Hãy nhã nhặn với mọi người khi bạn đi lên, vì bạn sẽ gặp lại họ khi đi xuống.Miranda
Nghệ thuật sống chân chính là ý thức được giá trị quý báu của đời sống trong từng khoảnh khắc tươi đẹp của cuộc đời.Tủ sách Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn
Ta sẽ có được sức mạnh của sự cám dỗ mà ta cưỡng lại được. (We gain the strength of the temptation we resist.)Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hãy lặng lẽ quan sát những tư tưởng và hành xử của bạn. Bạn sâu lắng hơn cái tâm thức đang suy nghĩ, bạn là sự tĩnh lặng sâu lắng hơn những ồn náo của tâm thức ấy. Bạn là tình thương và niềm vui còn chìm khuất dưới những nỗi đau. (Be the silent watcher of your thoughts and behavior. You are beneath the thinkers. You are the stillness beneath the mental noise. You are the love and joy beneath the pain.)Eckhart Tolle
Nếu muốn có những điều chưa từng có, bạn phải làm những việc chưa từng làm.Sưu tầm
Lời nói được thận trọng, tâm tư khéo hộ phòng, thân chớ làm điều ác, hãy giữ ba nghiệp tịnh, chứng đạo thánh nhân dạyKinh Pháp Cú (Kệ số 281)
Người có trí luôn thận trọng trong cả ý nghĩ, lời nói cũng như việc làm. Kinh Pháp cú
Mục đích cuộc đời ta là sống hạnh phúc. (The purpose of our lives is to be happy.)Đức Đạt-lai Lạt-ma XIV
Sự kiên trì là bí quyết của mọi chiến thắng. (Perseverance, secret of all triumphs.)Victor Hugo
Hãy đạt đến thành công bằng vào việc phụng sự người khác, không phải dựa vào phí tổn mà người khác phải trả. (Earn your success based on service to others, not at the expense of others.)H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

Trang chủ »» Danh mục »» SÁCH ANH NGỮ HOẶC SONG NGỮ ANH-VIỆT »» The Four Noble Truths »» One: Introducing »»

The Four Noble Truths
»» One: Introducing

(Lượt xem: 10.633)
Xem trong Thư phòng    Xem định dạng khác    Xem Mục lục  Vietnamese || Đối chiếu song ngữ


       

Tứ diệu đế - Chương I: Dẫn nhập

Font chữ:

Now let us turn to the Buddhist teaching on the Four Noble Truths. The first question we might ask is why these Truths are considered to be so fundamental, and why, in fact, Buddha taught them at all.

In order to answer this, we have to relate the Four Noble Truths to our own experience as individual human beings. It is a fact - a natural fact of life - that each one of us has an innate desire to seek happiness and to overcome suffering. This is something very instinctive, and there is no need to prove it is there. Happiness is something that we all aspire to achieve, and of course we naturally have a right to fulfil that aspiration. In the same way, suffering is something everybody wishes to avoid, and we also have the right to try to overcome suffering. So if this aspiration achieve happiness and overcome suffering is our natural state of being, and our natural quest, the question is how we should go about fulfilling that aspiration.

This leads us to the teachings on the Four Noble Truths, which provide an understanding of the relationship between two sets of events: causes and their effects. On one side we have suffering, but suffering does not come from nowhere, it arises as a result of its own causes and conditions. On the other side we have happiness, which also arises from its own particular set of causes and conditions.

Now when we speak of happiness in Buddhism, our understanding of it is not confined to a state of feeling. Certainly cessation (the total cessation of suffering) is not a state of feeling, and yet we could say that cessation is the highest form of happiness because it is, by definition, complete freedom from suffering. Here again cessation, or true happiness, does not come into being from nowhere or without any cause. This is a subtle point, of course, because from the Buddhist perspective cessation is not a conditioned event, so it cannot be said to be actually produced, or caused, by anything. However, the actualization or attainment of cessation does depend on the path and on an individual’s effort. You cannot attain cessation without making an effort. In this sense we can therefore say that the path that leads to cessation is the cause of cessation.

The teachings on the Four Noble Truths clearly distinguish two sets of causes and effects: those causes which produce suffering, and those which produce happiness. By showing us how to distinguish these in our own lives, the teachings aim at nothing less than to enable us to fulfil our deepest aspiration - to be happy and to overcome suffering.

Once we have realized that this is why Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths, we might go on to ask ourselves the reason for their specific sequence: why are the Four Noble Truths taught in a particular order, starting with suffering, continuing with the origin of suffering, and so on? On this point we should understand that the order in which the Four Noble Truths are taught has nothing to do with the order in which things arise in reality. Rather, it is related to the way an individual should go about practising the Buddhist path, and attain realizations based on that practice.

In the Uttaratantra, Maitreya states that there are four stages to curing an illness.

Just as the disease need be diagnosed, its cause eliminated, a healthy state achieved and the remedy implemented, so also should suffering, its causes, its cessation and the path be known, removed, attained and undertaken.

Maitreya uses the analogy of a sick person to explain the way in which realizations based on the Four Noble Truths can be attained. In order for a sick person to get well, the first step is that he or she must know that he is ill, otherwise the desire to be cured will not arise. Once you have acknowledged that you are sick, then naturally you will try to find out what led to it and what makes your condition even worse. When you have identified these, you will gain an understanding of whether or not the illness can be cured, and a wish to be free from the illness will arise in you. In fact this is not just a mere wish, because once you have recognized the conditions that led to your illness, your desire to be free of it will be much stronger since that knowledge will give you a confidence and conviction that you can overcome the illness. With that conviction, you will want to take all the medications and remedies necessary.

In the same way, unless you know that you are suffering, your desire to be free from suffering will not arise in the first place. So the first step we must take as practising Buddhists is to recognize our present state as duhkha or suffering, frustration and unsatisfactoriness. Only then will we wish to look into the causes and conditions that give rise to suffering.

It is very important to understand the context of the Buddhist emphasis on recognizing that we are all in a state of suffering, otherwise there is a danger we could misunderstand the Buddhist outlook, and think that it involves rather morbid thinking, a basic pessimism and almost an obsessiveness about the reality of suffering.

The reason why Buddha laid so much emphasis on developing insight into the nature of suffering is because there is an alternative - there is a way out, it is actually possible to free oneself from it. This is why it is so crucial to realize the nature of suffering, because the stronger and deeper your insight into suffering is, the stronger your aspiration to gain freedom from it becomes. So the Buddhist emphasis on the nature of suffering should be seen within this wider perspective, where there is an appreciation of the possibility of complete freedom from suffering. If we had no concept of liberation, then to spend so much time reflecting on suffering would be utterly pointless.

We could say that the two sets of causes and effects I mentioned earlier refer, on the one hand, to the process of an unenlightened existence, which relates to the causal chain between suffering and its origins, and, on the other hand, to the process of an enlightened existence which pertains to the causal links between the path and true cessation. When the Buddha elaborated on these two processes, he taught what is called the doctrine of the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination, or Twelve Nidanas.

The nidanas are the Twelve Links in the cycle of existence, which goes from ignorance, to volition, to consciousness, and so on, all the way to old age and death. When the causal process of an unenlightened existence is described in detail - that is, a life which is led within the framework of suffering and its origin - then the sequence of the Twelve Links begins with ignorance, and proceeds with volition, consciousness and so on. This sequence describes how an individual sentient being, as a result of certain causes and conditions, enters into the process of unenlightened existence.

However, if that same individual engages in certain spiritual practices, he or she can reverse this process, and the alternative sequence is that of the process which leads to enlightenment. For example, if the continuum of ignorance comes to an end then the continuum of volitional actions will cease. If that ceases, then the consciousness that serves as the support for such actions will cease; and so on.

You can see that the teachings on the Twelve Links of Dependent Origination are in some sense an elaboration on the two sets of causes and conditions described by the Four Noble Truths.

    « Xem chương trước «      « Sách này có 11 chương »       » Xem chương tiếp theo »
» Tải file Word về máy » - In chương sách này

_______________

MUA THỈNH KINH SÁCH PHẬT HỌC

DO NXB LIÊN PHẬT HỘI PHÁT HÀNH




Kinh Dược sư


Vua Là Phật, Phật Là Vua


Nguyên lý duyên khởi


Gõ cửa thiền

Mua sách qua Amazon sẽ được gửi đến tận nhà - trên toàn nước Mỹ, Canada, Âu châu và Úc châu.

XEM TRANG GIỚI THIỆU.





Quý vị đang truy cập từ IP 3.93.59.171 và chưa ghi danh hoặc đăng nhập trên máy tính này. Nếu là thành viên, quý vị chỉ cần đăng nhập một lần duy nhất trên thiết bị truy cập, bằng email và mật khẩu đã chọn.
Chúng tôi khuyến khích việc ghi danh thành viên ,để thuận tiện trong việc chia sẻ thông tin, chia sẻ kinh nghiệm sống giữa các thành viên, đồng thời quý vị cũng sẽ nhận được sự hỗ trợ kỹ thuật từ Ban Quản Trị trong quá trình sử dụng website này.
Việc ghi danh là hoàn toàn miễn phí và tự nguyện.

Ghi danh hoặc đăng nhập

Thành viên đang online:
Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Pascal Bui Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Phan Huy Triều Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn caokiem Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn hoangquycong Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Lãn Tử Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Ton That Nguyen Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Nguyễn Sĩ Long Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn ngtieudao Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Viên Hiếu Thành Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Phạm Thiên Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Tri Huynh Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Chúc Huy Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Trương Quang Quý Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Lê Quốc Việt Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Du Miên Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Quang-Tu Vu Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn phamthanh210 Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn An Khang 63 Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Vạn Phúc Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn zeus7777 Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Trương Ngọc Trân Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Diệu Tiến Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Tam Thien Tam Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Nguyên Ngọc Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Trần Thị Huyền Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Thiện Diệu Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Nguyễn Văn Minh Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Diệu Âm Phúc Thành Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Thiền Khách Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn nước Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Bui Tuyet Lan Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Xuân Thôn Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Nguyên Độ Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Thích Quảng Ba Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Pháp Tâm Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Dinhvinh1964 Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Yduongvan Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Trí Tuệ Từ Bi Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Tiến Mạnh Rộng Mở Tâm Hồn Hoat Khong ... ...

Hoa Kỳ (395 lượt xem) - Việt Nam (119 lượt xem) - French Southern Territories (5 lượt xem) - Saudi Arabia (3 lượt xem) - Senegal (3 lượt xem) - Philippines (2 lượt xem) - Mauritius (1 lượt xem) - Nga (1 lượt xem) - Algeria (1 lượt xem) - Uzbekistan (1 lượt xem) - Kenya (1 lượt xem) - Anh quốc (1 lượt xem) - Hà Lan (1 lượt xem) - ... ...