Baishui Zen

It’s not that I have the audacity to rename the central doctrine of Buddhist thought or anything like that, it’s that for the sake of these introductory posts, we want to clarify as much as we can surrounding this doctrine, which I think is sometimes poorly explained in what I can only call “popular culture.” Certainly when I was educated in school about the basic tenets of Buddhism as part of world history, I was explained a version of these truths, but the version that I got was pretty badly garbled, and not necessarily being explained well either. Because of misunderstandings about things like mind, self, suffering and so on, the version that I got was being passed through a very Westernizing lens, which in some ways overcomplicated some things, and in other ways, missed some important ideas.

So let’s start with the title. The relevant Sanskrit word is “arya.” It does indeed mean “noble,” but it also means “non-ordinary/extraordinary,” or “precious” or “valuable,” as well as “pure.” I think all these words are relevant here, but I can only pick one, so I did. There’s a very pervasive throughline in Buddhist imagery of valuable gems and jewels and metals being used as metaphors for high teachings and other hard-to-fully-grok ideas that are essential for good practice and spiritual progress. The most important example of this kind of metaphor is the “triple crown jewel” of the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha (monastic community) which will probably get its own post down the line, and are regarded as treasures, as well as “refuges,” e.g. things you can rely on for support.

The word “noble” alongside “exalted” has another direction of imagery that’s important to Buddhism, which is imagery surrounding a great warrior or hero. The Buddha is sometimes called “Conqueror” because of his defeat of certain types of bad spirits that delude people from the truths we have been discussing. So there’s a level of meaning to which it refers to a sort of spiritual elite, and it’s not (just) that the truths themselves are necessarily noble, but rather, they are the truths that noble beings recognize and hold most precious.

In summary: it’s not that I disagree with the use of the word “noble” for this purpose at all. It’s a multi-faceted concept that resists simple interpretation. Rather, in this little introductory article, in the spirit of making things as clear as possible (as I have come to understand them, all mistakes are my own), I want to try to replace as much Sanskrit or Pali terminology as possible with natural English terminology that mirrors our own usage of the words. Of course, I’m going to tell you where I do this as I go, so that when you go read other articles on this blog, read along with us in the sutras or the Zen record, or are just off in the world discussing the Dharma with friends, you use the terminology correctly, and most importantly, can understand what it really means.

So, let’s understand these four most precious truths.

• 1. All of life will be filled with discontentment.

The scriptures use the word dukkha for what is commonly translated as “suffering” in English. This is a somewhat misleading word. Several examples of this dukkha are listed. They are: birth, advancing in age, death, as well as grief, lamentation, sorrow, pain, and furthermore, not getting what one wants in life, and anything else causes one to cling to one’s desires. We’ll talk separately about what’s meant by “clinging,” for now, let’s focus on the rest. I certainly don’t want to suggest that those things cannot be causes of suffering, because they absolutely can. But it’s important to recognize the conceptual difference between suffering from e.g. sorrow, and feeling sorrow because of e.g. a serious disappointment with how something turned out in life.

A simple example: Consider a case where someone is interested in getting a promotion at work, and it doesn’t pan out. This person may not need the promotion to get by, it’s not like missing out on it causes them to experience any sort of direct harm. But if they were really banking on getting it, and they don’t, the feeling they experience is not necessarily a form of suffering. It’s more like profound disappointment. Similar analogies apply for other kinds of loss, grief, and so on. Even with pain, we can feel pain and not necessarily describe it as suffering. Perhaps it’s an inconvenience or a nuisance, and we might want it to stop, but depending on our own disposition, we may or may not think of it as suffering. For this reason, I think the more apt translation for the breadth of this concept is “discontentment.” In Approaching the Path, his Holiness describes it as “dissatisfaction,” and says that living with bad karma and afflictive emotions are dukkha, but are probably not going to be literally suffering all the time.

Among all the types of discontentment, the Buddha lists roughly three, depending on where you draw some of the conceptual boundaries. Roughly, they are, the discontentment coming from various types of pain. We’ve understood for a long time that physical and emotional pain are essentially the same phenomenon to us, as anyone with serious heart break or grief can tell you. This category includes physical pain and the emotional pain we just discussed. The second class of dissatisfaction comes from not getting those things which you want in life, or also, from getting things you want in life. Anything related to “worldly pleasures.” This can be things like FOMO (fear of missing out), indulging in food and drink that are unhealthy when we shouldn’t, or using escapism to avoid responsibilities or bad feelings. These things give us the illusion of avoiding our problems, but they leave us with a sense of discontentment because we cannot hide from ourselves, and we know that these behaviors are bad for us. That sense of dissatisfaction from indulgence or losing out, respectively, comprise the second class. Finally, the third class of suffering is the suffering of “conditioning.” This refers to the inescapable process of being born, aging and dying, all while having a mind and body that can be uncooperative or even impossible to fully control.

This last class is quite special, and ties in with the Buddhist belief in reincarnation, and better and worse rebirths, with the eventual goal of escaping the cycle all together, with Nirvana. The cycle of rebirth and death in an existence filled with this discontentment is called samsara, which literally means “wandering,” because when we are in it, our rebirths are somewhat aimless, without specifically cultivating the path towards better rebirths. These rebirths have overall less of this kind of suffering, better control of the mind and body, and in more esoteric traditions, are associated with all kinds of spirits and cosmic beings that live longer, even extremely long, lives.

• 2. Discontentment arises from craving.

The Sanskrit word that is often translated as “desire” here is tanha, and I think a better fit here is “craving.” It does refer to desires, but not casual desires like when you feel like taking a walk on a nice day. It refers to longing, impulses, urges, cravings, and so on, and often can be used to mean “greed.” You also see it translated sometimes as “thirst.” This difference is important to understand because it’s easy to fall into trivial sorts of confusion along the lines of “did the Buddha himself desire to help people? Did he desire to eat food ever? If not, because he’s perfectly enlightened, did it just so happen by coincidence that he ate food to sustain his body?” When viewed this way, it becomes clear these questions are pointless. Of course the Buddha wanted to help others achieve mental and spiritual liberation. But we can see the difference between the understanding of others’ plight, and wanting to help them, compared to say, the urge to go eat an entire chocolate cake. One of them is simple compassion, the other a type of gluttony or greed.

The Buddha taught that the root cause of duḥkha is ignorance, which we recall is a mental factor that misapprehends reality. It can be eliminated by
the wisdom that sees things as they really are — as empty of inherent
existence. We’re now ready to put together the basic plan the Buddha has for us to reach enlightenment for ourselvse.

By gradually eradicating ignorance, as well as the other afflictions, we can bring greater satisfaction and freedom into our lives. The Buddha teaches us the transitory nature of our cravings and afflictive emotions, which we allow to pass over us without controlling us. This gives us better control of mind and body, resulting in less greed, and more tranquility. After all the causes of ignorance have been eliminated, we attain the final true cessation of discontentment and suffering, and depending on your degree of religious belief, either leads to better rebirths, or to enlightenment. In either case, this release from cyclic existence is nirvaṇa.

The third noble truth is, simply enough, that this plan will work.

• 3. Liberation from cyclic existence is possible.

The fourth truth is a sketch of a plan for what practices you should adopt towards this end. Since it’s all a big domino effect starting from eliminating ignorance, a significant portion of these practices are forms of mind training, and are called the Noble Eightfold Path. Many segments of these posts will be about its contents, and there’s no super brief explanation available to us. We’ll summarize it as:

• 4. Proper mental, physical and spiritual practice is how the plan is put into motion.

The concept of dependent arising or origination is the most powerful weapon against afflictive ignorance. This makes it the root of a huge variety of mind trainings along the path to liberation, and has been described by His Holiness as the “slogan” for all of Buddhist thought. We’ll continue developing these ideas in the next post, by explaining this concept, how it is woven in to the precious truths, and in particular, how exactly it fits in to this process of eliminating discontentment.