The First Noble Truth

 The Four Noble Truths, one of the first and most important foundational teachings of the Buddha is also one of the most commonly misinterpreted and misunderstood  teachings in Buddhism.  

Often the problem has to do with translations of translations.  Most of the initial English versions of Buddhist texts were translated from either German or from Portuguese as these were the main groups of Westerners that came into contact with Buddhist scriptures in the East.  It was not until the mid 19th century that direct translations were done from either Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan or any of the other languages those sutras existed in.  Pali, considered the 'original' language of Buddhist teachings was studied early in the 1900s mostly by the Theosophical Society and others interested in those documents largely in India and Sri Lanka.  

In the first of the teachings of the Buddha, called The First Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma the Buddha explains what he has realized and teaches the first five ascetics that followed him.  The Four Noble Truths were outlined and the teachings began. 

The Four Noble Truths are; The truth of suffering, the cause of suffering, the possibility of relief of suffering and the directions to take to do that called the Eight Fold Path.   This all stems from a typical physicians duty to evaluate and diagnose a patient.  The first part is commonly called the 'working' diagnosis.  That is, when a patient is presented the doctor will evaluate them and render a diagnosis.  This is an educated guess really, since other information may present itself and change that.  Likewise a good doctor will also come up with what are called differential diagnoses.  Those are other possibilities that are considered and ruled out over time and further evaluation.  In this case we have the diagnosis of 'suffering'.  It is often misunderstood as 'life IS suffering' or 'All is suffering' or something similar.  This causes many philosophical conundrums including the thought that Buddhism is pessimistic or nihilistic.  It is far from the truth though, here is why. 

If we look at the Four Noble Truths in its whole, a full three quarters of it is the explanation of how to get out of suffering, that seems pretty optimistic to me. 

The Second Noble Truth, or part of the prescription is the cause of the diagnostic finding.  Here we have three basic causes; ignorance, enmity, and craving or pride.  Now that we have a cause we can decide if this process of dis-ease can or cannot be cured.  That would bring us to the third part of the diagnosis. 

The Third Noble Truth, the statement 'there is an end possible to suffering' This is where the rubber hits the road in the diagnosis and evaluation of a patient.  Once this step is reached, we now know IF the doctor can help, or if we merely make the patient as comfortable as possible etc.  This now brings us to the prescription portion of the evaluation... 

The Fourth Noble Truth.  This one is a sneaky way to bring in a whole other list of things to do to remedy the affliction of suffering.  The Eight Fold Path, that is the prescription for treatment.