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Four Noble Truths: Patipada (3 of 5) Direct Experience

So this topic of the Four Noble Truths, that has different interpretations, different understandings, different applications of this basic teaching, is a teaching that does lead to realization, to awakening. It describes a process for that. And in that process of becoming awake, the result sometimes is called vijjā^[1], knowledge. Some translators call it true knowledge; that there's an awakening, there's an understanding, there's a knowledge and knowing. Some people translate or use the term "direct knowing," a direct experiencing of something, that's really seeing something clearly with becoming free.

And then there is a whole chapter of teachings by the Buddha about the Eightfold Path, and the very first sutta there begins by saying that with someone who has this awakened knowledge, who's really let go deeply, Right View will spring up, or Right View will emerge out of that. It doesn't say that someone with enlightened awareness then thinks about Right View, or adopts Right View, or understands Right View; rather, it emerges, it appears. And then it goes on to say if someone has the Right View, then Right Intention springs up. "Springs up" is Bhikkhu Bodhi's^[2] translation.

With Right Intention, Right Action springs up. With Right Action, Right Speech springs up. With Right Speech, Right Livelihood springs up. With Right Livelihood, Right Effort springs up. With Right Effort, Right Mindfulness springs up. And with Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration springs up. It's very significant that they repeat this word "springs up" over and over again. It's not an action a person does, it's not like "this is what we have to do." It's rather a result of what happens when we let go deeply. Really deeply, we let go into something really good. Something here emerges, and one of the things that emerges is the Eightfold Path. It springs up in a person, and as I said yesterday, we become the Eightfold Path. The Eightfold Path is not something we do; the Eightfold Path is what we are when we've done the work of practice, when we've gone deep, deep down into the practice, and we become the Eightfold Path in a certain way.

So some of this maybe is interesting to look at the word "right." Many people in English have some trouble with the word "right," and it's a translation of a word sammā^[3] in Pali, samyak^[4] in Sanskrit. And I don't know how much to make of this, but if you look in the Pali dictionary, there are two definitions for sammā. One is right, or proper, complete. And the other one is a [sacrificial instrument?]^[5]—it's an instrument, like a ladle or a tool used for sacred rituals of the non-Buddhists, in pre-Buddhist kind of religions.

And I suspect that this word sammā has very rich religious connotations in ancient India that are lost by the English word "right." And so if you go look especially at the Sanskrit roots of the word, it means things like to stick, come together, to gather together, to unite, or to come together and go in the same direction—to be unified in how it's going, or how we're walking, to be unified. And that lends itself to being understood as coming together, as being complete, as being entire. So it could be that it's the complete view, or the unified view, the harmonious view. It's the view when everything comes together in harmony, or everything comes together to be whole. So I kind of like the idea of calling it a complete view, in the sense that everything is included. Now there is a completion, there's nothing left out. There's a wholeness in that process, there's a sacred kind of connection now, a sacred kind of way, an instrument of life, and we have become that sacred instrument.

So the word sammā is translated into English as "right." It's a useful translation in some ways if you think of it as the right tool for the job. Maybe it's good, but it's much more limited, the word "right," compared to the richness of the word sammā. Especially when we realize that one of the primary associations with these Eightfold Path factors—Right View and so forth—is how a person has become when they're awakened. So maybe "complete" works better, or "full," or "unified," or the "harmonious" view.

Right View is defined in many different ways in the suttas and teachings. In fact, because there are so many different ways, the ancient texts will actually make a differentiation between the Right View that is mundane and that which is supramundane; or Right View that's part of living a good life, versus Right View that has to do with becoming liberated. And the liberating Right View is defined as seeing suffering, the arising of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the practice leading to the cessation of suffering, or the practice walking to the cessation of suffering.

It's a little bit... we don't really know quite how to understand the Pali. And it gets more tricky to understand this when we realize we're talking not about a beginner's practice going towards awakening, but what a person becomes when they are awakened. And so we become the Eightfold Path. We enter the stream of the Eightfold Path, we get carried in the current of the Eightfold Path. And so we're letting go into something that carries us, into something that supports us and has us.

And there in the deep cessation, the deep dropping away that goes on is not a loss, but it's a phenomenal gain. But it's not a gain that you could hold onto, because as soon as you close around the fist—have the open hand and close around the fist, you know, close up to grab the open hand and make a fist—you've lost it. So it kind of doesn't go along with the usual way that many of us will operate in wanting and being. Many of the ways in which we have a self, the self-identity, self-views we have, is a kind of fisting up, a kind of contracting in and of itself.

And this deep letting go is good. It kind of goes against the current of the usual way of being in the world, and wanting and having something, and being someone. The strong habit is in that direction, and to break that habit and really begin to appreciate the openness—the absence and openness that comes with letting go—and to have this experience of it so present in one's heart or in one's being, it becomes a reference point that really begins to work on us and open us more. And we realize this is the way forward, this is what's worthwhile. It's not worthwhile going back and clinging and holding. Let's explore this, let's become wise in this whole experience of letting go.

So here what we're seeing is on one hand we have these four liberating insights: we have suffering, the arising of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the practice leading to the cessation of suffering, becoming [synonymous?]^[6] or anything associated with something called the Eightfold Path, an Eightfold Path that comes out of that experience. And in some places, we actually have these five things associated in the suttas and some of the poetry that they have. They have discussions about suffering, the arising of suffering, the disappearance of suffering, the practice leading to the disappearance of suffering, and the Eightfold Path. And so there's a kind of beginning of bringing these two together, and this bringing them together becomes kind of complete in a few of the teachings of the Buddha. I say a few, where the Fourth Noble Truth is explained or defined by the Noble Eightfold Path. And in this very famous discourse called the first sermon of the Buddha, he does that there; he connects it there.

And partly, it's there because when you really become the practice, the practice that goes with the cessation of suffering, it becomes almost one and the same as the Eightfold Path. So there is a kind of coming together, and that coming together of those two has a kind of wordplay that goes on that's a little bit more confusing in English perhaps. Maybe I said this yesterday, but the word "way," usually that Fourth Noble Truth is described as the way leading to the cessation of suffering.

And the word "way" can also mean a road or a path. But the word "way" is translating a Pali word that means a method or a practice. And "way" can also mean a method or a practice that we do, a way to do something as a method. And so when we have this word in English, "the way leading to the cessation of suffering," and we have an association of this "way" with the magga^[7], with a path, the Eightfold Path, some people will without even thinking associate "way" with "path" as being one and the same thing. And therefore the Fourth Noble Truth becomes the Noble Eightfold Path.

Probably a more accurate way of reading the ancient texts, at least, is that the practice that leads to liberation is seeing inconstancy. A deep experience of inconstancy (anicca^[8]) allows us to let go, and that deep letting go becomes synonymous with now inhabiting or becoming the Eightfold Path. And the Eightfold Path is naturally what we do, how we are. And this is a fascinating thing, that we become this thing, that letting go allows us to be transformed. And it's a transformation that, in modern English language, we might want to consider as being an ethical transformation.

The Eightfold Path has very deep ethical connotations, or associations, or expressions, especially Right Action, Right Speech, and Right Livelihood. But the other ones also do, and they have a very deep interpersonal aspect to them. The Eightfold Path has a lot to do with how we live life interpersonally. And so now it's getting richer and richer that this deep experience of letting go, that leads to becoming the Eightfold Path, transforms how we live in the world and how we interact ethically with people. Not because we're supposed to, but because we do; it's who we are. So tomorrow then, I'll talk more about the Eightfold Path, and it's a wonderful teaching. In the meantime, just let go. Thank you.