Four Noble Truths

The Four Noble Truths is the Buddha’s first discourse on how to actualize the path of awakening. In this study we explore the transforming power of acknowledging and clarifying the experience of unsatisfactoriness, the lawful dynamic of how stress comes to be in the mind, the experience of release or the cessation of suffering, and the proper understanding of the path. These teachings are designed to support the arising of insights and more skill and freedom as we live our lives. Understanding directly in our experience how suffering arises and how it ceases is our most important task.

• 2015 Meditations and Talks
• 2020 Meditations and Talks

Study Resources

• The Four Noble Truths, by Ajahn Sumedho
• The Message of the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, by Sylvia Boorstein
• The Art of Letting Go, by Ruth King
• Deep Dukkha: Getting Down in the Trenches with the First Noble Truth, by Toni Bernhard
• Pema Chodron on the Benefits of Hopelessness
• The Four Noble Truths: A Study Guide, by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
• How We Get Hooked and How We Get Unhooked, by Pema Chodron, Lion’s Roar, December 26, 2017
• The Grit That Becomes a Pearl: Dukkha Explained, By Thanissara, December 16, 2014
• The Joy Hidden in Sorrow, From Freeing the Heart by Ajahn Medhanandi
• The Far Shore, By Thanissaro Bhikkhu, Tricycle, SUMMER 2018
• Attadanda Sutta: Arming Oneself, Translated from the Pali by Andrew Olendzki
• Ud 3:10 Surveying the World (Loka Sutta)
• Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion translated by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
• The Dawn of the Dhamma: Illuminations from the Buddha’s First Discourse by Ajahn Sucitto
• Talk 36. Four Noble Truths – The Truth of Dukkha Notes from Joseph Goldstein’s series of talks on the Satipatthana Sutta taken by Mark Young
• Talk 37. Four Noble Truths – The Origin of Dukkha Notes from Joseph Goldstein’s series of talks on the Satipatthana Sutta taken by Mark Young
• Talk 38. Four Noble Truths – The Cessation of Dukkha Notes from Joseph Goldstein’s series of talks on the Satipatthana Sutta taken by Mark Young
• A Secular Buddhism by Stephen Batchelor
• The Weight of Mountains by Thanissaro Bhikkhu
• Suffering Should Be Welcomed by Ajahn Sumedho (From his book Intuitive Awareness)