โ Dhamma Teachers & Teachings
Sutta Library
Selected discourses of the Buddha and his disciples, organized by practice topic. Each entry offers a short summary, a connection to NBEF practice, and a link to a freely available translation.
Choose a topic below. Full suttas open in a new tab; close that tab to return here. The practice connections are NBEF explanations, presented separately from the sutta summaries.
Four Noble Truths
The Four Noble Truths concern suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path leading to its cessation. They provide the framework for understanding the purpose and direction of Buddhist practice.
SN 56.11 ยท Setting the Wheel of Dhamma in Motion
Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta
The Buddha teaches the Middle Way and the Four Noble Truths. Each truth has a task: suffering is to be understood, its origin in craving abandoned, cessation realized, and the Noble Eightfold Path developed.
Connection to NBEF practice: Practitioners observe greed, hatred, and delusion as they arise in daily life, without self-blame or following the associated thoughts. Through this observation, they begin to understand suffering and how craving and clinging sustain it. This experiential understanding develops right view and gives direction to cultivating the Noble Eightfold Path. The practice proceeds toward liberation and Nibbฤna through the complete ending of ignorance and craving.
MN 141 ยท An Analysis of the Truths
Saccavibhaแน ga Sutta
Sฤriputta explains the Four Noble Truths in detail, including bodily and mental suffering, craving, its cessation, and the eight factors of the path. Right concentration is explained through the four jhฤnas.
Connection to NBEF practice: NBEFโs instructions begin with developing right view through observing the three poisons and experiencing impermanence, suffering, and non-self. As understanding deepens, the three poisons diminish, the four immeasurables grow, and ethical conduct becomes more natural. Mindfulness supports all eight path factors, including the practice of the four jhฤnas. This connects with the suttaโs detailed explanation of the path leading to the cessation of suffering.
SN 56.31 ยท Siแนsapฤ Leaves
Siแนsapฤ Sutta
The Buddha compares what he teaches to a handful of leaves and what he knows to the leaves in a forest. He teaches the Four Noble Truths because they lead toward dispassion, cessation, awakening, and Nibbฤna.
Connection to NBEF practice: In her book, Nancy identifies the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path as the essential framework for understanding and practicing the way to liberation and Nibbฤna. NBEFโs instructions guide practitioners toward knowing these teachings through their own experience. The connection here is the purpose of study and practice: understanding suffering, abandoning its origin, realizing cessation, and developing the path.
All three linked English translations are by แนฌhฤnissaro Bhikkhu, freely available on dhammatalks.org. In these translations, dukkha is rendered as โstress.โ NBEF uses โsufferingโ in the summaries above.
Noble Eightfold Path
The Noble Eightfold Path is the fourth Noble Truth: the way of practice leading to the cessation of suffering. Begin with the overview, then explore how the path factors work together.
SN 45.8 ยท An Analysis of the Path
Magga-Vibhaแน ga Sutta
The Buddha explains all eight path factors, including right view as knowledge of the Four Noble Truths, right mindfulness through the four establishments of mindfulness, and right concentration through the four jhฤnas.
Connection to NBEF practice: NBEFโs instructions begin with developing right view through observing the three poisons and experiencing impermanence, suffering, and non-self. This understanding gives direction to the practice of the whole Noble Eightfold Path. Ethical conduct, mindfulness, and the four jhฤnas are cultivated as parts of this training toward liberation and Nibbฤna.
MN 117 ยท The Great Forty
Mahฤcattฤrฤซsaka Sutta
The Buddha explains right view as the forerunner of the path and shows how right view, right effort, and right mindfulness work together in developing right intention, speech, action, and livelihood. Noble right concentration is supported by the other seven factors. The discourse also distinguishes mundane and supramundane forms of several path factors.
Connection to NBEF practice: NBEF emphasizes beginning with right view and maintaining mindfulness throughout the path. Practitioners learn to recognize the three poisons underlying their thoughts, intentions, speech, and actions. As understanding deepens, they become more aware of unwholesome conduct and increasingly able to follow the precepts. The connection is the guiding role of right view together with continuing mindfulness and effort.
MN 19 ยท Two Sorts of Thinking
Dvedhฤvitakka Sutta
Before awakening, the Buddha distinguished thoughts of sensuality, ill will, and harmfulness from thoughts of renunciation, goodwill, and harmlessness. He recognized their consequences, abandoned unwholesome thoughts, and explained how repeatedly pursuing particular thoughts inclines the mind in that direction.
Connection to NBEF practice: Practitioners learn to recognize greed, hatred, and delusion underlying their thoughts and feelings, without self-blame or becoming absorbed in the associated stories. NBEF teaches how continued observation diminishes the three poisons while loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity grow. The connection is recognizing unwholesome qualities and developing a more wholesome direction of mind.
SN 47.35 ยท Mindful
Sata Sutta
The Buddha teaches mindfulness of body, feelings, mind, and mental qualities. He explains clear comprehension through knowing feelings, thoughts, and perceptions as they arise, remain, and cease.
Connection to NBEF practice: NBEF teaches practitioners to maintain awareness in daily life and gradually recognize the arising and passing away of mental activity at the six sense doors. Through repeated observation, impermanence, suffering, and non-self become understood experientially. Mindfulness and clear comprehension support both concentration and insight throughout this training.
All four linked English translations are by แนฌhฤnissaro Bhikkhu, freely available on dhammatalks.org.
Dependent Origination
Dependent origination explains how phenomena arise and cease through conditions. These suttas introduce the general principle, the twelve links, and their connection to practice.
โWhen this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.โ
Udฤna 1.3 ยท Awakening
Bodhi Sutta
After awakening, the Buddha contemplates dependent origination through both arising and cessation. The discourse presents the general principle of conditionality, followed by the twelve-link explanation of the arising and cessation of suffering.
Connection to NBEF practice: NBEF guides practitioners to observe how phenomena arise through causes and conditions, how the mind responds, and how that response becomes a condition for what follows. Understanding these relationships provides a practical basis for weakening the conditions that sustain suffering and cultivating those that support the path.
SN 12.2 ยท An Analysis of Dependent Co-arising
Paแนญiccasamuppฤda Vibhaแน ga Sutta
The Buddha explains the twelve links: ignorance, volitional formations, consciousness, name-and-form, the six sense bases, contact, feeling, craving, clinging, becoming, birth, and aging-and-death. He defines each link and explains the cessation of suffering through the cessation of its conditions.
Connection to NBEF practice: NBEF guides practitioners to observe the conditions through which suffering arises in body and mind. Particular attention is given to contact, feeling, craving, and clinging. These observations provide an experiential approach to studying the broader twelve-link teaching.
SN 12.12 ยท To Phagguna
Phagguna Sutta
When asked who makes contact, feels, craves, or clings, the Buddha redirects the questions toward the conditions through which these processes arise. He explains contact conditioned by the six sense bases, feeling by contact, craving by feeling, and clinging by craving.
Connection to NBEF practice: NBEF guides practitioners to examine the conditions of an experience without assuming a fixed self behind it. They observe the phenomenon, the accompanying feeling, and the mindโs response. Understanding this conditional process also preserves responsibility for how one responds.
SN 12.44 ยท The World
Loka Sutta
The Buddha explains how consciousness arises dependent on a sense faculty and its object. Their meeting is contact, which conditions feeling, followed by craving and the subsequent links leading to suffering. He also explains how the complete cessation of craving brings the subsequent process to cessation.
Connection to NBEF practice: Practitioners observe experience at the six sense doors, distinguishing feeling from the craving or aversion that may follow. Mindfulness and wisdom allow them to recognize and release reactions that sustain suffering. Repeated practice weakens these tendencies; its culmination is the complete ending of ignorance and craving.
SN 12.15 ยท To Kaccฤna Gotta
Kaccฤnagotta Sutta
The Buddha explains right view through understanding the arising and cessation of the world. Avoiding the extremes that everything exists or nothing exists, he teaches dependent origination and its cessation, without attachment to a view of self.
Connection to NBEF practice: NBEF guides practitioners to observe phenomena arising and passing through conditions, including the mindโs responses. Through this observation, impermanence, suffering, and non-self become understood experientially. Right view develops as grasping these conditioned experiences as a fixed self or its possessions weakens.
SN 12.61 ยท Uninstructed
Assutavฤ Sutta
The Buddha explains that mind, intellect, or consciousness continually arises and ceases, like a monkey moving from branch to branch. He teaches attention to dependent origination through the general principle of conditionality and the twelve links, leading toward disenchantment, dispassion, and release.
Connection to NBEF practice: NBEF teaches practitioners to observe the arising and passing away of mental activity at the six sense doors. This repeated observation develops experiential understanding of impermanence, suffering, and non-self. The connection is recognizing the changing, conditioned nature of mind rather than grasping it as a lasting self.
All six linked English translations are by แนฌhฤnissaro Bhikkhu, freely available on dhammatalks.org. The introductory formulation follows the wording displayed in NBEFโs Core Teachings.
This collection covers the Four Noble Truths, the Noble Eightfold Path, and dependent origination. Further practice topics will be added as the library develops.