The Fourth Noble Truth is that the Eightfold Path is the means of removing this cause of suffering. In summary outline form, the Eightfold Path is:

Cultivation of Wisdom

• right view
• right thought

Moral Action

• right speech
• right action
• right livelihood

Meditation Practice

• right effort
• right mindfulness
• right contemplation

There are many free electronic booklets on the Eightfold Path freely downloadable via the internet that are very good summaries of the above in ordinary English language. There is no good reason to further elaborate on most of those items here. It is interesting, though, to note a few things about the above. The first two items of right view and right thought have to do with what is happening inside one’s head as a precursor to the one’s interaction with the external world. The interaction with the external world, right speech, right action, and right livelihood is guided by precepts that provide direction about what is harmful, what is wholesome. Finally meditation is given as a means of transcending the internal/external divisions of reality we are usually lost in. All of these elements are complementary to each other, and none (surprise, surprise) are individually self-sufficient or adequate on their own. They are facets of a gem, and not the gem itself.

The commentary I choose to add is not expository, but simply a few observations from my experience, particularly in making a transition from Christianity to Buddhism.

The right view of Buddhism is basically Buddhist doctrine. It is a worldview of what life is, moral law, and how things are connected in a cause-effect relationship, along with a remedy to its suffering. In this aspect of being an explanation and solution to life’s problems it is similar to Christianity. But Buddhism and Christianity differ radically in the role of belief in doctrine. Christianity posits belief as the the essential element in its salvation. Buddhism posits minimal beliefs as a beginning point for the journey toward Truth, but only as temporary crutches to be abandoned as one’s own experiential legs are fully strengthened and healed. Transcendent personal knowing (not knowledge) is the foundation of Truth in one’s life, not concepts, theories, scripture, etc. The Buddhist right view then is more a statement about how you will see things when you have progressed on the path, rather than a creed you need to believe.

For me this difference was significant relief from a burden of effort to believe things that I knew to be factually wrong, and to reconcile incongruities between Christian doctrine as I’d been taught it, and what I intuitively/experientially knew to be true. I no longer had to be willfully ignorant to be faithful. I no longer had to pour effort into rationalizing gaping holes in both morality and self-consistency as a means of trying to be both a rational human being as well as a spiritual one.

A second aspect of the the Eightfold Path that I’ve found helpful is the precepts, which usefully distinguish actions (particularly toward others) that are harmful and wholesome. These principally concern the aspects of right speech, right action, and right livelihood. The Christian analog of precepts is commandments. In later stages of my efforts to follow a Christian path, I had to abandon the Christian absolutes, even supposedly moral ones, taught as Christian doctrine. (That’s a different story, but at some point my mind simply started vomiting up all the spoiled food I’d tried to ingest over the years using many strong spices to cover the odor.) So, I tried a Christian Quaker approach, which I still have warmth for. That environment, as well as the Unitarian Universalist one, though, left me adrift with my own personal ideas when it came to morality. (In the interest of honesty, many Quakers believe devoutly that a Inward Directed Light can/will provide a consistent personal morality not dependent on scripture.) The slippery slope of personal moral relativism was no more satisfactory than the quagmire of eternally rationalized commandments.

The Buddhist precepts have provided a helpful middle path here. There aren’t too many of them. (typically 5 to 20 of them for laymen.) They don’t include social customs like holy days (the Sabbath) or taking a deity’s name in vain as heinous offenses to be punished by death. They include some things like “not selling the wine of delusion” that seem to be a serious omissions in the Christian doctrine. They don’t have the concept of punishment and reward attached to them like commandments with the implicit notion that one can transgress them. The precepts seem more like statements of cause and effect – more analogous to scientific laws. Gravity will hurl you toward the ground if you jump off a building with an unwholesome outcome of being injured or killed. But it would be nonsensical to say that one was being punished or that the law of gravity had been “violated or transgressed.” In this context precepts serve as useful guard rails clearly marking boundaries and offering resistance to careless wandering off into the mushy ground of relativism. And they do so without being spiritual straitjackets of an absolute commandment theology.

To officially become a Buddhist, one has to “take the precepts,” i.e., agree to live within their bounds. I was a bit surprised at my reluctance to accept them. It’s not like I thought they would seriously alter or restrict my life. But I wanted a philosophical out. If, for example, I came to the conclusion that, under some unforeseen future circumstance, lying would be seriously advantageous, I didn’t want to be boxed in by a commitment to speak truthfully. Or I might want to hunt game or something, though I’ve never been interested in that. And I didn’t want to feel guilty about breaking a promise IF I changed my mind. In retrospect my mind was still clouded with misunderstanding – about punishment and reward, transgression and compliance, edicts and statements of fact, commandments and precepts. Finally I just made a decision to accept them as a moral basis for my life. It was that simple – just a decision – abandoning all theoretical misgivings about some future predicament I might find myself in. If life dissolved into nothingness at death and I had lived within the precepts and to my material disadvantage, I would not regret it. My actual life did not change remarkably, but the moral uncertainty I’d previously felt pretty much vanished. Morality, at least in terms of my life, was no longer an unresolved question. I’ve always been a bit surprised that this result could be achieved by choice – and without some bullet-proof personal belief system to support it.

Meditation – at least as any routine practice for me – was something that came from Buddhism. In unprogrammed Christian Quaker practice, the meeting consists of sitting silently together unless and until someone feels moved by the Spirit to speak. What came out of that for me was the very powerful idea, that in Christian terms, one should shut up and listen to hear what God was saying, rather than blabbing all his wants and wishes to God in hopes they would somehow be granted. Buddhist meditation, of course is focused quite differently, but the essential premise is the same. One sits in order to realize the Great Mind that is an integral part of one’s being, rather than listening to the incessant jabbering of the personal mind as it unceasingly tries to make a world in its own image.

Meditation is one of those things that seems to work, though, like the Tao, it is more an undefinable natural force rather than something controllable or directable by the personal mind. That aspect of meditation has been somewhat difficult to adapt to, because my personal mind assumes that if it does not perceive something useful to be happening, then nothing is. Over time the impact of meditation has sometimes been apparent, but the day-to-day impact is notoriously inscrutable. The anchor of my practice has been a compelling intuitive conclusion that it is both useful and helpful. Just don’t ask me exactly how or why.