The Analysis of Truth (sutra)

Dhr. Seven, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly translation (Sacca Vibhanga Sutta, MN 141)

The Buddha Greek influenced Gandhara style, Central Asia (Relational-Buddhism.com)

   

Why did Siddhartha set forth?

Friends, what is the noble truth of the path to the end of suffering? It is this Noble Eightfold Path (right- view, thought, speech, action, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and concentration).

Friends, what is right view? It is knowledge of disappointment (suffering)... of the arising of disappointment... of the extinction of disappointment... of the path leading to the extinction of disappointment. Friends, this is called right view.

Buddha Bodh Gaya, vimana above (WQ)

Friends, what is right thought (intention)? Thoughts of renunciation (letting go)... thoughts freed of malice... thoughts freed of cruelty. This is called right thought.

Friends, what is right speech? Abstaining from falsehood... slander... harsh talk... and idle chatter. This is called right speech.

Friends, what is right action? Abstaining from taking the lives of living beings, taking what is not given, taking sexual liberties (sexual misconduct). This is called right action.

(Johan Van Moorhem/flickr.com)

Friends, what is right livelihood? Here (within this Dharma and Discipline) a noble disciple giving up wrong livelihood [dealing in weapons, dealing in living beings (such as raising animals for slaughter, the slave trade, trafficking, prostitution), working in meat production or butchering, selling intoxicants and/or poisons like alcohol and drugs/harmful medicines] gets his/her living through right livelihood. This is called right livelihood.

Friends, what is right effort? 

Letting go! (newlotus.buddhistdoor.com)

1. Here, one produces a wish, strives, initiates effort, holds out mind, exerts for the nonarising of unwholesome and unskillful states of mind/heart [mental, verbal, or physical intentions/actions motivated by greed, hate/fear, or delusion] that have not yet arisen.
2. One produces a wish... exerts for the abandoning of unwholesome and unskillful states mind that have already arisen.
3. One produces a wish... exerts for the arising of wholesome and skillful states of mind not yet arisen.
4. One produces a wish... exerts for the continuation, for the stability, for the absence of confusion, for the increase, for the fullness, for the cultivation of the mind, for the fulfillment of skillful mental states that have already arisen.

This is called right effort.

Friends, what is right mindfulness? Here, friends, one lives seeing the body in the body, mindful, diligent, conscientious, disciplined in this world of covetousness and dejection; seeing the mind in the mind... in this world of covetousness and dejection. This is called right mindfulness.

Friends, what is right concentration?

Levels of jhana in samadhi

1. Here, friends, one -- quite secluded (withdrawn) from sense pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states of mind -- enters and abides in the first meditative absorption (jhana), which is accompanied by applied and sustained ATTENTION with rapture and happiness [joy and bliss] born of seclusion.
2. With the subsiding of applied and sustained attention, one enters and abides in the second meditative absorption, which has confidence and unification of mind transcending applied and sustained attention and filled with rapture and happiness born of concentration.
3. With the fading of rapture, one abides in equanimity, mindful and clearly comprehending, and one experiences in this body that happiness of which the noble ones say, "Happily lives one who has equanimity and mindfulness!" Thus one enters and abides in the third meditative absorption.
4. With the abandoning of pleasure and pain, and with the previous disappearance of joy and grief, one enters and abides in the fourth meditative absorption, which has neither-pain-nor-[gross]-pleasure but has instead purity of mindfulness due to equanimity. Friends, this is called right concentration.

This, O friends, is said to be the noble truth of the path leading to the end of all suffering.