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The Four Noble Truths & The Noble Eightfold Path
The essence of the Buddha’s teaching can be summed up in two principles: the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.
The first covers the side of doctrine, and the primary response it elicits is understanding; the second covers the side of discipline, in the broadest sense of that word, and the primary response it calls for is practice.
Two extremes that ought not to be cultivated by one who has gone forth: devotion to pursuit of pleasure in sensual desires, which is low, coarse, vulgar, ignoble and harmful; and devotion to self-mortification, which is painful, ignoble and harmful.
The Middle Way:
Avoid the two extremes – devotion to pursuit of pleasure in sensual desires and devotion to self-mortification. Follow the Noble Eightfold Path.
The middle way – Noble Eightfold Path – discovered by the Perfect One gives vision, gives knowledge, and leads to peace, to direct knowledge, to enlightenment, to Nibbana.
Noble Eightfold Path:
Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.
The Four Noble Truths:
Noble Truth of Suffering, Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering, Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering, and Noble Truth of the Way Leading to the Cessation of Suffering.
Noble Truth of Suffering:
Birth is suffering, ageing is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, sorrow and lamentation, pain, grief and despair are suffering, association with the loathed is suffering, dissociation from the loved is suffering, not to get what one wants is suffering – in short, the five aggregates affected by clinging are suffering.
Noble Truth of the Origin of Suffering:
It is craving, which produces renewal of being, is accompanied by relish and lust, relishing this and that; in other words, craving for sensual desires, craving for being, craving for non-being.
Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering:
It is the remainderless fading and ceasing, the giving up, relinquishing, letting go and rejecting of craving.
Noble Truth of the Way Leading to the Cessation of Suffering:
It is the Noble Eightfold Path, that is to say, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
Right View:
It is knowledge of suffering, of the origin of suffering, of the cessation of suffering, and of the way leading to the cessation of suffering.
Right Intention:
It is the intention of renunciation, the intention of non-ill will, and the intention of non-cruelty.
Right Speech:
Abstention from lying, slander, abuse, and gossip.
Right Action:
Abstention from killing living beings, stealing, and misconduct in sexual desires.
Right Livelihood:
A noble disciple abandons wrong livelihood and gets his living by right livelihood.
Right Effort:
A bhikkhu awakens desire for the non-arising of unarisen evil unwholesome states, for the abandoning of arisen evil unwholesome states, for the arising of unarisen wholesome states, for the continuance, non-corruption, strengthening, maintenance in being, and perfecting, of arisen wholesome states; for which he makes efforts, arouses energy, exerts his mind, and endeavours.
Right Mindfulness:
A bhikkhu abides contemplating the body as a body, feelings as feelings, consciousness as consciousness, mental objects as mental objects; ardent, fully aware and mindful, having put away covetousness and grief for the world.
Right Concentration:
Quite secluded from sensual desires, secluded from unwholesome states, a bhikkhu enters upon and abides in the first meditation, which is accompanied by thinking and exploring, with happiness and pleasure born of seclusion.
May all beings be happy!
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