The Four Noble Truths are the most basic formulation of the Buddha’s teaching.
1. Diagnosis
All existence is dukkha. The word dukkha has been variously translated as ‘suffering’, ‘anguish’, ‘pain’, or ‘unsatisfactoriness’. The Buddha’s insight was that our lives are a struggle, and we do not find ultimate happiness or satisfaction in anything we experience. This is the problem of existence.
2. Prognosis
The cause of dukkha is Samudaya The natural human tendency is to blame our difficulties on things outside ourselves. But the Buddha says that their actual root is to be found in the mind itself. In particular, our craving to grasp at things (or alternatively to push them away) places us fundamentally at odds with the way life really is.
3. Recovery
The cessation of dukkha comes with the cessation of craving. As we are the ultimate cause of our difficulties, we are also the solution. We cannot change the things that happen to us, but we can change our responses.
4. Treatment And Remedy
There is a path that leads from dukkha. Although the Buddha throws responsibility back onto the individual, he also taught methods through which we can change ourselves, for example, the Noble Eightfold Path.
