The Noble Eightfold Path (2): Right Intention

right intention is the topic for today some Sun kapa and right intention is an attempt in English to express what this means and there are various translations of some tsongkhapa I think that right intention will do for now but it must be remembered that it's an emotional activity of the mind it's not merely intellectual activity of the mind it's an attitude of the heart towards the world towards the experience in the world so what we really need to reflect on is the relationship between the Four Noble Truths that is right view and the various other kind of right view that I discussed in the previous talk and right intention at first when I read about the Four Noble Truths right view what followed it this right intention it was not obvious why these attitudes would follow from the Four Noble Truths because the basic Four Noble Truths is their suffering in the world the cause of suffering is that everything is impermanent that there's the impermanence Nietzsche dukkha anata and it's your relationship to those if you understood that why would you suddenly desist from ill-will harmful intentions and clinging or greed why would that follow from that it's just a statement of facts about the world the universe is everything is impermanent and why would that radically alter your emotional attitude so this is what you want to reflect on is why does right intention arrive and arise from right view it will tell you about the nature of right view so if you look at right intention first of all there's three factors in it the first two is non anger or the absence of ill-will the second one is the absence of harmful intentions sometimes it's translated as cruelty the absence of cruelty but actually it's just the absence of harm and many of you are familiar with this word ahimsa ahimsa non-harmful Ness Gandhi was very big on the ahimsa movement himsa is harmfulness and uh him says non harmfulness and the third factor is nee comma or renunciation so you want to reflect on if we could summarize these two it would be non greed and non anger or in the other the other order non anger and non greed now remember whenever the Buddhist summarizes his teachings he says it's about non-greed non hatred non delusion so the the three the summary of it is greed hatin hatred and delusion are the problems the solution is non greed non hatred non delusion so in right intention you have the two main factors which are the they arise out of delusion or misunderstandings so right view is all about right understanding the overcoming of delusion misunderstandings about the nature of reality and that is the root for both ill-will and greed so in right intention suddenly makes sense out of delusion Rises greed and hatred and out of right understanding rises the opposite non greed and non hatred so let's take a look at the first two factors non anger and non harm sometimes people translate non anger as or think it's synonymous with goodwill what but it doesn't say goodwill it says non ill-will is the literal translation of right intention non ill-will doesn't say goodwill non ill-will the absence of ill-will and the absence of harmful intentions doesn't say good intentions or compassionate action it doesn't say in the positive form and I think there's a very very important reason for this it's not in that positive form because there are a number of positive wholesome mental states that partake of non ill-will and non harmful intent but are not positive intent there's something called neutral and in fact the this experience of equanimity and a number of other deep serenity practices are ill-will and the intent to harm is absolutely absent in those states but they don't participate in goodwill or compassion so you know they're not meta and Karuna meta and Karuna also function so Meza and Karuna loving kindness and compassion also fulfill right intention they both have non ill-will and non harmfulness in them but it shouldn't be mistaken that you must be in a constant state of positive emotions such as meta and Karuna the third factor is renunciation Nate , and it is also not necessarily the to be translated as generosity it's the absence of greed is what it is the absence of craving and desire and so again it's put in this neutral kind of condition because there are many states were just of contentment which are you're not feeling generous or some sort of positive desire to act and distribute things in the world but what is absent is the desire to collect things hold things keep things in other words craving of some sort so I think the way it's put is very careful by the Buddha and I see people making mistakes even I noticed be Kabaddi emphasizes the positive form and I really think it's very important to just say that it's the absence of the negative form so we see that this is a this triad of greed hatred and delusion keeps coming up in the teachings of the Buddha as a summary and we can now if you need to remember quickly and clearly what the first two factors of the path is right understanding and right intention that the right understanding is the absence of delusion and the right intention is the presence of non ill will and non harm and non greed so the opposite of greed hatred and delusion non delusion non agreed non hatred this is a way of organizing the vast teachings of the Buddha you need these frameworks and when you have the frameworks you can meet all kinds of detailed teachings and new teachings and you have a pattern which you can put them in it's like understanding the principles of mathematics rather than just memorizing the x table you start to know how to do it so you can actually digest the large bodies of information if you have frameworks to put them in so intention is also related to that story the Buddha talks about when he was a bodhisattva he sat down and he decided that that he would divide his thought processes into two heaps and one would be unwholesome and one would be wholesome and the unwholesome ones were thoughts that he had that could be regretted that were tainted had problems to them and then it was another type of thought which was wholesome and there was never any regrets from having them so he made this strong determination that he would regulate his thinking process something that I suppose people are inclined to try to change that but most people are having myriad of thoughts come up and there of all kinds and the idea of controlling them it often just does not occur to the ordinary person they occurred to the Buddha to control his thinking and that he would definitely not think certain thoughts and that other thoughts when they came up would be welcomed and maintained and so he gave it a whirl and he said it worked it was very very good when I declined to think these unwholesome thoughts when I dismissed them and replaced them I found this a very very successful technique so actually right intention is a form of meditation it's a form of very high standards of mindfulness of the mind so it's actually fits very nicely under the third category of mindfulness mindfulness of the mind chitta new piscina that is a high awareness whether one is angry or not greedy or not deluded or not expansive expansive mind or not concentrated mind or not so this this is a form of mindfulness practice and it's the sec factor of the path it's right in tension and so we're actually incorporating this into the higher parts of the path you will see this basically come up in a little more expanded form under right effort as well it's very very closely connected with right effort what are wrong efforts there's two wrong efforts to be freed from and there's two right efforts to be developed our two types of mental states to defeat it out on a right effort so that's very closely connected with right intentional the next part of right intention that you need to see is that it precedes right speech and right action so it you can't have right speech and right action if you don't understand what right intention is so you will see that the he takes the subtlest thing that is the mind your intentions toward the world precede your speech because where does your speech come from comes out of your intentions and so if you haven't it you can't just have right speech you need right intention first and that informs and spontaneously produces right speech right speech is very very difficult to do it's one of the things that happens very very fast in your interactions with people so how do you do right speech you do it by establishing yourself in right intention and then once you have right intention you can navigate and function in the realm of speech which is happening at high speed without transgressing right speech so it basically speech comes from the heart so you orient the heart properly and then what comes out of your mouth will follow the heart but you can't possibly plan every aspect of right speech and intellectually do it fast enough to remain within the bounds of right speech if you don't have right intention this is kind of like improvising music just by doing it theoretically knowing the theoretical bounds of certain notes is hard to compute this the other the feeling of music then you can spontaneously generate improvised types of things without making mistakes so you have to have the feel of it what is the feel of the Goodheart actions follow that actions usually happen a little slower than speech and you will always be encountering such things as tiny insects you'll be will be late at night and a mosquito will be buzzing around your face and if you haven't establish self and right intention you might need just for the sake of convenience you just might try to you know kill the insect but if you're established in right intention to have a good will and so forth then that action will not take place so there's all kinds of actions that follow from wrong intention and they happen very very fast in the midst of disputes and arguments people act out and so if you have established yourself and right intention then these lightning-fast decision processes which involve speech and action will happen with skill so this is a lot of preparation for this a lot of dwelling and right intention always watching how do I feel towards the world is there anger towards the world is the world mean other people as well as yourself this all applies toward yourself you are not to have intentions of of hostility and harm towards yourself and not to burden yourself with cumulative kind of desires this is also a problem for person in the world intention needs to be understood in the context of the April path particular reference to the Four Noble Truths and right view and then you will understand what follows right intention right speech right action and of course Right Livelihood and it leads very smoothly into right effort as well so that is it in brief and I'm packaging it in brief and trying to give you memory structures so that you can actually use this in a practical everyday way without having to open a book and go over all the details again the delivery by the Buddha of these things is an oral delivery and people had to remember it because it wasn't written down and it had to be in a form that's useful it's no good if you can't remember it and have it quickly to mind so that's why I want to formulate it this way and to explain it this way

Channel: Ajahn Sona

Views: 17,181

Rating: 4.9289341 out of 5

Keywords: Ajahn Sona, Birken Forest Monastery, Sitavana, Theravada, Thai Forest Tradition, Dhamma, Buddhism, The Noble Eightfold Path, Right Intention

Id: bNNH_hebC50

Length: 16min 37sec (997 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 11 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/nkbowman]

Really enjoyed this :)

[u/redspextr]

The second talk from Ajahn Sona on the eight fold path which is RIGHT INTENTION.