The Third Noble Truth: A Glimpse of Hope

On our tour through the Four Noble Truths and how they translate to collective suffering, the first two have taken us into a thorough dissection of the nature of suffering. If we stopped there, it could be devastating.One of the things I’ve appreciated about this essay series is its interactive nature. I write (or other authors write) and then readers get to respond, critique, and question. In response to my first two essays, a common theme has been, “Yeah, so now what?”That response makes sense to me. It’s not that hard to figure out the reason for social suffering, especially when talking to a group of savvy activists and community organizers – which many of you are. The Buddha made it his practice to look for root causes, so that’s the focus of the first two truths. But skilled organizers and activists do this too. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., echoed the Buddha:

The Triple Evils of poverty, racism, and war are forms of violence that exist in a vicious cycle. They are interrelated, all-inclusive, and stand as barriers to our living in the “Beloved Community.” When we work to remedy one evil, we affect all evils. The issues change in accordance with the political and social climate of our nation and world.

In my piece on the Second Noble Truth, one reader asked for clarification about what I was presenting as the root cause of suffering. Now I realize that it may be more useful to talk about the web of causes and conditions that generate suffering. There is no one ‘root’ that then untangles everything. Certainly, some changes have higher leverage...but as MLK points out, the evils are part of a vicious cycle. And as another insightful reader noted, there is “a dialectical relationship between the three poisons of Buddhism and the institutional arrangements that foster them.”My sense is that a lot of the time our focus is on the intractability of suffering, that way in which the “evils” reinforce each other and in which it seems impossible to ever find the way out of it much less to transform it. Despair arises. What’s the point of any kind of response or action? But as MLK notes, while the evils are part of a vicious cycle it’s also true that when we work to alleviate one of them, something shifts with the others.Then along comes the Buddha with the pivot point of the Four Noble Truths, the third one: There is a way to end suffering. And we can realize this way.Do not underestimate the power of this truth.It changes everything. It moves the teachings of the Buddha from being an exercise in analysis to an invitation to transform ourselves and our community.This is the truth that gives hope, not in a superficial kind of way but in a manner that is as real (and mysterious) as the caterpillar’s transformation into a butterfly. Or to put it in a socio-political context, as real as South Africa’s evolution from a country organized around racial segregation and white supremacy to one that is now a constitutional democracy. South Africa still struggles with substantial issues, but the transformation has been remarkable and not one we might have predicted 30 years ago. This is what gives cause for hope.But if the Third Noble Truth changes everything, it requires everything from us, too. As the first two truths showed us, we need to look deeply at the nature of our suffering; at the dynamic of craving in our lives; and at how greed, hatred, and delusion manifest in us and in our society. If we are willing to do that, we can make the journey from dukkha to liberation from dukkha.As I write this, I’m remembering Arundhati Roy’s words from her iconic speech, “Confronting Empire,” given at the 2003 World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brasil:

Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe.

That’s it – that’s a beautiful contemporary rendering of the Third Noble Truth, large enough to include the whole world.It is worthwhile to include some of the words that Roy spoke leading up to that powerful end to a brilliant speech because they illuminate the Third Noble Truth and point the way to the Fourth (which will be the subject of the next set of essays):

What can we do?We can hone our memory, we can learn from our history. We can continue to build public opinion until it becomes a deafening roar....We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways. In other words, we can come up with a million ways of becoming a collective pain in the ass.When George Bush says “you're either with us, or you are with the terrorists” we can say “No thank you.” We can let him know that the people of the world do not need to choose between a Malevolent Mickey Mouse and the Mad Mullahs.Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness -- and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we're being brainwashed to believe.The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling -- their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability.Remember this: We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.

While I’ve been writing these articles, I’ve kept my radar tuned into issues that impact my local community here in northern New Mexico. The Third Noble Truth attunes my awareness to what’s going on in this region that is effectively addressing and transforming suffering, particularly suffering related to economic injustice. I’ve been heartened to learn about and see some of these vehicles in action, including Santa Fe Need and Deed, the Chainbreaker Collective, Somos un Pueblo Unido, and more. I’ve remembered the networks of acequias (irrigation canals) and the social system that has evolved around them to take care of the water needs of our communities. You’ll be hearing more about all these in the next (and final) article in this series.Finally, the crucial thing to remember about the Buddha’s framing of these truths – and the Third Noble Truth in particular – is that they emerged from his intensive period of sitting, breathing, and inquiring into the nature of suffering from a completely receptive place. If we want to unfold the Third Noble Truth in relation to social suffering, it would behoove us to make contemplative practice the ground of our life as well. Again – this is not an intellectual exercise. Meditation practice (or whatever contemplative mode works best for you) is one of the most powerful ways to discover, in an embodied way, the truths of non-duality and no separate self that are at the core of liberation.Maybe I can offer a cautionary tale from my own life. There have been times when, as a socially engaged Buddhist, I got swept away by engagement and gave short shrift to practice. A lot was lost when this happened. For me, meditation practice has been the wellspring of satyagraha... soul force, as Mahatma Gandhi described it. Any movement or activist who can harness satyagraha is on the way to making the Third Noble Truth a living reality.Top image by Patrick Emerson[divide style="2"]

Maia Zenyu Duerr is an anthropologist, writer, and student of liberation.

She practices in the Soto Zen lineage of Suzuki Roshi, with Victoria Shosan Austin as her teacher and guide. In 2012, she received ordination as a lay Buddhist chaplain from Roshi Joan Halifax.From 2004-2008, Maia worked at the Buddhist Peace Fellowship where she served as executive director and editor of Turning Wheel magazine. For the past six years, she has been the director of the Upaya Zen Center Buddhist Chaplaincy Training Program. She also serves on the faculty of the Buddhist Education for Social Transformation project, based at the International Women's Partnership for Peace and Justice center in northern Thailand.Maia's writing can be found on her website, The Liberated Life Project. She is also the curator of a blog on socially engaged Buddhism called The Jizo Chronicles.[divide style="3"]

About BPF's The System Stinks

Buddhist social justice curriculumTo help promote collective liberation and subvert the highly individualistic bent of much mainstream dharma these days, Buddhist Peace Fellowship presents our second year of The System Stinks — a collection of Buddhist social justice media named for the favorite protest sign of one of our founders, Robert Aitken, Roshi.This year, we've asked some of our favorite dharma teachers, practitioners, and activists to reflect on the Four Noble Truths — suffering; the causes of suffering; cessation of suffering; and a path to cessation — from a systemic, social justice perspective.Other Buddhist groups from around the world have also used the Four Noble Truths as a lens for social movements: for good examples, the International Network of Engaged Buddhists, and the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka. In a U.S.-based context (not predominantly Buddhist), where mindfulness is increasingly separated from ethics, we are eager to uphold this social justice tradition.If you like what you see, please comment and share to show the world another side of Buddhism!We are deeply grateful to the teachers and practitioners who lend their voices to this cause. In alignment with our media justice values, all contributors to the 2014 series have been offered humble compensation for their work.

You can support engaged Buddhist media makers by donating to BPF.

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