One of the most famous of the Buddha’s teachings is him summarizing the Quality to a group of 1,250 worthy ones.

The not doing of all evil,
Engaging in the wholesome,
The purification of the psyche,
This is the teaching of the awakened ones.

Acceptance is the ultimate austerity for honing.
“Extinguishing is the ultimate,” the awakened ones say.
One who has gone forth would not harm another.
A tranquil one does not harass another.

Without confronting, without harming
And restrained by the Restraint,
And knowing the measure of the meal,
Living in a secluded place,
And commitment to the mastery of the psyche
This is the teaching of the awakened ones.
Dp 183-185

Qualities of the Buddha Dhamma Sangha
Followers of the Awakened One would often take refuge, seek protection and shelter in the Awakened One himself, the Quality he taught, and the Order of monks he established.

The quality of belief, faith, and inspiration around the Awakened One, the Quality, and the Order can be an important source of energy and motivation and a vehicle for a wholesome, balanced, contentment and joy. When one has a basis of that wholesome balanced contentment and joy, it can be very conducive towards convergence and unification and ultimately letting go completely.

However, to generate that belief, one needs to have a sense for what they are. The canonical description of the Awakened One, the Quality, and the Order are:

He is auspicious, worthy, and fully and completely awakened, perfect in wisdom and conduct, virtuous, knower of the universe, unsurpassable trainer of men, teacher of deities and humans, awake and auspicious.

Well described by the auspicious one is the quality, visible, timeless, “come and see,” progressive, to be individually experienced by the perceptive.

Well practiced is the order of disciples of the auspicious one. Rightly practiced is the order of disciples of the auspicious one. Correctly practiced is the order of disciples of the auspicious one. Properly practiced is the order of disciples of the auspicious one. That is the four pairs of men, the eight types of men. That is the order of disciples of the auspicious one who are to be made offerings, to be hosted as guests, to be given gifts, to be offered añjali, an unsurpassable field of rewards of the world. (e.g. AN 3.70)

Giving
The Awakened One was constantly pointing out the benefits of giving. The results he described are both in this life and after death.

Monks, if beings would know the results of giving and having shared as I know them, they would not eat without having given, and the impurity of possessiveness would not stay in their psyche. Even the last bite, the last handful, from that they would not eat without sharing, if there were ones who could receive them. But monks, because beings do not know the results of giving and sharing like I know them, they eat without having given, and the impurity of possessiveness stays in their psyche.
Iti 26

Monks, these are five benefits in giving. Which five?

• Many people love it and find it pleasing.

• Those who are true men share.

• A good reputation spreads.

• Worldly things don’t disappear.

• With the breakup of the body, after death, one arises in a good destination, a heavenly world.
  These are the five benefits in giving.

  Giving is loved.
  Remembered, the quality follows
  Those who exist in that always share
  Restrained and celibate.

  They teach the quality
  Which drives out all pain.
  That quality here having understood,
  Completely extinguishes, without any impulses.
  AN 5.35

Morality & The Results of Deeds
The Buddha often taught about the importance of morality both in leading to our long-term worldly well being and also being a crucial part of the path that leads to ultimate freedom.

There are ten core parts of morality the Buddha laid out (MN 41):
The three parts of bodily moral conduct are:

• Refraining from killing living beings
• Refraining from stealing
• Refraining from wrong sexual behavior, that is, with one who is under someone else’s protection, is a monastic, is in another relationship, or with someone with whom sex is illegal.

The four parts of verbal moral conduct are:

• Refraining from lying
• Refraining from speaking divisively
• Refraining from speaking coarse speech
• Refraining from useless chatter

The three parts of mental moral conduct are:

• Not being covetous

• Not being hostile

• Believing in mundane right view:
  1) There are fruits which mature from good and bad actions.

  2) The visible world exists, as well as a world beyond. One is born into this world through a mother and a father. One is born into a world beyond through falling into them spontaneously.

  3) There are well practiced renunciates who have experienced with direct knowledge this world and the world beyond and make it known.

The Buddha taught that it is these 10 types of moral or immoral conduct which determine whether one is born in heavenly or human realms or goes down to lower realms.

There were also a number of suggestions that the Buddha made for lay people specifically. In addition to taking refuge in the Awakened One, the Quality, and the Order, he also explained that taking the five precepts are overflowing streams of rewards. These are not killing, not stealing, not having sexual misconduct, not lying, and not taking alcohol, liquor or other things which are the basis for distraction and intoxication. (AN 8.39)

Additionally, the Awakened One encouraged lay followers to observe observance days on the nights of the full moon, new moon, and 8th days of the lunar cycle. On these days, lay people would go to listen to a Dhamma talk from monastics when possible, and observe the eight precepts for that day. (AN 8.41)

Kamma
Teaching on kamma, deeds, is a fundamental part of the Awakened One’s teaching. He encouraged all people to frequently reflect:

I am the owner of deeds, heir to deeds, born of deeds, sheltered by deeds, whatever deeds I do, good or bad, I will be their heir.
AN 5.57

In this vein, a major theme of the Awakened One’s teaching is to be very careful with one’s intentions and put in a lot of effort to become conscious of one’s intentions and remember their consequences at every moment.

Just as importantly, an understanding that one experiences the results of one’s own actions leads to a greater ability to let go of trying to control the world or the acts of others. The more one is able to experience the effects of doing good actions and the consequences of doing bad actions inside oneself, leads one towards putting more effort into purifying ones own intentions and actions as opposed to trying to change the actions of others.

The Drawback of Sense Pleasures
The Buddha offered many teachings and exhortations to monks and lay people about the dangers of sense pleasures. He described sense pleasures as any pleasing, liked, wished for, desired, pleasurable sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch. (AN 6.63)

He used many similes on the dangers of sense pleasures to describe how fleeting, fraught with danger, disappointing, and unfulfilling they are:
He likened them to a hungry dog chewing on a bone unable to satiate his hunger.
He described them as similar to a vulture, hawk, or crow carrying around a piece of meat, and the likelihood that other birds of prey would attack the bird if it does not drop the piece of meat.
He likened them to carrying a torch against the wind.
He likened them to being dragged towards a pit of fire.
He likened them to borrowed goods, which one has to return.
He likened them to a dream, and the reality faced when one wakes up.
He likened them to someone who has climbed up a tree to gather fruit, but realizes the danger with the realization that another is planning to cut the tree down to gather the fruit for himself. (MN 54)

The Awakened One also encouraged lay people to look at how much work, struggle, and stress goes into trying to earn money to attain possessions and experiences, which don’t last and are subject to theft and destruction by various means. He often spoke at length on how many arguments, conflict, violence, war, and destruction is caused by the pursuit of sensual pleasures. (MN 13)

The more clearly one becomes aware of these internal and external drawbacks of sensuality and remembers them, the more one has a motivation to abandon them.

Benefits of Renunciation
In addition to avoiding all the potential conflict and frustration and disappointment bred by the pursuit of sensuality, renunciation also offers the time and space to be able to dedicate oneself completely to the development of wholesome qualities, the abandoning of unwholesome qualities, and the purification of one’s psyche.

In his own search for the way to ultimate freedom, the Awakened One, before he was awakened and was still a being destined for awakening, asked himself “Why if I’m subject to birth, aging, and death, do I seek out things that are also subject to birth, aging, and death?”

Even before reaching his aspiration of ultimate freedom, it became clear to him that seeking out the things and experiences of the world would only distract him from his purpose and only by looking at the internal causes of attachment and birth could he find the way out. (MN 26)

One of the common reflection for people preparing to go forth is:
“The household is cramped and dusty, going forth is open and spacious. It’s not easy living in a household to live the holy life completely fulfilled, completely pure, polished like a conch shell. What if I were to cut off my hair and beard, wear cloth dyed with tannins, and go forth from the household into homelessness?” DN 2

In addition, the abandoning of sensual pleasures yields another, even more important quality necessary to the ultimate freedom. In abandoning sensual experiences of the five senses, one leaves behind all the agitation that is bred in that movement and attachment. The more one succeeds in abandoning the craving for and movement towards sensuality, the more one has an inner sense of contentment, joy, pleasure, and relaxation. These qualities naturally tend towards convergence and unification of the psyche. DN 2

The Four Noble Truths
The four noble truths are the centerpiece of the Buddha’s teaching. They are the key to ultimate freedom. The whole path is included in the four noble truths.

The nature of those truths is they are the keys to coming out of the cycle of pain. They are the truths that delusion is constantly trying to avoid. All the previous sections are the required prerequisites to forming a wholesome basis from which one can come to a place of acceptance with that which is hardest to accept.

When the Awakened One was still on the path to awakening, his goal wasn’t only to lessen the emotional and physical pain inherent in life. His goal was to get out of the cycle of birth, aging, and death completely. (MN 26)

The first noble truth is the truth of pain. It was to be understood completely, from all sides:
“Birth is painful. Aging is painful. Death is painful. Being stuck with those who are not loved is painful. Being separated from those who are loved is painful. Not getting what one wants is painful. In brief, the five masses which are taken on are painful.”

The second noble truth was the origin of that pain which was to be abandoned:
“That craving which comes into existence over and over again, which goes along with delight and infatuation, going about delighting here and there. That is: craving for sensuality, craving for existence, or craving for non-existence.”

The third noble truth was the dissolution of pain was to be realized.
With the fading away, and dissolving without a trace of that very craving, giving it up, relinquishing it completely, release, without any clinging.

The fourth noble truth is the way leading to the dissolution of pain, the whole set of preparations necessary to develop the subtlety of mind and psyche necessary to abandon craving at a moment-to-moment level. It is to be developed.
“This very noble eight-part path. That is: right view, right resolution, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right remembrance, and right convergence.”
*(*SN 56.11)

It is the understanding of these realities and the experience of them that lays out the path to ultimate freedom. When they are understood, applied, and developed, they lead to the realization of ultimate freedom.

The Noble Eight-Part Path
The most complex part of the four noble truths is the fourth, the noble eight part path. The process involves creating a clean basis of moral purity, abandoning the pursuit of sensual experiences and unwholesome qualities, developing awareness, and unification of the psyche.

The noble truth of the way that leads to the dissolution of pain is the noble eight-part path:
Right view, right resolution, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right remembrance, right convergence.

Right view is the knowledge of pain, knowledge of the origin of pain, knowledge of the dissolution of pain, knowledge of the way leading to the dissolution of pain.

Right resolution is a resolution of renunciation, non-hostility, and non-cruelty.

Right speech is refraining from lying, divisive speech, coarse speech, and useless chatter.

Right action is refraining from killing living beings, taking what is not given, and wrong sexual behavior.

Right livelihood is abandoning wrong livelihood and supporting his life by right livelihood (MN 141). The full description of the types of livelihood a monastic should avoid includes a long list of activities which involve fortune telling, “animal arts” of reading omens and characteristics of people and nature, predictions about astrology, politics, weather, and mundane things, worldly livelihoods and doing errands for people, black and white magic, blessings, curses, and various forms of healing. (DN 2)

Right Effort: Developing the Wholesome and Abandoning the Unwholesome
Right effort is a monk generating desire, effort, arouses energy, digs deep for will power and strives to keep unarisen unwholesome, bad qualities from arising, to abandon arisen bad and unwholesome qualities, to make unarisen wholesome qualities arise, and to sustain, develop, extend, and fulfill arisen wholesome qualities.

To do this one needs to have a clear understanding of what wholesome and unwholesome qualities are.

The five coarsest forms of unwholesome qualities the Buddha described as obstructions or blockages. He would also often describe specific tools to overcome each of them. (DN 2)

To overcome the obstruction of covetousness, greed, envy, and sensual desire for the world, one is encouraged looking at the unattractive aspects of that which one is infatuated with. There are a number of different tools to either break the object down into its constituent parts, or think about what it will turn into as it dissolves.

Some of the most common reflections are corpse, a skeleton, or breaking things down into the characteristics of earth, liquid, heat, wind, or breaking the body down into its component parts: head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, sinews, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, pancreas, spleen, lungs, large intestine, small intestine, other inner organs, excrement, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, oil, saliva, snot, wound seepage, urine. (DN 22)

To overcome the obstruction of hostility, he encouraged developing kindness and sympathy for the well being of all living beings.

To overcome the obstruction of sluggishness and sleepiness, he recommended recognizing light, remembering, and fully aware. He encouraged by uncovering, unwrapping the will, developing radiance in the psyche, as well as remembering and being fully conscious. (AN 7.61)

To overcome the obstruction of agitation and worry, he encouraged a focus on calming one’s psyche.

To overcome the obstruction of indecision, he encouraged clarity on what are wholesome and unwholesome qualities.

In addition to these major obstructions, he also listed a longer list of unwholesome qualities such as anger and vindictiveness, being controlling or possessive, being deceitful and deceptive, arrogance and conceitedness, as well as grasping tightly to views and being unable to relinquish them. To deal with these more deeply seated impurities which are more tied to a sense of self and ego, he encouraged the recognition of impermanence (AN 9.3).

The benefit of overcoming these five obstructions and the weakening of the other unwholesome states, is that one is able to develop a state of calm, awareness and remembrance of the path. Because of this calm basis for awareness, it eventually develops into a deep contentment. One deeply content is overcome with joy. For one with a joyful mind, the body relaxes. A relaxed body feels pleasure. For one who feels pleasure, the psyche concentrates. (DN2, AN 11.1)

Right Concentration & Calm (Samatha)
The Buddha described many different tools for creating a wholesome basis for calm: morality (AN 11.1) The four supreme dwellings (SN 46.54), the six recollections of the Awakened One, the Quality, the Order, giving things up, morality, and deities (AN 11.11).

Additionally, one of the most frequent wholesome bases comes from abandoning the five obstructions and reflects on the benefit of being free of them. When someone has abandoned the desire for sensuality and other unwholesome states, one naturally has a sense of deep contentment, From there, the Awakened One describes:
For one who is deeply content, joy arises.
For one with a joyful mind, the body relaxes
For one with a relaxed body, one feels pleasure.
For one feeling pleasure, the psyche concentrates. (e.g. DN 2)

These transition naturally into the four focuses (jhānā):

“A monk separated from sensuality, separated from unwholesome qualities, he lives having entered into the first focus with thought and mental movement, with joy and pleasure born of solitude…

Joy and pleasure born of separation flow through, flow around, fill up, and pervade this very body, with no part of the body left unpervaded with joy and pleasure born of separation…

With the calming of thought and mental movement, internally settling down, the will having been set down and unified, he enters into the second focus without thought or mental movement, with joy and pleasure born of convergence…

Joy and pleasure born of convergence flow through, flow around, fill up, and pervade this very body, with no part of the body left unpervaded with joy and pleasure born of convergence…

With the fading of joy, dwelling in observation, remembering and fully aware, experiencing pleasure throughout the body, that which the noble ones make known “This one is observing, remembering, and dwelling in pleasure.” he enters into the third focus.

Pleasure without joy flows through, flows around, fills up, and pervades this very body, with no part of the body left unpervaded with pleasure and without joy…

With the abandoning of pleasure, and the abandoning of pain, with joy and suffering having previously come to an end, purified through observation and remembering, he enters into the fourth focus without pain or pleasure…

He sits having pervaded this very body with a pure and clean psyche, with no part of the body left unpervaded by a pure and clean psyche…“ (DN 2)

Right Remembrance & Discerning (Vipassanā)
Right remembrance is the piece of the path when one establishes remembrance in the context of four aspects of one’s experience. Right remembrance is described as:
“A monk lives examining the body within the body, passionate, fully conscious, and remembering having removed covetousness and suffering for the world,
Lives examining sensations within sensations, passionate, fully conscious, and remembering having removed covetousness and suffering for the world,
Lives examining the psyche within the psyche, passionate, fully conscious, and remembering having removed covetousness and suffering for the world,
Lives examining qualities within qualities, passionate, fully conscious, and remembering, having removed covetousness and suffering for the world.” (MN 141)

The Awakened One on several occasions goes much more in depth about what should be remembered in the context of each of these four experiences. (DN 22)

In the context of the body, he gave many objects for remembering the body in the context of its constituent parts and remembering the impermanence of it and a long list of impressions of a corpse and skeleton in various states of decay after death. Additionally, he included several objects which directed remembering more directly at the postures of the body, the breath, feeling the whole body, and relaxing the merging of the body.

In the context of sensations, he taught monks to remember whether the sensations being experienced were pleasurable, painful, or neither pleasurable nor painful, and whether they were arising because of worldly stimuli or whether they were arising due to spiritual qualities away from the world.

In the context of the psyche, he taught monks to remember whether the psyche was with or without infatuation, with or without hatred, with or without delusion, collapsed or scattered, expanded or not, limited or limitless, converged or not, and freed or not.

The remembrance in the context of qualities which arise is the most complex and profound of the four and have embedded in them the types of remembering and recognition that eventually lead to letting go and liberation.

In addition to understanding the qualities of the obstructions, many times, he went more in depth in describing the nature of one’s picking up, taking on, and identifying with different phenomena.

In breaking down each of the aspects of one’s experience, understanding their impermanent, changing, painful, and not-self nature, one becomes disenchanted with them. As one becomes disenchanted with them, infatuation fades away, and they dissolve, culminating in ultimate freedom, and in that freedom the knowledge that one won’t be born again.

This discerning has two main frameworks. These are repeated many times in the chapters of the Samyutta Nikaya 22 and 35. The most well known of these discourses are the first time the Buddha taught them and are known as the Anattālakkhaṇa Sutta(SN 22.59) and the Āditta Pariyāya Sutta (SN 35.28).

The former framework involves looking at the impermanent, painful, not-self nature of each of the five masses or aggregates which are taken on and identified with: the mass of form which is taken on, the mass of sensation which is taken on, the mass of recognition which is taken on, the mass of mergings which are taken on, and the mass of perception which is taken on.

The latter framework involves looking at the impermanent, burning nature of the six internal and external aspects of the six sense fields as well as the perception of those fields, the contact between the three, as well as the sensation which arises due to this contact. The six sense fields are seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, mind, the objects of each sense doors, sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches, and qualities, and the perception of each of these sense doors.

Once one establishes the awareness of the impermanent, burning nature of these experiences and the understanding that infatuation, hatred, and delusion are fueling the fire, one becomes disenchanted with them. When one becomes disenchanted, infatuation fades away. With the fading of infatuation one is freed. With the experience of freedom, one knows that one is freed and that this is one’s last birth.

Right Knowledge
Often, when the noble eight-part path is presented without the explicit context of the first three noble truths, it is extended to the noble ten-part path, which includes right knowledge and right freedom. When the first eight parts of the path have been developed. Right knowledge is where the first two noble truths are applied and right freedom is when the third noble truth of dissolution is realized. (e.g. MN 117)

One of the most common descriptions of the culmination of the path is described by the penetration of the four noble truths.

Like this, with a concentrated psyche, fully pure, fully clean, flawless, without any impurities, flexible, malleable, still, motionless, he bends and inclines the psyche toward the knowledge which leads to the wearing away of impulses.

He is aware “this is painful,” as it actually is,
is aware “this is the origin of pain” as it actually is,
is aware “this is the dissolution of pain” as it actually is,
is aware “this is the way leading to the dissolution of pain” as it actually is,
is aware “these are impulses” as they actually are,
is aware “this is the origin of the impulse” as it actually is,
is aware “this is the dissolution of the impulse” as it actually is,
is aware this is the way leading to the dissolution of impulses” as it actually is.
Knowing that in that way, seeing in that way, the psyche is freed from the impulse to sensuality, is freed from the impulse to exist, is freed from the impulse to ignorance, and in that freedom there is knowledge of freedom,
One is aware “Births have run out. The holy life has come to completion. What was to be done has been done. There is no more coming into this world.”
DN 2

Right Freedom & Extinguishing

The ultimate purpose of the path is what the Awakened One described as nibbāna, extinguishing, or going out.

This is peaceful, this is sublime: all mergings have stilled, everything acquired has been completely relinquished, craving has run out, fading away, dissolution, extinguishing.
E.g. MN 64 AN 9.36

The Moral Foundation: Kindness, Compassion, Generosity, Morality

The most accessible opening for the spiritual path to awakening is kindness and generosity. Kindness is the quality of well wishing for all beings. The more familiar one is with the experience of kindness, the more obvious it is that it is something worth building on. It is a nice pleasurable, balanced, calm, open internal experience. It is an experience familiar to most people, but it is easily overlooked exactly because it is subtle and calm. But because it is subtle and calm and arises from our own intention, it is much more sustainable and steady than external forms of pleasure.

The experience of kindness is open. Because of that openness it is not limited, not restricted, not constricted. People who are kind develop a wholesome basis in which to dwell within themselves, but also everyone around them benefits from that experience as well. Generosity is an act of kindness, offering another being something that might be helpful to them. The way that the Buddha described the results of deeds is that these types of actions create a pleasurable internal experience and supportive external conditions as a result.

A related but more subtle wholesome experience is the experience of compassion and living a moral life. It is the acknowledgement that beings all over the world go through pain and suffering of various sorts with a gentle caring and wish for them to come out of their pain. Morality is living a life with the basis of harmlessness and not wanting to do anything that might harm another being and create suffering for them.

The Buddha explained ten types of actions that create the most painful results and can even result in being born in hell after death. There are 10 types of wrong action: 3 of body, 4 of speech, and 3 of mind. The three types of wrong action of body are intentionally killing a living being, taking what is not given, and having wrong sexual behavior. The four actions of wrong speech are speaking lies, speaking divisively, speaking vulgar words, and speaking idle chatter. The three types of wrong mental actions are coveting, hostility, and wrong view. He described mundane wrong view as denying the existence of morality or moral consequences of actions and denying the existence of other planes of existence into which one can be born.

While generosity has the effect of creating the seeds of an inner experience of pleasure, morality has the effect of not doing anything that might create the results of inner pain. The more one purifies one’s conduct, the more balanced and pleasurable one’s internal experience will be.

It is difficult to overstate the importance of these two for the entire rest of the spiritual path. They are what create the reservoir of life and energy and strength and resilience for all the future steps. Generosity is like filling the tank with fuel and morality is like making sure there aren’t any cracks or holes in the tank.

With a basis of moral purity, the entire rest of the path becomes possible. It becomes possible to look at one’s internal experience and see what is going on. If one has been impure in one’s morality, it is like fracturing one’s psyche, a pain in one’s core. When the psyche is subject to the painful results of doing harm, it will not be able to sustain much effort or energy.

One important theme through the entirety of the spiritual path that the Buddha laid out is an understanding of the results of one’s deeds. Our trajectory in this life and afterwards is primarily determined by our own actions. Internally, the good that we can only result in a pleasure experience. The bad that we do will always result in a painful experience. This is the legacy from which we are born.

Just as importantly, while one inherits the results of one’s own intentions and their results, one isn’t responsible for the actions and intentions of others. While the actions of others may affect us externally, our internal experience is primarily driven by our own intentions, past and present. While one with a truly kind and compassionate intention goes through life with acts of body, speech, and mind based in the desire for the wellbeing of others, the actions of others aren’t one’s responsibility.

The kindness and compassion that is a basis for further spiritual growth is respectful of the agency of other individuals, even when they are making decisions that may ultimately be to their own detriment. It is not necessarily that one does nothing, only that whatever actions one takes are ultimately aimed at helping another person understand the consequences of their actions.

The Disadvantages of Sense Pleasures

Once one has a basis of generosity and morality as well as an appreciation for the steady, balanced pleasure created by kindness and compassion, it offers a basis for abandoning unwholesome pleasure.

The most obvious and visible forms of pleasure available in the world are the pleasures of the senses: money, possessions, experiences, other people, sexuality, food, sleep, beauty, etc. These are the crudest, loudest forms of pleasure which are experienced through the sense doors. But because these types of pleasure are coming from external sources, they are fundamentally not within one’s control.

To try to control the world in such a way that it meets the needs and desires of the senses requires a tremendous amount of work. It is fraught with disappointment and conflict because pursuing these types of pleasure sets us in conflict with others who are trying to do the same. The more one succeeds in amassing control and power over the world, the more one becomes a target for others who want that same thing. Beyond that, it is work that never ends. One needs to keep working to control the world and endlessly fight to maintain that power forever.

Indulging sense desires has a deeper drawback, which is that to engage in these pleasures is fundamentally unsatisfying. The pleasurable or painful quality of our internal experience is largely determined by the moral quality to our actions, while the pleasures of the senses can only offer a temporary distraction from the painful or pleasurable moral baseline. If one is solely fixated on these pleasures, it sets the stage for addiction, becoming so fixated on a short-term pleasure that one loses perspective on how exhausting the process is and how much damage the pursuit is doing to oneself and others.

And even more subtly than that, the indulgence in sense pleasures offers a more fundamental block to peace and further spiritual progress. It has to do with the nature of engaging in sense pleasures in the first place. When one experiences a sight or sound or smell or taste or touch and delights in that experience, grabs hold of it, and identifies with it, the mind goes out to it and the will binds to it. A subtle attachment or merging to that object is being created.

The next time that object arises mentally or externally, the attachment pulls the mind back out to the object. The more objects are attached to, the more one is pulled around by all the things which have been fused to. Each attachment is the seed for agitation and stress and tension. The more one binds oneself to the pleasures of the world, the more seeds of agitation are being planted.

In this way, indulging in and delighting in any pleasure of the senses is the exact opposite of peace. Peace is the internal experience of stillness. The pursuing sense experience is inherently based in movement and agitation.

When one reflects on all the downsides of sense pleasures, and one begins to appreciate that the more peaceful, steady, balanced sources of happiness and peace are available, it sets the foundation for renunciation, the conscious leaving of sense pleasures.

The Benefits of Renunciation

The conscious abandoning of sense pleasure is the most direct movement in the direction of peace. The more one makes the conscious choice to go without, to live simply, to minimize one’s desires, to not fill one’s life with the comforts and distractions of the senses, the more time and energy is available for the cultivation of kindness and compassion and contentment with little. It is a conscious choice to abandon the agitation and conflict and complication built into the pursuit of sense pleasures.

This is not to say this process is easy. Inevitably with any addiction, whether physical or emotional, there is a withdrawal phase, where the pain of going without the sense stimuli is more difficult than simply appeasing it. But enduring peace never comes through appeasing the desire for stimuli and agitation, it can only come through understanding the painful consequences of that pursuit and abandoning it.

While the effort needs to be great, it can never be a hostile or masochistic endeavor, or it will only lead to more pain. It has to be one motivated by kindness and compassion for oneself and others. The more clearly one understands the damage that is done, the disappointment caused, and unfulfilling agitation that is created by the fixation on sense pleasures, the more urgently one is motivated to abandon them. The kindness and compassion also offer a pleasurable inner refuge for enduring the pain of going without sense pleasures while the desire for them is still strong.

The result is a sustainable peace, a peace that comes not from getting an experience or object of the world, but from the absence of desire for them. It is not obvious before it happens, but that peace offers a means to a tremendous reservoir of joy and pleasure that comes from a relaxed, open state of being.

That joy and pleasure that arise through balance offer a basis and a window into the capacity to develop awareness and see one’s experience as it is.

The Way Out: The Four Noble Truths

With an inner world purified by one’s clean moral slate, and a foundation of peace developed through the abandoning of sense gratification, one has the means to look at the painful aspects of life without being overwhelmed by them.

Without looking at pain, one cannot see the cause for it. Without seeing the cause, one cannot come out of it.

The first step is simply to look at pain inherent in life: the pain of birth, the pain of aging, the pain of death, the pain of sadness and mourning, pain, suffering, and tension, the pain of being stuck with those who are not loved, the pain of being separated from those who are loved, the pain of not getting what one wants, and the pain of the five masses of experience which are taken on and identified with.

The more clearly one develops an internal, objective familiarity with all the different types of pain, the more clear the role of craving becomes in fueling it. The objectivity allows one the space to see craving as not oneself, but a habitual momentum that has formed by past attachments.

The second noble truth is the understanding that that fusing to and identifying with the impermanent objects, internal or external, is what sets one up for the pain that comes at their loss. It fuels the pain that comes with existence, and the pain that comes with death, as well as the grief at losing something one believed was oneself. Whether the craving is for a sensual experience, existence, or non-existence, it is that craving that fuels the force to bind oneself to the material or experiential fabric of existence. It is craving and attachment that create the force that keeps the cycle of birth and death going.

The third noble truth is the intellectual and experiential understanding of what happens when one abandons that craving. With the absence of craving, one still experiences whatever has been fused in the past, but it arises and dissolves without being bound to or fueled further. It is just like watching a fire burn, without engaging with it, without fueling it. Just watching as it cools, burns up old fuel and goes out.

The fourth noble truth is all the requisite means required to do this at a moment-to-moment level.

The Means: The Fourth Noble Truth

The last of noble truths, the noble eight part path, is all of the means necessary to internalize the first three noble truths. Establishing constant awareness of every aspect of experience, understanding the consequences of following craving, and abandoning that craving requires a great deal of preparation, skills, practice, and patience to be able to implement. The fourth noble truth is all of those means.

The first part of the eight part path is Right View: the intellectual understanding and view that the purpose of the endeavor is to come out of the cycle of pain, and the means to come to the end of that cycle is through abandoning craving for sensuality, existence, and non-existence.

The second part of the path is Right Resolution: the setting of the goal to renounce, leave the pursuit of sense experiences, without ever succumbing to hostile or cruel intentions either towards oneself or others.

The third part of the path is Right Speech: the abandoning of lying, divisive speech, coarse speech, and idle speech.

The fourth part of the path is Right Action: the abandoning of killing living beings, stealing, and wrong sexual behavior.

The fifth part of the path is Right Livelihood: receiving one’s sustenance as a monastic from the complete dedication to the spiritual path towards ultimate freedom without catering to people’s worldly desires through fortune telling, prognostications, blessings, magic, healing, or other worldly endeavors.

The first five parts of the path are all the necessary prerequisites. One needs to have a clear understanding of the problem and the way out. To have the internal strength and solidity, one needs to be morally clean. To be able to make sustained progress towards abandoning craving, one needs to be completely dedicated, not indulging in the distractions of worldly pursuits or self-harm. When any of that is compromised, the requisite commitment isn’t completely there to be able to achieve sufficient consistency in the abandoning of the deepest roots of craving and delusion.

Right Effort: Abandoning the Unwholesome and Developing the Wholesome

The last three parts of the path constitute a different section. These last parts of the path involve developing much more subtlety and unification of mind and psyche so that one can begin abandoning craving at a moment-to-moment level.

The sixth part of the path is Right Effort: the abandoning of unwholesome qualities and the development of wholesome qualities. To put this into practice, one needs a clear understanding of what are wholesome and unwholesome qualities and a clear understanding of how to counteract the unwholesome and develop the wholesome.

The crudest types of unwholesome qualities are the five blocks. Each has a particular tool designed to counteract and come out of it.

Sensual Desire

The first of the blocks is sensual desire. This includes desire for any type of sense experience, any sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch. However the strongest sensual desires tend to be desires toward sexuality, food, entertainment, comforts, beauty, and sleep. To abandon these when they come up most strongly, the Buddha recommended looking at the unattractive aspects of whatever one is infatuated with.

If the object of one’s desire is another person, one is encouraged to examine a list of unattractive parts of the body: head hair, body hair, nails, teeth, skin, muscle, tendons, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart, liver, membranes, spleen, lungs, small intestine, large intestine, inner organs, excrement, bile, phlegm, pus, blood, sweat, fat, tears, oil, saliva, snot, bodily fluids, urine.

The more one separates each component part of the body, the more it breaks the spell of infatuation. In a similar vein, he also encouraged the contemplation of a skeleton or a corpse in various stages of decomposition.

For other types of sensual desire he also encouraged examining the objects in terms of the four base properties, of earth, liquid, heat, and wind. Seen in terms of each of the separate constituent properties, the object similarly loses its allure.

The sign that this type of reflection is having the desired effect is that there is a palpable release of the sensual desire at the root of the infatuation.

Hostility

The second block is hostility, the entire realm of hatred, cruelty, violence and the like. To counteract hostility, the Buddha suggested the cultivation of kindness and compassion towards all beings.

The experience of hostility and the experience of kindness are the exact opposite. Hostility is the wish to harm. Kindness is wishing well. Hostility is tight, constricting, and burning. Kindness is expansive, open, smooth, and soothing. Hostility is painful. Kindness is pleasurable. Hostility is agitated. Kindness is calm and balanced.

The more one is internally familiar with these experiences, the more one can consciously move towards the opening, calm, balanced experience of kindness. The more one practices cultivating kindness, the more one can recognize the tightening of hostility and move to counteract it as it is starting.

Sluggishness and Drowsiness

The third block is sluggishness and drowsiness. It is the movement of one’s psyche towards disconnecting, dissociating, murkiness, depression, or sleep. It is a slow, slothful, stiff, torpid state. To counteract this state, the Buddha recommended recognition of light, remembering, and being fully aware.

The recognition of light is uncovering and developing the light coming from the depth of the psyche, generally in the center of the torso. When developed, that light helps one stay awake and alert. However, even if one isn’t able to develop that internal light, the most important part of counteracting sluggishness and drowsiness is generating energy toward staying connected to one’s direct experience and remembering.

Remembering and being fully conscious are separate qualities, but are practiced together. Being fully conscious is being fully aware of what is happening at the level of the body, sensations, the psyche, and the mental/emotional qualities arising. Remembering is both watching old memories arise and pass, as well as remembering the characteristics of all the various qualities in terms of the path towards freedom.

While remembering can take many different forms described in the next section, in its most core form it is remembering the causes and consequences of actions–whether they lead towards perpetuating the cycle of pain or towards freedom from it.

Remembering in the context of one’s direct experience is the understanding of the painful nature of transient phenomena burning up, falling apart, and grieving for it, the understanding of the role of craving in fueling that process, and the understanding of the way out as cultivating the ability to abandon that craving.

The key to coming out of sluggishness and drowsiness is generating the energy to stay present, keep from disconnecting, keep in touch with the body, sensations, the psyche, and whatever qualities that arise, and remember whether they are moving towards sowing the seeds of pain or moving towards freedom.

Agitation and worry

Agitation and worry are qualities of an overexcited psyche. To counteract that the Buddha recommended to focus on calming the psyche.

In both the mind and body, the main direction is towards calming and relaxing. The main focus is to just let the excitement and energy which is already present settle naturally without doing anything to stir it up more.

While sluggishness and drowsiness are under-excited states and require extra exertion to stay present, agitation and worry are over-excited and require the calming of excess energy.

Sometimes a person may fluctuate between under-excitement and over-excitement, and if so one needs to be very aware of which of the two is present at a given time. Because exerting more energy when one is overexcited can lead to further fueling the agitation and trying to calm when one is already sluggish can lead to settling into a murky, dark, unhelpful state.

The middle point is one where one is both calm, fully aware, and remembering.

Indecision

The last of the blocks is indecision, confusion, an inability to settle onto a particular course of action. For this, the Buddha recommended reflecting on the wholesome and the unwholesome. The more clear the distinction between those qualities, the more straightforward decisions will be.

The distinction between the two is all of the topics being discussed. Some examples of wholesome qualities are generosity, morality, kindness, compassion, renunciation, contentment, awareness, and letting go. Some examples of the unwholesome are sensual desire, hostility, sluggishness and drowsiness, agitation and worry, indecision, ego, craving for existence, and craving for non-existence.

Ego

While the five blocks are the crudest types of unwholesome qualities, there are many more impurities rooted in various forms of ego, self-centeredness, conceitedness, being domineering, possessiveness, excessive attachment to view, pride, jealousy, envy, inferiority and all the various forms the sense of self can take.

While ego and identification is a much more deeply rooted process which takes much more subtlety to uproot, the main approach to counteracting ego is the same whether the sense of self is taking a crude or subtle form.

To counteract ego, one develops the recognition of the impermanent, transient nature of that which one is identifying with. The more one can see the transience of that object, external or internal, crude or subtle, physical or experiential, mundane or sublime, the more that the object loses the sense of being “me” or “mine.”

The Results of Abandoning the Blocks

The five blocks block one’s clear, calm, balanced experience of awareness. When those five are not present, they open the space for a cascade of wholesomeness to arise. This cascade naturally transitions into Right Concentration. Right Remembering is present all along the way.

Right Remembrance: What is the Path and What is Not the Path

There are two forms in which remembrance is a part of the path. The first is remembrance whether what one is experiencing is going on the path towards freedom or on the path towards pain. The second form is that once one puts awareness in practice, one is beset by all the memories one has bonded to in the past. The more one uses the first type of remembering of what is the way to freedom in conjunction with the second type of remembering, the more one moves towards unbinding oneself from all the things in the past to which one has attached to or fused with.

With respect to the remembrance of the path, there is the mundane and the transcendent. The mundane part is remembering what is wholesome and unwholesome. This type of initial remembrance is absolutely essential because it is what allows for one to develop a wholesome basis of kindness, generosity, compassion, morality, contentment, renunciation, and observation to transition to the more liberating form of remembrance.

The transcendent part of remembrance is remembering the four noble truths. Right remembrance is the transition from remembrance of the four noble truths as an intellectual view and integrating it into experiential understanding.

There are four establishments of remembrance, the body, sensations, the psyche, and qualities. These are aspects of one’s direct experience which are the place where remembrance of the path is integrated. The Buddha described this as:

One who examines the body within the body, fervent, fully conscious, and remembering, would remove greed and suffering for the world.
One who examines sensations within sensations, fervent, fully conscious and remembering, would remove greed and suffering for the world.
One who examines the psyche within the psyche, fervent, fully conscious, and remembering, would remove greed and suffering for the world,
One who examines qualities within qualities, fervent, fully conscious, and remembering, would remove greed and suffering for the world.

Establishing remembrance in the body is remembering the impermanent, fragile, disintegrating nature of the body in the context of the experience of the body. To establish awareness, one can be simply aware of one’s body, what posture it is in, whether the breath is deep or shallow, what is being experienced by the body, relaxing the merging to the body, awareness of the various components of the body, awareness of the four properties of the body (earth, water, heat, wind), awareness of the impending disintegration of the body after death, awareness of arising and passing away, all moving towards abandoning any attachment, any taking on, any identification with the body.

The establishment of remembrance in sensations is: in the context of one’s direct experience of sensations, remembering whether those sensations are pleasurable, painful, or neutral, and for each of those remembering whether they are a result of worldly stimuli or whether they are triggered from being separated from the world. The sensations stimulated by the world, external stimuli are increasingly moved away from. They are not one’s own and whether painful, pleasurable or neutral, they do not lead toward freedom. One is increasingly cultivating the experience of sensations which arise from being away from the pursuit of worldly stimuli. With respect to these sensations, one is aware of their nature of arising and passing away, moving towards abandoning any attachment, any taking on or identification with those sensations.

The establishment of remembrance in the psyche is being aware of whether the psyche is infatuated or not, hateful or not, deluded or not, scattered or collapsed, expansive or not, unsurpassable or not, converged or not, freed or not. It is being aware of the psyche from within the psyche as well as awareness of the quality arising and whether that quality is moving towards or away from ultimate freedom. In seeing each of these types of psyche arising and passing away, one moves towards abandoning any attachment, taking on, or identification with the psyche.

The establishment of remembrance with the basis of qualities begins with remembering whether the qualities which are arising in one’s mind and psyche are wholesome or unwholesome in the context of the direct experience of them. It involves identifying the qualities which are arising in the context of the path, abandoning the unwholesome, and developing the wholesome.

As remembering of qualities transitions to a transcendent nature, one is aware of the impermanent nature of qualities, the fading away nature of qualities, the dissolving nature of qualities, the complete relinquishment of qualities.

Another form of establishing remembrance of qualities is dissecting the five masses which are attached to–the mass of material form, the mass of sensation, the mass of recognition, the mass of mergings to body, speech and psyche, and the mass of percept–seeing each of them in their impermanent, arising, passing away, painful, not-self nature. When one really sees that quality and that they are not really one’s own, the infatuation with them and the attachment to them fade away.

Still another form of establishing remembrance of qualities is remembering the four noble truths so that they transition into experiential awareness: awareness of the painful nature of qualities that come together and fall apart, awareness of the role of craving in fueling the merging of those compounded things, awareness of the experience of dissolution of that pain that comes with abandoning that craving, awareness of the way that leads to the dissolution of that pain.

All of these types of remembrance have fundamentally the same approach. They are the understanding of reality as it is in each of the four different experiential contexts. They remind one that that reality is impermanent, painful, not oneself. In this remembering, they all lead towards letting go, complete relinquishing, letting the fire of experience burn out.

Right Concentration: The Development of Wholesome Qualities

Right concentration begins with the abandoning of the unwholesome states described in right effort. With the abandoning of the unwholesome qualities one can dwell in a state of calm, balanced awareness. That one is able to settle into that calm awareness allows for a sense of deep contentment to arise inside oneself.

The more one settles into that deep contentment, a sense of joy arises in the mind, the body relaxes further, and one feels pleasurable sensations all through the body.

With that basis, as the psyche separates from the sense doors and separates from any unwholesome states, while thought and mental movement are still present, it enters the first focus. This becomes a fully pervaded experience in the body, so that no part of the body is unfilled with that joy and pleasure.

As one stops paying attention to the thoughts and mental movements because of their coarseness and moves towards the stillness and unification of the psyche, one enters into the second focus, which is free of thought and mental movement, and the will has unified and lowered further. The joy and pleasure born of that concentration pervade the body so completely that every part is suffused with joy and pleasure.

As one sees the joy as relatively agitated in comparison to the unification, the joy subsides and one is left with the smooth, pleasurable sensations. A sense of neutral, objective observation of the mind replaces the sense of joy, and one enters into the third focus. The body is completely suffused with pleasurable sensations.

Finally, when one settles even further, the movement of the pleasurable sensations slows to a stop, and without pleasure or pain, only neither painful nor pleasurable sensations present, purified by observation and remembering, one enters in the fourth focus. The body is now completely pervaded with the neutral sensations and the completely pure will.

Right Knowledge

With the basis of any of the four focuses, one can start to examine the first three noble truths again. Once one has developed the eight parts of the path one has all the means to be able to be aware of the four noble truths at the experiential, moment-to-moment level.

These very withdrawn and unified states allow one to experience all the different phenomena occurring within one’s experience separately.

One can examine the physical form arising and passing away, constructed and deconstructed, and see that it is not “me” or “mine.”
One can examine sensations arising and passing away, divided and dissected, and see that they are not “me” or “mine.”
One can examine recognition, arising and passing away, flickering, and see that it is not “me” or “mine.
One can see mergings of body, speech, and psyche, arising and passing, disintegrating, and see that they are not “me” or “mine.”
One can see one’s percept, the bare perception of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, mind, see that they are arising and passing away, see that they are not “me” or “mine.”

One can see craving for any of these experiences arise and move towards the object.
One can see and remember the painful experience of losing something that one has attached to and identified with.
One can experience the fading away of anything that has been fused together.
One can experience the dissolution of all the mergings of body, speech, and psyche.

Right Freedom

As one realizes the pain of binding to the impermanent, painful, and not oneself, one lets go. Each object and memory which in the past one has bound oneself to, in turn comes up to the mind. As one sees each formerly alluring object with the perspective of impermanent, painful, and not-self, the infatuation is broken. The craving loses its energy and excitement. The object is released.

As each object is released, the craving gets weaker and weaker until there comes a moment when one is released completely. The fire goes out. There is no more craving. This is the ultimate freedom that the Buddha realized and taught. It is the extinguishing that is possible for every being. It is the going out of the fire of craving, existence, birth, aging, death, sadness, mourning, pain, suffering, tension, and the whole mass of pain.

The Origin of Suffering
Prior to his awakening, the Buddha was looking for something that was not subject to birth, aging, and death. He realized while he was still young, that nothing that would die could possibly offer an enduring peace or freedom. As he looked around himself, everything he could see, his wealth and possessions, his friends and family, even his body and sense experiences were subject to the same process. He couldn’t justify pursuing anything in the world because they were all subject to this same quality of arising and passing away. He was looking for a way out. Leaving behind everything that was subject to this quality was the only way he saw to begin this search. He had to stop pursuing the things subject to birth, aging, and death, to have any hope of finding freedom from it.

He eventually came to the realization that anything subject to birth was subject to aging, death, as well as all the sadness, grief, pain, suffering, and tension that went along with it. To come to an end of aging and death, he needed to find something that was not subject to birth. As he looked at birth, he found there was no way to get out of birth when the flow of existence was already in motion. As he searched for the cause of the flow of existence, he saw that the process of taking things on, picking them up, and identifying with them drove the flow of existence. With that understanding he sought the cause of taking things on, the reason why beings took on and identified with various things like sense experiences, views, morality and practices, or the position of self. He found that the cause of that was sensation. This was the underlying reason why people took things on. When he sought the cause of sensation, he found that contact between the percept, the sense doors, and the sense objects caused sensation and feeling. The cause of that contact was the six sense fields. The cause of the six sense fields was the development of naming, designating as well as the material elements taking on form and shape. The cause of this naming and forming was the bare percept of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, and mind.

At this point, he looked deeper for what was allowing perception to find someplace to land and grow. When he searched through his own psyche and tried to identify the cause for this perception to land and grow, he saw that the cause for that infrastructure which allowed perception to take root was creation, attachment, merging itself. Once the merging of body, speech, and psyche had taken place, perception had somewhere to take root and begin the flow of existence. The only way out was to come out of the process of fusing to the entire world of body, speech, and will.

As he continued to look deeper, for the cause of creation, eventually he saw that the root of that merging was ignorance of the four noble truths. It was these four noble truths that offered the direction of freedom, the direction of liberation, the way to stop creating, stop fueling the flow of existence, stop seeking out that which is subject to death and grief and loss and pain and suffering and anguish.

The Four Noble Truths and Right View
When one understands deeply the pain inherent in all that is created–whether it is one’s own pain, suffering, and death, or the pain, suffering, and death of one’s loved ones, whether it is being stuck with those unloved or being separated from those loved, whether it is the disappointment of not attaining one’s desires, or the pain inherent in the arising and passing away of the body, sensation, recognition, mergings, and percept which are taken on and identified with–when one understands all that at a deep and penetrating level, the most natural direction to go is to seek a way out, to seek out the cause.

The more deeply one understands that pain objectively, the more it becomes clear that it is our own craving driving that pain–craving for sense pleasures, craving for existence, and craving for non-existence. It is our own attachment, our own identification that drives that pain. The craving and identification is what drives both creation and the pain inherent in the death of those things we have attached to.

The way out becomes just as clear. It is only through abandoning that craving, abandoning that impulse to get sense experiences, to be, to exist, to become, or to not exist. In abandoning that craving, one watches the process of all kinds of perceived phenomena fading away, and as each one arises, comes into existence, and fades away, one by one, one lets them go, one at a time, whether it is a bodily experience, a sensation, a conception, an old creation, or a bare sense percept, one establishes awareness, observation, and neutrality and watches them each arise and fade away.

The wisdom that allows this to happen is the understanding that death is painful, and attachment is what fuels that death. One’s intuition, will, and wisdom become ever more clear as it sees each part of this process–the arising and fading away, the pain inherent in arising and fading away, the impulse which drives the picking up of that which impermanent, the delusion of that impulse to believe that that which is actually arising and fading away will not arise and fade away, the experience of letting go of that impulse and letting it subside, the freedom that comes on the other side of that letting go.

Once one tastes the experience of freedom, once one knows intuitively what it feels like to let go, it becomes clear that the peace and happiness of letting go and the peace and happiness of getting something have different qualities. The peace and happiness of letting go is a stable and balanced experience, whereas the peace and happiness of sense objects are an agitated, imbalanced peace. The peace and happiness of letting go is sustainable because it doesn’t depend on anything. The peace and happiness of sense experiences or a sense of self is by its nature vulnerable because it only lasts as long as the object or experience which is created.

The dichotomy of the way towards ultimate freedom and the way towards endless suffering becomes ever more clear. The way towards ultimate freedom is through letting go and abandoning the entire realm of the created. The way towards endless work and disappointment involves pursuing that which is created. They have nothing in common. The only way out is abandoning everything.

But the reality which the Buddha knew is that it doesn’t work to abandon everything all at once, when the preparations haven’t yet been made. There are many prerequisites to make that happen. This is the fourth noble truth. Understanding all these essential preconditions is the only thing that makes liberation possible. It is in eight parts. There is no part of that path which is dispensable. Each component is essential. Without all these preconditions there is no liberation.

The first is at least an intellectual clarity of the first three noble truths. Without that clarity, the direction is always ambiguous. If one is not clear on the tenets inherent in these truths—the nature of impermanence, the pain inherent in death and passing away of those objects which have been taken on and identified with, as well as the role of identification and the belief in the self in taking on these things that are impermanent–then the rest of the path cannot and will not be liberating. It is essential that the purpose of the prerequisites are clear. The ultimate goal is to let go of everything that has been created and to stop the process of creation. Without that clarity, then whether the prerequisites are in place or not, the path will not lead to liberation.

When that understanding is solid and every step of the path is accompanied by an understanding of the first three noble truths, then all the rest of the pieces fall into place and make sense. Without that understanding, all the prerequisites may provide some mundane benefit and may eventually become useful tools, but they cannot be called the path to liberation.

Right Resolution
When one really comes to terms with the impermanence of things, when one really comes to terms with the understanding that it is our own craving for the things which are impermanent which drives the cycle of birth and aging and death, the second part of the noble eightfold path becomes very clear and obvious. The way towards freedom is through walking away, going without, renouncing sense experiences. They are quite clearly not within our control and offer only a fleeting and agitated form of relief. They cannot offer true safety or security. It is our addiction to them which drives our suffering. The only way towards freedom is leaving them behind. But, essentially, it is just as important to not let ourselves fall to the other extreme. The extreme of malice and cruelty whether directed at ourselves or to others is not the way. It is painful and serves no purpose other than to inflict needless suffering. Malice and cruelty are just the other extreme of pursuing sense pleasures, it is trying to fight with and destroy sense experiences instead of letting them go.

Once one starts abandoning sense comforts and distractions and indulgences, the baseline level of discomfort of one’s life increases and dealing with the tendency towards malice and cruelty is a very salient battle. Keeping constantly vigilant of whether one is veering towards craving or fighting with sense experiences is a central starting point for maintaining clarity on whether one is on the path or not.

The nature of pursuing sense pleasures is that we set ourselves up for the disappointment that comes when we lose that which is not within our control. The more we invest in sense experiences, the more pain and grief we are setting ourselves up for. And even more immediately, the pursuit of sense experiences is allowing the mind to go out and attach to external experiences. So, it is inherently a very agitated experience that pulls one outside oneself and leads to a tension each time one attaches to something external. The more attachments, the more tension and agitation arise. The nature of malice and cruelty is that they are painful states at the moment we generate them. They are painful to others around us, and they lead to painful consequences.

Abandoning these two pursuits is the beginning of the path, but renunciation has many more benefits than that. With walking away from the pursuit of sense pleasure, one doesn’t have to spend endless time working to earn money. One doesn’t have to try to manipulate others to get what one wants. One isn’t led into conflict trying to protect one’s possessions. And just as importantly one has a tremendous amount of time and space to pursue that which does offer a sustainable happiness and peace to ourselves and others.

The Buddha emphasized understanding and limiting ourselves to this realm of the wholesome, the good, the rewarding. He saw how terrible of an investment sense pleasures were and how tremendous of an investment actions based in goodness were and so he emphasized to monks and lay people constantly that they should be clear on what is good and what is not good, what is wholesome, and what is not wholesome, what is rewarding and what is not rewarding.

On several occasions he even exhorted monks not to disparage that which offers even mundane rewards–the conditioned states of kindness, compassion, contentment, and observation. These are tremendously balanced and pleasurable or peaceful states which can even be used as a basis for liberation if infused with the wisdom of impermanence and the noble truths.

Generosity has both the quality of generating tremendously positive karma leading to life, strength, beauty, intellect, and pleasure, as well as the transcendent quality of letting go of some aspect of the material world which has come into one’s possession.

Even belief in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha, can offer one basis for immeasurable rewards. When one understands that each of these three offer the hope and possibility of liberation, they offer not just inspiration, but also the spiritual power which allow for further steps on the path to be taken.

The nature of these types of actions, which all have the quality of true goodness, the direction of liberation of both, is the direction of at the very least tremendous rewards. For one who can tune in to the nature of experience the spiritual power of these types of actions is palpable, but regardless of whether one can immediately experience them or not, these offer a firm basis and support for going further on the path.

Right Action, Right Speech, and Right Livelihood
The next three pieces of the noble eightfold path are all of a piece. When one understands the nature of one’s internal experience, the consequences violating right action, right speech and right livelihood are clear. Violating right action involves killing, stealing, or sexual misconduct. Violating right speech involves lying, speaking divisively, speaking coarsely, and speaking frivolous chatter. Violating right livelihood involves earning one’s living in ways that violate even those first seven forms of right action and right speech. For when one gets to a status of a renunciate, living on the offerings of the faithful the standard for right livelihood gets even higher, it involves things like fortune telling, predictions about worldly things, black magic, or performing lay services which have nothing to do with liberation.

The consequences of these types of actions are painful states that drive a painful fissure down to the core of one’s internal experience. When that fissure is formed, one cannot sustain spiritual growth. It is like for one who aspires to climb a mountain to break one’s own legs. The basis for spiritual progress is one’s will. If one has a fissure driven through one’s will, one cannot sustain any attempt at spiritual growth. When one refrains from any of these actions, it is only a matter of time before one’s will becomes ever more pure and solid. The more solid the more it can sustain, the more it can sustain, the more sharp, consistent, and fruitful the progress on the path will be. It is the difference between trying to fill a leaky bucket and trying to fill a watertight bucket–the more watertight the bucket, the more fruitful the work of filling it will be.

Another way to see these three components of the path is that these are actions of body and speech which have the nature to result in painful consequences. The more clean one’s actions of body and speech are, the more untarnished our internal pleasure is. The native language of one’s will is the language of sensation and recognition. When one’s internal experience is painful, the will is always looking for relief through sense objects. When one’s internal experience is based in a wholesome pleasure, it doesn’t need the happiness of sense objects. It already has a more pure, more peaceful, more sustainable, more tranquil form of happiness.

When one has no internal peace, one is desperate for any type of happiness, wholesome or unwholesome and one can’t bear to look at the pain inherent in sense pleasure. But when one has an internal sense of peace and happiness, there is no problem seeing the downside of sense pleasures as one has somewhere else to go. One has an internal sense of peace and happiness. It becomes the most obvious thing in the world to give them up, because one has a better alternative. The thought of violating sila or pursuing sense pleasures seems like a needlessly self-destructive act. The inclination towards developing further on the path towards letting go or helping others develop further on that path is the only thing that makes sense.

Right Effort
Right effort is the first part of the eightfold path which involves meditation, though it can start even before that and ideally should be all the time. Right effort involves abandoning unwholesome qualities and developing wholesome qualities. It is important to understand each of these qualities and their progression.

The coarsest forms of unwholesome phenomena involve the five blocks, obstructions, blockages, barriers, coverings, defense mechanisms. These are sense desire, malice, lethargy and sleepiness, agitation and worry, and indecisiveness. Each has its own way of throwing us off balance, or disconnecting us from the nature of our internal experience. Often they arise as attempts to find pleasure or fix a problem, but they do so in ultimately self-destructive ways.

Each has their own antidote as each throws one off balance in a unique way. The antidote for sense desire is to look at the not shiny, not beautiful, not glistening nature of things, to see the nature of flesh and blood for what it is, to see the nature of the material world in its true nature–to break down, disintegrate, and fall apart. In deconstructing the shiny image we fall in love with, one’s will eventually starts to accept that one has fallen in love with something that isn’t that beautiful or satisfying.

The antidote for malice is kindness and well wishing. These can’t coexist. One cannot wish another harm and wish it well at the same time. When one adds kindness and compassion to malice it neutralizes it and brings one back into balance.

The antidote for lethargy and sleepiness is remembering and being fully conscious as well as putting forth energy, recognizing light. The key is to do everything possible to stay present. The tendency towards lethargy and depression is to disconnect, the antidote is to strive to stay present and aware.

The antidote for agitation and worry is calm, calm, calm. There is no shortcut that I know of. It just takes time to let the agitation settle. It is like sitting with a very worried and agitated child or animal or like watching the dust settle after a strong wind. It just takes a calm presence to let the agitation die down naturally. Even a single moment can offer the direction towards peace.

The antidote for indecision is clarity on what is wholesome or unwholesome. Pursuing Sense objects is unwholesome. Breaking one’s moral precepts is unwholesome. Malice and Cruelty are unwholesome. Not believing that there are results to one’s actions in this world and in another world are unwholesome. Kindness is wholesome. Compassion is wholesome. Contentment is wholesome. Observation is wholesome. Giving is Wholesome. Morality is Wholesome. Renunciation and walking away from sense pleasures is wholesome. The wisdom of the four noble truths–the understanding of the impermanence of conditioned experience, the understanding that following our craving is the driver of our pain, understanding that letting go, abandoning, relinquishing, release, freedom, non-clinging is the way to freedom, understanding the prerequisites for being able to abandon craving at a moment to moment level–all these are the highest form of the wholesome.

When one develops skill in abandoning those five hindrances as well as an intuition for the sense of balance and steadiness that comes in the absence of those five hindrances, it sets the stage for the next two phases of the path to really take off.

Right Remembrance
In reality Right Remembrance began at the same time as Right Effort. The moment one takes an object of the breath, one already starts observing the body. The four establishments of remembrance are the bases, the ground on which an understanding of the nature of one’s experience is built. They are tuning into the four aspects of reality which compose our experience and eventually are all meant to be experienced moment-to-moment, as they are happening.

The body is one aspect of experience. It starts with observing the breath, as well as all the physical experience which is happening at the level of the body. The experience of weight, or cohesion, or heat, or movement, what the nerves are feeling at the level of the body, all the tension that might be held in the body. However, the nature of right remembrance is that it is not only experiencing the body in the body, moment-to-moment arising and passing away, but also letting go of them–releasing the creation of the body, coming out of the craving for the sense pleasures and the suffering associated with the world.

The experiential aspect of the body is why it is a basis, but what we are remembering about the body is its nature to be constructed of four elements, to be formed of various not shiny parts, to be subject to falling apart, and deterioration and decay. It is those two aspects combined, the basis of the body, and the remembering of its nature of something that is composed, subject to disintegration and dissolution.

The second establishment of remembrance is experiencing sensations in sensations, the subtle sensations which normally overlays the body tinged with pleasure or pain or neither pleasure nor pain. It is a passionate striving to a constant, full and complete remembering of this experience, arising and passing away, and a letting go of any identification, craving, and suffering over this experience.

What is being remembered about sensations is that there are certain pleasurable, painful, or neutral sensations that arise from worldly things, and others which arise away from worldly things. The quality of the path is that initially in the process of renunciation, we abandon the world and also the sensations that arise from the world. Initially, the pain of going without worldly pleasures arises. Then, we develop the internal spiritual pleasure which comes from the wholesome. Finally from the spiritual pleasure one moves towards the more subtle neutral sensation, before letting go of even that as well.

The third establishment of remembrance is experiencing the will in the will. It is that aspect of our consciousness that precedes thought, the base level excitement, or hatred, or delusion, which gets scattered or collapses, or experiences the absence of those states. It is that aspect of our consciousness that has the capacity to expand or contract, the ability to concentrate, and has the potential for ultimate freedom. It becomes the most apparent when the thoughts settle. When the thoughts still, one can experience more clearly that aspect of the will which moves and intends, and intuits. It is that which experiences kindness, or compassion, or contentment, or observation. The third establishment of remembrance is the direct experience of the will, watching it move and be still, watching it arise and pass away, watching it concentrate or expand. The more clearly that aspect of the consciousness is experienced, the more clear it is where the work of abandoning craving needs to happen. If it is perceived directly, it becomes clear what craving feels like, what the passing away of craving feels like, what the freedom from craving feels like. It is the aspect of the consciousness that is most connected to the sensation and recognition, the knowledge that happens before any conscious thought arises.

Once that aspect of consciousness understands those experiences, and connects that the experience of craving leads to the experience of grief, one has moved into the fourth establishment of remembrance. The remembering of qualities in qualities. Qualities are anything that is perceived by the mind or states taken on by the will. It includes mental states, sensations and recognitions, contact with all the sense doors, qualities happening in the mind such as thought and mental movement. When the consciousness gets sharp and consistent enough it can perceive these qualities arising as they are happening. It can see the tendency to move out toward and identify with these phenomena. It can see the pain that arises from grabbing those phenomena. It can see the freedom that lies on the other side of abandoning those impulses and letting go of those phenomena. Examining qualities in qualities includes both the aspects of conditioned reality we interact with, as well as our mental states with respect to them, as well as awareness that allows us to release those qualities.

Right Concentration
Right Concentration is also intertwined with Right Effort and Right Remembrance. It is the natural progression that begins when a settled sense of balance from abandoning the five blocks left off. There is a crucial transition between that settled balance that arises from abandoning the blocks and the beginning of Right Concentration.

When one develops a little consistency with the state of being free of those blocks, the will settles. As that peace gets established, an internal sense of relaxation becomes a refuge, a respite from the emotional winds being driven by those blocks. When being plagued by the blocks there was no peace. Having left those blocks behind there is an internal relief that settles in, more and more deeply. That relief turns into a deep sense of contentment and happiness, the same warm and fuzzy feeling that can be sparked by true kindness, true goodness, reflection on the Buddha, Dhamma, Sangha, and true inspiration at the possibility that goodness and freedom exist in the world.

This relief, this contentment, this deep and peaceful happiness will often naturally spark a wholesome, balanced joy. It is in some ways similar to the joy that arises from worldly things, but completely different in that despite being a very energetic state, is a very balanced state.

That joy triggers a sense of relaxation of the body and an almost simultaneous sense of relaxed pleasure. With all those wholesome, balanced experiences, it becomes much easier for the will to withdraw from the sense doors and concentrate.

From there the four stages of right concentration are relatively intuitive, each one shedding the grossest layer of agitation–first the thoughts and mental movements settle, then the joy settles, then the subtle sensation of pleasure settles and one is left with just the unified still experience of observation and awareness along with neither pleasant nor unpleasant sensation.

Right Knowledge
At all of these stages, recognition is still fully active. While thought has settled down after the first stage the intuitive recognition of experience is still in full effect. While there are no thoughts of “This is impermanent” there is still the recognition of the burning, painful quality of arising and passing away. There is still the recognition of the pain that arises from grabbing hold of sense objects. There is still the recognition that the release is the way toward a sense of freedom. These recognitions are not automatic. They only come if they have been cultivated. But if they have been cultivated all the way through the process, they are able to become more and more consistent and automatic before, during, or after the will concentrates.

With a concentrated will examining the body, , recognition, attachments, the sense percepts arise and pass away becomes much sharper and more immediate. The will is much further removed from the objects it had the tendency to identify with. It has space from them. They can simply be watched arising and passing away.

Right Freedom
The last and final step is the extinguishing of that burning. Without one’s will adding more fuel to the fire by grabbing hold of any of the aspects of one’s experience, it is only a matter of time before the fire extinguishes. The Buddha has promised us that there is an end.

Though even before arriving at that point, the logic of it is irrefutable. One can see the way to stop grabbing hold of anything, stop creating anything, stop identifying from anything. One can see that the things which are arising and passing away are not really ourselves, they are not really ours, they are not really a sound source for hope and peace. One can see the impact of abandoning the craving for them. One can feel the calm and coolness and peace that arises from letting them go. One can understand that it is a peace that is far more sustainable than any source of peace that is dependent on a temporary phenomena. It is simply a matter of letting it extinguish, watching the impulses wear away, watching them cease, and letting the will let go until it is completely released, completely freed.

The Buddha’s Legacy
This is the hope that the Buddha left us. This is the path that he worked so tirelessly to discover. This is what he sacrificed everything for. He could have attained this ultimate freedom much earlier, but he decided to stick around and probe the corners of the universe and plumb the depths of the conscious experience so that he could offer a complete path to anyone, anywhere from where they were to complete liberation. He understood every corner of human consciousness and laid out the details of how to proceed from where people were at.

He showed tremendous restraint and consistency in not veering from that which was most essential to extracting ourselves from the pain of the experience of birth and aging and death. He wouldn’t veer into speculation. He knew which lines of thinking led out, and which lines of thinking led to an endless cycle of the tangled mess of birth and aging and death. He constantly encouraged us to see the world through the lens of principles as opposed to the lens of the self. He saw that the deepest roots of our delusion was the investment in the concept of the self, once we could see that everything that we tend to identify with was impermanent and painful, we could begin to let go. Through letting go, the deepest layer of our awareness can be free.

Initially, he thought that there was no way that people could understand it. It was too subtle. People who delight in clinging will never understand it. But the god Sahampati encouraged him that there were people who could understand. It is miraculous he discovered the path, and just as miraculous that he had the ability to teach others to realize it. That it still exists is his tremendous legacy. Even 2500 years later the ripples are still reverberating. The inheritance we have received is immeasurable. It points in a direction that many have never conceived before. It offers a hope that transcends all other hope. It is the hope of ultimate freedom, an ultimate peace.

The Buddha’s teaching encompasses a wide variety of tools to put into practice a systemic movement toward the wholesome and away from the unwholesome while ultimately moving towards unshakable freedom and extinguishing.

These are really two different pieces of the path. However, without the establishing of a wholesome basis, ultimate freedom is not possible. Without ultimate freedom, the wholesome basis is always subject to falling apart and reverting to the unwholesome.

General Recommendations

What defines a lay disciple of the Awakened One is going for refuge in the Awakened One, going. (SN 55.37)

Beyond that the Buddha encouraged lay followers to follow the five precepts:

1. To refrain from killing any living being
2. To refrain from taking what is not given
3. To refrain from wrong sexual behavior
4. To refrain from lying
5. To refrain from alcohol, liquor, and things that cause distraction or intoxication

Generosity and morality should be as integrated as possible into one’s daily life and moment-to-moment intentions. If one can always be moving through the world with the intentions of wishing well, kindness, friendship, compassion, harmlessness, then one will be creating that wholesome basis all through the day, whether one is at work or at home. With others or by oneself.

Finally, he encouraged lay people to develop awareness of the arising and passing away nature of things as much as possible.

Observance Day Recommendations

To move further towards more subtle forms of wholesomeness, the Buddha recommended for lay people to dedicate the full moons, new moons, and eighth days to cleaning the dirtiness from one’s psyche. (AN 3.70)

If one has the opportunity to seek out monastics and hear their teachings this is an extremely valuable opportunity to create boundless rewards. However, even if one isn’t able to be around monastics, one is still encouraged to cultivate the wholesome and observe the eight precepts.

On these days, as a means for cultivating a wholesome sense of contentment, the Buddha encouraged people to reflect on the Awakened One, the Quality, and the Order, reflect on morality, and reflect on deities and the belief, morality, learning, going without, and awareness that allowed them to be born in those forms. From those recollections one generates a sense of contentment. The sense of contentment offers one a basis from which to abandon the dirtiness, clean the dirtiness from the psyche.

Beyond that, he encouraged following the eight precepts for the day:

1. To refrain from killing any living being
2. To refrain from taking what is not given
3. To refrain from sexual activity
4. To refrain from lying
5. To refrain from alcohol, liquor, and things that cause distraction or intoxication
6. T refrain from eating outside the right time (before dawn and after midday)
7. To refrain from dancing, singing, playing music, entertainment, wearing garlands, perfumes, makeup, adornment, and beautification
8. To refrain from using high and luxurious bedding.

In this way, one is living one’s life for that day in a way similar to the way that worthy ones live their whole lives.

Also, on these days, one has the opportunity to develop more completely the continuity of “the awareness of arising and passing away, penetrating, noble, correct, and leading to end of pain.” (SN 55.37)