The pivotal notion around which the truths revolve is that of dukkha, translated here as “suffering.” The Pali word originally meant simply pain and suffering, a meaning it retains in the texts when it is used as a quality of feeling: in these cases it has been rendered as “pain” or “painful.” As the first noble truth, however, dukkha has a far wider significance, reflective of a comprehensive philosophical vision. While it draws its affective colouring from its connection with pain and suffering, and certainly includes these, it points beyond such restrictive meanings to the inherent unsatisfactoriness of everything conditioned. This unsatisfactoriness of the conditioned is due to its impermanence, its vulnerability to pain, and its inability to provide complete and lasting satisfaction.
The notion of impermanence (aniccatā) forms the bedrock for the Buddha’s teaching, having been the initial insight that impelled the Bodhisatta to leave the palace in search of a path to enlightenment. Impermanence, in the Buddhist view, comprises the totality of conditioned existence, ranging in scale from the cosmic to the microscopic. At the far end of the spectrum the Buddha’s vision reveals a universe of immense dimensions evolving and disintegrating in repetitive cycles throughout beginningless time—“many aeons of world-contraction, many aeons of world-expansion, many aeons of world-contraction and expansion” (MN 4.27). In the middle range the mark of impermanence comes to manifestation in our inescapable mortality, our condition of being bound to ageing, sickness, and death (MN 26.5), of possessing a body that is subject “to being worn and rubbed away, to dissolution and disintegration” (MN 74.9). And at the close end of the spectrum, the Buddha’s teaching discloses the radical impermanence uncovered only by sustained attention to experience in its living immediacy: the fact that all the constituents of our being, bodily and mental, are in constant process, arising and passing away in rapid succession from moment to moment without any persistent underlying substance. In the very act of observation they are undergoing “destruction, vanishing, fading away, and ceasing” (MN 74.11).
This characteristic of impermanence that marks everything conditioned leads directly to the recognition of the universality of dukkha or suffering. The Buddha underscores this all-pervasive aspect of dukkha when, in his explanation of the first noble truth, he says, “In short, the five aggregates affected by clinging are suffering.” The five aggregates affected by clinging (pañc’upādānakkhandhā) are a classificatory scheme that the Buddha had devised for demonstrating the composite nature of personality. The scheme comprises every possible type of conditioned state, which it distributes into five categories—material form, feeling, perception, mental formations, and consciousness. The aggregate of material form (rūpa) includes the physical body with its sense faculties as well as external material objects. The aggregate of feeling (vedanā) is the affective element in experience, either pleasant, painful, or neutral. Perception (saññā), the third aggregate, is the factor responsible for noting the qualities of things and also accounts for recognition and memory. The formations aggregate (sankhārā) is an umbrella term that includes all volitional, emotive, and intellective aspects of mental life. And consciousness (viññāṇa), the fifth aggregate, is the basic awareness of an object indispensable to all cognition. As the venerable Sāriputta shows in his masterly analysis of the first noble truth, representatives of all five aggregates are present on every occasion of experience, arising in connection with each of the six sense faculties and their objects (MN 28.28).
The Buddha’s statement that the five aggregates are dukkha thus reveals that the very things we identify with and hold to as the basis for happiness, rightly seen, are the basis for the suffering that we dread. Even when we feel ourselves comfortable and secure, the instability of the aggregates is itself a source of oppression and keeps us perpetually exposed to suffering in its more blatant forms. The whole situation becomes multiplied further to dimensions beyond calculation when we take into account the Buddha’s disclosure of the fact of rebirth. All beings in whom ignorance and craving remain present wander on in the cycle of repeated existence, saṁsāra, in which each turn brings them the suffering of new birth, ageing, illness, and death. All states of existence within saṁsāra, being necessarily transitory and subject to change, are incapable of providing lasting security. Life in any world is unstable, it is swept away, it has no shelter and protector, nothing of its own (MN 82.36).
THE TEACHING OF NON-SELF
Inextricably tied up with impermanence and suffering is a third principle intrinsic to all phenomena of existence. This is the characteristic of non-self (anattā), and the three together are called the three marks or characteristics (tilakkhaṇa). The Buddha teaches, contrary to our most cherished beliefs, that our individual being—the five aggregates—cannot be identified as self, as an enduring and substantial ground of personal identity. The notion of self has only a conventional validity, as a convenient shorthand device for denoting a composite insubstantial situation. It does not signify any ultimate immutable entity subsisting at the core of our being. The bodily and mental factors are transitory phenomena, constantly arising and passing away, processes creating the appearance of selfhood through their causal continuity and interdependent functioning. Nor does the Buddha posit a self outside and beyond the five aggregates. The notion of selfhood, treated as an ultimate, he regards as a product of ignorance, and all the diverse attempts to substantiate this notion by identifying it with some aspect of the personality he describes as “clinging to a doctrine of self.”
In several suttas in the Majjhima Nikāya, the Buddha gives forceful expression to his repudiation of views of self. In MN 102 he undertakes a far-reaching survey of the various propositions put forth about the self, declaring them all to be “conditioned and gross.” In MN 2.8 six views of self are branded as “the thicket of views, the wilderness of views, the contortion of views, the vacillation of views, the fetter of views.” In MN 11 he compares his teaching point by point with those of other recluses and brahmins and shows that beneath their apparent similarities, they finally diverge on just this one crucial point—the rejection of views of self—which undermines the agreements. MN 22 offers a series of arguments against the view of self, culminating in the Buddha’s declaration that he does not see any doctrine of self that would not lead to sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair. In his map of the steps to liberation, identity view (sakkāyadiṭṭhi), the positing of a self in relation to the five aggregates, is held to be the first fetter to be broken with the arising of the “vision of the Dhamma.”
The principle of non-self is shown in the suttas to follow logically from the two marks of impermanence and suffering. The standard formula states that what is impermanent is pain or suffering, and what is impermanent, suffering, and subject to change cannot be regarded as mine, I, or self (MN 22.26, MN 35.20, etc.). Other passages highlight the relationship among the three characteristics from different angles. MN 28 points out that when the external physical elements—earth, water, fire, and air—vast as they are, are periodically destroyed in cosmic cataclysms, there can be no considering this transitory body as self. MN 148 demonstrates by a reductio ad absurdum argument that impermanence implies non-self: when all the factors of being are clearly subject to rise and fall, to identify anything among them with self is to be left with the untenable thesis that self is subject to rise and fall. MN 35.19 connects the mark of non-self with that of dukkha by arguing that because we cannot bend the five aggregates to our will, they cannot be taken as mine, I, or self.
THE ORIGIN AND CESSATION OF SUFFERING
The second of the Four Noble Truths makes known the origin or cause of suffering, which the Buddha identifies as craving (taṇhā) in its three aspects: craving for sensual pleasures; craving for being, that is, for continued existence; and craving for non-being, that is, for personal annihilation. The third truth states the converse of the second truth, that with the elimination of craving the suffering that originates from it will cease w
ithout remainder.
The Buddha’s discovery of the causal link between craving and suffering accounts for the apparent “pessimistic” streak that emerges in several suttas of the Majjhima Nikāya: in MN 13 with its disquisition on the dangers in sensual pleasures, form, and feeling; in MN 10 and MN 119 with their cemetery meditations; in MN 22, MN 54, and MN 75 with their shocking similes for sensual pleasures. Such teachings are part of the Buddha’s tactical approach to guiding his disciples to liberation. By its own inherent nature craving springs up and thrives wherever it finds something that appears pleasant and delightful. It proliferates through mistaken perception—the perception of sense objects as enjoyable—and thus to break the grip of craving on the mind, exhortation is often not enough. The Buddha must make people see that the things they yearn for and frantically pursue are really suffering, and he does this by exposing the dangers concealed beneath their sweet and charming exteriors.
Although the second and third noble truths have an immediate psychological validity, they also have a deeper aspect brought to light in the suttas. The middle two truths as stated in the general formulation of the Four Noble Truths are actually telescoped versions of a longer formulation that discloses the origin and cessation of bondage in saṁsāra. The doctrine in which this expanded version of the two truths is set forth is called paṭicca samuppāda, dependent origination. In its fullest statement the doctrine spells out the origination and cessation of suffering in terms of twelve factors connected together in eleven propositions. This formulation, laid down schematically, will be found at MN 38.17 in its order of arising and at MN 38.20 in its order of ceasing. MN 115.11 includes both sequences together preceded by a statement of the general principle of conditionality that underlies the applied doctrine. A more elaborate version giving a factorial analysis of each term in the series is presented at MN 9.21–66, and a version exemplified in the course of an individual life at MN 38.26–40. Condensed versions are also found, notably at MN 1.171, MN 11.16, and MN 75.24–25. The venerable Sāriputta quotes the Buddha as saying that one who sees dependent origination sees the Dhamma and one who sees the Dhamma sees dependent origination (MN 28.28).
According to the usual interpretation, the series of twelve factors extends over three lives and divides into causal and resultant phases. The gist of it can be briefly explained as follows. Because of ignorance (avijjā)—defined as non-knowledge of the Four Noble Truths—a person engages in volitional actions or kamma, which may be bodily, verbal, or mental, wholesome or unwholesome. These kammic actions are the formations (sankhārā), and they ripen in states of consciousness (viññāṇa)—first as the rebirth-consciousness at the moment of conception and thereafter as the passive states of consciousness resulting from kamma that matures in the course of a lifetime. Along with consciousness there arises mentality-materiality (nāmarūpa), the psychophysical organism, which is equipped with the sixfold base (saḷāyatana), the five physical sense faculties and mind as the faculty of the higher cognitive functions. Via the sense faculties contact (phassa) takes place between consciousness and its objects, and contact conditions feeling (vedanā). The links from consciousness through feeling are the products of past kamma, of the causal phase represented by ignorance and formations. With the next link the kammically active phase of the present life begins, productive of a new existence in the future. Conditioned by feeling, craving (taṇhā) arises, this being the second noble truth. When craving intensifies it gives rise to clinging (upādāna), through which one again engages in volitional actions pregnant with a renewal of existence (bhava). The new existence begins with birth (jāti), which inevitably leads to ageing and death (jarāmaraṇa).
The teaching of dependent origination also shows how the round of existence can be broken. With the arising of true knowledge, full penetration of the Four Noble Truths, ignorance is eradicated. Consequently the mind no longer indulges in craving and clinging, action loses its potential to generate rebirth, and deprived thus of its fuel, the round comes to an end. This marks the goal of the teaching signalled by the third noble truth, the cessation of suffering.
NIBBĀNA
The state that supervenes when ignorance and craving have been uprooted is called Nibbāna (Sanskrit, Nirvāṇa), and no conception in the Buddha’s teaching has proved so refractory to conceptual pinning down as this one. In a way such elusiveness is only to be expected, since Nibbāna is described precisely as “profound, hard to see and hard to understand,…unattainable by mere reasoning” (MN 26.19). Yet in this same passage the Buddha also says that Nibbāna is to be experienced by the wise and in the suttas he gives enough indications of its nature to convey some idea of its desirability.
The Pali Canon offers sufficient evidence to dispense with the opinion of some interpreters that Nibbāna is sheer annihilation; even the more sophisticated view that Nibbāna is merely the destruction of defilements and the extinction of existence cannot stand up under scrutiny. Probably the most compelling testimony against that view is the well-known passage from the Udāna that declares with reference to Nibbāna that “there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned,” the existence of which makes possible “escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned” (Ud 8:3/80). The Majjhima Nikāya characterises Nibbāna in similar ways. It is “the unborn, unageing, unailing, deathless, sorrowless, undefiled supreme security from bondage,” which the Buddha attained to on the night of his enlightenment (MN 26.18). Its pre-eminent reality is affirmed by the Buddha when he calls Nibbāna the supreme foundation of truth, whose nature is undeceptive and which ranks as the supreme noble truth (MN 140.26). Nibbāna cannot be perceived by those who live in lust and hate, but it can be seen with the arising of spiritual vision, and by fixing the mind upon it in the depths of meditation, the disciple can attain the destruction of the taints (MN 26.19, MN 75.24, MN 64.9).
The Buddha does not devote many words to a philosophical definition of Nibbāna. One reason is that Nibbāna, being unconditioned, transcendent, and supramundane, does not easily lend itself to definition in terms of concepts that are inescapably tied to the conditioned, manifest, and mundane. Another is that the Buddha’s objective is the practical one of leading beings to release from suffering, and thus his principal approach to the characterisation of Nibbāna is to inspire the incentive to attain it and to show what must be done to accomplish this. To show Nibbāna as desirable, as the aim of striving, he describes it as the highest bliss, as the supreme state of sublime peace, as the ageless, deathless, and sorrowless, as the supreme security from bondage. To show what must be done to attain Nibbāna, to indicate that the goal implies a definite task, he describes it as the stilling of all formations, the relinquishing of all acquisitions, the destruction of craving, dispassion (MN 26.19). Above all, Nibbāna is the cessation of suffering, and for those who seek an end to suffering such a designation is enough to beckon them towards the path.
THE WAY TO THE CESSATION OF SUFFERING
The fourth noble truth completes the pattern established by the first three truths by revealing the means to eliminate craving and thereby bring an end to suffering. This truth teaches the “Middle Way” discovered by the Buddha, the Noble Eightfold Path:1. right view (sammā diṭṭhi)
2. right intention (sammā sankappa)
3. right speech (sammā vācā)
4. right action (sammā kammanta)
5. right livelihood (sammā ājīva)
6. right effort (sammā vāyāma)
7. right mindfulness (sammā sati)
8. right concentration (sammā samādhi)
Mentioned countless times throughout the Majjhima Nikāya, the Noble Eightfold Path is explained in detail in two full suttas. MN 141 gives a factorial analysis of the eight components of the path using the definitions that are standard in the Pali Canon; MN 117 expounds the path from a different angle under the rubric of “noble right concentration with its supports and its requisites.” The Buddha there makes the important distinction betwe
en the mundane and supramundane stages of the path, defines the first five factors for both stages, and shows how the path factors function in unison in the common task of providing an outlet from suffering. Other suttas explore in greater detail individual components of the path. Thus MN 9 provides an in-depth exposition of right view, MN 10 of right mindfulness, MN 19 of right intention. MN 44.11 explains that the eight factors can be incorporated into three “aggregates” of training. Right speech, right action, and right livelihood make up the aggregate of virtue or moral discipline (sīla); right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration make up the aggregate of concentration (samādhi); and right view and right intention make up the aggregate of understanding or wisdom (paññā). This threefold sequence in turn serves as the basic outline for the gradual training, to be discussed later.
The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha Page 3
