Todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, The Four Noble Truths andamp; Perfect Vision, comes to us from one of Sangharakshitaand#8217;s earliest recordings. From the series: The Buddhaand#8217;s Noble Eightfold Path we offer you two tracks from the first talk in the series: The Nature of Existence: Right Understanding given in 1968. Sangharakshita illustrates how perfect vision can arise, explores the three levels of suffering and truths of conditioned existence, and how all of this can be transcended.
Dharmabytes from free buddhist audio
The Four Noble Truths and Perfect Vision
[music] Dharma Vites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for real life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, come and join us at freebuddhistaudio.com/community. Thank you, and happy listening. [music] Now, the vision, Buddhism's vision, of the nature of existence can also be communicated, as I've suggested, in terms of concepts, though perhaps less vividly in terms of concepts than in terms of images. And traditionally, perfect vision is explained in terms of seeing and understanding the truth of certain doctrinal categories. And just for the sake of completeness at least, I'm going to run quickly through some of these. We should be careful to remember, though, that here we are not concerned with merely theoretical understanding. We're trying to get a glimpse of truth with the help of these doctrinal categories, trying to achieve some kind of vision of the nature of existence. First of all, one of the most important doctrinal categories, a vision of the four noble truths themselves. Right vision is usually explained in the doctrinal manuals as a vision of, or understanding of, if you like, the four noble truths. And these truths are, as many of you know, the truth of suffering or unsatisfactoriness or disharmony, which we see all around us and also within ourselves. The truth of the cause of that suffering or unsatisfactoriness or disharmony, which is selfish craving first in ourselves, as well as in others. The truth of the cessation of suffering, the total eradication and abolition of suffering, which is synonymous with the state of Nirvana or Enlightenment or Buddhahut, and finally the way to the cessation of suffering, which is the same noble eightfold path, which we are now studying. Now it's interesting to note that the first and the second truths, that are to say the truth of suffering and the cause of suffering, correspond to the image of the wheel of life, the wheel of life. This represents, as we were pictorially in terms of an image, what the doctrine or the teaching of the four noble truths represents in terms of suffering and the cause of suffering. Suffering is the effect craving or thirst is the cause. So there's a cause effect, action and reaction relationship. In other words, the cyclic pattern of action and reaction, which in fact the wheel of life represents. The third truth of the cessation of suffering on Nirvana corresponds to the image of the Buddha or the mandala of Buddhists and the fourth truth, the truth of the noble eightfold path, of course corresponds to the image of the path of the spiral itself. So we therefore see that our four noble truths present conceptually what our three images presented in terms of images. But there is the same vision, the same vision of the nature in this case of conditioned and unconditioned existence and the path between. Presented on the one hand in terms of three images, on the other hand conceptually in terms of the four noble truths, but the same vision. Then secondly, conceptually speaking, perfect vision is often explained in terms of the three characteristics of all conditioned existence. And these are that conditioned existence is suffering, but it is impermanent and that it is devoid of true selfhood. Perhaps I should say about a few words about each of these in terms. Poorly speaking, there are three kinds of suffering according to Buddhism. There's what we may describe as actual suffering as when you have a toothache or you cut your finger and so on. There's potential suffering as when you possess something, you enjoy possessing it, but you can't lose it. If you lose it, there's suffering. So even though you enjoy it at present, potentially it is suffering in the sense that you may lose it one day or must lose it one day. And then there's what we may call essential or metaphysical suffering. The fact that nothing mundane, nothing earthly, nothing conditioned can give full or final satisfaction to the human heart or the human spirit, which can be satisfied ultimately only by the unconditioned, only by truth itself. And everything short of that therefore in a sense is the source of at least a very subtle kind of suffering. So this is the truth of suffering, which means we may say in short that one will never be truly happy until one is enlightened. Everything falls short of that. And then impermanence, everything conditioned thing is impermanent, we know that only too well. Every day, every hour, every minute almost, we're made conscious, we're made aware of the fact that nothing lasts, nothing stays, everything flows on. Nothing remains the same even for two consecutive seconds. We're growing all all the time, things are wearing out all the time. We have to repair our houses every now and then. Everything is changing, everything is fading, nothing lasts, nothing is stable. We like to think it is, we like to think we're settled somewhere forever as it were. We like to think that we've got something as it were forever, but this forever that we're so fond of thinking of this, maybe for a few hours, it may be for a few days, a few years, it may be only for a few minutes. So this is one very important aspect of perfect vision as applied to mundane things, seeing clearly, seeing steadily, that everything is imperman and everything transitory, that you can't cling on to anything for very long. The best for a little while, but in the end you have to relinquish it. And then finally, that conditioned existence is devoid of true selfhood. This is rather difficult or rather abstruse aspect of perfect vision. It needs a whole lecture to itself, even a whole series of lectures. But we can only say at this stage in the few minutes available to us that nowhere in conditioned existence and in ourselves as conditioned do we find true being, true individuality, do we find reality of any sort. If we just turn our gaze even on ourselves, we become aware very often how empty, how unreal, how hollow we are. Very often we feel our thoughts are not real thoughts, our feelings are not real feelings, our emotions are not real emotions, we don't feel real ourselves, we don't feel genuine ourselves, we don't feel authentic ourselves. And we won't find genuine or authenticity or true selfhood on the level of the mundane at all, but only on the level of what we make all spiritual or what we make all the unconditioned reality. So these three characteristics seeing conditioned existence in these three ways, this is another aspect of perfect vision, another doctrinal category giving conceptual expression to our experience of perfect vision. And thirdly and lastly a vision we may say of karma and rebirth. This is presented very vividly sometimes almost pictorially in the Buddhist scriptures when it said for instance that the Buddha and other enlightened beings on the night of their enlightenment they saw passing before their eyes as it were a great panorama of birth and death and rebirth not only of themselves but of other living beings. In fact of all living beings and how they traced, how they tracked life after life, the whole process of karma, how this action led to that result and that action led to another kind of result, they saw it as it were clearly before their eyes. So this is another aspect of perfect vision. We hope you enjoyed the talk. 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