Three Noble Truths Versus Four

As Ajaan Lee teaches, we should learn how to let go like rich people, and not let go like paupers. Paupers have nothing to begin with. Then they say, “Well, we’ll content ourselves with not having anything. Let go of the possibility of having a Cadillac. Let go of the possibility of having a Mercedes-Benz.” But when you look at it, what do they have? They have nothing, aside from pride that they’ve been able to let go.

Rich people gain wealth, gain benefits from their wealth, and in spending the wealth, they let it go. But they have something to show for it. Even if they don’t spend their wealth, they don’t carry it around with them. It’s there in their homes when they need it, but they don’t have to carry it around.

What Ajaan Lee is talking about is the practice of concentration. There are people who say they don’t need to practice concentration. After all, they’ve learned from the Buddha that you should let go of the five aggregates, that the five aggregates are stressful, inconstant, and not-self, so they just let them go.

But you don’t gain anything that way.

What the Buddha has you do is take those five aggregates and develop them into right concentration. You’ve got the breath here: That’s form. The feeling of pleasure that comes when you stay with the breath is feeling. The mental image, the mental label that tells you, “This is where the breath is. This is how the breath flows. This is where you should be focused”: That’s perception. The directed thought and evaluation that adjust the breath to fit the mind, adjust the mind to fit the breath: That’s fabrication. And then there’s the consciousness that’s aware of these things.

You turn those five aggregates into a state of concentration. And in doing so, you’re fighting against those three perceptions of inconstant, stressful, and not-self. You’re making the mind more constant, you’re finding a sense of ease and pleasure, and you’re getting the mind under control.

Ultimately, you realize that you can push these things only so far. But if you push them far enough, and with enough discernment, you can turn them into a path that takes you to something that really is easeful and constant in the ultimate sense: nibbāna. That’s the wealth you’ve gained. Then you can let the concentration go.

But even when you let go of the concentration, you still have it at hand. Look at the Buddha. He let go of everything in the course of gaining awakening, but afterward he still had his powers of concentration, his powers of discernment. He could use them for his own well-being and for the well-being of the world. So letting go like a rich person — if your wealth is right concentration — is actually an act of kindness to yourself and to others.

Now, to gain concentration, you have to do some work. Look at the factors of the noble eightfold path. They start with right view, where the Buddha identifies what suffering is: the five clinging-aggregates. He identifies the cause of suffering as the three types of craving: for sensuality, for becoming, and for non-becoming. He points out the cessation of suffering, which is dispassion for those kinds of craving. Then there’s the path to develop that dispassion, starting with right view and ending in right concentration.

What’s interesting in those factors of the path is that after he sets out the three causes of suffering — craving for sensuality, becoming, and non-becoming — when he gets to right resolve, the next factor, he doesn’t talk about resolve to get rid of those three types of craving. He talks about resolve for renunciation—in other words, to get rid of sensuality—but then the other two right resolves are resolve on non-ill will and resolve on harmlessness, which don’t make reference to the remaining two types of craving.

What they are referring to is what you have to let go of in order to get into right concentration. In fact, the whole rest of the path is aimed at right concentration. We practice right speech, right action, and right livelihood to get the mind in the right frame of mind, to create the right conditions to have a concentration based on honesty. We practice right effort to get rid of the qualities that get in the way of concentration and to develop the qualities that are needed for the mind to get centered. We practice right mindfulness to give concentration a foundation. The last seven factors of the path are aimed at right concentration.

If you try to practice without getting into right concentration—which a lot of people do—you’re trying to function with three noble truths and not four. You see this especially around people who say that you have to learn to be content, and they interpret contentment so that it even covers unskillful qualities coming up in your mind. You’re just going to be okay with them, not have any passion to get them to go away—because that would be desire, right? That’s what they say—and they’re stuck right there.

It’s like trying to go to the Grand Canyon without following the path or the road to the Grand Canyon. Just find the nearest ditch and say, “Well, this will be my Grand Canyon. I’ll be a good little boy, good little girl, learn to content myself with it.” That’s letting go like a pauper. And it’s the wrong use of contentment.

As the Buddha said, contentment with material things is fine. But then he himself said that the secret to his awakening was being discontent with skillful qualities. Notice that: discontent with skillful qualities—to say nothing of being discontent with unskillful qualities. What he meant, of course, was that if anything unskillful came up in his mind, he would let it go. As for skillful qualities of mind, he wouldn’t be satisfied with them until they led all the way to the deathless.

Look at his life: all the different ways he pursued the deathless. He ran into a couple of dead ends, but didn’t get discouraged. He kept trying again, starting over again, starting over again, until he found what really worked.

That’s the pattern he established. And that pattern provides the reason for how and why you want to get into right concentration. In the course of getting the mind to settle down, you learn a lot about those five aggregates, and you learn a lot about clinging. You learn about the five aggregates by making them the best aggregates you can think of. And in the course of clinging to them, you learn to let go of other things that would get in the way. It’s only through following the path through right concentration that you really get to comprehend suffering, the duty with regard to the first noble truth. And you really are in a position where you can develop dispassion for the second noble truth.

But to do that, you have to have passion for the path, and you can’t leave the path out. People practicing blanket contentment are trying to practice with just three noble truths. They let go of the fourth, because the fourth requires passion. They say, “Well, the third noble truth is dispassion, so let’s go right there. We’re taking the path to a peaceful place, so it should be a peaceful path. The cause should be like the effect, right?” But they’re trying to clone the effect without developing the cause. And not all causes are like their effects. When fire burns a piece of wood, the fire doesn’t look like wood. When smoke comes out of the fire, the smoke doesn’t look like the fire. You need some passion for the path before you can let that passion go. You need to push those aggregates around a bit so that you can really understand them.

Like scientists: When they study an animal, they don’t just watch the animal. They poke it. In other words, they put it in different situations, different conditions, to see how it responds to those conditions. Change the conditions, see how the animal changes its response. And this is how you learn about the aggregates, making them as constant and as easeful and as under your control as you can. Then you find the line past which you can’t control them, where they show their limitations. Then you’re really ready to let go.

And as Ajaan Lee says, you let go like a rich person. The other analogy he gives is of letting go of a wound in your body. If you say, “Well, the wound is just there. I’ll be content with the fact that there’s this wound there,” it’s not going to heal. You have to put medicine on it. You have to bandage it up. You have to take care of it. Then the wound has a chance to heal. Otherwise, it’ll fester and get infected.

As we practice concentration, we’re treating our wound. People who say, “Oh, the treatment is too stressful”: Don’t let them be your doctors. The effort that goes into treating the wound is a lot less stressful than having to deal with a wound that’s infected.

So when you’re practicing, make sure you practice all four noble truths. Don’t try to make do with three—in other words, telling yourself, “Well, the five clinging-aggregates are stressful, so I’ll just go straight to dispassion for them.” You first have to do something skillful with them, develop them, turn them into wealth, the wealth that will take you beyond. Then you can let them go. You need to have passion for the path before you can develop dispassion for the cause of suffering. Once you’ve mastered dispassion for the cause, then you can have dispassion for the path. Even then, though: Even though you’ve let it go, as with the Buddha, you still have concentration, you still have discernment. You can use these skills to help yourself and other people.

So when you let go, learn to let go like a rich person and not like a pauper. When paupers let go, they’re still a burden on themselves and on other people. If you let go like a rich person, you’re not a burden on anyone at all.