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Venerable Ajahn Sucitto -
The Buddha’s Eightfold Path
What if...by contemplating your own thoughts, actions and
feelings, and by noticing their causes and effects, you could establish ease
and confidence in life? What if...without belief, supposition, or ideology,
you could find out how you get stressed and frustrated, and put an end to
all that? At any rate...since you are living your life, you might as well
pay attention to it. Why not fully Awaken to what is happening in and around
you? In exploring these possibilities, millions of people throughout the
world use the teachings of the Buddha. Some shy away from calling themselves
Buddhists, feeling that such a label might compromise the authenticity of
their inquiry. From a Buddhist point of view there is no problem with this:
the main point is to listen to the Buddha's teachings, mull them over, put
them into practice and feel out the results. The teachings, called the
Dhamma, are likened to medicine, and everyone who practises Dhamma can
choose the medicine that they need, in accordance with the nature of the
problem that needs curing. But the general theme that covers all Dhamma
teachings is that they are aspects of the Four Noble Truths – of dukkha, or
suffering, its origin, its ceasing and the Path which leads to the end of
suffering. This is called the Noble Eightfold Path. The eight factors of
this Eightfold Path are Right View, Right Intent, Right Speech, Right
Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right
Concentration. I'll give details on these factors later, but the first and
most important point is that they are a way of living. They are not
philosophical concepts, beliefs, or descriptions of an Ultimate Truth, or
Divinity. They lead to an Awakening to Ultimate Truth, but do not define it.
The Buddha's realisation was that the experience of ultimate Truth was
consonant with the ending of dukkha. And dukkha -- whether this be
depression, anxiety, frustration, or a more general sense of pointlessness--
concerns us all in the here and now of our lives. It's not a matter of
belief. Nor, in Buddhism, do you have to believe that there is such a thing
as liberation or Ultimate Truth; just put an end to suffering and stress,
and you'll know Truth for yourself. So the Buddhist approach is through
direct experience, of which the first thing to consider is where both our
innermost pain and our most reliable sense of well-being are to be found.
Circumstances such as illness or good fortune come and go; but what lingers
with us are internal conditions- a sense of being trusted and at peace, or
of having regret or hatred gnawing away at our hearts. If we have peace of
mind, we can weather through the rough patches; but guilt, hatred or
depression can cloud the brightest day. A millionaire or a king can be beset
with worry and mistrust. And a penniless monk like the Buddha can dwell in
ease and fulfilment. Suffering and its cessation lie in our minds and
hearts. Mind and heart: we have an awareness that is affected by and
responds to experience. This awareness is what the Buddha would encourage a
listener to attend to when putting the teachings to the test. In dialogue he
would encourage the inquiry: how does it feel if someone abuses you, kills
your friends and relatives? Is that suffering or not? And how is it when
people treat you with generosity and kindness? And if you act in either of
these ways, which brings about the results that will give you most
well-being? So using your own wisdom, how should you best act? Applying
reasoned inquiry in this way, the Buddha would sketch in the outline of his
Dhamma. However, for myself as for many people, Buddhism began with
meditation. I'd graduated from University, had a head full of ideas and just
as many questions as to what life was about. Before following a particular
career, it seemed best to get my own take on what I really wanted. And how
to achieve it. So I travelled around, trying this and that, and after a few
years headed East to see what some soul-searching would uncover. I
eventually arrived in Thailand, and happened across a class in Buddhist
meditation being given in English. It seemed to be worth a try. The venue
was a room in a Buddhist monastery that had a few mats to sit on and nothing
much else. It was lit by a lamp, which was placed next to the meditation
teacher who was sitting up front beside a window. He was a Westerner, and
was wearing the ochre-brown robes of a Buddhist monk. Being a monastery in
the tropics, there was no glass in the window, and flying ants were coming
in, attracted to the light. A few fluttered over the monk, but I noticed
that as he spoke, he wasn’t put off by the ants fluttering over his arms,
and just occasionally picked one carefully off his face if it seemed to be
in danger of going into his mouth. He wasn't getting agitated, and he picked
each ant off with specific awareness of its fragility, without losing the
thread of what he was talking about. In the same situation, I would have
killed a few ants, got irritated about the lack of glass and definitely lost
the gist of what I was talking about. But the stress that I would have got
into would have been self-induced: the ants weren't actually doing any harm.
It was just a matter of responding to the sensation with full awareness
rather than reacting to it. That was a good introduction to what meditation
was about; and in a larger sense what the Buddhist Path was all about. In a
nutshell, the Eightfold Path can be seen as covering ethics, meditation and
understanding. In the class in Thailand, that meant don't kill flying ants,
be with what's happening, and guide your responses with an understanding of
how to let go of the stress. Easy enough in theory, but I could see that I
needed some training. Meditation takes us to where we're really being
affected, but that's where we tend to react blindly. To respond clearly to
experience, we need to establish guidelines. The foundation for such
guidelines is Right View. Right View is the recognition that what we do
counts. We're not in a pre-determined cosmos, we can be effective. We can be
a source of benefit or harm for ourselves and others; and such a
responsibility is not so much a moral obligation as a mandate: if we develop
clarity and kindness, we can live with that kind of mind. If, however, we
sustain prejudices or indifference, we become narrow and insensitive. We can
act clearly and be at peace with ourselves, or we can act out of compulsion,
and get stuck. Because compulsion leads to addictive behaviour and loss of
personal authority. And in all cases, the chances are that we'll end up
being associated with people who mirror our attitudes. So Right View is the
recognition that our own integrity has to be the centre of our lives. And
that feels empowering. Right Intent, sometimes called Right Thought,
proceeds from that under-standing of cause and effect; it means setting up
the intention to bring around skilful results through body speech and mind,
and to relinquish the unskilful ones. This is the foundation of the
teachings on action, or kamma, as it is called in Buddhism, of which mental
intention is the agent. Since actions of body and speech proceed from
mind-states and emotions, if we can get the mind and heart clear, we can
both act from a place of balance, and be able to discern the results of our
actions. This is the case with Right Speech and Right Action. We give up
deception, stealing and violence, and cultivate honesty and words that are
worth treasuring. Right Livelihood means avoiding trade in arms,
prostitution, animal slaughter; and it also broadens out into how one shares
one's life with others. Our relationships with other people profoundly
influence our minds, so on occasion, the Buddha gave attention to
husband-wife relationships, parenting, mutually supportive norms for
employer and employee; as well as on the benefits and qualities of
friendship. For myself these Path factors came together with the decision to
spend time on retreat in a monastery, and after a while, to take on an
open-ended commitment to training as a Buddhist monk. And as well as
morality and meditation, friendship is a big part of that. The teacher and
fellow-monks are the friends who support you with companionship in the
training, and the lay followers are the friends who provide encouragement as
well as the food and the simple requisites that a monk or nun needs. In turn
the monastic community supports the laity with teachings, and example. It is
a micro-society based on mutual respect, compassion and generosity. Right
View, Right Effort and Right Mindfulness underlie every other factor. For
example with Right Speech, one starts with Right View by recognising that
how one talks affects others. We can bring something of value into someone's
mind with a well-attuned remark, or we could ruin their day. We could be
left with regret and mistrust, or with openness and peace of mind. From
there Right Effort, means doing the work of steering one's actions, while
Right Mindfulness entails being fully there with what we do or say and what
effects it has. And the result is we avoid distress and participate in
something of immediate benefit. This is the process of the entire Eightfold
Path. Mindfulness and the last Path factor, Right Concentration, take us
into the domain of meditation, the cultivation of awareness. These factors
are often what people are usually struck by in Buddhism, because they offer
a powerful deepening of the inner life, possibilities of great serenity and
joy and the unconditioned peace that is called Nibbana. And this deepening
begins and is maintained with mindfulness - which entails being simply and
purely present to what is going on. If I go back to that first meditation
class in Thailand: .the monk gave us some advice on how to sit upright in a
state of relaxed alertness, and start paying attention to the sensations
that accompanied the process of breathing. I couldn't have followed more
than a breath or two before my mind was wandering. In fact it was careening
on a wave of speculations, memories, and analyses. Every now and then I
would steer my attention back to the breath sensations, and be able to
maintain that for a few seconds before a fresh tide of thoughts came washing
in. This is pretty much the standard beginner's meditation. Nevertheless,
what struck me deeply was that here I was witnessing my mind. And that was
strangely peaceful, even reassuring: somehow I didn't have to make anything
out of my thoughts, or even out of my mind. It was just something happening.
Moreover, if I was witnessing my mind, who was I, and whose mind was this?
The Buddha reckoned these to be unanswerable questions. Whatever you think
or say you are -- that is just one more event passing through your mind. No,
the point is that there is always this present awareness, and what passes
through it is changing and not what you really are. But the more you centre
on that present awareness, maybe using a focal point like the sensations of
breathing to help you do that, the steadier and clearer you feel. You can
let go of the impulses and sensations that come up, or, as I learnt later,
you can focus on them and allow the steadiness of awareness to bring them
into harmony. Which is what happens. That is, with practice you can stop
struggling with your body and your moods, and that very quality of
non-struggle starts to infuse and settle them. So: bringing attention into
the present is mindfulness, and the result, a steadiness that pervades the
body and mind is concentration, or samadhi. Samadhi is not a concentration
that you do, it's a centred and pleasurable unity that occurs as a result of
Right View, Right Effort and Right Mindfulness. Although the practice of
mindfulness and concentration is immensely remedial in terms of clearing out
stress, worry, and obsessive moods, it has a further development; which is
the understanding that liberates the practitioner from the very source of
suffering and stress. This understanding, called insight, both attunes you
to the ephemeral nature of what is happening, and puts you in touch with the
steady ever-presence of awareness itself. Sensing this time and time again,
an involuntary shift takes place: your centre moves to that pure awareness.
In daily life, you can act from that awareness with compassion and clarity;
and in meditation, you can let all the events subside, and dwell in a
bright, unhindered presence. This leads to Nibbana, the fulfilment of the
Eightfold Path. As you get to sense this, even in glimpses, you don't get
caught up in hankering or dejection; there's no frustration, no need to
defend, and nothing you have to prove. Just this is an end to suffering and
stress. For me personally, this is the best option that human life affords.
But as the Buddha recommended, it's up to each of us to know it for
ourselves.
From a talk originally broadcast on BBC Radio 4,
February2nd 2003.
I would like to dedicate whatever benefits may arise from this talk to my
first teacher, Phra Alan Nyanavajiro. ********
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