The Four Noble Truths Of Buddhism

Buddhism is a fascinating religion with equally fascinating doctrine, featuring such concepts as The Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, among others. It features a nontheistic worldview with the focus on living the best life you can and attaining nirvana, the perfect peace, freedom from all suffering and desires. This paper will discuss these concepts in addition to answering the following questions: is all of life suffering; is suffering the result of desire; and is the Noble Eightfold Path an adequate way to eliminate suffering in the world?
The first topic that will be tackled is the Four Noble Truths, and they are as follows: Suffering is inherent in life, the cause of suffering is desire, there is a way to put an end to desire and
As listed in the textbook, the noble eightfold path is: right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration. The Eightfold Noble Path is basically the Buddhist’s Guide to living like the Buddha. By striving to live an enlightened and kind life, they follow the eightfold path by seeing the world “as it truly is”, make a very strong effort to stick to the path and teachings of the Buddha, avoid being anything but kind with their words, work in fulfilling and helpful occupations, attempt to abandon all that would be harmful to themselves and others and instead try to better themselves with their thoughts, attempt to monitor and control all of their thoughts and actions to ensure they are following the path, and striving to attain nirvana. I do believe that if it were followed, the eightfold path would eliminate a lot of unnecessary suffering in the
Is it a result of desire? In my opinion, not all of life is suffering, but usually the most enjoyable things will inevitably involve suffering, some necessary, some not. In particular, marriage is a wonderful experience and if you’ve picked your spouse carefully, you’ll love each other for a lifetime. When your spouse has a dangerous job, there is a lot of worrying to be had: What if they don’t come home safely? Could you ever be whole again? You have to manage your expectations in order to reduce your suffering. That is what the four noble truths are alluding too: using the middle way. You’re very unlikely to be the next Steve Jobs, but you can desire your basic needs for wellness and happiness to be met. As someone with chronic pain, I understand the direction this statement is going. On very bad pain days (usually when the barometric pressure changes), I am very limited in how far I can walk and in the things I am able to do. Mindfulness and limiting my expectations don’t always reduce my physical suffering, but it helps with the emotional suffering of feeling inadequate for being unable to do the laundry. I could anguish over these feelings, or I could reject them knowing my husband won’t mind doing the laundry today, and would much rather do it than watch me struggle or feel guilty about