Truths that Are Noble

Tonight’s Āsāḷha Pūjā. Āsāḷha is the name of the month; pūjā means homage. We’re paying homage to an event that happened on the full moon night in *Āsāḷha *during the first year after the Buddha’s awakening.

Immediately after his awakening, he stayed at the Bodhi tree for seven weeks, experiencing the bliss of release. Then the question came: Should he teach? At first, he was disinclined.

This upset one of the Brahmās, Sahampati. He came down and begged with the Buddha, “Please teach. There are those with little dust in their eyes.”

The Buddha considered on his own, and he saw that, yes, there would be people who would benefit from the teaching. So even though it would require a lot of effort on his part, he decided to set out the Dhamma and Vinaya so that other people could practice as well, find the same bliss that he had found: the bliss of release.

He first thought of teaching his two teachers from very early on during his time in the wilderness, but then he realized that both of them had died and gone to the formless realms, where they were unreachable. They had totally withdrawn from the five senses. There was no way he could contact them. So he then thought of the five monks who had looked after him during his austerities. They were near Benares.

So he walked there. It took about a week.

At first, they were disinclined to listen to him. They had seen him abandon his austerities, and they believed that austerities were the way to awakening. But even though when they saw him coming from afar they had made up their minds not to greet him or show him any deference, when he did come, though, they greeted him as before. But they kept calling him “friend.”

He said, “Don’t call me friend. The Tathāgata is awakened.” They asked, “How can you be awakened when you gave up on the path?” He said, “No, there is another path, a true path. I’ve found the deathless. And if you listen to my instructions and do as I say, you can find the deathless, too.”

They were still unpersuaded until he repeated his claim three times and then added, “Look, in all the years that you’ve known me, have I ever made a claim like this?” Well, no, he hadn’t. So they were more inclined to listen.

And he taught them the path to the deathless.

That first night, one of them, Koṇḍañña, gained the Dhamma eye, seeing that whatever is subject to origination is also subject to passing away—which meant that he had found something that was not subject to origination and not subject to passing away, which was the deathless. He had his first glimpse and then was ordained as the first monk in the Buddha’s Saṅgha.

So as we say, that’s the night when the triple gem or the triple refuge became complete. The Buddha was now a teaching Buddha. His Dhamma had effect. It could bring someone to awakening and establish the noble Saṅgha.

In the course of that talk, he discussed the noble eightfold path as the middle way between two extremes, both of which were ignoble: the ignoble extreme of sensual indulgence, and the ignoble extreme of austerities. That surprised the five monks. They thought that the path of the householder indulging in the senses was ignoble, and the path of austerities was noble. But the Buddha said, no, both extremes are ignoble because they don’t take you to the deathless.

Then he pointed out the noble path: the noble eightfold path. The first factor of that noble eightfold path was right view, which is composed of the four noble truths. So, noble, noble, noble: noble goal, noble path, noble truths.

People sometimes question what’s noble about them. Was the Buddha just advertising? But no, “noble” for him had a very specific meaning—in fact, two very specific meanings.

As he said, the search for what’s deathless is noble. Any other search that doesn’t aim at a happiness that doesn’t die is not noble. After all, you yourself are subject to aging, illness, and death. If you look for happiness in things that are also subject to aging, illness, and death, what’s special about it? What’s accomplished? You gain them and you lose them. And as he’d seen on the night of his awakening, he had gained things and lost these things many, many times over the course of many, many lifetimes.

The amount of tears he had shed in the course of all that gaining and losing was greater than the waters in the ocean. This applies to all of us.

So what’s noble about a search like that? You gain things, you do good, you get rewarded for your good actions, and then—enjoying those rewards—you get careless and complacent, and you fall back down again. Again and again.

All too often, we do a lot of things that are very unskillful in our search for happiness, and we end up gaining things that we then lose. When that happens, we lose in both ways: The things we gain leave us, and then if we’ve been acting in an unskillful way to gain them, we have to suffer the results of those bad actions.

So when the Buddha said that the truths were noble and the path was noble, that meant that they led to a deathless goal, something that wouldn’t change. After all, that’s what the Buddha said when he made up his mind that he would teach, “Open are the doors to the deathless.” When he first met with the group of five monks, he said, “The deathless has been found. And if you follow what I teach you, you’ll find it as well.”

That’s the main meaning of the word noble.

Think about that. The Buddha found something that doesn’t die. We’re so used to death in this world. It happens all over the place. It’s normal. We’ve accepted the fact that whatever happiness we have is going to have to end at death.

But the Buddha’s basically saying, “No, you don’t have to accept that.” There is something that we can touch within the mind that’s outside of space, outside of time, so it’s not subject to any change at all.

That’s an audacious claim. And it’s an inspiring claim as well. Otherwise, what do we have in life? Things we gain then we lose. We gain them again, lose them again.

As he’d seen on the night of his awakening, the universe doesn’t go anywhere. It just keeps spinning around and around. But it is possible to get out of that spinning.

And the path that takes you out is a noble path. The truths that show you the right way to follow that path: Those are noble truths.

So that’s the first meaning of “noble” in terms of the noble truths: They’re part of the path to the deathless.

The second meaning is that these truths are universal. They’re true for everybody—not only for human beings, but also for all beings.

The Buddha’s solution to the problem of death is something unexpected, but it’s true for everyone. The solution is that if you understand suffering and how suffering is caused, then you can put an end to suffering by ending the cause.

The pattern of those truths is true for everybody. Whether you’re Thai, American, Indian, Pakistani, man, woman, old, young, divine beings, human beings—the same pattern works for everybody. To find the deathless, you first have to understand the problem of suffering.

What is suffering? Just this evening I received a chapter from a book written by a journalist. She had a section on Wat Mettā, and it gave some background on the Buddha’s teaching. The first thing she said: “First noble truth: Life is suffering.” It seems that this misunderstanding is never going to die. The Buddha never said that life is suffering, or simply that there is suffering. His first noble truth said something much more useful and to the point: Suffering is the clinging-aggregates—the passion and desire you have for form, feeling, perceptions, thought-constructs, consciousness.

It’s like an addiction. We lay claim to these things. We construct our idea of who we are out of those things. We search for food using these activities. So we think they’re really good, that we can’t do without them.

But the Buddha points out, “No, this is where true suffering is: the fact that you have to cling, you have to hold on.”

You can’t hold on for long, because as you hold on to these things and feed off of them, you use them up. Then you have to find more and more and more. Even as you’re feeding, there’s the stress of knowing that you’re going to have to find a new source of food for your next meal. You’re trying to hang on to things that will disappoint.

So that’s suffering. It’s caused by three kinds of craving: craving for sensuality, your fascination with sensual fantasies; craving for becoming, the idea of taking on an identity in a world of experience so that you can find something you desire within that world; and craving for non-becoming, when you’ve gained a becoming and you no longer want it, you don’t like it, you want to see it destroyed.

These three kinds of craving: That’s what the Buddha said was the cause of suffering.

The third noble truth is that suffering will end when you can end these three kinds of craving. And the fourth noble truth is the truth of the path that you follow to end those three kinds of craving. It has eight factors, which come down to three: virtue, concentration, and discernment.

Now, this pattern is true for everyone. This is why these truths are noble in the sense of being universal. They were true in the time of the Buddha; they’re true now. They were true in India; they’re true everywhere.

To solve the problem of suffering in line with them, we have to comprehend the suffering, abandon the cause, so that we can realize the cessation by developing the path. Those are the duties appropriate to the truths. That pattern, too, is universal. There’s no other way to find the deathless.

So those are two of the meanings of “noble” from the Buddha’s point of view: They lead to a deathless goal and they’re universal—true for everyone.

The word “noble” also has two meanings in English that are relevant. One is “preeminent.” These are the primary truths in what the Buddha taught. As he once said, all he taught was suffering and the end of suffering. Suffering there encompasses the cause; the end of suffering encompasses the path as well. This was the focus of his teachings. As Ven. Sāriputta once said, just as all the footprints of all the legged animals in the world can be encompasses by the footprint of an elephant, in the same way, all true Dhammas are encompassed by the four noble truths.

So when you know these truths, you know what’s important. Anything that was not related to the problem of suffering and how to solve it, the Buddha wouldn’t discuss. His teaching had that strong a focus.

When we really understand his teachings, we realize that we have to use them for that purpose: understanding suffering so that we can abandon the cause and realize the end of suffering. Any other use for the teaching is not legitimate.

So when you learn a teaching of the Buddha, ask yourself, “How does this help free me from suffering?” When you think in those terms, you’re thinking in the right terms.

These truths are also preeminent in the sense that they’re the most important truths in the world. As the Buddha said, we’re born with this question in mind. One of the first things we meet with in life is suffering, pain, and our reaction is twofold. One, we’re bewildered: “How does this happen? Why is this happening?” You can imagine as a child when you don’t understand language, and there’s pain, you’re bewildered: “Why is there pain?”

The second reaction is a search: “Is there someone who can help put an end to this pain?” So the truths that put an end to pain, put an end to suffering, are the most important truths. The Buddha is offering these truths as a way of ending our bewilderment and ending that search. You find the way to put an end to suffering, and that’s the end of the problem.

So these truths are preeminent both within the Buddha’s teachings as a body of doctrine, and in relation to the truths of the world as a whole. These are the most important things to know.

Think about all the philosophy and all the science and other knowledge that people have worked hard to know: If it can’t solve the problem of suffering, what good does it do? This is why the Buddha saw this as special. He saw that this was the important teaching, the important problem, and these truths were the important truths to know and to follow.

And finally, there’s another meaning of noble: honorable. These truths are ennobling if you take them on. Someone might ask, “What’s honorable or noble about craving or clinging?” It’s not the craving or clinging that’s noble, it’s the truths about them. As the Buddha said, the things you crave, the things you cling to: Are they really worth clinging to? Is it really worth it being a slave to these cravings, a slave to these clingings?

The Buddha gets you to step back from them and realize that these are the things that are causing you to suffer. When you step back from those things, you say basically that you’re not going to obey your thirst anymore. You’re not going to be a slave to your cravings and clingings. You’re going to be responsible, honorable. After all, in causing ourselves suffering, we also cause a lot of pain to other people as well. We look at the way we’ve been searching for happiness, and we realize that we’ve been causing harm.

The noble reaction is to say, “I don’t want to cause that harm anymore.”

So that’s what’s noble about the truths in the sense of being honorable. You adopt an honorable attitude towards your clinging, an honorable attitude towards your craving, one where you take responsibility and you don’t just follow your immediate impulses or urges.

You look for what will lead to happiness and well-being in the long term, a harmless happiness. A happiness that’s noble in all those senses of the word: deathless, universal, preeminent, and honorable.

So as we take on these truths, we put ourselves on the noble path. And these truths are ennobling. This is how people become noble disciples. We read the stories of Ajaan Mun and Ajaan Lee, and sometimes it seems as if they were born to be noble, or already noble as soon as they came out of the womb. That’s not the case. They started out like as people just like us.

The Buddha started out like as a person just like us. All of his disciples started out just like us. But they realized that they wanted to be responsible in their search for happiness. That’s why they became noble. When we adopt the same attitude, we can become noble, too.