Lesson video

Hello and welcome to another lesson on Buddhism.

My name is Miss Pauvaday.

Today we are going to be looking at something called the Four Noble Truths.

So stick with me and let's get ready.

So for today's lesson, you are going to need a pen and some paper and we need to make sure our minds and our ears are nicely focused for today's lesson.

So go ahead and pause for a moment, make sure that you have all those things and make sure that you're in a place where you can concentrate.

So move away from any distraction if you can, go somewhere quiet so that we can just nicely focus on our lesson today.

Okay, so today we're going to be looking at the Four Noble Truths.

We're going to be thinking about what are they? And why are they so important to Buddhists? So I'm sure some of you have come across this idea of the Four Noble Truths already in school.

Today we're going to look a bit deeper into what they actually mean and how it relates to some of the other ideas we've come across in Buddhism already.

So the first thing I want to do is, I want you to think about this story.

I'm going to tell you a brief story.

It's known as "The Myth of Sisyphus and it's a really ancient Greek story.

What happens is, I mean the back story for our purposes isn't really that important, so I'm not going to go into the depths of it.

But what happens is, Sisyphus, he displeases the gods, he does something that makes them really angry.

And what they do is they condemn him to an eternity of pushing this great big rock up a mountain or a hill, depending on the translation you have.

And so that's what he does all day.

It's a really big rock.

He pushes it up the mountain, but because of the weight and the inclination of the mountain, of the incline of the mountain, it just keeps falling back.

But he's condemned to keep pushing this rock up.

And that's all he does for an eternity, pushing this rock up, and it keeps falling down.

Now this myth has been used in lots of philosophical texts in the past, but there was a link here with Buddhism and Hinduism.

And I want you to think about, do you think this is a good existence? So go ahead and pause, have a good think, and think, is it a good existence? If you disagree, think why, what's the problem with it? So go ahead pause, and have a think.

Okay, so you might have thought, okay, a life like that just gives you no hope because what's there to look forward to.

You just have this constant grind of pushing this rock up the hill.

You might think it's a painful existence because it must be really painful, physically painful, and mentally painful to just keep pushing this rock up the hill, and exhausting.

You might think, okay, there's no way out because in the myth, he's condemned to this for an eternity.

So that's it, he can't do anything else.

There's no way out for him.

And it just must be a really miserable existence.

You can't find a way out, it's painful.

What's the point? So a really fancy word that you can impress people with is what we call existential nihilism, this idea that there's no point to life.

It has no meaning, it has no purpose.

So you might be thinking along those kind of lines.

And this is going to help us understand where the Buddha is kind of starting from in many ways.

In Hinduism and Buddhism, we might've touched upon this in our first lesson, I think, when we looked at the birth, life and death kind of cycle.

This is symbolised with Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva.

They represent this cycle.

So Buddhists and Hindus, they actually share a lot of ideas, which we've looked at in the past.

One of the things that they share is the Cycle of Samsara, but they have differences.

And it's important that we know that.

So the Cycle of Samsara, this is a kind of constant cycle of being born, living your life and then dying, and then being reborn.

In in Hinduism it's reincarnation, and crucially for Buddhists, it's something known as rebirth.

And this cycle is constant, it just keeps going, going, going.

Now Hindus believe that there's an end to this, known as moksha.

But it's very long, it's very difficult to get to.

So the Buddha was kind of asking questions like, what is the point of this existence? A bit like "The Myth of Sisyphus." Now it's important to know that Buddhism is not what we call nihilistic.

Buddhism is not saying there's no point to life, but that's exactly what they're trying to uncover is, how do you live your life in a meaningful way? Especially if you're part of this kind of cycle that's going on and on and on, a bit like Sisyphus pushing his rock up the hill and then coming down again.

Some people have likened this existence to Samsara, that you're just being born, you're living and you're dying and you're just going round and round and round and round, you're really getting anywhere.

So I want you to go ahead and pause, have a look at these terms. Just make sure that we're on the same page.

I'm going to move my face over here.

And, one is always done for you, so we've got Sisyphus there.

Now let's see if you can do the other two.

So go ahead and pause, and then unpause when you're ready.

So, okay, I was jumping ahead then.

Let's have a look at the answer.

So Sisyphus, yes, he was the Greek, this is the Greek myth of a man who's punished by the gods to push a large rock or boulder up a mountain for infinity.

We have got the cycle of Samsara, that's the cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

And in Buddhism, you've got rebirth, which is the belief that death isn't the end, the body just continues into a new body, right.

Let's have a look at the Four Noble Truths.

I'm just going to migrate myself back over here.

There we go.

So the Four Noble Truths.

The Four Noble Truths are considered to be possibly one of the most important and well known teachings of the Buddha.

The first sermon, so as soon as he, about seven weeks after he became enlightened, he reached this awakened state.

He went to a place called Deer Park in Banaras and he gave his first sermon.

And the subject of the first sermon was the Four Noble Truths.

He was talking about what he had discovered and he really wanted to share it with everyone.

And what we'll find is the teachings that come from the Buddha afterwards are always linked back to the Four Noble Truths, always comes back to these four things that he realised about the nature of reality.

So let's now have a look at the first noble truth, dukkha.

So the first noble truth is in life we suffer.

That's the first thing that the Buddha realised.

And if you think about his story, not really knowing suffering, this must've become very, very, like strongly apparent to him.

As soon as he realised what it was, it must have taken, really changed his worldview according to the story of his life.

So let's just revisit dukkha.

So what do we mean? We've looked at the three marks of existence Anicca, this idea of impermanence, that we want things to be permanent but they're not.

And because of that, we suffer.

Anatta, we kind of stick to these ideas about who we are, and what our views are, and possibly feeling that we might even live forever.

Some people do feel a bit invincible, particularly when you're really young, you feel like nothing can touch you.

But as you get older you realise that we're not as invincible as we think, and that causes us to suffer.

And these are illusions, they're not real, according to Buddhism.

And all of that creates this sense of, a sense of not really knowing the truth, not really knowing who you are when you finally are confronted with the reality of our being.

Right, and then we think about the mental states, the skandhas, the ways that we actually observe and experience objects.

We might just have this observation but the mind starts to attach different kind of illusions, different judgments to things.

And that again can cause suffering.

Last time we talked about how you might meet a friend at school, but they might not be so friendly.

And you might suddenly be thinking, oh God, what have I done? Don't they like me anymore.

But actually it might have absolutely nothing to do with you.

It might be something that's happened to them.

So the mind can do that to us.

And again, it can cause suffering.

We're not seeing things as they actually are.

Many of us have got a fear, rightly, of death and pain, because we have an inbuilt survival instinct.

So that's rightly so, but for some people, it can be quite extreme.

And again it causes suffering and fear.

If you look at the Abrahamic traditions, these are quite different, it's quite different, because you've got the concept of heaven and hell.

So particularly in Christianity, the concept of suffering and death is, according to the Christian stories, because of Adam and Eve disobeying God.

And that's why there is suffering and pain and death in the world, but there is a place afterwards that you can go to which is free of suffering and pain, and that's heaven.

But if you misbehave and you're very naughty, you're going to go to hell.

In Buddhism, we don't quite have that.

There isn't that idea really, partly because there isn't this real belief in a God.

So therefore existence is seen, not as a sin towards God, as a kind of punishment for disobeying God, it's more of just the reality of how things are, by being kind of stuck in this cycle.

So that's what the Buddha means by the first noble truth.

He experienced that this is just the way things are.

This is the nature of reality.

That's what he taught, that's what he believed.

That's what Buddhists believe.

And the rest of his teachings are going to be about how can you see reality as it is, and find a way to exist in a peaceful, harmonious, happy way, and eventually to escape the cycle, so that we're not stuck in it anymore.

So, quick fire question for you.

We've kind of covered quite a few heavy concepts already, which is great, I love it.

Why is existing alone a cause for suffering according to Buddhism.

So go ahead and pause.

Have a think about it, having a think about what we've looked at so far, why do you think that just existing by itself is going to cause you to suffer according to Buddhism? Okay, so again, we're coming back to this idea of experience of the Buddha.

According to the tradition, this is what he experienced.

It wasn't a theory, it was something that he, through meditation, through these practises of extreme focus, was able to experience the very nature of being and the very nature of existing.

And what he saw was that all beings are in this Cycle of Samsara, going round and round and round, being born, living, dying, being reborn.

And that in itself was a cause of suffering because of all the conditions that come with it, like illusion, pain, death, all of those things.

Okay, so let's have a look at the next one.

I'm just going to move my face over here to the toilet rolls.

So the second one is samudaya, which is the second noble truth.

And this is the truth of the cause of suffering.

So the first one is, existence is suffering.

The second one is, why do we suffer then? What's the cause? And the cause is desire.

It's because, according to Buddhism, we want things.

As human beings, well, most creatures are striving for things all of the time.

And what happens with desire, desire is a really interesting one because.

I'm terrible with food.

I really have very little control with like chocolate and cakes and things like that.

And I know they're not good for me, but once I have it in my mind, it's difficult to get out of my mind.

And therefore I'm not really in control of myself anymore.

And if you think on an extreme level when you think about addiction and things like that, it can really take over people.

And in fact, the thing about desire is sometimes you want something, and then you kind of suffer because you don't get it, you can't have it.

But sometimes you do get it.

So for example, I'm thinking, okay, I want a packet of crisps.

And I go and get myself a packet of crisps.

So I'm happy, but for how long? Eventually I'm going to start desiring and wanting things again.

Now that desire can be extended to all sorts of things.

It could be extended to wanting a certain person to like you or wanting to achieve a certain goal in your career or do really well in your exams, or all these things we try and strive for.

If we can't have them, that's hard.

It's hard, we struggle with that.

And even if we do get them, how long are we happy for? We're looking for something else then to strive towards.

So, that can be a circular problem, and a great psychologist, the French psychologist, Lacan, his work was about desire.

He noticed that desire actually isn't a thing, but we do spend a great deal of our time chasing after things that we want.

So, yeah, and that's a problem.

And if you think about anicca, we want things to stay the same.

We don't like it when things change.

So, that comes back to desire as well.

Anatta, I wish I was 18, again, in lots of ways, but that's just not going to happen.

So all of these things can come back to desire.

And according to Buddhism, that can really make us suffer.

So another quick fire, and I'm going to move my face again, what are the two causes of human suffering? So go ahead and pause.

What are the two causes of human suffering? Okay, right, so just to make it absolutely clear, for Buddhism, the two root causes of human suffering are desire, which I'm sure many of you got, and some of you might've linked it to the other one, which is illusion.

So illusion or ignorance.

What we mean by ignorance, what is meant by ignorance in Buddhism is not, it's not like something negative that you say to somebody.

Ignorance just means the illusion of not being aware of the truth of reality.

So ignorance is things like anicca and anatta, not realising that the world, or not really fully being aware that everything is constantly changing and nothing is permanent, for example.

So the two root causes are desire and ignorance.

Right, third noble truth.

This is the third truth that he came up with.

So the first one was life is suffering, in life we suffer, everything suffers.

Secondary truth is, what is the cause of that suffering? It's desire and ignorance that causes us to suffer.

The third noble truth is about whether we can actually stop this, whether there's any way a human being or a being can find a way out of this kind of cycle.

So sometimes when people start learning about Buddhism, they start to think, oh God, it's so depressing.

They're just talking about suffering all the time.

And life is pointless, and you're never going to get out of this cycle.

Well, actually, even though the focus starts off that way, most of Buddhism then becomes about, okay, if that's the way we start, if that's the nature of reality, if that's what we're dealing with, how do we live a good life so that we're not stuck to these conditions? How do we be happy? And the Buddha, the reason why he came back to teach everyone is because he was trying to say, look, that is the way things are, but you don't have to live like this.

The reason we live like this is because we're not aware of the nature of reality.

And now that we're aware, we can now start to think about how to live our lives in a way that makes us happy, that makes us fulfilled, that is healthy, and that makes us progress.

And this is what the third noble truth is about.

It's about the idea that, okay, there is a way out.

Life isn't so bleak.

If we change the conditions, the way that we live, if we become aware of what's in our minds and in our hearts, and we learn to live in the moment, then we can stop suffering and we can start living a joyful life.

So, another quick fire, is life pointless for Buddhists? Have a think about it.

Oh, I got ahead of myself again then.

So, is life pointless for Buddhists? Well, no, life is joyful.

It's full of really, really important moments.

And really Buddhism is about trying to really teach people to be present, be in the moment.

Because everything's changing so quickly, you need to enjoy and really experience things as they're happening.

And that's really the point of Buddhism, to have compassion, to really live your life.

And the fourth truth, magga.

This is really where there's a lot of focus.

Most of the, there were whole texts, enormous amount of texts devoted to this, the Eightfold Path and the Middle Way.

So this is basically a guide how to actually find your way out of living in this kind of cycle effectively, and how to live a good life.

And what is the way out of suffering? Yes, so the Eightfold Path and the Middle Way.

So these are like, like I said, it's a guide to kind of living in a balanced way where you are content and happy and serene.

So another way of looking at this teaching is the doctor's, sorry, the Buddha is often likened to a doctor.

So the same way a doctor might diagnose an illness.

So if you look at it in these terms, it might be easier for you to remember.

A doctor might think, okay, is there a problem? And so the Buddha asks this question, is there a problem? Yes, suffering.

Is there a cause? Yes, desire and ignorance.

Is there a cure? Yes, that's the third noble truth.

And the fourth noble truth, what is the cure? The cure is a Middle Way and the Eightfold Path.

It's a good way of looking at it.

This is the way the Buddha kind of dissected how to come out of suffering.

Okay, so what I'd like you to do now is you can choose a task.

You can get creative and you can create a poster infographic model, even a diorama, it's up to you, to show each noble truth.

You must include the Pali terms and a brief explanation of each truth, or alternatively, have a go at this four mark question in which you can explain two ways in which the Four Noble Truths can help us lead a good life.

So think about, what does it teach? And is there a way out of suffering? So well done for another great lesson.

I'm sure that you found that very interesting, and has given you some food for thought.

The Four Noble Truths are something that we will revisit because they were really important teachings of the Buddha.

So you'll find that it comes up again and again, and hopefully over this series of lessons, we're going to start linking together.

So what I'd like you to do now is do two things.

Straight away, I'd like you to go ahead and have a go at the quiz.

And if you can, go and tell someone about the Four Noble Truths.

It's always good to have these kinds of discussions, see what other people think.

And I will see you next time.