dred disciples. He took no time for any thinking about tomorrow, and he was content to find his dinner in the home of some local admirer. Once he scandalized his admirers by eating in the home of a notorious courtesan. His favorite sutra was the Four Noble Truths in which he expounded his view that life is pain, that pain is due to desire, and that wisdom is achieved in the stilling of all desire for earthly temptations. There are four noble truths: the first is the noble truth of sorrow, that birth is sorrow, that illness is sorrow, that separation from loved objects is sorrow and that unfulfilled obtainment causes sorrow; the second noble truth contains the origins of sorrow, and that comes from craving, accompanied by sensual delight; the third noble truth is the cessation of sorrow by the laying aside of, the giving up of, the being free from craving; the fourth noble truth is the noble eightfold path, which, when followed, leads to the total cessation of sorrow (Hsing, 1987, p. 35-55). The eightfold path encompasses right understanding, right mindedness, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right endeavor, right recollectedness, and right concentration.
Buddha was convinced that pain so overwhelmed pleasure in human life terms that it would be better never to have been born. "More tears have flowed," he tells us, "than all the water that is in the fou
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