It bears repeating that the first noble or aryan truth is suffering—but what in particular is suffering? The correct answer to this question is the five skandhas or aggregates are what is suffering. When the Buddha says all things are suffering he is referring to the five skandhas consisting of physical shape, feeling, perception, volitional formations and consciousness. This is the aryan truth of suffering.
Now we come to the origin or etiology of suffering. We understand that it is clinging. But what exactly are we cling to that is making us suffer? The answer is the five skandhas. They are the source of all this pain which we can't let go of. This is the aryan truth of the origin of suffering.
The truth of the origin of suffering is very important. According to the Buddha, the truth of the origin of suffering is to be abandoned (S. v. 422) only then, in the Buddha's words, did vision, knowledge, wisdom, true knowledge, and light arise in him. This as we, rightly, guess is the truth of the cessation (nirodha) of suffering.
Next we ask, what made such cessation an actual fact whereby the cause of suffering, which is clinging to the five skandhas, stopped? We would not be wrong to guess, the aryan eightfold path beginning with right view, or the same, the right view of insight (vipassana-sammâditthi) which is without defilements, supramundane, etc., (M. iii. 72); which clears the way by contemplating the aggregates as impermanent, etc. Nothing in this composite world is to be taken as being permanent for one who has right view (M. iii. 64). Nor does one with right view approach a finite thing as being the self. Nothing in this world can protect one from suffering. This is why the Buddha taught us to transcend this world with its suffering.
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