We need to understand the Noble Truths as things not to believe, but to help you re-enact the Buddha’s enlightenment. They should be ‘the four ennobling provocations’.
The Buddha didn’t present the Four Noble Truths as a set of concrete practices and beliefs. Instead, he offered the Four Noble Truths as a practical guide for individuals to recognise, in terms of their own lives, their basic situation, the causes of the situation, the possibility that the situation might be transformed, and the means of transformation.
When people first read or hear [suffering], they tend to think that it refers only to extreme pain or chronic misery. But dukkha, the word used in the sutras, is actually closer in meaning to terms more commonly used throughout the modern world, such as ‘uneasiness’, ‘disease’, ‘discomfort’, and ‘dissatisfaction’.