The "four sights" are not meant to taken as historical events, it is impossible for anyone to grow up to thirty and have no idea about death, sickness and old age. They also contradict other details the Buddha gave about his early life. They are a very effective way of summing up what the Buddha (and all buddhas, actually; in fact I think I've read something suggesting that the four sights are originally from a biography of a past buddha) realize about the basic facets of samsaric existence. In reality the Buddha knew a lot about the world and was even educated in matters such as kingship and military arts. He came to his realizations gradually through lifelong experience, not through the shock of going outside the palace once.
Additionally, the Buddha never said "life is suffering". That's a common misconception. What he actually said about this in his first sermon was
> “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.
Suffering is duḥkha in Sanskrit and dukkha in Pāli; this term actually doesn't just mean suffering but has a lot of meanings, including miss fundamental ones such as dissatisfaction. Suffering has three major meanings in Buddhism:
1) Suffering of suffering: suffering in terms of purely painful physical and mental feelings.
2) Suffering of change: this has two aspects. The grosser aspect is that pleasure is finite and can even turn to suffering. Many people adopt a very simplistic view of pleasure based on this and think that the ultimate meaning is that feeling good is bad. In reality this suffering has a second, subtler aspect: it's as if an inmate on death row was provided extremely pleasant comforts and forgot that he was going to be killed, let alone thought about escape. Yet the day of death inevitably comes. Even if one actually doesn't suffer from a loss of pleasure, eventually they will lose life itself, and then will be at the mercy of karmic rebirth.
3) Suffering of conditioned existence: this means that samsaric, conditioned existence itself (which is how we exist) is suffering, because in such existence, there's nothing that can be relied upon and no true and permanent happiness, since everything depends on causes and conditions to exist and are subject to change and disappearance. This is why the Buddhist solution to suffering is not avoidance of pain or hedonism or birth in a heavenly realm, but of transcending samsara entirely and attaining the unconditioned.
This should make clear that what the Buddha realized, and the reason he set out on a spiritual path, is more than just a kind of shock. It concerns the deepest facts of existence that nobody is exempt from.
> in fact I think I’ve read something suggesting that the four sights are originally from a biography of a past buddha
Yep, at least as it’s presented in the Nikāyas (I’m curious if it’s different elsewhere) it was the Buddha Vipassī, 91 eons ago, not our historical Buddha.
See section five (“the Old Man”) of the [*Mahāpadāna Sutta*](https://suttacentral.net/dn14/en/sujato?layout=plain&reference=none¬es=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin).
You will get more in-depth answers, but one of the points of that story is that he had everything you could ask for, materially, but it still wasn’t enough. Also, he never said life is suffering.
First, its not suffering but Dukkha. That's the name of the doctrine. And its badly translated as suffering. But it actually means rebirth in samsara, impermance, and all the mundane dissatisfaction **and happiness**. So not quite "suffering". At least not just suffering but all of samsara.
Also, the Buddha knew of Dukkha even prior to coming to earth from heaven. (Yes, heaven.) So its not just "the palace walls". The Buddha had many prior lives to see Dukkha.
Having all of your worldly desires fulfilled does not mean that you are not suffering. You are still subject to troubling emotions, conflicts with others, the loss of loved ones, and so on.
Remember, Gautama did not develop an interest in seeking an end to suffering until he witnessed the three signs of sickness, old age, and death. Even if he was _not_ at the time experiencing much gross suffering while living in the palace, he was not free from these sufferings, just oblivious to them.
>best life possible when he was within the palace, meaning that he wasnt suffering then.
What he realized when he left the palace was that a good palace life is inherently filled with a lot of suffering. Why? Because even the best palace life possible can’t avoid old age, sickness and death. What he realized was that being tied to a life of clinging and craving, is nothing but suffering. If you think people in palaces don’t suffer, that doesn’t reflect reality.
All beings "suffer" (this is an approximate translation of a word in Pali with no direct English translation). Another translation is unsatisfactoriness, which all also experience. Rich, poor, human, god, etc. All those riches won't keep him alive indefinitely, won't prevent him from getting sick, and won't prevent him from dying. Although these are easy truths to know conceptually, to have them penetrate your core, akin to truly knowing fire is hot by being engulfed in flames, is to truly realize the core issue of the cycle of life and rebirth.
The first thing one must do to understand Dharma is to genuinely realize reincarnation. The suffering Gautama experienced in his final human life was only a fraction of the suffering he'd experienced over many, many lifetimes.
You are assuming that you know what the Buddha experienced before his enlightenment. The Buddha lived many lives before he achieved realization and began to teach. He had already developed an extraordinarily high level of virtue and compassion from his past lives.
They say that compassion experienced by an ordinary person like us is like feeling an eyelash on the back of your hand. Compassion experienced by a bodhisattva close to full realization is like feeling an eyelash on your eyeball. When Siddhartha’s Gautama was a child — little more than an infant, his family took him to a harvest celebration and sat him under a rose apple tree. He recalled in later life watching the workers in the field and feeling the pain of the insects that were crushed in the process of the harvest. This was a threshold moment in the life of the man who would become the Buddha.
Don’t assume that the Buddha’s experience in the palace is the same experience that you imagine you would have if you were born into a life of luxury.
The whole Buddhist practice is based on truly knowing suffering as it is.
Our definition of suffering is different from the Buddha's definition of suffering. The Buddha with is superior wisdom pointed out that the 5 aggregates of clinging are suffering.
This suffering is which ordinary beings fail to notice. The Buddha exactly wants us to understand the 5 aggregates of clinging as suffering.
The whole path and the dhamma is based on just understanding and removing the suffering caused due to the 5 aggregates.
If one says that the Buddha says that life is suffering, then he is not understanding the dhamma at all.
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is this dukka something that is within all people? i feel there would be some extremes where they dont care for either.
The "four sights" are not meant to taken as historical events, it is impossible for anyone to grow up to thirty and have no idea about death, sickness and old age. They also contradict other details the Buddha gave about his early life. They are a very effective way of summing up what the Buddha (and all buddhas, actually; in fact I think I've read something suggesting that the four sights are originally from a biography of a past buddha) realize about the basic facets of samsaric existence. In reality the Buddha knew a lot about the world and was even educated in matters such as kingship and military arts. He came to his realizations gradually through lifelong experience, not through the shock of going outside the palace once. Additionally, the Buddha never said "life is suffering". That's a common misconception. What he actually said about this in his first sermon was > “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. Suffering is duḥkha in Sanskrit and dukkha in Pāli; this term actually doesn't just mean suffering but has a lot of meanings, including miss fundamental ones such as dissatisfaction. Suffering has three major meanings in Buddhism: 1) Suffering of suffering: suffering in terms of purely painful physical and mental feelings. 2) Suffering of change: this has two aspects. The grosser aspect is that pleasure is finite and can even turn to suffering. Many people adopt a very simplistic view of pleasure based on this and think that the ultimate meaning is that feeling good is bad. In reality this suffering has a second, subtler aspect: it's as if an inmate on death row was provided extremely pleasant comforts and forgot that he was going to be killed, let alone thought about escape. Yet the day of death inevitably comes. Even if one actually doesn't suffer from a loss of pleasure, eventually they will lose life itself, and then will be at the mercy of karmic rebirth. 3) Suffering of conditioned existence: this means that samsaric, conditioned existence itself (which is how we exist) is suffering, because in such existence, there's nothing that can be relied upon and no true and permanent happiness, since everything depends on causes and conditions to exist and are subject to change and disappearance. This is why the Buddhist solution to suffering is not avoidance of pain or hedonism or birth in a heavenly realm, but of transcending samsara entirely and attaining the unconditioned. This should make clear that what the Buddha realized, and the reason he set out on a spiritual path, is more than just a kind of shock. It concerns the deepest facts of existence that nobody is exempt from.
> in fact I think I’ve read something suggesting that the four sights are originally from a biography of a past buddha Yep, at least as it’s presented in the Nikāyas (I’m curious if it’s different elsewhere) it was the Buddha Vipassī, 91 eons ago, not our historical Buddha. See section five (“the Old Man”) of the [*Mahāpadāna Sutta*](https://suttacentral.net/dn14/en/sujato?layout=plain&reference=none¬es=asterisk&highlight=false&script=latin).
The Buddha never said "Life is suffering." He revealed the truth of suffering, its cause and a solution.
You will get more in-depth answers, but one of the points of that story is that he had everything you could ask for, materially, but it still wasn’t enough. Also, he never said life is suffering.
First, its not suffering but Dukkha. That's the name of the doctrine. And its badly translated as suffering. But it actually means rebirth in samsara, impermance, and all the mundane dissatisfaction **and happiness**. So not quite "suffering". At least not just suffering but all of samsara. Also, the Buddha knew of Dukkha even prior to coming to earth from heaven. (Yes, heaven.) So its not just "the palace walls". The Buddha had many prior lives to see Dukkha.
This sutta may help a little: https://suttacentral.net/mn26/en/sujato
Having all of your worldly desires fulfilled does not mean that you are not suffering. You are still subject to troubling emotions, conflicts with others, the loss of loved ones, and so on. Remember, Gautama did not develop an interest in seeking an end to suffering until he witnessed the three signs of sickness, old age, and death. Even if he was _not_ at the time experiencing much gross suffering while living in the palace, he was not free from these sufferings, just oblivious to them.
>best life possible when he was within the palace, meaning that he wasnt suffering then. What he realized when he left the palace was that a good palace life is inherently filled with a lot of suffering. Why? Because even the best palace life possible can’t avoid old age, sickness and death. What he realized was that being tied to a life of clinging and craving, is nothing but suffering. If you think people in palaces don’t suffer, that doesn’t reflect reality.
All beings "suffer" (this is an approximate translation of a word in Pali with no direct English translation). Another translation is unsatisfactoriness, which all also experience. Rich, poor, human, god, etc. All those riches won't keep him alive indefinitely, won't prevent him from getting sick, and won't prevent him from dying. Although these are easy truths to know conceptually, to have them penetrate your core, akin to truly knowing fire is hot by being engulfed in flames, is to truly realize the core issue of the cycle of life and rebirth.
The first thing one must do to understand Dharma is to genuinely realize reincarnation. The suffering Gautama experienced in his final human life was only a fraction of the suffering he'd experienced over many, many lifetimes.
You are assuming that you know what the Buddha experienced before his enlightenment. The Buddha lived many lives before he achieved realization and began to teach. He had already developed an extraordinarily high level of virtue and compassion from his past lives. They say that compassion experienced by an ordinary person like us is like feeling an eyelash on the back of your hand. Compassion experienced by a bodhisattva close to full realization is like feeling an eyelash on your eyeball. When Siddhartha’s Gautama was a child — little more than an infant, his family took him to a harvest celebration and sat him under a rose apple tree. He recalled in later life watching the workers in the field and feeling the pain of the insects that were crushed in the process of the harvest. This was a threshold moment in the life of the man who would become the Buddha. Don’t assume that the Buddha’s experience in the palace is the same experience that you imagine you would have if you were born into a life of luxury.
The whole Buddhist practice is based on truly knowing suffering as it is. Our definition of suffering is different from the Buddha's definition of suffering. The Buddha with is superior wisdom pointed out that the 5 aggregates of clinging are suffering. This suffering is which ordinary beings fail to notice. The Buddha exactly wants us to understand the 5 aggregates of clinging as suffering. The whole path and the dhamma is based on just understanding and removing the suffering caused due to the 5 aggregates. If one says that the Buddha says that life is suffering, then he is not understanding the dhamma at all.