What are the Four Noble Truths?

The Four Noble Truths are the central teaching of the Buddha about suffering, its causes and the path to its cessation. They explain what is wrong with ordinary existence, where that comes from, whether it can end and what to do about it. According to tradition, the Buddha formulates them in his first discourse after awakening, set out, for example, in SN 56.11.

In the canon the truths are put like this:

1. The truth of dukkha (dukkha). Birth, ageing, illness, death, meeting what is disagreeable, parting from what is dear, not getting what one wants; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging (pañcupādānakkhandhā).
2. The truth of the origin of dukkha. It is craving (taṇhā) and the clinging born in its wake, leading to renewed existence and accompanied by delight and lust: craving for sensual pleasures (kāma-taṇhā), craving for existence (bhava-taṇhā), craving for non-existence or cessation (vibhava-taṇhā).
3. The truth of the cessation of dukkha. The remainderless fading away of the three “root” defilements of the mind - craving, hatred and ignorance - and, with their eradication, release from taṇhā and from the causes of suffering. This cessation is what is called Nibbāna (Nibbāna).
4. The truth of the path leading to the cessation of dukkha. This is the Noble Eightfold Path: right view, intention, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and concentration. The eight factors fall into three groups - virtue (sīla), concentration (samādhi) and wisdom (paññā) (MN 44).

Dukkha is wider than “suffering”: it covers plain pain, the unsatisfactoriness of impermanence and of pleasant things that end, and the unreliability of everything constructed. The canon distinguishes three kinds:

• dukkha as pain (dukkha-dukkhatā), obvious physical suffering;
• dukkha of change (vipariṇāma-dukkhatā), the disappointment of pleasant things running out;
• dukkha inherent in the conditioned (saṅkhāra-dukkhatā), or “all-pervading unsatisfactoriness” (SN 45.165).

What matters in the Four Noble Truths is not only the list itself but what has to be done with each truth. The Buddha describes three turnings for each: knowing the truth, knowing its task, knowing the task has been done. The tasks differ:

• dukkha is to be fully understood (pariññeyyaṃ);
• its origin is to be abandoned (pahātabbaṃ);
• its cessation is to be realised (sacchikātabbaṃ);
• the path is to be developed (bhāvetabbaṃ).

Agreeing with four statements is not enough here; each one calls for an act of its own. So the truths do not stop at the diagnosis - they offer a “treatment”: the third says dukkha can cease completely, and the fourth describes what has to be done for that. Incidentally, the comparison with medical treatment - diagnosis, cause, prognosis, prescription - is a much-used analogy that helps grasp the point, but it does not occur in the suttas.

Moreover, right view, the first factor of the path, is itself defined through knowledge of these same four truths (MN 9, MN 141). The path, then, is not attached to the truths from outside - it is the fourth of them.

Where to read: MN 141 (a detailed analysis of all four truths, given by Sariputta), MN 9 (right view), SN 56.11 (the first discourse and the three turnings).