Hello, I’m Cheng Qing. Welcome to Relief for Life: Forty Introductions to Buddhism.

In recent episodes I introduced impermanence and no-self. Impermanence is relatively easy to understand, but no-self contradicts intuition. Although we cannot yet experience it, we can approach it analytically and practice methods the Buddha taught. Over the next several episodes I will explainideas and methods for breaking attachment to self.The subject is rich and may take several episodes.

No-self was the Buddha’s direct realization beneath the Bodhi tree, not ordinary experience, so we often understand it only by analogy and reflection. In his day, however, many renunciants accepted his teaching, practiced, and awakened. The Saṃyukta Āgama records his instructions to monks at Deer Park:‘The Blessed One told the monks: There are four noble truths: suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path to cessation. A monk knows and understands suffering, knows and abandons its origin, knows and realizes its cessation, and knows and cultivates the path. Such a monk is an arhat: the defilements are ended, the task completed, the burden laid down, the goal attained, the bonds of existence exhausted, and liberation rightly known.’

In this passage, besidesknowingthe truths of suffering, origin, cessation, and path, one must alsounderstand, abandon, realize, and cultivate them.That is,understand suffering, abandon its cause, cultivate the method that ends it, and directly realize suffering’s cessation.Such a monk is called an arhat, the figure known in Chinese culture as a luohan. The phrase‘defilements ended, task completed, burden laid down, goal attained, bonds exhausted, and rightly liberated’describes complete freedom from affliction.

The wordsunderstand, abandon, realize, and cultivatedescribe the process of practice many find mysterious. Scriptures often summarize it in four lines:associate with good people, hear the true Dharma, attend wisely, and practice in accordance with Dharma.。