How the Third and Fourth Noble Truths Move Us Toward Freedom

Date: 2025-01-16 Thursday

For the first month of 2025 we’re going to the root of the Buddha’s teaching: the four noble truths.

As many of you know these four – the unsatisfactoriness of un-awakened existence, the cause of this unsatisfactoriness or suffering, the possibility of freedom, and how to achieve that freedom – are shared by all Buddhist traditions.

Thus these four aren’t basic but core, meaning that if we truly realize these  four, we will awaken. With this in mind we’ll be exploring these four in ways that you can bring into your practice, into your daily lives. This is fruitful material!

The third and  fourth  noble truth are in away even more important, because  they offer  the way out, freedom from dukkha. The third  explores  the nature of  that freedom – nibanna – while the  fourth is  step-by-step directions – the noble eightfold path - to take us to that  freedom. 

The four noble truths are so central to the Buddha’s teachings – in fact among the first things he taught - they seem a good way to start the year. Also people have asked for more core teachings, and it  doesn’t get more  core than this. And third, Seattle Insight will be exploring the four noble truths over the entirety of 2025, so this is in a small way paralleling that.

Click here to listen to or download the talk on the Seattle Insight page.