Soon after his Enlightenment, Gautama the Buddha gave the first sermon, famously known as the Setting of the Wheel of Dharma in Motion, the Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta, which included the Four Noble Truths:
1. Suffering, as a noble truth, is this: Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief, and despair are suffering; association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering — in short, suffering is the five categories of clinging objects.
2. The origin of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is the craving that produces renewal of being accompanied by enjoyment and lust, and enjoying this and that; in other words, craving for sensual desires, craving for being, craving for non-being.
3. Cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is remainder-less fading and ceasing, giving up, relinquishing, letting go and rejecting, of that same craving.
4 The way leading to cessation of suffering, as a noble truth, is this: It is simply the noble eightfold path, that is, right view, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.
With the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha outlined the purpose and aim of his doctrine: the end of suffering. This a very practical goal, which he frequently stressed. He was not concerned with arguments as to whether there is or not a permanent soul, the nature of the universe, or of existence.
This was in great contrast to the Hinduism schools of his time who argued as to the nature and relation of Brahman and atman (the permanent essence of a person, or sou).
As the Buddha pointed out, the human condition is like a soldier who is pierced by a poisoned arrow and is dying. He does not need to know who shot the arrow, what it was made of, or why, but needs the arrow to be removed.
Suffering he saw as an ailment, and the Eightfold path as the cure.
Suffering
The Buddha spoke specifically of suffering, and not just pain, because suffering is a psychological condition. Pain is usually easier to deal with. You can take medication, and most of the time, the injury will not be long lasting. Suffering, on the other hand, can last years, worsening with time.
Suffering, the second truth reveals, is the result of desire: the craving to have, the desire not to have, the need to become, the need not to become. The rest of the teachings involve developing insights and the practice of meditation for overcoming suffering, or taken positively, for finding happiness.
The existential origin of suffering
Suffering is the disease, and desire (craving) is the cause.
But why does desire arise in the first place? Why don’t we just naturally accept pain? What is it about human consciousness that brings about this ailment?
Desire is in fact the result of a fundamental human condition: the Nothingness of consciousness.
The philosopher Jean Paul Sartre (b.1905, d.1980) explains in his master work, Being and Nothingness, that human consciousness (awareness) is not anything, has no essence. We come into self-conscious existence knowing things but unable to know the thing that we are:
The knower is not; he is not apprehensible. He is nothing other than that which brings it about that there is a being-there on the part of the known, a presence.” (Sartre 1984, 246)
From the first onset of self-awareness, from about two years of age, we want to know who we are. This is the origin of desire, of craving, the need to become something. But, because consciousness cannot be conscious of itself (cannot see itself), it has to invent itself with what it can know, the world.
If you sit in meditation long enough and you release your attention from everything that you can be conscious of, you will arrive at pure awareness, pure consciousness of existence. But this pure awareness is a transparency, emptiness, not any-thing that we can identify as an existing thing: it is pure existence.
The only problem with defining our self with the world is that it will always be impermanent, not lasting, and a source of stress.
One of the most important teachings of the Buddha is the principle of dependent origination, or the Paticca-samuppada-vibhanga Sutta. Basically, everything that we are conscious of depends on something else for its existence and is therefore not permanent. Therefore, the self that we create with the world will always be impermanent, and as a result, always a source of stress and suffering.
With existentialism we learn that the cause of desire is the Nothingness of our awareness. It is because we cannot see who we are that we are bound to create a sense of identity from a world which is ever changing.
In other words, the self and the world can never be a source of lasting happiness, but only the satisfaction of desire. It will always lead to suffering.
What we also learn from existentialism is that there is one thing that is not impermanent, and that is our awareness (consciousness).
The philosopher Emmanuel Kant (b. 1724, d.1804) expressed in his masterpiece, The Critique of Pure Reason, the nature of the awareness:
No knowledge can take place in us, no connection or unity of one item of knowledge with another, without that unity of consciousness which precedes all data of intuitions, and by reference to which all representation of objects is alone possible. This pure, original and unchangeable consciousness I shall call transcendental apperception. (B144-A108)
The existential difference
The aim of Buddhism is straight forward and non-metaphysical: a psychological method to end suffering. To purify the mind and avoid attachment to ideas, the Buddha simply prescribed the cure and allowed for healing to take place.
Peace of mind comes about by following the Eightfold Path. Unbinding (Nirvana) is realized with the release of all earthly attachments.
Following the path, however, does require a degree of faith, and much effort. This is because the Buddha did not describe what you would find with the success of the Eightfold Path (and mediation), other than that it would be wonderful.
To complicate matters, in his Not-self Doctrine, the Buddha also proclaimed that everything that we know to exist is not the self.
Here is where existentialism helps us understand the disease and how the treatment works.
With the insights of existentialism, we understand that we search (desire) the world looking for our true self and happiness, because we cannot see who we are, because our self-consciousness is pure existence, an absolute subjective point of view.
And because we are an absolute subjective point of view, everything that we can be conscious of is not our true self, is Not-self.
It is this pure consciousness that we arrive at with wisdom and meditation. It is this pure awareness that is the emptiness.
In the following entries we will discuss in detail the absolute subjective nature of our consciousness, and how this plays into making Buddhism clearer to understand and meditation easier to master.