The Noble 8 Fold Path
Weekly Texts 9-18
Week #9, Right Thought / Compassion
The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield
Chapter 2 Holding the World in Kindness
'The courageous heart is the one that is unafraid to open to the world. With compassion we come to trust our capacity to open to life without armouring. We need this compassion to pass through a difficult divorce without lashing out and increasing the pain and anguish. We need it when our children are in trouble, when things go wrong at work. In all these situations we are vulnerable and everyone involved needs compassion.
Week #10, Right Speech
From the Flower Adornment Sutra
Abstention from Lying
By nature he does not lie. The Bodhisattva always utters true speech, actual speech, and timely speech, to the point that even in a dream, he would never think of wanting to do so, how much the less deliberately commit violations.
Abstention from Divisive Speech
By nature he does not engage in divisive speech. The Bodhisattva, towards all living beings, has no thought of dividing them against each other. He has no thought of troubling or harming. He does not report the speech of one person to break his relationship with a second person, nor does he report the speech of the second person to break his relationship with the first person. If people have not already broken with each other, he does not break them up. If they have already broken with each other, he does not increase the break. He does not enjoy dividing people against each other, nor is he happy when people are divided against each other. He does not utter speech that would divide people against each other, nor does he report speech that would divide people against each other--regardless of whether it is true or false.
Abstention from Harsh Speech
By nature he does not engage in harsh speech, that is, cruel, malicious speech, coarse, wild speech, speech that brings suffering to others, speech that provokes anger and hatred in others, blunt speech, furtive speech, vile and evil speech, cheap and vulgar speech, speech unpleasant to hear, speech that does not delight the listener, angry hateful speech, speech that burns the heart like fire, speech bound up in resentment, heated, irritating speech, disagreeable speech, displeasing speech, speech that can destroy oneself and others--all such types of speech as those he completely abandons. He always utters kind, encouraging speech, soft and gentle speech, speech that delights the mind, speech pleasant to the listener, speech that makes the listener happy, speech that wholesomely enters into people's hearts, elegant and refined speech, speech agreeable to most people, speech that gladdens most people, and speech that brings joy to body and mind.
Abstention from Irresponsible Speech
By nature he does not engage in loose speech. The Bodhisattva always delights in thoughtful, examined speech, in appropriate speech, in true speech, in meaningful speech, lawful speech, speech that accords with Way-principle, skilfully taming and regulating speech, speech which is reckoned and measured according to the time and which is decisive. This Bodhisattva, even when making jokes, always weighs his words, so how much the less would he deliberately pour out scattered and abandoned talk.
Week #11, Right Speech
Right Speech Reconsidered
by Beth Roth In Tricycle
Right Speech is a mindfulness practice. By undertaking this practice, we commit to greater awareness of our body, mind, and emotions.
Mindfulness makes it possible to recognize what we are about to say before we say it, and thus offers us the freedom to choose when to speak, what to say, and how to say it. With mindfulness, we see that the heart is the ground from which our speech grows. We learn to restrain our speech in moments of anger, hostility, or confusion, and over time, to train the heart to more frequently incline towards wholesome states such as love, kindness and empathy.
From these heart states Right Speech naturally arises.
Week #12, Right Action
Sudden Awakening, Gradual Cultivation
Joseph Goldstein
Gradual cultivation can become a template not only for this step of Right Action, but also for the entire journey of awakening. We need to repeatedly remind ourselves, whatever the siuation may be, of what Right Action is appropriate, making some effort to keep ourselves informed over and over again, so we don't fall back into delude thinking.
What motivated and energizes us to make this effort are precisely the previous steps on the Path. As we understand through Right View the selfless, interconnected aspect of all things, and as we cultivate Right Thoughts of renunciation, lovingkindness, and compassion, then we are moved to speak and act in such a way that minimizes harm and is conducive to the welfare of all.
Week #13
Right Livelihood and the Art of Living
Paul Wapner
"Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us that right livelihood is not simply about what we do for a living but about the art of living itself. Whether we have paid jobs or not, all of us work actively in the world: washing our clothes, cultivating gardens, or advocating for social change. Our labor is not only an occupation but the sculpting of our lives. In this sense, all of us are more than our particular professions and even vocations. Right livelihood, then, involves cultivating a loving, compassionate, joyful and generous life.'
Week #14
Right Effort, 1st great endeavor
Prevent the Arising of Latent Defilements
1st great endeavor
Joseph Goldstein
The Buddha spoke of Right Effort as the application of energy (viriya) to four great endeavors. The first is to prevent the arising of unwholesome states not yet arisen. This aspect of Right Effort points to a fundamental understanding of how our minds work. In the suttas, the most pragmatic description of nibbāna is the mind that is free from the root defilements of greed, hatred, and delusion.
We’ve all experienced many wholesome mind moments when these defilements are not present, yet have also had unwholesome factors frequently reemerge as conditions change.
This is the functioning of what are called “latent defilements,” mind states that are not present in the moment, but that have the potential to arise whenever the conditions for them to reappear are present.
How, then, do we practice this first aspect of Right Effort? The previous steps on the Path, Right Speech, Action, and Livelihood, provide the foundation, through abstinence from unwholesome activities. We then need to exercise wise attention on the different objects of experience arising through the senses. If our attention is casual, careless, and unwise, then we simply fall into old habits of reactivity. Clearly, we need a wise and sustained attention to weaken these deeply conditioned habits of mind.
Week #15
Right Effort, 2nd great endeavor
Abandon Unwholesome States that have Arisen
Joseph Goldstein
The second great endeavor is to abandon those unwholesome states that have already arisen. Mindfulness of them is always the first strategy; if we’re not even aware that they are present, there’s not much possibility of abandoning them.
“At present the natural clarity of your mind is obscured by delusions,” says Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche in the book Journey to Enlightenment. “But as the obscuration clears you will begin to uncover the radiance of awareness, until you reach a point where, just as a line traced on water disappears the moment it is made, your thoughts are liberated the moment they arise.”
At times, though, the hindrances may be tenacious, and we need additional strategies for abandoning them. In one sutta, the Buddha describes five techniques for dispelling distracting thoughts and unwholesome mind states.
states.
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The first is using its opposite as an antidote.
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The second is through the factors of hiri and ottappa, often translated respectively as “self-respect” Used wisely, hiri and ottappa can awaken us from the power of deluded thinking.
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The third method is a deliberate diversion of attention.
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The fourth method is just the opposite: looking directly at them, investigating their source and their hold on the mind.
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And in the fifth method, when all else fails, forcibly suppressing the unwholesome thought.
Week #16 Right Mindfulness
The Noble Eightfold Path:
Way to the End of Suffering by Bhikkhu Bodhi.
The Buddha says that the Dhamma, the ultimate truth of things is directly visible,
timeless, always available to us, and that the place where it is to be realised is
within oneself. It can be reached only by understanding our experience. What
brings our experience into focus is ‘sati’ or mindfulness. With the practice of
mindfulness, the mind is kept at a level of ‘bare attention’, a detached
observation of what is happening within us and around us in the present, open,
quiet and alert, contemplating the present event. All judgements and
interpretations have to be suspended, or if they occur, just registered and
dropped. The task is simply to note whatever comes up just as it is occurring,
riding the changes of events in the way a surfer rides the waves. The whole
process is a way of coming back into the present, of standing in the here and now without slipping away, without getting swept away by the tides of distracting thoughts.
Week #17 Right Mindfulness
The Noble Eightfold Path:
Way to the End of Suffering by Bhikkhu Bodhi.
Mindfulness brings to light experience in its pure immediacy. It reveals the object as it is before it has been plastered over with conceptual paint, overlaid with interpretations. To practice mindfulness is thus a matter not so much of doing but of undoing: not thinking, not judging, not associating, not planning, not imagining, not wishing. All these "doings" of ours are modes of interference, ways the mind manipulates experience and tries to establish its dominance. Mindfulness undoes the knots and tangles of these "doings" by simply noting. It does nothing but note, watching each occasion of experience as it arises, stands, and passes away. In the watching there is no room for clinging, no compulsion to saddle things with our desires. There is only a sustained contemplation of experience in its bare immediacy, carefully and precisely and persistently.
Week #18 Right Concentration
The Noble Eightfold Path:
Way to the End of Suffering by Bhikkhu Bodhi.
There is a kind of concentration which does not depend upon restricting the range of awareness. This is called “momentary concentration” (khanika-samadhi). To develop momentary concentration the meditator does not deliberately attempt to exclude the multiplicity of phenomena from his field of attention.
Instead, he simply directs mindfulness to the changing states of mind and body, noting any phenomenon that presents itself; the task is to maintain a continuous awareness of whatever enters the range of perception, clinging to nothing. As he goes on with his noting, concentration becomes stronger moment after moment until it becomes established one-pointedly on the constantly changing stream of events.
Despite the change in the object, the mental unification remains steady, and in time acquires a force capable of suppressing the hindrances to a degree equal to that of access concentration. This fluid, mobile concentration is developed by the practice of the four foundations of mindfulness, taken up along the path of insight; when sufficiently strong it issues in the breakthrough to the last stage of the path, the arising of wisdom.
Week #19 Devolpment of Wisdom
The Noble Eightfold Path:
Way to the End of Suffering by Bhikkhu Bodhi.
To reach the end of suffering demands that the Eightfold Path be turned into an instrument of discovery, that it be used to generate the insights unveiling the ultimate truth of things. This requires the combined contributions of all eight factors, and thus a new mobilization of right view and right intention. Up to the present point these first two path factors have performed only a preliminary function. Now they have to be taken up again and raised to a higher level. Right view is to become a direct seeing into the real nature of phenomena, previously grasped only conceptually; right intention, to become a true renunciation of defilements born out of deep understanding.
Beyond the composure and serenity of the unified mind, is wisdom (pañña), a penetrating vision of phenomena in their fundamental mode of being.
Wisdom alone can cut off the latent tendencies at their root because the most fundamental member of the set, the one which nurtures the others and holds them in place, is ignorance (avijja), and wisdom is the remedy for ignorance.
Whereas ignorance obscures the true nature of things, wisdom removes the veils of distortion, enabling us to see phenomena in their fundamental mode of being with the vivacity of direct perception. The training in wisdom centers on the development of insight (vipassana-bhavana), a deep and comprehensive seeing into the nature of existence which fathoms the truth of our being in the only sphere where it is directly accessible to us, namely, in our own experience.
To free ourselves from all defilements and suffering, the illusion of selfhood that sustains them has to be dispelled, exploded by the realization of selflessness. Precisely this is the task set for the development of wisdom.
Week #20 Development of Wisdom
The Noble Eightfold Path:
Way to the End of Suffering
Bhikkhu Bodhi.
Wisdom alone can cut off the latent tendencies at their root because the most fundamental member of the set, the one which nurtures the others and holds them in place, is ignorance (avijja), and wisdom is the remedy for ignorance.
At the cognitive level, which is its most basic sphere of operation, ignorance infiltrates our perceptions, thoughts, and views, so that we come to misconstrue our experience, overlaying it with multiple strata of delusions. The most important of these delusions are three: the delusions of seeing permanence in the impermanent, of seeing satisfaction in the unsatisfactory, and of seeing a self in the selfless.[66] Thus we take ourselves and our world to be solid, stable, enduring entities, despite the ubiquitous reminders that everything is subject to change and destruction.