Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
The Noble Eightfold Path - Coggle Diagram
The Noble Eightfold Path
The Range of Suffering
Suffering is the main topic of Buddha's teachings
Life is directly associated with dukkha (suffering)
Means something more than just suffering, pain, and misery
Refers to unsatisfactory aspect that infects our lives
Manifests as sorrow, grief, disappointment, and/or despair
To us it just feels like life is never perfect/nothing ever meets our expectations
Buddha says that dukkha is the only real spiritual problem
The other problems are considered “matters not tending to liberation”
Teaches dukkha and its cessation
Exposes different forms that dukkha exhibits
Physical suffering
Includes birth, aging, and death (sickness, accidents, and injuries)
Inner reactions to situations and events
Sorrow, anger, frustration, and fear aroused by painful separations and unpleasant encounters and failure
Found even in pleasures
Do not last forever → leads to deprivation
Our lives consist of finding pleasure and fearing pain
We do not often enjoy or experience contentment
Real satisfaction is usually completely out of reach
Eventually we die and have to leave behind what we built our lives to be without ever really experiencing satisfaction
Death does not end dukkha
2 more items...
Buddha discovered suffering through his encounter with an old person, a sick person, a dead person, and a "sadhu"
The Causes of Suffering
Must understand the origination of suffering in order to end it
Need to figure out and understand the causes (how they work and what they are)
The Buddha explains “the truth of the origin of dukkha"
The origin is within ourselves
Causes disorder in our minds and affects our relationships
Can be seen through our mental states called, Kilesas or “defilements"
Most common defilements are greed, aversion, and delusion
Greed (lobha): self centered desire that includes pleasure, possessions, need for survival, power, and need to uplift one’s ego
Aversion (dosa): represents negation that is shown through rejection, irritation, condemnation, and hatred
Delusion (moha): mental darkness that blocks out clear understanding
From these, other defilements arise like conceit, jealousy, ambition, and lethargy
1 more item...
To avoid suffering, we must erase defilements
We must remove them in a methodical way
Can not happen by just pure will or by just hoping they go away
Must happen through investigation
1 more item...
The Buddha states that all defilements are held together by one thing, which ignorance (avijja)
Ignorance is not just a lack of knowledge, it can co-exist with an accumulation of knowledge (shrewd and resourceful)
Fundamental darkness that surrounds our minds
Obscures our understanding
Considered a great deceiver that creates distorted perceptions and conceptions
4 more items...
Ignorance → defilements → suffering
2 more items...
Siddhartha Gautama realized suffering exist through a sick person, an old person, a dead person, and a "sadhu"
Siddhartha Gautama realized that the only way to end suffering was to follow the ascetic path
Goal is freedom from samasara
Cutting Off the Causes of Suffering
To free ourselves from suffering (dukkha) we must eliminate ignorance from our lives
We need knowledge that represents things as they really are
Need perceptual knowledge: knowing which is also seeing → known as wisdom (panna)
Assists in correcting the distortive work of ignorance
Allows us to understand things in actuality, directly, and immediately → absence of distorted thinking (free of views and assumptions)
Wisdom can not be gained by just learning and accumulating facts
Wisdom is cultivated
Acquired through conditions that we have the power to develop and acquire
Conditions consist of mental factors and components of one’s consciousness
Fit together → path for movement leading to a goal
Goal is to end suffering which is through the path leading to the Noble Eightfold Path
Right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration
Buddha calls this path the middle way (majjhima patipada)
3 more items...