The Four Noble Truths
In this explanation of the Four Noble Truths that can be found in the teachings of Buddhism, I will examine what these Truths mean and explain them in a way that a children’s Methodist Sunday School Class could understand. Instead of focusing on the foreign terms and the history or development of ideas, the explanation will mainly focus on what these ideas mean so that they can simply be comprehended at a basic level that even children of an entirely different religious background can grasp.
The Four Noble Truths come from the ideas presented by Buddha, who lived many, many centuries ago far away on the other side of the world. He became very much admired by those around him because he seemed to them to have discovered the secret of happiness: nothing upset him or made him lose his temper; he was always calm and always seemed to be at peace with himself and with everyone and the world around him. It was as though he had transcended above everything to a special place in his mind where he was free from sorrow, sadness, pain and suffering. How did he do this, everyone wondered? What was his secret?
Buddha explained how he did this by telling his people what it was he saw when he looked out at the world. He saw that human always tended to suffer in some way when they became attached to the things of the world. Whether their attachment was to money, to friends, to a place, a home, some piece of property that they loved very much and were very fearful of breaking or of someone stealing—anything at all—this attachment always tended to cause pain underneath the current of joy. In fact, it seemed that the attachment typically caused more pain than they did joy because the possession of the thing became the overriding obsession of the individual so that all else was blocked out. There was not even time to simply enjoy the thing that the person loved so much: every thought was consumed about keeping the thing—even though deep down it should have been obvious to the people that the thing they loved so much could not be kept forever for it was of this world and humankind is destined to leave this world. Instead of preparing to leave the world...
So they were constantly wringing their hands about it. This made the people very unhappy. Why? They did not stop to think that all things are finite, meaning they cannot last forever, yet every human being has something of the infinite in him—so this attachment goes against the very nature of humankind. It is from this awareness that Buddha began to understand the Four Noble Truths.
What are these Four Noble Truths? Here they are quite simply:
First, suffering is a fact of life. All things contain some form of suffering. It cannot be escaped. Suffering is part of existence—it is part of life. No expression of life exists without it. Every rose has its thorn is a popular expression that communicates this idea. Have you ever seen a rose bush? It has beautiful, pleasing flowers—but the stems are riddled with sharp, painful thorns that prick when you touch them. Suffering is a fact that cannot be avoided, and trying to avoid it only makes it worse for everyone—so don’t do that. That is the first noble truth.
But if you are not going to run from suffering, what should you do? This leads us to the second Noble Truth. Think of how Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ accepted suffering—how He fasted in the desert so as to have the strength to overcome temptation, how He accepted His cross so as to save men from their sins. Without this example, we would not have the courage to embrace suffering like He did. Buddha also recognized this, but he expressed the idea in a different way. He stated in the second Noble Truth that desire and ignorance are what cause suffering, so people should stop letting their desires run their lives, and they should enlighten their minds through meditation on the meaning of reality. By controlling desire, one could resist the temptations of the world, the temptations to chase after things and try to find happiness in attachments. Basically, Christ taught the same concept when He…
