The Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path

Overview

Recall questions on the four noble truths and the doctor analogy, the first teaching in the deer park, arhats, tanha and the three kinds of craving, nirodha, nibbana with remainder and parinibbana, the eight factors and three sections of the path, and detachment.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What are the four noble truths?

   Model answer

   First, that conditioned existence is marked by dukkha. Second, that dukkha has an origin, namely tanha or craving. Third, that dukkha can cease, and its cessation is nibbana. Fourth, that there is a path, magga or marga, leading to that cessation, namely the eightfold path. Buddhists regard them as the framework holding the whole teaching together, and they are traditionally described as truths for the noble, that is, truths whose full force is seen by those advanced on the path.

2. 2

   Why do Buddhists treat the four truths as the foundation of the whole teaching?

   Model answer

   Because everything else fits inside them. The marks of existence expand the first, kamma and dependent origination explain the second, nibbana is the third, and meditation, ethics and wisdom are the content of the fourth. They are also presented as the content of the Buddha's awakening and of his first teaching, so they frame the tradition historically as well as logically. Every Buddhist school treats them as the framework of the teaching, though not in the same way: Mahayana texts such as the Heart Sutra deny that the four truths have any intrinsic existence, which they take as deepening rather than discarding them, since the truths remain fully in force as a description of how things conventionally are.

3. 3

   Explain the doctor analogy used for the four truths.

   Model answer

   The Buddha is compared to a physician. The first truth is the diagnosis, that the patient is ill; the second identifies what is making the patient ill; the third is the prognosis, that recovery is possible; the fourth is the prescribed course of treatment. The analogy is used by Buddhists to make two points: the teaching is practical rather than speculative, and a prescription only works if the patient follows it, which is why the path must be practised rather than believed.

4. 4

   What happened at the deer park, and what did that first teaching set out?

   Model answer

   After his awakening the Buddha sought out the five companions who had abandoned him during his ascetic period, at a deer park near Varanasi. He set out the middle way between sensual indulgence and self-torment, then presented the four truths, and Buddhists describe this as setting the wheel of dhamma in motion. One of the five is said to have understood immediately. The event matters because it marks the beginning of both the teaching and the Sangha.

5. 5

   Who are the arhats or arahants, and what is their relation to the four truths?

   Model answer

   An arhat is someone who has followed the path to its end, destroyed craving, hatred and ignorance, and will not be reborn. In Theravada teaching this is the goal of the disciple who takes up the four truths and practises them fully, and the Buddha himself is described in these terms and also as the discoverer of the path. Arhatship is the demonstration that the third truth is not merely theoretical, and Mahayana Buddhists later criticised it as too limited a goal.

6. 6

   Why do Buddhists treat dukkha as the condition that the rest of the path exists to remedy?

   Model answer

   Because it is the presenting problem that everything else answers to. Buddhists say the first truth is not a pessimistic mood but an honest identification of what is wrong, and that no cure can begin until the illness is admitted. It is also said to be a truth to be fully understood rather than merely accepted, which is why meditation on the body, feelings and mind matters. Denial of dukkha, on this account, is the reason people keep applying the wrong remedies.

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