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The Eightfold Path has nothing to do with religion, has nothing to do with any kind of God, has nothing to do with any kind of theology. The Eightfold Path is a very practical tool, a certain kind of lifestyle, if you want to use that word, to follow. The Eightfold Path is simply what is known as right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right collectedness.

So let's break down what these elements are. When you look at the structure of the Eightfold Path, it is based on the foundation of three principles: sila, samadhi, and panna. Sila literally means foundation. It means rock. It's the bedrock of everything, and that is essentially morality. When we talk about morality, we're not talking about something where we have to do it because there is some God in the sky who's going to judge you after you die, and he will punish you or reward you with eternal heaven, or punish you with eternal hell.

Stay away from that nonsense. What we're talking about is the golden rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That's it. That is a universal principle of humanity, and you find it in every tradition, and you don't need to believe in anything to do that. So there's a very selfish reason to be ethical. There's a very selfish reason to be moral, because I don't want people to be assholes towards me, so I will not be an asshole towards them. So the idea is I remain vigilant of the times when there is an intention to harm another living being with my words, with my actions, and with my intention.

When I do this, my mind is clear. My mind is stable. My mind is filled with what is known as non-regret, because if I have an intention to harm another being, that will frazzle my mind somewhere. The thing about this practice is that you have to have a certain level of morality. You have to have a certain level of a conscience, an ethical GPS, because you can bypass all of that and you can learn about wisdom. And you can learn about samadhi. You can be the greatest meditator this planet has ever seen. You can do all kinds of amazing things with your mind. You can have the pinnacle of wisdom and understand emptiness

and whether there is a self or not a self. And be a great philosopher, a great intellectual person. You could be somebody who has even penetrated with wisdom. But it's like building a house without a solid foundation. The ethics of it is the bedrock. It is important. And it's not being a goody-two-shoes. It's not being a people pleaser.

It's not about being somebody without boundaries. This is very important to understand. Somehow there is this notion that if somebody is moral, we can push them around. Some people have that idea. It's about understanding that you yourself are free of any kind of agitation in the mind, because there is no desire to harm another individual. You don't need to be loving and kind. You don't need to be compassionate.

In fact, when we get to right intention, which we will do shortly, you will see that it doesn't say you have to be loving and kind. It just says don't have ill will. It doesn't say you have to be compassionate. It just says don't be cruel. It doesn't say you have to renounce the world. It just says be content. We'll get into that shortly. Right view.

Right view is essentially the understanding of karma. At a very mundane level, it is about action and consequence, action and reaction. So I'm shortening this process for you, because there is a whole layer of things when it comes to mundane right view. For example, it says there is meaning in what is given, what is offered, what is sacrificed.

There is meaning in what is received. There is mother and father. There is this world and the other. There are Brahmins and teachers and ascetics who have walked the path and can show the way. So this is what is usually seen as mundane right view. But the core essence of it is karma, because there is meaning in what is given. There is meaning in what is offered. There is meaning in what is sacrificed.

This, really, what it means is, when I am doing something that is not harmful to another being, that is beneficial for another being, one way or the other, that will return back to me. That is the meaning aspect of it. There is a kind of logic to it. There is a causality and conditionality to being an ethical person.

When I do this, this occurs. When I treat someone this way, this is how I will be treated, either now, or later, or in some future time period. There is mother and father. Oftentimes this is interpreted as: we have to be grateful to our parents. But not all parents are great. Of course, they've done the best they could most of the time.

But we also live in a world where we are abandoned by parents, where we are given up to a family, or we are given into the system, the foster care system, whatever it is. So how do we reconcile this, that there is mother and father? What does it actually mean? One way of interpreting it is that there is mother and father. In other words, in order for us to exist, we needed a mother and father. We needed their genes, their biology, for this body to be created and for us to come into this life. To that extent, we acknowledge that.

Yes, you will hear in the suttas the Buddha talks about how we can never repay our parents, and so on. But that is assuming that our parents did not abandon us. That is assuming that, to the best of their ability, our parents gave us the things that were required of us growing up. At the very least, we can acknowledge with some level of gratitude and appreciation that yes, we came into this life due to mother and father.

And so when we do this, we are doing it because we realize that this life is an opportunity to experience greater states of existence, greater states of mind, to finally experience freedom of the heart, to learn from the world, to learn from our own life. There is this world and the other. So how do we look at it?

One way of looking at it is there is this world, which is the world we live in, the human world, and there is the other world, some concept of a heaven or a hell or whatever you want to define it as. But there is another way of interpreting this. There is this world of the sense bases. There is this world of the physical sense bases. This matrix that we create through the sense bases is one world, but when we are in meditation we are in another world.

We may experience jhanas, which in some sense correspond to, let's say, the higher planes of existence in the cosmology of ancient India, but we don't need to know all of that. We just know that when we are in meditation we are in another world. We're not paying attention to what's going on outside with regards to what we're hearing or seeing or what is being experienced through the senses. The other world is happening in our mind, internally. And then there are ascetics and brahmins and teachers who have walked this path and can show the way. This is essentially that there are those who have, to some extent, walked this path and can provide some guidance. So all of these aspects of right view are not only check marks to see how our mindset is, but also guidelines to see where we can course correct our mindset.

Because this practice is not for everyone. Frankly speaking, it's not for sociopaths. It's not for psychopaths. It's not for anybody who has any kind of personality disorder, or I should say an extreme kind of disorder of personality, because it is difficult for them to understand empathy. Sometimes, in some cases, it's difficult to understand action and consequence in a way that is not harmful to oneself and harmful to others. So this isn't for everybody. This is for somebody who has some level of understanding that when I do this, it affects another person in this way, because I know how that feels, and I wouldn't want to cause harm because I do not want to experience that same kind of harm.

The super mundane level of right view is the understanding of the four noble truths. The four noble truths are that there is suffering in life, that some aspects of life are terrible. The second noble truth of that is that there are causes and conditions for that, namely what is known as craving, but essentially expectations of ourselves, expectations of the people around us, and expectations of the world around us. The third noble truth is known as nirodha, cessation.

The big word, cessation, what does that mean? It means the relief from suffering in that moment. When we are able to see the expectations and see how this is causing us to enter into a loop of suffering, and we choose to disengage from that, we experience relief in that moment. The fourth noble truth is the Eightfold Path. So this supermundane right view occurs when we have done these four things, namely understood and recognized that there is suffering in life, abandoned or disengaged

from the causes and conditions that lead to that experience of suffering, and experienced for oneself that relief that is known as nirodha, by cultivating and developing the Eightfold Path. So the Eightfold Path is the spine of the practice. From the Eightfold Path, or I should say before that, from the Four Noble Truths, we have all of the suttas. Every sutta in the Majjhima Nikaya, the Digha Nikaya, the Khuddaka Nikaya, the Samyutta Nikaya, all of the different aspects of the Pali Canon, are essentially describing, elaborating, explaining, analyzing, and recollecting one or more of the four noble truths in different ways. So later on we will talk about dependent origination, which is an elaboration of the first and second noble truths. We will talk about transcendental dependent origination, which is an elaboration of the third and fourth noble truths. And in this case in particular, the fourth noble truth, which is the Eightfold Path, is the spine from where all the other aspects of technique and practice and so on and so forth, the factors of enlightenment.

The four foundations of mindfulness, all the rest of the 37 factors, are included in the eightfold path, and include the eightfold path, and are interconnected by the eightfold path. Now, you don't need to remember all of this, right? There's no need for you to remember this, because when you are practicing, these things are happening implicitly. It is my job to just point them out. Remember, there's not going to be an exam at the end of the retreat, right? You don't need to memorize all of this. So from right view there is what's known as sammasankappa, which is right intention. Right intention is made up of three things: nekkhama, which is renunciation; avihimsa, which is non-ill-will or non-cruelty; and ahimsa, which is non-ill-will, or avyapada, also.

But essentially what we're talking about is renunciation, non-ill-will, and non-cruelty. When we talk about renunciation, it can give the idea that we need to go into the forest and become an ascetic and renounce the world and every possession and renounce our family and friends and become a hermit and things like that. If that's your path, that's great. If you want to be somebody who's in a monastic or an ascetic tradition, that's great, that's fine.

But I know many monks who are only monks in name. And they still have a lot of desires. They still have a lot of craving. And they still have no idea what it means to truly renounce. It's an outward show of renunciation. What we're talking about is an inner renunciation. And that inner renunciation is, plain and simple, contentment.

having contentment, knowing when enough is enough, the contentment of here I am, let's say in this case in the retreat, I have my meals taken care of, I have my room taken care of, I'm content, i don't need anything else so i can just focus on my practice more difficult outside of a retreat setting where i have bills to pay i have family to take care of or i have society society to fit into i have work to do all of these things and there is this push towards what is the next step what is the next step what is the next step what is the next step and this is taking you out of contentment contentment is about being here right now seeing what is required in this moment if nothing is required in this moment why do anything if something comes up you act on it do it and come back to contentment the next is non-ill will in the sequence of right intention non-ill will essentially means that I do not have a desire to harm another living being they may frustrate me they may annoy the hell out of me

but there is no desire to harm them that's it it's just that I don't have any sense of hatred towards that being. Non-ill will, ill will, that when we say ill will, it is a desire to harm. Cruelty or non-cruelty is the lack, I'll put it a different way, non-cruelty is essentially recognizing another person's suffering. When I get into an argument if somebody wants to argue with me, if somebody wants to get upset by something I said or did and they want to call me names.

They want to say things to me or about me. If I'm not able to see the underlying notion behind all of that, it's very difficult to do in that moment because it's all about me. If somebody's saying something towards me, I hold very personal to that image of me. But if I'm able to, with wisdom, in that moment, be able to relax and see, what is it that is actually causing me pain? Who is being hurt?

And at a very extreme level, this can happen, where we talk about this in the suttas. Sariputta, for example, talks about this. He says, if you were to see the abuses that people throw at you as just sound forms, as just sound waves, then would you take it personally? It's like me being here in Austria. I don't know a lick of German.

I've been telling Krishna I've been wanting to learn for the last two years, but I'm just too lazy. I'll give the excuse that I don't have time. But it's like me walking down the street and then somebody says something to me in German. I see them shouting, I see them getting upset, visibly upset. And they're using all kinds of expletives towards me in German.

But because I don't know it, it's just sound waves coming to me, I'm not reacting to it. So that's what Sariputta is talking about. If you can get to that level through development and seeing that it is just sound waves, it's just emotional charge that's coming at us, and it's nothing to do with us. It's to do with the other person. This is what I'm getting at when we talk about non-cruelty.

The recognition that when a person is upset, it is because they are suffering in one way or the other, and giving them slack, giving them the rope, to be like, okay, they must be in a bad mood, somebody must have said something to them earlier, maybe they didn't get enough sleep, maybe they're whatever it is. Have that benefit of the doubt, because when we have that, we can also recognize that, yeah, there have been times when I have been upset, there have been times when I have said things that I shouldn't have said. And so we are recognizing our own suffering in them. But cruelty is not only not recognizing, but adding to that suffering.

The reactivity towards somebody being upset at us, the reactivity of returning their sound waves with more explicit sound waves, that is cruelty, because I'm not able to see their suffering and I'm just adding to the whole circle or cycle of suffering that's going on. That is cruelty. So non-cruelty is the recognition of that and letting that go, disengaging. And so the entire umbrella of renunciation or contentment, non-ill-will or no desire to harm, and non-cruelty, not adding to another person's suffering, the entire umbrella of that is all about disengaging, is all about letting go, is all about relaxing.

Now we will get into right speech and right action and right livelihood. Right speech, I have used an acronym for this: think before you speak. T-H-I-N-K, think before you speak. And this matches with what is in the sutras. A couple of weeks ago, David Johnson sent me an email, and he said, look at the sutra, it was a very short sutra, and he talked about right speech, and he said, it sounds a lot like your think before you speak. I said, that's the exact sutta that I got it from. So this isn't something I've made up. This is from looking at the suttas and coming up with a way to relate that in a modern context, in a way that's easy to understand and remember.

So the T here stands for timeliness. Is it the right time to say what it is that you want to say, or can it be said at a different time? Maybe it's not the right time because there's a group and you want to speak to this person about something they might have done or said, and you don't want to embarrass them, so it's not the right time to speak. Now it's better that you speak to them alone. H is for honesty. Do you know what you are about to say is true? If you don't, and if it's hearsay, then preface it with that. Tell them, I don't know if this is true or not, but this is what I understand.

This is how I understand it, this is how I took it. I is for intention. What is your intention behind what you want to say? Is it just relaying information? Is it relaying appreciation? Is it relaying harm? What is the intention? N is for necessity. Is it necessary for you to say what you have to say to that person?

How will it benefit you or them or you and them? And K is kindness. Can you say what you're going to say with kindness? You can still reprimand someone with kindness so this is think before you speak you speak this is right speech right action is all about keeping the other precepts so in the square of think is also the precept of not using false or harsh speech the other precepts are included in right action so when you take precepts in the morning it is not just a it's not a ritual it's not something that you're doing because you know the Buddha had told you that you have to do it or some teacher tells you you have to do it it's up to you whether you want to keep the take the precepts or not but they are great ways to start the day because it reminds you of how to to keep your mind in a beneficial space and a space of non-harm it reminds you it's like upholding a habit or creating a habit and upholding that habit

So refraining from killing or harming living beings is part of right action. Refraining from taking what is not freely given is part of right action. Refraining from sexual or sensual misconduct is also part of right action. Funnily enough, refraining from intoxicants is not part of right action, because that came later. That does not excuse us to get drunk.

So right action leads to right livelihood. And there are many ways of interpreting what that means when we say right livelihood. The Buddha has listed out things which monks should not be doing. And this is a question I've gotten, funnily enough, that it says there that to be a doctor, to be a physician, is part of wrong livelihood. Well, in the case of a monk, it is wrong livelihood. Buddha is explicitly saying that for bhikkhus and bhikkhunis, the reason why they became bhikkhus and bhikkhunis is for the purpose of letting go of all external distractions

coming into a different lifestyle that is conducive for a practice that allows one to experience Nibbana. It is streamlining one's life in such a way that your whole mindset is directed towards Nibbana. Over a period of time during the Buddha's life, however, he had to create more and more precepts. So in the case of bhikkhus, it's 227.

In the case of bhikkhunis it is 311. Be happy that you're only doing eight. So over a period of time it happened that the Buddha had to add this particular rule and this particular rule and so on and so forth. Majority of that was also for good PR and having a good image, because the rival monastics of different practices were a certain way, and if we as Buddhist monks are not that way, we will be open to criticism, or we will be criticized for that.

But the core essence of the precepts, in terms of when we talk about the five basic precepts, is about not causing oneself harm and not causing another person harm. And so that is the principle behind right livelihood: do not engage in any kind of business or career or job or livelihood that can cause you harm or cause another being harm directly. This is a very important understanding, directly, because there are all these moral conundrums. Well, I work for a defense company, but I'm not actually the one sending the missiles, so should I still be part of that or not? That is up to you.

Well, I'm invested in this particular stock, but I know that it is funding this particular thing that is harming other beings, or whatever it is. Do I continue investing in that stock or not? That's up to you. You have to decide for yourself. This samsara is very complicated. It's very complex in that regard, and if you overthink the process you're not going to get anywhere. You are going to be sort of stuck in a rut. So you decide for yourself what is the line that you draw when it refers to this is causing harm and this is not causing harm. I will take questions after.

So right speech, right action, right livelihood are part of sila. It's all about keeping the precepts, keeping the mind unagitated. Now we get into samadhi. What is samadhi? Sama means same-same, equal. Dhi, d-h-i. Dhi is the short form for buddhi, which is the intellect or the mind. Samadhi is all about even-mindedness, a mind that goes deeper into collectedness. And there are three parts, or three components of samadhi: right effort, right mindfulness and right collectedness. Right effort is essentially about abandoning the unwholesome and bringing up the wholesome and staying with that.

There are four components. The four components are: preventing the arising of unarisen unwholesome states; the second part is the abandoning of already arisen unwholesome states; the third is generating wholesome states; and the fourth is maintaining those wholesome states. But to simplify the process: letting go of the unwholesome, staying with the wholesome. How do you define or discern between what is wholesome and unwholesome? Unwholesome creates a constrictive, contracted mind that feels tense.

Wholesome is a mind that feels like it's expansive, spacious. Sometimes it can happen that we are with the wholesome, but we still feel tightness and tension. And that's just because we have become too obsessed with staying there, instead of allowing the free flow of mind. That's it. And sometimes the tightness and tension is there, and it's just nothing to do with anything.

And so we allow it to be there as well. And that's okay. But very broadly speaking, this is how I would define the difference between the wholesome and the unwholesome. Another way of defining it, as per the suttas, is: the unwholesome is that which is not beneficial for me or another person, that which is causing me harm and another person harm.

And the wholesome is that which is beneficial for me and for another person, that which is not causing me or another person harm. That's basically the definition. So that is right effort. So I have simplified the six R's for you to such an extent that all you have to do is notice when the mind is distracted, and relax.

And relax back into whatever your object is. If you are staying with metta, relax back into the feeling, relax back into the awareness, relax back into the present moment. If it is radiating, relax back into radiating in the different directions. If it's just quiet mind, relax back into staying in quiet mind. Whatever it is, the object is.

Right mindfulness. So, right mindfulness, this is a whole other talk which we may get into. But suffice it to say that when we say right mindfulness, what we're talking about essentially are two components: Sati and Sampanjanya. Sati means to remember. Sampanjanya means to comprehend. Remember what? Remember to be here in the present moment. And Sampanjanya is to comprehend what is happening in the present moment.

You have heard it said before from me and from David and from Bhante that mindfulness can be defined as remembering to observe how mind's attention moves from one object to the other. That is quite a mouthful, so to simplify what it is: it is present moment awareness and the comprehension of what is happening in the present moment. Your attention is gathered around what is happening in every moment, and understanding what is happening in that present moment. That's it.

And this inevitably leads to right collectedness. Sama Samadhi, right collectedness. Right collectedness is essentially the mind that is collected around its object, or collected enough to not let the mind go here or there. As per the suttas, right collectedness has the first four jhanas. But let's set that aside for a moment. We will talk about the jhanas if we need to at some point. But when we talk about right collectedness, it implies that there is a wrong collectedness.

What do we mean by that? What would be an example or definition of wrong collectedness? Pushing, trying too hard. You know, as the suttas say sometimes, grinding your teeth, crushing mind with mind. And what that does is it suppresses the mind. It feels great. It feels great in that moment to be in such a state of samadhi that you can't hear anything that's going on outside of you. The mind is completely free of any kind of hindrance and there's absolutely nothing going on, and you may experience some degrees of bliss and happiness and joy and all of that good stuff. You may experience that joy and bliss for hours on end after the end of that meditation, but then when you are triggered, all of that falls like a house of cards. So it is the suppression of the mind that is wrong collectedness. But right collectedness is like a mind that is orbiting around its object, collected around its object. In the case of being at the lake, when you have wrong collectedness it's like your attention is fully on that sailboat but you don't realize that there is a fire around you,

whereas right collectedness is, yeah, I'm engaging with the sailboat, but oh my God, there's a fire, I better leave, right? So that allows for when distractions arise, noticing that a distraction is coming, noticing the mind is starting to divert away, and gently letting that go and returning back to your object. The more gung-ho you are about the practice, while it might seem like you are making more progress, you are not, because you are not letting the mind learn where those trigger points are coming from,

where those points of distraction are arising, and how to deal with them, how to acknowledge them, how to fully be with them, and disengage from them. Because when you do this, you are actually practicing the Four Noble Truths. When you can acknowledge, yes, my mind is distracted, that is the First Noble Truth. You have understood that there is suffering in the form of that hindrance, in the form of that distraction.

And when you disengage, you don't desire to control it, you don't desire to push it down, you don't desire to manipulate it or do anything with it, except to disengage. Then you are not adding to the fuel of the Second Noble Truth: craving. Craving for a certain outcome. Don't like this, here, I don't want it here, I'm pushing it away, I'm pushing it down, I'm going to wrestle with it, do whatever I can with it, destroy it. And all you're doing is adding fuel to the fire of craving.

But if you can see it and acknowledge it, that's the First Noble Truth of understanding that it's there. The Second Noble Truth is disengaging from that, abandoning it, letting it go, and seeing the relief in that when you relax. Third Noble Truth, and implicitly you have practiced the Fourth Noble Truth. So right collectedness circles back into the supramundane right view, and so the right view and the right intention are part of panya, the cultivation of the eightfold path, or the cultivation of these different factors under the umbrella of sila and samadhi. They lead to the development of supramundane right view and the right intention, which is automatic: automatically disengaging.

Not for any other purpose but for the purpose of having peace. And that is the development of wisdom. What do we mean by that wisdom? We'll explore that in future discussions. But essentially it is the realization that that which we call the world, that which we call the self, is essentially a stream of data bits that the mind complexifies and turns into something. The conceptual proliferation. The seeing through that, the shunyata, the emptiness of that, is the cultivation of wisdom. And this is all what happens when you practice in this way.