The Noble Truths Revisited.

                                                             

     Hi!
 
     I would like to start by talking about the idea that whatever was written about and and what the somewhat formal forms of evolved Buddhism are pointing to are, at best, interpretations that have first been translated from oral traditions that were then translated to writing  and then translated into several different languages. The truth is that the initial message was so powerful that it's "essence" has survived through thousands of years. Yet there remains an enormous amount of room for misinterpretation, confusion, and cognitive contamination. Much of what we have now has become dogma and presented with an inflated sense of surety of meaning. As the Buddha has been reported to have said we need to question everything. Always.

     We can take the translations and interpretations anyway we want too. Some declare that the writings represent what was said or pointed to most accurately. They indicate a belief that oral traditions can be transmitted successfully over multiple generations. Others indicate the difficulty in accuracy if we rely on dead languages, interpretations, arrogance, ego, human error, human inability to translate anything without adding a filter and the human tendency to "spin" information to place the interpreter in a position of importance. My thinking is grounded in the idea that regardless of the above arguments some of the "essence" of the original message has been retained. So the "core" message has remained intact although not particularly in a precise manner. Evidently the root message was powerful enough to withstand all the twists and turns as it was passed along. ( I do wonder how much information was lost before the oral tradition was initiated. The Buddha evidently said some things before they was an organized attempt to "memorize" his talks.)

     The Four Noble Truths. It's an interesting title. Unfortunately it's not very accurate in the sense that the Pali language is open to a lot of different interpretations and the title is just one of them. They could have been called "The truth for the nobles" except that wouldn't fly well with a lot of people because it implies the truth is for a select group of people. It's not. Although that could actually have been the title. Interpreting means to be aware of source, content, context, and the interpreter's agenda. All the known Buddhist information is loosely interpreted and a lot of guesswork was done before its presentation to the public. This becomes apparent if you investigate multiple sources of interpretation. 

     My belief is that the loosely named "truths" were not initially meant as separate ideas but a connected cohesive conceptual idea that over time has been broken down in to the separate "truths" that we see today. Looking at context and content I have come to the conclusion that the truths were initial presented as a concept statement and so will proceed to explain what I think is the truer meaning.

Some examples of the first truth as we have translated it reads as the following

Life is suffering.

We experience dissatisfaction.

Life is like a wheel out of kilter.

     These are just a few of the interpretations. It's pretty apparent that the difficulty lies in the way the statements are formulated. Almost all of the first truth statements imply a state of no change. EX: Life is suffering. No it's not. Life, if you accept that everything is change, simply cannot be one thing. It can be a billion things or an experience in transience thus "containing" an event but it cannot be "suffering." So we need to examine the first truth or part of the truth in terms of a flowing dynamic. 

     The word that is the focus of the first of the truths is Dukkha. A word that has been translated as meaning, suffering, anxiety, uneasiness, and dissatisfaction. Notice that all of these point too but do not translate the meaning of the word. Part of the difficulty in extracting the exact meaning of ancient words is that much of what we identify as nouns or subjects were in fact words that meant action in the sense that verbs relay a sense of action. The words are not static but  represent a flowing process. Think of the difference between a s simple photograph or a movie.

     So Dukkha relates the ACTION of change. Not suffering, anxiety, uneasiness, or dissatisfaction. To change. It is the first principle of an entire conceptual statement. This is not exactly an earth shaking or profound idea. Certainly this is not the first time in history that this idea was explored particularly in the Yogic traditions. Everything is change. It's not that "things" change. Things "are" change. There are no things to change, only changing things. If you look at a table it's not the "idea" table. It's not sitting there stuck in time. It's a flowing never ending process of transformation that we loosely call "table." In reality the best we could say is that it's a "flowing through time" type of table. Our view of the table is a slice of the transience not the table itself. 

     The same concept applies to people and all that's living. None of life is static. There is not a single essence of you. Only multiple essences that overall appear to be you when taken in the broadest view or again a brief slice of transience. You are not the you of a microsecond ago but are fleeting and in constant motion. 

     So in reality what Dukkha or the ACTION OF CHANGE represents is transience. The first concept in the "truths" is simply pointing to the concept of TRANSIENCE. Transience means that everything has a life. Everything "appears" briefly and proceeds to change. And the bigger concept, and the one that I think is the original message, is that of not only accepting transience but the ACCEPTANCE AND WILLINGNESS TO LIVE IN THE STATE OF TRANSIENCE. Rather than simply stating an observance the concept is pointing to a radical change in our relationship to existence itself.  

     One of the difficulties in the path of Zen, Buddhism, and Taoism is remaining aware and focused on the living in transience part of the teachings. We forget and in doing so become steeped in what we think is both permanent and personal. If we truly live in transience nothing has any permanent impact. There is a distinct difference in comprehension of a concept and integrating or living the concept. A pitfall remains in simply comprehending a concept, like transience, and adopting the belief system that we are LIVING the concept through the comprehension. We only live in transience by integrating it through a state of awareness not by simple comprehension. We can easily be misled by thinking we "know" things and become confused because our lives are not being "lived" according to comprehension. In understanding this we come to a greater appreciation of the practices of meditation and contemplation both of which are tools for integrating concepts. 

     We will continue to explore this further by exploring the second part of the Four Noble Truths in our discussion of Samudaya.

I welcome any and all comments and information or questions.

Sincerely,

Bryan S. Wagner