Buddhism: Week 1
The Noble Eightfold Path
Friday, September 4, 2015
Thich Nhat Hanh says, “The Fourth Noble Truth is the way out of suffering. First the doctor looks deeply into the nature of our suffering. Then she confirms that the removal of our pain is possible, and she prescribes a way out.” [1] The “way out” is the Eightfold Path. The Buddha said again and again, “I teach only suffering and the transformation of suffering.” I often say: “If you do not transform your pain, you will almost certainly transmit it” and “All great religion is about what you do with your pain.” The Noble Eightfold Path describes the Buddha’s way to transform your pain. The Buddha said, “Wherever the Noble Eightfold Path is practiced, joy, peace, and insight are there.” [2]
Thich Nhat Hanh writes that when the Buddha gave his first sermon to the wandering ascetics, he “put into motion the wheel of the Dharma, the Way of Understanding and Love. This teaching is recorded in the Discourse on Turning the Wheel of the Dharma. . . . It teaches us to recognize suffering as suffering and to transform our suffering into mindfulness, compassion, peace, and liberation. . . . The teachings of the Buddha were not to escape from life, but to help us relate to ourselves and the world as thoroughly as possible.” [3]
James Finley describes the Eightfold Path in the following way within our Living School curriculum:
The first two steps of the Eightfold Path are Right Vision and Right Thinking (“right” meaning effective in evoking happiness and inner peace). These two are associated with the notion of wisdom. They help us ground ourselves in this wisdom of the Eightfold Path.
The next four of the eight steps are the paths of the moral precepts. Do not confuse this with being “moralistic.” The intuition of the Buddha is that one will not come to this inner peace unless one grounds one’s life in an inflowing and outflowing love. This is the core of what it means to be moral. Love is the outflowing way that we must relate to everything [read “God”] and the outflowing way we must relate to each individual person. [“On these two commandments hang the entire Law and the Prophets as well,” says Jesus (Matthew 22:40).]
So, Right View and Right Thinking are the wisdom aspects of the Eightfold Path. But Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, and Right Diligence are the life of effort and choice that expands our realm of conscious freedom. God cannot and will not give us any gift that we do not want and freely choose—usually again and again.
The last two steps are Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration. The Buddha felt none of this would work without deep meditation practice. [4]
I also find that a meditation practice is necessary for transformation, except for people who allow themselves to be changed through great love or great suffering. Meditation then preserves and sustains what they have learned in love and suffering over the long haul. In other words, I know many “meditators” who are still quite self-absorbed people, and I have met people who do not even know the word meditation, who live in deep unitive consciousness. There is no one technique; life and death itself are the only technique.
Gateway to Silence:
To understand everything is to forgive everything. —Buddha
References:
[1] Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (Broadway Books: 1998), 43
[2] Ibid., 49.
[3] Ibid., 7-8.
[4] James Finley, exclusive Living School teaching (Learn more about the two-year program at cac.org/living-school).
