On our journey to the way home, we find that in search of the truth, we come to The Eight Fold Path.
The Eight Fold Path is the Buddhist concept of our state of being. It speaks to our alignment with the eight paths or spokes around the wheel of Samsara. The wheel of Samsara is the wheel of death and rebirth. This wheel is the wheel that puts us back into our body as we are reincarnated from birth to birth. While we travel through each life, Samsara is what holds us in place to ourselves. We are but a life lived and a life that has yet to be born. In this way, we traverse The Eight Fold Path, over and over — each time becoming more of who we are in each life time as we progress through reincarnation as ourselves from Samsara.
From the void, to this place we call life, we are born living in the shallowness of our nature, until we find a way to seek and search for the truth inside ourselves. This search leads one to understand many avenues of thoughts, feelings, and being. Through our time in Samsara, our search will have granted us the ability to find what we are meant to find on our path. It is on this path, that we go to now. This path, for all Buddhists, is The Eight Fold Path. May we walk it together.
The Eight Fold Path is the path that a Buddhist honors outright and inherently, as a truth that is absolute. It is the instinctive conceptual way of being with ones’ self that all Buddhists honor and live by. The Eight Fold Path has many versions depending on the sect of Buddhism one has faith in, but all regard The Eight Fold Path as the path to walk and to traverse on the journey through Samsara. This journey that we make towards ourselves, day in and day out, requires that we be true to our nature as a spiritual being. To do this, The Eight Fold Path helps guide, teach, strengthen, express, and account for our decisions and choices that we make in every moment.
Below is the version of the Eight Fold Path that I follow. May it lead you on your way home.
Right View: The state of self that knows how to use it’s inner intuition to see through reality and understand what is seen from its own perspective. This sense of seeing is known to come from the Third Eye and is allowing you to see a truth beyond yourself. When using Right View, you have the ability to garner a more precise view, with sharper clarity and with a sense of knowing that this truth that you are in witness of, is the truth alone. Right View can add insight into your life and make it so that you are more capable of seeing life the way its meant to be.
Right Livelihood: Right Livelihood is one’s ability to obtain a path in life that honors their strengths and allows for one to work on honing and developing one’s weaknesses. The path one takes in life is so varied that it may not always seem like the right path to be on, but to know that you are developing, always making progress and growing is the only truth to Right Livelihood.
Right Understanding: The Right Understanding comes from the view that one takes. It is the light between your eyes that shines through when observing the known world and seeing through things with a fresh pair of eyes. It takes the form of a moment and heightens it to an awareness that gives insight into your view. You are then given something in turn, a truth in your view. What you see becomes a moment of true awareness and a truth that you can shed light on from being able to see past false reality of a thing, event, or even the moment itself. With Right Understanding, you can see and view with the same lens. Your understanding grows entirely free and you become attuned to the moment with clear insight.
Right Meditation: If one is to sit, then one learns to meditate. In our choosing to sit, we sit alone and we are comforted in being alone with ourself. This aloneness brings attention to who we are as a being. In our ability to be alone, we become more of ourself at home. The more time we spend with our state of being, the more time we spend sitting and being silent. In our silence, we find that we are at home and comforted by the fact that we have a place to be at peace with ourself.
Right Mindfulness: Our mind is the garden that we are apart of. If we soil the garden and do not tend to it, then our garden does not grow, nor is it alive, active, or whole. In this space, our Mind is the place we see ourselves as being with and in touch of a state of self that can harness our growth and potential to lead a life with Right Mindfulness. This state of growth is the garden that gives us truth about what our mind is aware of and how to pay attention to that which grows and to that which decays. It gives us our ability to pay attention to our everyday moments and makes us aware of our awareness as a whole.
Right Action: The actions we take in our life are actions either meant for us to take or meant for us to learn from. Each action, is an action with the right intent behind it. The right intent, is our ability to choose with wisdom and clarity of thought, what decision we are to choose in our life. Our choices, based upon Right Action, are to believe in our decisions. Each decision is a choice that confronts the wisdom in ourself. When we are choosing, we should look to The Eight Fold Path to make the right decision.
Right Speech: To speak to anyone, we must first speak to ourself. It is because we have Right Speech, that we can correctly speak to the people in our lives that we regard as important to us. The people outside of ourself, as those who we must be most critical of, require our speech, which can be a weapon or a tool, for us to be able to communicate with them in kindness and compassion. When we speak, we should speak with an understanding that we are speaking to ourself foremost and that our speech is a reflection of ourself to everyone else.
Right Thought: Our mind is a framework that is understood through the things we think of. If our thoughts are negative, then we are essentially the framework that we inhabit. If, however, we are positive, we think with a positive mindset that completes and aligns with our framework of thought. Our thinking of our state of self, is our ability to align with the 7 of truths of The Eight Fold Path. If we are misaligned, we are, because, we are not in alignment with our thought of ourself.