--- ai_generation_date: '2026-09-10' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2020-10-23' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/12304/20201023-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-nibb_na_5_of_5_the_birth_of_the_eightfold_path.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: "Nibb\u0101na (5 of 5) The Birth of the Eightfold Path" url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12304 video_unavailable: false location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: dzCPSgk0j1U imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: 'Dharmette: Nibbana (5 of 5) Giving Birth to the Eightfold Path' upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzCPSgk0j1U --- # Nibbāna (5 of 5) The Birth of the Eightfold Path - [Gil Fronsdal](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1) _This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._ ## [Nibbāna (5 of 5) The Birth of the Eightfold Path](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12304) Greetings again. This will be the last of the five talks on Nibbāna (Nirvana in Sanskrit). This is the ultimate goal of mindfulness practice as taught by the Buddha. Mindfulness practice is meant to be an onward-leading practice where we are led and supported onwards into some of the deepest potentials for freedom that a person can have: freedom of the heart, freedom of the mind. One of the core definitions of Nibbāna is release from all suffering, and the word _all_ is important here. There could be a lot of partial Nibbānas, partial freedoms that come along as things we've been troubled with for a long time get released. But the definitive experience of Nibbāna is generally a temporary experience, but an experience which is a radical cessation of all suffering that catches our attention, takes our breath away almost: _Wow, this is possible._ Some people don't even understand the subtlety and the deep way in which suffering is embedded in the fabric of life until it really drops away, and, wow, this is possible. It's a release from suffering. Sometimes Nibbāna is defined by the psychological forces which are the cause for suffering and which are suffering themselves: greed, hatred, and delusion. Nibbāna is defined as the release of those, the freedom from those, the cessation, the destruction of those. This is not a blank slate, because Nibbāna in ancient India has strong positive associations. It is associated with health, happiness, well-being, and peace. The word Nibbāna kind of means _the going out_, like the going out of a fire. Think of it as the going out of the fire of a fever. The fever passes or breaks, and then there is more health and it feels good, finally a relief, a sense of peace that that fever is gone. The fever of greed, hate, and delusion. We often talk about it as an experience. I like to think of it as an event, because experience puts it a little bit in personal terms, which is fine, but there's something about the freedom that comes with Nirvana, this really, really deep release, where it's not really so easy to take it into personal terms. It's almost a transpersonal experience, or a beyond personal, or we're kind of freed from the personal in a certain kind of delightful way. So it's an event that goes on, and it's an event that involves this radical absence. That radical, full absence of suffering, or full absence of greed, hate, and delusion, of clinging, has a big impact on a person who has it. Yesterday I talked about the function of it and how people are changed, and I want to talk a little bit more about that today. This was kind of a review up to now. Nibbāna changes the person who experiences it. In the Buddhist tradition, they say they become a noble person. There's a kind of state shift that's strong enough. And what is that change? The tradition will often describe it in relationship to the Eightfold Path. With the experience of Nibbāna, or experiences on the way to Nibbāna—there are similitudes, it's very similar, sometimes there are traces or hints of Nibbāna that we have along the way—in those events, something gets born inside of us, and the language of being born is used by the Buddha. What is born is the Eightfold Path. The other language is that one enters the current of the Eightfold Path. Usually, someone who's experienced the first experience of Nibbāna is said to become a stream-enterer, someone who's entered the stream. That's the usual English way of saying it. _Sota_[^1], which is the word that's translated as stream, literally means current, and it means entering the current of a river. It's a little bit important to appreciate that, because a current is what carries you all the way to the ocean in the plains of India. We're being carried to deeper and deeper, fuller experiences of Nibbāna, the freedom. As long as we're in the river, there's some freedom, but the idea is when you come to the ocean, the fullness of water is in the ocean, the fullness of freedom is there. That's maybe the metaphor. It's one thing to be in a river—you might be in an eddy, there might be no current where you are—but to finally be in the current and feel you're being carried. Generally, currents are peaceful and gentle in a big river (over the rapids they're not), so you're kind of carried by this current. When Sariputta[^2], his disciple, was asked at the time of the Buddha, "What is the current that one enters?", Sariputta said, "It's the current of the Eightfold Path." The Buddha himself also said that a person who has Nibbāna, who has this experience of real deep release, is now endowed with or possesses the Eightfold Path. I like the idea of "endowed with the Eightfold Path." So if something is born, something is endowed with something, we enter into the current and are carried by it. Now, it gives a very different idea of what the Eightfold Path is than when it's instructed to a beginner who first comes to Buddhism. "This is what you do: you do Right View, Right Intention, Right Action, Right Speech, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration." But it is said that with Nibbāna, with a big enough release, all eight factors of the path are not steps along the way, but they're unified and become kind of who we are. We're unified in such a full way that they're all there present together. Some people say that with Nibbāna, each of these steps of the Eightfold Path shouldn't be called "right" so much, but maybe more "complete" or "in harmony." Literally, the original word _Sammā_[^3] means everything going along with the current, being in harmony with something. And what we're being in harmony with, what really opens up, and why this Eightfold Path becomes something we possess, is that the freedom, the openness, the sense of release from clinging, craving, and attachments, from suffering, becomes... then a person kind of naturally lives by the Eightfold Path. To not live by it, to live by Wrong View, Wrong Intention, and Wrong Action—all these things require some clinging, attachment, and holding on. But when all that's gone, what comes out of that? The Buddha talked about someone who has Nibbāna as having virtue, noble virtue. There's a sense of noble Samādhi[^4], noble wisdom that comes from that. There's a sense of integrity or a sense of place inside, a knowing inside of a kind of completeness, a kind of freedom, a kind of absence of clinging that itself protects us, teaches us, or guides us to avoid messing that up, soiling it with attachments, clinging, and unethical behavior. So there's a reference point inside for being ethical, for being settled, for being free. It's phenomenal to have this reference point. The Eightfold Path, as many of you know, begins with Right Vision, or usually we say Right View. Someone who has the experience of Nibbāna now has a vision of what is possible, and that vision is, to some degree, a memory of how full that release is. But when the experience of Nirvana is full enough, that vision is ever-present, ever-available in the present moment. This vision of freedom, the sense and feeling of release, of the cessation of suffering, of freedom. It's that vision of that possibility, that vision of that potential, that creates the foundation for all the other parts of the Eightfold Path. That's why Right Vision, Right View, is first on the path. It seems that when the Buddha first was teaching the Eightfold Path, the Noble Eightfold Path, he was teaching it for people who had an experience of Nibbāna. In fact, it's been pointed out now by many people, including the ancient commentators, that the expression "Noble Eightfold Path" is not quite the right translation of the Pali, the original wording of it. The original meaning is the "Eightfold Path of the Noble Ones," the Eightfold Path of those who have some degree of freedom. So we possess it, we're in the current of the Eightfold Path. And then someone who has the first experience of Nibbāna, their task is then to develop the Eightfold Path further. We develop the Eightfold Path before Nibbāna, and all eight factors of the path converge and unite for the experience of Nibbāna, for the release, the letting go, for removing the fuel that keeps suffering going, the fires of suffering going. Then, once we have that experience, we know what it's kind of all about, and then we practice. We develop the Eightfold Path further. We develop our intention, our ethics, our efforts, our mindfulness and concentration. In a sense, the practice is the same before and after Nibbāna, but after Nibbāna, there's a new reference point for it that gives us unshakable confidence. We know what it's about. In a metaphoric or symbolic way, the tradition sometimes will say that a person's practice begins with a significant enough experience of release, of freedom. Maybe that's true for some of you, that you've had some degree of freedom, some degree of letting go of some clinging, some holding, that has given you inspiration and enthusiasm for a vision of what's possible, that maybe can serve as a guide and a support for your practice and what you're developing and growing. May you have experiences of Nibbāna, whether it's the traces of it that can happen along the way, or whether it's fully entering the stream. May that stream carry you, and may you be carried by it and carried by the Dharma to greater and greater freedom from suffering. It's a phenomenal path to be on. It's a tried and true path if you practice it, if you entrust yourself to it. It doesn't work if you don't practice it. So thank you. For the next few weeks for the 7:00 a.m. morning meditation, I'll go through the Eightfold Path. It's such an important topic, and for those of you here this week, you can keep in mind as I give these teachings that part of what we're talking about is how to practice, and the reference point for practice, with freedom as the guide, the rationale, or the source for the Eightfold Path. Thank you very much. I look forward to our next time together on Monday. May you be well, and thank you. --- [^1]: **Sota:** A Pali word meaning "stream" or "current," often used in the context of Sotāpanna or "stream-enterer," the first stage of awakening. [^2]: **Sariputta:** One of the two chief male disciples of the Buddha, renowned for his profound wisdom. [^3]: **Sammā:** A Pali word often translated as "right," "perfect," or "complete," used to describe the eight factors of the Noble Eightfold Path. [^4]: **Samādhi:** A Pali and Sanskrit term often translated as "concentration" or "unification of mind," referring to a state of meditative absorption or stillness.