The Four Noble Truths

No longer craving fantasy,
a steadfast desire for liberation,
attaining these two is the first breakthrough.
The Three Principles of the Path

Inspire me to realize the shortcomings of samsara
And to give birth to the great wish for blissful freedom.
The Foundation of All Perfections

Praise the LORD!
Happy are those who fear the LORD,
who greatly delight in his commandments....
The wicked see it and are angry;
they gnash their teeth and melt away;
the desire of the wicked comes to nothing.
-- Psalm 112:1,10

The core teachings of Buddhism are found in the Dhammacakkapavattana Sutta ("The Sutra of Turning the Wheel of Truth"), which describes the Buddha's first sermon to his disciples in the Deer Park at Varanasi. This begins with a brief description of the Middle Path which avoids addiction to extremes. Then follow the Four Noble Truths, which explain why the path is to be followed.

The literal meaning of the Pali term nibbana (Sanskrit nirvana) is "unbinding", that is, liberation of the mind from its enslavement by the Three Poisons and all the anguish (dukkha, often translated "suffering") that follows from that.

"Monks, these two extremes ought not to be practiced.... There is addiction to indulgence of sense-pleasures, which is low, coarse, the way of ordinary people, unworthy, and unprofitable; and there is addiction to self-mortification, which is painful, unworthy, and unprofitable.

"Avoiding both these extremes, the Tathagata [The Perfect One] has realized the Middle Path; it gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to calm, to insight, to enlightenment and to Nibbana.... It is the Noble Eightfold path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration....

"The Noble Truth of Suffering [dukkha], monks, is this: Birth is suffering, aging is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, association with the unpleasant is suffering, dissociation from the pleasant is suffering, not to receive what one desires is suffering — in brief the five aggregates subject to grasping are suffering.

"The Noble Truth of the Origin [cause] of Suffering is this: It is this craving [thirst] which produces re-becoming (rebirth) accompanied by passionate greed, and finding fresh delight now here, and now there, namely craving for sense pleasure, craving for existence and craving for non-existence (self-annihilation).

"The Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering is this: It is the complete cessation of that very craving, giving it up, relinquishing it, liberating oneself from it, and detaching oneself from it.

"The Noble Truth of the Path Leading to the Cessation of Suffering is this: It is the Noble Eightfold Path, and nothing else, namely: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."

-- from "Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting in Motion the Wheel of Truth" (SN 56.11).
Translated from the Pali by Piyadassi Thera.
Access to Insight, 30 November 2013.