Dukkha is more than suffering.

The Buddha didn't say "life is suffering." He said "the five aggregates subject to clinging are dukkha".
"Suffering" is just one of several ways the word "dukkha" can be translated. It has also been translated as "dissatisfaction" and "stress."

According the the Buddha's teachings, we feel suffering or dissatisfaction because we cling to the five aggregates of form, sensation, perception, volition, and consciousness. By clinging less, and following the middle—equanimous—way, we mitigate our dukkha.
 
The Buddha never preached at anyone, but always led by example. He dealt with all things as they actually are.
He did not invent anything and say it was true if there was no evidence to support such a claim.
He taught that, if there were such beings as gods they needed enlightenment as much as any other sentient being.
He taught that we can only live in this moment. Every moment is precious and should not be wasted.

He taught that we are all born with original goodness and that life was all about seeking to maintain and develop this goodness. He also taught that all life is sacred, not just human life.
He did not preach at people, but always led by example. Buddhism cannot be fazed by new discoveries.
For instance, it has no problem in accepting the truth of evolution. The best parts in the Christian gospels have all been adapted from much earlier Buddhist scriptures such as the Dharmapada and the Lotus Sutra,
The Buddhist scriptures are deeper, more helpful and longer than the scriptures of any other any other great religion.

Parables were invented in India long before the time of the Buddha, who saw them as useful teaching tools.
The originals of such parables as the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son can be found in earlier Buddhist Sutras. Buddhist teachers were present in Alexandria, Antioch and Athens during the time of Jesus and they travelled around quite a bit, which means that Jesus may well have picked up some of his teachings from them. Zen, also known as Dhyana and Ch’an, is the simplest and purist form of Buddhism and teaches serene reflection meditation.
 
A Look at the Kalama Sutta
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/bodhi/bps-essay_09.html
The passage that has been cited so often runs as follows: "Come, Kalamas. Do not go upon what has been acquired by repeated hearing, nor upon tradition, nor upon rumor, nor upon scripture, nor upon surmise, nor upon axiom, nor upon specious reasoning, nor upon bias toward a notion pondered over, nor upon another's seeming ability, nor upon the consideration 'The monk is our teacher.' When you yourselves know: 'These things are bad, blamable, censured by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to harm and ill,' abandon them... When you yourselves know: 'These things are good, blameless, praised by the wise; undertaken and observed, these things lead to benefit and happiness,' enter on and abide in them."

Now this passage, like everything else spoken by the Buddha, has been stated in a specific context — with a particular audience and situation in view — and thus must be understood in relation to that context. The Kalamas, citizens of the town of Kesaputta, had been visited by religious teachers of divergent views, each of whom would propound his own doctrines and tear down the doctrines of his predecessors. This left the Kalamas perplexed, and thus when "the recluse Gotama," reputed to be an Awakened One, arrived in their township, they approached him in the hope that he might be able to dispel their confusion. From the subsequent development of the sutta, it is clear that the issues that perplexed them were the reality of rebirth and kammic retribution for good and evil deeds.

The Buddha begins by assuring the Kalamas that under such circumstances it is proper for them to doubt, an assurance which encourages free inquiry. He next speaks the passage quoted above, advising the Kalamas to abandon those things they know for themselves to be bad and to undertake those things they know for themselves to be good. This advice can be dangerous if given to those whose ethical sense is undeveloped, and we can thus assume that the Buddha regarded the Kalamas as people of refined moral sensitivity. In any case he did not leave them wholly to their own resources, but by questioning them led them to see that greed, hate and delusion, being conducive to harm and suffering for oneself and others, are to be abandoned, and their opposites, being beneficial to all, are to be developed.

The Buddha next explains that a "noble disciple, devoid of covetousness and ill will, undeluded" dwells pervading the world with boundless loving-kindness, compassion, appreciative joy and equanimity.
Thus purified of hate and malice, he enjoys here and now four "solaces": If there is an afterlife and kammic result, then he will undergo a pleasant rebirth, while if there is none he still lives happily here and now; if evil results befall an evil-doer, then no evil will befall him, and if evil results do not befall an evil-doer, then he is purified anyway. With this the Kalamas express their appreciation of the Buddha's discourse and go for refuge to the Triple Gem.

Now does the Kalama Sutta suggest, as is often held, that a follower of the Buddhist path can dispense with all faith and doctrine, that he should make his own personal experience the criterion for judging the Buddha's utterances and for rejecting what cannot be squared with it? It is true the Buddha does not ask the Kalamas to accept anything he says out of confidence in himself, but let us note one important point: the Kalamas, at the start of the discourse, were not the Buddha's disciples. They approached him merely as a counselor who might help dispel their doubts, but they did not come to him as the Tathagata, the Truth-finder, who might show them the way to spiritual progress and to final liberation.

Thus, because the Kalamas had not yet come to accept the Buddha in terms of his unique mission, as the discloser of the liberating truth, it would not have been in place for him to expound to them the Dhamma unique to his own Dispensation: such teachings as the Four Noble Truths, the three characteristics, and the methods of contemplation based upon them. These teachings are specifically intended for those who have accepted the Buddha as their guide to deliverance, and in the suttas he expounds them only to those who "have gained faith in the Tathagata" and who possess the perspective necessary to grasp them and apply them. The Kalamas, however, at the start of the discourse are not yet fertile soil for him to sow the seeds of his liberating message. Still confused by the conflicting claims to which they have been exposed, they are not yet clear even about the groundwork of morality.

Nevertheless, after advising the Kalamas not to rely upon established tradition, abstract reasoning, and charismatic gurus, the Buddha proposes to them a teaching that is immediately verifiable and capable of laying a firm foundation for a life of moral discipline and mental purification. He shows that whether or not there be another life after death, a life of moral restraint and of love and compassion for all beings brings its own intrinsic rewards here and now, a happiness and sense of inward security far superior to the fragile pleasures that can be won by violating moral principles and indulging the mind's desires. For those who are not concerned to look further, who are not prepared to adopt any convictions about a future life and worlds beyond the present one, such a teaching will ensure their present welfare and their safe passage to a pleasant rebirth — provided they do not fall into the wrong view of denying an afterlife and kammic causation.

However, for those whose vision is capable of widening to encompass the broader horizons of our existence, this teaching given to the Kalamas points beyond its immediate implications to the very core of the Dhamma. For the three states brought forth for examination by the Buddha — greed, hate and delusion — are not merely grounds of wrong conduct or moral stains upon the mind. Within his teaching's own framework they are the root defilements — the primary causes of all bondage and suffering — and the entire practice of the Dhamma can be viewed as the task of eradicating these evil roots by developing to perfection their antidotes — dispassion, kindness and wisdom.

Thus the discourse to the Kalamas offers an acid test for gaining confidence in the Dhamma as a viable doctrine of deliverance. We begin with an immediately verifiable teaching whose validity can be attested by anyone with the moral integrity to follow it through to its conclusions, namely, that the defilements cause harm and suffering both personal and social, that their removal brings peace and happiness, and that the practices taught by the Buddha are effective means for achieving their removal. By putting this teaching to a personal test, with only a provisional trust in the Buddha as one's collateral, one eventually arrives at a firmer, experientially grounded confidence in the liberating and purifying power of the Dhamma. This increased confidence in the teaching brings along a deepened faith in the Buddha as teacher, and thus disposes one to accept on trust those principles he enunciates that are relevant to the quest for awakening, even when they lie beyond one's own capacity for verification. This, in fact, marks the acquisition of right view, in its preliminary role as the forerunner of the entire Noble Eightfold Path.

Partly in reaction to dogmatic religion, partly in subservience to the reigning paradigm of objective scientific knowledge, it has become fashionable to hold, by appeal to the Kalama Sutta, that the Buddha's teaching dispenses with faith and formulated doctrine and asks us to accept only what we can personally verify. This interpretation of the sutta, however, forgets that the advice the Buddha gave the Kalamas was contingent upon the understanding that they were not yet prepared to place faith in him and his doctrine; it also forgets that the sutta omits, for that very reason, all mention of right view and of the entire perspective that opens up when right view is acquired. It offers instead the most reasonable counsel on wholesome living possible when the issue of ultimate beliefs has been put into brackets.

What can be justly maintained is that those aspects of the Buddha's teaching that come within the purview of our ordinary experience can be personally confirmed within experience, and that this confirmation provides a sound basis for placing faith in those aspects of the teaching that necessarily transcend ordinary experience. Faith in the Buddha's teaching is never regarded as an end in itself nor as a sufficient guarantee of liberation, but only as the starting point for an evolving process of inner transformation that comes to fulfillment in personal insight. But in order for this insight to exercise a truly liberative function, it must unfold in the context of an accurate grasp of the essential truths concerning our situation in the world and the domain where deliverance is to be sought. These truths have been imparted to us by the Buddha out of his own profound comprehension of the human condition. To accept them in trust after careful consideration is to set foot on a journey which transforms faith into wisdom, confidence into certainty, and culminates in liberation from suffering.
 
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Imagine you were a character in a computer game. The normal situation is to be in character, to experience the internals of that agent in a seemless way. You are the agent.

Next imagine getting knocked out of the character to a position where you could observe its code.
You are not the character. Now you can inspect and debug. You can reprogram the character in ways that were impossible before.
You can delete old technical debt which slows things down and generates errors.
You can clean up other areas to be more efficient and precise.
New objectives can be set. Busy hung loops can be given an exit.

You notice all the other characters run the same code. You can learn how to use your new understanding to help them clean up their errors and inefficiencies from inside the agent. You can help them also generate the faults that drop them out of character, so they can hack too.

Buddha didn't gain anything, it's still all just code, but became awake to the program.
 
changing karma is a lot of work, but chanting Nam-myoho-renge-kyo is the way to go to make the impossible possible.
 
Phantasmal said:
Fake Buddhist is hilarious. Supporting Trump, you will be reincarnated as a slug.
Click to expand...

That's the kind of JPP Staff Moderator you'd expect when being escorted into Hell.

So in the era of Fake-News we find EXPERTS assessing everything into two categories:
a] Things we agree with.
or
b] Things we do not agree with.


Yet the odd thing is that the EXPERTS don't know anything.

Every war lord in History was actually trying to accomplish peace ---as they like it--- forcing everyone to be proud.
 
Phantasmal said:
Fake Buddhist is hilarious. Supporting Trump, you will be reincarnated as a slug.
Click to expand...
Buddhists do not reincarnate as a self. That's Hindu.

my location "100% re-cycled karma" - means the un-perfected karma has to go some place
( conservation of energy theory) and it does go back into the pool which gives rebirth, but not as a new me

anatta = "no self"
 
Bill said:
Yes, I am familiar w/ that..

From what I have read the root of the problem is they were brought there from British India as coolie laborers, the Burmese had no say in this decision.

As you know there are many ethnic groups there that are formally recognized, & even some that are Muslim & originally from India that migrated long ago but the Rohingya have not, & have always been considered unwanted British plants, Not even Aung San Suu Kyi will come to their defense.
Click to expand...

She is powerless to do anything about it, the enmity towards the Rohingya goes back many decades, in the past we just never knew about it.
 
f a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive,” he said while laughing and scrunching up his face. “People, I think, prefer not to see that face.”

When the interviewer pointed out that the Dalai Lama’s emphasis on looks seemed strange for a man who preaches tolerance and inner confidence, he doubled down, saying both inner and outer beauty are important in Buddhist teachings.

He then stressed that he supported women’s rights and equal pay in the workplace.

The Dalai Lama has spoken about this before, telling the BBC in 2015 that an unattractive female Dalai Lama “would not be much use.”

The Dalai Lama has a vested interest in the matter since Tibetan Buddhists believe the Dalai Lama can personally pick the body of their next incarnation.

The Dalai Lama’s comments about women weren’t the only ones attracting attention. The Buddhist leader responded to a question about letting refugees resettle in Europe by saying a “limited number” is “OK.” But he added, laughing, that the idea of Europe becoming Muslim or African is “impossible.”

He then echoed a far-right talking point: “Keep Europe for Europeans.”

The Dalai Lama has made similar comments in recent years.

The Buddhist leader also slammed Donald Trump for his “lack of moral principle.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dalai-lama-female-successor-attractive_n_5d162d45e4b07f6ca57c75b8
 
Buddha came to his own Self-Realization and ‘enlightenment,’ without the prior guidance of his own Dharma, Satipatthana Sutta, etc., couldn’t we do the same? Do we really need past scripture/teachings from Buddha,
Lao Tze, Jesus or any other ancient enlightened master to abide in our own true nature?
To come to rest in whatever ‘level’ of conscious enlightenment this Life has in store for us?

No, we don’t. We are already one with our natural state, with Reality, whether we realize it or not, whether our temporary illusory identification with our seemingly-separate ego identities temporarily appears to blind us to That. There is nothing to attain.

Contemplate this:
What if Buddha and all the other ’enlightened’ masters had never lived, and never offered a single discourse,
teaching or guidance?

What if you never heard a single line of teachings on enlightenment, what it (supposedly) is,
and how you might ‘reach’ it?

What if you never even heard the words enlightenment, self-realization or ‘spiritual awakening?’

And yet, in your lifetime, you still noticed there seemed to be an awful lot of suffering, lack of meaning and lack of wisdom about the true purpose of life, and you wondered if there wasn’t something more, something deeper,
some ‘living awareness’ of what we Are, in addition to all that?

And you decided to go seeking for this, for these ‘ultimate answers’…not only intellectually,
but to embody this true purpose or true Is-ness?

What would you do? Where would you go? Remember, you’ve got no scriptures, no gurus, no Buddhas,
no reference points whatsoever. Still, you are determined to uncover the true Reality and live it fully,
be One with it.

What would you do?

Why, you would likely walk a path very similar to what Buddha did. Without any guidance except life, suffering, change, loss and death. You would learn from Life Itself.

And that’s not just how it should be, that’s how it must be. Each of us must make this seeming ‘journey’
(from Nowhere to Right Back Where You Started:-) alone, totally alone. It seems so wonderful & useful to have these scriptures, sutras, bibles, and great living and dead masters, ‘attainers of enlightenment,’ to transmit there discourses & knowledge and guide us Home.

Except that Home is discovered to be One Thing, One Reality, no duality, no separation having ever existed, and “we” discover there was no one out there, no gurus or masters talking to us or exemplifying the ‘path.’
The true We was just talking to Itself. “God pouring God into God” as Herman Hesse once said.

So each of “us” approximately 250 billion humans that have lived on Earth can go forth and ‘seek enlightenment,’
an end to their suffering, and the true meaning & purpose of Life, with or without past Buddhas or present gurus or written/recorded learned discourses or Quora (lol!) and it will seem that very few, even the ones totally committed to Buddhist or other ‘path,’ will ever ‘reach’ it. At least 249.999 billion will not. Or it will seem that way.

Because enlightenment is not a state or achievement of anyone’s ‘individual life.’ Enlightenment is Life Itself. All of It. And you are already That. We are already Home.
 
Billionaire donates $100 million to compassion research after conversation with Dalai Lama
by Lilly Greenblatt| July 25, 2019
https://www.lionsroar.com/banking-b...tudy-compassion-after-meeting-the-dalai-lama/

Banking billionaire Denny Sanford has donated $100 million to UC San Diego (UCSD) for the scientific study of empathy and compassion. Sanford said that the donation was inspired by a private meeting he had with the Dalai Lama in 2017, when His Holiness gave a commencement address at UCSD.

“I have been inspired by the work and teachings of the Dalai Lama, whose interest in the intersection where science and faith meet is deep and profound,” Sanford said in a statement. “I have had the opportunity to see how grace, humanity and kindness can change people and the world. This gift extends that vision.”

Dr. David Brenner, the vice chancellor of health sciences at UCSD, told The San Diego Union-Tribune that Sanford’s gift was influenced by this meeting. “The Dalai Lama said that we must show that there is a scientific basis to empathy and compassion,” Brenner said. “That’s what Denny’s gift will help scientists do.”

The research funded by the gift will look at how to cultivate empathy and compassion in medical professionals. “Doctors work in a world where compassion is essential, but often lost in the harsh realities of modern medicine. If we can help medical professionals preserve and promote their compassion, based on the findings of hard science, the world can be a happier, healthier place,” said Sanford.

The gift will allow for research to help understand empathy and compassion and how to use these qualities effectively. So far, researchers have lacked the tools needed to undertake such research.

Most of the research will be conducted through the T. Denny Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassion at UCSD, where researchers say they “will conduct innovative research into the neurological basis of compassion, establishing the empirical evidence required to design a compassion-focused curriculum for training new generations of medical professionals and developing new methods to protect and promote the well-being of current clinicians and their patients.”
 
What is karma, according to the Buddhist teachings?

Bhikkhu Bodhi: Perhaps we could begin with the description of the Buddha’s enlightenment experience as given in various sutras in the Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha (Pali, Majjhima Nikaya). This gives a very concise statement of the early Buddha’s understanding of karma.

The Buddha’s enlightenment unfolded by way of what are called the Three Higher Knowledges.
The first of these is the Buddha’s knowledge of his past lives—recollecting his previous lives going back hundreds of thousands of eons. The second is his knowledge of the death and rebirth of beings, which involves understanding how beings transmigrate according to their karma. Perhaps I could read a passage describing this from the Bhayabherava Sutta:

“When my concentrated mind was purified, bright and so on, I directed it to knowledge of the passing away and rebirth of beings. With the divine eye, which is purified and surpasses the human, I saw beings passing away and being reborn, inferior and superior, bare and ugly, fortunate and unfortunate. I understood how beings pass on according to their actions thus:

“These beings who are ill-conducted in body, speech and mind, revilers of noble ones, wrong in their views, giving effect to wrong view in their actions, with the breakup of the body after death, have reappeared in the plane of misery, in a bad destination, in the lower worlds, even in hell.

“But these worthy beings who were well conducted in body, speech and mind, not revilers of noble ones, right in their views, giving effect to right view in their actions, on the breakup of the body after death, have been reborn in a good destination, even in the heavenly world.

“Thus, with the divine eye I saw beings passing away and being reborn and I understood how beings pass on according to their actions.”


Finally, the third knowledge is described as the knowledge of the Four Noble Truths. But preceding that comes the understanding of the chain of dependent origination or dependent arising. This involves understanding the dynamics of how karma, in conjunction with the basic defilements of ignorance and craving, brings about rebirth.

Jan Chozen Bays: As a physician, I teach karma from a scientific point of view, because what I love about karma is that it is rational. Karma is like the laws of physics. It’s almost mathematically precise, and there is a great relief in that. Because if you understand karma, you really understand who and what you are, and you understand the rest of the universe too, because the laws of karma are universally applicable.

When I teach about rebirth, I ask people to consider what happens to the physical elements of the body after they die. I ask them, if we buried you in the ground with no preservatives and dug you up in a week, would we recognize you? Yes. If we dug you up in a year, would we recognize you? Maybe. If we dug you up in ten years, would we recognize you? No. So what happened to the elements that made up the body? They all dispersed and became other things.
If you die angry, what happens to that energy of anger?

Appreciating this, people begin to understand that on the physical level there is a endless chain of energy that passes through a series of changes. Then if you apply the same principle to our mental and emotional energy, you can also ask where it goes. That energy is also not destroyed, though the energy that was “you” will transform.
https://www.lionsroar.com/panel-the-law-of-karma/?mc_cid=f06ac79d46&mc_eid=[UNIQID]
 
the Buddha acknowledged two key facts: Enlightenment or Awakening is an intrinsic capacity of every human being. And some people, without finding teachers, do Awaken through their own natural or intensive efforts. The term the Buddha used for such people is Pratyeka-Buddha, which means “self-awakened.” The Buddha simply meant that a person might find the Way on his or her own without a Teacher, and this was legitimate enlightenment.
 
Buddhism can be a religion but it doesn't have to be. Buddhism is a set of principles and practices that demonstrably improve your life. No faith is necessary. You can believe in another religion or be an atheist and it still works.

The Four Noble Truths

1. Life means suffering and struggle
2. The origin of suffering and struggle is attachment
3. It is possible to end suffering and struggle through...
4. ...The Eightfold Path

The Eightfold Path

1. Right View (The Four Noble Truths)

2. Right Intention
a. Renunciation:
Resistance to desire
b. Goodwill:
Resistance to anger and aversion
c. Harmlessness:
Compassion,
Don't think or act cruelly, violently or aggressively

3. Right Speech
a. Tell the truth
b. Don't gossip
c. Don't use offensive or hurtful language

4. Right Action (The Precepts)
a. Don't harm other living beings
b. Don't take things not freely given
c. Don't engage in sexual misconduct
d. Don't engage in false speech
e. Don't abuse drugs or alcohol

5. Right Livelihood
Don't work in a job that violates The Precepts

6. Right Effort
a. Create, preserve and increase healthy states
b. Prevent, eliminate or decrease harmful states

7. Right Mindfulness
a. See things clearly
b. The Four Foundations of Mindfulness
Be mindful of:
- body
- feeling
- state of mind
- phenomena

8. Right Concentration
a. Meditation
b. Concentration on healthy thoughts and actions

Buddhist Virtues (The Four Immeasurables)

1. Compassion: The intention and capacity to relieve the suffering of oneself and all other living beings.

2. Loving Kindness: The intention and capacity to bring joy and happiness to oneself and all other living beings.

3. Empathetic Joy: Rejoicing in the happiness and virtues of another living being

4. Equanimity: Accepting loss or gain, praise or blame, success or failure with detachment. Regarding all living beings equally. Being clear-minded and tranquil but not dull.

The Three Poisons (The Roots of All Suffering)

Anger/Aversion/Hatred
Craving/Attachment/Greed
Delusion/Ignorance


The Three Jewels (The Credo of Buddhism)

Buddha: Mindfulness, your highest spiritual potential
Dharma: The teachings of the Buddha and the practice of those teachings
Sangha: The community that supports that practice


I take refuge in the Buddha,

the one who shows me the way in this life

I take refuge in the Dharma,

the way of understanding and love

I take refuge in the Sangha,

the community that lives in harmony and awareness
 
In Zen, what is suchness? -Is it the nature of emptiness? Did the Buddha talk about it?


Suchness is the physical reality. Take a look at a fallen leaf. It is what it is. That’s how it looks like. No amount of meditation or psychedelics will make it look any different, maybe only temporarily.
That’s reality.

The nature of emptiness is not suchness, the nature of emptiness is the dreaming mind, the unreality. Your self-image, what kind of person you think you are or want to be, how you relate to other people, your goals, aspirations in life, your emotions, your struggles, your pride, your accomplishments, your hatred, your love, your fear, your anxiety, your longing, your relationships, your gender - this whole intricately complex inner world which you inhabit is empty, and is ultimately self-created.
All spiritual practices and methods are designed to bring all this stuff to the level of consciousness, see it, experience it and let it go.
All spiritual experiences, however scary, blissful or profound they may be, also happen in your mind, not reality. Just like dreams.

The total and complete destruction of this inner world is the process of spiritual enlightenment,
and the realization of suchness lies at the very end of the spiritual path.
(Yahoo)
 
In some way, or by some means, whether it be through sitting still on the floor for ten years, or an episode of intense suffering, you have to clearly see that the ego-self that you feel yourself to be cannot actually do anything about your situation as a human being.

In other words, it has to become viscerally apparent to you that every atom and every electron in this universe is in a constant state of flux, and there is absolutely nothing you can hold on to. You have to realise in the pit of your soul that all your attempts to grasp at, resist or control this universe are about as futile as trying to make bricks out of water. There is nothing you can ultimately do about change and decay.

If you really get with this, then, what happens is that you realise that the feeling of yourself as a fixed observer of the changing tides of experience was always just an illusion. It's just a fear reaction created by the reflective capacity of the human mind. This separate 'me' that feels confronted by a changing organism and a changing world could never do anything about these things because it never actually existed in the first place. There is only the stream of change, and you are that. So you might as well swim with the current, because, in the end, there really is no other option. Enlightenment is as simple as that.
 
What is Buddha’s realization?

Lord Buddha realized the noble truth. In the sense, it is the ultimate truth anybody can realize about the world.

The Noble Truth is of four parts.

The ‘suffering’: There are several categories of suffering Lord Buddha has explained. No matter how hard you try, no one can escape from it unless you follow the path revealed by Lord Buddha. There is a concept in buddhism;

‘Pancha (Five) - Upadhana (grabbed by desire) - Sakanda (Masses/ Entities)’.
Lord Buddha explained, having this ‘Five-Entities-Grabbed by Desire’ itself is the ‘suffering’. In brief, these five entities are as follows. When you grabbed these five entities by your desire, so comes the suffering).

The physical body (Ruu.pa)
The nature of the mind (or thoughts) of experiencing something (it can be joy, sadness or neutral) (Vee.da.na)
The nature of the mind (or thoughts) of identifying something (like how you recognize your father by seeing him) (San.gna)
The nature of the mind (or thoughts) that generate when doing/ going to do things (either by mentally, orally or physically) (San.ka.ra)
The mind itself (Vin.gna.na)

The ‘cause of suffering’: Lord Buddha explained the immediate cause of the suffering is the ‘desire’ (Than.ha).
But, one important thing to understand is ‘desire’ is not the only cause to ‘suffering’ and it is the immediate cause only. Therefore, it is very important not to misunderstand that, vanishing ‘desire’ itself is not the path to cease the suffering.
Because, you cannot vanish ‘desire’ itself. You will see that when I briefly explain the fourth part of noble truth.

The ‘cessation of suffering’: Lord Buddha realized there is a end for these sufferings by creatures;
That is the ‘Enlightenment’ (Nir.va.na). In very simple sense it comes when you realize and able to see all four noble truths through yourself.
Not simple read, memorizing or understanding will grant you this. As I said, realization and able to see it through yourself.

The ‘path to cessation of suffering’: Lord Buddha did not stop his journey and kindness just understanding it by himself. He taught others the exact path to follow. It is called Ar.ya (Noble) - As.tan.gi.ka (Eight-stepped) - Mar.ga.ya (Path).
In brief, it is as below. There are many detailed ways and presentations of this path.
Noble Vision (Understanding without myth (This is the most important. Meaning of ‘Myth’ might be different to what you think). (Samma Ditti)
Noble concepts/ attitudes (Samma Sankappa)
Noble use of words (Samma Waacha)
Noble way of doings (Samma Kammantha)
Noble way of living (Samma Aajiwa)
Noble efforts (Samma Vaayama)
Noble conscious (Samma Sathi)
Noble concentration (Samma Samadi)

As I said before, you will see from the above brief path, that the ‘desire’ is not the point to turn the suffering backward.
it is not the point to stop suffering; but the correction for your vision is!
This correction of your vision, in other words it need to change the way you see the world. In brief, you have to see how the world (not earth, world means, in and out side of you) is built when the reasons present, and how it is vanished when the reasons are gone.
 
śrotāpanna is a term in Buddhism known as Stream Entry.

The stream is the process of removing ignorance which is initially glimpsed for a period.
This ignorance is seeing a world that never existed at all…everyday existence (ordinary mind.)

When the illusion of existence is seen through it cannot be unknown ever again.
What is known is known. One can then never be out of the stream of liberation.

This is also referred to as Awakening.
There is basically experiential certainty that things do not exist as they appear to.
 
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