The gist of Buddha’s teaching---4

The gist of Buddha’s teaching---4

Bhikkhu Dhammavaro
Buddharatana Monastery of Australia

The Noble Truth of the Cessation of suffering

The third truth is the truth of the cessation of suffering, the Buddha said: “This is, O Bhikkhus, the Noble Truth of the Cessation of suffering. It is complete cessation of suffering, giving it up, renouncing it, release from it, detachment from it.”
Only when a person has begun their practice, then through a few years of training in the moral discipline, meditation, and cultivation of wisdom, then this person may know how to give up their desires, bad habits, inner negative tendencies, learn to renounce them one by one, and learn to detach from them. This is not easy; it requires a lot of effort, determination, and practice to get to the core of our inner being.
It is not something impossible or un-achievable, it is for those who are having faith and determination to try, the cessation of suffering is for a practitioner to investigate and thoroughly eliminate all attachments here and now, it is not for next life, or relying on some super-being or Bodhisatta to lend a hand, it is to be self-help, self effort, self renunciation, self detachment from craving, and self release from those attachment. This is why Dhamma is to be realized individually by the wise with personal effort. (paccattam veditabbo viññūhi)

The cessation of suffering is the extinction of the three poisons, ie; Nibbāna. Buddhaghosa explained in Vissudhimagga: “It is called disillusionment of vanity (mada), on coming to it, all kinds of vanity, such as the vanity of conceit, and vanity of manhood, are disillusioned, undone, done away with. And it is called elimination of thirst, because on coming to it, all thirst for sense desires is eliminated and quenched. But it is called abolition of reliance, because on coming to it, reliance on five cords of sense desire is abolished. It is called the termination of the round, because on coming to it, the round of the three planes of existence is terminated. It is called destruction of craving, because on coming to it, craving is entirely destroyed, fades away and ceases. It is called Nibbāna, because it has gone away from (Nikkhanta), escaped from (nissata). It is dissociated from craving, which has acquired the common usage name ‘fastening’ (vāna). Because by ensuring successive becoming, craving serves as a joining together, a binding together, a lacing together, of the four kinds of generation (yoni), five destinies (gati), seven stations of consciousness (viññanatthiti) and nine abodes of beings (sattāvāsa).”

The Buddha said: “Monks! There is a not-born, a not-become, a not-made, non-compounded. Monks! If that unborn, not-become, not-made, non-compounded were not, there would be apparent no escape from this here that is born, become, made, compounded.” (Udana, p.80-1) Therefore Nibbāna is not annihilationist, but it is a state to be reached not through praying, arguing, or logic, or intellectual understanding, but through personal experience.