Buddhas' First Nobel Truth

The word Dhukka suffering. In The Buddhas' teachings he taught the Four Noble Truths, The first of the Noble truths is that Life is suffering. Buddha spoke of how to live is to suffer in countless forms of pain, anguish, fear, and physical torments,as well as psychological maladies and emotional discomforts. There is no way to over come the outer causes of suffering but we can over come our internal suffering by following the Buddhas' teachings.

The main reasons for the suffering in the world is the nature of incarnate life, it is not perfect and neither is the planet we live on. During all of our lives, we will be unable to avoid physical suffering like bodily pain, sicknesses, injuries, fatigue, old age, and eventually death. There are all kinds disagreeable psychological forms of Suffering, including Sadness, Fear, Frustration, Disappointment, and Depression, that we all must endure.

Every unpleasant experience we have in this life time has an equal and pleasurable reaction. All the different levels of Dhukka will pass and be replaced by pleasurable experiences while we are still living. We generally like to think of suffering as the opposite of pleasure, but in fact it is the opposite.

Ease, Comfort and Happiness, are thought of as being the opposite extreme to displeasure. Life is complex but in order to make it tolerable for the masses there must be ease and pleasure to look forward to. Complexity is simply imperfect and incomplete, because humans, plants and every living being in this world are subject to impermanence, there is a means to an end.

Impermanence means that we will never be able to keep permanent hold of the things that we strive for, including our homes, cloths and jobs. Even though we are able to enjoy pleasurable moments, sadness and reality of misfortune to come are always looming. Eventually we ourselves and our loved ones will have to pass on and leave this body and life behind.

Suffering is the first noble truth. We must come to terms with this reality, learn from our misfortunes and let them pass. Every experience we have in this life is an opportunity to take wisdom with us as we pass through on our journey to enlightenment.