Four Noble Truths
Lee Shields, July 11, 2026
As the story goes, Buddha left a comfortable home when realizing the unavoidable fact of old age, sickness and death. He spent years in dedicated practice, alone and with others, at times dangerously denying himself food and water before choosing the middle way. Then taking a seat under the Bodhi tree, he remained, through all manner of delusions doing their best to unseat him. On the morning of the eighth day, the Venus star shattered the world he knew.
Rising at last, he sought out his practice community and for the first time expressed what was in him to say. He laid out the Four Noble Truths.
Life is suffering, or anguish. We suffer because we cling to that which we care for, and are loath to lose who and what we love. There is freedom within this world. And lastly, he offered the Eightfold Path of right view, intention, speech, action, lifestyle, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.
There are times these words and the Four Noble Truths can grab us by the collar, and times they are words of description that don’t speak for us, and which don’t know the beating of the one heart we share. For the latter times, poetry can often speak in our language. Here are excerpts from the poem, “From the Japanese,” by Louise Glück (pronounced “Glick”):
4.
We were walking the Japanese gardens
among the cherry trees,
a path you chose
deliberately in desolate November
as though I myself had ordered down
the petals, the black
nuggets of the fruit—
Nearby, a boy sailed his wooden boat,
home and away, home and away.
Then the thread snapped; the boat
was carried toward the waterfall.
“From this moment I will never know
ease,” you said, “since you have lied to me,
nor joy.” The boy
covered his face with his hands.
There is another world,
neither air nor water
but an emptiness which now
a symbol has entered.
Glück continues a little later in the poem with these two lines:
7.
Why love what you will lose?
There is nothing else to love.
by Louise Glück, “From the Japanese,” 24 May 2015
https://tracywan.tumblr.com/post/119791377630/from-the-japanese
“Why love what you will lose? There is nothing else to love.”
This brings us to the second noble truth; there is suffering because we cling to that which we care for and we are loath to lose who and what we love.
Of course we suffer anguish. The goal of Mahayana Zen is not an untouched heart, not a heart absent preferences and longings that are in themselves inseparable from the humanity we share. I can only imagine what may seem the serenity of a heart unmoved by joy or sorrow as one that is detached, disconnected from the joy of holding the hand of a loved one – disconnected from joy altogether, and detached from tears of seeing a being wracked by and writhing in pain. What is left then that we would be connected to? Without caring, there is no loss; without loss, there is no caring.
I rendered the third noble truth of Buddha as, “There is freedom within suffering.” It is often translated instead as “By releasing cravings, there is cessation of suffering.” I offer both of these ways of saying the third Noble Truth, fully believing that each can express the same thing, and each also says something true for all of us. In that spirit, let’s take a quiet moment to sit, not to figure anything out, but to recognize what is already in our bones about suffering and zazen.
“Why love what you will lose? There is nothing else to love.”
This is not a sad story; it’s a love story. We are anguished because we are of the nature to love and to appreciate and to live in a world with so much to love. Buddha sat seven days and seven nights under the Bodhi tree as his way to shed the bands that held him back from full participation; when the Venus star came above the horizon, Buddha rose to greet it where it was and where it is, shining down in the night sky still.
We all have our reasons to fear, cringe, and make plans to protect ourselves and others. We do choose to lock our doors, and in a world of never-certain safety, we still courageously relax anyway, and take respite in our home, and in the people and things we enjoy within it. Each moment of open-hearted engagement is fully loving what we will lose.
Would you give that up? And if you did, what would you be left with?
Each moment of release is enactment of the third Noble Truth and is freedom within suffering. This Noble Truth encourages us to have faith, but faith in what?
In the Babylonian Talmud, rabbis of old concluded that when the Hebrew people stood agitated between the red sea and the Egyptian army, Moses asked their steadfastness, and he stood praying for God’s help. Later rabbis had various beliefs about how it unfolded, but all concluded that there were individuals who entered the water before the sea parted, and while Moses continued to pray. God asked Moses what he was doing praying while his people were drowning in the sea. Moses in turn asked God what he should do, and Moses was told to raise his staff to part the waters; and so he did.
Personally, I don’t take this all literally, and the rabbis who wrote it didn’t come to full agreement either. I do take the beliefs expressed to be a demonstration of humanity across the world and through time. To let go is an act of faith, and is always stepping into roiling waters, risking everything. Letting go we stand with what is, and with what will be. As in the story about the people standing at the banks of the Red Sea, these events have elements of meditation – prayer, of faith – stepping in the unparted waters, and of action – Moses raised his staff as advised, and everyone walked between two perilous walls of water.
The Four Noble Truths began with the Buddha and the Venus star. We could say this faith is not about doctrine; before doctrine Buddha believed in sitting quietly, without knowledge of the role of the Venus star. Faith is the belief that you and I can realize here what the Buddha realized under a tree in India 2,500 years ago. Saying this wouldn’t be wrong, and it would be trusting that there was something of meaning in that story that applies to me and you. But we could more directly put our faith in the Venus star, in this breath, in the oak tree in the garden, and the hiss of the city bus air brakes. With our distractions along the way, we are no better or worse than Buddha beset by distractions under the tree. We too take the time we need.
Zazen is an open heart and mind when knowing that locking a door is not sufficient to protect, but it’s enough for life. Otherwise in this world of loss and disappointments, we are never at rest, nothing can ever be enough, and we are never enough. An open heart is the freedom of the third Noble Truth. An open heart and mind see this as just this and hear that as just that, not in spite of suffering, but in embrace of it, and of every wisp of breeze, and tear of joy and of sorrow.
Leaving nothing out is not separate from arising and cessation as well. We can desire, love, with and without clinging, craving. Clinging and craving are extra to what is simply here, and craving is undeniable in this great world, accompanied by tensing the body and fighting the mind when recognizing what is true yet wanting to deny it. Embracing all is a release of our fight to make the world what it isn’t. Embracing all is Zen.
What is freedom when clinging and not clinging? This is a topic that comes up regularly during our Wednesday evening periods of discussion. That it comes up is a low-intensity version of the matter at hand. We cannot escape love and loss, no matter how we might try to sweep them away. There is undeniable freedom in the full participation in the endless universe of creatures and stones, work and play. As part of the entanglement, we long to understand how there can be clinging to love, and simultaneously when living fully, there is freedom even in grasping without understanding it. Or, maybe because of not understanding any of it.
Buddha offered the fourth Noble Truth as his summary of living fully. In the style of early Buddhism, the fourth Noble Truth is a list of specific ways of being that at once foster freedom and are at the same time the manifestation of the freedom we inherently possess. Once again, the Eightfold Path consists of right view, intention, speech, action, lifestyle, effort, mindfulness, and concentration.
The exploration of each of these eight could be its own talk that I may give in the future, but not today. Instead, I’d like to touch on the fifth of these eight – action. Reading Susan Murphy‘s book about the fires in Australia I had to think again about my own actions regarding climate. This passage of the Australian fires starkly brought home the condition of this planet we share. Quoting from the book:
In the season in hell that was the Australian six months of fire in 2019 and 2020, we were obliged to learn a newly coined word, pyrocumulonimbus (pronounce: pyro/cumulo/nimbus), to name the towering thunderheads of superheated smoke that crowned the skies for months. These fire clouds were born of firestorms so intense they created their own weather system, producing freakish rainfall amid the dry lightning that continued to spark fresh outbreaks in advance of the massive fire front. This new word took its place in an uncanny new world where meaning has begun to slip many of its old constraints.
Murphy, Susan. A Fire Runs Through All Things: Zen Koans for Facing the Climate Crisis (pp. 111-112). Shambhala. Kindle Edition.
When responding with raw horror and fear we are connected to our own love and loss, the incalculable number of beings painfully overtaken and consumed in the fire, and the danger for our entire planet. It is easy to want to turn away, but even when not looking, we know and fear what is behind the veil we’ve hung. With zazen we are moved by what beauty and tenderness we see, and we are connected. With connection tears fall, and our hands and mouths move to respond. What is the freedom that we can take from acting in a natural way, of finding effortless effort in the midst of this world, gorgeous and troubled as it is? Action is responsive to the circumstances in which we love. Reading Susan’s book, I found myself reflecting again, opening wider to the cries of the world, and a hunger arose to find new actions that I hadn’t been thinking of the moment before.
We have our very personal storm clouds, and our collective storm clouds, and they are hopelessly intermingled. All beings act as they can, in murmuration, like a flock of birds rising, swooping left, and swooping right, and shifting in shape.
Always relevant, we began the day by chanting the Five Remembrances, with the fourth as this:
All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change.
There is no way to escape being separated from them.
This remembrance is the summary of the first Noble Truth. Anguish, loss, disappointment –all of it is the bitter face of tenderness for some wrenching moments. Just as laughter, gratitude, joy and love are the face of tenderness at another moment.
Opening fully, all my faces are here in every moment, though some are worn manhole covers, by a guileless grandchild who breaks me open, and by the politician bugging me, whose face I’d rather not call my own.
Which leads us to the fifth remembrance:
My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.
My actions are the ground on which I stand.
When chanting by myself, I presumptuously chant it like this instead:
This action is my only true belonging. I cannot escape the consequences of this action.
This action is the ground on which I stand.
When fully opening to the joys and sorrows of the fourth remembrance, how can we do anything but join the murmuration of the world, and act.