The Order of Practicing the Four Noble Truths

The sequence of practicing the Four Noble Truths is: knowing suffering, eradicating accumulation, yearning for cessation, cultivating the path (nirodhābhiprāya-mārga-bhāvanā); or alternatively: knowing suffering, yearning for cessation, cultivating the path, and eradicating accumulation. Eradicating accumulation is divided into provisional eradication and fundamental eradication. Provisional eradication refers to when, without meditative concentration (samādhi) and without attaining realization, the mind consciousness subdues and suppresses itself so as not to create unwholesome karma, or to create less of it. Fundamental eradication is ultimate eradication: after the afflictions have been eliminated, the manas no longer has the thoughts or impetus to create unwholesome karma; without the subduing and suppression by the mind consciousness, it spontaneously and automatically refrains from creating unwholesome karma. In this way, the old seeds of unwholesome karma are eliminated, and new seeds of unwholesome karma no longer accumulate, so there will be no suffering in future lives.

How does suffering come about? In the earliest phase of life, there was no world of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha), and thus no suffering. Because of ignorance, the manas reached outward, seeking to know, and thereupon the tathāgatagarbha brought forth the world, and subsequently brought forth the body of the five aggregates. Living in the world, the five aggregates, due to the manas's ignorance, will create unwholesome karma that is not in accord with reality; thus the karmic seeds accumulate, resulting in the retribution of suffering in future lives. After studying Buddhism and practicing, one continually contemplates the truth of suffering, understanding that the source of suffering is the unwholesome karma accumulated in past lives; one then seeks ways to eradicate suffering and begins to cultivate the path, no longer accumulating unwholesome karmic formations. After realizing no-self, one eradicates ignorance and afflictions, and only then is suffering gradually extinguished.