Go big or go home, as the saying goes.

And what these days is so big in the spiritual domain as a few pithy Truths to supplant and supersede the venerable old Four Noble Truths of the Buddha?

Now, before we get to our new Big Four, the thing we need comprehend if we are ever to move beyond the Buddha’s teaching to a fuller richer understanding of Life is that despite what we’ve been told for century upon century, the Buddha was limited in outlook. That’s because he was the product—the blossoming—of a culture much like our’s, that is to say, in the long drawn out centuries-long process of decline and disintegration, but unlike our’s, he had no idea or conception that other peoples and other civilizations had undergone such a process prior to him and that numerous more would do so after. He had no history books recounting the story of Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece or Rome, not even China or, closer to home, the very ancient civilizations of Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa in his own backyard.

He had no perspective.

Nothing.

As a result, he confronted the collapse of everything dear to him alone, so to speak, and divined a response based on what he knew.

So, faced with the inevitable and what’s more entirely natural Hindu civilizational collapse, he taught his Four Noble Truths:

1) All life is suffering

2) Suffering has its origin in our conception of ‘self’

3) Would you end suffering? Extinguish ‘self’

4) The ‘noble eightfold path’ was the way towards the extinguishing of ‘self’

There they are, still taught to this day in countless manifestations.

However, we—at least in a historical scientific sense—are wiser and far more broader of outlook. We’ve grasped Time and can imagine its unfathomable depths, both backwards and forwards. We’ve plumbed our world and explored or peered out towards much of its immeasurably distant horizon.

In short, we have more information available, and as such I propose a new set of Four Noble Truths, a set to supersede the Buddha’s, to contain his four and so many, many more.

In fact, one to contain all there truly is!

Wow, who the hell do I think I am?!

Anyway, no turning back now….

Here are the Omphalos Cafe’s Four Noble Truths intended to supersede those of the Buddha:

1) Life is ALL there is

2) Life is nothing more or less than the ever ongoing flow from one generation to the next, what I’ve sometimes referred to as ‘The Great Passing Through’

3) Each species accomplishes this Passing Through from one generation to the next in their own specific and highly unique fashion

4) Humans, the most adaptable, flexible and resourceful of species, accomplishes our Passing Through in phenomenally diverse, dynamic, and ever evolving communities

There you are folks, the Omphalos Cafe’s very own Four Noble Truths.

Maybe your’s too one day, who knows?

The thing is, in my humble opinion it’s where we’re going…

If we’re going anywhere at all….