Are the four noble truths supposed to be applied to every type of anguish separately?
5
votes
4
answers
212
views
In the answer to [another question](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/questions/17693/where-can-i-get-buddhas-teachings-of-the-dharma-practice) user Dhammadhatu wrote that according to the *Four Noble Truths*
1. suffering is to be comprehended,
2. the origin of suffering is to be abandoned,
3. the cessation of suffering is to be realised, and
4. the path to the cessation of suffering is to be developed.
That's the theory.
Is it correct that this process needs to be applied to different types of suffering separately, like explained below?
Imagine that on a given day I experienced and registered following phenomena:
* Someone said something and I was upset for 15 minutes.
* I was angry at the people around me in a crowded place and wanted punch them in the face.
* Instead of doing something productive, I watched a movie I saw many times before.
All three are **symptoms** of suffering. In step 2 (origin of suffering is to be comprehended) I find out, what exactly it was that **caused** my suffering.
- In the first example it may be my wish to be accepted by all people, and when someone reacted in an unexpected way, I interpreted it as if thy weren't liking/accepting me.
- In the second example the cause of the suffering was my emotional (I just don't like it) and fact-based (among every 100 people, there are at least 5 rude idiots) aversion to crowded places.
- In the third example the cause of the suffering was my thought that I'm too weak resisting the habit of watching movies I already saw.
Step 3 maybe the goal -- how do I want to behave in future, if I experience a similar situation? What could be a better response to it?
In the first example I could realize that the number of people, whose opinion really matters to me is very small, and the person I was upset about wasn't one of them.
In the second example I could decide to
* avoid crowded spaces at all (e. g. by coming and going to work outside of the rush hours),
* when I experience bad emotions I use them as motivators (emotional fuel) for work (say to myself "work hard now in order to never see those ... faces in the public transport").
In the third example I could decide to
* allocate a quota of my weekly time for entertainment and then use it for that purpose without guilt,
* define a healthy reward for not watching that movie (if I work instead of watching the movie today, I'll do something fun tomorrow),
* during that work I'm supposed to do, regularly think about why (to what end) I do that work and artificially create a feeling of joy during work so that gradually it will become a reward in itself (more attractive than watching a movie).
The final and fourth step is to implement these solutions, i. e. develop a habit of reacting to old challenges in a new way. Then, other types of sufferings will appear, which I handle in an analogous way. Note that for every type of suffering I design a separate strategy.
Is this how the Dharma practice is supposed to work?
Asked by user10111
Oct 6, 2016, 08:00 AM
Last activity: Oct 6, 2016, 08:26 PM
Last activity: Oct 6, 2016, 08:26 PM