This talk explains the Four Noble Truths and how we learn to meet difficult experience with wisdom, not reactivity.

[sound quality poor due to removal of background noise. This talk is truncated by 7 minutes due to excessive noise.]

Having opened the hearts of his five companions with his teaching of the middle way, the Buddha now teaches the four truths of the noble ones (cattāro ariya-saccāni). These are: dukkha; its arising; its cessation; and the path leading to its cessation. This discourse centres on dukkha and craving (taṇhā), because the Buddha is concerned here with what coloured his own practice before his awakening – his sense of drivenness, of trying to get in the future something missing now.

The Buddha as a healer: the ariyasacca as formula rather than as doctrine; perspectives on a tentative history of "The Four Noble Truths" and how to take their medicine, rather than just believing in its efficacy.

This is the first talk in a speaker series titled Fundamental Buddhist Principles 2015. Buddha was a human being, whose mind opened to the truth of things, to the nature of life. He understood the causes of suffering, and developed a path of teaching that enables others to realize the truth of things for themselves. He was awakened, which means greed, hatred, and delusion were uprooted from his mind. So when we meditate, we examine our mind with the goal to understand what is really happening in our encounter with experience. What happens in our seeing, hearing, smelling, or tasting? What happens when we feel with our body? What happens when we think or feel emotions? Is that encounter affected by greed, hatred, or delusion? Or are we seeing the nature of these experiences arising and passing away, with a mind free of clinging? This talk also includes basic Buddhist teachings such as the Four Noble Truths, the Three Training (virtue (sila), meditation (samadhi) and wisdom (panna)), and the Three Primary Contemplative Skills that support meditation (concentration, mindfulness, and investigation).

Second of a series examining the Four Noble Truths.