BSRV 26.2 (2009) 197–227 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (print) 0256-2897 doi: 10.1558/bsrv.v26i2.197 Buddhist Studies Review ISSN (online) 1747-9681 The Four Ariya-saccas as ‘True Realities for the Spiritually Ennobled’ — the Painful, its Origin, its Cessation, and the Way Going to This — Rather than ‘Noble Truths’ Concerning These PETER HARVEY University of Sunderland
[email protected] Abstract This paper critiques the standard translation of ariya-sacca as ‘Noble Truth’ and argues that the term refers to four saccas as ‘true realities’, rather than as verbalized ‘truths’ about these realities; the teachings about them are not, as such what the term ariya-sacca refers to. Moreover, only one of the ariya-saccas (the fourth) is itself ever described in the suttas as ‘noble’. The four are ‘true realities for the spiritually ennobled’: the fundamental, basic, most significant genuine realities that the Buddha and other noble ones see in the flow of experience of themselves and/or others. The first of them is not best translated as ‘suffering’ but as ‘pain’ — in all its many senses — or indeed ‘the painful’: the upādāna-kkhandhas as ‘bundles of grasping-fuel’ which are described, adjectivally, as ‘painful’. The paper includes a new translation of the Dhamma-cakka-ppavattana Sutta in line with this analysis. Keywords: ariya-saccas; noble truths; dukkha; Dhamma-cakka-ppavattana. In three successive suttas of the sacca-saṃyutta (SN 56.7–10), it is said that things one that one should ‘think (vitakkeyyātha)’ about, ‘reflect cinteyyātha( )’ about, and talk about, when one does think, reflect and talk are: ‘“This is dukkha” … “This is the origin of dukkha” … “This is the cessation of dukkha” … “This is the way going to the cessation of dukkha”’.