The teaching of ethical conduct or integrity is the next grouping on the Eightfold Path. Sila or ethics include wise speech, wise action, and wise livelihood – the non harming of ourselves and others. The practice is two fold: to resolve to do no harm and to restrain yourself when about to do something unwholesome or unskillful. The Buddha said that skillful actions have freedom from remorse as their purpose. They are a conscious choice to refrain from behavior that causes more fear, confusion and suffering. To most of us this makes sense, but there are increasing levels of subtlety in them so let’s look at speech.

Speech is a strong conditioning force in our lives—in our minds and in our relationships. Certain ways of speaking are unskillful and cause suffering and the Buddha cautioned against four unskillful ways of speaking: false speech or lying, angry or aggressive speech gossip, and frivolous or useless talk. That covers a lot of what is said in modern life! So how do we take these guidelines as our practice? How do we reflect on it and come back to it again and again? Words have tremendous power to harm and to heal. And we do not want to repress communication, but to communicate in a way that facilitates openness and freedom rather than constriction and suffering.

This is where the practices we developed through wise understanding and wise intention bear fruit. Our understanding and motivation – our wisdom – informs and guides our action so that our speech comes from a wholesome place. And it begins in our mind/hearts: look to see how many of your thoughts are not true, have a judgmental or harsh tone, how much is gossip, how much is useless. Note your thoughts within the 4 categories before you give voice to them. Imagine what it would be like to practice carefully enough to see motivation behind speech—see when it’s motivated by metta or care and refrain from speech when it’s not.

It is said in the texts that “Everything rests on the tip of motivation.” According to traditional Buddhist teaching, every mind moment involves an intention. The second step of the Wisdom group in the Eightfold Path is Wise Intention. Each decision we make and every action is born of intention. Each movement, word and even thought is preceded by a volitional impulse, usually unnoticed. And just as drops of water will eventually fill a bathtub, so the accumulation of these small choices shapes who we are.

Our intentions–noticed or unnoticed, gross or subtle–contribute to our suffering or our happiness. Intentions are seeds; the garden we grow depends on the seeds we plant and water. Long after a deed is done, the trace or momentum of an intention remains as a seed, conditioning our future happiness or unhappiness. If we water intentions of greed, anger, vengeance or hate, their inherent suffering will sprout; both while we act on them and in the future in the form of reinforced habits, tensions and painful memories. If we nourish intentions of compassion, love and generosity, that will be what grows in us, and the inherent happiness and openness of those states will become more frequent visitors in our life.

An important function of mindfulness practice is understanding the immediate and longer term consequences of our intended actions. This understanding will help us with our future choices by helping to ensure that they be wiser than those based only on our likes and preferences. I invite you to really begin to listen to that within yourselves, to listen to and see what is there in a situation when you act. What motivates you? For even if we act in ways of service or generosity, but not out of a spontaneous movement of the heart but out of guilt or fear, to please others, to feel good or righteous, or out of fear of rejection and loss, the actions will have a certain benefit but they won’t be lasting. We’ll burn out because they come from some idea of what we wish we were, or from fear rather than that deeper place of our basic and fundamental goodness.

Perhaps the most significant inquiry is to reflect carefully now on our deepest intention. What is your heart’s deepest wish? What is of greatest value or priority in your life? Mindfulness practice connected to one’s deepest intention will bear a different result than practice connected to more superficial concerns.

The Eightfold Path is not simply a linear list. The Dharma Wheel – an ancient and ubiquitous symbol of Buddhism – is a circle with 8 spokes, a beautiful image for how each step on the path is equally weighted to support our full participation in life and co-arises with the other aspects of the Path. Often, we enter into the Eightfold Path with Wise Understanding as our first step in uncovering Wisdom. His Holiness the Dalai Lama says:

Sources of suffering and delusion lie in ignorance – distorted states of mind. We need to cultivate a correct understanding of the nature of the world. By this, we reverse the process of cyclic existence.

Wise Understanding involves a profound and subtle knowledge of our true nature – that everything is impermanent and empty (anicca and anatta) of self. All elements of mind and body exist in a moment and pass away, arising and vanishing continuously. Breath, thought, emotions, sensations–all phenomena are in constant flux. There is no lasting security to be had in this flow of impermanence.

So this is the quality of wisdom or Wise Understanding: a sense of trust and openness that rests in something greater than the smaller difficulties of our life. There may be experiences we don’t like or want, but Wise Understanding deeply and joyfully knows life in all its seasons and understands that all thoughts, words and deeds have consequences. It doesn’t struggle or fight against life. In the end we discover, remember, recognize that we possess none of it. We don’t possess our things, our parents, our partners, our children, our experiences. Yet, we understand the interconnectedness of all things as the ground of being.

THE FOURTH NOBLE TRUTH What is the Noble Truth of the Way Leading to the Cessation of Suffering? It is the Noble Eightfold Path, also called the Middle Path, a path of balance, opening, seeing what is true now, letting go. It is what we practice. Of course, this Path must be walked. As Antonio Machado said, “Travelers, there is no path; paths are made by walking.” The Eightfold Path is presented in three aspects: beginning with Wise View or Understanding, and Wise Intention or Aspiration; these first two elements of the Path are grouped together as Wisdom, where the Path is centered in the heart liberated from self-view and selfishness, that knows that all our thoughts, words and deeds have consequences. The second group is Moral Commitment (to live a trustworthy life with integrity and a light footprint); this consists of Wise Speech, Wise Action and Wise Livelihood. Third is Meditation, consisting of Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness and Wise Concentration, the commitment to train the mind/heart to unification leading to deep realization, peace and freedom. From this peace emerges Wisdom, where we started. The Path is not a straight line, but a circle. The totality of the Path allows us to respond appropriately to the world, the natural response of life itself. Encountering the hungry, we feed them; the sick, we find medicine; the lonely and forgotten, we provide solace. Encountering injustice, we work for justice—not from a place of grasping and reaction, but simply from caring, from the wisdom that it is “we” who are hungry, sick, homeless, lonely and poor, not “them.” We walk the Path ourselves, but not in isolation. On the Path, we are connected to all of life.

The Second Noble Truth is that the cause of suffering is our clinging or grasping from the mental forces of greed & possessiveness, of hatred & aggression, and of ignorance & delusion. And this clinging or grasping must be let go of.The cause of most human suffering on the earth right now, is in our hands. Individually we grasp at how we think it should be; we don’t want things to change. Or we do want them to change. We don’t want to grow old and we don’t want to lose certain things. We don’t want certain things to happen the way they do. So when you’re suffering, see where there is attachment, where there is grasping, clinging.

Study where you grasp – to your children, your money, your work, your spiritual beliefs — so many ways we grasp. See what happens when you are rigid about your spiritual beliefs. Study how you sit, moment to moment, each sitting. Each moment we can see the grasping — I want this, and I don’t want that. This is pleasant– I want more of that. This is unpleasant—none of that, please. Or we check out completely. It’s called the body of fear, the small self. That place from which we live that is afraid to let go and change. The body of fear is always protecting. The whole sense of self gets created by trying to make safety and territory.

And out of the body of fear, out of clinging, grasping and possessiveness and aggression those come wars, racism, tribalism, us and them, and most of the hunger in the world and the deaths from illnesses. To unclench the fist of clinging doesn’t mean that we don’t respond to the world, that we don’t try to help. But we can let go of our clinging to an outcome–deep down the cause of suffering is this gut level grasping of how it should be. And from this, fear, manipulation, aggression, rigidity, holding, dukkha arises. The more we cling, the more we suffer.