Abstract
The essence of the Buddha’s teaching can be summed up in two principles - the
Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold path. The former embraces the side of
doctrine and foremost response it elicits is understanding: the latter comprises the
side of discipline and the pre-requisite is practice. These two are called Dhamma
Vinaya, the doctrine and discipline: in short, the Dhamma. The last noble truth is
the truth of the way - the noble eightfold path, while the first factor of the noble
eightfold path is “right view” that is understanding the Four Noble Truths. In this
way, the two principles penetrate and include one, the formula of the four noble
truths containing the eightfold path and the noble eightfold path containing the four
truths (Ven Bhikkhu Bodi 1999). To follow the noble eightfold path is a matter of
practice rather than intellectual knowledge but to apply the path correctly, it has to
be properly understood. In fact, right understanding of the path is itself a part of the
practice.
More than 200 centuries is the world, seven hundred crores population and
seamlessly, a variety of complex human personalities, attitudes, behaviors, value
system, belief system, socio - cultural background, religious, economic, academic,
physical, psychological, emotional and other backgrounds. The world is filled with
saints and sinners, beauty and ugly, healthy and ill - health, rich and poor, urban
and rural, literates and illiterates, men and women.
Human beings are undergoing transitory, pleasant experiences and a lot of
suffering. They are searching and searching eternal happiness whether they
succeed certainly not. One gains a lot, just to lose at the end. Suffering is the corner
stone of Buddha’s teaching. Un-satisfactoriness is running through our lives, the
lives of all but the enlightened one. This Dukkha erupts into open as sorrow, grief,
disappointment or despair, fear and frustrations. The real satisfaction seems
somehow always out of reach, just beyond the next horizon. In the end, one has to
die, give-up his or her identity built over whole life, leave behind everything and
everyone we love.
But even death, the Buddha teaches, does not bring us to the end of Dukkha, for the
life process does not stop with death. When life ends in one place, with one body,
the “mental continuum”, the individual stream of consciousness springs up again
elsewhere with a new body as its physical support. Thus, the cycle goes on over
and over - birth, ageing and death driven by the thirst for more existence. The
Buddha calls it as the round of rebirths – called samsara “the wandering”.