I gave this talk yesterday at our Full Moon Zen Thursday evening sit. A recording follows the text.

This is a passage from the Pali Canon:

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of suffering: birth is suffering, aging is suffering, illness is suffering, death is suffering; union with what is displeasing is suffering; separation from what is pleasing is suffering; not to get what one wants is suffering; in brief, the five aggregates subject to clinging are suffering.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the origin of suffering: it is this craving which leads to re-becoming accompanied by delight and lust, seeking delight here and there; that is, craving for sensual pleasures, craving for becoming, craving for disbecoming.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering: it is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving, the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, non-reliance on it.

Now this, bhikkhus, is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: it is this noble eightfold path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

These, of course, are the Four Noble Truths Shakyamuni Buddha is said to have shared in his first talk after his awakening experience. So very familiar to us, they obviously focus on the fact of suffering, its cause, the possibility of ending it, and a method for ending it.

A few weeks ago I read an article by Jonathan Gold, a scholar of Buddhism, that asks if the Buddha truly said “suffering” in this sermon. He reconsiders what the Buddha meant if he used a different word, “precarious,” instead of “suffering.”

This isn’t Gold’s idea. It was first proposed by the linguist Christopher Beckwith, who noted that a Greek Philosopher called Phyrro of Elis heard the Four Noble Truths and other Buddhist teachings in oral tradition long before the Sanskrit and Pali word “dukkha” was recorded in the early Buddhist scriptures. Dukkha is the word we translate as suffering.

Phyrro traveled to India in the 4th century B.C.E. with Alexander the Great’s army. The first Buddhist scriptures were written about 300 years later. Phyrro’s much earlier writings that were influenced by his encounter with Buddhism use precarious, not suffering.

Gold’s article examines multiple Buddhist texts, substituting “precarious” wherever “suffering” appears. He thinks this resolves many questions generations of scholars have had about the Buddha’s supposed use of the word “suffering.” I won’t try to summarize all his examples, but here’s one:

Scholars wonder why the Buddha would say the whole of life is suffering when so many of our experiences are pleasant: eating ice cream, holding a baby, smelling the roses. We might feel a sense of loss when these experiences end, but does that mean we were suffering during them? Buddhist teachers have been glossing over this and other problems with the word suffering forever or making rather contorted arguments to dispense with them.

But it’s not so hard to accept the notion that the pleasant experience of holding a baby is precarious, in the sense that it won’t last or that this little love ball might puke in my face while I’m holding her. Pleasant experiences sometimes turn unpleasant. Even when they don’t, they end.

If we substitute “precarious” for “suffering” in the Four Noble Truths, I imagine we get something like this:

One:

Life seems precarious.

Two:

Maybe what makes life seem precarious isn’t so much the obvious fact of impermanence, but the way we tend to respond to it: compulsively chasing after or trying to cling to experiences we find pleasant and compulsively avoiding or trying to push away experiences we find uncomfortable.

Three:

We can end, or at least dial way down, this feeling that we’re riding a rollercoaster with our eyes closed, alternately wishing it would end or begging for more.

Four:

We do that, well, by doing. By orienting differently in and to life. The Buddha embraced eight specific perspectives and practices he found helpful. He thought we might find them helpful, too.

Here’s another way to say the same thing, drawn from modern research on how our minds work, rather than the Buddha’s ancient personal experiment. When focusing on a task, like feeding a baby or washing the dishes, you can either have what researchers call a “state orientation” or what they call an “action orientation.”

If you have a state orientation, you’re focusing primarily on yourself: Do I feel prepared? Does the baby like me? The dishwater feels cold. What if I screw this up?

If you have an action orientation, you’re focused on the task itself, without concern for your emotional or physical state. You’d flinch and do something about it if the baby puked or the water were scalding hot, but you’re not obsessing about that possibility.

You won’t be surprised to hear people with an action orientation are more successful at whatever they’re doing. And I also doubt you’ll be surprised to hear this notion generalizes to the whole of life. If we go around chasing states, constantly asking ourselves whether we’re happy, that’s a recipe for unhappiness.

The Buddha apparently spent years chasing a blissful state. Many of us enter this path looking for a state of existence or nonexistence that feels more reliably pleasant; less precarious. The insights and guidance the Buddha ultimately offered seem more about how to set our intentions and act, and about not separating from our experience, whatever our state.

Perhaps ironically, we tend to find the stability we’re seeking by unifying with the shifting ground of experience, being and doing without fuss.