What Did the Buddha Teach?

The early sutras present the Buddha's teaching as the solution to a problem. The problem is the fundamental problem of life. In Pali the problem is named dukkha; in Sanskrit duhkha. These words can be translated as stress, anxiety, discomfort, dis-ease, or suffering.

In a passage in the Majjhima Nikaya the Buddha says he has always made known just two things; namely dukkha and the cessation of dukkha.

This statement may be regarded as expressing the basic orientation of Buddhism for all times and in all places. The classic formulation is 'The Four Noble Truths': the truth of the nature of dukkha, the truth of the nature of dukkha's cause, the truth of the nature of dukkha's cessation, and the truth of the nature of the path leading to dukkha's cessation.

The temptation to think of these four 'truths' as a kind of Buddhist creed should be resisted. The Four Noble Truths do not represent truth claims that one must intellectually assent to when one makes the decision to follow the Buddha's Teaching, on becoming a Buddhist. Part of the problem is with the word 'truth'. The Pali word sacca and the Sanskrit word satya can certainly be translated as truth, but they can equally be rendered as 'real' or 'actual thing.'

We're not dealing with propositional truths with which we must either agree or disagree, but with four 'true things' or 'realities' whose nature, we are told, the Buddha realized or finally understood on the night of his awakening.

The teachings of the Buddha therefore state dukkha, its cause, its cessation, and the path to its cessation which we fail to see as they are, and this is as true for Buddhist as for non-Buddhist. A Buddhist is one committed to trying to follow the Buddha's prescriptions for coming to see these realities as they are.

One of the earliest summary statements of these truths is from the Samyutta Nikaya:

This is the noble of dukkha: birth is dukkha, aging is dukkha, sickness is dukkha, dying is dukkha, sorrow, grief, pain, unhappiness, and unease are dukkha; being united with what is not liked is dukkha, separation from what is liked is dukkha; not to get what one wants is dukkha; in short, the five aggregates of grasping are suffering.
     This is the noble truth of the origin of dukkha; the thirst for repeated existence which, associated with delight and greed, delights in this and that, namely the thirst for the objects of sense desire, the thirst for existence, and the thirst for non-existence.
     This is the noble truth of the cessation of dukkha: the complete fading away and cessation of this very thirst—its abandoning, relinquishing, releasing, letting go.
     This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: the noble eightfold path, namely right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.