[TODO]
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âDoes Master Gotama have any position at all?â
âA âposition,â Vaccha, is something that a TathÄgata has done away with. What a TathÄgata sees is this: âSuch is form, such its origination, such its disappearance; such is feeling, such its origination, such its disappearance; such is perception⊠such are fabrications⊠such is consciousness, such its origination, such its disappearance.â Because of this, I say, a TathÄgataâwith the ending, fading away, cessation, renunciation, & relinquishment of all suppositions, all excogitations, all I-making & mine-making & obsessions with conceitâis, through lack of clinging/sustenance, released.â
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Noble Eightfold Path
- Right View: our actions have consequences, death is not the end, and our actions and beliefs have consequences after death. The Buddha followed and taught a successful path out of this world and the other world (heaven and underworld/hell).
- Right Resolve or Intention: the giving up of home and adopting the life of a religious mendicant in order to follow the path; this concept aims at peaceful renunciation, into an environment of non-sensuality, non-ill-will (to loving kindness), away from cruelty (to compassion). Such an environment aids contemplation of impermanence, suffering, and non-Self.
- Right Speech: no lying, no rude speech, no telling one person what another says about him to cause discord or harm their relationship.
- Right Conduct or Action: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual misconduct, no material desires.
- Right Livelihood: no trading in weapons, living beings, meat, liquor, and poisons.
- Right Effort: preventing the arising of unwholesome states, and generating wholesome states, the bojjhagÄ (Seven Factors of Awakening). This includes indriya-samvara, “guarding the sense-doors”, restraint of the sense faculties.
- Right Mindfulness (sati; Satipatthana; Sampajañña): a quality that guards or watches over the mind; the stronger it becomes, the weaker unwholesome states of mind become, weakening their power “to take over and dominate thought, word and deed.” In the vipassana movement, sati is interpreted as “bare attention”: never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing; this encourages the awareness of the impermanence of body, feeling and mind, as well as to experience the five aggregates (skandhas), the five hindrances, the four True Realities and seven factors of awakening.
- Right samadhi (passaddhi; ekaggata; sampasadana): practicing four stages of dhyÄna (“meditation”), which includes samadhi proper in the second stage, and reinforces the development of the bojjhagÄ, culminating into upekkha (equanimity) and mindfulness. In the Theravada tradition and the vipassana movement, this is interpreted as ekaggata, concentration or one-pointedness of the mind, and supplemented with vipassana meditation, which aims at insight.