Before I go into offering my two cents worth on the cornerstones of Buddhist beliefs, the 4 noble truths and the eightfold path, let me explain my motivation for writing this article. I have been interested in spirituality for over two decades now, and if you read this on my site, StandUpPhilosopher.org, you probably figured out by now: I’m no stranger to contemplation. However, I would have been perfectly content just reading about the 4 noble truths and the eightfold path, because I figured that Buddhism has been around for two and a half millennia and the subject must have been studied to death by now.
As it turns out, that last part is absolutely true, the one about the subject having been mulled over a gazillion times. Most everything I found, though, as with the interpretation of most religious things, sounded like parroting things that have already been said a thousand times with no real conviction or experience behind them. More like an intellectual exercise instead of real wisdom.
I have thought long and hard about these tenets, ran them through the filters of my own life experience, and this is what I came up with. Hopefully, you will find them insightful, and more useful than an academic argument on the subject. The basic translations for both the 4 noble truths and the eightfold path I got from Wikipedia: 4 Noble Truths
The 4 Noble Truths of Buddhism:
1st Noble Truth: Suffering Does Exist
I think I have a pretty good idea what this means, but the word suffering may be too strong a word for the most part. Sure, suffering describes accurately how you might feel when you lose a loved one or when your significant other cheats on you. But I think the concept goes well beyond that. For instance, feeling like your career is going nowhere, even though you are not quite ready to jump out the window over it is one of them. This will also, in my opinion, include things like seeing a random attractive person and feeling that they are way out of your league and you could never get with them in a million years. In other words, all things fall into this category that make you feel like things in your life are lacking, or as a matter of fact, that you are lacking in some way.
2nd Noble Truth: Suffering Arises from Attachment to Desires
Well, this one we pretty much covered while trying to define suffering just now, but there is one more thing to add, which is the key to the whole thing as far as I’m concerned. Desire itself isn’t the main problem in life. Many paths make it their goal to destroy a person’s ability to feel desire. I think that’s a big mistake. As a biological being, you can’t help desiring things. For instance, if you are not hungry now, you will be soon enough. The same basic principle works behind all desires a person may have. They are hard-wired into us, because they helped the human species evolve and survive throughout the eons. To deny desire, is to deny life itself. So, I think the key work here is attachment. You only have a problem if your desires suck you in and keep you a prisoner. (More on how to stay detached under the explanation for the eightfold path.)
3rd Noble Truth: Suffering Ceases When Attachment to Desire Ceases
I feel I keep jumping ahead of myself, as we just discussed this, but this phrase accurately describes the relationship between desire and attachment. The fact that you have desires isn’t the core of your problems. The fact that you can’t let go of them is.
4th Noble Truth: Freedom from Suffering is Possible by Practicing the Eightfold Path
A while back, I was discussing the passing of my father with a healer. She told me that I had to let him go. I asked her: how do I do that? She seemed dumbfounded.
People think when they are given a piece of advice such as “let go” they are supposed sit down or something and think that they are over their problem. I understand that I have to get over my issues somehow, but telling me that is useless to me unless you can tell me how to do it. You can’t just reason your way out of misery. The eightfold path attempts to provide step-by-step instructions to that effect.
Here you can watch a professional (I guess) interpretation of the 4 noble truths:
The Eightfold Path of Buddhism:
The 4 noble truths tell you what your problem is. The eightfold path gives you instructions how to go about managing them. The following is my take on them.
1. Right Understanding
This basically refers to the 4 noble truths. It is important to understand that you have a problem and what that problem is. Just like in AA. Hmm… no personal experience there, I swear.
2. Right Aspiration
You have to be 100% sold and hell-bent on pursuing the goal of being freed from this “suffering.” In the West, spiritual pursuits are treated at best as a hobby. They are optional and they are transient and a lot of times people are just going trough motions. I am not saying that everybody should become a monk and spend his or her days in meditation. This has more to do with looking at everything you do and experience through spiritual eyes and keeping your progress on that path in mind.
3. Right Effort
If you are going to do something, make sure that you follow through. Make spirituality part of your daily routine and then stick with it. They say practice makes perfect. Someone once told me, perfect practice makes perfect.
4. Right Speech
While this point and the next one, right conduct, has been dissected a thousand different ways, I think they just elude to acting and interacting in a manner that is constructive as opposed to destructive. Depending on the situation and people in said situation, this can literarily mean a million things.
5. Right Conduct
Read stuff under “Right Speech.”
6. Right Livelihood
Well, I can only make guesses on this one, but I’ve worked in jobs where I was miserable, where the company made its living selling bull and so on. It’s hard to get free from suffering, if you spend one-third of your day in a place that’s contributing to it.
7. Right Mindfulness
Some interpret this as a point about living in the moment. While smelling the roses along the way sounds like a good thing to do, I think “right mindfulness” has more to do with never losing sight of the fact that spiritual evolution IS the main goal in life, and everything else is there to supplement it.
8. Right Concentration
All commentaries take this as a reference to mediation. I hope they are right, and if so, this is the most important part of the 4 noble truths and the eightfold path. The reason being is that one can’t pull himself out of a hole by his bootstraps, meaning that you can’t think or reason your way out of suffering. The intellect will take you part of the way, but you will need to "go beyond" to bring about real change via meditation.
Here is a slightly different perspective on the eightfold path:
Conclusion
I think it is absolutely important to understand that what you have on this page, and basically any webpage on the subject of the four noble truths and the eightfold path, is JUST information. As you read them here, even with a commentary, we are not even scratching the surface.Just think about it. These few lines of text serve as the basis for one of the world’s most major religions. Buddha didn’t spend all those years in seclusion and meditation to come up with this. If so, he would have been done in about a day and a half. The ideas set forth in these have the power to teach you for the rest of your life (not to mention mastering them), and if Buddhist are right, beyond.
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