A teaching summary podcast of 4 Noble Truths Retreat 1999 by Khensur Rinpoche, recorded at Buddha House, Adelaide.
Four Noble Truths Retreat 1999
Teacher: Khensur Rinpoche
Tradition: Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism
Venue: Buddha House, Adelaide
Recordings: 10 teaching sessions (April 1999)
Source: Corrected transcripts from the Bodhi Archive
Overview
This Easter retreat at Buddha House, Adelaide, presents Khensur Rinpoche’s systematic explanation of the Four Noble Truths — the very first teaching given by Buddha Shakyamuni after his enlightenment, at Varanasi (Banaras). Rinpoche explains that the Four Noble Truths are accepted by all four Buddhist schools of tenets and by both the lesser and greater vehicles, making them the foundation and basis of all Buddhist teaching. Without understanding this foundation, he says, one cannot progress in the path of wisdom and method, and without that path, one cannot achieve the results of liberation and Buddhahood.
The teaching spans four days and proceeds in careful stages: establishing why the Buddha’s teaching is trustworthy, explaining the sequence in which the truths were taught (result before cause, for a reason), exploring each truth through its nature, function, and the action of the practitioner who understands it, and finally examining the sixteen attributes of the Four Noble Truths. Throughout, Rinpoche employs vivid everyday examples — a sick person going to a doctor, a troubled family, a cup of delicious tea poisoned by someone, the changing temperature in the meditation hall — to make abstruse teachings immediate and comprehensible.
The retreat also covers the mechanisms of cyclic existence: how karma and disturbing emotions act as the causes that keep sentient beings circling from body to body, how ignorance — specifically the mind grasping at a self as inherently existent — is the root cause of all suffering, and how the wisdom realising selflessness and emptiness is the antidote. Rinpoche concludes by teaching the four attributes of each of the Four Noble Truths and explaining the significance of the subtle and gross forms of impermanence. The teaching ends with a dedication and an aspiration to meet the future Buddha Maitreya when he turns the wheel of the Four Noble Truths for the first time.
Key Teachings
The Buddha’s Authority and the Purpose of the Teaching
Rinpoche opens by establishing the trustworthiness of the teacher. Buddha Shakyamuni developed great love and compassion over many lifetimes, cultivated the wisdom realising emptiness, and through these two — method and wisdom — finally achieved enlightenment. He taught the Four Noble Truths first, Rinpoche explains, out of compassion for sentient beings, in order to fulfil two kinds of wishes: temporary wishes (higher rebirth) and ultimate wishes (definite goodness or liberation).
The great Indian masters Dignaga and Dharmakirti, Rinpoche notes, established through logic the existence of past and future lives, refuting the claim that Buddhist teaching rests on mere faith. The mind at the last moment of death, accompanied by disturbing emotions and their imprints, provides the best logical reason to prove that there is a next rebirth.
The Three Ways of Teaching the Four Truths
Buddha Shakyamuni taught the Four Noble Truths in three ways:
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By their nature: identifying what each truth is — “This is true suffering,” “This is the origin of suffering,” and so on. Supreme beings (those who directly realise emptiness) see the body as suffering, just as everyone agrees that what is in front of them is a table.
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By their function (from the object side): understanding what each truth does — “Suffering is to be understood; the origin is to be abandoned; cessation is to be attained; the path is to be cultivated.”
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By the agent’s action (past tense): the disciple who has practised confirms, “I have understood suffering, I have abandoned its origin, I have achieved cessation, I have meditated on the path.” This third way refers to the effect or result of practice in the practitioner.
When the Buddha first taught in this threefold way at Varanasi, the disciple Kaundinya attained arhathood, and the other four disciples realised selflessness and attained the path of seeing.
Why the Results Are Taught Before the Causes
Buddha taught the results first (true suffering, then true cessation) and the causes second (true origin, then true path), even though in the actual sequence of arising, the causes come first. Rinpoche explains this through the analogy of a sick person: first the person recognises their suffering (the sickness), which leads them to look for its cause (the disease), and then they understand what health (cessation) would look like, and finally they take the medicine (the path). You must first know you are sick before you seek a cure. The teacher follows the student’s experience, not the logical order of causation.
The two sets of cause and effect show: (1) how we circle in cyclic existence — suffering arises from karma and disturbing emotions; and (2) how we achieve liberation — cessation arises from training in the true path.
True Suffering: Our Present Body
Rinpoche identifies the main object to be recognised as “the suffering of pervasive conditioning” — our present body and mind, taken under the influence of karma and disturbing emotion. This, he says, is the root or the container of all other sufferings. Just as a single ringleader causes all the trouble in a crowd, if you deal with this main suffering, the rest resolve themselves.
He enumerates the forms of human suffering: birth, aging, sickness, and death; not accomplishing one’s wishes; separation from loved ones; meeting with the unwanted; uncertainty (a friend in one life may be an enemy in the next); and the suffering of unsatisfied craving — never being satisfied with what one has, always wanting more. He extends this to the suffering of beings in the lower realms — animals, hungry ghosts, hell beings — whose suffering far exceeds our own.
The feeling of happiness, Rinpoche observes, is not reliable or stable. He offers a perfect in-room example: those who came in feeling cold were warm and happy by the teaching’s end, and those who came in feeling warm were now too hot. The feeling of happiness that depends on conditions is contaminated happiness — it always turns into suffering when conditions change. The only stable, inexhaustible happiness is the true cessation of liberation.
True Origin: Karma and Disturbing Emotions
The origin of suffering is karma (action) and disturbing emotions. Karma gives birth to our present rebirth; the disturbing emotions act as its necessary companion, like water is necessary for a seed to grow. Without disturbing emotions, karma cannot give its result.
Among the disturbing emotions, the three principal ones are desire, hatred, and confusion (ignorance). The root among these is ignorance — specifically, the grasping at a self as truly or inherently existent. Rinpoche uses a memorable political analogy: ignorance is like the president who sits on the throne, and desire and hatred are like the prime minister who does all the actual work.
The grasping at “I” as self-sufficient and inherently existent gives rise to “self” and “other,” from which arise attachment to self and aversion to others. The self then uses the five sense organs to seek its happiness, and when that fails, it creates aversion and harmful actions. This is how we generate karma and circle in samsara.
Rinpoche distinguishes two types of action: intention (mental action — the motivation formed in the mind before acting), and intended action (actions of body and speech that follow from intention). Both good and bad actions are further divided into those performed through body, speech, and mind.
The four results of any action are: (1) the ripening result (the realm of rebirth); (2) the result that accords with the cause (a natural tendency toward similar actions); (3) the experiential result (length of life, or its opposite); and (4) the environmental result (the nature of the place one inhabits).
The Root of Cyclic Existence: Self-Grasping
Rinpoche defines samsara not as external objects, tables, or the world — the world is the container; samsara is what it contains, the mental and physical aggregates that are taken under the influence of karma and disturbing emotions. The “I” that circles from body to body is the agent; the body is the cyclic existence. The thread that keeps us circling is the disturbing emotions and karma. Cut that thread, and we stop circling.
The antidote is taught through dependent arising and emptiness: because we lack understanding of dependent arising and emptiness, ignorance arises. Ignorance is like a wire that powers the engine of samsara.
True Cessation: Stable and Inexhaustible Happiness
True cessation is the state that has abandoned all sufferings from the root, uprooted karma and disturbing emotions, and is therefore free from suffering permanently. Liberated beings (arhats) and Buddhas have abandoned the causes of suffering; because those causes are gone, their happiness never transforms into suffering. Their merit is immeasurable and their happiness inexhaustible — unlike our contaminated happiness, which is limited and always turns into suffering.
The four attributes of true cessation are:
1. Cessation — it has ceased all sufferings.
2. Pacification (Peace) — it has uprooted all suffering from the root.
3. Excellence (High Auspiciousness) — free from all suffering, it remains in happiness all the time.
4. Definite Emergence — suffering will never return; the freedom is definitive.
True Path: Wisdom Realising Selflessness
The true path is the wisdom that directly realises the selflessness of a person. This wisdom is the method to achieve cessation; it is the antidote to ignorance, just as medicine is the antidote to disease.
The four attributes of the true path are:
1. Path — the wisdom of direct realisation of selflessness is the path to liberation.
2. Suitability (Awareness) — it is the suitable method to abandon disturbing emotions.
3. Achievement — it directly realises the mode of existence of phenomena.
4. Deliverance — it acts as a direct antidote to suffering and never allows suffering to return.
The Sixteen Attributes of the Four Noble Truths
Each of the Four Noble Truths has four attributes, making sixteen in total. The four attributes of true suffering are taught to overcome four misconceptions:
1. Impermanence — overcomes seeing the suffering as permanent.
2. Suffering — overcomes seeing the contaminated body as pleasurable.
3. Emptiness — the self and the aggregates are empty of true existence; they are interdependent.
4. Selflessness — there is no self that exists self-sufficiently or inherently without depending on the aggregates.
The four attributes of the true origin are:
1. Origin (Cause) — it is the cause of suffering.
2. Origin of All — from it, all suffering arises.
3. Conditions — it acts as the condition for suffering to grow (like the prime minister who does all the work).
4. Intense Production — it gives powerful birth to the result of suffering.
Subtle and Gross Impermanence
In teaching the first attribute of true suffering (impermanence), Rinpoche explains two levels. Gross impermanence is easy to perceive — aging, sickness, death, a flower wilting, a glass breaking. Subtle impermanence is the momentary change that occurs at every instant, which we overlook because our mind grasps things as permanent. Rinpoche illustrates this by dividing a finger snap into 65 moments — beings change at every one of these instants, never staying for even a single moment. The cause that gives birth to a thing is the same cause that brings about its disintegration from the very first moment.
Differences Among Buddhist Schools
Rinpoche notes that the Prasangika Madhyamika school holds that to attain full enlightenment (Buddhahood), one must realise both the selflessness of persons and the selflessness of phenomena. Schools below the Prasangika hold that merely realising the selflessness of persons is sufficient to attain liberation (arhathood), because they do not assert the true existence of phenomena as a root of cyclic existence. All schools agree, however, that ignorance is the root of suffering and that cultivating the wisdom of emptiness is the antidote.
To cultivate the wisdom realising emptiness according to the Mahayana path, one must first cultivate the accumulation of merit (through ethics, generosity, patience, and effort) and the accumulation of wisdom (through the five logical analyses, including the logic of dependent arising and the logic of “not one and not many”).
Key Terms
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Four Noble Truths | The foundational teaching of Buddha Shakyamuni: true suffering, true origin, true cessation, true path |
| True Suffering (Dukha Satya) | Our present body and mind, produced under the influence of karma and disturbing emotions; the main form is the suffering of pervasive conditioning |
| True Origin (Samudaya Satya) | The karma and disturbing emotions that are the causes of suffering |
| True Cessation (Nirodha Satya) | The state of liberation in which all suffering and its causes have been permanently eradicated |
| True Path (Marga Satya) | The wisdom directly realising selflessness; the method to achieve cessation |
| Karma | Action; the imprints left by intentional actions on the mindstream |
| Disturbing Emotions (Klesha) | Ignorance, desire, and hatred; the afflictive mental states that motivate karma |
| Ignorance (Avidya) | The mind grasping at a self as truly or inherently existent; the root of all suffering |
| Self-Grasping | Holding the “I” to exist self-sufficiently, without depending on the aggregates |
| Selflessness (Anatman) | The absence of an inherently existent self; the direct antidote to ignorance |
| Emptiness (Shunyata) | The absence of inherent existence; the self and phenomena exist only by depending on others |
| Cyclic Existence (Samsara) | The continual taking of rebirth under the power of karma and disturbing emotions |
| Liberation (Moksha) | Freedom from cyclic existence, achieved by cutting the thread of karma and disturbing emotions |
| Supreme Beings (Aryas) | Those who directly realise emptiness; they see the body as suffering directly |
| Gross Impermanence | Visible, coarse change — aging, sickness, death, a flower wilting |
| Subtle Impermanence | Momentary change: the fact that phenomena change in every single instant |
| Contaminated Happiness | Happiness that depends on conditions and therefore transforms into suffering when conditions change |
| Accumulation of Merit | The store of positive karma built through ethical discipline, generosity, patience, and effort |
| Accumulation of Wisdom | Understanding built through logical analysis and meditation on emptiness |
| Prasangika Madhyamika | The Consequentialist Middle Way school, considered the highest philosophical view in Tibetan Buddhism |
Practice Points
Meditate on the disadvantages of suffering. Tsongkhapa states plainly: without meditating again and again on the disadvantages of suffering, one will never generate the mind wishing for liberation. As Rinpoche puts it, if you do not see the faults of the man causing trouble in the family, you will never try to remove him. One must first recognise suffering, then see its faults, and only then will the wish to abandon its cause arise naturally.
Recognise the suffering of pervasive conditioning. Among all the types of suffering, the suffering of pervasive conditioning — the contaminated body and mind itself — is the main one. See this clearly. If you can see the faults of the main suffering, understanding of all subsidiary sufferings follows naturally.
Investigate the origin: know your enemy. Just as an archer must see the target before releasing the arrow, one must clearly identify the origin of suffering before one can abandon it. The origin is karma and disturbing emotions, rooted in the ignorance that grasps at a self as inherently existent. Without knowing this target, no amount of prayer or wishing can eliminate suffering.
Do not mistake contaminated happiness for real happiness. The feeling of happiness is not stable or reliable. If it were real happiness, using it would make it increase, but it does not — it always eventually turns into suffering. The only real, stable happiness is the true cessation of liberation.
Cultivate both accumulations. To gain the wisdom realising emptiness — the true path — one must cultivate both the accumulation of merit (ethics, giving, patience, effort) and the accumulation of wisdom (logical analysis, analytical and placement meditation on emptiness).
Use discussion and meditation together. Rinpoche instructs students not merely to hear the teaching and leave it there. He says: meditate on what you have heard, discuss it in your group, clarify anything you can, and bring remaining doubts back to him the next morning. The teaching is like food on a plate — it is of no use if you simply look at it and do not eat it.
Make aspiration prayers. Rinpoche closes the retreat by asking students to dedicate the merit and to make aspiration prayers to be born when the future Buddha Maitreya gives his first teaching of the Four Noble Truths, so that at that time we may together attain liberation, just as the first five disciples did at Varanasi.