This is somewhat misleading and unfortunate and tends to give Buddhist teaching the reputation of being gloomy or pessimistic. Sometimes expressed in English summaries as life is suffering.
We need to talk a bit about this word Dukkha because usually if you see English translations of the four noble truths it will be the 1st noble truth is the truth of suffering. So the primordial disease of beings is Dukkha (the disease that covers all others). The idea with these medical texts was they would deal with a disease first by describing the symptoms, then the cause of the disease, then the prognoses (whether it could be cured or not), then finally laid out a course of treatment. This is something that the Buddha often did in his teaching career, was that he would take structures and forms from the existing culture and give them a new angle. It follows the pattern of the medical texts of the day. The structure follows a scheme that would have been familiar to any reasonably educated person in India at the time. The structure of the four noble truths is the truth of Dukkha (or suffering), the truth of the origin of Dukkha, the truth of the ending of Dukkha, and the truth of the path leading to the ending of Dukkha. He said that there these two paths in the world that don't lead anywhere - 1 is the path of sensual indulgence which he called the low path of the village and the other path that leads nowhere is the path of self mortification (extreme asceticism) -so one should neither seek pleasure nor pain but practice the middle way.Īfter this introduction he then launched into the main theme of his talk which is the four noble truths. He began by teaching briefly on the idea of a middle path between hedonism and asceticism. This sermon is very beloved in the Theravada tradition, it's often chanted as a recistation in the Pali. The Buddha then sat down and he gave the first sermon (the dhamma chawakana Sutta) to the five ascetics in the deer park. They couldn't help themselves, they got up and prepared a seat for him and they brought him a water drink and water to wash his feet. But as he approached closer they saw the radiance of his face and the nobility of his bearing. They thought that was scandalous (that he had been indulging in such luxuries) so they agreed amongst themselves "don't show any respect, don't get up to greet him, he's a backslider". He then headed that direction and when he arrived at the deer park the five ascetic (his companions) they saw him coming and they said "here comes that backslider Gautoma" - because they had been practicing extreme fasting and at the end he decided that was counterproductive and he had taken a bowl of milk rice before his final meditation. So he next thought of his companions in the years of his austerities (he had spent 6 years wondering and practicing austerities) and he had five companions at that time and he saw that they were in the deer park at Isophatina near Varanasi (this Sarnath in modern India - Saraswathi). But we should always have respect and veneration to our teachers and the Buddha thought of them as the first worthy recipients but when he turned his mind to find where they were he realised they had both died in the interim. He decided at the time when he was studying with them he decided his teachings were incomplete so he went on to his own search. So the Buddha consented and he turned his mind to seeing who in this world be a suitable recipient for these teachings in the first instance and he thought of his teachers during his early years (there had been 2 yogis who had taught him various meditation techniques) that started him on his path.
But then a powerful being, Brahma Sahāmpati (one of the Brahma deities, a very refined level of being) appeared before the Buddha on bended knee and begged him to teach for the sake of those with little dust in their eyes. He thought it would be “a weariness and a fixation for me, this generation of beings are attached to their sense pleasures, they will not want to hear this teaching, this teaching will be difficult for them to hear”. His mind was inclined towards just enjoying the bliss of enlightenment sitting under the tree. After the Buddha's awakening under the Bodhi tree at first he was not inclined to teach.
These four truths are included in the content of the 1st discourse of the Buddha after his awakening and the subsequent 45 years of his teaching career is basically filling in the details (commentary) on the four noble truths, it's all in the four noble truths. The four noble truths are the basic statement of the Buddha's teachings. Transcription from online discourse recorded Aug 1 2015
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