The Eightfold Path
The long term goal is to be free of mental suffering, excessive complaints, and disharmony. These are goals that all humans can work towards no matter what their spiritual beliefs are.
These are skills that must be cultivated over time. It’s not a once and done type thing. But with effort, we can learn to change the way we think so that no matter what we face – we are still holding our core inner truth which always leads us to freedom, balance, and harmony.
The Four Noble Truths are said to be what the Buddha realized on the night of his full awakening. These truths help the seeker to see how things really are when we are able to see clearly and with discernment. Another way to translate The Four Noble Truths is The Four Truths of the Noble Ones. This is a more accurate translation because noble refers to those who understand the truths, not to the truths themselves.
The Four Truths of The Noble Ones
1. The Truth of Suffering – Everyone experiences pain, discomfort, or unhappiness at some point. Our goal is to move from “I am suffering” to “There is the presence of suffering.” We want to acknowledge the problem without identifying with it.
2. The Truth of the Origin of Suffering – The world and its pain come from desires, longings, and cravings. The disharmony stems from the following causes: ignorance (not seeing things for what they are), greed (attachment and wanting), hatred (aversion or not wanting). This leads to attachments to experiences and illusions.
The goal is not to identify desires, but to recognize them. The problem is not the desire itself, but the attachment to it. These attachments lead to negative judgments of ourselves, (I am a bad person if I want something) or it can lead to a lack of self-acceptance (I have to be this desire or have this thing in order to love myself). This is suffering.
3. The Truth of the End of Suffering – The unease or dissatisfaction can cease when we let go of desires. We understand our conditions, but we don’t allow ourselves to be misled by them. This means we don’t have to throw the desires away, we can put them down and let them be. We can learn to change our state of mind.
4. The Truth of the Path to the End of Suffering – Suffering and dissatisfaction can end by following the Eightfold path.
The Eightfold Path
Right View –The Right View means to understand the truth about reality, including the Four Noble Truths. It essentially means to have wisdom. That wisdom comes through direct experience. No matter what someone else tells us, we can’t really know it until we experience it. In order to experience that which leads to wisdom, we have to practice mindfulness, concentration, meditation, and inner reflection.
Right Aspiration– Right Aspiration is sometimes translated as Right Thought. Aspiration is not a desire, it is a feeling or intention that we have to align our thoughts to truth. We want to keep a flexible mind and remove any delusions about life on Earth. When we realize that this planet cannot satisfy all of our wants and desires, we free ourselves of wrong thinking and we open the door to being content.
Right Speech –Right Speech means to speak constructive words that are true, compassionate, and harmless. We don’t want to be dishonest, vindictive, divisive, or vulgar. We don’t want to gossip or use words to hurt others. Right Speech leads to being able to connect to others.
Right Action – Right Action means to hold the intention of harmlessness towards ourselves and others. This includes not killing, stealing, or abusing anyone. It also means having ethics in everything that we do.
Right Livelihood – Right Livelihood means to choose a job that does not cause harm or suffering to others. If we are unemployed, we can make sure that our means of survival are ethical.
Right Effort- Right Effort means to cultivate wholesome qualities and to abandon bad or unwholesome habits and characteristics.
Right Mindfulness– Right Mindfulness means to guard one’s mind to ensure that thoughts are pure. This requires maintaining awareness. We need to be aware of what we are doing, how we are feeling, and how we are behaving. One might ask, “how am I existing in the moment?”
Right Concentration – Right Concentration means to focus one’s minds and body in order to foster good moral character. Most often this refers to having some sort of meditative practice. When one practices Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration becomes easy as these concepts flow into each other.
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