If it is asked what is the foundation of the Buddha’s teaching, the answer is: the Four Noble Truths. They formed the subject of his first sermon of all, which was preached at Benares. Here is how they were stated on that occasion.
‘There is this Noble Truth of Suffering: birth is suffering, ageing is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering, association with what is disliked is suffering, dissociation from what is loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering, in short, the five aggregates (of experience) as objects of clinging are suffering’.
‘There is this Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering: it is craving, which produces future becoming, is accompanied by delight and greed, delighting in this and that, that is to say, craving for sense-desires, craving for being, craving for non-being’.
‘There is this Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering: it is the remainderless fading and cessation of that same craving, denying it, relinquishing it, leaving it behind, rejecting it’.
‘There is this Noble Truth of the Way Leading to the Cessation of Suffering: it is just this Noble Eightfold Path, that is to say, right view, right thinking, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration’.
This foundation is unshakable because it rests, not upon metaphysical theory or speculation or dogma, but upon actual experience stripped of unverifiable hypotheses. It is upon this sure foundation that the whole structure of Buddhist ethics rests. It is the perfected vision of the Buddha that sees how a man and the world in which he lives interact the one upon the other. Sufficient of this vision is directly perceivable by a thoughtful man to compel him to lead a moral life if he would avoid suffering, just as the knowledge acquired by a child of how fire burns keeps him from putting his hand in it And he will also be incited and urged on to spiritual development and the attainment of the goal of final bliss by the testimony of those who have attained it.
As theistic religion enjoins the living of a moral life by commandments, and by threats and the principal argument advanced for obeying them is that man owes obedience out of gratitude to his Creator. From this it is often argued that a good and moral life is inconceivable without a Creator-God. How fallacious this assumption is has been clearly shown by the Buddha.
Again, attempts to build a system of ethics on the basis of modern science, independent of the concept of a God, creator of the universe, are obliged, since true scientific data are neither moral nor immoral, to invoke some extraneous doctrine such as a Categorical Imperative, a postulated subjective faculty supposed directly to perceive an objective duty as to-be-done, without need of justification. Again the unsurmountable difficulties inherent in such an unverifiable thesis are avoided by the clear and complete vision of the Buddha, which shows that there is no need of hypothetical perceptive faculties and percepts to recommend living the Good Life.
The Four Noble Truths, we said, are the foundation of the Buddhist ethical structure. It is thus based, not on divine revelation, not on dogma, not on hypothesis, but upon the verifiable facts of experience, objective and subjective.
The world of experience (no matter whether heavenly or this-worldly) is, the Buddha found, unsatisfactory because nothing really permanent can be found in it to which to cling as a refuge in the universal flux of change and becoming. This is the first Truth. Then the subjective act of craving snatches at and rejects the various aspects or modes of the five aggregates of experience that constitute the Truth of Suffering (craving itself coming within the formations aggregate). It manifests itself in the forms of lust and hate, greed and nausea, acting as the kamma that maintains the five aggregates of experience in the dynamic process of change and continuity that is called ‘life’. This is the second Truth, Objective experience, the Truth of Suffering, is like the stills of a cinema reel: craving animates it like the running of the reel through the projector onto the screen; and the whole five-aggregate process of formed experience is like the moving film seen by a conscious audience.
The ceasing of that same craving, with the consequent ceasing of the five-aggregate process at the termination of the Arahant’s life, is the unformed Nibbāna. It is the cessation of all suffering, the highest of all possible bliss, which by comparison makes the bliss of any kind of heaven (even the immaterial arūpaheavens) appear worthless since they do not last forever. It can only be known by personal realization through development of the path that leads to it. The realization of it irrevocably transforms and purifies the character. This is the third Truth. The way in which the ordinary man can interpret his experience, organize his life and compose his mental attitude in order to realize that cessation and that unshakable bliss and make them a fact is the Noble Eightfold Path. This is the fourth Truth.
It is sometimes asked whether the attainment of Arahantship is not a selfish goal. If Arahantship meant some kind of superior heaven where a man continued to live his personal life in the pursuit of pleasure however refined, the answer would be, yes. But Arahantship in the final attainment of nibbāna is not that it is the elimination of the concept of self, the ending of selfish ‘self-becoming’ and the abolition of the conceit ‘I am’.
Upasīva asked:
‘Then when he the Arahant has gone out does he no longer exist? Or is he made invulnerable for eternity ?
And the Buddha replied:
‘There is no measure of one who has gone out, Upasīva;
There is nothing of him whereby he could be described;
When all ideas have been abolished, all ways of describing have been abolished’.
The Noble Eightfold Path is the Buddhist code of morals and ethics. If a man chooses that path, then his duty, if we speak in terms of duty, is primarily to himself, and it takes the form of inflexible sincerity of purpose. His success in reaching the goal is the true encouragement and sole and only true hope for others in the world still caught in the wheel of becoming, the repeating cycle of birth, ageing and death. The man who attains Arahantship keeps the way open for others. He is the most unselfish of all.
Here is the Path briefly explained. RIGHT VIEW (the understanding of the four Truths) and RIGHT THINKING (thoughts of renunciation, non-ill-will, and non-cruelty) comprise Understanding. RIGHT SPEECH (abstention from lies, slander, abuse, and gossip). RIGHT ACTION (abstention from killing, stealing and sexual misconduct) and RIGHT LIVELIHOOD (there are five trades no layman should engage in: trading in weapons, living beings, meat, liquor, and poison) comprise Virtue. Then RIGHT EFFORT (not arousing unarisen evil, abandoning arisen evil, arousing unarisen good, and developing, maintaining and perfecting arisen good), RIGHT MINDFULNESS contemplation of experience as it is, that is to say, contemplation of the body as a body, of feelings as feelings, of the mind as mind, and of mental objects (ideas) as mental objects, and RIGHT CONCENTRATION (the four kinds of absorption) or mental unification lastly comprise Concentration.
As a tetrapod always stands firm on the ground however it falls, so the standard of the Four Truths is always applicable as a guide to the evaluation of any experience. It is a standard by which a man can, inany walk of life and in any circumstances, judge the better course and make his choice. Even if circumstances are beyond his control, he is still free to choose his attitude towards them, to exercise the responsibility, and so diminish his own suffering as well as that of others.
