Truths the First Teaching Ever

¶ … Truths

The first teaching ever given by the Buddha was to five student monks in a deer park about the truths he had discovered while struggling for enlightenment. These became the central teachings of Buddhism. It was his first awareness that life brings illness, age, misery and death that lead to a search for a deeper understanding of the way one lives and to end suffering. The teachings of the Buddha revolve around a central belief system known as the "Four Noble Truths."

The first truth can be translated as "suffering." When Western people hear this word, they have a negative connotation. However, Buddha did not mean it in this way. He wanted individuals to recognize that their lives did not have much meaning and were not fulfilling. Most important, this could be changed. This is not to deny the fact that people have pleasing experiences. The question is, how superficial or deep are these experiences? Are they lasting and do they change the person for the better? or, are they merely short-lived distractions to keep busy and unthinking? As Albert Schweitzer stated: "Only at quite rare moments have I felt really glad to be alive. I could not but feel with a sympathy full of regret all the pain that I saw around me, not only that of men, but of the whole creation."

Buddha then mentioned six points in life when these experiences become very noticeable: at the trauma of birth, when one becomes ill, as one ages and frailer, as a person starts to fear death, when an individual cannot escape a distasteful lifestyle and if one is separated from a loved one. These are the time of most suffering when a person must be the strongest.

The second truth is often translated as "desire." Once again, it is important to see this in a positive light. The desire is to become a better person and for personal fulfillment. When people are selfless, they become free. People are vain and selfish and wrapped up in their own lives. They are concerned about "me" rather than "you" and "them." The object is to think about oneself as only a small part of the whole, not alone but together with others.

The third truth is an extension or outcome of the second. If people realize the necessity of exchanging selfish for selfless, they will begin to find ways for overcoming the intense need for conceit. It is recognizing that one can and must end peesonal suffering.

This can be accomplished, said Buddha, through the fourth truth or the eightfold path to enlightenment: This is a series of changes designed to release the individual from ignorance and unwitting impulse and pick up a person where he/she is at that moment in life and set him/her down as a different individual who no longer has the disabling human traits. It is a path that one continues to follow throughout all of life.

Right Views: A way of life always consists of more than beliefs that can never be totally ignored, for humans are rational as well as social animals. However, one needs a map to follow.

Right intent. This suggests that people need to make up their minds and hearts as to what they really want out of life. Is it actually enlightenment, or are their desires continually distracted by whims?

Right Speech. In the following three steps, people begin to control their lives, beginning with attention to language and what it shows about their character. Their words should stress charity and veracity.

Right Conduct. These are the ways people live that are similarly based on codes as the Ten Commandments.