THE NOBLE EIGHTFOLD PATH

All the major religions were initially invented with the wellbeing of the followers in mind. For example, in the New Testament, Jesus boiled down the guiding principles of good action (or ethics) to two points: 1) to love God, 2) to love your neighbor as yourself. Unfortunately, the love of power trumps the power of love. The greed of religious institutions and individuals turns their religion into a brainwashing machine for their political and personal gains, in the name of glorifying their religion, and suppress/oppress other religions. The followers are tasked to help spread the religion for the purpose of expanding the influence of the religion, geographically and demographically; instead of the pure happiness of the believers. They peddle the religion using the promises of God’s blessing and benefits in the afterlife, or the lack thereof. They emphasize RECEIVING loves (or punishments) from God instead of GIVING loves to their neighbor. As a result, the believers only think of their personal benefits (from God and other believers who supply the sense of wellbeing) instead of what they themselves are supposed to do; i.e. to love your neighbor as yourself, so that you feel abundant and happy to have the capacity to GIVE instead of begging to RECEIVE loves from somebody else. Giving alms to monks are supposed to be an opportunity to experience the joy of GIVING, instead of self-glorification as moral hero or anticipate RECEIVING reciprocation from God. However, if the monks preach: “No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” They will find it hard to recruit followers for the religion. The people demand to RECEIVE free gifts or reciprocation. No one wants to better himself by walking the path. Like sales promotion, the religion which offers the best deal will have more customers; religion which emphasizes self-improvement and self-reliant will have few followers. Religious leaders choose to forget the original purpose of the religion, i.e. purely for the happiness of the followers, teach the followers to fish rather than giving them fish. They become ignorant about true compassion but limit their loves to only the fellow believers of the same sect of the same religion. They further create innumerable moral codes to forcefully control the lives and properties of the followers. That is evil and itself a moral failing. In the end, they themselves destroy all the religions and give rise to a new religion called Atheism: a pursuit or interest followed with great devotion to deny the existence of personal god or gods. Like Buddhism and Daoism, Atheism was a philosophy and not a religion. It is not a disbelief in gods or a denial of gods; it is a lack of belief in gods. Unfortunately, every “-ism” is a wasn’t. Philosophies are turned into religions to compete for believers. Every religion sees other religions as competitors or threats to its survival. We see wars of deeds, and wars of words, between the various religions every day, even in this day and age. Talks of co-existence, unity in diversity, harmony instead of unity, are just temporary truces.

If you want to become enlightened and happy, you must understand that desires are undesirable. The Noble Eightfold Path (八正道) is not the path to enlightenment. It is the supplementary path to guide you on your journey to achieve the state of no-desire (无欲), so that you don’t stray away from the right path. There are no right or wrong in the details of the journey, but there is a right destination. You need to have the desire to reach the destination, but you will not need the desire anymore when you reach the destination. The Noble Eightfold Path was proposed by Shakyamuni Buddha to debunk the practice of Asceticism (hardship and self-torture) and Hedonism (maximization of personal pleasures and consumerism, a basis of Capitalism).

“Right View” (正见): distinguishing right and wrong is an easy task, especially when you follow the standards and rules of others. It is much more difficult to see and understand things as they really are, not as you wish them to be. Life is full of suffering; wishing it otherwise will not change the reality. Intelligent individuals do not need to polarize the world and then choose a side to stand on (无相). They accept (and not just tolerate) the diversity; they don’t have the wish or desire to see only “good” things but not the “bad” things, therefore their feelings not adversely affected by the reality; they have no like and no hate. They have no suffering because they have no desire to see a different reality other than the reality of the Four Noble Truths (四圣谛). Some scholars want to know every detail about everything, but they lose sight of the Four Noble Truths; in the end, they could not extinguish the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion in their heart. The land area of 1 square-foot is all you need to stand on; anything beyond that seems useless but is actually essential to support the land you stand on, without which the 1-square-foot land will collapse and you will not feel secure. Being rich or poor (in terms of money, knowledge, compassion, or other aspects) are both not-wrong and not-right; the world need both of them. It’s OK to be rich or to be poor. It can be a personal choice, although some people choose to feel sad because of inability to become rich or to escape poverty. Some people are even more foolish to hate the rich and feel sad for the poor, instead of saving themselves from being burnt by the fires of greed, hatred, and delusion.

“Right Thinking” (正思维): Until you finally achieve enlightenment and the state of no-desire, you need to keep thinking. Not thinking (执于空) will definitely make you stupid, and that is detrimental to your happiness. In fact, intelligence is essential to sustain the state of no-desire, so that you are not easily swayed and lured towards the Dark Side. Following the standards and rules of others (执于法) is a symptom of not thinking, although most people still think they are thinking. No-desire is the greatest selfishness (because it maximizes your self-interest of being happy), but the world see it as selflessness. By having no-desire, everything you do seems to be not for personal pleasure, but to love others; nobody knows you are actually having fun doing all those things spontaneously, without fakery or artificial conditioning of the mind due to prior mis-education (真人无伪). By having no desire, the threshold level to attain happiness is very low. Every little victory can make you happy. You don’t have to do too much and yet you will be happy every single day. Hardship and self-torture will make you unhappy; while consumerism is like opium which is addictive and will only give you temporary euphoric effects but return to feeling unhappy when the drug wears off. Thinking about anything that will cost you your peace is too expensive. Instead, you should think about how to achieve enlightenment. The Buddha said: “my teaching is not a dogma or a doctrine, but no doubt some people will take it as such. I must state clearly that my teaching is a method to experience reality and not reality itself, just as a finger pointing at the moon is not the moon itself. A thinking person makes use of the finger to see the moon. A person who only looks at the finger and mistakes it for the moon will never see the real moon.”

“Right Speech” (正语): Having no-desire doesn’t mean you don’t even have the desire to speak. A happy person is usually talkative because of the affection. But you must talk to the people who want to listen; therefore, you will naturally have free-of-charge fun talking about events and ideas. You will not become angry; therefore, you will naturally not utter vicious words of hatred, violence, slander, abuse, and lies.

“Right Action” (正业): Having no-desire doesn’t mean you don’t even have the desire to do anything. Not doing anything will cause detrimental effects to your mental and physical health, which will make you unhappy. It is a symptom of stupidity. However, you don’t need to kill or steal for the sake of materialistic pleasure. You don’t have to sell your soul to become rich. Your heart is in your hand; you don’t have to rely on someone or something to make you happy; lest you will have attachment and become un-free. You don’t have to beg for food or donation; you can work it out using your intelligence to self-sustain. By the way, there is nothing wrong about accepting alms without begging. Refrain from doing negative actions that are not helpful (akusala karma) to your progress in attaining enlightenment; on top of that, do positive actions (kusala karma) to accelerate your progress. You have a license to kill (ants, mosquitoes, bugs, etc.) but you should choose not to kill or steal because these are akusala karma. Sin is not a concept of Buddhism; butchers are not criminalized. You should instead try to save all living and non-living things, and give rather than take whenever possible because these are kusala karma, for your own good.

“Right Livelihood” (正命): Having no-desire doesn’t mean you don’t even have the desire to live. On the contrary, you want to live and maximize your happiness. You live as well as you can; eat well, drink well, sleep well, and exercise well (especially with Shaolin Kung Fu). If you are not happy, you have no life although you can still walk. If you are not happy now, you must learn to be happy; otherwise, there is no guarantee that you will ever be happy in the future. There is no path to happiness; happiness is the path. You must stay on the happiness path, and you will continue to be happy into the future. Some people become a monk because they are unhappy with reality. They are probably going to the wrong place to look for happiness, if they are just trying to run away from reality. Happiness is in here and now; you don’t have to look any further. Wanting to live is actually being not afraid to live in this dangerous world (where there are bugs everywhere ranging from the size of a molecule to the size of a human). Wanting to live is being brave to face the reality and future challenges. Kamikaze or Japanese suicide pilots were actually cowards who couldn’t face the defeat of their Empire during WWII and committed the final ditch of craziness. You must also be not afraid to die; otherwise, the fear of death will rob you of your happiness. Death is like walking from one room into another room through a door; there is nothing to be afraid of. And don’t forget to extinguish the candle (of greed, hatred, and delusion) or turn off the light and move on. Being afraid of death will not change the reality. You can become a monk if you want a career of teaching people how to be happy by “swimming to the shore at the opposite side of the bitter sea” (彼岸). It isn’t easy; but the good news is you will not need any more energy to stay afloat when you reach the destination. Some people consume all kinds of foods/drinks/drugs (which they know are harmful to their health) to get the temporary euphoric effects. They are either afraid to live or ignorantly think that they will never get ill or die. On the other hand, some people are afraid to die so much so that they avoid at all costs anything that is rumored as unhealthy. The fact is, there is no unhealthy food; only unhealthy eater.

“Right Efforts” (正精进): Having no-desire doesn’t mean you don’t even have the desire to learn. Not learning will definitely make you stupid, and that is detrimental to your happiness. In fact, knowledge is essential to attain intelligent and sustain the state of no-desire, so that you are not easily swayed and lured towards the Dark Side. You may be intelligent already, but you must still continue to learn from others (破我执). The force of the Dark Side is getting stronger every day. Master Yoda burns the sacred tree at the first temple and incinerates the Jedi Order’s remaining sacred text to make Luke Skywalker even more disillusioned with the Jedi Order. Intelligence is not in the sacred text; it can only be created in your brain. Don’t learn to become clever devil but learn the intelligence to have no worry (绝学无忧); learn to not rely on sacred text (破法执); don’t let your brain remains empty with no knowledge (破空执). The sacred text of the Sage can be misused to benefit the Dark Side. The disciples of the Sage may be recruited by the Dark Side too. Therefore, if the Sage doesn’t die, the evil Empire will not vanish (圣人不死，大盗不止). The people must learn to become intelligent, take their fates into their own hands, and stop worshiping for a “noble” Chancellor or Emperor Palpatine to save the Universe; The First Order is the evil which will create order without spirit (没有生命的有次序). It is better to have disorder with spirit (没有次序的有生命). Clever devils will put their efforts to become cleverer at deceiving people, and also their leaders. Clever Emperor of clever subordinates will feel insecure. Only stupid subordinates will be loyal to the Emperor.

Right Intent (正念): Knowing the benefit of having no-desire is not as good as living with no-desire; living with no-desire is not as good as feeling happy to have no-desire (知之者不如好之者，好之者不如乐之者). If you don’t have a strong intent or persistence to swim to the shore of happiness, you will either stop half-way or never start the journey. You will never reach the destination if you move one step forward and one step back. You will be easily swayed and lured towards the Dark Side; either to the path of self-torture or the path of consumerism. You will remain afloat in the bitter sea. When high intelligent Individuals hear of Dao, they see the subtleness of it and therefore practice it diligently. When middle intelligent individuals hear of Dao, they don’t fully understand it and therefore have some doubts about it. When low intelligent individuals hear of Dao, they laugh because their self-righteous and subjective biases toward an ideology/religion make their minds corrupted with misconceptions and therefore not able to objectively see the truth. Common truth is ordinary; the ultimate truth is uncommon, therefore not easily understood. If common people do not laugh at Dao, that means it is not extraordinary and has nothing subtle (上士闻道，勤而行之；中士闻道，若存若亡；下士闻道，大笑之。不笑不足以为道).

“Right Calmness” (正定): You should have a calm demeanor, peace of mind, and not easily swayed into emotional states when faced with points of view that run counter to your belief or understanding. You should recognize that there are different ways of looking at different things depending on the context and perspectives. If your heart is calm, you will not participate in the debate on whether the wind or the flag is restless. If you have no fear, obligation, and guilt (F.O.G.), you will be able to remain calm even if the mountain collapses in front of you (泰山崩于前而色不变，麋鹿兴于左而目不瞬，骤然临之而不惊，无故加之而不怒). By having no-desire, there is nothing you cannot let go, including your body, you will have no F.O.G. Living another day is a bonus, and a cause for celebration. If you have done everything to save yourself (正命) but yet you have to leave this world, be brave and adventurous to experience the next world. Don’t mourn the past (无住), and don’t worry about the future (无念), but concentrate on the present moment (定). The idea about the cycle of death and rebirth, or reincarnation, was the belief of Jainism which existed long before the birth of Shakyamuni Buddha. In fact, he was a Jainist before becoming the Buddha. He was an Atheist; he had a lack of belief in gods but wasn’t disbelieving in gods. He had a lack of belief in reincarnation but wasn’t disbelieving in reincarnation. Emphasizing living in the present moment precisely tell us not to worry about the future and afterlife. Whether or not there is reincarnation, or existence of Heaven and Hell, is of secondary importance. The most important thing is to learn and experience the Four Noble Truth, leading to the cessation of all suffering, and abandonment of all attachment. We don’t have to know everything. We don’t have to feel anxious for not knowing what will happen after we die. We should instead apply the knowledge of not knowing and face reality as it is. Ignorant is not necessarily a bad thing. It is definitely better than pretending we know the afterlife.

You must make having no desire your lifelong endeavor. Having no desire will bring you the greatest happiness. You are already standing on an undefeatable ground (立于不败之地) when nothing can make you unhappy; no one has the privilege to control your heart and decide the feeling which you are allowed to have. Having no desire is the greatest desire; selflessness is the greatest selfishness. “Taste the tasteless and stay serene to have a clear view of your ambition. Stay comfortable with being unknown and quiescent to reach a great distance in the future.” (淡泊以明志，宁静以致远。) A person with a lot of desire can never do great good because he uses a lot of time and energy for self-serving purposes (i.e. laughably small selfishness compared to the greatest selfishness). An impatient person who is restless will make a lot of mistakes and never go very far; even if he truly desires to do great good for the people. Hope is never a good strategy; good intention is never a guarantee of good outcome. We should intent to have no greedy ambition (but pursue small targets one-by-one instead), do nothing to chase for success (wishing to have no problem to solve instead), and enjoy the tasteless life (because ordinary life is better than given the opportunity to achieve extraordinary success which comes from the suffering of yourself and other people) (为无为 事无事 味无味). Keep learning and be prepared to face challenges anyway; opportunity is reserved for people who are prepared to grab it.

Devadatta wanted to kill the Buddha and takeover his leadership role. He fed large amount of liquor to Nalagiri, the most dangerous elephant in the royal herd of elephants, until it became dangerously drunk. Then the drunken elephant was beaten to make it extremely angry and violent. Finally, the angry, violent, drunk elephant was directed to the street where the Buddha was coming for alms. Nalagiri smashed everything that was on its way. People were terrified and screamed together in one voice. Nalagiri was dashing violently towards the Buddha. All the disciples who were with Buddha was horrified at this terrible sight and scrambled to flee for safety. Only Disciple Ananda stood firmly beside the Buddha. At that time, Buddha himself remained totally at ease and composed. He stood where he was and radiated his loving-kindness towards the elephant. Buddha’s love and compassion were so strong and powerful that the elephant could feel it. Just a few steps before it was about to charge into the Buddha, it stopped in its path and calmed down. It then trotted towards Buddha and respectfully bowed its head. Buddha stroked the elephant’s trunk and comforted it with soft and kind words. The elephant was totally tamed.

Love can appease any hatred only if your power of love is great enough. You can never have enough power of love if you do not abandon all desire and all attachment. Buddha would have been killed by Devadatta and the elephant otherwise. However, his power of love was not enough to overrule Devadatta’s love of power. His power of love could not appease the hatred against him; he could not make everybody loves him. Gandhi’s misjudged of his own power of love led to his assassination by his followers.