The First Noble Truth (Dukkha – suffering or unsatisfactoriness)

The idea is that the cosmos we know of (as unenlightened beings) is in conditioned existence (samsara) (i.e. things follow from other things) and that this is unsatisfactory (dukkha is our very state of existence, then).

There are three categories. The first is dukkha dukkha and this means the clearly unsatisfactory things such as direct suffering, pain, trauma, loads, psychological distress and loss/bereavement. The second form is the unsatisfactoriness of the reality that we know the happinesses we may be feeling now will surely end in old age or death (viparinama (change) dukkha). Siddhartha is asking for people to consider how their lives are unsatisfactory in the here and now (are we in pain now or do we fear the pain of loss of our happiness in the future?) The third form of unsatisfactoriness is the very fact that those states we feel - good or bad - are not our independent states, they are conditioned because we are living in a conditioned world (samkhara (conditioned existence) dukkha (samskara duhkka in Pali)). Siddhartha wants followers to examine whether this conditioned state is real or must be real for all time. He also asks them to ask if any of these three states is satisfactory. It’s fairly clear that if they are our reality that our reality is not ideal.

Is knowing this, then, the beginning of the way to reach for the ideal reality that is possible? The idea is that pondering this in itself in depth is useful to us if we seek enlightenment. This is really a pondering of whether we have agency to make our own reality or not. The answer of course is too subtle for us to simply know without in-depth pondering (and pondering over many lifetimes may be required before we can know the answer). The Buddhist argues both that 'we' are dependent by nature and that imagining otherwise is an illusion that we need to try to know as the illusion it is but that knowing this is part of finding a way out of this major chain of dukkha states we call our lives.

There are within this dukkha (samsara) reality held to be five or six realms plus some meditation level realms and we’ve now entered into the metaphysics/ontology of abhidharma. Tibetan Buddhists especially have created wheels of existence that depict the realms for the benefit of the unlettered. One actually shows 31 realms because there are various sub-realms all of which humans might potentially experience in some sense in their lifetimes so human mind experiences in some sense reflect Buddhist cosmology.

The five realms that we can say Buddhists accept as at least real in some sense according to the abhidharma are the Hell realm (niraya), the Animal realm (tiracchanaroni – especially difficult to get out of), the Ghostly realm (pettivisaya – the ghosts may or may not be hungry and/or thirsty ghosts), the Human realm (mantissa) and the realm of the Gods. Some wheels depict a further realm of Titans (a demi-god (Asura) realm). Within the actual God (deva and Brahma) realms some hold that there are six lower God sub-realms and sixteen higher God sub-realms.

I’ve mentioned that only humans, egotistical though they are said to be, are able to escape to nirvana because only they are able to see both what is and what can be but is not now and four of the possible realms are realms regarded as higher than the higher God realms that can only be reached by human meditation (called formless dhyana/Samadhi/Zen) - levels five to eight of meditation - the highest of them is on the edge of nirvana but still a realm of existence and the four lower so-called pure form levels of meditation one to four permit communion with various higher gods). Humans can also arguably be reborn in these highest four realms (five to eight) as a result of having reached them in an earlier life by meditation.