How a Person Can Use Buddhism to Escape From Melancholy

Four Noble Truths

The Truth of Suffering -- the First Noble Truth

The Buddha believed that humans suffer and struggle, which is the problem of existence. He believed that all existence comes down to dukkha, which translated means roughly "anguish," or "pain," or "suffering"; dukkha also suggests a word that isn't in the English dictionary -- "unsatisfactoriness" (the Buddhist Center). Dukkha also suggests that life / existence is temporary and conditional, and before humans can contemplate life and death people must come to terms with the self.

The Truth of the Cause of Suffering -- the Second Noble Truth

Buddhism teaches that humans suffer because people are constantly craving, searching, seeking for answers outside ourselves that will bring happiness to us (about.com). The Buddhist Center explains that the "root" reason for suffering is the mind; people tend to "grasp at things (or alternatively push them away)" which makes humans "at odds" with the way life actually is.

The Truth of the Cessation of Craving -- the Third Noble Truth

The Buddhist Center points out that because people are the real reason they suffer, and are the "ultimate cause of ... difficulties," they also have the solution to their suffering. Understanding the Four Noble Truths can be understood in these terms: like a doctor telling a patient first, what the illness is (First Truth), then prescribing a treatment (Second Truth), the Third Truth is helping the patient discover a solution or remedy (about.com). Buddha believed that humans can put an end to craving, and the cure is to change responses to the things that happen to us because we cannot always change the things happening to humans.

The Path that Frees Humans from Suffering -- the Fourth Noble Truth

The belief that humans can change themselves, and basically put an end to suffering, is equivalent to the doctor's advice bringing health and satisfaction to the patient. Moreover, in Buddhism, the path that will help one move away from suffering involves embracing the Noble Eightfold Path (the Buddhist Center). That Path entails: (Samma-Ditthi) perfected vision; (Samma-Sankappa) perfected emotion; (Samma-Vaca) perfected or whole speech; (Samma-Kammanta) taking the right action; (Samma-Ajiva) the right livelihood; (Samma-Vayama) putting forth full energy; (Samma Sati) thorough awareness; and (Samma Samadhi) full concentration, absorption, fixed on a single object (BuddhaNet).

Person Observation of the Four Noble Truths

Living in the home of a very conservative family was trying for a young person like me, whose friends at school were progressive and worldly. I wanted to run away and explore the world, hitchhike around Europe and surf in South Africa, as some of my friends did the summer before their senior years. But my parents wanted me to stay in the same small town and become a minister or a teacher, and marry someone in the church our family attended. The First Noble Truth could be used to explain my suffering. I did not find happiness at home, and I experienced emotional pain at being a captive of my parents' will.

I blamed my unhappiness on my family, but looking back on it, my problem was perhaps in my mind (the Second Noble Truth), because I still could have had a happier adolescence. Knowing in a few years I'd be on my own anyway, I could have cooperated with my family instead of resisting everything they believed in (religiously and socially).