Which recording artist sang the most Buddhist

song in the history of popular music?

Now obviously, there's no officially correct answer to that question.

But if you want to know someone that I think should at least be

in the running for that title, that is, believe it or not, this guy.

That's right.

Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, who famously

sang the lyric, I can't get no satisfaction.

Now if you've read much Buddhist scripture, you probably don't recall

running into that phrase and that's because I don't think it's there.

But it does capture a lot of the spirit of what is called The First Noble Truth.

And that's what we're going to talk about in this

segment of lecture one, along with the Second Noble Truth.

Together, they constitute the Buddha's diagnosis of the human predicament.

Then later we'll be talking about the Third and Fourth Noble

Truths, which embody the Buddha's prescription, his cure for what ails us.

These, these Four Noble Truths are foundational to Buddhist thought.

The Buddha delivered them in a famous sermon

at Deer Park shortly after attaining enlightenment, which

in turn happened after he had meditated under a Bodhi tree for a very long time.

Now, I should stop here and admit that we

don't really know whether what I just said is true.

We don't know if the Buddha delivered that sermon, or what he said at it.

If he did, we don't know whether he sat under a Bodhi tree.

So far as we know, the story of the Buddha, and what he

said, was not written down for a very long time after he lived.

So, whenever you hear me say the Buddha

said this, the Buddha thought that, strictly speaking

what I mean is according to Buddhist scripture,

the Buddha said this, the Buddha thought that.

What we do know is that the Buddha's teachings were

being promulgated, well more than two millennia ago, centuries before

the time of Jesus, who of course is another foundational

religious figure whose sayings we can't really pin down with confidence.

Of course, as a matter of faith people may believe that any

given foundational religious figure said various things, and that's fine with me.

But as a matter of historical scholarship, we just can't be sure.

So the First Noble Truth, the one that I'm suggesting has a kind

of Mick Jagger aspect, is usually translated

into English as The Truth of Suffering.

But a lot of scholars think that suffering is really

not an adequate translation of the word the Buddha used.

It's not that the word is wrong, it's just that it doesn't capture

the full breadth of what may have originally been meant by the word.

So, maybe we should take a look at the word itself.

And for this purpose, and at the risk of seeming like a relic from a simple era,

I'm going to make use of a black

board and an analog information technology known as chalk.

This is the word that is typically translated as suffering, and

as you can see I've written it twice with two different spellings.

The reason for that is that one is the Sanskrit version

and one is in Pali, an ancient language closely related to Sanskrit.

The reason this is worth talking about a little is

because this is true of key Buddhist terms in general.

As you read about Buddhism, you may encounter

them in one language or in the other.

And in some cases it really matters because

that might keep you from even recognizing the term.

So, for example, if you ran into this term,

Nibbana, you might say what is that?

Whereas if you ran into it in this form,

Nirvana, you would probably have a slightly clearer idea.

Sorry about my handwriting.

Nirvana means of course, liberation, liberation from suffering and that is

what you get, in theory, if you follow the Four Noble Truths all the way to the end.

And there's one other very important term that can appear in

either language and is also related to the Four Noble Truths.

And that is, in probably the form you'll see it most commonly, dharma.

Or if you see it in the Pali, it is dhamma.

And it's a very interesting and rich word with a lot of meanings.

We don't have time to go into all of them.

I want to mention a couple, though.

Probably the most common meaning of dharma is to refer to the Buddha's

teachings and by extension, the path that the Buddha said we should tread.

Okay.

But there is a more fundamental meaning of dharma.

It refers to kind of the truth about the way the universe is

structured or about the, the natural and moral law that structures the universe,

that is the truth that is reflected in the Buddha's writings and in his teachings and

the, the truth whose implications are spelled out in his teachings

but it's the truth itself, not, not just the Buddhist teaching about the truth.

So, in other words, you could say that dharma means both, the truth about

the way things are and then in, in the other sense of the term,

the truth about the way we should live in recognition of the way things

are, that is the, the path that is spelled out in the Buddha's teachings.

So this is kind of reminiscent of that William James quote

we heard earlier, where James said that the essence of religion

is the belief that there is an unseen order and the

our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves to that order.

So dharma in the, in the second sense, in

the fundamental sense of the term, is the unseen order.

And then it is spelled out to us in the

first sense of the term dharma, in the Buddha's teachings.

And also there, we find out how to harmoniously adjust ourselves to

the unseen order, and, and thereby realize our supreme good, which is Nirvana.

if, again, we, we make it all the way through the, the Four Noble Truths and

follow them, and their implications, precisely which Brings us back to duhkka.

Ok now as I said, a lot of scholars

think that the translation of duhkka as suffering is

not, not wholly adequate, and if you ask well,

what other senses of the term might we add?

Well the answer is, and here's a clue,

that's right, the most commonly nominated supplementary translation

of duhkka, supplementary to suffering, is unsatisfactoriness in life.

And one virtue of adding this sense to the meaning of duhkka is

that it makes the First Noble Truth sound a little bit more plausible.

Because you know, the First Noble of Truth emphasizes the pervasiveness of suffering.

One way it's often paraphrased in English is life is suffering.

And, you know, the Buddha never quite says that in so many words, as far as I know,

life is duhkka, but it, that line does capture the, the sense of things.

That, that this duhkka thing is a pervasive part of life.

And you know, that you may just, that may not make any sense to you.

Right?

I mean, there have obviously been times in your

life when you felt, you know, you were not suffering.

But if you add this sense of unsatisfactoriness to

the word, it makes a little more sense I think.

So, just to give you an example, let's

take one of my favorite things; powdered sugar donuts.

Okay, I don't eat them all that often, I'm proud to

say, but that does sometimes takes some self restraint, you know.

I'm talking about, you may have see them, in these little 6 packs of

donuts at a convenience store, each one small enough to pop into your mouth.

And if you asked me, while I'm eating one of these, am I suffering?

The answer is, I would say no, are you kidding, obviously not.

I'm not suffering.

On the other hand, it probably is true that,

you know, just about as soon as I start swallowing

the one donut, I'm already thinking about that next donut,

already kind of yearning for another donut at some level.

And the fact that I want another donut means

that in a literal sense, I didn't get satisfaction.

If you get satisfaction, you don't want any more.

Right?

So this, you know, this, this, this lends some credibility to the First Noble Truth,

the idea that there's always a kind of

undercurrent of yearning no matter what we get.

You know, whether it's donuts or money or sex.

You know, feels good, but eventually the time comes

when the thrill wears off, you want some more.

It just, the pleasure doesn't last.

And this, this business of things not lasting is a major theme of the Buddha's.

Impermanence is a very common word in Buddhist texts.

The idea is that you know, nothing is permanent in the world,

certainly not pleasure, and yet we seem to try to cling to things.

And here we're actually moving into the Second Noble Truth, which

announces the cause of duhkka, the cause of suffering and unsatisfactoriness.

And that cause is, it's a word that means something like thirst.

It's often translated as craving.

And there's a sense of clinging, of trying to hang on.

And the Buddha said that, in clinging to things that

won't last, you know, we're evincing a kind of delusion.

We're just not getting the picture about the impermanence of things.

We're not reckoning with the truth about reality.

Now I want to emphasize that the stakes of this

go way beyond powered sugar donuts in a couple of senses.

First of all, we're not just talking about kind of raw, sensory pleasures, okay?

It's gratifying things in general.

Getting an A on that next exam.

Winning the esteem of your friends.

Winning the acclaim of society at large.

You know, whatever makes you feel good, eventually that

feeling will fade, and you're going to want more.

Psychologists refer to this as the Hedonic Treadmill.

Hedonic, meaning pleasure seeking, and

treadmill, meaning you're not getting anywhere.

You keep trying, and keep striving after happiness, you don't get any closer to it.

And this refers to the finding that when

people do get happier, a new job makes them

happier, they win the lottery, as a rule, their

happiness before too long returns to its normal level.

Okay.

Now, there's a second sense in which the

stakes are higher than, than powdered sugar donuts.

And that is that although it sounds like the first two Noble

Truths are all about things that we, that we seek, that we desire.

It also covers anxieties and fears.

Anxieties about, you know being criticized in public or something, or

going to some cocktail party you don't want to go to.

The fear of being eaten by a lion or something, you know?

And that, you know, that that doesn't, that doesn't sound

right that you could include these things under the rubric of

craving, right, because you don't, you know, social rejection you

don't, you don't want, you want to get away from that.

You don't want to get closer to it, and, you know, a charging lion

is something that you do not want to embrace, you want to get away from.

And for that reason, I'm almost kind of surprised that,

in the, in the second Noble Truth, we actually don't

hear about aversion to things as a problem, because elsewhere

in Buddhist texts, there is a lot of emphasis on aversion.

And sometimes, it's put on kind of an equal

plane with craving, as the source of our troubles.

But it is true that, you know, you can phrase these things in a way

such that anxieties and fears do fit into the Second Noble Truth as it's stated.

So you would say, for example, well, if you fear

social criticism, if you have anxiety about that, or if

you have anxiety about doing badly at some presentation you're

going to give, that's because you're clinging to your social status.

You're attached to your social status.

That's the problem.

It's attachment.

Or, if you fear a charging lion, that's

because you are attached to your own existence.

You cling to, you crave, your own existence.

And you know, you may at this point say, wait

a second, this, this is where I get off the boat.

If Buddhism is telling me I shouldn't be attached to my

own existence you know, I'm just not interested in this program.

Well.

You know, I'm not trying to recruit you, I'm just telling you what the

Buddha's diagnosis does explicitly include attachment to

your existence as part of the problem.