Since the Buddha turned the first wheel of dharma in India in 2500 years ago his teachings have spread to many other countries where various traditions have developed. This has been partly due to which of the Buddha’s teachings were emphasised in that country and what aspects of the local culture influenced the way the teachings were put into practice.
One of the fundamental teachings of the Buddha that we find in all Buddhist traditions however, is the teaching on the Four Noble Truths which many of you may be familiar with. These truths are that
- There is suffering,
- That karma, ignorance and negative emotions are the causes of suffering,
- That there can be a complete cessation of suffering and
- That the path to cessation is through the cessation of the causes karma, ignorance and negative emotions.
In the first truth - the truth of suffering - sickness, old age and death are all included as types of sufferings that we will experience during our life.
We are encouraged in our practice of Buddhism to see sickness of any kind as a normal thing to happen rather than seeing perfect health as normal and sickness as life gone wrong. As ordinary beings ie unenlightened beings, we are under the control of ignorance, negative emotions and karma and therefore it is natural that we will experience sickness just as it is natural for us to experience old age and death.
We are born with the potential to experience many forms of illness, pain or injury - and this potential ripens when we meet the appropriate conditions eg spending time with someone who has a cold just at the time we are stressed, tired and have less resistance than usual. We probably all have the potential to be injured in eg a car accident but for most of us it hasn’t happened yet because we were not the one immediately behind the car that stopped suddenly and unexpectedly.
So this is the first understanding we can develop from the teaching on the 4 Noble Truths - that sickness is a normal thing to happen to us.
