Explanation of the Second Noble Truth
The second Noble Truth, samudaya, the arising of dukkha. It is a thirst for many things. A thirst for sense pleasures, a thirst for existence and becoming, and a thirst for non-existence (self-annihilation). It is this desire, greed, and craving manifesting itself in various ways that gives rise to all forms of suffering. This thirst is not only a desire for, and attachment to sense pleasures, wealth and power, but also a desire for, and attachment to ideas and ideals, views, opinions, theories, conceptions and beliefs. According to the Buddha all troubles in the world from little family fights to giant wars between nations that cause millions of death are caused by this “thirst”, caused by samudaya. We are all guilty of having samudaya being a big part of our lives. Even a thirst to reach Nirvana and follow the Buddhist path is samudaya, an attachment to any religious or philosophical ideas is samudaya. This makes it almost impossible to escape it.
To fully understand the Second Noble Truth you need to read some about the philosophical side of it corresponding to the philosophical side of the First Noble Truth. To understand this you’ll probably need some idea of the theory of karma and rebirth. There are four Nutriments in the sense of ‘cause’ or ‘condition’ needed for the existence of beings: ordinary material food, contact of our sense organs with the external world, and mental volition or will. The last of these four ‘mental volition’ is the will to live, to exist, and to re-exist (corresponding to the Buddhist belief of reincarnation), to continue, and to become more and more. It creates the root of existence, and the will to continue forward with good or bad actions. It’s the same as volition. Volition is karma as the Buddha defined himself. Referring to mental volition the Buddha says, “When one understands the nutriment of mental volition one understands the three forms of ‘thirst’.” This basically has been translated to mean that ‘thirst’, ‘volition’, ‘mental volition’ and ‘karma’ all mean the same thing. They denote the desire, the will to be, to exist and to accumulate more and more. This is the cause of the arising of dukkha, samudaya. This is found within the Aggregate of Mental Formations.
One of the most important teachings of the Buddha is very confusing when first said but makes more sense when it’s explained. He taught that the cause or arising of dukkha (samudaya) is within dukkha itself, and just as much as the cause of dukkha being within dukkha, the end or cessation of dukkha is within it too. I think of it in a much simpler way then it sounds. So a person’s life is within them. They grow up and become stronger as their life continues on and have a better chance of living longer as their life continues until they reach a certain point (and the same goes for dukkha). Then when they reach around the middle of their life their immune system weakens and their whole body weakens (and as dukkha continues past this point it weakens) and they have a better chance of dying. They get some sort of virus or germ and it kills them. The cessation of human life comes from within them always, while the cessation of dukkha, or the germ that kills dukkha, comes from within dukkha. “Whatever is of the nature of arising, all that is of the nature of cessation.” “A being, a thing, or a system, if it has within itself the nature of arising, the nature of coming into being, has also within itself the nature, the germ, of its own cessation and destruction.” This means that anything, including dukkha, has within itself the nature of its own arising, and has within itself the nature of its own cessation (ending).
