Resources: The Four Noble Truths
While exploring The Four Noble Truths from Buddhism with students, there was a request for resources to help explain or deepen understanding. Here are a few that I found and/or were recommended to me by fellow meditation teachers:
An extremely straightforward summary, from the book "The Gifts He Left Behind":
"On the four noble truths
A senior monk of the meditation tradition came to pay his respects to Luang Pu on the first day of the Rains Retreat in 1956.
After giving him instruction and a number of teachings on profound matters, Luang Pu summarized the four noble truths as follows:'The mind sent outside…is the origination of suffering.
The result of the mind sent outside…is suffering.
The mind seeing the mind…is the path.
The result of the mind seeing the mind…is the cessation of suffering.'~
A very short animation explaining The Four Noble Truths & The Eight Fold Path
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Dr. Rick Hanson's article on The Four Noble Truths
Dr. Rick Hanson is a psychologist and expert on positive neuroplasticity. I highly recommend his talks and books.
Also, here is a YouTube video of him discussing The Four Noble Truths and the difficulty with translations.
(Speaking of, he uses the pronunciation "tanha" for the word for craving that I was taught to pronounce "tersha." )
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Tara Brach's talk on "Coming Home to True Refuge."
Tara Brach is one of my main teachers in Insight Meditation, and she released this talk early this month.
While not specifically about the Four Noble Truths, the first half of this talk includes an exploration of "false refuges," which seems to me to be describing exactly what the first two Truths are about (suffering and why we suffer, or how we try to escape suffering). Take a listen and let me know what you think!
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Last but not least, I always love a Wikipedia page.