Lane-Fox G. - The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism: Difference between revisions

  | original author name = St. George Lane-Fox

  | publications = [[Lucifer/Vol1/Text|''Lucifer'', vol. 1, no. 1]], September 1887, pp. 49-51

  | read links = [[Lucifer/Vol1/Text|Electronic journal edition in Teopedia]]; [https://www.gutenberg.org/files/60852/60852-h/60852-h.htm#Page_49 Project Gutenberg library]

  | origin = English: St. George Lane-Fox, ''The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism''

{{Style P-Title|The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.}}

<span style="font-variant:small-caps">When</span> a man immersed in the darkness of modern civilization awakens, however slightly, to the hollowness of his every-day life, he becomes sensible of a feeling of despair, for he is mentally brought face to face with what appears to him to be a meaningless yet cruel destiny. Now to any one so circumstanced, no truer source of consolation and encouragement can be offered than that which is to be found in a proper consideration of the “Four Noble Truths” of Buddhism. But to give this proper consideration to the Truths, or indeed to promote even a preliminary enquiry into their nature is by no means an easy task, because the fundamental ideas which they embody have scarcely any vitality in the present generation; nay more, they involve for the most part a complete inversion of maxims commonly accepted as axiomatic in current thought.

Thus: – 1. Right fundamental Belief, ''i.e.'', the right basis mentally and spiritually upon which to establish true knowledge. 2. Right Intention, ''i.e.'', goodwill towards all that lives, singleness of purpose, correctness and purity of motive. 3. Right Speech, ''i.e.'', the use of becoming language, kindly temperate, fair and profitable; patient yet vigorous; thoughtful, courageous, honest and discriminating. 4. Right Behaviour ''i.e.'', active philanthropy. 5. Right means of Livelihood, ''i.e.'', honest and useful employment of one’s time, paying adequate attention to one’s own material needs and helping others to do the same, yet without care for the morrow. 6. Right Endeavour, ''i.e.'', putting one’s heart in one’s {{Page aside|51}}work. 7. Right Loneliness, ''i.e.'', self-contained and harmonious within. 8. Right Meditation. This is the Sanskrit ''Yoga'' and signifies union with the divine by practising the contemplation of the reality of being. It is the result of a sustained effort to concentrate the mind upon the universal, eternal and immutable law of life; the first stage of such concentration takes the form of an impartial review or survey of all one’s thoughts, actions, desires, sensations and experiences from a thoroughly impersonal standpoint. This Eightfold Path has four stages representing different degrees of advancement towards Buddhahood or the state of perfect enlightenment. The true Buddha or Tathâgata is one who has attained final emancipation from individual existence, whose purified spirit is freed from the last vestige of Tanha, one upon whom Karma has no more hold, for he has reached Para Nirvana, the ''Eternal'', the Absolute Being.