Noble Eightfold Path
The Noble Eightfold Path is an early summary of the path of Buddhist practices leading to liberation from samsara, the painful cycle of rebirth.
The Eightfold Path consists of eight practices: right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi. In early Buddhism, these practices started with understanding that the body-mind works in a corrupted way, followed by entering the Buddhist path of self-observance, self-restraint, and cultivating kindness and compassion; and culminating in dhyana or samadhi, which reinforces these practices for the development of the body-mind. In later Buddhism, insight became the central soteriological instrument, leading to a different concept and structure of the path, in which the "goal" of the Buddhist path came to be specified as ending ignorance and rebirth.
The Noble Eightfold Path is one of the principal teachings of Buddhism, taught to lead to Arhatship. In the Theravada tradition, this path is also summarized as sila, samadhi and prajna. In Mahayana Buddhism, this path is contrasted with the Bodhisattva path, which is believed to go beyond Arhatship to full Buddhahood.
In Buddhist symbolism, the Noble Eightfold Path is often represented by means of the dharma wheel, in which its eight spokes represent the eight elements of the path.
Etymology and nomenclature
The Pali term is typically translated in English as "Noble Eightfold Path". This translation is a convention started by the early translators of Buddhist texts into English, just like ariya sacca is translated as Four Noble Truths. However, the phrase does not mean the path is noble, rather that the path is . The term magga means "path", while aṭṭhaṅgika means "eightfold". Thus, an alternate rendering of ariya aṭṭhaṅgika magga is "eightfold path of the noble ones", or "eightfold Aryan Path".All eight elements of the Path begin with the word samyañc or sammā which means "right, proper, as it ought to be, best". The Buddhist texts contrast samma with its opposite miccha.
The Eightfold Path
Origin
According to Indologist Tilmann Vetter, the description of the Buddhist path may initially have been as simple as the term the middle way. In time, this short description was elaborated, resulting in the description of the eightfold path. Tilmann Vetter and historian Rod Bucknell both note that longer descriptions of "the path" can be found in the early texts, which can be condensed into the eightfold path.The Eight Divisions
The eight Buddhist practices in the Noble Eightfold Path are:- Right View: our actions have consequences, death is not the end, and our actions and beliefs have consequences after death. The Buddha followed and taught a successful path out of this world and the other world. Later on, right view came to explicitly include karma and rebirth, and the importance of the Four Noble Truths, when "insight" became central to Buddhist soteriology.
- Right Resolve or Intention: the giving up of home and adopting the life of a religious mendicant in order to follow the path; this concept aims at peaceful renunciation, into an environment of non-sensuality, non-ill-will, away from cruelty. Such an environment aids contemplation of impermanence, suffering, and non-Self.
- Right Speech: no lying, no rude speech, no telling one person what another says about him to cause discord or harm their relationship.
- Right Conduct or Action: refraining from killing, stealing, sexual misconduct
- Right Livelihood: Gaining one's livelihood by benefiting others also not selling weapons, poisons or intoxicants
- Right Effort: preventing the arising of unwholesome states, and generating wholesome states, the bojjhagā. This includes indriya-samvara, "guarding the sense-doors," restraint of the sense faculties.
- Right Mindfulness : "retention," being mindful of the dhammas that are beneficial to the Buddhist path. In the vipassana movement, sati is interpreted as "bare attention": never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing; this encourages the awareness of the impermanence of body, feeling and mind, as well as to experience the five aggregates, the five hindrances, the four True Realities and seven factors of awakening.
- Right samadhi : practicing four stages of dhyāna, which includes samadhi proper in the second stage, and reinforces the development of the bojjhagā, culminating into upekkha and mindfulness. In the Theravada tradition and the Vipassana movement, this is interpreted as ekaggata, concentration or one-pointedness of the mind, and supplemented with Vipassana-meditation, which aims at insight.
Liberation
Threefold division
The Noble Eightfold Path is sometimes divided into three basic divisions, as follows:| Division | Eightfold Path factors |
| Moral virtue | 3. Right speech |
| Moral virtue | 4. [|Right action] |
| Moral virtue | 5. Right livelihood |
| Meditation | 6. Right effort |
| Meditation | 7. Right mindfulness |
| Meditation | 8. Right concentration |
| Insight, wisdom | 1. Right view |
| Insight, wisdom | 2. [|Right resolve] |
This order is a later development, when discriminating insight became central to Buddhist soteriology, and came to be regarded as the culmination of the Buddhist path. Yet, Majjhima Nikaya 117, Mahācattārīsaka Sutta, describes the first seven practices as requisites for right samadhi. According to Vetter, this may have been the original soteriological practice in early Buddhism.
"Moral virtues" group consists of three paths: right speech, right action and right livelihood. The word śīla though translated by English writers as linked to "morals or ethics", states Bhikkhu Bodhi, is in ancient and medieval Buddhist commentary tradition closer to the concept of discipline and disposition that "leads to harmony at several levels – social, psychological, karmic and contemplative". Such harmony creates an environment to pursue the meditative steps in the Noble Eightfold Path by reducing social disorder, preventing inner conflict that result from transgressions, favoring future karma-triggered movement through better rebirths, and purifying the mind.
The meditation group of the path progresses from moral restraints to training the mind. Right effort and mindfulness calm the mind-body complex, releasing unwholesome states and habitual patterns and encouraging the development of wholesome states and non-automatic responses, the bojjhagā. The practice of dhyana reinforces these developments, leading to upekkha and mindfulness. According to the Theravada commentarial tradition and the contemporary Vipassana movement, the goal in this group of the Noble Eightfold Path is to develop clarity and insight into the nature of reality – dukkha, anicca and anatta, discard negative states and dispel avidya, ultimately attaining nirvana.
In the threefold division, prajna is presented as the culmination of the path, whereas in the eightfold division the path starts with correct knowledge or insight, which is needed to understand why this path should be followed.
Tenfold Path
In the Mahācattārīsaka Sutta which appears in the Chinese and Pali canons, the Buddha explains that cultivation of the noble eightfold path of a learner leads to the development of two further paths of the Arahants, which are right knowledge, or insight, and right liberation, or release. These two factors fall under the category of wisdom.The Noble Eightfold Path, in the Buddhist traditions, is the direct means to nirvana and brings a release from the cycle of life and death in the realms of samsara.
Further explanation
Right view
"Right view" or "right understanding" explicates that our actions have consequences, that death is not the end, that our actions and beliefs also have consequences after death, and that the Buddha followed and taught a successful path out of this world and the other world. Majjhima Nikaya 117, Mahācattārīsaka Sutta, a text from the Pāli Canon, describes the first seven practices as requisites of right samadhi, starting with right view:Later on, right view came to explicitly include karma and rebirth, and the importance of the Four Noble Truths, when "insight" became central to Buddhist soteriology. This presentation of right view still plays an essential role in Theravada Buddhism.
The purpose of right view is to clear one's path from confusion, misunderstanding, and deluded thinking. It is a means to gain right understanding of reality. In the interpretation of some Buddhist movements, state Religion Studies scholar George Chryssides and author Margaret Wilkins, right view is non-view: as the enlightened become aware that nothing can be expressed in fixed conceptual terms and rigid, dogmatic clinging to concepts is discarded.
Theravada
Right View can be further subdivided, states translator Bhikkhu Bodhi, into mundane right view and superior or supramundane right view:- Mundane right view, knowledge of the fruits of good behavior. Having this type of view will bring merit and will support the favourable rebirth of the sentient being in the realm of samsara.
- Supramundane right view, the understanding of karma and rebirth, as implicated in the Four Noble Truths, leading to awakening and liberation from rebirths and associated dukkha in the realms of samsara.
- Karma: Every action of body, speech, and mind has karmic results, and influences the kind of future rebirths and realms a being enters into.
- Three marks of existence: everything, whether physical or mental, is impermanent, a source of suffering, and lacks a self.
- The Four Noble Truths are a means to gaining insights and ending dukkha.
Right resolve
Like right view, this factor has two levels. At the mundane level, the resolve includes being harmless and refraining from ill will to any being, as this accrues karma and leads to rebirth. At the supramundane level, the factor includes a resolve to consider everything and everyone as impermanent, a source of suffering and without a Self.
Right speech
Right speech in most Buddhist texts is presented as four abstentions, such as in the Pali Canon thus:Instead of the usual "abstention and refraining from wrong" terminology, a few texts such as the Samaññaphala Sutta and Kevata Sutta in Digha Nikaya explain this virtue in an active sense, after stating it in the form of an abstention. For example, Samaññaphala Sutta states that a part of a monk's virtue is that "he abstains from false speech. He speaks the truth, holds to the truth, is firm, reliable, no deceiver of the world." Similarly, the virtue of abstaining from divisive speech is explained as delighting in creating concord. The virtue of abstaining from abusive speech is explained in this Sutta to include affectionate and polite speech that is pleasing to people. The virtue of abstaining from idle chatter is explained as speaking what is connected with the Dhamma goal of his liberation.
In the Abhaya-raja-kumara Sutta, the Buddha explains the virtue of right speech in different scenarios, based on its truth value, utility value and emotive content. The Tathagata, states Abhaya Sutta, never speaks anything that is unfactual or factual, untrue or true, disagreeable or agreeable, if that is unbeneficial and unconnected to his goals. Further, adds Abhaya Sutta, the Tathagata speaks the factual, the true, if in case it is disagreeable and unendearing, only if it is beneficial to his goals, but with a sense of proper time. Additionally, adds Abhaya Sutta, the Tathagata, only speaks with a sense of proper time even when what he speaks is the factual, the true, the agreeable, the endearing and what is beneficial to his goals.
The Buddha thus explains right speech in the Pali Canon, according to Ganeri, as never speaking something that is not beneficial; and, only speaking what is true and beneficial, "when the circumstances are right, whether they are welcome or not".
Right action
Right action is like right speech, expressed as abstentions but in terms of bodily action. In the Pali Canon, this path factor is stated as:The prohibition on killing precept in Buddhist scriptures applies to all living beings, states Christopher Gowans, not just human beings. Bhikkhu Bodhi agrees, clarifying that the more accurate rendering of the Pali canon is a prohibition on "taking life of any sentient being", which includes human beings, animals, birds, insects but excludes plants because they are not considered sentient beings. Further, adds Bodhi, this precept refers to intentional killing, as well as any form of intentional harming or torturing any sentient being. This moral virtue in early Buddhist texts, both in context of harm or killing of animals and human beings, is similar to ahimsa precepts found in the texts particularly of Jainism as well as of Hinduism, and has been a subject of significant debate in various Buddhist traditions.
The prohibition on stealing in the Pali Canon is an abstention from intentionally taking what is not voluntarily offered by the person to whom that property belongs. This includes, states Bhikkhu Bodhi, taking by stealth, by force, by fraud or by deceit. Both the intention and the act matters, as this precept is grounded on the impact on one's karma.
The prohibition on sexual misconduct in the Noble Eightfold Path, states Tilmann Vetter, refers to "not performing sexual acts". This virtue is more generically explained in the Cunda Kammaraputta Sutta, which teaches that one must abstain from all sensual misconduct, including getting sexually involved with someone unmarried, and someone married, and someone betrothed to another person, and female convicts or by dhamma.
For monastics, the abstention from sensual misconduct means strict celibacy, states Christopher Gowans, while for lay Buddhists this prohibits adultery as well as other forms of sensual misconduct. Later Buddhist texts, states Bhikkhu Bodhi, state that the prohibition on sexual conduct for lay Buddhists includes any sexual involvement with someone married, a girl or woman protected by her parents or relatives, and someone prohibited by dhamma conventions.
Right livelihood
Right livelihood precept is mentioned in many early Buddhist texts, such as the Mahācattārīsaka Sutta in Majjhima Nikaya as follows:The early canonical texts state right livelihood as avoiding and abstaining from wrong livelihood. This virtue is further explained in Buddhist texts, states Vetter, as "living from begging, but not accepting everything and not possessing more than is strictly necessary". For lay Buddhists, states Harvey, this precept requires that the livelihood avoid causing suffering to sentient beings by cheating them, or harming or killing them in any way.
The Anguttara Nikaya III.208, states Harvey, asserts that the right livelihood does not trade in weapons, living beings, meat, alcoholic drink or poison. The same text, in section V.177, asserts that this applies to lay Buddhists. This has meant, states Harvey, that raising and trading cattle livestock for slaughter is a breach of "right livelihood" precept in the Buddhist tradition, and Buddhist countries lack the mass slaughter houses found in Western countries.
Right effort
Right effort is preventing the arising of unwholesome states, and the generation of wholesome states. This includes indriya-samvara, "guarding the sense-doors," restraint of the sense faculties. Right effort is presented in the Pali Canon, such as the Sacca-vibhanga Sutta, as follows:The unwholesome states are described in the Buddhist texts, as those relating to thoughts, emotions, intentions, and these include pancanivarana – sensual thoughts, doubts about the path, restlessness, drowsiness, and ill will of any kind. Of these, the Buddhist traditions consider sensual thoughts and ill will needing more right effort. Sensual desire that must be eliminated by effort includes anything related to sights, sounds, smells, tastes and touch. This is to be done by restraint of the sense faculties. Ill will that must be eliminated by effort includes any form of aversion including hatred, anger, resentment towards anything or anyone.
Right mindfulness
In the vipassana movement, mindfulness is interpreted as "bare attention": never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing. Yet, originally it has the meaning of "retention," being mindful of the dhammas that are beneficial to the Buddhist path. The Brahmins had used the word to refer to remembering the Vedas, a usage close to its everyday meaning, “memory.” The Buddha appropriated sati to mean remember the meditation object, and this meaning at first may have applied mainly to the cultivation of deeply absorbed, secluded states of mind. Over time sati evolved beyond the simple yogic imperative, remember the object, and came to signify remember to attend, opening onto an ever wider field during the breath “frame.” In practice, it enables two important forms of progress. First, it repeatedly “yokes” the yogi to the present moment, lessening identification with mentally fabricated scenarios involving past and future. Second, he keeps attention in the neighborhood of the body, an arena in which any reactivity in the form of afflictive volitions—clinging—will usually be reflected. According to Frauwallner, mindfulness was a means to prevent the arising of craving, which resulted simply from contact between the senses and their objects. According to Frauwallner this may have been the Buddha's original idea. According to Trainor, mindfulness aids one not to crave and cling to any transitory state or thing, by complete and constant awareness of phenomena as impermanent, suffering and without self.The Satipatthana Sutta describes the contemplation of four domains, namely body, feelings, mind and phenomena. The Satipatthana Sutta is regarded by the Vipassana movement as the quintessential text on Buddhist meditation, taking cues from it on "bare attention" and the contemplation on the observed phenomena as dukkha, anatta and anicca. According to Grzegorz Polak, the four upassanā have been misunderstood by the developing Buddhist tradition, including Theravada, to refer to four different foundations. According to Polak, the four upassanā do not refer to four different foundations of which one should be aware, but are an alternate description of the jhanas, describing how the samskharas are tranquilized:
- the six sense-bases which one needs to be aware of ;
- contemplation on vedanās, which arise with the contact between the senses and their objects ;
- the altered states of mind to which this practice leads ;
- the development from the five hindrances to the seven factors of enlightenment.
The dhyāna-scheme describes mindfulness also as appearing in the third and fourth dhyana, after initial concentration of the mind. Gombrich and Wynne note that, while the second jhana denotes a state of absorption, in the third and fourth jhana one comes out of this absorption, being mindfully awareness of objects while being indifferent to them. According to Gombrich, "the later tradition has falsified the jhana by classifying them as the quintessence of the concentrated, calming kind of meditation, ignoring the other – and indeed higher – element.
Right concentration
''Samadhi''
Samadhi is a common practice in Indian religions. The term samadhi derives from the root sam-a-dha, which means 'to collect' or 'bring together', and thus it is often translated as 'concentration' or 'unification of mind'. In the early Buddhist texts, samadhi is also associated with the term "samatha". In the suttas, samadhi is defined as one-pointedness of mind. Buddhagosa defines samadhi as "the centering of consciousness and consciousness concomitants evenly and rightly on a single object...the state in virtue of which consciousness and its concomitants remain evenly and rightly on a single object, undistracted and unscattered."According to Bhikkhu Bodhi, the right concentration factor is reaching a one-pointedness of mind and unifying all mental factors, but it is not the same as "a gourmet sitting down to a meal, or a soldier on the battlefield" who also experience one-pointed concentration. The difference is that the latter have a one-pointed object in focus with complete awareness directed to that object – the meal or the target, respectively. In contrast, right concentration meditative factor in Buddhism is a state of awareness without any object or subject, and ultimately unto nothingness and emptiness.
Practice
Bronkhorst notes that neither the Four Noble Truths nor the Noble Eightfold Path discourse provide details of right samadhi. The explanation is to be found in the Canonical texts of Buddhism, in several Suttas, such as the following in Saccavibhanga Sutta:Bronkhorst has questioned the historicity and chronology of the description of the four jhanas. Bronkhorst states that this path may be similar to what the Buddha taught, but the details and the form of the description of the jhanas in particular, and possibly other factors, is likely the work of later scholasticism. Bronkhorst notes that description of the third jhana cannot have been formulated by the Buddha, since it includes the phrase "Noble Ones say", quoting earlier Buddhists, indicating it was formulated by later Buddhists. It is likely that later Buddhist scholars incorporated this, then attributed the details and the path, particularly the insights at the time of liberation, to have been discovered by the Buddha.
Mindfulness
Although often translated as "concentration," as in the limiting of the attention of the mind on one object, in the fourth dhyana "equanimity and mindfulness remain," and the practice of concentration-meditation may well have been incorporated from non-Buddhist traditions. Vetter notes that samadhi consists of the four stages of dhyana meditation, butGombrich and Wynne note that, while the second jhana denotes a state of absorption, in the third and fourth jhana one comes out of this absorption, being mindfully awareness of objects while being indifferent to it. According to Gombrich, "the later tradition has falsified the jhana by classifying them as the quintessence of the concentrated, calming kind of meditation, ignoring the other – and indeed higher – element.
Practice
Order of practice
Vetter notes that originally the path culminated in the practice of dhyana/samadhi as the core soteriological practice. According to the Pali and Chinese canon, the samadhi state is dependent on the development of preceding path factors:quote|The Blessed One said: "Now what, monks, is noble right concentration with its supports and requisite conditions? Any singleness of mind equipped with these seven factorsright view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, and right mindfulnessis called noble right concentration with its supports and requisite conditions.|Maha-cattarisaka Sutta
According to the discourses, right view, right resolve, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, and right mindfulness are used as the support and requisite conditions for the practice of right concentration. Understanding of the right view is the preliminary role, and is also the forerunner of the entire Noble Eightfold Path.
According to the modern Theravada monk and scholar Walpola Rahula, the divisions of the noble eightfold path "are to be developed more or less simultaneously, as far as possible according to the capacity of each individual. They are all linked together and each helps the cultivation of the others." Bhikkhu Bodhi explains that these factors are not sequential, but components, and "with a certain degree of progress all eight factors can be present simultaneously, each supporting the others. However, until that point is reached, some sequence in the unfolding of the path is inevitable."
The stage in the Path where there is no more learning in Yogachara Abhidharma, state Buswell and Gimello, is identical to Nirvana or Buddhahood, the ultimate goal in Buddhism.
Gender
According to Bernard Faure, the ancient and medieval Buddhist texts and traditions, like other religions, were almost always unfavorable or discriminatory against women, in terms of their ability to pursue Noble Eightfold Path, attain Buddhahood and nirvana. This issue of presumptions about the "female religious experience" is found in Indian texts, in translations into non-Indian languages, and in regional non-Indian commentaries written in East Asian kingdoms such as those in China, Japan and southeast Asia. Yet, like other Indian religions, exceptions and veneration of females is found in Indian Buddhist texts, and female Buddhist deities are likewise described in positive terms and with reverence. Nevertheless, females are seen as polluted with menstruation, sexual intercourse, death and childbirth. Rebirth as a woman is seen in the Buddhist texts as a result of part of past karma, and inferior than that of a man.In some Chinese and Japanese Buddhist texts, the status of female deities are not presented positively, unlike the Indian tradition, states Faure. In the Huangshinu dui Jingang, a woman admonishes her husband about he slaughtering animals, who attacks her gender and her past karma, due to the belief that women are further from enlightenment as the common man is further from enlightenment to a monk, or an ant to a mouse. Similar discriminatory presumptions are found in other Buddhist texts such as the Blood Bowl Sutra and the Longer Sukhāvatīvyūha Sūtra. In the Five Obstacles theory of Buddhism, a woman is required to attain rebirth as a man before she can adequately pursue the Eightfold Path and reach perfect Buddhahood. The Lotus Sutra similarly presents the story of the Dragon King's daughter, who desires to achieve perfect enlightenment. The Sutra states that, "Her female organs vanished, the male organs became visible, then she appeared as a bodhisattva".
Gender discrimination worsened during the medieval era in various sub-traditions of Buddhism that independently developed regionally, such as in Japan.
Some scholars, such as Kenneth Doo Young Lee, interpret the Lotus Sutra to imply that "women were capable of gaining salvation", either after they first turned into a man, or being reborn in Pure Land realm after following the Path. Peter Harvey lists many Sutras that suggest "having faded out the mind-set of a woman and developed the mind-set of a man, he was born in his present male form", and who then proceeds to follow the Path and became an Arahant. Among Mahayana texts, there is a sutra dedicated to the concept of how a person might be born as a woman. The traditional assertion is that women are more prone to harboring feelings of greed, hatred and delusion than a man. The Buddha responds to this assumption by teaching the method of moral development through which a woman can achieve rebirth as a man.
According to Wei-Yi Cheng, the Pali Canon is silent about women's inferior karma, but have statements and stories that mention the Eightfold Path while advocating female subordination. For example, a goddess reborn in the heavenly realm asserts:
Such examples, states Wei-Yi Cheng, include conflating statements about spiritual practice and "obedience to my husband" and "by day and by night I acted to please", thus implying unquestioned obedience of male authority and female subjugation. Such statements are not isolated, but common, such as in section II.13 of the Petavatthu which teaches that a woman had to "put away the thoughts of a woman" as she pursued the Path and this merit obtained her a better rebirth; the Jataka stories of the Pali Canon have numerous such stories, as do the Chinese Sutta that assert "undesirability of womanhood". Modern Buddhist nuns have applied Buddhist doctrines such as Pratītyasamutpāda to explain their disagreement with women's inferior karma in past lives as implied in Samyutta Nikaya 13, states Wei-Yi Cheng, while asserting that the Path can be practiced by either gender and "both men and women can become arhant".