Deliberately More Colloquial
I’d like to share this wonderfully straight-forward translation of the Four Noble Truths from Turning the Wheel of Truth: Commentary on the Buddha’s First Teaching, by Ajahn Sucitto (pictured here).
“There is a noble truth with regard to suffering. Birth is difficult; aging is hard; dying is painful. Sorrow, grieving, pain, anguish, and despair are all painful. Being stuck with what you don’t like is stressful; being separated from what you do like is stressful; not getting what you want is stressful. In brief, the five aggregates that are affected by clinging bring no satisfaction.
“There is a noble truth concerning the arising of suffering: it arises with craving, a thirst for more that’s bound up with relish and passion and is always running here and there. That is: thirst for sense-input, thirst to be something, thirst to not be something.
“There is a noble truth about the cessation of suffering. It is the complete fading away and cessation of this craving; its abandonment and relinquishment; getting free from and being independent of it.
“There is a noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering. It is the noble eightfold path: namely, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.”
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In the introduction, Sucitto explains: “…since the teaching was given so long ago in a culture different from our own, its wording and allusions can cause us modern readers to stumble. For starters, it’s written in the Pali language, which is an amalgam of various ancient, vernacular Indian dialects. This language of the text is similar to Sanskrit, but is deliberately more colloquial.
“This is because the Buddha chose to teach in the spoken dialects of ordinary people in order to get his message across more readily–not that this helps the modern Westerner. Sanskrit was the literary language, reserved for the upper caste, so by using ordinary language, the Buddha was making the point that his teaching wasn’t philosophical or only for the learned. Instead, it is supposed to reach ordinary people, be matter-of-fact, and accessible.”
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I think Ajahn Sucitto’s translation goes a long way toward doing just that.