The Concise Oxford Dictionary of World Religions (804 page)

Four Kings/Guardians
(four world protectors in Buddhism)
:

see
CELESTIAL KINGS
.

 
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Four last things
.

The Christian awareness of the ultimate realities awaiting humanity and the cosmos. They are the second coming of Christ, the day of judgement, heaven, and hell, epitomized in death.
The mindfulness of death is a central part of Buddhist meditation.
Buddhaghosa's
Visuddhimagga
8. 1–41 summarizes the method of realizing the imminence and inevitability of death, making it real and personal to
me
.

 
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Four mountains
.

In China, sacred in association with
bodhisattvas
:

(i) Chiu-hua-shan/Ti-ts’ang (Skt.,
K
itigarbha
);
(ii) P’u-t’o-shan/Kuan-yin (Skt.,
Avalokite
vara
);
(iii) O-mei-shan/P’u-hsien (Skt.,
Samantabhadra
);
(iv) Wu-t’ai-shan/Wen-shu (Skt.,
Mañju
r
)

.

 
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(Skt.,
catv
ri-
rya-saty
ni.
P
li,
cattari-ariya-sacc
ni
). The foundation of the
Buddha's
insight and teaching:

(i) the first truth is the recognition of the all-pervasive and universal nature of
dukkha
;
(ii) the second truth is the recognition of what gives rise to suffering, summarized in the thirst (
ta
h
, Skt.,
t
a
) for satisfaction in things that necessarily pass away, or for permanence (e.g. a self or soul) in the midst of the transient;
(iii) the third truth is that dukkha can nevertheless be brought to cessation, by the eradication of ta
h
, and that this cessation is
nirv
na
;
(iv) the fourth truth is the summary, in the Eight-fold Path (
a
angika-m
rga
), of the means to that eradication.