four noble truths | The Enlightenment & Simple Living Institute

The Four Truths are most frequently heard referred to as the Four Noble Truths, although a more accurate translation would be Four Arya Truths. In brief, the Four Truths are:

There is suffering
Suffering has an origin
Suffering has an end
There is a way to end suffering

The Four Truths are a concise description of the worldview that leads to liberation. Part of the attainment of stream-entry is the realization of these truths (hence the name Four Arya Truths).

The Buddha in his first teaching (Dhammacakka Sutta) said the following about the First Truth:

This is the Noble Truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering; illness is suffering; death is suffering; sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.

The Second Truth:

This is the Noble Truth of the origin of suffering: It is craving which produces rebirth, bound up with pleasure and greed. It finds delight in this and that; in other words, craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence or becoming and craving for nonexistence or self-annihilation.

The Third Truth:

This is the Noble Truth of the cessation of suffering. It is the complete cessation of suffering, the giving up, renouncing, relinquishing, detaching from craving.

and The Fourth Truth:

This is the Noble Truth of the path leading to the cessation of suffering. It is simply the Aryan Eightfold Path, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right awareness, and right concentration.

The first book that I picked up on Buddhism was Venerable Rewata Dhamma’s The First Discourse of the Buddha. I highly recommend it. It is a pith book that clearly outlines the Arya Eightfold Path and has a nice section on “right concentration” that describes the jhanas and other essentials.

Reference: Rewata Dhamma (1997) The First Discourse of the Buddha. Wisdom Press, Somerville Massachusetts.
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An ayra or stream-enterer is a person that has eliminated the first three fetters. These are

view that one is a separate self
belief that rites and rituals alone could lead to liberation
doubt or uncertainty, especially about the teachings regarding liberation (i.e. the noble eightfold path)

When we run into the word “noble” as in the eightfold noble path or the four noble truths, these are unfortunate translations of the word arya. While an arya is noble, they are not nobility in our normal use of the word to mean royalty or a member of the aristocratic class.

The classic method of attaining stream-entry (aryahood) is to experience ultimate reality directly. During this experience all cognition and sensing naturally ceases. It is unclear how one know something has happened, but people do. This experience can lead to a deep realization of how things really exist and the four arya truths (four noble truths) that the Buddha taught. After the experience the practitioner has confidence in the path to liberation and although they experience themselves as a separate self, they no longer believe it at all.

An arya is called a stream-enterer, because they have reached a state which naturally flows to liberation. The arya cannot fail to become enlightened, although I suppose it is possible to purposely revert back.