This is the unedited script of a talk which I wrote for a beginners’ course which Bahiya ran at the Bristol Buddhist Centre in September 2006
It’s been great to be given the opportunity to look again – and look further – into this really fundamental teaching of the Buddha. One of the things I love about spiritual practise is that you don’t just do something and head on to the next thing…. there is a richness and depth in re-visiting the familiar, going deeper with it and understanding with more and more of oneself over a period of years.
Last week Kamalamani talked about the Four Noble Truths. The Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path are inextricably linked:
There is suffering
There is a cause of suffering
There is an end to suffering
There is a way leading to the end of suffering.
Now last week you perhaps began to get a glimpse that on one level the teaching of the Buddha is simple. Very simple. And yet on another level, it’s not simple at all! When you start really to look into what’s being said, what it means for you, when you start really to question for yourself what you are being taught, it’s maybe not so straight forward as you thought. That’s fine! There’s a traditional story from which we have a kind of saying that the teaching of the Buddha is so simple that a child of 3 could understand it, yet an old person of 80 cannot put it into practice.
I’m saying all this by way of preamble because when I talk about the Noble Eightfold Path you will discover right at the start that there are some seeming contradictions. This is a good thing so look out for it and value it. It’s the contradictions and the questions that are like grit in the oyster of our spiritual practice – so I hope you have lots of questions.
Path or Flower?
Now the very first thing to say about the Noble Eightfold Path is that if you just think of it as a path to get you from A to B then you’re missing out. In the original Sanskrit it is called the arya-astangika-marga.
arya means noble or holy
asta means eight
marga means path
but anga actually means limb, member or even shoot.
So if you hear “Noble Eightfold Path” you might get an image – as someone said recently in our study group – of a lovely yellow brick road leading off over the horizon towards enlightenment. Now this can be helpful – I’ve always quite liked the idea of the spiritual life as a journey, but it can also cause problems if one gets too literal with it. At times I’ve got so caught up in the idea of “getting somewhere” on this yellow brick road that I’ve felt like I was battling my way up the north face of the Eiger with gritted teeth. At such times it can be good to remember that there is another way of seeing the so-called Noble Eightfold “Path”, and that is as as flower or tree of which the various petals or limbs gradually unfold until one is, as it were, “blossoming” into enlightenment.
I like the fact that there’s something for everyone here – if you want to see it as a gung-ho, noble quest, striding forth, you can. If you want to see it as gradually cultivating and unfolding yourself and your spiritual qualities, that’s fine too! Across the whole Buddhist World there are people following both approaches – and we could have a whole course just exploring that, and those differences. But what matters is that we are practising, that we are not just sitting round thinking what a good idea all these teachings are, but we’re actually setting out on the path ourself (or cultivating ways to help our own petals flop open!). I think what’s important is to be aware of which of these approaches engages your heart and mind and, if it’s helpful, to use the image as a tool. A final note on this, before I move on the “limbs” themselves, and that is that it may well be that at times your heart is into striding up that mountain and at other times you might need to be tending your flower (ie yourself AS the flower) in its pot.
The Path that is Two Paths
The next thing to say is that actually the Noble Eightfol Path is two paths, not one. I’ll just recap the eight limbs or stages and then explain:
Perfect Vision
Perfect Emotion
Perfect Speech
Perfect Action
Perfect Livelihood
Perfect Effort
Perfect Awareness
Perfect Samadhi
The way it divides into two paths is that the first of the eight, Perfect Vision, is seen as the Path of Vision and the remaining 7 limbs are seen as the Path of Transformation. There’s a lot one could say about this and Sangharakshita’s book, Vision and Transformation, goes into this in some detail.
Sangharakshita says, “Perfect Vision represents the phase of initial spiritual insight and experience, whereas the rest of the Eightfold Path represents the transformation of one’s whole being , in all its heights and depths, in all its aspects, in accordance with that initial insight and experience.”
The Path of Vision
The Path starts for all of us with some kind of Vision, often an experience of suffering or sometimes a seemingly spontaneous glimpse of something profound which inspires us. To return to our images, we might see it as the glimpse of a mountain top towards which we want to move or one could see it as the glimpse of something tiny and embryonic which we sense can unfold into much, much more.
When we say “vision”, it’s not just an intellectual thing. We’re talking about something which goes beyond a dry intellectual understanding – a kind of spark which ignites within us, for whatever reason. The reason we refer to “perfect” vision is that we’re talking about a glimpse of something that is in line with reality, with truth, with the way things really are. Cultivating or treading the Path of Vision is about trying more and more to see things the way they really are, for example recognising that things we often think of permanent are, in fact, impermanent – the job, the house… and especially, of course, people. Clinging to the view that these things are permanent and unchangeable is one of the causes of suffering (the second Noble Truth).
One final thing to say about the Path of Vision is that it isn’t some great lofty thing out there and over there… something that we come to “at some point”. Everyone here is already on the Path of Vision. The fact that you have walked in through the door of the Buddhist Centre, that you have signed up for this 8-week course was motivated by something, some experience, some glimpse, some inspiration. If we’ve time at the end it might be interesting for us to share these experiences, if people would like to.
Path of Transformation – the remaining 7 steps or limbs…
So, we’ve had our glimpse of Perfect Vision, and now we come to the remaining 7 stages of the path.
Perfect Emotion
Perfect Emotion is the second limb of the eight-fold path and the first step on the “path of transformation”. This is very significant. We can’t begin to transform, can’t begin to move along the path unless “our heart is in it”, unless we are emotionally engaged.
How often have you tried to make changes in your life, even on a mundane level and encountered this struggle? eg trying to lose weight, take up exercise or pursue a course of study? We have a great idea and it seems fantastic. Yes! Let’s do it!… and then we fizzle out after a bit.
Sangharakshita says that “For most of us, the central problem of the spiritual life is to find emotional equivalents for our intellectual understanding.”
So how do we engage our hearts as well as our minds? Well, traditionally there are meditation practises which help us to do this. The “Brahma Viharas” or sublime-abodes are a practical way of helping s to cultivate kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy and equanimity. Tonight we’ll be learning the metta Bhavana which is the first of the brahma viharas and the foundation for all the others. So before you go home tonight, you’ll have had at least some taste of how to begin to cultivate Perfect Emotion.
The other very simple way to cultivate Perfect Emotion is to practise dana or generosity. This is one of the basic “Buddhist Virtues” and it’s said that even if one can’t practice meditation, even if one is having difficulty practising ethics, then at least one can give, one can practise generosity. We cannot overestimate how important the transforming effect of this can be.
A final note on Perfect Emotion before we move on, and that concerns ritual. Now for man people the connotation of ritual is “rites and rituals” – a kind of worthy “going through the motions”… (I always think of being at school at having to stand in assembly and say prayers and the only thing I was ever truly aware of at that time was that I always seemed to have a runny nose and I never seemed to have a hankie…. Anyhow. The Buddhist perspective on ritual is that it serves and important role in helping us to develop Perfect Emotion, helping us to engage our hearts as well as our minds. We practise the 7-fold puja (puja means worship), we chant, we build shrines… Now just as I was saying earlier, that some people’s hearts engage with the image of treading a path, others with the image of a flower unfolding, just so with ritual: it doesn’t work for everyone and it’s not obligatory. It’s good not to make a premature decision about this and also to recognise that one’s relationship with it may change over time. But ritual can be a very powerful way to cultivate positive emotion.
Perfect Speech
This brings us to the part of the path or flower which concerns ethics. The week after next, Chittamani is going to talk more about this, but we’ll make a start tonight.
So the first part of ethics that we’re considering is Perfect Speech. Now it’s interesting that speech has a whole limb or petal to itself. It’s not just lumped in with other kinds of ethical behaviour in the next section of the path, which is Perfect Action.
Buddhism recognises what a huge effect speech has on our hearts and minds and so no only does speech have a whole section of the Noble Eightfold Path to itself, it constitutes no less than four of the ten ethical precepts which one takes when one is ordained.
So how can we practise perfect speech? Well, traditionall we look at it both in terms of the negative (what we’re not going to do) and the positive (what we aspire to do). So…. we…
avoid untruthful speech and practise truthful speech
avoid unkind/harsh speech and practise kindly speech
avoid harmful speech and practise helpful speech
avoid disharmonious speech and practise harmonious speech.
Sangharakshita explores this more in his book The Ten Pillars which is all about the 10 ethical precepts and I’m sure Chittamani will say a lot more about this when he’s here.
Perfect Action
So having talked about Perfect Speech we can go to the next step which is Perfect Action, the step of the path concerned with transforming ourselves by ethical action. Now an important thing to say about the Buddhist conception of ethics is that the Buddhist precepts should not be confused with any Christian idea of morality or seen as “laws” or commandments. Buddhist Ethical precepts are not imposed but rather they are often described as “training principles”.
Their significance is not theological (in the sense of obedience to some deity). Their significance is psychological. That is to say, acting unethically (or unskilfully, as we usually say) has an effect on our minds which prevents us from moving forwards on the path, prevents us from unfolding our true spiritual potential.
It’s been said that the ethical precepts describe how an enlightened being would spontaneously act. So observing the precepts helps us to have a glimpse of that. It gives us a taste of what it is like to more away from being motivated by greed, hatred and delusion (about which Simhanada will talk more on week 6 of this course when you get to the Tibetan Wheel of Life).
So what are the ethical precepts? We’ve looked at speech already, which is the fourth of the 5 precepts which are traditionally chanted. One takes a further 5 at ordination, of which 3 relate to speech, but the main list of 5 ethical precepts is as follows:
avoid harming beings cultivate kindness
avoid taking the not-given cultivate generosity
avoid sexual misconduct cultivate stillness, simplicity & contentment
avoid untruthful speech cultivate truthful speech
avoid intoxicants cultivate mindfulness, clear & radiant
Right Livelihood
So we’ve learnt that an important aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path is that our actions (including our speech) have consequences for whether we can progress along the path. The next limb of the path recognises that , if we spend the greater part of the day at work, it has a big effect on us and our ability to practise ethics. It’s great to come to the Buddhist Centre and practise ethics and read Dharma books… but how do we relate this to how most of us spend the best part of our waking hours, ie at work?
The practise of Right Livelihood was stressed by the Buddha and he gave specific teachings about the kinds of occupations which would be unhelpful to people wanting to practise the spiritual life. For example, working in a slaughterhouse would make it impossible to practise the first ethical precept about not harming living beings and so on.
But Right Livelihood (just the like the precepts) isn’t just about avoiding the unskilful. It’s also about cultivating the positive and I love this facet of the path. Work as spiritual practise has always fascinated me and, if you think about it, if we can practise and work at the same time it gives us lots more time. Maybe we sit on our cushions for 30-40 minutes a day, or even an hour or two. But most of us are at work for about 7-8 hours. There’s no time now to go into detail now, but we can bring many facets of our practise, many limbs of the Noble Eightfold Path right into the midst of our everyday life – and also have a very positive effect by doing so. I’ve written an article specifically about this and it’s on my website, which is on the handout I’ve written for tonight.
Phew. So now we’ve explored 5 of the 8 limbs of the Buddha’s Noble Eightfold Path. So we’ve got 3 to go – but the further along the path you get, the less there is to say, so we won’t be long now!
Perfect Effort
Now I like the teaching on Perfect Effort – probably because I’ve had some very funny ideas about it over the years – especially when I’ve been clinging on by my finger nails on the north face of the Eiger! The spiritual life is an active life and it does need effort, but not just any old effort, Perfect Effort. So there are two things I want to mention in respect of Perfect Effort. One’s a story and one’s a list:
There’s a story about a disciple of the Buddha’s called Sona. …
Parable of the Lute
“Once the Blessed One lived near Rajagaha on Vulture Peak. At that time, while the venerable Sona lived alone and secluded in the Cool Forest, this thought occurred to him:
“Of those disciples of the Blessed One who are energetic, I am one. Yet, my mind has not found freedom.” Now, the Blessed One, perceiving in his own mind the venerable Sona’s thoughts, left Vulture Peak, and, as speedily as a strong man might stretch his bent arm or bend his stretched arm, he appeared in the Cool Forest before the venerable Sona. And he said to the venerable Sona: “Sona, did not this thought arise in your mind:
‘Of those disciples of the Blessed One who are energetic, I am one. Yet, my mind has not found freedom.’”
” Yes, Lord.”
” Tell me, Sona, in earlier days were you not skilled in playing stringed music on a lute?”
” Yes, Lord.”
” And, tell me, Sona, when the strings of that lute were too taut, was then your lute tuneful and easily playable?”
” Certainly not, O Lord.”
” And when the strings of your lute were too loose, was then your lute tuneful and easily playable?”
” Certainly not, O Lord.”
” But when, Sona, the strings of your lute were neither too taut nor too loose, but adjusted to an even pitch, did your lute then have a wonderful sound and was it easily playable?”
“Certainly, O Lord.”
” Similarly, Sona, if energy is applied too strongly, it will lead to restlessness, and if energy is too lax, it will lead to lassitude. Therefore, Sona, keep your energy in balance and balance the Spiritual Faculties and in this way focus your intention.”
” Yes, O Lord,” replied the venerable Sona in assent.
Afterward, the venerable Sona kept his energy balanced behind the Spiritual Faculties, and in this way focused his attention. And the venerable Sona, living alone and secluded, diligent, ardent and resolute, soon realized here and now, through his own direct knowledge, that unequaled goal of the holy life.
So that’s the story of the Lute. The list is a nice practical one about using effort in relation to our mind and what we call our “mental states”. These can either be positive or negative, skilful or unskilful. Obviously the positive ones help us along the path and the negative ones don’t – you’ll perhaps hear more about this when you get to second ring on the Wheel of Life later in the course. There is a traditional teaching called “
” which is all about how we work with these different mental states, a bit like looking after a garden, the four efforts are: preventing, eradicating, cultivating or maintaining.
So we prevent the arising of unskilful mental states by guarding the gateways of the senses, by not letting in unskilful or unhelpful thoughts, patterns or habits, just as we prevent weeds from taking hold in a garden or on an allotment by covering the ground in black plastic or old carpet.
We eradicate unskilful mental states by noticing them and not letting them get a hold – a bit like hooking weeds out of the garden, before they’ve had a chance to really take a hold and start producing more seeds and more weeds…
We cultivate positive mental states through the practise of ethics and the metta Bhavana meditation we’ll be doing later, just as we cultivate the flowers we want in our gardens.
And when we’ve got our garden (or our mind) starting to be more how we want it to be, then we don’t just sit back, we have to maintain it and that means carrying on practising, pruning a bit here and there, hooking out the odd intrusive thought or weed and so on.
So that’s the Four Right Efforts: preventing, eradicating, cultivating and maintaining.
Perfect Awareness
The penultimate state of the path is Perfect Awareness, also translated as Perfect Mindfulness, tho’ the literal meaning is something like memory or recollection.
In order to come more and more into line with reality, in to move towards or unfold into our Perfect Vision, we need to be mindful, we need to be aware.
Traditionally there are 4 levels of mindfulness or awarness:
Awareness of Things
Awareness of Self
Awareness of Other People
Awareness of Reality/Truth/The Ultimate
This list of four begins with simply being aware of what we are doing while we are doing it – really noticing the dishes we are washing, the pavement we are walking on. We can gradually become more aware of ourselves – we do this with the mindfulness of breathing, where we gradually more and more aware of our breath. Just as in the metta Bhavana meditation, we can then extend this awareness out to other people and, ultimately, to reality itself.
Perfect Samadhi
This brings us right to the last Noble Truth which is Perfect Samadhi, a difficult word to translate. It’s sometimes translated as “Perfect Meditation” but that doesn’t quite do it, really. Literally it means “the state of being firmly fixed or established” either in terms of being concentrated on a single object, or more profoundly, that one’s whole being is established in a certain mode of consciousness or awareness in the sense of enlightenment or Buddhahood.
Sangharakshita talks more of this in “Vision and Transformation” but I suspect that we’ve probably had enough detail for one night. Let’s just say that in a way Perfect Samadhi might represent one of the peaks of the mountain we glimpsed at the beginning, but represents reaching there, rather that seeing it from a distance.
However, the story doesn’t end there. As I said at the beginning, spiritual practise isn’t a case of simply having a vision and getting from A to B as a one-off, linear activity. So let’s assume we get to a point of practising Perfect Samadhi. What do we see? Well, just like climbing a mountain, we get to that peak and look out, only to discover that actually the real mountain still lies ahead of us, we get a different glimpse of what Perfect Vision really is and so we have no choice but to set forth again on the path, to unfold the flower more and more deeply to allow our own natural purity and Buddha nature to unfold.
Recommended Reading:
Vision and Transformation – Sangharakshita
The Ten Pillars – Sangharakshita
The Path with Heart – Jack Kornfield
After the Ecstasy the Laundry – Jack Kornfield
Satyalila – September 2006
