What Buddhists believe
The four noble truths
Suffering, its origin in craving, its cessation, and the path. The heart of the Buddha's first sermon, and where the Bible's diagnosis differs.
What they say
According to the Pali discourses, the Buddha's first teaching after his awakening was given to five ascetics in the deer park at Isipatana near Varanasi. He set out four truths: suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path that leads to its cessation.
Now this is the noble truth of suffering. Rebirth is suffering; old age is suffering; illness is suffering; death is suffering; being coupled with the disliked is suffering; separation from the liked is suffering; not getting what you wish for is suffering. In brief, the five grasping aggregates are suffering. Now this is the noble truth of the origin of suffering. It’s the craving that leads to future lives, mixed up with relishing and greed, taking pleasure there wherever it alights. That is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for continued existence, and craving for nonexistence. Now this is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering. It’s the fading away and cessation of that very same craving no residue left behind; giving it away, letting it go, releasing it, and not clinging to it. Now this is the noble truth of the practice that leads to the cessation of suffering.
Samyutta Nikaya 56.11:4.1-4.8, Rolling Forth the Wheel of Dhamma (tr. Bhikkhu Sujato) · context
Where Christians agree
Life in this world is marked by suffering, and the Bible does not hide it: Job, the Psalms and Ecclesiastes say so plainly. Greed and grasping do make us miserable.
1“Man, who is born of a woman, is of few days, and full of trouble. 2He grows up like a flower, and is cut down. He also flees like a shadow, and doesn’t continue.
Job 14:1-2 (WEB) · context
14I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and behold, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
Ecclesiastes 1:14 (WEB) · context
1Where do wars and fightings among you come from? Don’t they come from your pleasures that war in your members? 2You lust, and don’t have. You murder and covet, and can’t obtain. You fight and make war. You don’t have, because you don’t ask.
James 4:1-2 (WEB) · context
Where the Bible differs
The Bible says suffering entered a good world through sin, that the root problem is our turning away from God, and that the cure is not the extinction of desire but forgiveness and a new heart. See reason 4.
17To Adam he said, “Because you have listened to your wife’s voice, and have eaten from the tree, about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ the ground is cursed for your sake. You will eat from it with much labor all the days of your life. 18It will yield thorns and thistles to you; and you will eat the herb of the field. 19You will eat bread by the sweat of your face until you return to the ground, for you were taken out of it. For you are dust, and you shall return to dust.”
Genesis 3:17-19 (WEB) · context
20For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God.
Romans 8:20-21 (WEB) · context
6All we like sheep have gone astray. Everyone has turned to his own way; and Yahweh has laid on him the iniquity of us all.
Isaiah 53:6 (WEB) · context
Sources
- Earliest source Samyutta Nikaya 56.11. Translation: Bhikkhu Sujato (CC0), SuttaCentral.