#the noble eightfold path

[despair-tea]

i just need to do good awareness of the situation

i just need to do good mindfulness

i just need to do good action

i just need to do good effort

i just need to

[thejsacco]

The Perils Of Attachment

Introduction This is a bit longer than my normal posts as the topic of this post is focused on the 2nd Noble Truth “the origin of dukkha” and also touches on the 3rd and 4th Noble truths. For the purposes of this blog post, you can think of craving and attachment as the same thing and will be used interchangeably. Most of my references are from books in the Pali Canon. The Pāli Canon is the…

[soneatisland]

[renegade-hierophant]

The First Noble Truth that the Buddha taught is often mistranslated into modern languages.

It is not that life is suffering, but that life is unsatisfactory. Nothing you ever do will ever be satisfying. Suffering is just a consequence of that.

The Second Noble Truth is the cause of unsatisfactoriness, and that is desire. Because you desire to be happy, you will inevitably end up unsatisfied. No matter what you achieve, it won’t be enough. Might be for a while, but it won’t be for way longer afterwards.

The Buddha taught the Third Noble Truth, and that is that there is a way out of unsatisfactoriness.

Which is the Fourth Noble Truth, the Eightfold Noble Path, hence the symbol of Buddhism: ☸.

The eight folds are: right view, right aspiration, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration.

All lead down to one outcome: compassion, which brings end to all unsatisfactoriness.

[raffaellopalandri]

Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path

I am often asked what principles I follow and mention in my posts. The answer lies in the profound wisdom of Buddhism, particularly the आर्याष्टाङ्गमार्ग – āryāṣṭāṅgamārga or the Noble Eightfold Path. This path presents both a set of rules and a framework for living a more mindful and compassionate life. It’s an eight-limbed approach, whose pillars I divided into three categories for a quicker…

[beeden96]

Coraline as a Buddhist parable

Last night while I was writing down the Four Noble Truths with a brush pen in my sketchbook (I do stuff like that sometimes), my roommate put on the movie Coraline. This was entirely coincidental but I was struck by how much the themes of the movie relate to everything I've been learning recently about the core teachings of Buddhism.

There is a concept in Buddhism called "right view." It is the first practice in the Eightfold Path. I think of this as referring to a person's understanding and perception of reality. When a person does not see the true nature of reality, they are vulnerable to illusions and delusions, which cause cravings and excessive attachments.

The Other Mother in Coraline has buttons for eyes, and she sews buttons into the eyes of other people who she lures into her illusory reality. She literally lacks "right view," and she tries to force other people to share her distorted view. She craves, and clings, and she wants other people to cling to her, so she offers them the things they crave. She controls others because she is so attached to them.

The moment when all of this hit me was at the end of the movie, when the Other Mother screams, "Don't leave me! Don't leave me! I'll die without you!"

The reason it hit me is because I suddenly saw myself in her. I think a lot of people live like this without realizing it. I am one of those people, or at least I have been. This "I'll die without you!" sentiment can be applied to any kind of addiction. The "You" could be food, it could be alcohol, it could be sex, it could be attention from others, etc. The sentiment behind the Other Mother's words can be related to any pattern of compulsive thought or behavior. But in this movie, and in my own life, that theme most often plays out in relationships with other people. Codependence is a key word to describe the pattern, at least the way I understand it.

I'm trying to develop the inner strength and acceptance of reality, to move beyond that way of existing. It is really painful to live like that. And I found myself feeling sad for the Other Mother, who is trapped in a world (resulting at least in part from her lack of "right view") where she never has enough, is never satisfied, and is never happy. Things change, and everything is impermanent, so clinging and controlling is only ever going to end in heartbreak.

There is a concept in Buddhism of the hungry ghost. They are ghosts who are stuck in a state of constant craving and dissatisfaction, and they can be extremely destructive as a result. I think that the Other Mother is a perfect, almost textbook example of a hungry ghost. I mean, she would literally consume children because she was craving their love so much.

The word "love" here is interesting to me. The cat in Coraline says that the Other Mother loves Coraline and wants to be loved in return. But the word love in this context indicates an unhealthy, all-consuming obsession, rather than mutual respect and care. A really helpful and succinct explanation is actually right in the book (which the movie is based on). Neil Gaiman writes: "It was true. The other mother loved her. But she loved Coraline as a miser loves money, or a dragon loves its gold."

Now, turning my attention to Coraline herself: I see this movie as a story about how Coraline developed "right view" after undergoing a process of reckoning with her previous approach to life. She was unable to accept reality as it was. She was unhappy, and craved a different life with different parents and different friends and different material possessions. She wanted more. And in this way, she was very like the Other Mother.

As a storytelling device, the Other Mother is useful. Characters are useful for illustrating dynamics of growth and change over the course of a narrative. But I think that ultimately, the Other Mother was inside of Coraline, and a part of her. Just as she had been a part of all the other people living in that house who were dissatisfied with their lives. She is a symbol of the attachments and cravings that all people have, taken to their extreme but logical conclusion.

In the first part of the movie, Coraline resists change. She has just moved to a new place, and she has not accepted her new reality. She has trouble connecting with the people around her, who are either overworked and exhausted (her parents), or who she barely knows at all. Because her material and social conditions are not acceptable to her, and she does not yet have "right view," she develops cravings. She lives out those cravings in the fantasy world inhabited by the Other Mother.

Sometime in the early to middle part of the movie, Coraline goes to a shop with her Mom and asks for some colorful knitted gloves. She wants them because nobody else will have them and she thinks they look pretty and interesting. Her Mom says no. This makes Coraline angry, and causes her to go even deeper into the world inhabited by the Other Mother, because that is a world in which she believes her desires can be fulfilled.

Over time, she begins to understand that the Other Mother (this dissatisfied aspect of herself) is not a good person to hang around, and that her perspective on life is warped. She begins to see the dangers of living in delusion, and clinging to sense pleasures. She becomes a firsthand witness to the instability and violence this way of living can create.

So she lets go. She lets go of her expectations, she lets go of her cravings, and instead she decides to honor her love for her parents, which is based in mutual care, rather than obsession and excessive catering to desires. It is only once she lets go of any attachment to an outcome, that she begins to receive the things she originally wanted. Love, care, attention, and even some nice physical items. Her Mom gives her the gloves she wanted as a surprise gift. But now, she is wise enough to appreciate these things for what they are. She can be happy and present in the moment, appreciating the little things while they last.

[brettesims]

The Eightfold Path

The eightfold path is the fourth Noble Truth, which is the path that the Buddha taught us leading to the cessation of suffering and the achievement of self-awakening.

Follow the path to your dreams!

~ B

[ohmconsciousness]

Dharma wheel

[hkunlimited]

Buddhist Karma and the Middle Path to Salvation  

You want good karma? Help a beggar to eat. That’s good karma. Because karma literally means ‘acts’ or ‘actions’, though it is often used almost synonymously with the English word ‘fate,’ as though it were all about some sort of predestination. But no, that’s a derivative meaning which may or may not always apply. The most important thing is right actions, or samma kammanta, as specified in the…

[buddhismnow]

The Eightfold Path

Foundations of Buddhism: The Eightfold Path. https://wp.me/pFy3u-Oc

The Eightfold Path Right View Right Purpose Right Speech Right Action Right Livelihood Right Endeavour Right Mindfulness Right Concentration … THE GREAT FORTYbeing a discourse on The Eightfold Path Thus have I heard. At one time the Lord was staying near Savatthi in the Jeta Grove in Anathapindika’s monas­tery. While he was there the Lord addressed the monks, saying, ‘I will teach you…

[moko1590m]

仏教にルーツを持つマインドフルネスは、　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　ブッダの教えを紀元前3世紀頃にまとめた原始仏典の中に垣間見ることができます。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　ブッダはさまざまな苦しみから逃れる具体的な実践法のひとつに　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　八正道、正見、正思、正語、正業、正命、正精進、正念、正定という教えを説いています。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　その中のひとつである「正念」がマインドフルネスにあたります。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 正念とは「心と体を客観的によく観察して、　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　貪る気持ちを克服した“正しい気づき”（正しい気づかい）」 のことをいいます。　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　この正念を英語訳すると「（正しい）マインドフルネス」になります。

マインドフルネスとブッダの教え | 日下部記念病院

[eyeoftheheart]

“Prince Siddhattha stated that he himself had attained knowledge through his own efforts, without a master to show him the way; so, in the original Doctrine of Awakening, each individual has to rely on himself, and on his own exertions, just as a soldier who is lost must rely on himself alone to rejoin the marching army. Thus Buddhism, if a comparison of various traditions were being made, could legitimately take its place with the race that elsewhere we have called heroic, in the sense of the Hesiodic teaching on the "Four Ages." We mean a type of man in which the spirituality belonging to the primordial state is no longer taken for granted as something natural, for this tradition is no longer itself an adequate foundation. Spirituality has become an aim to him, the object of a reconquest, the final limit of a reintegration to be carried out by one's own virile efforts.

(...)

We already know that the title Buddha, given to Prince Siddhattha and then extended to all those who have followed his path, means "awakened." It takes us to the same point, to the same criterion of certainty. The doctrine of the Ariya is called "beyond imagination" and not susceptible of assimilation by any process of ratiocination. The term atakkāvacara often recurs, a term that means just that which cannot be apprehended by logic. Instead the doctrine is presented in an "awakening" and as an "awakening." One can see at once the correspondence between this mode of knowing and Plato's view of anamnesis, "reminiscence" or "recollection" overcoming the state of oblivion; exactly as Buddhism aims to overcome the state produced by the āsava, by the "intoxicants," by the manias, by the fever. These terms, "reminiscence" and "awakening," however, should not represent more than the manner in which knowledge appears, than recognition and appraisal of something as directly evident, like a man who remembers or who wakes and sees something. This is the reason for the recurrence in later Buddhist literature of the term sphoṭa, which has a similar meaning: it is knowledge manifested as in an unveiling—as if an eye, after undergoing an operation, were to reopen and see. Dhamma-Cakkhu, the "eye of truth" or of "reality," cakkhumant, "to be gifted with the eye" are normal Buddhist expressions, just as the technical term for "conversion" is: "his eye of truth opened."”

― Julius Evola, The Doctrine of Awakening: The Attainment of Self-Mastery According to the Earliest Buddhist Texts

[allbegins]

Buddha's Silence: Practical Focus on Ending Suffering

Buddha's Silence: Practical Focus on Ending Suffering

The Wisdom of Silence: Understanding the Buddha’s Approach to Metaphysical Questions In the vast tapestry of philosophical inquiry, few figures loom as large as the Buddha. His teachings have provided spiritual guidance and philosophical insights to millions over the centuries. However, one of the most intriguing aspects of his doctrine is his notable silence on metaphysical matters. This…

[planetdharma]

Walking the Eightfold Noble Path | Planet Dharma

April 14 - May 5

We want peace and harmony—well-being? Wholeness? What about… emptiness? Whatever we think and say we want—which at our core is all the same—how do we put all the talk and philosophy into place in a meaningful, practical, and grounded way in our lives?

The 8 steps of the eightfold path are:

Right View: sammā-diṭṭhi

Right Intention: sammā-saṅkappa

Right Speech: sammā-vācā

Right Action: sammā-kammanta

Right Livelihood: sammā-ājīva

Right Effort: sammā-vāyāma

Right Mindfulness: sammā-sati

Right Concentration: sammā-samādhi

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