Buddhist Belief — The First Noble Truth _ Part 2
“There seem to two kinds of searchers: those who seek to make their ego something other than it is, i.e. holy, happy, unselfish (as though you could make a fish unfish), and those who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation and play-acting, that there is only one thing that can be done, which is to dis-identify themselves with the ego, by realizing its unreality, and by becoming aware of their eternal identity with pure being.”
~~ Fingers Pointing Toward the Moon by Wei Wu Wei
Last time we introduced some thoughts about one of the fundamentals of Buddhist Belief, The First Noble Truth. As mentioned in that article, it’s going to take more than one post to cover the topic of the first of the Noble Truths.
When the Buddha began to teach the Four Noble Truths, he described the First Noble Truth as the “first fact of life”. That fact of life, in its most basic terms, is that all created or conditioned things are ultimately dissatisfying. Buddhists call this dukkha, which is the Sanscrit language for dissatisfaction. However you try to define it, it boils down to the fact that not much in this world will ever be truly satisfying. If you think about it, just about everything that comes into our life, anything that is conditioned, will eventually not last — we’ll find that we’re uncertain about it — it will prove to be unreliable and dissatisfying.
I personally, had a great deal of trouble when I first learned about The First Noble Truth of Buddhist Belief. But try as I might, when I put my mind to it, I couldn’t think of any examples that were truly satisfying in the long run. Sure, it was easy to think of things that felt good, that were satisfying in the short run, that caused pleasure, but ultimately they either faded away, or fell apart, or got lost, or ran away, or died. Or I got tired of it, or them, and began to look for something else that would take it’s place and give me a new boost of satisfaction. It seemed that no matter what I thought of as an example of something that met the requirement of always being satisfying — 24-7-365 — some form of negativity would creep into it at some point in its time in my life. I saw one person refer to this as the “roller coaster of life”.
This Buddhist Belief, the First Noble Truth, does have another side to it, however. There is a place where there is a lasting, perfect peace. There is a place that we can always be certain that what we have will not fail us in some way. This place is not a state of mind. It is not a thought to be analyzed. It’s not something we make up. It is not a created or conditioned thing. It is completely reliable and always will be. This is the place we can all find through our own enlightenment, our awakening. It is our natural state. It is who we truly are.
The First Noble Truth is that anything that we create, (emphasis on the world WE) is conditioned. It will always be dissatisfying and uncertain. It’s in its nature, and cannot be anything other than what it is. As long as its stuff we create, it will ultimately be something that will keep us from finding true peace.
On the other side of this, our true nature, the essence of who we are, our Buddha-nature, is not a created thing. It will always bring us inner peace. It will always be there. It has always been there. It will never change or become something other that what it is — our true self. This is the essence of Buddhist Belief.
In doing some research for these articles, I came across a series of short films produced by the BBC called The Life of Buddha. Here is the video of the first part of this series. I’ll include the others along with our next few articles. I hope you enjoy this:
Until the next time,
Be in Peace,
Ron Rink
Tags: Buddhism, Buddhist Belief, Meditation