The Four Ariya-saccas as ‘True Realities for the Spiritually Ennobled’- the Painful, its Origin, its Cessation, and the Way Going to This – Rather than ‘Noble Truths’ Concerning These
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/bsrv.v26i2.197Keywords:
ariya-saccas, noble truths, dukkha, Dhamma-cakka-ppavattanaAbstract
This paper critiques the standard translation of ariya-sacca as ‘Noble Truth’ and argues that the term refers to four saccas as ‘true realities’, rather than as verbalised ‘truths’ about these realities; the teachings about them are not, as such what the term ariya-sacca refers to. Moreover, only one of the ariya-saccas (the fourth) is itself ever described in the suttas as ‘noble’. The four are ‘true realities for the spiritually ennobled’: the fundamental, basic, most significant genuine realities that the Buddha and other noble ones see in the flow of experience of themselves and/or others. The first of them is not best translated as ‘suffering’ but as ‘pain’ – in all its many senses – or indeed ‘the painful’: the upadana-kkhandhas as ‘bundles of grasping-fuel’ which are described, adjectivally, as ‘painful’. The paper includes a new translation of the Dhamma-cakka-ppavattana Sutta in line with this analysis
References
Analayo. 2003. Satipatthana: The Direct Path to Realization. Birmingham: Windhorse.
———. 2006. ‘The Ekottarika-agama Parallel to the Saccavibhanga-sutta and the Four (Noble) Truths’, Buddhist Studies Review 23(2): 145–153.
———. 2009. From Craving to Liberation, New York: Baus.
Anderson, Carol S.. 2001. Pain and its Ending: The Four Noble Truths in the Theravada Buddhist Canon. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Bodhi, Bhikkhu. 1978. ‘The meaning of the word “Tathagata”’. In his The Discourse on the All-embracing Net of Views: The Brahamajala Sutta and its Commentaries, 331–344. Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society.
Cousins, L.S. 2001. Review of Carol S. Anderson’s Pain and its Ending: The Four Noble Truths in the Theravada Buddhist Canon. In Journal of Buddhist Ethics 8: 36–41: http://www.buddhistethics.org/8/cousins011.pdf
Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. 2004. ‘Aspects of the Four Realities of the Noble Ones; Excerpt from the transcript for Abhisamaya-alankara: The Ornament of Clear Realization, Nitartha Institute 2002’, downloadable from Nalandabodhi Sangha News archive http//www.nalandabodhi.org/mt-sanghanews/archives – July 2004 edition.
Flood, Gavin. 1996. An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gethin, Rupert. 1998. The Foundations of Buddhism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gombrich, Richard. 1996. How Buddhism Began: The Conditioned Genesis of the Early Teachings. London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone.
Harvey, Peter. 2007a. ‘The Ennobling Truths/Realities as a Whole’. In Encyclopedia of Buddhism, edited by Damien Keown and Charles Prebish, London: Routledge. A fuller version, with more references, is at: http://www.sunderland.ac.uk/buddhist/originaleob.pdf
———. 2007b. ‘Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: The Discourse on the Setting in Motion of the Wheel (of Vision) of the Basic Pattern: the Four Realities of the Noble Ones’, translation, with notes, on Access to Insight Website, at: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/sn/sn56/sn56.011.harv.html
Hopkins, Jeffrey. 1983. Meditation on Emptiness. London: Wisdom.
Hopkins, Thomas J. 1971. The Hindu Religious Tradition. Encino, CA: Dickenson.
Johansson, Rune E.A. 1981. Pali Buddhist Texts: An Introductory Reader and Grammar, Third edition. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press.
Masefield, Peter. 1987. Divine Revelation in Pali Buddhism. Colombo: The Sri Lankan Institute of Traditional Studies.
Ñanamoli, Bhikkhu. 1982. The Path of Discrimination. London: Pali Text Society.
Ñanamoli, Bhikkhu and Bodhi, Bhikkhu. 1995. The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha. Boston, MA: Wisdom.
Nitartha International Online Dictionary: http://www.nitartha.org/dictionary_search04. html
Norman, K.R. 1982. ‘The Four Noble Truths: A Problem of Pali Syntax’. In Indological and Buddhist Studies (Volume in honour of Professor J. W. de Jong), edited by L.A. Hercus, F.B.J. Kuiper, T. Rajapatiratna and E.R. Skrzypczak, 377–391. Delhi: Indian Book Centre; orig. publ. Canberra 1982, 377–391 and reprinted as ‘The Four Noble Truths’, in K.R. Norman, 1991, Collected Papers Vol. II, 210–223, but indicating original pagination. Oxford: Pali Text Society.
———. 1990. ‘Why are the Four Noble Truths called “Noble”?’. In Ananda: Essays in Honour of Ananda W.P. Guruge, edited by Y. Karunadasa, 11–13. Colombo, reprinted in K.R. Norman, 1993, Collected Papers Vol.IV, 171–174, but indicating original pagination. Oxford: Pali Text Society.
———. 1992. The Group of Discourses (Sutta-nipata) Volume II. Oxford: Pali Text Society.
———. 1997. A Philological Approach to Buddhism. London: School of Oriental and African Studies.
Olivelle, Patrick. 1996. Upanisads: a New Translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Pruden, Leo, M. 1991. Abhidharmakosabhasyam by Louis de La Vallée Poussin, English translation from the French translation, 4 vols. Berkeley, CA: Asian Humanities Press.
Radhakrishnan, S. 1953. The Principal Upanisads. London: George Allen and Unwin.
Thanissaro, Bhikkhu. 1993. The Mind Like Fire Unbound. Barre, MA: Dhamma Dana Publications. Also available on the Access to Insight website: http://www. accesstoinsight.org/lib/modern/thanissaro/likefire
Warder, A.K.. 1974. Introduction to Pali, second edition. London: Pali Text Society.
Weller, Friedrich. 1940. ‘Über die Formel der vier edlen Wahrheiten’. Orientalistische Literaturzeitung. Berlin, 43 (3/4): 73–79. Reproduced in Friederich Weller’s Kleine Schriften, 2 vols., Wilhelm Rau (ed.), 1987, 166–169. Stuttgart: Steiner.
Woodward, F.L. 1930. The Book of Kindred Sayings, V. London: Luzac.
