All that I am is the result of all that I
have thought.
and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow:
our life is the creation of our mind.
If a man acts or speaks with an impure mind,
suffering follows him as the wheel of the cart follows
the beast that draws the cart.
What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday,
and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow:
our life is the creation of our mind.
If a man speaks or acts with a pure mind,
joy follows him as his own shadow.
INTRODUCTION TO THE EIGHT-FOLD PATH
THE EIGHT-FOLD PATH, the Fullness of the Fourth
Noble Truth, offers a timeless blueprint for living the spiritually
realized life. It was first offered by the Buddha at his very first
sermon, called the “Deer Park Sermon,” delivered at Benares,
India.
Here for the first time the Four Noble Truths were
presented, followed
As the Buddha introduced his first teaching on the
Middle Path, he instructed the monks as follows:
1. Now this, monks, is the noble truth of pain:
birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, death is
painful, sorrow, lamentation, dejection and despair are painful.
Contact with unpleasant things is painful, not getting what one
wishes is painful. In short the five groups of grasping are
painful.
2. Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the
cause of pain: the craving which tends to rebirth, combined with
pleasure and lust, finding pleasure here and there; namely the
craving for passion, the craving for existence, the craving for
nonexistence.
3. Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the
cessation of pain, the cessation without a remainder of craving,
the abandonment, forsaking release, nonattachment.
4. Now this, monks, is the noble truth of the way
that leads to the cessation of pain: this is the noble Eight-fold
Way; namely Right View, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action,
Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right
Concentration.
A chapter has been created for each, illustrating
how each has been applied in my life and how I have in turn taught
its value and use to others. Each of the eight chapters offers
practical, real-life examples, along with exercises to assist the
reader in integrating each step into his or her own life.
The first two steps, Right View and Right Thought,
give the reader the preliminary conditions that must be established
in the individual’s life in order to make further spiritual
progress. The third, fourth and fifth— Right Speech, Right Action,
Right Livelihood—speak of one’s willingness to align these most
important aspects of life with one’s spiritual intentions. Here the
practitioner learns to live his life consistent with this high
aspiration. Also, the foundation is laid to progress to the final
three— Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration.
These final three are the fundamental conditions
necessary to progress toward ultimately achieving an awakened mind
or enlightenment.
The Eight-fold Path is a methodical process for
moving toward an enlightened state of being using spiritual tools
to get there. Tibetan Buddhism has preserved the enormous treasury
of what is original Indian Buddhism, the studies of the ultimate
nature of being. To attain Buddhahood /Christhood requires a
radical shift in consciousness. Buddhism teaches that the old
paradigm has to go. Suffering, victimhood and separation become
union, empowerment and oneness when one spends years, if not
lifetimes, studying and practicing Buddhist principles. The
Eight-fold Path is key to this growth.