Hinayana

Imagine you row a boat at the ocean of suffering. You row the boat alone. You want to get out of your personal individual suffering. Through the little vehicle, your little boat, or the Hinayana, you learn about the nature of suffering, the cause of it, that it can have an ending and the way in how to end it. You learn how to steer out of your own suffering

 

The four noble truths

The nature of suffering is presented to you as the four noble truths; You learn that life brings suffering, that suffering is part of living, that suffering can be ended and that there is a path that leads to the end of suffering. These ideas sum up the key teachings of Buddhism.

 

1. Life is full of suffering.

All of life consists of suffering; We will experience birth, sickness, aging and death and all of this contains suffering; Birth is suffering, illness is suffering, aging is suffering, death is suffering. Also union with what is displeasing is suffering and separation from what is pleasing is suffering. Not to get what one wants is suffering and when we cling to objects through our five senses or “aggregates” we experience suffering.

 

2. The suffering has a cause

The craving described under the first truth of suffering leads to re-becoming. It is also accompanied by delight and lust and seeking delight here and there. We crave for sensual pleasures, crave for becoming and crave for disbecoming, which all leads to suffering.

 

3. The suffering can be ended

This 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.

 

4. The way leading to the cessation of suffering

This is teachings of the Dharma and the noble eightfold path; right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration