Buddhism's Eightfold Path

I spoke yesterday of the four noble truths of Buddhism. To sum up:

1. The only consistent thing in life is suffering.
2. We suffer because of our desire.
3. The only way to eliminate suffering is to eliminate desire.
4. The only way to eliminate desire is to follow the way, aka as the eightfold path.

Here is the eightfold path, with more explanation to follow. Also please visit thebigview.com for a more detailed explanation. Please note that the quoted examples of the eightfold path below come from thebigview.com's website.

1. Right view. This is to see things how they are and to understand the four noble truths. Now, for you logicians out there, you might say this is already a circular argument, but understanding the four noble truths and say, living them (which is the purpose of the eightfold path) are two different tasks.

2. Right intention.

While right view refers to the cognitive aspect of wisdom, right intention refers to the volitional aspect, i.e. the kind of mental energy that controls our actions. Right intention can be described best as commitment to ethical and mental self-improvement. Buddha distinguishes three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion.

3. Right speech. Basically, don't lie, don't engage in hurtful speech, and try to limit frivolous conversation that lacks a reason or depth.

4. Right action. Something akin to the Ten commandments.

The second ethical principle, right action, involves the body as natural means of expression, as it refers to deeds that involve bodily actions. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others.

Additional details on right action can be found in the precepts of Buddhism.

5. Right livelihood.

Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.


6. Right effort. Basically, the expenditure of mental energy to try and prevent unwholesome states, the effort to abandon them if one has occurred, the effort to create wholesome states, and the effort to maintain wholesome states once they are obtained.

7. Right mindfulness. This is the ability to gain control over our perceptions in order to see them more clearly. This is a tough one, but to me it's like taking a deep mental breath before attaching significance, judgements, connections, conclusions, etc., to our impressions, and to do this in an active, concentrated fashion, which leads to...

8. Right concentration. All of these activities should work together and support each other to enable wholesome states and actions. This is accomplished and trained through meditation. Eventually increased concentration is made more habitual, allowing the Buddhist to obtain a more perfected, wholesome state, closer to Nirvana.

Maybe I'll go into the precepts next or perhaps into the meat of the practice - meditation. Thanks for reading.

Not exactly a New Years' Resolution, but...

I'm trying to simplify my life these days for a variety of reasons. Ultimately, I think I'll be a better person for me and a better person for those around me. One of the ways I've found to get back to the person I most value is to restart my Buddhism studies. Here's a quote from Albert Einstein about Buddhism:

"The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs, it would be Buddhism."

So, as a part of this, I'm listening to Zencast.org's podcasts, and today, a podcast of Thich Nhat Nanh giving a "dharma talk" (something akin to a sermon). From that talk:

"In Buddhism, the ultimate goal is Nirvana, the extinction of all suffering. But our suffering come from our wrong perceptions, our misunderstandings. And that is why the practice of meditation, the practice of looking deeply, is to remove our wrong perceptions. If we are able to remove our wrong perceptions, we will be able to be free from the afflictions and the sufferings that always arise from wrong perceptions."

For those of you unfamiliar with Buddhism, it is based upon on Four Noble Truths. Here is a brief explanation from the buddhanet website:

The Four Noble Truths

The first sermon that the Buddha preached after his enlightenment was about the four noble truths. The first noble truth is that life is frustrating and painful. In fact, if we are honest with ourselves, there are times when it is downright miserable. Things may be fine with us, at the moment, but, if we look around, we see other people in the most appalling condition, children starving, terrorism, hatred, wars, intolerance, people being tortured and we get a sort of queasy feeling whenever we think about the world situation in even the most casual way. We, ourselves, will some day grow old, get sick and eventually die. No matter how we try to avoid it, some day we are going to die. Even though we try to avoid thinking about it, there are constant reminders that it is true.

The second noble truth is that suffering has a cause. We suffer because we are constantly struggling to survive. We are constantly trying to prove our existence. We may be extremely humble and self-deprecating, but even that is an attempt to define ourselves. We are defined by our humility. The harder we struggle to establish ourselves and our relationships, the more painful our experience becomes.

The third noble truth is that the cause of suffering can be ended. Our struggle to survive, our effort to prove ourselves and solidify our relationships is unnecessary. We, and the world, can get along quite comfortably without all our unnecessary posturing. We could just be a simple, direct and straight-forward person. We could form a simple relationship with our world, our coffee, spouse and friend. We do this by abandoning our expectations about how we think things should be.

This is the fourth noble truth: the way, or path to end the cause of suffering. The central theme of this way is meditation. Meditation, here, means the practice of mindfulness/awareness, shamata/vipashyana in Sanskrit. We practice being mindful of all the things that we use to torture ourselves with. We become mindful by abandoning our expectations about the way we think things should be and, out of our mindfulness, we begin to develop awareness about the way things really are. We begin to develop the insight that things are really quite simple, that we can handle ourselves, and our relationships, very well as soon as we stop being so manipulative and complex.

The fourth noble truth, the way, is sometimes referred to as the "Eightfold path." More on this later.

3D Perspective Art

Like, wow, man. Cool. (via neatorama)

Chinese New Year

Sunday is the start of the Chinese New Year. It'll be the "Year of the Dog." Every year is year of the Dog in my house; spoiled animals that they are. At any rate here's a cool page that New York's Chinatown did outlining traditional munchies. If anyone wants to come to the parades with me (dragon puppets!) on Sunday (in Chicago), drop me a line.

Guess They Really Do Stunt Your Growth

I shouldn't be laughing, but the combo headlne and picture makes me laugh. It's not funny, I know. (via Gridskipper)

Dust Bowl Photographs - Farm Security Administration

Here's a link to pictures taken during the dust bowl migration. Even though I've seen these before, I'm always a little bit awestruck at the grittiness and hard times evoked.

These images depict people who were driven from their homes in the Southwestern states by drought and economic depression and migrated to the West in search of work. Most of the images in this archive were taken in the mid to late 1930s by Dorothea Lange, one of several photographers hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to document migrant life. Many of the FSA photographs were used to publicize the deplorable living and working conditions of the migrants.

The images in this collection are part of a larger collection of FSA photographs in the Library of Congress’ American Memory Historical Collections. For copyright and credit information consult the Library of Congress’ Restrictions on FSA/OWI Black-and-White Images.

If you would like further information on the CSU, Bakersfield library’s collection of FSA photographs, please contact Librarian Christy Gavin (cgavin@csub.edu or 661-664-3237).

(via Neatorama)

Lenticular Clouds

I have never seen this type of cloud formation before:

Very interesting. (via Neatorama) These are formed by "mountain waves" - strong waves of atmospheric pressure that form as air moves over mountains. Given the right conditions, moisture in these waves condense to form clouds.