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Eightfold Path: Introduction (1 of 2)

Greetings. On this Monday, I'll begin a new series of talks. For the next few weeks, I'll do talks on the Eightfold Path, and today I'll give a general introduction to it.

The Eightfold Path, sometimes called the Noble Eightfold Path, is often seen as the core formulation of Buddhist practice. It is the path that we engage in as we practice. The word "path" has the connotation that the practice we do is onward-leading. It takes us along a beneficial path of spiritual growth, developing the qualities of heart, mind, and body that lead to concentration. Concentration means the ability to really be settled here in the present moment. This leads to liberation, to freedom from our suffering, and freedom from the ways in which we hold on or resist that bring stress and tension to us.

Sometimes, if you go to large "Introduction to Buddhism" classes, the Eightfold Path will be presented as a core teaching. It will be presented as what Buddhists do, the fundamental teaching of Buddhism, and almost as something for beginners. If you look at the teachings of the Buddha, there might be some truth to that, but overall, the Eightfold Path is not really a beginner's practice. The Noble Eightfold Path is a unified whole. The steps all work together and come together in a person who becomes mature in this practice.

The individual pieces of the Eightfold Path might be considered stepping stones. In that sense, they are stepping stones to the totality and wholeness of the Eightfold Path. The aspects of the Eightfold Path are not steps taken one after the other, but rather they are integrated and unified as a way of being in the world.

This idea of a unified way of being in the world is seen throughout the Buddhist tradition. The story is that in the first sermon the Buddha gave, one of the first things he did was highlight the Eightfold Path in a particular way. Before his enlightenment, the Buddha practiced with a group of five other ascetics. One huge thrust of ancient Indian religious life was the belief that asceticism—tormenting oneself, stopping eating, living with a lot of restraint and deprivation—was a way to purify oneself of all hindrances, defilements, and clinging. The idea was to purify ourselves of all this stuff to come to a place pure enough to become liberated.

The Buddha practiced that for many years and found that it was a dead end; it didn't really work. Then, he discovered his path to awakening. He went to find his five companions to tell them about his new discovery: that asceticism didn't work and there was another way to liberation. When they saw him approaching, his ascetic friends said, "Well, the ascetic Gotama has left the spiritual life. He's reverted back to a life of indulging in sensual pleasure. Let's not give him any attention. Let's not stand up for him or say hello to him, since he's left the real way."

But as the Buddha approached, there was something about his peacefulness that was quite compelling for these five, and they couldn't help themselves but to stand and greet him. They arranged a seat for him on the ground where they were sitting, and he joined them. The Buddha then started off by saying, "There is a middle way between asceticism and indulging in sensual pleasures."

That was a big dichotomy that the ascetics and others were living with: on one hand, the choice was to be in the world, indulging in and devoted to sensual pleasures, and on the other hand, to reject that, be an ascetic, and deny any sensual pleasure. The first teaching that tradition says the Buddha gave is that there is a middle way between self-denial and self-indulgence, and that middle way is the Eightfold Path. Here the Buddha was enlightened, and he was offering these ascetics a different way of living. He represented this alternative way of being in the world, away from self-denial and self-indulgence, and he called it the Middle Way.

In a sense, it's the middle way between self-indulgence and ascetic self-denial. But "middle way" might not be quite right in the sense of being halfway between on a spectrum. It might be a middle way that's a third way, an alternative way to live. These eight aspects of the Eightfold Path are this way of living that is the Middle Way.

For the Buddha, it is the way that a spiritually mature person actually lives. This is not because they are adopting these practices or taking them on, but rather these eight practices express who they are. They come naturally out of them, because the opposite of the Eightfold Path is called the wrong path.

I should tell you what the eight aspects are. In English, they are usually called Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. In saying all that, I want to emphasize the word "Right." Eight times that word is repeated. In Pali, it is sammā^[1], and I'll talk more about this. The opposite of it is micchā^[2]—Wrong View, Wrong Intention, Wrong Action, and so on.

The "wrong" aspect implies that our action, our speech, and our view of how we see the world are motivated by greed, hatred, or delusion. They are motivated by craving and clinging. In the same way, unethical behavior in Buddhism is also said to be rooted in these inner forces that are deleterious to ourselves and, through our actions, deleterious to others. Greed, hatred, and delusion involve excessive clinging, craving, and thirsting.

The Eightfold Path is what naturally arises in a person—how a person lives—when there is no greed, hatred, and delusion, and when there is no clinging. For the Buddha, being liberated from craving, clinging, and attachment didn't make him aloof from the world. Rather, it made him someone who lived in the world through this Middle Way. That was his first teaching about the Eightfold Path.

Over time, the Eightfold Path was also seen as a wonderful stepping stone to liberation and spiritual maturity. These different steps can be taken up individually, and they encapsulate eight different sets of practices taught by the ancient Buddhist tradition, and the modern one as well. Those eight sets encompass the fullness, the richness, and the completeness of what Buddhist practice is traditionally understood to be.

I've sometimes seen a strong sense—though it's changing now—some decades ago, people who practiced Vipassana^[3] had this idea that mindfulness meditation was the be-all and end-all. If you just practiced mindfulness enough and meditated, everything else would be taken care of. You'd solve everything. But there was no sense of practicing in daily life.

There are other people who think that living an ethical life is the whole thing—that just being strictly ethical and following the precepts is the point. Other people emphasize wisdom, Right View, and Right Understanding, and really think that's what it takes. And then there's a whole debate among people who emphasize concentration over mindfulness, a conflict about who has the true or right practice.

But in the Eightfold Path, all these different things are integrated into one whole, suggesting that as we engage in Buddhism and learn all these different sets of practices, we are becoming whole. The practice addresses all of who we are, not just part of who we are.

All of who we are is summarized into three different aspects: wisdom, ethics, and meditation. Wisdom has to do with our understanding of things, the orientation, the frame of reference we use to understand our lives, and the perspectives we hold. Ethics has to do with our behavior in the world and how we impact others and the world around us. Meditation, or cultivating the mind, has to do with a deeper aspect of truly transforming the heart in a way that allows for liberation to happen.

The first two steps of the Eightfold Path have to do with wisdom or understanding. The next three steps have to do with ethics, and the last three have to do with meditation and cultivating the mind. So the wholeness of it involves wisdom, ethical action in the world, and developing and maturing our inner life and mind through meditation and other inner practices.

For beginners, understanding wisdom and the rationale for how this works is important. For people who are spiritually mature, there is a deep insight that makes it obvious that this is a way of living that frees us. It is free of suffering, free of the ways we operate in the world that cause suffering, and free of attachment and clinging. To engage, explore, reflect on, contemplate, and practice the Eightfold Path is phenomenally rich and beneficial in so many different ways. It eventually touches all aspects of our life in a useful way as we practice, see, and learn.

That is a general introduction today to the Eightfold Path. I will continue with some more introduction tomorrow. Over these next few weeks, we'll take our time and go through the Eightfold Path. Hopefully, you'll appreciate its value in all its details and the different practices it entails, and you'll get a sense of how it helps make a whole of Buddhist practice and a whole of you as a practitioner. Thank you, and I'll see you tomorrow.