Eightfold Path Fifth Factor - Right Livelihood
The fifth factor prompts you to ask yourself - Am I creating negative karma for myself with how I earn money? Does how I earn money cause harm to myself or others?
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Eightfold Path Fourth Factor - Right Action
In order to get free there are some changes we will need to make, some action that will need to be taken. T
he path to Right Action is structured by the Five Precepts:
1. Abstain from killing
2. Abstain from stealing or taking what is not freely offered
3. Abstain from sexual misconduct
4. Abstain from lying
5. Abstain from intoxicants (drugs and alcohol)
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Eightfold Path Third Factor - Communication & Right Speech
The three aspects of wrong speech - unskillful speech - ways that we create negative karma for ourselves with our communications are gossiping, harsh speech, and dishonesty.
How often in a conversation with another are you talking about someone who is not present? How often are you using your language in an intentionally harsh way with the intention of causing harm. How often are you omitting the truth, exaggerating, minimizing, or rewriting the story to better serve you.
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Eightfold Path Second Factor - Intention
This Buddhist path of mindfulness is the key to changing our actions, to changing our intentions, and our relationship to our mind. The action of responding to what's happening, both internal and external is how we get free.
You decide what your intention is and the big picture, how free do you wanna be?
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Eightfold Path First Factor - Understanding
Awareness and understanding are ultimately what will allow us to change our relationship to our present time experiences and end the cycles of craving and suffering.
The first part is understanding the Four Truths. As we gain this understanding we begin to see ourselves and our experiences through the lens of the Four Truths.
Finally, understanding that it's really quite simple - You're either attached or nonattached, you're either clinging and craving or not.
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The Eightfold Path - An Overview The Eightfold Path can be broken down into three sections - Meditation, ethics, and wisdom.
Meditation includes mindfulness and concentration based meditations, the heart practices - compassion, forgiveness, loving kindness.
Ethics is the renunciation of creating negative karma for ourselves. The intention to not cause harm to ourselves or each other.
Wisdom is understanding the reality that we live in and trying to be in harmony with the reality of impermanence.
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The Third Noble Truth is Nibbana, which can be translated as removing from the fire. It is the extinguishing of that which has been burning us.
When we hold on to things that are impermanent, when we cling, when we are self-centered we get burned. Nibbana is freedom, Nibbana is learning to live life on life’s terms so that you can enjoy the human reality without making it worse.
When we reach Nibbana we are able to say - Right now it’s like this and it’s super unpleasant AND I am totally at ease with it.
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The second noble truth explains that the cause of suffering is craving - our repetitive experience of craving. All of our suffering is caused by our craving, none of it is caused by external circumstances.
Craving also includes aversion - When we are aversive, we are craving for the painful experience to go away or be more pleasant than it is.
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After the Buddha reached enlightenment he had to figure out the best way to teach others this path to freedom. As he began to teach others he developed the Four Noble Truths and Eight Fold Path.
In this Dharma talk Noah will give a brief overview of the path, but in the following weeks will dive deeper into each of the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path.
We all have the ability to respond to what is happening in our lives without suffering about it.
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After the Buddha reached enlightenment he had to figure out the best way to teach others this path to freedom. As he began to teach others he developed the Four Noble Truths and Eight Fold Path.
In this Dharma talk Noah will give a brief overview of the path, but in the following weeks will dive deeper into each of the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path.
We all have the ability to respond to what is happening in our lives without suffering about it.
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The Buddha characterized this path as being counter-instinctual to human beings: the natural human instinct is to resist, avoid, or meet with aversion all things that are unpleasant, and to grasp at, hold on to, and crave all things that are pleasurable.
He explained that his experience along the whole spiritual path was one that went "against the stream" of ordinary human consciousness.
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After experiencing both extremes of life, from gluttonous attachment to pleasure to radical rejection of all things pleasant, from aversion to discomfort to attachment to pain. Suddenly the Buddha (then Sid) could see that he needed to find some balance, he needed to find a middle path
Mindfulness starts to reveal to us that it's not so much what's happening as how we are relating to what's happening. Mindfulness reveals the impermanent, the unreliable or unsatisfactory and the impersonal. Buddhism says, if you are mindful, if you practice, if you follow this path, you can come to a place of non suffering. Freedom, from the definition of Nirvana of enlightenment, is that you can be free from suffering in this lifetime.
Mindfulness starts to reveal to us that it's not so much what's happening as how we are relating to what's happening. Mindfulness reveals the impermanent, the unreliable or unsatisfactory and the impersonal. Buddhism says, if you are mindful, if you practice, if you follow this path, you can come to a place of non suffering. Freedom, from the definition of Nirvana of enlightenment, is that you can be free from suffering in this lifetime.
Mindfulness starts to reveal to us that it's not so much what's happening as how we are relating to what's happening. Mindfulness reveals the impermanent, the unreliable or unsatisfactory and the impersonal. Buddhism says, if you are mindful, if you practice, if you follow this path, you can come to a place of non suffering. Freedom, from the definition of Nirvana of enlightenment, is that you can be free from suffering in this lifetime.
Mindfulness starts to reveal to us that it's not so much what's happening as how we are relating to what's happening. Mindfulness reveals the impermanent, the unreliable or unsatisfactory and the impersonal. Buddhism says, if you are mindful, if you practice, if you follow this path, you can come to a place of non suffering. Freedom, from the definition of Nirvana of enlightenment, is that you can be free from suffering in this lifetime.
Mindfulness starts to reveal to us that it's not so much what's happening as how we are relating to what's happening. Mindfulness reveals the impermanent, the unreliable or unsatisfactory and the impersonal. Buddhism says, if you are mindful, if you practice, if you follow this path, you can come to a place of non suffering. Freedom, from the definition of Nirvana of enlightenment, is that you can be free from suffering in this lifetime.
We can end suffering in this lifetime with our own efforts, but the meditation practice is only one part of this path to freedom.
The Five Precepts: 1. Abstain form taking life 2. Abstain from taking what is not given 3. Abstain from sexual misconduct 4. Abstain from lying or harmful speech 5. Abstain from drugs and alcohol
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What do you find unacceptable? Acceptance is not the same as complacency. The more mindful we are, the more we can see that everything is constantly changing. Understanding with wisdom that everything is impermanent and accepting this is the reality
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It's not going to work, but go for it anyway. Live Dharma Q&A with Noah Levine
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