Early Buddhist Teachings: The Four True Realities for the Spiritually Ennobled

Abstract

What are generally known as the four ‘Noble Truths’ (Pali ariya-sacca , Skt ārya-satya ) are the focus of what Vin . i .10–12 portrays as the first sermon of the Buddha: the Dhamma-cakka-ppavattana Sutta . As found in the early Sutta (Skt Sūtra ) collections known as the Nikāya s or Āgama s, the ariya-sacca s are subjects of an advanced teaching intended for those who have, by the ‘step-by-step’ discourse (see p. 48), been spiritually prepared to have them pointed out. If the mind is not calm and receptive, talk of dukkha (Skt duḥkha ) – the mental and physical pains of life, and the painful, stressful, unsatisfactory aspects of life that engender these – may be too disturbing, leading to states such as depression, denial and self-distracting tactics. The Buddha’s own discovery of the ariya-sacca s was from the fourth jhāna (Skt dhyāna ), a state of profound meditative calm ( M . i .249). The Mahāyāna later came to see the teachings on the ariya-sacca s as themselves preliminary to higher teachings – but there is none of this in the Nikāya s or Āgama s. In these, they are not teachings to go beyond, or unproblematic simple teachings, but about deep realities to be seen by direct insight ( S . v .442–3 ( BW .362–3)), and then responded to in appropriate ways. The translation of ariya-sacca as ‘Noble Truth’ (e.g. Anderson, 1999), while well established in English-language literature on Buddhism, is the ‘least likely’ of the possible meanings (Norman, 1997: 16). To unpack and translate this compound, one needs to look at the meanings of each word, and then how they are related. The term sacca (Skt satya ) is regularly used in the sense of ‘truth’, but also to mean a ‘reality’, a genuinely real existent. In pre-Buddhist works, Chāndogya Upaniṣad 6.15.3 sees the universal Self as satya , and Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad 2.3 talks of two forms of Brahman : sat , which is mortal, and tyam , which is immortal, with 2.3.6 implying that the latter is ‘the real behind the real [ sayasya satyam iti ]’ (Olivelle, 1996: 28), that is, satya encompasses all reality, which is twofold in its nature. There is also a connection to sat , meaning existence.