The Four Noble Truths

1. Life is suffering (symptom)

a.suffering (duhkha): pain, fleetingness of life, frustration of desire, emotional distress

b. occasions: birth -> sickness -> decrepitude -> death -> rebirth according to your karma (dispositions or habits)

2. The root, or cause, of suffering is craving and attachment (diagnosis)

a. craving (tanha): personal clinging, egoism

b. occasions a (false) sense of individual, enduring self

3. Cessation of suffering comes from cessation of craving (etc.) which is nirvana experience (prognosis)

a. nirvana reveals a consciousness that is to be described as an "emptiness" (sunyata) of self

b. nirvana is blissful, the supreme personal good

4. The way to cessation of craving (and cessation of suffering = Nirvana experience) is to follow the Noble Eightfold Path (prescription)

  1. right thought (e.g., remembering the Four Noble Truths)
  2. right resolve (e.g., aspiration to experience Nirvana and to show compassion toward all living things)
  3. right speech (truth, charity; lies promote craving)
  4. right behavior (show compassion in all action, towards others and towards oneself)
  5. right livelihood (promote happiness and Buddhist values; don't be a poison peddler, slave dealer, butcher, arms maker, tax collector, etc.)
  6. right effort (become capable of enormous exertion while remaining calm and steady like an ox)
  7. right mindfulness (all we are is the result of what we think: be high-minded and self-critical)
  8. right meditation (achieve mental silence through practicing meditation; achieve a new mode of experience; cf., the jnana yoga of the Gita)