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Central to Buddhism

The Four Noble Truths are regarded as central to the teachings of Buddhism; they are said to provide a unifying theme, or conceptual framework, for all of Buddhist thought. In the Buddhist tradition, it is said that the Buddha compared these four truths to the footprints of an elephant: just as the footprints of all the other animals can fit within the footprint of an elephant, in the same way, all of the teachings of the Buddha are contained within the teachings on the four noble truths.

According to tradition, the Buddha taught on the four noble truths repeatedly throughout his lifetime, continually expanding and clarifying his meaning. Walpola Rahula explains:

The heart of the Buddha’s teaching lies in the Four Noble Truths (Cattāri Ariyasaccāni) which he expounded in his very first sermon to his old colleagues, the five ascetics, at Isipatana (modern Sarnath) near Benares. In this sermon, as we have it in the original texts, these four Truths are given briefly. But there are innumerable places in the early Buddhist scriptures where they are explained again and again, with greater detail and in different ways. If we study the Four Noble Truths with the help of these references and explanations, we get a fairly good and accurate account of the essential teachings of the Buddha according to the original texts.

Medical model

In the Buddhist discourses, the Buddha is often referred to as a doctor, and the four noble truths are formulated according to the ancient Indian medical model as follows:

1. There is an illness
2. There is a cause(s) of the illness (the diagnosis)
3. There is a possibility of a cure of the illness (the prognosis)
4. There is a prescription or treatment for the illness that can bring about a cure

Bhikkhu Bodhi explains:

The Buddha sets out the Four Truths as a formula a doctor uses to deal with a patient. The Buddha first sets out the basic affliction of human life, the problem of dukkha [i.e. suffering, dissatisfaction]. Thereafter he makes the diagnosis, explaining the cause for the disease; this is the second truth as craving. As a third step the doctor gives a prognosis. He determines the possibility of a cure, the cessation of dukkha. The Buddha says that suffering can be ended . As the fourth step the doctor prescribes the course of treatment. So too Buddha prescribed the fourth truth, the Noble Eightfold Path.

Phillip Moffitt states:

Thus, the Buddha, like a doctor, tells the patient what the illness is, diagnoses the cause, tells the patient the cure for the condition, and recommends the medicine needed to bring about the cure. --- Phillip Moffitt. Dancing with Life: Buddhist Insights for Finding Meaning and Joy in the Face of Suffering (Kindle Locations 224-225). Kindle Edition.

Experience

Thanissaro Bhikkhu writes:

These four truths are best understood, not as beliefs, but as categories of experience. They offer an alternative to the ordinary way we categorize what we can know and describe–in terms of me/not me, and being/not being. These ordinary categories create trouble, for the attempt to maintain full being for one's sense of "me" is a stressful effort doomed to failure, in that all of the components of that "me" are inconstant, stressful, and thus not worthy of identifying as "me" or "mine."

To counter this problem, the four noble truths drop ideas of me/not me, and being/not being, and replace them with two sets of variables: cause and effect, skillful and unskillful. In other words, there is the truth of stress and suffering (unskillful effect), the truth of the origination of stress (unskillful cause), the truth of the cessation of stress (skillful effect), and the truth of the path to the cessation of stress (skillful cause). Each of these truths entails a duty: stress is to be comprehended, the origination of stress abandoned, the cessation of stress realized, and the path to the cessation of stress developed. When all of these duties have been fully performed, the mind gains total release...

Thus the study of the four noble truths is aimed first at understanding these four categories, and then at applying them to experience so that one may act properly toward each of the categories and thus attain the highest, most total happiness possible.

Two sets of cause and effect

Chogyam Trungpa writes:

The four noble truths are divided into two sections. The first two truths–the truth of suffering and the origin of suffering–are studies in the samsaric versions of ourselves and the reasons we arrived in certain situations or came to particular conclusions about ourselves. The second two truths–the truth of cessation and the truth of the path–are studies of how we could go beyond or overcome it. They are related with the journey and the potentiality of nirvana, freedom, and emancipation. Suffering is regarded as the result of samsara, and the origin of suffering as the cause of samsara. The path is regarded as the cause of nirvana, and the cessation of suffering is the result. In this regard, samsara means ongoing agony, and samsara means transcending agony and such problems as bewilderment, dissatisfaction, and anxiety.

Rupert Gethin:

What did the Buddha teach? The early sūtras present the Buddha’s teaching as the solution to a problem. This problem is the fundamental problem of life. In Sanskrit and Pali the problem is termed duḥkha/dukkha, which can be approximately translated as ‘suffering’. In a Nikāya passage the Buddha thus states that he has always made known just two things, namely suffering and the cessation of suffering.1 This statement can be regarded as expressing the basic orientation of Buddhism for all times and all places. Its classic formulation is by way of ‘four noble truths’: the truth of the nature of suffering, the truth of the nature of its cause, the truth of the nature of its cessation, and the truth of the nature of the path leading to its cessation. - Gethin, Rupert (1998-07-16). The Foundations of Buddhism (p. 59). Oxford University Press. Kindle Edition.

First teaching

• Joseph Goldstein states: "After his enlightenment, Buddha Shakyamuni (“Sage of the Shakyas”), spent seven weeks near the Bodhi Tree contemplating various aspects of the Dharma. Wondering who would be receptive to his profound realization of awakening, he thought of the five ascetics who were his companions during his years of intense austerities. The Buddha then went to Sarnath, a small village outside of what is now Benares, where these ascetics were staying. His first teaching to them is called “Setting the Wheel of the Dharma in Motion,” and it lays out the Four Noble Truths, the basic doctrine of liberation common to all Buddhist schools."