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Is the noble eightfold path of Buddhism intelligible?

6/23/2021

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Like the Ten Commandments, Buddha’s Nobel Eightfold Path, is simple to understand but not really easy to accomplish. These eight attitudes are not moral precepts about specifically what not to do, though. They are a simple list of how to behave if you want to live a life with a minimum of suffering for yourself and others.

Buddha does use the word “right” but it is not in the sense that you are damned by God if you don’t take his recommendations. It is more in the sense of what is most appropriate for the moment. Here is the Noble Eighfold Path:
  1. Right understanding
  2. Right thought
  3. Right speech
  4. Right action
  5. Right livelihood
  6. Right effort
  7. Right mindfulness
  8. Right concentration
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Because they are so simple, people can interpret these concepts in different ways. Huge volumes have been written on the subject. My interpretation, in short, is approach everything with a free, pure, unattached heart. This ensures that we say the appropriate words as well as perform appropriate actions. We consciously put our efforts towards meaningful goals while remaining grounded in what is eternal about ourselves.

Four of the ideas in The Noble Eightfold Path concern themselves with our inner selves: Understanding, thought, mindfulness, and concentration. This is different from the Ten Commandments, which do not concern themselves with a person’s inner life and more with their relationship to Jehovah and with each other.
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Four of the items on the Path are action-oriented: Speech, action, livelihood, and effort. The Buddha did not leave anything out. And by not defining precisely what each “right” thought or action is, he left a lot of room for interpretation. But the final test is, by living this way do you alleviate suffering? Thousands of years after he delivered his insights, they are still alive and bringing people and understanding of life, so they have stood the test of time.
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Is it possible to dissolve the ego completely? If it is possible, how can this benefit somebody’s life?

6/9/2021

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The Universe is perfectly designed, so if we are born into bodies that come equipped with egos, who are we to say it needs to be completely dissolved? We can manage it because it has some troublesome aspects. It is fearful, tries to prove itself right and everyone else wrong, and it is never satisfied with what is, wanting more, more, and more.


But it is also part of what makes us human. And as with our bodies, we can do things with it to optimize its performance and not turn it into our enemy. We can put it in its place. We can be grateful to it that it is only trying to protect us to ensure our survival. We don’t have to fight it. We can thank it and then put it in its place as our servant and not our master.
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The ego wants to excel, improve on things, fix things, and gain praise. It sees what’s wrong with the picture and is discontent with the Now. All of these qualities spurred the great works of art, engineering, technology, and inventions of our species. So we don’t want to throw the ego out completely. We want to put it where it belongs—being a help to us in our creative energy and not destroying our happiness in the process.
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What were Eckhart Tolle's fears and anxieties of his life situation before Enlightenment?

6/9/2021

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Eckart Tolle’s fears and anxieties, that he reports on in his books, were very much like all of our fears and anxieties: We’re not enough. We need to do something to make ourselves enough but we never do enough, we’re not good-looking enough, we’re not smart enough, we will be on the street with nothing, we’re not loved or appreciated enough, we’re not (fill in the blank).

Those are just a few fears that plagued him, along with an unhappy childhood with quarreling parents, not fitting in at school, and just the low-level non-stop terror that the mind inflicts on everyone who doesn’t know how it operates.
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When he discovered how the ego-mind and its negative bias runs our lives instead of us running it, he was able to get out from under its tyranny and start to control and master it. Now he could use it as a tool, instead of letting it using him as its tool. This brought him freedom from the never-ending emphasis on lack that is the focus of the ego-mind, which always wants more, more, more and is never satisfied with what is.
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The books by Eckhart Tolle were very popular because they had the answer that if you are totally in the present (now), you are totally happy. But are people now disappointed because he had no way to get there, since he got there by accident?

6/9/2021

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It’s delusional to think that anyone can be totally happy all the time by following a simple formula. It is a popular concept, of course, that if you are always in the present you have found the way to total happiness. It is a great selling point with people who are looking for instant enlightenment and a life of endless fun without the discipline, watchfulness, and work it takes to get there.

Such ideas can also make a reader feel that if it is so easy, why doesn’t it work for them? They must be deficient in some way. They then add that to the list of negatives that keep them stuck in a depressive world view.

I don’t interpret Eckart Tolle’s present moment awareness as being totally happy, anyway. I interpret it as being at peace with the underlying understanding that all lis right with the Universe, regardless of what my emotional reaction is to the circumstances. Sometimes being totally happy is not appropriate and shows a shallowness and lack of sensitivity that borders on the fake and annoying. Sometimes, being truly sad and feeling it deeply, is the appropriate emotion and shows compassion and empathy for other sufferers.

As F. Scott Peck says in the first line of The Road Not Taken, “Life is difficult.” Because people don’t want to face that, they are outraged, angry, disappointed, upset, unhappy, feel entitled to their piece of the pie, and every other negative emotion. If we accept that life is difficult and that it requires spiritual work and discipline to achieve inner peace, lots of our problems would clear up naturally.

With Eckart Tolle, it wasn’t really an accident that brought his breakthrough into the world of spiritual peace. It was that his mind broke. He had taken the ego-mind to the limit and saw the absurdity of its claims on him. He saw that he wasn’t two beings, his nagging ego-mind and his eternal, harmonious soul. It wasn’t an accident at all. It was the result seeing clearly, for the first time, that if he went with the repetitive, automatic, and negative path of this mind, his life would continue to be hell.
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Many mystics have arrived at this realization the same way. Often it is the result of The Dark Night of the Soul. But it is never an accident. Part of it is by grace as well. But it is never because someone read a book and got “instant karma” as a result. It always takes some form of work.
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    As a spiritual guide, healer, and lecturer, I have had the privilege to touch the lives of people who long to understand their higher selves. Please leave questions and comments for me. Hope to see you often here!

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