This is a common experience for people learning about Buddhism:
- You have heard Buddhism has a good reputation, you suspect it contains wisdom
- You say, “Right so, what do Buddhists believe?”
- You are told, “It’s all about the Four Noble Truths”
- “What’s the first Noble Truth?”
- “Existence is suffering”
- “GTFO, that is dumb and obviously wrong! Existence is a mix of suffering and joy.”
What’s this misunderstanding?
The First Noble Truth is not the bullshit it appears on the face to obviously be.
Firstly, revisit #1 above: you can credit that Buddhism contains some wisdom. The Buddhists ARE NOT SAYING that every moment of existence is pure agony. If they were, they’d be fucking stupid, and you probably know they’re not.
Therefore, the First Noble Truth must be saying something more subtle, more wise, about suffering. The rest of this post is to explain that more subtle more wise meaning of “Existence is suffering”.
You’ve always known something is off
The First Noble Truth is validating something you’ve known all your life, but don’t talk about because you don’t want to worry your Mam.
In your innermost heart, you’ve always felt that something seems a bit wrong, something is broken. “Ugh, what is wrong with me!?”
The Buddha says it’s alright to feel that way, there is actually wisdom in it. The “what’s wrong with me” feeling isn’t that you’re a loser: everyone has it, it’s the nature of being a Being. And that’s good news, that is affirming of your experience.
The answer to “what is wrong with me!?” is dukkha, the truth of suffering.
Vedana quality
Buddhism doesn’t say that all sensations are unpleasant. Buddhism teaches that sensations can be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral; this is called the vedana of the particular sensation. (By ‘sensation’ I mean anything felt, seen, heard, experienced in any way.) So if some sensations are nice (sugar, orgasm, juicy steak) then why say “All is suffering!”? Because even the nicest sensations do not fix the above ‘there’s something wrong’ feeling. Existential dissatisfaction remains regardless of how nice your experiences are. They don’t get to the core of the existential problem.
Impermanence is related to dissatisfactoriness
There are Three Characteristics of all sensations:
- Everything that exists is impermanent
- Everything that exists is unsatisfactory
- Nothing that exists is you yourself.
The first two have a philosophical relation that any child can see: if everything comes and goes, it stands to reason nothing can really satisfy you.
Imagine you got the fantasy: Mexican weathergirl girlfriend who’s crazy about you, solid-gold house. Ok, you’ve got that. But in 30 years, she’s no longer beautiful. And your wealth might grow, but you have to leave it behind because there’s no tow-bar on a hearse. So what did that get you? Temporary happiness, no more. And Buddhism accepts the existence of temporary happiness, and indeed cheers for it. Temporary happiness is desirable and you should give it (create it) any time you get the chance. But it doesn’t satisfy. That’s the First Noble Truth.
Sitting versus standing. Nothing is in-and-of-itself pleasant
I forget where I heard this one. Maybe someone can find the reference; I think it’s some popular internet source. It really helped me understand dukkha.
Imagine you sink into a nice comfy couch. That’s a pleasure, isn’t it? Feels good. You’re comfortable. Now you stay there. And stay there. And stay there. Now you’ve been sitting in a comfy couch for five hours. You want to get up. What if you kept sitting there? You’d soon really want to get up, really really. What had been a source of pleasure starts to be a source of pain.
And you get relief. You stand up. Ahhhhh! Feels good. Now you stay standing. And stay standing. And stay standing for hours and hours. Starts to hurt. Now you want to sit down. Standing becomes a source of pain. But it was a source of pleasure at the start of this paragraph.
The above shows that sitting is not a source of pleasure. Standing is not a source of pleasure. Pleasure comes from the mind, from a confluence of factors. Could you keep things varied and live an overall dynamic pleasant life? Absolutely you could (and should) but that’s not the philosophical point being made here. I’m not saying you can’t have a mostly pleasant life. I’m saying there is nothing that is in-and-of-itself (inherently, svabhava) a source of pleasure.
Dessert is wonderful. Me I like banoffe pie. What is your favourite dessert? Imagine getting a serving of it. That would be nice. Imagine getting two servings of it, now three. Imagine being forced at gunpoint to eat twenty servings of your favourite dessert. The feelings would prove that nothing is an inherent source of pleasure. Which is what The Buddha says as “nothing whatsoever is satisfying”: the First Noble Truth.
Imagine hearing the best joke you’ve heard over and over again, repeated constantly for a week. No joke is inherently funny; the funniness isn’t inherent in the words. If the funniness were inherent in the words, it would still be funny the 888th time in a row.
Hearing the best song over and over again: same thing. Gets tiresome.
You may think of sex as the peak pleasure. But you know that feeling when you’ve been having sex a long time, and you’re sweaty and warm, and panting, and drained, and you say, “Let’s take a break, chica?” Why do you say that? Because having sex in that moment feels bad. Imagine you had to keep having sex then. There’s a gunman by your bed and he says, “No, you two can’t stop, you have to keep going.” And that’s been going on for 12 hours. That would be a nightmare. So is sex a nightmare? Is sex inherently-and-always a pleasure? Buddha says nothing whatsoever is inherently-and-always a pleasure.
I hope this post helped one person understand the doctrine of suffering a little bit better. May all conscious beings get happiness. May all conscious beings end their suffering.
I saw the title and came to correct or explain the view only to find the post was correcting a common misconception. I will say that to me buddhism is kinda existential. I could read and read and read but my mind sorta had to get it.
Eh?
Im not a buddhist, but i’m buddhism curious and have been for about a decade.
To me, the first noble truth relies on the second noble truth. If I were introducing someone to buddhism, i would string one and two together with a coordinating conjunction in order to avoid putting that person off… Like so:
"Existence is suffering and the cause of suffering (dukkha) is craving, desire, or attachment (tanha) " all in one quick breath. Then break it down into equal parts.
How could someone new to it be expected to accept that “existence is suffering”? By itself, the first noble truth is straight-up bleak. But knowing the noble truths together, it can all be reconciled.
Just read the tao.
A lot of the confusion over the idea is that the word suffering doesn’t really fit the concept of the original words used.
Dukka as concept includes the usual usage of the English word suffering, but also contains more.
It’s a word that embraces a wide range of human discontent and dissonance in response to life. It can be what people think of as suffering, like grief and physical pain. But it can also be anger and fear. And, it can simply be ennui or stress.
Once that is integrated into the English usage of suffering as well, it starts to be easier to understand the concept of the first truth.
And life really is a state of existence into which dissonance will lead to distress at sime scale for everyone.
From there, accepting that the distress is partially due to internal processes (emotions and thoughts) is a much easier process for someone new to the subject. Attachment is the part of suffering that can be mitigated. Buddhism is (at least by principle) simply a process to learn how to mitigate that attachment.
Buddhism won’t keep a broken bone from throbbing in pain. But it can help move past that pain once it stops, and sometimes help people experience that pain in a less intense way. You can’t stop nerve signals from happening by virtue of Buddhism, but you can change how you respond to those signals.
yeah its a lot like desire when its used in the translations. I notice both are more often not used for a moe complex translation. It was a big thing for me to look at the third truth as more about acceptance of life as it is than to remove desire.
Thanks for this. I’ve always been interested in Buddhism but have never taken it further. As an agnostic I find it’s the only religion I could possibly pursue. I like the concept of pleasure as being an impermanent experience but I think you could therefore say that suffering is impermanent as well rather than the default state. If you are doing nothing, is that suffering?
If you are doing nothing, is that suffering?
Total cessation is the total cessation of suffering, yes, and is liberation.
The answer to your question depends on what you mean by ‘doing nothing’. If you’re lying in bed, you are still very active in many ways, the mind is very active.
Allowing for the active mind, my thought of “doing nothing” was meant as a neutral activity that’s purpose is neither positive or negative. I guess, as with all topics, generalizations do little to address the points they are being used to support. I appreciate your post as I’m always interested in thinking about all the ways we exist. Perhaps, if Buddhism’s first truth is this, then it is meant as a way to cope with the suffering that was/is common in life. Either your own or that which you feel through your empathy with others. I personally don’t require this base case in order to deal with the world as I encounter it. Thanks again.
peanut gallerying here but the key thing is the impermanence. So its not looking point and time as much as the general overall experience we have in life.
Even in very fine blissful states like the formless ones, there is a subtle dukkha.
That’s why the Buddha said “Go beyond, go beyond, go completely beyond, go bleedin’ totally completely beyond, be grounded in awakening”
