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Eightfold Path: Introduction (2 of 2)

Greetings again, and welcome to this second talk on the Eightfold Path. This will continue to be an introductory talk, and then tomorrow I'll start on the first factor of the path. As a way of introducing it, I also want to say briefly the essence of the first factor of the path, and that has to do with understanding suffering. To really understand the arising, the appearance of suffering, the cessation of suffering—to really understand how to be free of suffering.

The Eightfold Path is a path that is walked in relationship to this freedom of suffering. There are two general ways that I talked about yesterday, to say it in a different way, in which the Eightfold Path exists for people. One is, it's the path that people who are awakened walk. Second, it's the path people on the way to awakening walk. Awakening or enlightenment are kind of vague terms, but the essence of it is this freedom from suffering. Those who are free from suffering walk this path. Those who are on their way to freedom walk this path. It's the same path, but in one, it's fully developed in the awakened ones, and in those on the way to awakening, to freedom from suffering, it's being cultivated, developed, and grown further.

What's interesting about this is that it's the same path, and it points to a principle that is very important to me, and something very important for me to try to convey as a teacher. It is important not to set up too strong of a separation between where we're going in practice (the freedom from suffering, to be awake or enlightened) and the practice along that way. How not to make a strong separation is to understand something about the qualities of a heart and mind that's free of suffering, and to practice those qualities as we walk the path. To have aspects of awakening in how we practice, even as a beginner.

So the means—the practice—should contain a bit of the goal. The means doesn't justify the goal; the goal informs the means, how we practice. To give a little different example, to cultivate being generous, one practices generosity. To be kind, one practices kindness. The goal is to be generous, and how that's done is by being generous. The goal is to become someone who is fully awakened, endowed with the Eightfold Path, to have really entered into the Eightfold Path. The way to become such a person is to practice the Eightfold Path.

To say this a different way, freedom from suffering is synonymous with freedom from clinging. Clinging is the source, the cause, the condition for suffering. Without that clinging, the suffering that Buddhism wants to address will not exist. The suffering, the dukkha^[1], that Buddhism addresses is that which arises from clinging. In common English, we might refer to different kinds of emotional pain as suffering. Some of them do not arise from clinging; a liberated person would feel them as well. But really, it is the clinging-based suffering that Buddhism addresses.

The freedom from clinging is what an enlightened person has. As we practice the path of awakening, we want to bring that sense of non-clinging into the practice itself all along the way. We want to not cling to Buddhism, not cling to the Eightfold Path, not cling to the different factors of the Eightfold Path. We practice them with devotion and dedication, but hold them lightly and openly. Not to live with strong compulsive desire around it, expectation, demands, or a lot of comparative thinking (e.g., "someone else is further on the path than me"). Not a lot of ego involved ("look at me, I'm the great one who's on the Eightfold Path"). All those represent forms of clinging.

Be sensitive all along, from being a beginner all the way, to the role that clinging has in our suffering, and begin practicing non-clinging, even if it's a modicum of it, from the very beginning. It includes not clinging in relationship to how we cling—not being caught up in desires when we're craving, like wanting it to go away, wanting not to show people that we behave this way, or having aversion to aversion. There is this art of cultivating awareness that lets things be but doesn't feed them or fuel them. That's the task of non-clinging.

The Eightfold Path is how an enlightened person walks, how someone walks who has no clinging. For someone who is on the path to awakening, it's how they cultivate non-clinging. They cultivate it by having what's called right view, right intention (or right consideration), right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

The word "fold" in Eightfold Path refers to it all being one thing that has different folds in it. A more proper translation into English of the Pali is the "eight-factored path." It's a singular path, but it has all these different aspects. Those aspects live together in harmony. It isn't necessarily that we practice one after the other, but the idea is that they are all an expression of the same thing: non-clinging. Part of our task is to understand how these things are an expression of non-clinging.

The word "right" is used in front of each one. The Pali word is sammā^[2], spelled s-a-m-m with a long "a". It has a number of different meanings. It can also mean "complete," so it's the complete view, complete intention or consideration, complete speech. It can also be "harmonious," that which is harmonious. But what is it in harmony with? It's in harmony with the other factors, in harmony with non-clinging. I don't know if the Buddha understood the etymology of the word, but the ancient etymology of this word that precedes the Buddha is "coming along together." These different factors come along together. This coming along together for the same direction, the same purpose, is kind of the meaning of sammā.

The word "right" is a fine translation if we understand "right" in the sense of using the right tool. You don't want to use a hammer to unscrew a screw; you use a screwdriver. A screwdriver is the right tool. A hammer might be the right tool for nailing in a nail. These eight factors, these eight sets of practices, are the appropriate tool, the appropriate means for not just becoming awake or enlightened, but rather living a life of awakening.

This is an important distinction. It isn't that Buddhism is about becoming an enlightened person for its own sake—just to become enlightened and live in an enlightened retirement. Rather, it's to transform the person to live a life, to walk through life as an expression of freedom, an expression of non-clinging. It's all of who we are. It's our entire way of being in the world that is changed, or becomes in harmony, or comes along with non-clinging, with freedom.

These eight factors are both practices to do, and they are also wonderful questions and explorations around the topic of non-clinging. How is it that speech can be informed by, or could be done without any clinging? How is it that our actions in the world—how we live in the world with our actions—are right actions in the sense that they are actions without clinging? What does clinging have to do with livelihood, with effort, with mindfulness? How does right mindfulness come along as an expression of non-clinging? How does concentration become an expression of non-clinging?

The idea is that the eight factors of this path are the discovery and the expression of non-clinging. It helps us discover it, express it, and be it. How does that work? Why is non-clinging so valuable in this sense? What is it about not clinging that should provide these wonderful eight qualities for a human being, and why should you want it?

The Noble Eightfold Path—the eight-factored path of the noble ones, the non-clinging ones. So that's the introduction. Tomorrow, we'll start with the first factor of the path, right view, and we'll go from there. Thank you.