“The goal of the Buddhist path is to end suffering.”

Not suffering, Dukkha…suffering alone limits the first noble truth into a bland talking point.

The Buddha never said that all life should be viewed as suffering, but I have a feeling your argument is based on the logical sequence of events if all things turned out to be true, rather than real world, real life experience.

And your logic is based on the assumption that Nirvana is real, or one would believe Nirvana to be real. I think that’s why I am drawn to Zen, a much more see for yourself approach.

If one believes in Dukkha, if one believes in Nirvana then your argument holds water…but the Buddha never asked anyone to believe.

And I am a horrible Buddhist. :-)

That’s pretty logical. There are some holes in it, and other commenters have done a very good job of pointing them out above, but there’s a pretty clear logic here, and if it holds, we may be better off not meditating on the First Truth.

I actually don’t know very much about Ch’an/Zen. I do know that East Asian philosophies (not only Buddhist) tend to be a lot more worldly than South Asian ones. The East Asian Buddhists may have figured this question out better.

The point about fire is a very helpful one, which I hadn’t considered. It’s not a matter of translation as such – I read Pali and have examined discussions of the Truths in Pali. Rather, it’s a matter of the background assumptions we bring into the discussion – even about matters as mundane as what it is for a fire to blow out. (To say that the meaning of nibbana connotes extinguishing a fire is not wrong, even if Thanissaro’s argument about the background meanings are correct; it just misses a point about what extinguishing a fire itself means.)

The question then might be what the non-clinging state of fire turns out to be. If the fire is literally unattached to its fuel, nibbana might still turn out to be a state most fully reached after death, in which the aggregates of consciousness are completely unattached to the body. (The Jains, I think, believed in a liberated state that looked something like this.)

The Dhamma is a means to freedom and happines, but if picked up in the wrong way, the Dhamma can be harmful. It seems you are advocating picking it up in that way.

Re the use of the English word “extinction” for nibbana, please read Thanissaro Bhikkhu’s book; ‘The Mind Like Fire Unbound’ which gives some background into the understanding of fire at the Buddhas time. This is very different to our common understanding now. In India and China fire was seen as an element which was always present in the atmosphere and which would ‘cling’ to a fuel to make a fire. When the fire went out, it was not dead, extinguished in the way we think of it, but had returned to it’s non-clinging state. He explains it very well.

In the Four Noble Truths, the Buddha points to this:
There is dukkha,
(not life is dukkha or “all is suffering, painful, unsatisfactory, sorrowful, bad.”)
dukkha should be understood,
(so one needs to investigate dukkha and how it has arisen)
dukkha has been understood.
(Aha!)

There is a cause of dukkha,
(which is craving, clinging to conditions or attaching to a sense of ‘me and mine’)
the cause of dukkha should be let go of,
(Let Go!)
the cause of dukkha has been let go of.
(Ahhh!)

There is the cessation of dukkha,
(which we often overlook)
The cessation of dukkha should be realized
(notice when it ceases, as all things do…)
The cessation of dukkha has been realized.
(enjoy that openness of mind when it is no longer contracted around an object)

There is the path leading to the cessation of dukkha
(the Noble Eightfold Path, which is a guide to good living and wise thinking)
The Eightfold Path should be cultivated,
(in one’s daily life)
The Noble Eightfold Path has been cultivated.

It is a practical teaching, which if applied can lead to freedom of mind and a joyful and connected life.

So we don’t have to attach to the body as oneself and then anihilate it, but let go of the attachment to the body and let it get on with it’s natural process. Take care of it, learn from it. Likewise for the thoughts, feelings, perceptions, sense impressions that arise… and cease, naturally.

The Buddha is pointing to the fact that all conditions are impermanent, changing, in a state of flux, and trying to hold on to that which is changing will inevitably lead to dukkha. The trick is to keep letting go, letting be.

English translations can be misleading and the Damma is meant to be practiced, and not only theorized about.

I wish you the joy of freedom from attachment, the joy of letting go, letting be.

Blessings to you.