How do we transcend the stress’ control over our choices, utterances, and deeds? The Buddha’s eight fold path. How do we transform our raw survival instincts from being our tyrant to merely being our tool? The Buddha’s eight-fold path. But what about holy grail of enlightenment itself? What if enlightenment was merely the mastery of the Buddha’s eight-fold path? But what is mastery?
As a little, brain-damaged, boy I found the tying of my shoes to be a daunting task. But after (what seemed like) a great amount of time, and tears, and repeat instructions I finally got so good at tying those sneakers that I could do so spontaneously, habitually, easily, and effectively. The same held true for potty training, dental hygiene, and bicycle riding. Likewise, we could so master the Buddha’s eight-fold path.
The seventh and eighth folds of the path are mindfulness as well as meditation and when practiced correctly they are the key to the path. Mindfulness and meditation could be the engine that turns the metaphoric wheels of the Buddha’s enlightenment machine.
When practiced authentically mindfulness and meditation could calm our amygdala (the seat of anxiety and aggression) and stimulate our anterior cingulate gyrus (the seat of empathy). This is why the late Tulku Thondup insisted that the highest love was not the product of focus or analysis but rather the spontaneous and uncontrived by product of mindfulness and meditation. The significance of this cannot be overestimated for loving-kindness comprise fifty percent of the Buddha’s eight-fold path:
2nd fold’s kind intention,
3rd fold’s kind communication,
4th fold’s kind conduct, and
5th fold’s kind commerce.
Persist in the consistent, enthusiastic, and correct practice of mindfulness as well as meditation and you’ll find that your choices, utterances, and deeds could flow with the effortless effort of love’s centered spontaneity – the 6th fold’s right effort.
But what about the 1st fold, the view of reality’s impermanence that supports letting go? Sit in mindfulness as well as meditation and as you might to see permanence and you’ll never find it. Effortlessly you’ll be assailed with perceptions of sights, sounds, sensations, flavors, and scents ever shifting in a manner ranging from the subtle to the jarring. The internal is no different. Mindfulness and meditation rub our face in the ever changing nature of our emotions, intentions, thoughts, memories, and imaginings. Mindfulness and meditation are the key that unlock our mastery of his eight-fold path. A mastery that he taught could be accomplished in less than:
seven years,
seven quarters,
seven months,
seven fortnights,
seven weeks, or even
seven days.
This is why the Buddha taught mindfulness and meditation.
Let us conclude
with a simple
call to action
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