THE EIGHTFOLD PATH: A MAP AND GUIDE FOR SPIRITUAL PRACTICE
Ozmo Piedmont, Ph.D.
The Eightfold Path is a guide for living presented by the Buddha. It is as relevant today as it was 2,500 years ago, when the Buddha first expounded it. It contains wisdom based on the pragmatic observation that we all have a tendency to suffer in life, due to our fundamental desire to find happiness which has become misdirected. Our culture has told us that the momentary pleasure gained through sense stimulation, possessions, and physical comfort will satisfy all our needs, and bring ultimate happiness. We buy into this promise again and again, only to find that something is missing in our lives. This discontent and interior emptiness is what the Buddha meant by suffering. Though everyone experiences this basic discontent in life, the normal reaction is to do more of the same: buy more, do more, or find more stimulation in hopes that this will drown out that nagging feeling that something is missing deep down in our hearts. Yet we yearn for something that we can’t even find expression to. The real desire is a need to return to the Unborn, the Infinite that manifests as a deep wellbeing that finds expression in every act of our lives. The Buddha recommends a specific technique to apply in our everyday life in order to reconnect ourselves with the Unborn, which is the EIGHTFOLD PATH: RIGHT UNDERSTANDING, RIGHT INTENTION, RIGHT SPEECH, RIGHT ACTION, RIGHT LIVELIHOOD, RIGHT EFFORT, RIGHT MINDFULNESS, AND RIGHT CONCENTRATION.
The Eightfold Path is a roadmap for spiritual practice with specific tools that will liberate us from suffering. The first step is RIGHT UNDERSTANDING, which involves the 4 Noble Truths, the three poisons, karma, impermanence, no-self and the skandhas. If we understand the problem of suffering we can also learn how to end it, as the Buddha explained in the Four Noble Truths: Life is suffering, desire causes suffering, the elimination of desire eliminates suffering, and the way to eliminate desire is by practicing the Noble Eightfold Path. Strong desire leads to the three poisons of greed, aversion, and confusion: greed being a demand on life that you must have something external in order to be happy; aversion being the frustration, resentment, anger, fear, worry, or hate that result from an unfulfilled desire or the desire to avoid or eliminate something in order to be happy; and confusion being a set of erroneous beliefs that contribute to or maintain patterns of suffering to oneself and/or others. Why do these desires arise to begin with? They are due to our Karma. Negative Karma involves patterns of intentions we carry from life to life which tend to create more suffering. Positive Karma involves intentions that result in the cessation of suffering. For example, if our intention is to hurt others in order to obtain our desires, this pattern of thought leads to actions that not only causes pain to others, but in turn hurts ourselves, due to the fact that all is interconnected and nothing is permanent. All is impermanent and in constant flow, one thing giving rise to another thing, all forms arising and evolving into something else, what the Buddha termed dependent origination. However, the belief in a separate and permanent self is the fundamental confusion that allows us to hurt others, believing that if no one sees or knows that we are being selfish, then it will not affect us. In turn, it is paramount to preserve and maintain this little, separate self at all costs, so the ends justify the means. I must survive at the expense of others. I fear that this separate little self may be killed or terminated, therefore I imagine all sorts of ways to hold on to an eternal little being called “me”. However, the Buddha explained that there is no separate and permanent self, the term he used being “anatman”, meaning “no-self”. This means that all is interconnected and made up of basic elements of the universe: earth, fire, air and water. In addition, we ourselves are made up of basic elements, called skandhas, which consist of material form, sensation, perception, mental activity, and consciousness. We all have a body and mind to experience the world. This body receives messages from the environment as sensations, which are then recognized in the brain as perceptions. These in turn are manipulated or strung together into patterns of thinking that include impulses and mental activities to respond to the environment. All this is held together by consciousness, which is a basic self-awareness that there is a here and now where body sensations and perceptions arise that are being strung together as ideas in the mind. The ego is nothing more that a series of thoughts and associations based on the experience of a functioning body/mind complex. Although we are individuals, this individuality is never separate from the whole, as an ocean and its waves. The wave is both individual form and an integral part of the whole ocean. We are individual forms arising, each with our individual experience and karma, but at no time are we separate from the Unborn.
Once we have right understanding of these basic principles of the Universe, we realize that any suffering we experience is due to our own misguided beliefs and intentions based on conditioning and desire. In order to free ourselves from the old patterns that lead to suffering, we must develop the RIGHT INTENTION to practice spiritually, renouncing egocentric desires, thereby freeing ourselves from confusion, allowing us to return to our identification with our true Self, the Unborn. Through the practice of caring for others as we do for ourselves, and through acts of benevolence, kindness, love and compassion, we purify karma, breaking our selfish patterns based on greed and desire. The right intention is to do no harm, help others, and renounce desire.
Once right intention has been awakened, we must apply it in our daily lives, which are the next three steps of RIGHT SPEECH, RIGHT ACTION, and RIGHT LIVELIHOOD. We become aware how our own speech and actions impact those around us. Our words carry weight, and if we use thoughtless language, we hurt others. If we are careless of our treatment of others, this can cause pain. Ultimately, due to the law of cause and effect of karma, that which we sow, we reap. If our intentions cause suffering, we suffer. Plain and simple. What we do to others, in reality is what we are doing to ourselves, since all is part of the same whole. In addition, if our jobs somehow contribute to suffering or negativity, that will effect how we feel about ourselves and others, creating more pain all around us. We come to see how we are part of a giant web of interactions. As all in nature is part of bigger and more complex ecosystems, we begin to take responsibility for our own work and how it contributes to the world. We become more ecological in our awareness, seeing that all of nature is our responsibility to care for and protect, that all beings in the universe have intrinsic value, and deserve to live life free of pain and suffering. We search for ways to earn a living which will do the least amount of harm to those living systems, and we try to work in harmony and balance to care for the environment in which we live. How do we know that we are out of harmony with the universe? That which causes suffering in ourselves or others is exactly that which we need to focus on, to purify and to rectify in our intentions and our actions.
The sixth step in the Eightfold Path involves RIGHT EFFORT, the energy actually required to implement change in our old karmic patters of intention. Everyone is responsible for his or her own training. Passively sitting on a cushion in meditation is only half the effort required for spiritual practice. The other half is application into daily life. Sitting provides our realization of re- connecting with the Unborn. We then bring that realization into expression in daily life, as we encounter our karma of past intentions and actions that manifest as suffering or love, and we make the effort to change those patters into egoless expressions of Divinity. In so doing, there are 5 obstacles that tend to arise: 1. Sensual desire; 2. Ill will; 3. Laziness; 4. Restlessness; and 5. Doubt. The first, sensual desire, includes all the addictions we suffer based on a belief that physical comfort and mental stimulation will bring happiness: food, sex, drugs, alcohol, expensive cloths and possessions. The second, ill will, includes all types of aversion, like anger, irritation, aversion, hate, rage, hostility, impatience, and jealousy. The third, laziness, includes mental or physical sloth and torpor, the inertia that permeates our thoughts seducing us into procrastinating our meditation sessions or our spiritual practices to another day when it may be more convenient or feels better. The fourth, restlessness, includes agitation, regret, the need for constant stimuli, the dread of boredom, worry and fear. The fifth and final obstacle is doubt, which arises when we forget, distrust, or lose faith in the Unborn as our anchor and foundation in life. We practice to decrease these five obstacles, while fomenting the 7 factors of Illumination, which include: 1. Mindfulness; 2. Investigation; 3. Energy; 4. Rapture; 5. Tranquility; 6. Concentration; and 7. Equanimity. Mindfulness is our primary tool of spiritual practice and meditation. It allows us to be in the present and helps us purify our karma. We maintain an open attitude to investigate spiritual truth, the Dharma, generating a wholesome energy to apply ourselves to spiritual practice, which leads to deepening levels of joy, rapture, peace and tranquility. All of this requires concentration through meditation, and equanimity as surrender and gratitude to the Unborn.
The seventh tool of the Eightfold Path is RIGHT MINDFULNESS . Though external events and inner thoughts are changing constantly, we develop the ability to maintain tranquil attention that is alert, impartial, and indifferent. Mindfulness is focuses on the present arising of experience, avoiding over identification with either future or past thoughts, avoiding conceptualizations or interpretations. We just watch how thoughts and sensations arise, last for awhile, then subside. Everything changes and is in a constant flux and flow. Nothing is permanent in the environment, the body, or the mind. This attentive observation includes mental processes, body sensations, internal and external phenomena. The active application of right mindfulness in daily life is made through application of the AAA OF SPIRITUAL PRACTICE : 1. ABSTAIN, 2. ATTEND, and 3. ANALYZE. When an intention is based on the three poisons of greed, aversion, or confusion, we ABSTAIN from acting on that impulse. We then ATTEND to the arising thought or sensation, watching it without pushing it away or attaching to it, waiting until that idea, sensation or thought changes or subsides. We then open ourselves to the Unborn and ask with an open heart, “What is it good to do right now?” We also attend to the intuition, feeling or guidance that arises from the Unborn which guides us to do what is right in that moment. Once we have then acted on that guidance, we let it go, trusting in the Wisdom of the Divine. Finally, we take a moment to ANALYZE what has happened, how it relates to our spiritual principles, and how to do better the next time a similar pattern, or karma, arises. Practicing mindfulness with the Triple A’s allows us to return to identification with our Buddha Nature, so we can receive guidance from the Source of the Unborn.
The eighth step of the Eightfold Path is CONCENTRATION , which is the practice of Serene Reflection Meditation, also known as shikantaza, silent illumination, vipassana and zazen. Through sitting in silence, we can learn to balance body and mind, to observe without reacting, to be present, applying compassion, impartiality, equanimity, and gratitude. We learn to dis-identify with our thoughts, sensations, desires, and fantasies, all aspects of an illusory ego self that ultimately causes suffering. Everything we need to learn about truth, the real Self, and practice, begins with meditation. Meditation can bring direct experience of the Unborn, an intuitive understanding of Truth, and the realization of our Buddha nature in everyday life. Meditation is fundamental to our understanding and our practice. Through meditation and application of the Noble Eightfold Path, we have the possibility of unlocking the Secrets of the Universe. As Dogen, the 13th century master and teacher of Soto Zen once wrote, “Zazen is simply the natural and pleasant practice of a Buddha, the realization of Buddha´s wisdom.”
Bibliography
Bodhi, Bhikkhu. The Noble Eightfold Path. Pariyatti Publishing: Onalaska, WA. 2008.
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