Teaching #4 - The Eightfold Path
The eight-fold path is often represented as an eight-spoked wheel. I have one tattooed on my left anterior forearm as a reminder of my path.
The Buddha laid a path for us to follow that examines our deepest motivations and separates them into eight areas, commonly illustrated as an eight-spoked wheel.
The systematic approach to achieving freedom from the effects of suffering/dissatisfaction is called the Eightfold Path.
The eight-fold path is a way of living this precious life that replaces our desire for instant gratification of our cravings or attachments with our aversions or the thoughts we push away.
By keeping these guidelines in mind, we can make wiser choices in our everyday lives.
The Eightfold Path’s Guidelines
Each of the guidelines the Buddha included are life-long practices. Unlike cammandments of strict rules that carry penalties if broken, the practices are more like the directions of a compass (hence it’s compass-like representation).
No ship can head true North 100 percent of the time, nor can we drive a car in. straight line without fail. Instead, we do our best and make tiny corrections when we realize we’ve become slightly or grossly off course.
One final point about the eightfold path is that it’s not sequential. We work on all eight guidelines simultaneously. That’s because life sin’t sequential. Life doesn’t wait for you to deal with one challenge at a time and instead dumps 99 of them on you at once.
Here are the eight practices involved:
Wise View - choosing to consider all points of view instead of insisting on our own.
Wise Intention - choosing an appropriate intention for each life situation; what’s the wisest intention when having a difficult conversation with a loved one? What’s a wisest intention for not telling the whole truth?
Wise Speech - choosing our words to fit the occasion, even if the if that means dropping the periodic but well-intentioned, fuck, shit, and/or sonovabitch.
Wise Actions - are those rooted in harmlessness; those that move you closer to being free from dissatisfaction or those that don’t harm others.
Wise Livelihood - is earning one's living through wholesome avenues that do not harm oneself or others. I once quit a job working for a software firm whose products ultimately supported methods of warfare because it didn’t feel like this was eventually honoring the freedom of poeple targeted by munitions.
Wise Efforts - the purposeful dedication of our energy toward what is wholesome (i.e., helpful) and abandoning what is unwholesome (i.e., unhelpful).
Wise Mindfulness - remembering that all things are in a state of flux; that nothing is permanent and everything changes. To expect change to cease is like being shocked when your hair turns gray. Duh, it happens.
Wise Meditation is spent in relative silence, allowing the sounds, scents, odors, light or its absence, and activity surrounding you to enter your consciousness without engaging with them. It’s not a time to try to quiet your mind—that’s only possible after you’re dead.