In our discussion of the First Noble Truth we saw clearly that suffering is part of life. It arises in relationship to actual pain or injury and in response to unfathomable natural and man-made events that affect hundreds of millions of people. Suffering experienced as unsatisfactoriness also arises when we feel things in life are unreliable because they are constantly changing. Finally, we can also experience suffering as a kind of existential anxiety when we encounter the big “why” questions in life.

The Second Noble Truth tells us that before we can find freedom from suffering, we also need a deep understanding of what causes it. The Buddha found through his own experience that craving and not being able to see the world as it really is were two primary causes of suffering. We crave pleasures of the senses but become unsatisfied and disappointed when they don’t last and we can’t control them. We also suffer when we attach our fears, hopes, facts and behaviors on the world view we’ve built ourselves that is based on insufficient information and incomplete understanding.