Introduction to the Eightfold Path

hi folks today we're going to discuss the Eightfold Path what is it [Music] so I'm Doug Smith I'm the state director at the secular Buddhist Association that secular Buddhism org please go ahead and subscribe if you want to watch more videos about early Buddhism secularism philosophy and these kinds of related topics and stick around to the end I'll give you a URL of a very good general introduction to the Eightfold Path what is the Eightfold Path that's a huge topic in a certain sense the Eightfold Path is the whole of the Dharma the first one of the first of the elements of the Eightfold Path is right view now there's many ways of understanding right view but I think that the best way to start is to say that right view is the understanding that there is a distinction between healthy and unhealthy ways of thinking and of acting that there's a skillful and unskillful ways of doing things without that general background general ethical understanding of the way we behave in the world you're really not going to have any interest in a path it's supposed to make life better because you have to begin with some understanding that life can get better that we can get more skillful that we can get more healthy in the way that we interact so that's right whew next is is right intention where we set up an intention therefore to behave in a certain way to behave in a way that's more skillful we set up the intention to to try not to harm other beings start trying to harm ourselves and so right intention is is is the second of these first two factors which we can think of as the wisdom factors we begin with some modicum of wisdom that gets us towards trying to behave in a better way we start with a modicum of wisdom in a way it's supposed to impact our intention in daily life so those are the first two and that's the wisdom part of the path so the next three path factors have to do with ethics the pali word is sila and the first of these has to do with with rites speech how we interact with other with others around us both speaking and nowadays we would say texting telephoning emailing whatever there are various aspects of right speech a right speech in in Buddhism is one of the most fruitful topics and one of the one of the ones I think that we have the most to learn from but the basic idea is obviously we don't lie we tried to be as much as possible truthful with other people trying to mislead and this is this is an aspect of right speech that of course autism shares with other religious and non-religious traditions but also we're supposed to avoid harsh speech we're supposed to avoid divisive speech that is to say speech that divides one person from another that makes one person dislike another hate another we're supposed to also avoid idle speech or gossip that is speech that has no particular and except to waste time now with all of these aspects of speech we can see that there are pluses and minuses we can understand that voice sometimes it's necessary to to speak harshly and there are certain circumstances under which which that might be necessary it might be necessary even to speak in a divisive way if if somebody's being harmful in some way and you have to warn people from them sometimes gossip can be useful if we're getting across information that's important to people's lives so we shouldn't take these as Commandments but rather as general of general framework around which we should think to organize our speech such that we're being less harmful in a general way and if harsh speech is to no end in other words if there's no real point to the harsh speech if we're just a venting our anger maybe there's a better way of behaving in that circumstance where we're not being so so harsh let's say so that's right speech right action this is these are in many ways not that controversial when we should avoid killing we should avoid stealing we should avoid sexual misconduct these are the these are classic ideas and in many different cultures around the world one might say even in all cultures but there they hold a central place in Buddhism and even if we're not overtly killing or stealing were committing sexual misconduct it still was a place that we can inhabit for a while and try to think about the ways in which we may commit theft in small fashions with the ways that we may take life in small fashions there really are necessary for us killing small animals killing insects may be necessary in certain circumstances but may not be necessary in all circumstances so that's a way that we can expand our practice so any event that's that's great action Right Livelihood is similar to right action that is to say we shouldn't involve ourselves and in a kind of livelihood in in a job that causes harm to other people ha to other beings harm that's not necessary and again it may be that our job is not one that's obviously harmful but maybe it's harmful in small ways now I mean of course every job probably has some harm in it somewhere so part of that awareness may involve a kind of thinking about that and how that impacts us within the Buddha's lifetime he had a group of livelihoods that he considered wrong livelihoods these were very specific things like not trading and living beings not trading in let's say slave the slave trade not trading in poisons not trading in armaments weapons and not trading in meat these were things that the Buddha considered wrong livelihood because they were directly involved in the harming of other beings but he she kept it rather specific he did not include for example a soldiery in in wrong livelihood which is something he could have done but he didn't we should look at his his list as something just as an inspiration for ourselves to try to think about our our own livelihood and and how it might be dangerous or hurtful to others and ourselves those three aspects are constitute the ethical part the last three are the meditative part of the Eightfold Path and that begins with with right effort now right effort is the the aspect of the meditative path or Bhavana cultivation where we cultivate certain kinds of states and ourselves and effort of course right effort is is the aspect where we try to arise and art make a rise in ourselves those states that we find to be healthy to be beneficial to be skillful in the world and we try to we try to minimize those states that are unhealthy or unhelpful to ourselves so for example we might find that being friendly and being a patient our healthy states are helpful states so when we see ourselves being patient or friendly we try to cultivate that we try to remain that state remain with ourselves as long as possible and if we find ourselves in a state where we're not where we don't feel patients where we don't feel friendliness we try in whatever way we can to make those states arise so the patient's arises such that friendliness arises if it's not there and similarly if there's a state that's that's unhealthy that's unhelpful such as let's say hatred or greed anger that we are aware of that when it happens and we do what we can to try to minimize those states when they're there that is part of the effort that we make there's aspects to effort where we can overdo it or we can under do it you can overdo it and become very over rocked we can become overly stiff-necked we can become overly self-righteous which is a problem we can we can do things in such a way that we actually make it worse for ourselves if we're doing if we're efforting as they say efforting too much but on the other side we can also make things worse on ourselves if we're not putting in enough effort if we kind of get overly lazy if we forget about these kinds of things so that's right effort that's the first aspect of the meditative path that leads into right mindfulness now mindfulness many of us we'll know is probably the most famous form of Buddhist meditation right now and it involves getting ourselves calming ourselves down and getting ourselves into a state of open and non-judgmental awareness of the world and of ourselves we make ourselves aware of the state of our own body at the state of our own mind those kinds of states that we find pleasant and unpleasant when they happen we make ourselves aware of the emotional state of our minds when we're in states of anger when we're in states of happiness when we're in states of kindness patience equanimity and so on and without that awareness of course we have nothing to work with we need to know that we're in these states in order to be able to work on them in order to be able to put up the effort and also this kind of mindfulness enables us or helps us to be aware of the changing nature of reality of realities difficult nature of the fact that there is the reality doesn't provide a secure refuge it makes us aware of the fact that our own minds are continually changing our own experiences are continually changing so this is these are all aspects of right mindfulness in itself is a very very large topic the last aspect of the Eightfold Path is right concentration right concentration is in the old time in the original texts understood as a johning meditation which is to say absorption meditation absorption and a particular kind of mental state particular kinds of mental states there are four of them that are pleasant they they arise initially during long periods of meditation for most of us has an experience of joy of rapture bliss if we focus on that and make that that state or those those related states focus of the mind and sort of enter into them an absorptive fashion where we absorbed by them those can be very very pleasant states of abiding as they're called and can as a result be very happy and useful States healthy states for us so long as we don't assume that that is the aim of practice the aim of practice is not to sit in in jhamak States of course the name of practice is to use these states as a technique for creating happiness within ourselves that we can then take into the world in our daily life and even here even though John ik states are themselves very difficult to achieve and take a lot of effort and so therefore don't tend to be the kinds of things that lay people are very interested in nevertheless we can still say that there is an aspect of the path of right concentration that we should we should cultivate that is to say the factor of calmness of focus even one pointedness so that we can use that ability of calm to get towards a better understanding of mindfulness of towards a deeper kind of mindfulness so those are the those are the eight aspects of the Eightfold Path in a nutshell now for those of us those of you who are interested in a more detailed introduction there's a very good ebook or PDF out by bhikkhu bodhi called the noble eightfold path and i'm gonna include a URL to it down on the screen here that is that is something that I think many many people who want a more detailed introduction to path would find very very interesting now that said this is bhikkhu bodhi is as a traditional monk in his lengthy introduction fateful path he does include a more traditional interpretation of such features as rebirth and so on and those of us who come from a more secular background you can overlook those we read through them skip them they're not very long most of what he deals with is an understanding of the Eightfold Path from the early tradition hoped that that would be useful to too many people who are watching this video even if necessarily interested in the most traditional aspects so I hope that that was helpful to you and if you are interested in these videos please consider subscribing I will have I have a subscribe button here for we generally deal with issues of early Buddhism secularism secular Buddhism and sort of related philosophical topics and if you have any questions and comments please feel free to also leave them up in the section down below I always like to hear anything you have on your minds thanks very much for watching and I hope to see you on the next one

Channel: Doug's Dharma

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Id: bi8OeCuzHKc

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 24 2017