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Eightfold Path: Right Knowledge

So now we come to this penultimate talk on the Eightfold Path^[1]. The Eightfold Path is a path to freedom, and it is an expression of freedom, but then there comes the freedom itself. And so a few times in these teachings, the Buddha adds two more steps or factors to the Eightfold Path: Right Knowledge (or Right Understanding) and Right Release (or Right Freedom)^[2].

The first is liberating knowledge. This is the idea that there is an insight, an understanding, a kind of direct knowledge that's not book-learned. It's not something you have to figure out, not something you have to believe, and not something you have to find by reasoning your way to it. Rather, it's a knowledge that comes from direct experience—the direct experience of what is suffering^[3] and what is the release of suffering.

The simplest knowledge that is at the heart of Buddhism is this simple thing: to really understand suffering, to be present for it. To not cower from it, recoil from it, or attack it, but really to have the stability to be present for how we feel. Whether we are despairing, upset, angry, frustrated, or experiencing all kinds of ways in which we suffer—some small, some big—we need the stability to see it clearly. With that stability, at some point, we are also able to see freedom, to see the release from it. The knowledge of that is Right Knowledge, the Right Understanding that is part and parcel of this Eightfold Path and is also the result of it.

Freedom To vs. Freedom From

For people who have no experience of liberation, the eight factors of the Eightfold Path are what we engage in out of faith, out of receiving instructions from the tradition and teachers. We do it out of faith, and this is a good thing. But hopefully, very quickly, we start getting personal experience that teaches us, "Oh, this is true. I have my own way of knowing now; no one has to teach me anymore." We feel the goodness of it, the wholesomeness of it, and then keep moving in this wholesome, good, supportive, healthy direction until we get clear experience of freedom from suffering.

In the United States, I think we have to make the distinction between freedom to and freedom from. There's a strong idea that we should be free to vote, free to assemble, free to shop, and free to do all kinds of things that Americans want to do, which can lend itself to a certain kind of conceit. In this free to movement, having an unlimited credit card to be free to shop would be a great thing, and you'd feel a lot of ease in shopping if you had unlimited funds on your credit card. But if you had unlimited funds to spend and buy and buy, you might have no awareness of how we're actually caught, enslaved, or imprisoned by our desires. Because we can act on them freely, we don't see that desires are actually in control of us.

In Buddhism, freedom is freedom from clinging^[4], from being caught. It is really letting go of the inner forces that some people want to freely express. We realize we've actually lost ourselves in this free expression—to shop unlimitedly or to express our opinions unlimitedly because we have free speech. The idea is to learn how to free ourselves from the compulsions inside, to find freedom from the very forces that lead to suffering, either right away or down the road when they get frustrated.

At some point, we begin to see how this works: suffering, clinging, and the release from clinging. Sometimes we see it in small ways. We see that we were impatient about something, and then we could let go of that impatience, and we feel, "Wow, this is a much better way to be." It's not dramatic, but why add this tension to my life when I don't need to? I can just be patient here. Or I don't even have to be patient; I just have to let go of the impatience.

Beginning to tune into that experience of having something with tension, suffering, or pain, and having an experience of letting it go, we realize there's freedom from it. We start tasting for ourselves what the Buddha is about. We start becoming our own teacher, in a sense, on the path of freedom.

Actualizing Freedom

For beginners, the Eightfold Path is about putting in place a healthy sense of self, a healthy way of living in the world, so we don't have remorse or self-criticism. We don't get caught by doing things like wrong speech, wrong action, and wrong ways of thinking. We are putting together a healthy sense of self so that we can let go of it all with ease, so we can see more clearly where freedom is.

As we go further along the path, that experience of freedom is so qualitatively distinct that it can almost take our breath away. It's like, "Wow, that's the potential." It's not just letting go of impatience at a traffic light; there's a phenomenal release of self, of self-concern, of some of the deepest ways in which we're attached and organize our lives. And it's good. When we really know the full potential of this freedom, a full experience of the heart's freedom, and have that now as a reference point, then we become increasingly sensitive to all the different ways in which we do cling.

This is part of the ongoing path: to develop a greater and greater understanding of the subtler and deeper ways in which clinging, attachment, and wanting limit us and keep us from being free. Because we've had the experience of very full freedom, we have heightened sensitivity to it. It's like having a piece of clothing you've been wearing for a long time that has gotten really dirty. You don't ever wash it, and you don't even notice it getting dirty anymore because more dirt doesn't show. Finally, the cloth is completely cleaned, one hundred percent clean like it was new. Then we know what it can be like clean. Putting a little dirt on it, you say, "Oh look, it's dirty now. I see now, it's really clear."

The mind can be that way as well. The Right Knowledge that comes at the end of the Eightfold Path is really the dramatic, fuller knowledge of what freedom can be like. It's something that gets our attention so much that it shows a potential for psychological health, a health of the heart, that's so palpable and compelling. It seems so much more important than many other things people are caught up in or think they need to have.

At some point, we learn to realize that the sense of freedom is the safest thing going. It's not something to be afraid of; it's the place of safety. It's a place from which we can take care of ourselves, where we have a really healthy perspective on what's important. No matter what happens to us, we realize, "I'm responsible for some degree of my inner happiness, some degree of my inner peace. And no matter what happens, maybe I don't have to give that up." I can go through the world with that peace, that inner health, that inner freedom as a reference point, and use that to make wise choices about how to live and what to do.

With the knowledge of freedom, the knowledge of release, the knowledge of liberation, and the knowledge of letting go, the Eightfold Path has a whole different orientation. Not as a beginner, but as someone who knows what freedom is, the Eightfold Path becomes a way that we live that begins to express, manifest, or actualize this freedom in our lives. The Eightfold Path then is an actualization of freedom. You cannot have wrong view, wrong consideration, wrong speech, wrong action, wrong livelihood^[5], wrong effort, wrong mindfulness, or wrong concentration if you're actualizing freedom.

Right Knowledge, Right Understanding—I think one of the most important things I want to repeat is that this is a knowledge and understanding you have through your direct experience. The book you're supposed to read to understand the Eightfold Path and Right Knowledge is the book in your heart, the book in yourself. Developing this mindfulness and strong sense of awareness of what's happening is so that you can read the book of freedom that's within you, in your own heart. Once you can read that book and have that knowledge, the Eightfold Path opens in a whole other way, and it becomes what you actualize as opposed to what you're cultivating.

Thank you very much. We'll finish this whole series tomorrow with the related topic of Right Release, Right Freedom. Thank you.