Everyday Wisdom Philosophy School

Contemporary Buddhism

Buddhist philosophy will be used due to its logical practicalness. Buddhism has one main aim, and that is overcoming suffering in your life right now. Also, due to its practicalness, it is easy to grasp and observe how it works. The essence of Buddhism (the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path) has never been lost. The essential Buddhist process of overcoming suffering has always been able to stand apart from traditions and doctrine of culture and the various Buddhist schools.

Also the essence of Buddhism easily equates with the essence of other religions such as Christianity, providing Christianity is studied from the perspective of wisdom rather than blind faith.

Buddhism can also be easily compared with modern wisdom philosophy and psychology. As much as possible a contemporary style of Buddhism is used to suit our particular culture without undermining its original essence, similar to the style of Buddhism taught by Jack Cornfield.

1. Right View
Right View is a vital key to the successful attainment of the realisations available to one who practices the Noble Eightfold Path. To not have Right View is like an archer who spends a lifetime perfecting the skill whilst neglecting to learn how to aim at the right target. All his time and energy becomes wasted, and can even lead to disaster. Like the other steps, Right View must never be taken for granted, and our understanding is going to evolve as we continue to walk our individual path.

Ultimately, Right View is essentially the full clarity of understanding of the Four Noble Truths: That life involves inevitable suffering. In Buddha's words "What, monks, is the truth of suffering? Birth is suffering, decay, sickness and death are suffering. To be separated from what you like is suffering. To want something and not get it is suffering. In short, the human personality, liable as it is to clinging and attachment brings suffering." As a human being therefore, suffering is unavoidable. Suffering is then perpetuated, even increased, by trying to escape from suffering. For example, trying to surround oneself with material possessions only to have them stolen or be in fear of them getting stolen. Therefore, suffering is ultimately caused by clinging to, or trying to make permanent all things that are impermanent, and by its very nature, physical life itself is impermanent.

Buddha then goes on to reveal the secret to ending suffering, and that is to cease the desire to be attached to all that is impermanent. The method that he gave to us to achieve this breakthrough in consciousness, or "liberation," is the Noble Eightfold Path.

In our modern lifestyle and its freedoms as compared to Buddha's time 2,500 years ago, it is understood that one does not need to renounce the world and its material nature in order to achieve a high degree of enlightenment. Rather, what essentially changes is one's relationship to the world. The path of the Bodhisattva also reveals the deep compassion of Buddhism with its ideal of serving humanity in the aim of ending suffering for all beings.

The Noble Eightfold Path is also immensely practical. One can practice it in order to alleviate suffering to a level that leads to a well-lived meaningful life, or one can surrender oneself to the path entirely in the pursuit of full liberation.

2. Right Intention
Right Intention is one's unyielding commitment to the path of personal and spiritual development. Buddha outlines three types of right intentions: 1. the intention of renunciation, which means resistance to the pull of unhealthy desire, 2. the intention of good will, meaning resistance to feelings of anger and aversion, and 3. the intention of harmlessness, meaning not to think or act cruelly, violently, or aggressively, and to develop compassion. In other words it is the commitment to accept personal responsibility for all that we do, say, feel and think. Not because someone says so, but because freedom from suffering, and the ability to free others from suffering is the result. Even more than this, it is about awakening our power to love under all circumstances.

This Right Intention comes in the form of lovingly taking care of the ongoing development of our own mind and consciousness. This also means accepting and having compassion for our humanness, which is often forgotten in the pursuit of the ideal. It is like the intention to lovingly care for one's own child. No matter how many mistakes the child makes, love is never withdrawn, but instead continues to flow in the form of compassion, understanding and gentle consistent guidance and discipline. The same consideration is of course given to all other beings, nature included, but loving others is made far easier by maintaining our own inner-balance. Giving is then an effortless and natural extension of the heart.

3. Right Speech
Right Speech is the first principle of ethical conduct in the Eightfold Path. Ethical conduct is viewed as a guideline to moral discipline, which supports the other principles of the path. Purification of the mind can only be achieved through the cultivation of ethical conduct. The importance of speech in the context of Buddhist ethics is obvious: words can break or save lives, make enemies or friends, start war or create peace. Buddha explained right speech as follows: 1. to abstain from false speech, especially not to tell deliberate lies and not to speak deceitfully, 2. to abstain from slanderous speech and not to use words maliciously against others, 3. to abstain from harsh words that offend or hurt others, and 4. to abstain from idle chatter that lacks purpose or depth. Positively phrased, this means to tell the truth, to speak friendly, warmly, and gently and to talk with a positive and constructive intent.
Right speech can also encapsulate our internal dialogue. For instance, pay attention to how you talk to yourself throughout the day. Note how many times you put yourself down etc. This can reveal much about the nature of your own relationship with yourself, which can determine the bulk of your suffering or the depth of your inner-harmony.

4. Right Action
The second ethical principle, right action, encapsulates all that we do. Unwholesome actions lead to unsound states of mind, while wholesome actions lead to sound states of mind. Again, the principle is explained in terms of abstinence: right action means 1. to abstain from harming sentient beings, especially to abstain from taking life (including suicide) and doing harm intentionally or delinquently, 2. to abstain from taking what is not given, which includes stealing, robbery, fraud, deceitfulness, and dishonesty, and 3. to abstain from sexual misconduct. Positively formulated, right action means to act kindly and compassionately, to be honest, to respect the belongings of others, and to keep sexual relationships harmless to others. Further details regarding the concrete meaning of right action can be found in the Precepts.

For the "householder" or everyday person who is not a monk, right action is the central hub of one's practice. Life itself becomes a meditation until one is able to transcend the do's and don'ts to a point where one can simply feel what is right in the moment. This is also known as "skill in action" which is underpinned by "thinking with your feeling". This intuitive ability comes by way of attunement with one's own heart of wisdom. When one acts on this level of greater consciousness, one's action is ultimately appropriate for all concerned. Practice of the Noble Eightfold Path constitutes a journey of evolvement into this great ability.

5. Right Livelihood
Right livelihood means that one should earn one's living in a righteous way and that wealth should be gained legally and peacefully. The Buddha mentions four specific activities that harm other beings and that one should avoid for this reason: 1. dealing in weapons, 2. dealing in living beings (including raising animals for slaughter as well as slave trade and prostitution), 3. working in meat production and butchery, and 4. selling intoxicants and poisons, such as alcohol and drugs. Furthermore, any other occupation that would violate the principles of right speech and right action should be avoided.
The naming of certain livelihoods is obviously problematic. The question arises, what is more beneficial; a butcher who displays loving kindness and joy to his customers or an angry, judgmental vegetarian? Perhaps at this stage of human development, the kind butcher is of greater benefit. Ultimately, perhaps the best way to find the Right Livelihood is follow your heart. While you are learning to do that, make use of appropriate guidelines for your own life and work towards building a world of peace and harmony without judging others. As the old saying goes, "It is not what you do so much as how you do it."

6. Right Effort
Without effort, which is in itself an act of will, nothing can be achieved. This will-directed effort must in turn employ the intellect to construct system and order in one's practice of the Noble Eightfold Path. System and order focuses one's power, awakens clarity, and facilitates feeling-the essential link to the heart. The ancient texts say this about Right Effort: 1. to prevent the arising of unarisen unwholesome states, 2. to abandon unwholesome states that have already arisen, 3. to arouse wholesome states that have not yet arisen, and 4. to maintain and perfect wholesome states already arisen.

Right Effort is also about talking full responsibility for one's own motivation. It is about never giving up. This means steadfastly refusing to see oneself as a victim in the heat of life's challenges, but rather face all situations with an open heart and mind in order to grow through all these experiences. This courageous approach to life is fortified by our commitment to a support system that nurtures our vulnerable humanness (often not well defined in traditional Buddhism and other ancient traditions) while motivating us to journey ever closer to the ideal. In other words, maintaining the balance between accepting and caring for our humanness while practicing the power of positive thinking and action-power with compassion. Therefore, Right Effort is a devoted everyday practice of meditation and the process of the Noble Eightfold Path or something like it.

7. Right Mindfulness
Right Mindfulness is about being completely present and aware of reality as it is in any given moment. Where human minds are concerned, this is rarely the case. I often say to students and clients, "To be mad and to know that you are mad is to be on a journey to conscious illumination. To be mad and not know you are mad is to be on a journey of insanity." If one equates madness with the pursuit of material possessions with the expectation of finding fulfillment, then the picture becomes a bit closer to home. It is not that we shouldn't pursue material possessions, but rather to be mindful enough to awaken to the inherent unsatisfactoriness of the exercise. Therefore, the illusion that gathering material possessions will lead to fulfillment is broken, and so is the attachment and greed that leads to suffering.

Mindfulness is being aware of what the mind is up to in any given moment, which enables us to consciously work with our mind and guide it towards enlightenment. Therefore, meditation enables one to observe the mind from an increasingly detached and conscious vantage point. Lets cite another example: Worry is a common pass-time of the human mind. If we stop for a moment and instead of being consumed by the worry, we choose to open up and observe the mind worrying, we will discover many things about the nature of worrying. For a start, on the emotional level we may notice that worrying hurts. When we observe our thinking patterns we may discover that our thoughts are erratic and somewhat circular, like a rat in a cage. If we observe our will, or desire to act, we may discover that our ability to act is thwarted due to trying to do the impossible of acting on the future while we are still in the present. Thus mindfulness exposes the delusion of worry, i.e., trying to control the uncontrollable, and in so doing awakens us to seek a better way to use our mind.
Buddha accounted for this with the four foundations of mindfulness: 1. contemplation of the body, 2. contemplation of feeling (repulsive, attractive, or neutral), 3. contemplation of the state of mind, and 4. contemplation of the phenomena.

8. Right Concentration
Right Concentration is the art of disciplining the mind by bringing it under the control of the will, which is in turn serves one's higher consciousness, the divine Will. The objective of concentration is to bring the mind to a still point, usually by focusing on a single object with tighter and tighter control until one literally slips between the moments of existence to what is called samadhi. This is not the end but a means to an even greater end, and that is the ability to direct and focus one's mind at will in the service of humanity and enlightenment. It is the ability to galvanize the immense power of one's consciousness.

Some of us have naturally strong wills that can easily bring the thoughts and emotions to heal. For others, concentration is a difficult exercise requiring the longer-term development of one's will. It is often mistakenly thought that one-pointed concentration is the highest stage of meditation. However, this ability must be complimented with being adept at the other steps as well, which someone skilled in concentration may find quite difficult. Otherwise, there is a danger of compartmentalizing one's mind, walling off certain unintegrated areas rather than genuinely integrating them. Higher states of Right Concentration inevitably become blocked until all the doors of the mind are fully opened.

Therefore, every step has its own importance and place in developing our human and spiritual potential, as well as opening the doors to ultimate enlightenment. High attainment of any one step requires the high attainment of the others. The Eightfold Path is an organically evolving interdependent process. However, Right View and Right Intent, the wisdom steps, could be regarded as the foundation and ultimate consummation of the path. All the other steps are simply vehicles for the increasing mastery of these two steps, which are the beginning and the end. Right View and Right intent can be equated with Acceptance and Personal Responsibility-Steps 1 and 2 of the 5-Step Process.

(Adapted and expanded from www.thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html)

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