The Teaching of Ajahn Suchart.

The Teaching Of Ajahn Suchart.

17 September 2023

Question:  What does seeing the Four Noble Truths mean?

Than Ajahn:  Seeing the truths in real time, not in theory. When we’re talking about the Four Noble Truths now, this is just talking about them in theory. To see the Four Noble Truths means to see the truths in real time. 

Like when you get sick, and the doctor said that you’ve got cancer, then you’d feel stressful right away—this is dukkha. If you investigate it, you’ll find that your stress arises because you don’t want to get cancer. 

If you have the tool to get rid of your dukkha, which is the magga—the wisdom or insight into the nature of the body—then you’ll see that the body is anicca (impermanent), it’s subjected to ageing, sickness and death, and no one can avoid it. The body is not you, it doesn’t belong to you, it isn’t under your control. 

If you want to get rid of your stress, then you have to accept the truth i.e. this is how the body works, this is how the body is going to be, you can’t stop it from getting cancer. 

Hence, you let go your desire to live and prepare yourself to die. This way you will then let go of your attachment or craving for life, craving for the body to exist. You just let the body be. If it’s going to go, let it go. So, you see them in real time. 

When you can let go of your attachment to your body, to your desire to live, then the dukkha that is inside your mind will disappear entirely, and you’ll feel normal. You‘ll feel as if you are not sick at all as far as the mind is concerned. Even though the body is still sick, the mind is not sick with the body. So, you see the truths in real time, not just in theory. When we are talking about it now, this is still a theory. Our discussion is a theory. 

When you go to see a doctor and the doctor says that you’ve got terminal cancer, if you look into your mind and if you have samādhi, you’ll see dukkha arising in your mind clearly. 

You’ll see that the cause of the dukkha is your craving, i.e. the desire not to get sick, the desire to be well all the time. If you want to deal with this stress, you’ll have to use the teachings of the Buddha, i.e. you have to get rid of your desire. 

And the way to get rid of your desire is to accept the truth of the body, that it’s annicaṁ dukkhaṁ, anatta.

When you accept that this is the way it’s going to be, then you’ll stop your desire to resist the truth. 

The desire not to get sick, not to die, is the desire going against the truth. When you can stop your mind from desiring not to die, not to get sick, your mind will become peaceful, and then you’ll see the cessation of dukkha. So, this process is working in your mind whenever you get stress. You don’t deal with the external things to alleviate or get rid of the stress, instead, you deal with the inner cause of the stress which is your craving. And the tool you use are wisdom, samādhi, and upekkhā. You need to have upekkhā. When wisdom tells you that this is the way how things work and there’s nothing you can do to change it, then you just remain non-reactive. 

So, now you see that all your problems arise from the 3 cravings: craving for sensual pleasure, craving for being, and craving for non-being. And the tool to get rid of the stress is to see that everything is annicaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anatta, and then you’ll stop your craving for things that are annicaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anatta, like your body and your feelings. 

However, this doesn’t mean that you don’t get your body fixed. If you think that you can still fix, fix it. 

But if the doctor says that there’s nothing that you can do to fix it, then just stop fixing it, don’t try to prolong your life or find other ways to fix the body.

“Dhamma in English, Dec 28, 2020.”

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Question:  What does Ajahn mean by ‘seeing’ the Four Noble Truths because intellectually I can see how I suffer when I separate from the loved ones, or when I have to be around people I dislike etc. I see my suffering, I see my desire cause me to suffer, I know and try to practice the Noble Eightfold Path, but I am not enlightened. So can Ajahn please explain more what does seeing the Four Noble Truths mean in order to be enlightened? 

Than Ajahn:  You see ‘suffering’, you see ‘the cause of suffering’, but you don’t see ‘the cessation of suffering’ because you lack the tool to create the cessation of suffering, which is the Noble Eightfold Path. 

So, this is what you need to do: you have to develop the Noble Eightfold Path, namely sīla, samādhi, and paññā—you have to keep the precepts; you have to be able to enter into jhāna all the time, maintain calm all the time; and then you can use paññā to see that everything is aniccaṁ, dukkhaṁ, anattā. Then, you can get rid of the suffering that arises in your mind. When you see something that hurts you, you will not be hurt if you have sīla, samādhi, and paññā in your mind.

“Dhamma in English, Apr 24, 2019.”

By Ajahn Suchart Abhijāto
www.phrasuchart.com

YouTube:  Dhamma in English.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi_BnRZmNgECsJGS31F495g