07.09. The Noble Eightfold Path

a set of non-linear instructions for conduct that moves one toward liberation

When Buddha realised the Four Noble Truths, that there is suffering, a cause of suffering, an end to the cause of suffering … the fourth Noble Truth was that the Noble Eightfold Path is the end to the cause of suffering. The eight Path factors are

1. Skillful¹ View (sammā-diṭṭhi)
2. Skillful Aspiration (sammā-sankappa)
3. Skillful Speech (sammā-vācā)
4. Skillful Action (sammā-kammanta)
5. Skillful Livelihood (samma-ājīva)
6. Skillful Effort (sammā-vayama)
7. Skillful Mindfulness (sammā-sati)
8. Skillful Concentration (sammā-samādhi)
9. Skillful Consumerism

Okay, so that’s 9 - and there are also two other Path factors that are experienced at fruition of the Eightfold Path, being Skilful Knowledge and Skilful Liberation. This is called the Noble Tenfold Path, and because I value the consideration of contemporary scholars that we need to include Skilful Consumerism at least in our own practice, if not as a doctrinal appendage, I have started rendering the Path as the nFold Noble Path.

A Note on Translation

The Pali word sammā (Sanskrit, śamyā) translates as “right”, “correct”, “wholesome”, “appropriate” or “skilful”, where “wholesome” means any action that moves toward enlightenment and “unwholesome” means any action that moves away from enlightenment.

I prefer “skilful” because it connotes a choice rather than the sense of moral arbitration that comes with the general English understanding of “right”. We can cultivate habits that are more skilful than others, giving us agency in the experience and perception of reality: where habitually unskilful actions of mind, body and speech once caused suffering in our experience, cultivating skilful habits moves us toward consistent and sustainable happiness, and away from bog-standard suffering.

Ethics, Meditation, and Wisdom

The Eightfold Path is categorised by these three, often with ethics (sila) leading the way.

the Five Precepts

It’s pretty straightforward sticking a confirmed stamp on this one.

growth	epistemic status
seed ~ needs work	✅ confident - don’t be a jerk

1. don’t kill
2. steal
3. lie
4. engage in sexual misconduct, or
5. take intoxicants

Skilful View, sammā-diṭṭhi

aka Skilful Understanding; Right View

It makes sense that I should open this Path factor first, considering it is the one aspect of the Eightfold Path I have had most trouble with, as reported in my experience at the Tibetan centre in Adelaide. Skilful view is also usually presented first on the Path, and there are reasons for that: without faith in the views taught here, it is unlikely a practitioner can make serious progress.

We cannot advance to the higher levels of training without well-developed saddhā in right view. “Our motivation acquires the requisite maturity by the cultivation of right view, the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path, which as explained by the Buddha includes an understanding of the principles of kamma and rebirth as fundamental to the structure of our existence.”[

Nonetheless, I consider there to be value in considering the psychological interpretation, as an entry point at least. It is quite a leap to go from there to a full-blown literal interpretation, but I am happy to lean-in to that because I find the panoramic perspective consoling I suppose - that doesn’t sound very scientific, but it starts with the idea that our whole present is nested in causes and conditions that are largely out of our control … that takes the pressure off, somehow; and if rebirth is real I have infinite changes - this one ‘dress rehearsal’ isn’t my only shot.

It has also been important for me to recognise it is not quite true that one can be Buddhist without holding certain beliefs, because right view includes belief in rebirth, at least, and also kamma - it’s quite a gnarly list, between mundane and supramundane view. Coming to terms with this has been helpful, because I think I was experiencing a generalised reluctance to take things on faith because I had thought I wouldn’t need to.

A great appeal of Buddhism for many Westerners is that one doesn’t have to take on beliefs they cannot prove before they can start practising Buddhism, which I think is related to our fear of credulity. A whole Secular Buddhism movement has developed around this, and I could relate to it for a while because I didn’t like the idea of just accepting beliefs I couldn’t understand or prove to be justified. But I have since learnt that Buddhism requires a different kind of faith, which is more like a confidence in these beliefs, lightly held while one puts those beliefs to the test - so we can justify them, and Buddha never asked us to accept them without endeavouring to do so.

To do so we need to start by understanding what beliefs are expected of us.

🎯 A gnarly one that I have always had trouble with, and which probably causes trouble for anyone approaching this practice with a desire to not be told what to believe. There are two levels of skilful view, mundane (MN 117) and supramundane (MN 9), which feature respectively:

• generosity is merited
• actions have consequences (kamma)
• there is this world, and another world (rebirth)
• there are mothers and fathers - and they are to be forever held with gratitude because they enabled this precious human rebirth
• there are spontaneously-born beings (realms)
• there are people who have seen these truths directly

and

• the Four Truths (SN 45.8)
  • suffering, the origin of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the way to cessation
• of conditionality
  • ageing and death, its origins, cessation, and way to cessation
  • birth,
  • the taints,
  • etc.,
  • the cycle of the whole mass of suffering, which can be leveraged for dependent liberation
• and of the roots of wholesome and unwholesome conduct
• understanding of the nutriments,
  • nutriments, the origin of nutriments, the cessation of nutriment, and the way leading to the cessation of nutriment - the nutriments being
    • physical food, gross or subtle
    • contact
    • mental volition
    • consciousness

The mundane aspects of skilful view are described in MN 117 as being views that are ‘accompanied by defilements, partaking of good deeds, and ripening in attachments’, which throws me a lot because they seem contradictory.

The full passage is:

There is meaning in giving, sacrifice, and offerings. There are fruits and results of good and bad deeds. There is an afterlife. There are such things as mother and father, and beings that are reborn spontaneously. And there are ascetics and brahmins who are rightly comported and rightly practiced, and who describe the afterlife after realising it with their own insight.’

Supramundane skilful view is described as ‘noble, undefiled, transcendent, a factor of the path’, because one has seen the Four Truths directly and no longer has any doubt about the Path. ‘This is called right view that is noble, undefiled, transcendent, a factor of the path.’

An analogy might be that mundane right view is like running a program without reading the source code or documentation: I take it on reasonable confidence that the program does what it says I will do, endeavour to use the program correctly, depending on faith that it’s good code; supramundane right view is having read the source code. With the supramundane view of a stream-enterer, one sees the documentation was never wrong, but no longer relies solely on faith because they have seen the truth directly.

Mundane Skilful View

Rebirth

growth	epistemic status
	✅ confident
In [[MN 60 Apaṇṇaka Sutta, ‘A Safe Bet’	MN 60]], the Buddha claims, very explicitly, “Since there actually is another world, one who holds the view ‘there is no other world’ has wrong view.” In lieu of having our own direct experience of this metaphysical truth claim, it is advised in MN 60 that a wise or skilful person would assume it to be true, just in case - if it isn’t true and there is actually no other world, then at least one’s wholesome motivation yields the fruit of happiness and welfare in this lifetime. Such an argument seems to be essentially consistent with Pascal’s Wager. I find these grounds to be sufficient for choosing to believe in rebirth, so this aspect, at least, of skilful view, gets a green stamp for epistemic status.

I also happen to believe in rebirth primarily because I came into this world with affinities I can’t explain without reference to previous existence. I also have no known good reason to disbelieve the various accounts of rebirth.

It may be argued that rebirth can be interpreted psychologically or existentially and doesn’t require cosmological belief in literal realms, but I wonder how that would impact one’s practice: whether it would undermine effort or faith because one would believe they are not coming back for another life and/or that we escape from samsara upon death. If our consequences end with death, there is little motivation for ethical behaviour beyond how it supports a happy current life - the possibility of eternal discontent at least, and possibly rebirth in lower realms, becomes an incentive according to Pascal’s Wager: if there is such a possibility, the best bet is to assume that possibility - if it turns out there isn’t an afterlife, the least you get is a wholesome current life.

Buddha had his own version of Pascal’s Wager, found in MN 60, which is translated literally as ‘A Safe Bet’ by Bhikkhu Bodhi.

Personally this reasoning is sufficient for me to assume rebirth is real, and other aspects of Buddhist cosmology make more sense to me than the Big Ban one-universe theory, which is not a question of skilful view, and is discussed elsewhere.

Kamma

Also in MN 60, ‘A Safe Bet’, the Buddha makes the case that assuming belief in kamma is the most-sensical thing to do, considering the consequences of denying kamma..

Supramundane Skilful View

Dependent Origination and Dependent Liberation

An important aspect of skilful view is an understanding of dependent origination, also called dependent co-arising, the Buddha’s teaching on how suffering is created and perpetuated - on the flipside we have [[#Dependent Liberation|dependent liberation]], which the teaching on how suffering ceases. This is going to require its own chapter 👉🏻.

Skilful Aspiration, sammā-saṅkappa

aka Skilful Intention; Skilful Attitude; Skilful Thought

A common misconception of Buddhism is that there is no place for desire ~ because desire causes suffering, right? Not quite. A healthy understanding of sammā-saṅkappa is where wholesome desire (chanda) fits into the Path. The word tanha denotes “desire arising out of ignorance”, whereas chanda denotes something more like “skilful desire” such as the desire to realise the cessation of suffering.

Skilful Speech, sammā-vācā

aka Skilful Verbal Conduct

✅

Skilful speech is the practise of respecting truth, and avoiding harsh speech, gossip and idle talk. The practise of skilful speech is of such importance that it features in the first the Five Precepts of any dharma practitioner. The four classic formulations are:

1. respect truthfulness and try to avoid false speech ~ lying and deceit
2. be kind and inclusive and try to avoid divisive speech
3. be gentle and avoid harsh and vulgar speech
4. respect your energy and avoid indulging in idle chatter or gossip

As with other actions (of body and mind), verbal actions have the power to harm or heal and the above four points are just guidelines.

Skilful Action

sammā-kammanta

Skilful Livelihood

samma-ājīva

Don’t be a hitman or a butcher, or a barman or a politician.

Skilful Effort

sammā-vayama

Cultivate the wholesome, and abandon the unwholesome.

Skilful Concentration

sammā-samādhi

Skilful Mindfulness

sammā-sati aka Right Remembrance

I like that this is sometimes considered to be Right Remembrance, because

for 1. that is very much what cultivating mindfulness is like ~ remembering that we were trying to keep the breath (for example) in mind, but that we had wandered from the object

and 2. this points at the idea that we are just working to remember our original nature, not create some new experience or transform our nature into something else. This may just be |wishful thinking though.

Footnotes

1. The translation of samma into ’skilful’ sits better with me than ‘right’ ~ far less moralistic, although still binary. ↩