Buddha's Life Story: How We Got The Four Noble Truths

Hello fellow meditator,

And welcome to this teaching on the Four Noble Truths,

The foundational teachings of Buddhism.

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Greetings friends,

And welcome to this introduction to the Four Noble Truths.

I'm going to offer you in this video a little bit of context and the story behind the Four Noble Truths so that when you are ready to dive into them you really understand where they're coming from.

And also,

If you're interested,

I have a mini course called A Beginner's Guide to Buddhism's Four Noble Truths.

It is free and the link to sign up for it is below,

So go grab that.

And now let's lay the groundwork for the Four Noble Truths.

You probably know that the Four Noble Truths are kind of like the foundational teachings of basically all of Buddhism,

So it's not surprising that their origin story is the origin story really of the tradition itself of Shakyamuni Buddha.

And the story begins with the birth of a prince.

This prince is going to go on to become the Buddha,

But just so you know,

The Buddha wasn't born enlightened.

He was born an ordinary person and then he trained during his lifetime and realized the truth of like the way the world is and that's how he became the Buddha.

And according to a lot of schools of Buddhism,

Anyone can wake up and become a Buddha.

So I'm going to tell you the story of Prince Siddhartha who became the Buddha,

But really in a way it's a story of each of us.

So the story actually begins before the birth of the prince.

He is born to a king and the king and his wife get this prediction that this child they're about to have is either going to be a world-conquering monarch or a great spiritual sage.

And the father wants an heir to carry on his kingdom and his lineage and also Buddha's mother passes away shortly after Buddha is born,

So there's kind of some suffering in the Buddha's origin story.

But anyway,

The father decides that his son is going to be sheltered from all forms of suffering.

He only wants him to see what's good about life.

He wants him to be a prince,

To be happy,

And not to think of leaving this prince's lifestyle and seeking anything else.

So basically the father creates this amazing sort of pleasure realm in the palace where the young prince has everything he wants,

Great food,

Good friends,

Once he's old enough the company of ladies,

And then once he's old enough to get married he gets married off.

He has a beautiful wife.

They have a child together.

So everything seems like it's going great for Prince Siddhartha,

The Buddha to be.

But the story goes that one day the prince rides out from the palace grounds in his chariot and as usual everyone who is old,

Sick,

Or dead is out of sight.

The king only wants the prince to see young healthy beautiful people.

Kind of sounds like a reality tv show or something.

So this carefully curated tour of the city around the palace gets kind of interrupted when the prince sees someone who is old and he's never seen this before.

So he asks his charioteer what's up with that person?

Why is their hair white?

And the charioteer says oh that's because they're old.

And the prince says wait old?

What is this?

And once it's explained to him the prince says like well wait is this going to happen to everybody?

Is this going to happen to me?

And the charioteer says yes it is.

So the Buddha to be,

Prince Siddhartha comes back to the palace.

He's very shaken up.

But then the next day he goes out again in his chariot and this time he sees a sick person.

And again he asks the charioteer what's wrong with that person?

Why are they just lying there not moving?

And the charioteer has to explain sickness to the prince because he's never known it.

So again he comes back to the palace kind of freaked out.

Oh my god this happens to everybody.

Like there's no cure.

Everybody is subject to sickness.

And then the third day the prince goes back out again and this time he sees a dead person.

And this one he really doesn't understand.

So once the charioteer has kind of explained to him what death is and the prince understands wait everyone's gonna die.

Not just me but like all of the subjects that I'm about to become the king of and I can't protect any of them.

It really freaks the prince out.

So he's beginning to have the spiritual crisis of his life.

He is 29 years old we're told at this stage when he has these experiences.

And then the next day he goes out again.

You'd think the king would have stopped him but I guess that wouldn't really work with the the way the myth unfolds the story unfolds.

So he goes out again and the fourth day he sees a renunciate.

Someone who has given up worldly life.

This was kind of a thing that people did back in the Buddhist time which is about 2500 years ago about 500 BC.

People would leave their homes and go wandering in search of truth like capital T Truth.

And they at this time would perform all sorts of like aesthetic practices and meditation practices.

And just basically everybody was out.

Well everybody who was one of the renunciates,

The cool kids in this story,

Was out searching for a way out of suffering or way to bliss or a way to understand themselves.

Everyone seemed to have different goals but Prince Siddhartha's goal was to find a way beyond all forms of suffering.

So when he sees this renunciate and he's like,

Oh wait I have another option?

Like you can do that?

You can just wander off and like search for truth?

He comes back to the palace and he really wrestles in his mind with what to do but he can't kind of unsee what he's seen.

He can't kind of unrealize that everybody is subject to old age,

Sickness,

And death including him,

Including everyone he knows,

And everyone he loves.

So this is really a point in the story where Prince Siddhartha goes on his quest.

This is the beginning of his hero's journey.

He goes out,

Leaves the palace,

There is a famous image of him sort of taking his long hair and cutting it off with a sword and just renouncing his prestige,

His wealth,

His place at the top of the social hierarchy and going out to be no one,

To be a wanderer who's left behind his previous identity.

So again the story goes for six years Prince Siddhartha practices really severe austerities.

At one point he's only eating one grain of rice per day and he tries all these different techniques for really waking up out of this trance,

Like going beyond the state of suffering.

But no matter how deep he goes in his meditations,

When he comes back out he's not fundamentally changed.

So eventually he gives up all these austerities,

He decides to eat again,

Good call Buddha to be,

And famously he finds this tree which is now known as a Bodhi tree,

And Bodhi means awakening,

So it's the tree under which the Buddha awakened.

He goes under this tree,

He sits down,

And he makes this like vow to himself and he says,

I am not leaving this spot until I have figured out how to go beyond suffering,

Until I've woken up to the nature of reality.

So the Buddha sits down and again the story goes over the course of this night,

After the Buddha has made this Buddha to be,

Prince Siddhartha,

Has made this vow,

He's sitting and he's sitting and there's all these challenges.

It's a really great story,

But for our purposes today,

The important part is he begins to understand the way things are.

So over the course of the night he sees beings being born and dying,

He just sees the workings of reality,

He sees how karma works,

He sees how people's actions that they think are going to bring them happiness bring them suffering instead.

And by the end of the night he has woken up,

And this is like the moment that Buddhism looks to as like the template for what each of us is capable of.

It's really cutting all the way through ignorance,

Waking up to reality,

Going completely beyond suffering.

So in the morning,

Prince Siddhartha has become the Buddha and he just,

The story goes again,

He just sits there under that tree for an additional seven weeks,

I think,

Just like blown away by what he's realized.

And at first he doesn't even plan to teach because he's like,

How can I even explain this to anyone?

Like no one's gonna understand,

No one even cares,

No one wants to know,

I'm just gonna,

You know,

Live out my life free,

Free from all suffering.

But the gods appear to him and they ask him to teach.

And so the first teaching that the Buddha gives after his awakening is the Four Noble Truths.

So this is why the Four Noble Truths are so important in Buddhism,

Or maybe to put it another way,

Because these Four Noble Truths are so important to Buddhism,

They play a really key role in the story of the Buddha's life.

They're the beginning of his teaching career,

Sort of the second stage of his life.

So according to this story,

The Four Noble Truths are the teaching that the Buddha gives to five of his former companions.

They see him after he's had this experience.

And in the beginning,

They don't really want to have anything to do with him because he like quit the practices that they were doing together.

So they're a little bit like wanting to shun him.

But then they get curious because he's so transformed,

He's so radiant looking.

And so he offers them this teaching.

And this is the first time in the Buddhist tradition that the wheel of Dharma has been turned.

You might see this wheel symbol.

I'll make another video to explain what that is.

But if you see this wheel,

It has eight spokes in it.

And the idea is that he turns the wheel,

He puts it in motion.

So there's a wheel of suffering,

But he's put in motion,

The wheel that leads to freedom.

So it's like this big,

Important moment in the history of Buddhism,

It's kind of the foundation of Buddhism.

And these Four Noble Truths are what the Buddha teaches.

And I think it's actually helpful to know this story because the Four Noble Truths really revolve around the suffering that we experience as humans and how to end it.

And a lot of times,

People focus on the suffering part,

And they don't necessarily focus on the how to end it part.

So what I want to make clear is really that these Four Noble Truths,

Even though they're all about suffering,

Are focused on the path out of suffering.

So the Four Noble Truths are,

First of all,

The truth of Dukkha,

Of unsatisfactoriness,

That as long as we haven't woken up out of our sort of trance of thinking of ourselves as separate from other people,

Separate from nature,

Of thinking of ourselves as limited in this way,

Of thinking that we're going to go on more or less as we are sort of indefinitely,

Denying death,

Denying the reality that we will get sick,

We will age.

So until we wake up out of that,

And we stop expecting things that are never going to happen,

We're obviously going to have some kind of mismatch between what we want and what happens in our lives.

So that's Dukkha.

It can mean anything from like really severe suffering of like losing a loved one or being in a terrible accident,

All the way to just like this kind of subtle sense that life could be better.

Sort of like scrolling through Instagram and thinking like,

I'd like to go there.

Like,

My life is okay,

But that life looks like they've arrived.

The second Noble Truth is that there is a cause for suffering.

This one doesn't sound super exciting,

But if you understand Buddhism,

It's really a tradition about cause and effect in a lot of ways.

So anything that has a cause,

If you stop the cause,

The effect will also stop.

So the good news is suffering or Dukkha isn't just like part of life,

It's actually caused by us.

And if we stop causing it,

We won't continue to experience it indefinitely.

The third Noble Truth is that there is an end to all Dukkha.

So we're not just talking about like,

You know,

You don't have enough money for a while and then you get a raise and your money situation is fine.

Like we're talking about no more Dukkha,

No more suffering,

But also no more like subtle dissatisfaction with life.

No more wondering if there's something better for you out there.

Like you're just done with all forms of Dukkha.

And then the fourth Noble Truth,

Buddhism is a religion of lists,

The fourth Noble Truth is the Noble Eightfold Path.

It's like the path to get from unawakened life to awakened life.

So that's also really good news because if it were just the case that like you could stop all Dukkha altogether,

That wouldn't necessarily do most of us a lot of good because like how do you do that?

You know,

How do you go from a 21st century life where it's busy,

There's always stuff going on,

A lot of us are addicted to phones and in the middle of this pandemic,

You know,

All sorts of other things that are probably not the best thing for our mental or physical health.

Like there's just so much to suck us in to this idea that we're gonna finally get what we want and it's gonna make us happy forever and that's what keeps us stuck.

So this Noble Eightfold Path basically gives us like a map for how to get from here to where we want to be,

Which is free,

Which is also here,

But we don't realize it yet.

So that is what I wanted to present.

Just a little bit of context,

A little bit of the story behind the Four Noble Truths so that you understand the focus on suffering,

But also that it's a focus really on going beyond suffering and then just that very brief recap of what the Four Noble Truths are.

So again,

If you want a deeper dive on the Four Noble Truths,

Check out the info with this episode or this video and you will find a link to a free mini course and it's a deeper dive into each of the Four Noble Truths.

It also comes with some exercises to help you,

You know,

Meditate on them or reflect on them in daily life.

It's really meant to help you go from an intellectual understanding to like a heart understanding of what the Four Noble Truths are and how they can really change your life.

So go grab that now.

Also,

Thank you for watching or listening.

I appreciate your joining me.

I hope that this whets your appetite to learn more about the Four Noble Truths.

So I will see you,

I hope,

In that course and in the subsequent lessons and may you be free from suffering.