The Noble Eightfold Path explained ☸️🛞

(The East Made Simple) The Ennobling Eightfold Path of Buddhism explained: What each step (path factor) actually means:

1. right view
2. right intention
3. right speech
4. right action
5. right livelihood
6. right effort
7. right mindfulness
8. right meditation

Abuse of the Buddhist term "mindfulness"

(Natasha Yehenara) Psychology's corporate takeover of Buddhist mindfulness (sati)

• "Mindfulness" defined by Ven. Analayo Bhikkhu
• The field of psychology appropriated (hijacked) the Buddhist term "mindfulness" (originally sati but now just "awareness" or "paying attention")
• Anyone who thinks it was a commonplace practice in ancient India during the time of the Buddha should look up the Hindu definition of sati, which reveals it used to mean throwing a wife on the pyre when her husband died 😲
• The great work of Jon Kabbat-Zin to help therapists led to the unexpected disconnection of the practice with anything, as if it could be a standalone endeavor
• "Bare attention" is a component of sati, but it must be coupled with dispassionate (unbiased) looking on, free of greed, hatred, and delusion (wanting, aversion, and confusion)
• What is one to be mindful of to advance to insight, realization, and awakening? The Buddha pointed at four things: body, feelings, mind, and mind-objects. What does this mean? Psychology cannot tell us, but the Dhamma can
• Who needs Dhamma when we have a corporate bottom line to advance, productivity to raise, and mental health symptoms to abate?
• Why call it "mindfulness," Psychology? Why not pick a new name for what you've turned this into?

Ego (buddhism podcast) The Buddha didn't teach us only to be "present." He taught us to remember (recollection, memory, bearing in mind, the faculty of sati)

On the road to Berkeley like Benji (The Graduate)

Personally, in college at UC Berkeley many years ago, I took a "Buddhist Psychology" course in the department and was so excited to finally be able to learn what "cognition" meant and what the Buddha had to say about all these psychological things. Our assigned textbook, written by a psychologist, was called Mindfulness. "All right," I thought, "I'm finally going to advance in my practice and being in college is going to help me. Imagine my surprise when, as I read, I did not recognize what was being called "mindfulness." It did not align with all the translated ancient texts I had read and was continuing to read from the Buddhist Publication Society and the Pali Text Society. A few years in the future I would even visit BPS Editor Bhikkhu Bodhi in Kandy, Sri Lanka, to ask him about all this.

The Art and Science of Mindfulness

Not yet having him as a direct resource, except through his translations and BPS newsletter messages, I asked my professor in class about how I was left perplexed by reading our textbook. She looked at me and shrugged, "Of course! This "mindfulness" isn't the Buddha's mindfulness. It is psychology's," she explained. I looked around and many students were nodding their heads in agreement. "There are two mindfulnesses?!" I balked. "There are now" was the implicit answer. "Does Berkeley know about this? Why is this class called Buddhist psychology if all we're going to talk about is Western psychology?" She winked because she was subverting the system and introducing Buddhist ideas back into class, but we had to know that the new mindfulness had been taken, changed, and applied in rigorous scientific ways to the behavioral sciences, therapy, counseling, and the mental health field. Sure, it wasn't the Buddha's mindfulness, but that's because it had to be stripped of all spirituality and/or religiosity to get by the gatekeepers of the university system. What a gyp.

• The Art and Science of Mindfulness: Integrating Mindfulness Into Psychology and the Helping Professions (Shauna L, Shapiro, Linda E. Carlson
• Amazon.com: psychology mindfulness textbooks

What is 'Right Action' in Eightfold Path?

Presence versus presents

Like right speech, there is a very simple way to think about right action: It is action (karma, conduct, deeds of mind, speech, and body, behavior) that gives rise to peace and happiness in self and others.

In the same way, right action is simply right intention as applied to action.

The Buddha provides useful practical guidelines. He defined right action as abstinence from three things: killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct [1].

The combination of right speech and right action gives rise to a set of guidelines that the Buddha recommends for ethical and wholesome behavior called the Five Precepts [2]. These Five Precepts form the center of ethics and morality in Buddhism.

The precepts apply to monastics and lay practitioners.  The Five Precepts are:

1. To abstain from killing
2. To abstain from stealing
3. To abstain from sexual misconduct
4. To abstain from bearing false witness
5. To abstain from intoxicants that occasion heedlessness.

Hey, Bean, is our radio show right speech? - FU!

The first three precepts are the practice of "right action." The fourth item, right speech, is so important that the Buddha named it as a precept of its own. The first four precepts might seem obvious while the fifth precept may surprise some

In one sutra delivered to a large group of monastics and laypeople, the Buddha explained the purpose of abstinence from intoxicants in this verse:

Because of intoxication

foolish people do harmful deeds,

and they make other heedless folk do such deeds.

One should avoid this basis of demerit,

delightful to fools, causing madness and delusion [3].

Wake and bake, Bro. Let's go to Goenka's and smoke out to be able to sit better. Huh huh huh

.

Shut up, you hor. I'm drunk! I'll knock you out.

In modern terms we avoid intoxicants because intoxication makes people do very harmful things.  However, beyond that, there is a deeper reason for this precept. That is the keen awareness in Buddhism of the close interrelationship between the mind, behavior, and suffering. For this reason, keeping the mind unclouded and uncompromised is an essential part of Buddhist practice.

There is a beautiful way to look at these ancient (pre-Buddhist) Five Precepts, and that is as gifts. The Buddha considers observing the Five Precepts a way of giving five great gifts to ourselves and others.

By observing the precepts, he says, “the noble disciple gives to an immeasurable number of beings freedom from fear, enmity, and affliction. One in turn enjoys immeasurable freedom from fear, enmity, and affliction” [4].

In that spirit, modern Buddhist teachers emphasize the active aspects of the precepts. Each precept is a call to refrain from harmful actions and also an opportunity to practice beautiful qualities.

The great Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, for example, lovingly encouraged one to use

1. the first precept (abstaining from killing) as an opportunity to practice compassion,
2. the second precept (abstaining from stealing) as an opportunity to practice generosity,
3. the third precept (abstaining from sexual misconduct) as an opportunity to practice true love,
4. the fourth precept (abstaining from lying) as an opportunity to practice loving speech and deep listening, and
5. the fifth precept (abstaining from intoxication) as an opportunity to practice nourishment and healing [5].

In other words, the Five Precepts are an opportunity for beautiful living.

But wait, there’s more. The Five Precepts are the core of virtue (sila), and virtue is a gift that keeps on giving. For laypeople, the Buddha lists five benefits of being virtuous:

1. A virtuous person does not lose wealth because of heedlessness.
2. A virtuous person gains a good reputation.
3. A virtuous person approaches any assembly confident and composed.
4. A virtuous person dies unconfused.
5. A virtuous person, after death, is reborn in a good destination [6].
6. For those reasons, the Buddha declares a lay person who possess the five precepts as one who dwells in self-confidence [7].

Do as I say, not as I do. And don't talk back!

Students of religion may be tempted to equate the Five Precepts with “moralistic strictures,” standards of conduct set for people by God. However, being nontheistic, there is no such thing as moralistic strictures in Buddhism, given that there is no God to impose anything upon us.

Instead, the reason we practice virtue in Buddhism is because virtue is highly conducive to our own happiness and good fortune, our progress and contentment here and now.

Western Buddhist monk and author Ajahn Munindo has a beautiful way of putting it. Paraphrasing the Buddha, he states:

“It is wisdom that enables

letting go of a lesser happiness

in pursuit of a happiness

which is greater” [8].

In Buddhism, the practice of virtue is precisely that, having the wisdom to let go of the lesser happiness of nonvirtuous indulgence for the greater bliss of blamelessness and confidence, and as you shall see later, the even greater bliss coming from compassion, samadhi (profound stillness in meditation), and nirvana.

• ACTIVITY: Reflect on this post with Angela

REFERENCES

1. Saṃyutta Nikāya 45.8.
2. Pali term: pañca-sīla.
3. Dhammika Sutta (Sutta Nipāta 2.14).
4. Aṅguttara Nikāya 8.39.
5. Thich Nhat Hanh’s Five Mindfulness Trainings on (learnreligions.com/thich-nhat-hanhs-five-mindfulness-trainings-449601).
6. Aṅguttara Nikāya 5.213.
7. Aṅguttara Nikāya 5.171.
8. This is Ajahn Munindo’s rendering of Dhammapada Verse 290, which reads, “If by renouncing a lesser happiness one may realize a greater happiness, let the wise person renounce the lesser, having regard for the greater.”

• Chade-Meng Tan, Buddhism for All (buddhism.net), Dec. 24, 2023, featured image by Colin Goh; edited by Seth Auberon, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Reflection and Meditation as Powers

We ask to understand. We sit still to know things directly and awaken (DBM/InsightLA).

.

The "power of reflection" (patisankhāna-bala) or contemplation is one thing, and the "power of mental development" (bhāvanā-bala) or cultivation is another. About these two powers (bala) it is said in A. II, 10:

It's time to reflect: What have I done?

"What, O meditators, is the power of reflection? O meditators, if someone thinks, 'Unskillful conduct in deeds, words, and thoughts really bears unwelcome fruits both in this life as well as in the life to come' and, as a result of this consideration, one abandons unskillful conduct in deeds, words, and thoughts, follows a skillful course of conduct, and keeps one's heart/mind pure, this, O meditators, is the power of reflection.

Now it is time for stillness, body breathing

"What, O meditators, is the power of mental development (meditation, mental cultivation)? O meditators, if a meditator develops the [Seven] Factors of Enlightenment (bojjhanga), bent on seclusion, on letting go, on cessation, culminating in liberation [following awakening, enlightenment], namely:

1. mindfulness,
2. investigation,
3. energy,
4. rapture,
5. tranquility,
6. stillness, and
7. equanimity,

this, O meditators, is the power of mental development."

• Ven. Nyanatiloka (formerly Anton Gueth) Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Doctrines and Terms (palikanon.com) edited and updated translation by Dhr. Seven, Wisdom Quarterly, June 2024

Strange Secret to Success: right thinking?

After Skool, 6/20/23; Sheldon S., Seth Auberon, Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Fake Buddha quote? No, an elaborated mistranslation of what the Buddha teaches in the opening lines of the Dhammapada: "Mind is the forerunner of all conditions." Thinking (intention) precedes acting (karma) and colors it, thereby molding the result. Skillful actions will yield fortunate results (vipaka, phala), unskillful actions (akusala karma) will bring woeful results.

The Strange Secret to Success: Earl Nightingale

The Strangest Secret

(After Skool) What is the strangest secret to success? "We become what we think about"?

Earl Nightingale V (March 12, 1921–March 25, 1989) claims "everyone" was in agreement on this point. It's so famous a saying that it has become a fake Buddha quote.

• AUDIO: The Strangest Secret and This I Believe: How to Live the Life You Desire

What did the Buddha actually say? "Things [life circumstances] are preceded by the mind (heart), ruled by the mind, made by the mind. If one speaks or acts [i.e., performs karma] with a corrupted mind then suffering follows — just as the wheel of the ox cart follows the ox that pulls it" (Dhp. 1). "Mind is the forerunner of all conditions; they are preceded by mind, ruled by mind, made by mind. If one speaks or acts with a calm and bright mind then happiness follows just as one's shadow that never departs" (Dhp. 2).

Earl Nightingale at the mic, bloviating.

Nightingale was an American radio speaker and author, dealing mostly with the subjects of human character development, psychology, motivation, and meaningful existence.

He was the voice, during the early 1950s, of Sky King, the hero of a radio adventure series. He was also a WGN radio program host from 1950 to 1956. He was the author of The Strangest Secret, which economist Terry Savage has termed "one of the great[est] motivational books of all time."

The goal is not to end thinking. Stay calm.

• *"Right thought," one of the factors of Buddhism's Noble Eightfold Path (noble = aryan = "ennobling" = enlightening), means thinking thoughts of renunciation (letting go, non-clinging, non-lust rather than the usual sensual craving that overtakes one), thoughts of non-harming (ahimsa) or non-ill-will, thoughts of non-cruelty. "Right thought" is usually defined as right intention or right resolve, referring to the underlying motivation for an action or deed (karma). The resultants to be expected are called the vipaka (karmic resultant) and the phala (karmic fruit).

Like this video? Want to help create more? Please support After Skool on Patreon patreon.com/AfterSkool To get in touch, visit our website afterskool.net. For prints and merch shop.afterskool.net. For daily inspirational art, follow After Skool on IG and please subscribe.

First factor of the Noble Eightfold Path

Dhr. Seven, Amber Larson, Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; Ven. Bodhi, Noble Eightfold Path

The Buddha awakened and taught awakening

According to the Commentaries, all of Buddhism may be summarized as the Four Noble Truth. It's Buddhism in a nutshell.

Unfortunately, most people misunderstand these four because they misunderstand the word dukkha.

It's commonly translated as "suffering," but it is much more. Dukkha is the entire range of unpleasant experience, from minor agitation to severe agony, and better translated as "disappointment" or "unsatisfactoriness."

1. The first of the ennobling (= enlightening) truths is, "All conditioned states are disappointing," incapable of satisfying or fulfilling us. ("All life is suffering" is a terrible and misleading translation).

Yet we pursue pleasures, real and imagined, due to desire/craving with the ignorant idea that they are capable of satisfying or fulfilling us. They would never be able to. But the root of all suffering is not "desire."

The real root is ignorance (delusion, wrong view, not knowing, not understanding, illusion), which conditions and is the basis of our craving.

These two condition aversion. The cause of all our problems is karma (action) motivated by these three root conditions: greed, hatred, and delusion (craving, aversion, and ignorance).

• The Buddha points at desire (tanha, craving) because he understood when he became enlightened that we can directly do something about that here and now. We cannot directly undo ignorance, which is effortlessly dispelled like darkness in the presence of enlightenment.

This path of practice is for direct knowing

2. There is a cause of our suffering and disappointment, this very craving rooted in ignorance.

3. There is an end to all our suffering, every bit of it, and it is nirvana.

4. There is a path that leads to nirvana, and in general terms it is the Noble Eightfold Path. It sounds too simple, but this is a very general outline. Buddhism is all about "packed" terms that need to be unpacked in order to put them into practice.

Understanding alone is not enough. This is a path of practice. The first thing to grasp is mundane and supramundane "right view."

The first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path: Ordinary or mundane "right view" involves a correct grasp of the law of karma, the moral efficacy of intentional (directed, willful) actions. Its literal name is “right view of the ownership of action” (kammassakatā sammādiṭṭhi).

The standard formulation is: “Beings are the owners of their actions, the heirs of their actions. They spring from their actions, are bound to their actions, and are supported by their actions. Whatever deeds they do, skillful or unskillful, of those they shall be heirs” (AN 3:33; Word of the Buddha, p. 19).

More specific formulations have come down in the texts. For example, one stock passage affirms that:

• virtuous actions -- such as letting go, giving, and offering alms -- have moral significance,
• skillful and unskillful deeds produce corresponding fruits and mental resultants,
• one has a duty to serve mother and father,
• there is rebirth and worlds beyond this visible world, and
• that spiritual teachers of high attainment can be found who expound the truth about the world on the basis of their own direct realization.

Superior Right View

When one knows and sees, one is free.

The right view of karma and its fruits (phala and vipaka) provides the rationale for wholesome deeds and attaining high status within the round of rebirths (samsara), but it in itself does not lead to liberation (nirvana).

Because there is disappointment and unsatisfactoriness, because we never find fulfillment, with wisdom we are impelled by the urge to transcend the endless cycle of karma and its many fruits.

The impulse to gain liberation from the entire round of becoming depends on the acquisition of a different perspective, a deeper wisdom that yields insight into the inherent defectiveness of all forms of wandering through saṃsāric existence, even the highest.

The superior right view leading to liberation from all suffering is the thorough understanding of the Four Noble Truths. It is this right view that is the first factor of the Noble Eightfold Path in the proper sense: noble (enlightened) right view.

The Buddha defines the Noble Eightfold Path factor of "right view" expressly in terms of these four ennobling truths:

“What now is right view? It is understanding of suffering (dukkha), understanding of the origin of suffering, understanding of the cessation of suffering, understanding of the way leading to the cessation to suffering” (DN 22; Word of the Buddha, p. 29).

• The Noble Eightfold Path (Wheel #308) by Bhikkhu Bodhi

Ajahn Chah: How to find right understanding

Ajahn Chah (ajahnchah.org) via Ven. Sujato, Ellie Askew, Dhr. Seven (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

What? Are you serious, that's how I find noble "right view"? There has to be another way!

.

When, not if. (Pema Chodron)

How can you find right understanding? I can answer you simply by using this glass I'm holding.

It appears to be clean and useful, something to drink from and keep for a long time, right? "Right understanding" is to see this as a broken glass, as if it has already shattered. Sooner or later it will shatter and lie destroyed.

This glass is as good as broken, so use it.

If you keep this understanding in mind while using it -- that all it is is a combination of elements which have come together in this form to break apart in line with nature -- then no matter what happens to the glass, you'll have no problem.

This body is similar to this glass. It is also going to break apart. We die. You have to understand that.

This one, too, and the bottle...and this body.

Yet when you do, it doesn't mean you should go kill yourself, just as you shouldn't take that useful glass and shatter it or throw it away before it's served its usefulness.

The glass is something to make use of until it falls apart -- in its own natural way. This right understanding can make you free in all the changing circumstances of the entire world.

THE BUDDHA'S LASTS WORDS: "All things (that depend on conditions) are hurtling towards destruction; work out your awakening with diligence" (DN 16).

"Open are the doors to the deathless (nirvana)" (MN 26), so make an end of rebirth and death.

What the Buddha calls "mindfulness" (3/12)

Ananda (Dharma Buddhist Meditation), Dhr. Seven, Jen, Wisdom Quarterly

Why do we meditate? (sharonsalzberg.com)

The Buddha taught the practice of mindfulness (Pali sati or Sanskrit smrti) to develop tranquility and insight. Remembering to bring the mind back to the present is the way mind (attention) is initially applied then sustained. But what passes for "mindfulness" nowadays is watered down to mean any kind of awareness. Mindfulness is much more. And the benefits are profound. We will look at what the Buddha says about it to practice insight-meditation (vipassana) as the path to going beyond to enlightenment in this very life. Free/by donation. RSVP:

• Dharma Buddhist Meditation
• Ahiah Center for Spiritual Living, Pasadena
• Thursday, March 12th, 7:00-8:30 PM

Sept. 19, 2020 (mindfulnessexpo.com)

Four forms of "right" speech (sutra)

Bhikkhu Bodhi (WP) via PacificBuddha.org; Dhr. Seven, Sayalay Aloka (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

[THE BUDDHA EXPLAINS:] "Householders (ordinary laypersons), there are...four kinds of wholesome verbal conduct, conduct in accordance with the Dharma....

"And, householders, how are there four kinds of wholesome verbal conduct, conduct in accordance with the Dharma?

(1) "Here someone, abandoning false speech [perjury, bearing false witness], abstains from false speech: When summoned to a court, or to a meeting, or into the presence of one's relatives, or to one's guild, or to the royal family's presence, and questioned as a witness thus: 'So, good person, tell what you know,' not knowing, one says, 'I do not know,' or knowing, one says, 'I know'; not seeing, one says, 'I do not see,' or seeing, one says, 'I see'; one does not in full awareness speak falsehood for one's own ends, or for another's ends, or for some trifling worldly end.

(2) Abandoning malicious speech, one abstains from malicious speech; one does not repeat elsewhere what one has heard here in order to divide [those people] from these, nor does one repeat to these people what one has heard elsewhere in order to divide [these people] from those; thus one is one who reunites those who are divided, a promoter of friendships, who enjoys concord, rejoices in concord, delights in concord, a speaker of words that promote concord.

(3) Abandoning harsh speech, one abstains from harsh speech; one speaks such words as are gentle, pleasing to the ear, and lovable, as go to the heart, are courteous, desired by many, and agreeable to many.

(4) Abandoning idle chatter, one abstains from idle chatter; one speaks at the right time, speaks what is factual, speaks on what is good, speaks on the Dharma and the Discipline; at the right time one speaks such words as are worth recording, reasonable, moderate, and beneficial.

That is how there are four kinds of wholesome verbal conduct, conduct in accordance with the Dharma.

• COMICS: Funnies with Jen Sorensen
• I quit drinking year ago here's what happened?

Lucid Dream Meditation (June 28 and 30)

Dhr. Seven, Ananda (Dharma Meditation Initiative), Crystal Quintero (ed.), Wisdom Quarterly

The mind is different when it finally relaxes.

There are the samadhis, highly coherent states of clarified consciousness. It is a factor of the Noble Eightfold Path outlined by the Buddha and misleadingly translated as "right concentration."

The path has three sections (Sila, Samadhi, Prajna): Virtue, Meditation, and Wisdom. Concentration or absorption falls into the Meditation Section.

Colors were brighter, things were clearer!

The question for us is how best to arrive at these coherent states of mind, states of consciousness between waking and sleeping, an in-between state or bardo, when the body is completely relaxed. One good way we developed is "American Meditation Technique," that is, in a warm bath, but it's too easy to drift off. "Dream Meditation" is different and has four steps.

 

Now the meditator becomes increasingly aware of the inner-world by following verbal instructions. This undistracted state of consciousness can be focused to give one access to deep meditation via intense concentration or absorption as one withdraws from the external world of the bodily senses to the internal world of the mind and consciousness.

1. Relax, letting go of all tension and worries.
2. Listen, drifting off to a state just before sleep.
3. Follow, while in a lucid dream state, as the instructions guide the malleable mind to focus, bringing about heightened awareness and lucidity.
4. Emerge, learning to retain that serenity and lucidity.

Buddhism is about waking up.

Meditators are not fully gone because hearing still connects us to the instructions that guide us in, much in the way the Bardo Thodol ("Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State") guides a hearer out of rebirth on this painful plane when in a transitional state.

Now we have an opportunity to access and develop profound samadhi. It's a balancing act, much like sitting is, because an exhausted body will plunge into sleep until refreshed, and a anxious body will slowly learn to let go.
 

D.M.I. - Disclosure - UCLA - Pasa - Punx

Practice serene "Dream Meditation" this Thursday and/or Saturday, June 28th and 30th, at Dharma Meditation Initiative's FREE Dream Meditation Workshop and 1-Day Relaxing Summer Retreat in L.A.

Buddhism: What is "right" effort? (sutra)

Compiled by Ven. Nyanatiloka, Buddhist Dictionary: Manual of Buddhist Terms and Doctrines edited and updated by Dhr. Seven and Ananda (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Bathing and practicing in the River Jordan, Palestine's own Ganges, I will purify myself?

  

Right effort, right effort! What is right effort? The answer is fourfold, the cleansing and purification of the mind/heart.

• "Right"? Each of the Path factors is preceded with samma or "right." Why? Not all effort or exertion is profitable and beneficial. The Pali word sammā), samyañc in Sanskrit, means "right, proper, as it ought to be, best" (Thomas William Rhys Davids; William Stede, Pali-English Dictionary, pp. 695-696) and is contrasted with the opposite miccha ("wrong or misguided").
• "Meditation" (bhavana) in Buddhism is not limited to sitting in lotus position. It literally means "bringing into being," calling into existence, producing, cultivating, developing, sometimes by contemplation and reflection (anussati) -- most notably of the 12 causal-links of Dependent Origination in insight meditation -- other times by still and silent absorption in some field of effort like the 40+ meditation subjects the Buddha recommended.
  

The Four Right Efforts (samma-padhāna or sammā-vāyāma) form the sixth spoke in the wheel of the Noble Eigthfold Path. They are the effort to:

1. avoid (samvara-padhāna)
2. overcome (pahāna-padhāna)
3. develop (bhāvanā-padhāna)
4. maintain (nurakkhana-padhāna).

The Wheel of Rebirth vs. the Wheel of the Path

The first (1) is the effort to avoid unwholesome states, such as harmful thoughts and so on. The second (2) is to overcome unwholesome states.

The third (3) is to develop wholesome states, such as the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. The fourth (4) is to maintain the wholesome states (often summarized as the Ten Courses of Wholesome Action) to completion.

"The meditator rouses will to avoid the arising of unskillful states, namely, unwholesome things not yet arisen... to overcome them if they have arisen... to develop wholesome things not yet arisen... to maintain them once they are present, not to let them disappear but instead bringing them to growth, to full maturity, to perfection of development.

"One one makes effort, stirs up energy, exerts heart/mind, and strives" (A. IV, 13).

SUTRA explanations

Balance your exertions with ease.

(1) "O meditators, what now, is the effort to avoid? Perceiving a form, a sound, an odor, a taste, a bodily or mental impression, the meditator neither adheres to the whole nor to its parts.

One strives to ward off that through which unskillful and unwholesome things might arise -- such as greed, hatred/fear, delusion, and sorrow -- if one were to remain with senses unguarded; one watches over the senses, restrains the senses. This is called the effort to avoid.

 

(2) "What now is the effort to overcome? The meditator retains no thought of sensual lust, or any other unskillful, unwholesome states that may have arisen; one abandons them, dispels them, destroys them, causes them to disappear. This is called the effort to overcome.

 

(3) "What now is the effort to develop? The meditator develops the Factors of Enlightenment, bent on solitude [i.e., withdrawal into meditation/absorption], on letting go/detachment, on happiness, on extinction, and ending in deliverance/liberation, namely:

1. mindfulness (sati)
2. investigation of phenomena (dhamma-vicaya)
3. energy/effort (viriya)
4. joy/rapture (pīti)
5. tranquillity (passaddhi)
6. coherence/concentration (samādhi)
7. unbiased equanimity (upekkhā).

"This is called the effort to develop."

Cemetery meditations are not for hate-types.

(4) "What now is the effort to maintain? The meditator keeps firmly in mind/heart a favorable object of attention (reflection/contemplation), such as the [repulsive] mental image of a skeleton, a corpse infested by worms, a corpse blue-black in color, a festering corpse, a corpse riddled with holes, a corpse swollen up [the purpose of which is to temporarily overcome lust and sensual craving to gain liberating-insight]. This is called the effort to maintain" (A. IV, 14).