Buddhism.

The Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta presents the Four Noble Truths.

Primary text

The Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta is a teaching translated from the Pali. The text shows the speaker addressing five monks at Varanasi in the Game Refuge at Isipatana.

The teaching presents four claims:

"Now this, monks, is the noble truth of stress: Birth is stressful, aging is stressful, death is stressful; sorrow, lamentation, pain, distress, & despair are stressful; association with the unbeloved is stressful, separation from the loved is stressful, not getting what is wanted is stressful. In short, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful."¹

"And this, monks, is the noble truth of the origination of stress: the craving that makes for further becoming — accompanied by passion & delight, relishing now here & now there — i.e., craving for sensual pleasure, craving for becoming, craving for non-becoming."¹

"And this, monks, is the noble truth of the cessation of stress: the remainderless fading & cessation, renunciation, relinquishment, release, & letting go of that very craving."¹

"And this, monks, is the noble truth of the way of practice leading to the cessation of stress: precisely this Noble Eightfold Path — right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration."¹

What must not be mashed

People: Practitioners of a tradition are not the text.

Doctrine: The text is not the lived experience.

State: The state's actions are not the text's teachings. Theology as lived faith is not a desk verdict.

Related reading

For how religious terms carry hidden claims, see Load-bearing terms.

For the mash between doctrine, community, and state, see Religions as objects.

Footnotes

1. Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta (SN 56.11), translated from the Pali by Thanissaro Bhikkhu. ©1993 Thanissaro Bhikkhu. Access to Insight (BCBS Edition), 30 November 2013, https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.than.html. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴