four noble truths
The fourth noble truth is the path that leads us out of suffering. Through the practice of sensitivity, meditation and wisdom we will achieve permanent happiness. With moral sensitivity we enhance our empathy and we can improve our patience and attitude towards people, plus we will lose our egocentric tendency. With the practice of meditation we can improve our mindfulness and be always aware and in control of ourselves and so we let wisdom grow in us. Only when we lose our ego we can achieve total freedom. Our ego prevents us to connect directly with the others, we build it like a shield to defend ourselves, like an armor, the fact is that the same armor that protects us can prevents us from breathing freely. In buddhism the fourth noble truth shows how to get out of suffering through the practice of the eightfold noble path. This is the eightfold noble path:
1- Right understanding. Right understanding refers to the middle way. We must understand and find a middle way between extremes in our life. Balance is the key in everything, in our reaction towards other people, in our general attitude and even in our diet. For example if we eat to much we get fat, if we eat poorly we will get weakness and illness, so you can easily see how balance is important.
2- Right Thought. The right thought practice allows us to be a witness of ourselves and what happens to us. We must pay attention to emotions and thoughts to avoid the development of negative reactions. In other words we must keep our attention on avoiding that emotions take over and possess us. We absolutely don’t need to repress those emotion (this way they will never get out of our system) but we need to “watch” them without let them dominate our person, gradually with this process they will disappear. When we get angry for example instead of burst into a volcano of rage we can just notice that anger is coming, using our mindfulness, and without let anger to control our actions and words. This is a hard process but like everything else with practice we can achieve anything.
3-Right Speech means to pay attention to what we say, how we use our language and our ability to communicate with others. Normally we aren’t even aware of our reactions and actions (specifically in language) and so we indulge in bad attitude, gossip and insults. If we manage to become aware of our speaking we will naturally avoid aggressiveness and useless chattering.
4- Right Action is how we act, bad or good toward ourselves and others, specifically with our bodies. Our actions, like our words, directly influence people arounds us, if we pay crescent attention to our actions we will be less incline to harm others in any way.
5- Right livelihood. There is nothing wrong in making money or protect the persons we love, our families and friends. We live (like the buddha at his times) in a society based on exchange of money. So to eat and sleep properly, to live, we need a occupation. This occupation of ours should not be aggressive or harmful in any way toward people or other living beings. Making money is good, what is bad is a mind possessed by money.
6- Right effort. Right effort means to pay attention at the traps of attachment, ignorance and aversion. We have instincts and we are used to certain mechanisms. At the beginning of this path we need to practice with effort, pay constant attention to not fall again in previous mistakes. It’s like when we learn to drive a car, someone just have more basic ability than someone else but when driving is a new thing we need to pay more attention to achieve the state of calm driving, to get used to driving. So like anything else when we want to evolve and improve ourselves and our happiness we need to focus more. This extra-focus is the right effort.
7- Right mindfulness. Mindfulness is the one thing that can help us in being aware of our thoughts, words and actions. If we learn to use mindfulness constantly, whatever we experience, we become more aware and in control of our reaction and of how our mind works under any circumstance.
8- Right concentration is simply to be focused. We must pay attentions to avoid distractions especially in meditation we should be able to stay “focused” without letting any sound or situation to break our focus.
So this ancient wisdom seems very actual to me. We can take those teachings and melt them in our everyday life and gradually get better. How use them is up to use, but if you ask me the best way is to avoid any stress and work step by step in calmness and tranquility.
Thank you for reading and stay tuned for more ancient wisdom.
Take your time!
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Whether you want to start some new activity or change something in your life you will need time. Nowadays something like 12 hours of our precious days are dedicated to work from the wake-up to the time necessary to return at home from the workplace. We don’t have time for learning something new, time for our friends and families and time for us. We are so tired that most of the times the week-ends and the evenings are dedicated to doing nothing. When we don’t have time for learning or simply time for us, our life is reduced merely to our work.
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