Since the start of the year, my early morning meditation class has been focusing on the Eightfold Path, the Buddha’s wise recipe for liberation. 

We’re using Gil Fronsdal’s lucid, practical introduction, Steps to Liberation: The Buddha’s Eightfold Path, as our guide. Fronsdal says, “Having the Eightfold Path mature within you is one of the great joys of Buddhist practice. It brings confidence, strength, ease, freedom, and so much more.”

Not a physical path, which exists whether we walk on it or not, the Buddhist path comes into being only as we engage with it. We create it as we go, with the path factors as our guide.

The eight interrelated path factors are:

Right View
Right Intention
Right Speech
Right Action
Right Livelihood
Right Effort
Right Mindfulness
Right Concentration

“Right” doesn’t mean “virtuous” or the opposite of “wrong.” It’s more along the lines of “wise,” “skillful,” or “helpful.” In furtherance of mutual benefit.

The Buddha said, A wise person is motivated to benefit one self, others, and both self and others. In other words, wishing for the good of everyone, oneself included.

For example, we recently delved into Right Action. Our teacher, Regina Flanigan, summarized it thus:

Doing our very best not to harm others. 

The practice of avoiding harm brings with it the “bliss of blamelessness” and the opportunity for people to feel safe around you.

Regina shared that being mindful is so superior to being vigilant! The latter is a tense and contracted state that denies you information that mindfulness gives you access to. So she recommends allegiance to being mindful and aware of what’s happening right here before you.

Moving forward on the path involves reflection. Our questions for reflection and practice around Right Action are:

What supports being wise? Being kind? Being generous?

And—what gives rise to harm?

Our curiosity and observations around these questions give us the gift of greater wisdom on how we can live and act without doing harm to, and better, for benefitting everyone, including ourselves, in this complex world.

With gratitude for such goodness!

 

Photo by Jo Cooper