With permission from: http://appliedawareness.org
The Four Noble Truths of Life
(Life Sucks When We Are Being Stupid)
(note: loose translations of quotes of the Buddha
are in Italics annotated with quotation marks)
1. Life sucks - "Now this is the Noble Truth concerning life sucking. Birth sucks, aging sucks, death sucks, sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair suck; not getting what one wants sucks. In short, the limited five aggregates suck that make up this human life."
2. Life sucks for a reason - "And what is the Noble Truth of the origination of life sucking? The craving that creates further becoming, accompanied by chasing after lust and delight, relishing now here and now there, i.e. craving for sensuality, craving for existence, craving for non-existence."
The Buddha told us that life sucks for a reason, and that we make our own lives suck. We make our lives suck by our constant chasing after excitement and our thinking that life sucks when it isn't exciting. There is no possible way that life can be exciting all the time, and it is our wanting life to always be exciting even though it can never be that way; our wanting life to be other than it is; our own wrong thinking, that makes life suck so much. Our own trying to make life more than what it naturally is and can ever be; trying to get more out of life than what it has to offer, where we make our own lives suck.
3. Life doesn't have to suck - "And what is the Noble Truth of the ending of life sucking? The abandoning and cessation, renunciation relinquishment, release, and letting go of the craving that causes life to suck."
The Buddha says that life doesn't have to suck, that if we stop being stupid life won't suck anymore. If we look at this we can see that we make life suck ourselves (create our own turmoils). So if we stop being stupid by creating our own difficulties life won't suck so much.
4. The path leading to the ending of life sucking – Don't Be Stupid!.
The Buddha described it as the Eightfold Path saying: "And what is the Noble Truth of the path of practice leading to the end of life sucking? Just this very Eightfold Path: right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration."
That doesn't mean that we should sit around trying to perfect each of these eight aspects individually. That would be being "Stupid", it would take forever. Look back at the time of the Buddha…at the number of people who gained enlightenment…not a single one of these people had a Ph.D., so this path can't be as complicated as most modern teachers make it out to be. Maybe they just like being important and in control, I don't know, but it is not so difficult. Just Be Only The Heart the best you can, and be patient (but patience is not negligence). If we are patiently doing the best we can and not being negligent, we are practicing the entire Eightfold Path…it's that simple. It just comes down to: Don't Be Stupid…it's not so difficult, so don't make it difficult. | |
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