The Four Truths Explain Everything 07-18-26

[00:00:00]So, today is turning the Dharma wheel day, the anniversary of the Buddha's first teaching. So, it's a very, very important day, one of the four holy days in the Buddhist calendar.

[00:00:16]And uh when you think about it, you know, in some ways even more important than the Buddha's birth.

[00:00:27]Yeah, because the chief way that Buddha's uh helps sentient beings is by teaching the Dharma through their speech.

[00:00:38]Yeah. And so, that's what today is celebrating, you know, all those teachings that the Buddha gave starting off with the teaching on the uh four truths. Yeah.

[00:00:52]And this teaching on the four truths is so important because it it summarizes everything. Yeah. If you know how to look and summarize everything, you can see it. Okay. So, you know, it starts out with what is our situation, what causes it.

[00:01:15]Yeah, so let's look at our lives and what's going on and what, you know, what that portends for the future.

[00:01:24]And then, if we don't like what we see, yeah, because uh you know, going around and around, uh getting born, getting old, getting sick and dying, getting born, getting old, getting sick and dying, getting born and getting old, getting sick and dying.

[00:01:42]And we've been doing this beginninglessly.

[00:01:46]At some point, you just say basta finito. This is enough.

[00:01:51]Yeah, and you want to get out of the cycle. And so, then you have the true path, which in which the Buddha describes what we need to generate the understandings in our mind we need to generate to get at. And the true cessations, which is the emptiness of a mind that has eliminated all the defilements.

[00:02:18]And especially in the Mahayana, we're aiming not just for our own liberation, but for the liberation of all living beings. And to bring that about, then generating the bodhicitta.

[00:02:32]Yeah.

[00:02:32]So, um, yeah, just, you know, this is the start of the wheel turning, you know? And once you turn a wheel, it keeps going.

[00:02:45]And we have to help it keep going.

[00:02:48]Yeah, because it goes from one living being to another living being to another living being. Yeah. The scriptures are good, and we need them, and, you know, in in places where, you know, there's been a political or religious movement against Buddhism, then the scriptures become even more important to to hold the tradition. But it's really living people that hold it. Yeah, and pass it down.

[00:03:21]Um, and we can see that in in our own uh, in our own lives, you know? When we see the example of people who really practice what the Buddha taught, um, it's like, who wouldn't want to be like them?

[00:03:41]Well, maybe some people wouldn't, but uh, you know, if you could be free of samsara, if you could be have a heart of of never getting angry again anybody no matter what they did.

[00:03:57]Wouldn't that be nice?

[00:04:00]Yeah.

[00:04:01]Never getting greedy again so that our mind is just is overpowered with I've got to have my way, you know. Um and then replacing those with um love and compassion equally for all sentient beings.

[00:04:20]So, that's what we're celebrating today.