bring it to an end, one is awakened. If it is difficult to translate it's because it is inherently difficult. The only way to end dukkha is to actually understand it in all its complexity, and if we have a word that seems to perfectly translate it, we've cheated ourselves out of the lesson.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I can dig it. I know Siddhattha or Siddhartha is late, but since we don't know if he even was a historical figure (much as the existence of Jesus as a historical personage is uncertain) I'm shorthanding the traditional name by calling him Sid because I find it a useful tool in my own head to keep in mind the idea of a guy who had some valuable insights, not a mystical or supernatural entity like some of the traditions have elevated him into. I also have a bit of a dharma punk attitude to the issue, and Sid's a good punk name, B-D. I'm not a fan of guru type structures, so it's kind of a conscious de-formalization, so as to keep him on a human level.

    I'm not trying to pretend to have a scholarly level of discourse in these posts, I'm just trying to give a quick and dirty summation of my understanding of the basics. I know that the Buddha didn't reject the permanent self out of hand, but since he didn't endorse it either, I mentioned atman more as a contrast to anatta, not to fully explore the finer details. I may get to that later, but for now I'm trying to cover all the basics as simply as possible, with room for further deconstruction of concepts down the line. When I finish covering the other basic elements in this series, like the aggregates and the 8fold path itself, it'll likely be similarly basic, with room to go more in depth in the future.

    I'm very much a practice-focused "secular Buddhist", and getting a decent amount of mindfulness practice in on a regular basis is of much more immediate concern to me than full in depth understanding.

    As you might pick up on if you read other posts on here, especially the one before this, my philosophical convictions are a mishmash of many influences, not just Buddhism, but also Stoicism, Epicureanism, naturalism, etc, and what I value Buddhism most for is the meditative techniques contained within the traditions. I'm very sympathetic to the essay "Killing the Buddha" by Sam Harris that way. I guess I lean much more towards the MBSR end of the spectrum. That's not to say that I think that the dharma/dhamma is worthless, I think it has a lot of value, but to me it's one among many philosophical traditions that interest me, not the primary one.

    ReplyDelete