In Human Existence, Suffering is a Feature, Not a Bug

Explaining Buddhism's Four Noble Truths

Over the past year, I've been speaking as a guest lecturer for the New York Zen Center, and recently they asked me to speak to their Contemplative Medicine program on the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.

At Chozen-ji, the Zen temple in Honolulu where I live and train, we don't usually introduce people to Zen and Buddhism this way—i.e., through concepts—as our approach could be described as more "body first." We spend a lot of time teaching people how to sit, breathe, and use their bodies. While we do incorporate textual study, it's only later on. In our experience, it's better for people to experience Zen training first, then verify through concepts what they already understand intuitively from their own lived experience.

So, please, take what follows—and any attempt to explain or teach Buddhism through words—with a grain of salt. Even with an excellent explanation of the Four Noble Truths, the most any of us can probably gain is an intellectual understanding of Buddhist doctrine/philosophy. One has to train deeply to master or truly grasp it.

Take what follows—and any attempt to explain or teach Buddhism through words, for that matter—with a grain of salt. 

All of this being said, I do like the Four Noble Truths and am excited to write about them. First of all, I like how straightforward they are. So much so that they don't even seem particularly religious. They can almost seem scientific.

Take the name, Noble Truth. Another place we see this word "noble" is in the periodic table, where it's used to describe certain stable and inert gasses. A noble gas is so-called because it is not made up of any other elements. 

Similarly, one way of thinking of the Four Noble Truths is as a set of first principles—basic assumptions that cannot be simplified or deconstructed any further. In contrast, consider what you'd find if you looked up "noble" in the dictionary: "distinguished by rank or title," and synonymous with "grace" and "morality". This definition of noble already makes the Four Noble Truths feel awfully religious when, in my view, it's quite agnostic.

Here is my paraphrasing of the Four Noble Truths, which made up the first of the historical Buddha's lessons to his disciplines after he was fully enlightened:

1. Suffering is a feature of human existence due to the impermanence of all existence and the tendency of our five bodily senses to clinging.

2. Suffering is caused by craving or attachment.

3. Suffering ceases when we're free from craving.

4. The Eightfold Noble Path is the way to cease suffering.

"Birth is suffering," the Buddha said. "... Aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering…." In other words, to exist as a fully formed human being is to encounter suffering in some form. But what exactly is suffering?

At its core, suffering—as the Buddha defined it—comes from the desire for things to be different. And what allows this desire to exist is the intersecting of two universal and quintessentially human realities:

1. All existence is impermanent—i.e., things are always changing, and

2. Our five senses (sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell) have a tendency to cling to what we experience as pleasant.

Whether we see, hear, smell, taste, or touch something pleasing, we tend to want more of it. And when we encounter something displeasing, we tend to want less of it. From there, people build things up with emotions, thoughts, and actions, so that this relatively simple experience of pleasant vs unpleasant can mushroom into something much bigger. Soon, we're full on chasing after the experiences we want more of and running away from the things we want less of.

In a Judeo-Christian worldview, suffering is seen in more moral terms. Essentially, suffering is what happens when we do bad things and/or lack faith in God. But in Buddhism, suffering is agnostic. And it's so common that, if human existence were an app, we'd say that suffering is a feature, not a bug. The presence of suffering really is not a sign that you're malfunctioning or doing anything wrong. It's actually a hallmark of our human experience. 

The presence of suffering really is not a sign that you're malfunctioning or doing anything wrong. It's actually a hallmark of our human experience. 

As far as we can tell, human beings seem to be the only animals that suffer. Other creatures do experience pain, but suffering as defined in Buddhism is a higher order trait that requires a certain level of intellect and self-awareness, or ego.

This ego is a significant accomplishment of human evolution—we are able to divide the world in a way that it seems no other beings can. Everything we perceive, we divide into dualistic relationships—me and not me, inside and out, good and bad, past and future. As a result, we're able to craft complex language and thinking to describe not just what we observe, but far more complex constructs, even things that haven't happened yet like hypotheticals. This translates into the ability to tell stories and make plans for the future, which has made us vastly superior in hunting, building, and war than any other creature.

But this same achievement of human evolution creates suffering when the basic desire for things to be different metastasizes into what the historical Buddha called tanha, or craving (literally, thirst), which in turn leads to two things that the Buddha said lead to suffering: greed and aversion.

Using a common situation in medicine, one of the Contemplative Medicine students asked me when concern about a loved one's test results turns into suffering. In response, I said that it is very reasonable and well-balanced in a Buddhist sense for someone to feel concern about the outcome of an important lab test. But when we start to spin out, our stomach in knots and so consumed with worry that we can't fulfill the responsibilities right in front of us, then we're clearly suffering.

Similarly, it's possible to find something very pleasing without becoming greedy for more of it. For example, we can enjoy seeing our loved ones without having to see them all the time, and without feeling immobilized by missing them when they're not around. When they have passed away—as all the people we love inevitably will—we can feel sad for their absence and even grieve for them while not becoming stuck in our grief, and without ruminating on our regrets or wishing we'd done things differently. It is possible, instead, to keep moving and according with the the constant moment-to-moment changes happening all around us, which are a result of the fact that all phenomena are impermanent.

Next week, I'll tackle the Third and Fourth Noble Truths, which basically say that, now that we understand that suffering is a feature, and not a bug, of normal human experience, we can learn to transcend suffering and free ourselves from its smothering grasp.