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BOOKS IN BRIEF | EASTERN HORIZON 59

BOOKS IN BRIEF BOOKS IN BRIEF

The Four Noble Truths. A Guide to Everyday Life. Lama Early Buddhist Teaching. The Middle Position in Theory
Zopa Rinpoche. 2018. pp 293. US$17.95 and Practice. Y. Karunadasa. 2018. pp 227. US$29.95 Hard
Cover
The Buddha’s profound teachings on the four noble
truths are illuminated by a Tibetan master simply and Dr Karunadasa provides a lucid and comprehensive
directly, so that readers gain an immediate and personal
understanding of the causes and conditions that give summary of the Buddha’s psychology of liberation as
rise to suffering as well as the spiritual life as the path to taught in the Pāli tradition. Comprising a total of 12
liberation. chapters, the book introduces to the readers to several
key concepts of early Buddhism such as:
The Four Noble Truths begins with an excellent elucidation
of the nature of the mind and its role in creating the • insight into the beginning of Buddhism and the
happiness we all seek. Lama Zopa Rinpoche then turns to significance of its core beliefs—dependent arising,
an in-depth analysis of the four truths. The first truth is non-self and the putative Overself, moral life, the
that we are suffering because we are in cyclic existence, diagnosis of the human condition, the critique of
or Saṃsāra, the beginningless cycle of death and rebirth theoretical views, and the nature of Nibbāna;
characterized by three types of suffering: the suffering • a lucid understanding of the Buddha’s challenge to
of suffering, the suffering of change, and pervasive the concept of the subject as a self-entity and the
compounding suffering. These are not inflicted on us reality of both the subject and object, perceiver and
without cause, nor do they come from others. The second perceived, as a dynamic process;
truth tells us that there is a cause for all this suffering—the •
delusions and karma that arise from the ignorance that a grasp of early Buddhist teachings as representing
fails to see the way in which things exist. Because there is a middle position (equally aloof from spiritual
a cause and because we can develop the wisdom realizing eternalism and materialist annihilation) and a
emptiness, the antidote to ignorance, we are able to middle path (equally aloof from self-mortification
actualize the third truth, the cessation of suffering. How and sensual indulgence) that leads to happiness;
we do that is explained in the fourth truth, the path to the and
cessation of suffering. EH • the experience of the Buddha’s teachings on
attaining liberation or Nibbāna as the final goal as
comprehensible, sensible, and something we can
make part of our own practice.
• The unanswered questions or metaphysical matters
that the Buddha refused to answer. EH