(Continued from Just Fail)
In response to the four sights, Buddha formulates four truths, the first three being about the first three sights, and the fourth being a critical response to the fourth sight. Rather than be a self-punishing sadhu, just join the sangha -- the community of those embodying the dharma, that is responding to reality realistically. He details the ways of doing this: see rightly, resolve thoroughly, speak sense, behave, work honorably, see it all through to an honorable conclusion, bear in mind those things that matter, and sit, stand, walk, and lie down with a centered stillness.
These are mutually supporting and overlapping activities, the positives that are later joined by prohibitions that arose as needed because human nature, embedded within the ongoing system of greed, anger and ignorance, finds these positives difficult to apply to all of one's life.
Chinese monks and nuns found that it helped to go and spend some time alone, and so adapted some of Taoism's hermetic culture -- "leaving behind the rest dust (of the cities)" -- for years or even decades in many cases. But the eight practices were intended to be carried out in the midst of society, as the point of behaving well is to behave well toward others.
Bodhidharma is said to have similar instructions in a document know as the "Two Entrances and Four Practices."
In it, he notes that an intellectual appreciation of Dharma, combined with zazen, can serve as a way into the life of thusness, but he seems to prefer the other Entrance: four recommended practices of what could be called applied Dharma. These are: acceptance of suffering, such as from injustices, acceptance of circumstances as we find them, ignoring cravings, and according with Dharma, that is to say, practicing the six perfections. Those are: giving, ethics, patience, effort, meditation, wisdom.
I sometimes think all these instruction, especially if one throws in the Vinaya or at least the precepts, amount to busywork to stave off the three poisons.
Buddha's early instructions, and Bodhidharma's instructions, if followed, certainly seem to be capable of bringing one's life away from the worst effects of these poisons and into the "thusness" zone.
If we need to put it in less verbose form, though, I think that can be done.
-- shonin