A RADICAL SOLUTION

The Four Noble Truths discovered by the Fully Enlightened One, offers a radical solution to the problem of suffering with which the world is grappling. The Buddha found that the problem has been imperfectly stated. Only the symptoms of the disease had attracted the worldling's attention. An effective cure has to be based on a thoroughgoing diagnosis. So he had to give a restatement of the problem ‘as-it-is'.

In the enunciation of the First Noble Truth of Suffering, which is something ‘to-be-comprehended', the Buddha was thoroughgoing and forthright.

“ Birth is suffering, decay is suffering, disease is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering. Being attached to the unloved is suffering, being separated from the loved is suffering, not getting what one wants is suffering, in short, the five aggregates of grasping are suffering.”

Last but not least -'in short, the five aggregates of grasping are suffering. ‘This, then, is the ‘Dis-ease'. No doubt - this is a ‘bitter truth', to the worldling - but it is ‘to be comprehended', if a radical cure is asked for'.

What one usually does, is to ‘departmentalize' this vast maze of suffering and search for a solution in one's departmental files.

If one is to rise above that kind of self-deception, one must be prepared to rise above the deception of SELF itself. All possible views of SELF are traceable to the Five Aggregates of Grasping. Form, feeling, perception, preparations and consciousness are the five groups which for the sake of grasping are conceived as compact. They are but transient heaps of processes, elusive and delusive by their very nature. There is only a semblance of stability and a conceit of mastery about them.

since grasping, clinging or holding on to these five groups is the disease, it follows that the cause is craving or desire. The radical cure, then, is the abandonment of that very craving - the ‘letting go' of it. The stress, tension and conflict arising out of that grasping will give place to the ease and bliss of Release - NIBBANA

The Noble Eightfold Path is the Middle Way - the Golden Mean - of setting about the task of letting - go. One grasps, clings and holds on to something out of fear. But when one is sufficiently convinced that what one grasps, clings and holds on to, is itself fearful, one has no choice but to let go. This is the conviction already implicit in the definition of Right View - the first step of the Path. It is stated as the understanding of suffering, its arising, its cessation and the Path leading to that cessation - all in one. Treading the Path, one strengthens this conviction and prepares one's mind for the final ‘letting-go'

The supra-mundane Path is perfected in four stages by the Noble Disciple to become a Stream-winner, a Once-returner, a Non-returner and an Arahant. It is like turning the wheel of Dhamma four times. Already as a Stream-winner, one is convinced that there is no ‘I' outside the five fleeting and fearful groups which promise no security. The lingering conceit ‘ AM' - the ‘hang over' of the chronic samsaric disease - is shaken off only at the fourth round when, as an Arahant, one puts an end to the entire problem of samsaric suffering.