Illness, cause, recovery, treatment. The Buddha called himself a surgeon and set out his teaching as a physician sets out a case. The Greeks and Romans said the same of philosophy. Whether the four truths are a creed, a prescription, or an argument, who in the West practiced philosophy as medicine, and what kind of truth a truth is that comes with a task. 病、病因、康復、療法。佛陀自稱外科醫師，並且像醫生陳述一個病例那樣陳述他的教法。希臘人與羅馬人對哲學也說過同樣的話。四聖諦是信條、處方，還是論證？西方有誰把哲學當作醫療來做？而一個附帶著一項任務的「諦」，又是哪一種真理？
D7 Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學Suffering and Its End · 苦與苦的止息Advanced · 高級about 30 min
四聖諦
cattāri ariyasaccāni Pāli catvāri āryasatyāni Sanskritthe four noble truths
The verdict · 判定
Closest: the Hellenistic schools as a group, and Epicurus most of all, who said that a philosopher’s argument is empty if it heals no suffering and who summed up his teaching as a fourfold remedy. The likeness ends at what the medicine is. For the Greeks the cure is a set of correct beliefs, held firmly. For the Buddha each truth carries a task, and the fourth is a training of conduct and attention that does its work whether or not it is believed in advance.
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all.每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
1 · What the Dharma says · 佛法怎麼說
A physician states a case 一位醫生陳述一個病例
The four truths were the content of the Buddha’s first discourse: there is suffering; it has an origin, which is craving; it has a cessation, which is the ending of that craving; and there is a practice that leads to the cessation, the eightfold path. The order is that of a medical case. A discourse preserved in the Chinese canon makes the comparison explicit. A great physician, the Buddha says there, has four skills. He knows the illness well, knows its source well, knows its remedy well, and knows how to treat it so that it does not return. “The Tathāgata, the great king of physicians, has four qualities and heals the illness of living beings in the same way,” and the four qualities are his knowledge of the four truths as they are.
The Pali discourses use the same language. “I, mendicants, am a brahmin, committed to charity, always open-handed, bearing my final body, a healer, a surgeon.” In another place the Buddha describes a surgeon who cuts open a wound, probes for the arrow, draws it out, and then tells the patient how to care for the wound so that it heals. He remarks elsewhere that there are three kinds of patients: those who will recover whatever is done, those who will not recover whatever is done, and those who will recover only if they are given suitable food, medicine, and care. It is for the sake of the third kind, he says, that medicine is prescribed. The teaching is addressed to people for whom it can make the difference.
The first discourse adds something that the medical comparison could not supply by itself. Each truth comes with a task. The truth of suffering “should be completely understood.” The origin “should be given up.” The cessation “should be realized.” The practice “should be developed.” The Buddha says that he did not claim to be awakened until he had seen each truth, seen its task, and seen that the task was done, twelve aspects in all. A truth here is something to be acted on in a specific way. It would make no sense to give up the first truth or to develop the second. This is the feature that most distinguishes the four truths from a creed, and Western summaries most often leave it out.
A saying attributed to Epicurus puts the medical view of philosophy in its strongest form: the argument of a philosopher is empty if it heals no human suffering, as medicine is useless if it does not drive illness from the body. His followers summed up his teaching in four lines that they called the fourfold remedy: God is not to be feared, death is not to be felt, what is good is easy to get, and what is terrible is easy to endure. They memorized it, as one keeps a medicine at hand. The parallel with the four truths is close in spirit and in number. Both reject speculation that does not bear on the cure. The difference is in the ingredients. Each line of the Epicurean remedy is a belief that removes a fear, and the patient is cured when he holds all four securely. The four truths include one belief of that kind at most. The rest is diagnosis and regimen.
The Stoics developed the comparison in most detail, and Cicero, who was not a Stoic, gave it its best-known wording while mourning his daughter. “Philosophy is certainly the medicine of the soul, whose assistance we do not seek from abroad, as in bodily disorders, but we ourselves are bound to exert our utmost energy and power in order to effect our cure.” The passions are diseases, on the Stoic account, and each consists of a false judgment about what is good or bad. Treatment is the correction of the judgment by argument and by daily exercises, such as rehearsing in the morning the troubles the day may bring. Cicero’s sentence could stand at the head of a Buddhist text: the patient must do the work. The Stoics located the illness in reason and trusted reason to cure itself. The Buddha traced it to thirst and ignorance, which argue well in their own defense, and his treatment begins with conduct and attention before it reaches views.
Wittgenstein revived the medical picture in the twentieth century and narrowed it. A philosophical problem, he held, is a confusion produced by language, and the philosopher treats a question as one treats an illness. The aim is to show the fly the way out of the bottle, after which the problem does not get solved. It disappears. He shares with the Buddha a suspicion of theories and a view of his own remarks as tools to be set down once they have done their work, which the Buddha said of his teaching in the simile of the raft. The patient is different. Wittgenstein’s therapy is for people who have been made ill by philosophy, and when it succeeds they return to ordinary life as it was. The Buddha thought that ordinary life was where the illness lay.
Who is closest, and where the likeness ends 誰最接近，相似到哪裡為止
On the purpose, which the first lesson on this shelf made the deciding level, the Hellenistic schools stand closer to the Buddha than any later Western philosophy does. Epicureans, Stoics, and Skeptics all held that philosophy exists to remove suffering, judged doctrines by whether they did so, and trained their students with exercises. For several centuries in the West, as in India, a philosophy was a way of life that one entered. Epicurus is closest among them, for his test of an argument and for the form of his remedy. This tradition lapsed in the West when philosophy became a university subject, and the French scholar Pierre Hadot spent his career recovering it.
On the conclusion and the argument the likeness is partial, and it ends at the nature of the medicine. The Greek schools treated by changing what the patient believes. Their exercises served to fix correct opinions so firmly that they would be present in a crisis. The four truths are built differently. Only the second and third are propositions to be accepted, and even they are stated as things to be given up and realized. The fourth is eight kinds of training, in speech, action, livelihood, effort, attention, and concentration as well as view. A person can begin it with very little belief, and the tradition expects understanding to come from the practice. The Greek doctor says: come to see that death is nothing to you. The Buddhist doctor says: keep these precepts, watch the breath, and tell me what you find.
Assembling reminders of how words are used把「字是怎麼被使用的」提醒聚集起來
Is the medicine kept?藥要留著嗎？
No. The raft is left on the shore不。筏留在岸上
Yes. Kept at hand for life要。一輩子放在手邊
Yes. Rehearsed daily要。每天演練
No. It purges itself with the illness不。它連同病一起把自己瀉掉
No. The ladder is thrown away不。梯子爬完就丟
5 · The step the Dharma takes further · 佛法多走的一步
Truths with tasks 附帶任務的諦
The first further step is the one already described: each truth is paired with something to do. This changes what it means to accept the teaching. To accept a creed is to affirm its articles. To accept the four truths, on the Buddha’s own account, is to be engaged in understanding suffering, giving up its origin, realizing its end, and developing the path, and he did not count the truths as known until the tasks were complete. The word translated “noble truth” has been read in more than one way, and one old reading is “truths of the noble ones,” the things that are evident to those who have done the work. On that reading the four truths resemble a report from people who have recovered more than they resemble a set of doctrines for the sick to believe.
The second step concerns the scope of the cure. The Hellenistic schools offered a better life: calmer, freer, less afraid. The patient remained the person he was, with his judgment repaired. The third truth claims something more radical, a complete end of craving, and the lessons on not-self and impermanence have shown what that involves. When the treatment is finished, the one who came for it is no longer found in the form in which he arrived. This is the reason the Buddha was careful about whom he taught and in what order. He usually began, the texts say, with generosity and conduct, and gave the four truths when the listener’s mind was ready. A surgeon does not operate first and explain afterward. The simile of the three patients shows the same care from another side. The medicine is prescribed for those it can help, and it is offered to the others too, in case they turn out to be among them.
Westerners usually meet the four truths as a list to be memorized, which makes them sound like commandments or a statement of faith. Present them as the four questions any doctor asks. What is wrong? What is causing it? Can it be cured? What is the treatment? Everyone has sat in a consulting room, and the frame carries three points without argument: the tone is practical and not gloomy, the third truth is the good news, and nothing happens unless the patient follows the treatment. Then add what the frame leaves out. Each truth has its own task, and one is asked to understand suffering before trying to get rid of it. Listeners who have tried to skip straight to the cure will recognize themselves.
The first truth is “to be understood,” not removed. Describe a time when understanding a trouble had to come before fixing it.
第一個諦是「要被了知」，而不是被除去。描述一次經驗：必須先了解一個困擾，才能去處理它。
Epicurus offers four beliefs to memorize and the Buddha eight kinds of training. In 200 words, say which kind of medicine you think works on people, and why.
