The Eightfold Path

Gautama discovered through enlightenment that life is full of desires that lead to misery. If human suffering could be affected by cause and effect, it stands to reason that each person's action and choice in life affects their present state. Through trials and tribulations, Gautama was able to find the answer to cease human suffering but first he had to experience both extremes of life. Gautama's father, whose own desires of seeing his son become a great leader of India, had shielded Gautama from the negative aspects of life such as death, old age, and disease. Because of this, Gautama was able to experience life that held great pleasure. But after divine interference of showing Gautama these said negative aspects he became very depressed and decided to seek the truth for himself. This led him to experience extreme mortification because he had chosen to meditate while letting his body waste away in order to find enlightenment. According to Noss' research, "the philosophic meditation and bodily asceticism yielded no results" (170) and Gautama tried a different form of enlightenment. Through deep and thoughtful meditation without starving his own body, Gautama was able to develop what is now known as Buddhism. Noss was able to provide the definition as "Buddhism was a movement toward liberation of the self from the suffering entailed in living in the world" (164).

Gautama's first sermon in the Deer Park at Benares to his first five ascetics informed them that the middle way is the path that will "lead to insight, which leads to wisdom, which conduces to calm, to knowledge, to Enlightenment, to Nirvana" (Noss 172). Gautama also left the teachings of the Four Noble Truths in order to teach people how to detach from their desires. In this paper, the Fourth Noble Truth of the Path will be discussed as it relates to the Eightfold Path. The Truth of the Path leads to the cessation of suffering. Each path will be discussed in detail as it relates to the wisdom of what Gautama had found in life.

The first of the Eightfold Path is right belief. A person must believe in the Four Noble Truths before he or she is able to start undertaking the Eightfold Path. A person must believe the Truth of Suffering that is caused by clinging to existence through the five states of being which are body, perception, feelings, predispositions, and reasoning. If the person doesn't believe that their senses cause this suffering due to the creation of desires from the connectivity to earthly things then they won't be able to understand detaching from these desires. After accepting the Truth of Suffering, a person must accept the Truth of the Cause of Suffering which is the desire for pleasure, existence, and prosperity. The next truth that a person would need to accept is the Truth of the Cessation of Suffering which means that in order to cease suffering they would need to disband their desires. This leads us to the last truth which is the Truth of the Path that shows how a person can cease suffering if they follow the Eightfold Path. As one can see, the first step of the Eightfold Path relies on the person believing in the Four Truths. These Four Truths in turn build upon each other until the person is able to tackle the Eightfold Path. If a person were not to accept the Fourth Truths they would not be able to move past the first step in the Eightfold Path.

The second step of the Eightfold Path is right aspiration which means a person must cultivate love for others that does not produce attachment that will bring misery. A person must cause no harm to any living being and feel compassion for them but not to the point that when the living being who they feel compassion for dies they in turn are caused misery. According to Noss, a person must cultivate a universal love such as one would hold for humanity where there is no particular person that love is directed to, instead it is great in its entirety to envelope every living being on the planet (184).

The third and fourth steps of the Eightfold path go hand and hand. They are right speech and right conduct. A person who is following the Eightfold path must not bear any ill will or proclaim hurtful actions or words against any living being. To go against these two steps would be like if someone had spoken ill of the person trying to reach Nirvana and in turn that person harbored hate towards them. According to the Dalai Lama though, "anger and hatred, like compassion and love, are part of our mind ... the dominant force of our mind is compassion and human affection" (Middlebury Symposium 1990). A person following the Eightfold path must be mindful of their speech and their actions