TERMS AND GUIDE QUESTIONS FOR FILM

The Dali Lama: The Four Noble Truths

 

List of chapters for discussion in order of viewing

Disc One, Part One:

  1. Robert Thurman Introduction

Disc One, Part Two:

        7. Three Levels of Suffering

Disc One, Part One:

12.        The Four Noble Truths, A Sequence for Practice

13.        Buddha’s Insight into the Nature of Suffering

14.        The Twelve Links

Disc Two, Part Four:

  1. Emptiness: Text and Teachers
  2. Emptiness is not Nothingness
  3. Emptiness and Appearance

 

Dependent origination (pratītyasamutpāda): the twelve-link causal process in a person’s unenlightened existence.  The links are: 1. Ignorance, 2. Mental patterns, 3. Consciousness, 4. Body and Mind, 5. The Six Senses, 6. Sensual contact, 7. Feeling, 8. Desire, 9. Clinging,  10. Existence, 11. Rebirth, 12. Aging and Death.

 

Karma: good and bad actions that facilitate the process of cause and effect in one’s existence.

 

 

Dukkha: suffering.

 

Dharma: “protection” through the integration of the Buddha’s teachings in everyday life.

 

Nargarjuna (ca. 2nd-3rd cent.) South Asian native, a leading Buddhist thinker and founder of the Madhyamika (Middle Way) school.

 

 

#1. What are the three levels of suffering in Buddhist thought?  What is the significance of suffering?

 

 

#2. Why are the Four Noble Truths taught in the order, in which they are presented?

 

 

#3.  If everything is emptiness, then in what state do we exist?