The Fourth Noble Truth — Right Understanding

THE FOURTH NOBLE TRUTH
Right Understanding
(samma ditthi)
�QUESTION
We have now covered all the basic understanding of Buddhism. There is in later Buddhist
commentaries an understanding which is drawn from the Buddhas words. It is the idea that
if someone understands certain things, this will lead to right thinking, words and action and
that this will in turn produce, in the goodness of time, circumstances around the meditator
which will be supportive of the quest to liberation and enlightenment.
What do you think these understanding are?
So we come full circle, back to the problem of wisdom which in Buddhist terms means
the solution to the problem of suffering.� If the Buddha had left just a philosophy or
psychology, he would no doubt be considered these days to be one of the greatest thinkers
of mankind.� But what sets the Buddha apart from philosophers was that he also left a
methodology, a systematic practice whereby each and every individual could make their
own discovery of what he himself had discovered.
The Fourth Truth is the Eightfold Noble Path. It is divided into three sections: morality,
mental development and wisdom and it contains this practice, this methodology. Wisdom
is what is gained in terms of our personal experience. These guidelines, culled by the
Buddha from his own experiential wisdom, act as guidelines directing the whole process of
self-enlightenment. There is the wisdom we gain through insight and the wisdom we gain
through compassionate action or ordinary daily experience. Both of these are supported by
what we learn from other sources such as books, magazines, TV and, of course, people and
by how we ourselves think.
I'm sure everyone has had the experience of buying a do-it-yourself furniture kit, a sort
of adult . �If you're like me you take everything out, quickly work out in your head how
it's supposed to go together and start fixing it up - only to come to the end of the labour
to find one metal bracket or something left over. Because of this missing piece, the whole
construction keeps falling over. So it all has to be dismantled and started again. Only this
time with a humbling and grudging read of the instructions.� Others, who do not suffer
so much from overweening self-confidence, will carefully read the instructions or get a
friend to instruct.� Some will get a friend to do it so that although they might say they it
themselves.� In all these cases, one or more of the above types of understanding has been
employed, but the Buddha would have us tackle even such mundane things as building a
DIY stool, by first of all reading the instructions, then thinking about it so we've actually
understood it for ourselves and then construct it.� In this way we can say we truly know
what it means to construct a DIY stool.� Now we're in a position to help others.� I'm sure
everyone has a friend who can 'fix things', and it ends up costing twice the professional
fees. We can say that knowledge and wisdom is the more profound and authentic to the
individual, the more it is discovered and experienced by that individual.
So, it's the same sort of attitude the Buddha wants us to apply to his teaching. When
he explains to me that there is no lasting entity or soul to be found in body and mind, I
understand it, but I'm not convinced. Then I go away and ponder over it and check it out
with my own logic, arguing with other beliefs I have within myself.� If after all my thinking,
I understand it to be right, then it becomes almost my own argument as it were.� But
as yet its all head stuff.� I have-not actually experienced the insubstantiality of my body
and mind. Scientists, for instance, tell me there is no difference between my body and the
computer Im working on in terms of subatomic particles, but I don't experience myself
as subatomic activity!� Through the meditation practice I can experience the teaching of
insubstantiality. I do begin to experience for myself the insubstantial nature of my body

and mind and when this happens my knowledge is the wisdom of seeing these things as
they really are. It becomes experiential knowledge. This is 'realisation, to 'real-ise the truth.
According to the Buddha, this is the only true wisdom.
Herein lies the importance of different types of wisdom in Buddhist practice. The
progression from received knowledge to one's own personal conclusions to realisation
through actual experience is expressed by the Buddha like this
There are two conditions to the Arising of Right Understanding,
Namely, instruction by another and one's own wise consideration.
The importance of Right Understanding is that it is the first step.
If our first step is wrong, we might very well get lost!�
The Buddha says it in a more poetic way:
�� Just as the red morning sky is the forerunner and first indication
of the rising of the sun,
�� Just so is right understanding the forerunner and first indication
of karmically wholesome things.
So here expressed very clearly is the link between Right Understanding, kamma and our
destiny.�Before we make any decision, we do it by way of understanding.� If I'm going to
buy one of these DIY kits, I'd be very foolish if I didn't understand what it entails. Once I
understand, my decisions put ideas into force, into action. Right Intention, the second part
of the Wisdom division of this Noble Eightfold Path is just that. It is the will putting force
into ideas, plans, projects which run along the lines laid down by Right Understanding.�
Having understood the meditation, what the actual practice and theory is, I then decide to
sit.� This decision is Right Intention. And this develops a Right Attitude which is another
way the second step on the Noble Eightfold Path is sometimes translated.
Right Understanding undercuts delusion, whereas Right Intention undercuts greed and
hatred.� In this way Right Understanding and Right Intention destroy the roots of all
unwholesome kamma. Indeed, of all suffering! We will never intend to keep the Three
Primary Precepts or the Five Training Rules, we will never intend to practice the Perfections
and we will never intend to meditate, if we have no knowledge or understanding� of them.
Right Understanding is the foundation of the Middle Way, the Path of Purification.
So what is Right Understanding? �It is, of course, enshrined in the Four Noble Truths which
were succinctly expressed in the Buddhas first talk: the Discourse on the Turning of the
Wheel of the Law.
Here, the first distinction that he made is what should be avoided by. This doesn't just
refer to monks and nuns, but to anyone who is turning towards a spiritual dimension.�
There are three paths, the path of sensual pleasure, the path of self-mortification and the
Middle Path.� The whole of the Buddha's teaching can be seen as the destruction of sensual
desire.� Remember this doesn't mean there's no tastiness anymore in our food.� It means
the end of greed.� To end greed we need also to end its twin, hatred.� Self-mortification,
thinking that the body and mind are bad or evil and must somehow be destroyed, is wrong
understanding.� There's nothing evil in nature.� Nature is perfect just as it is.� It is our
view of things that cause us suffering and there is no escape in self-hatred or repression or
by means of self-mortification such as long fasts and so on.� The Middle Path is simply to
understand the crucial point that our greed and hatred are the roots of our misery. Once we
have understood that, we have gone along way to destroying our delusions.� Our wisdom
is growing.� Over Christmas and New Year, for instance, everyone drinks and eats so
much.� We get fat.� That's the path of personal pleasure.� Afterwards, we worry about
cholesterol and heart attacks. We suffer ourselves to eat less and cut out what we like.�
That's the path of mortification. The Middle Path is to eat when we are hungry and until
the body has had enough.� The Middle Path is hedged both with the thorny bush of moral
laws which safeguard us from doing anything unwholesome, unskilful or harmful and the

flowering bushes of the Perfections that perfume and beautify our journey.� The Path itself
is our steps, our actions, what we do and how we do.� It is the meditative life in which
sitting meditation trains us to live our lives in a mindful and careful way.
In the second of the Buddha's talks, given to the same five monks, he is concerned to
extend their understanding of the underlying characteristics of human nature.� Delusion
causes us to identify with our pleasures. We think that's what we are.� We think that's
what life is about.� This delusion is the theory upon which our greeds and hatreds are
founded.� To understand the nature of our delusion is paramount if we are going to
achieve the Right Understanding without which all our intentions and all our actions will be
leading us towards suffering, not away from it.
The Buddha converses with his disciples:��
What do you think? Is the body permanent or impermanent?
Impermanent Lord.
And is this impermanence something that brings happiness or unhappiness?
Unhappiness Lord.
And is it right to understand what is impermanent,
and what destroys happiness as mine, me, or myself?�
No Lord.
And so he questions them concerning feelings, thoughts, emotions and even
consciousness.� All are not permanent, do not bring happiness and do not constitute a 'me'
or 'soul' or 'self'.
If we really understand this, that there is nothing in our body and minds that we can hold
on to since it is all arising and passing away, if we really understand that we can't call any
of it a permanent me, or ego, or soul or self, then says the Buddha:
Understanding this, a wise noble disciple loses his passion for things of the body, his
passion for feelings, for thoughts, for emotions, for consciousness.� When he loses
the passion for these things, his greeds and obsessions fade away.� When greeds and
obsessions fade away, the heart is liberated.� When the heart is liberated, then he comes
to know - this is liberation.� He understands: this is the end of birth, the Holy Life has been
completed, what had to be done has been done. There is no more rebirth for me.
Please notice! The heart is not lost with destruction of desire. It is liberated!
This talk was so clear to the five disciples and they were all totally liberated as their new
understanding coupled with their meditation practice came to fruition. There and then they
were released from their delusions. Becoming more and more aware of the changing nature
of our lives will always undermine our attachment to it.� When someone dear to us dies,
it is extremely painful.� Yet if the mourning process is successful, most of our sorrow will
have passed within a year. Within five or ten years there may not even be a sad memory.�
Instead we will remember the person with warmth, joy and gratitude. Virtually all suffering
caused by that separation will disappear. This is what the Buddha taught.� If we can accept
that life is impermanent and uncertain, our attachment to it will be questioned. As we come
to see that life is forever on the move, we won't hold onto anything.� We expect things to
change, be it for the better or the worse. It doesn't matter anymore.� What matters is how
we react to it, how we are affected by it.� It is of no use to our dead loved one, if we spend
the rest of our lives in misery at their passing away!� Its hardly what they'd want.� They'd
want us to get on with living! That's what the Buddha taught. Don't hold on to life. Just get
on with living here and now, but with Right Understanding and Right Intention, of course.
The Path that Buddhists follow, the Middle Path, also contains different levels of
commitment and insight. A person, who experiences Nibbana, is known as a Sotapanna or
stream entrant.� It is said of a Sotapanna that their faith in the Buddha Dhamma Sangha
is unshakable, for now they know by their own experience the Third Noble Truth, the End

of Suffering. Unfortunately, however, this is not the end of training.� Even though total
liberation to such a person is assured, there are three further Noble Paths to be attained.�
The second is called Sakadagami and at this stage the bonds of attachment and hatred
are only loosened.� It is only on achieving the third path, Anagami that these bonds that
tie us to sensual pleasure are finally cut. Even so the training must still go on.� Final
liberation is achieved with the attainment of the Arahat which literally means to have killed
all enemies.� The enemies are, of course, greed, hatred and delusion.� These four types
of persons are known as the Noble Community, Ariya� Sangha.� They are the Buddhist
saints.� When a Buddhist bows three times towards a shrine, he is taking refuge in the
Buddha, the historical personage and his enlightenment, the Dhamma, the doctrine and
the Sangha, this community of saints.� Taking refuge means to put one's trust in the
Triple Gem or the Three Jewels as they are sometimes called.� This act of refuge, plus the
taking of the Five Training Rules is how a person becomes a Buddhist.� But the formula is
repeated by devout Buddhists everyday.� And it is common to make a special effort, every
quarter moon, approximately once a week.� These four days per lunar month are known as
Uposatha Days.� Lay people often go to the monastery on these days to meditate or just to
spend a quiet reflective day within monastic grounds.
For those who have not attained one of the paths, there is an understanding that if certain
teachings are truly understood and development towards the first Aryan Path, Sotapanna,
the Stream Entrant who intuits Nibbana is assured.� That teaching is called the Light of
the Analytical Knowledge of Causation.� There are three types of wrong understanding
concerning the Law of Causation, the Law of Cause and Effect, the Law of Kamma. The first
is to say that existence, life, what we do, what happens to us, arises without a cause. Right
Understanding states that everything happens because of something else.� Everything
is caused.� Everything is the effect of a cause.� The second is to say that existence,
life, what we do, what happens to us arises spontaneously or because of some deity.
This is also not Right Understanding.� Every birth and action is conditioned by past and
present actions.� Thirdly, to say that only past actions condition the present and future
is not Right Understanding either.� To believe this would be to believe in predestination,
in sealed fate.� In reality, the present moment and the future are also effected by our
present decisions. If this were not possible we would not be able to effect any change within
ourselves.� We would simply be doomed by fate.� It is knowing that we can take certain
control especially of our decision making that makes the whole process of purification and
eventual liberation possible.
In other words to have truly understood the Law of Kamma is to have the light which will
lead meditators out of the dark.� The Buddha talked of four kinds of persons.� Those
going from dark to dark, from light to dark, the unfortunates; and those going from dark
to light and from light to light, the fortunates. Understanding that we can be in control of
this process through our will means we have the ability to start moving in the right way.�
Understanding that unwholesome thoughts, words and actions produce the same, and that
wholesome thoughts, words and actions produce the same, means we can now see the
light.� At least at this level we are beginning to see the connection between what we think,
say and do and what happens to us. Even if the outer consequences of our actions are not
immediately obvious, by our meditative practice we come to know their immediate effect
on the mind and heart.� If I'm angry with someone, maybe hell try to get his own back.�
Of that I'm not sure.� I don't know what the outer effect will be.� But when I meditate
and see how this anger affects me in myself, then at least I am aware of its negative and
unhealthy effects on me.� I notice the effects are quite the opposite if I'm kind, gentle and
helpful.� Slowly, this Analytical Knowledge of Causation begins to be our guiding light.�
Then we can say such a person is a Cula-Sotapanna, a lesser Stream Entrant.� We can

be sure that such a person will try to develop the Perfections and practise meditation.�
The later commentaries on the Scriptures assure us that such a person will not end up in
situations where his training will not be able to continue.� In other words his mentality and
actions will lead to situations conducive to training.
To guide such a person, the Buddha clearly laid out the Noble Eightfold Path.� By following
this, especially the sila, Right Action, Right Speech and Right Livelihood, the fourth type of
wisdom arises. Wisdom in action, Compassion.� For this is also the aim of any meditation.
To help other fellow beings towards their enlightenment.� That doesn't mean to preach
Buddhism. It means to help others in whatever capacity a person feels able.� To guide
a child in moral understanding, to feed a sick person and comfort them with encouraging
words, to listen to the problems of some friend or colleague, to give to good causes.
Whatever is compassionate is to practise the Perfections.� It's a two way stream learning
to be patient with the angry child is to learn to be patient with our own internal worrying
childish thoughts.� Learning how to care for and comfort ourselves is to learn how to care
for and comfort others.
So this is it.� This is all the Buddha would have us do.� To study ourselves, our lives.� To
make the connections.� To decide to follow what is wise.
To cease from harm.� To do good.� To purify the mind.
This is the teaching of all the Buddhas!
Like most things, easy to say, hard to do.� But it's worth the effort for the fruits of our
labour are sweet.� The Middle Path really does bring peace, joy, love and harmony and in
the end liberation and an end to all suffering. When the Buddha was asked what is the taste
of Nibanna, he said:
Just as the great ocean only has one taste
The taste of salt
So there is only one taste to Nibbana
And that taste is freedom
May the Teachings of the Buddha shed light into your life!
May you quickly attain the Supreme Goal!
SUMMARY
RIGHT UNDERSTANDING (Samma Ditthi)
Ways of Understanding :�
By instruction, from others�
One's own thinking
By insight experience in meditation
By compassionate action in the world
The Importance of Right Understanding
As the forerunner of all karmically wholesome things.
What is Right Understanding?
1. The Middle Path: neither indulging nor repressing;
2. The First Noble Truth
The Three Characteristics of Existence;������������� ���������
Transience (anicca)
Unsatisfactoriness (dukkha)
Egolessness (anatta)
3. The Second Noble Truth
Desire and attachment as cause of suffering;
The Law of Moral Causation;
4. Cula-Sotapanna:� 'Lesser Steam Entrant' : understands:

The Light of Analytical Knowledge of Causation.
does not believe: that existence is uncaused
: that existence is caused by non causes
: that only past� actions are only causes
such a person will produce circumstances conducive to training and eventual liberation
5. The Third Noble Truth
Nibbana : the End of Suffering
6. The Fourth Noble Truth
The Eigthfold Path.