Four Noble Truths are not absolute truths!

[SarathW]

Four Noble Truths are not absolute truths!
Says Ajhan Amaro in his article below.
What does he mean by that?


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Theravada Buddhism in nutshell.

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/therav ... a-nutshell" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Page 5

[Sam Vara]

You might want to add this point by his teacher, Ajahn Sumedho:

Notice that there is a difference between a metaphysical doctrine in which you
are making a statement about The Absolute and a Noble Truth which is a reflection. A
Noble Truth is a truth to reflect upon; it is not an absolute; it is not The Absolute. This is
where Western people get very confused because they interpret this Noble Truth as a
kind of metaphysical truth of Buddhism - but it was never meant to be that.

http://www.buddhanet.net/pdf_file/4nobltru.pdf

[Aloka]

Four Noble Truths are not absolute truths!
Says Ajhan Amaro in his article below.
What does he mean by that?


============
Theravada Buddhism in nutshell.

https://www.abhayagiri.org/books/therav ... a-nutshell" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Page 5

If you read it again in context , this is what he actually says:

"Although there are numerous volumes of the Buddha’s discourses in many traditions, it is also said that the entirety of his Teaching was contained in his very first exposition— called The Setting in Motion of the Wheel of Truth — which he gave to five monastic companions in the deer park near Benares, shortly after his enlightenment. In this brief discourse (it takes only twenty minutes to recite), he expounded the nature of what he named the Middle Way and the Four Noble Truths.

This teaching, the Four Noble Truths, is common to all Buddhist traditions. Just as an acorn contains within it the template for what eventually takes shape as a vast and ancient oak, so too all the myriad Buddhist Teachings can be said to derive from this essential matrix of insight. What is more, enlightened Elders of both Southern and Northern traditions have agreed that this is the case.

The Four Noble Truths are formulated like a medical diagnosis in the ayurvedic tradition: a) the symptoms of the disease, b) the cause, c) the prognosis, and d) the cure. This, I’m told, is the standard format. The Buddha was always drawing on structures and forms that were familiar to people in his time, and this is how he laid out the Four Noble Truths.

The First Truth (the ”symptom”) is that there is dukkha— the experience of incompleteness, dissatisfaction, or frustration— that we are less than blissfully happy all the time. Does anybody argue with that? [Laughs] Occasionally we are blissfully
happy, and everything is fine, but there are moments when we wobble, right? Why this is significant is that, if we have an intuition of an Ultimate Reality, an ultimate perfection, then how come there is this dukkha? But there is.

Sometimes people read this First Truth and misinterpret it as an absolute statement: “Reality in every dimension is dukkha” — that the universe and life and everything are unsatisfactory. The statement gets taken as an absolute value judgment of all and everything, but that’s not what is meant here. These are noble truths, not absolute truths. They are “noble” in the sense that they are relative truths, but when they are understood, they lead us to a realization of the Absolute or the Ultimate. It’s just saying, “There is the experience of dukkha; there is the experience of dissatisfaction.”

The Second Noble Truth is that the cause of this dukkha is self-centered craving, tanha in Pali (trshna in Sanskrit), which literally means ”thirst.” This craving, this grasping is the cause of dukkha. This can be craving for sense-pleasure, craving to become something, craving to be, to be identified as some thing. Or it can be craving to not be, the desire to disappear, to be annihilated, to get rid of. There are many, many subtle dimensions of this.

The Third Truth is that of dukkha-nirodha. Nirodha means ”cessation.” This means that this experience of dukkha, of incompleteness, can fade away, can be transcended. It can end. In other words dukkha is not an absolute reality. It’s just a
temporary experience that the heart can be liberated from.

The Fourth Noble Truth is that of the Path, how we get from the Second Truth to the Third, from the experience of dukkha to ending it. The cure is the Eightfold Path which is, in essence, virtue, concentration and wisdom."

[Sam Vara]

Yes, this is Sumedho's point as well. Presumably if all Four Truths were "absolute" in the sense that westerners sometimes use the term (i.e. always and everywhere true) then they would contradict one another.

[chownah]

I think there are no absolute truths. If there were absolute truths then wouldn't they be views worth holding onto?....and aren't all views not worth holding onto?
chownah