In the Context of the Path
May 29, 2024

The Buddha’s first sermon was on the noble eightfold path. With the last person he taught, he focused on the topic of the noble eightfold path. That’s the metaphor he used as a framework for what he was teaching: a path. He was teaching a training—something to do, instructions to follow.

Some of the other teachings that were taught at his time would start with a picture of the world—the world is like this, these are the principles of what reality is “out there”—and then they would tend to stop right there. They presented a picture but didn’t tell you much of what to do with it. In fact, in many of their pictures, there was nothing you could do. Action had no meaning.

Whereas the Buddha’s teachings are all about what to do. We’re suffering and we need to put an end to suffering. We can do it, and this is how you do it.

It’s good to keep that in mind: that the noble eightfold path—starting with right view, which is the four noble truths—is the main framework for everything else. So whenever you read a teaching of the Buddha’s, ask yourself, “Where does it fit in the training? Where does it fit in this course of action?”

There is a tendency, sometimes, to focus on the three characteristics as the Buddha’s primary description of reality. And then, into the framework of that description, everything else gets squeezed.

But what are you to do with those three characteristics? You can think about things being inconstant, stressful, beyond your control, and you can come to all kinds of conclusions.

Some people adopt a materialistic view and say, “Well, there is no self, there’s nobody there, so you’re not responsible for anything. You have no free will.” Given just the three characteristics on their own, you could come to that conclusion.

But when you see that teaching in the context of the noble eightfold path, you realize what you have to do with these three things. To begin with, the Buddha himself never called them “three characteristics.” He called them perceptions: There’s the perception of inconstancy, the perception of stress or suffering, and the perception of not-self. These perceptions play a role in two of the duties of the four noble truths: the duty to comprehend suffering and the duty to abandon its cause.

What is suffering? The Buddha gives a list. There’s the suffering of birth, aging, and death. The suffering of not getting what you want, of having to be with what you don’t like, of having to be separated from what you do like. All of that we know. Then he says that it all comes down to the five clinging-aggregates.

That’s not immediately obvious, which is why it’s a really important insight. We’re suffering from the things we’re clinging to. We have to comprehend that—in other words, understand it to the point where we have no passion, aversion, or delusion around the suffering that we’re causing through our clinging.

Of course, the clinging itself is caused by craving: craving for sensuality; craving to become, to take on an identity in a particular world of experience; or craving to destroy whatever identity you already have, or whatever world you’re in because it’s not satisfying you anymore. That, the Buddha says, you’ve got to abandon.

If you want to understand the relationship between clinging and craving. think of the meaning of the word taṇhā in Pali, which means not only craving, but also thirst. Upādāna, the word for clinging, means not only clinging, but also taking sustenance, or the actual sustenance itself—food. When you’re thirsty or hungry, you’re looking for something to eat, and then you finally get something and you feed off of it.

There’s one passage where the Buddha talks about the stages: You thirst for something, and you go out and you search for it. You find something. And then you try to ascertain what it is: Does it satisfy your criteria for what you want to feed on? If you decide that it does, then you latch on to it. You develop desire and passion for it—that’s the clinging—and then you get possessive. When you’re possessive, there can be battles.

So these are the things you’re trying to avoid as you practice: the battles and the suffering. As the Buddha said, even if you’re not battling somebody else, the fact that you’re holding on to something that’s going to change, or the fact that you’re holding on, period, involves stress in and of itself.

You want to learn how to see these things as inconstant, stressful, not self. See the objects of your clinging as inconstant, stressful, not-self—as a way of comprehending them. Seeing the act of clinging itself as inconstant, stressful, not-self. See the craving as inconstant, stressful, not-self—so that you can abandon it. That’s the function of those three perceptions.

The Buddha talks about the four noble truths and the noble eightfold path as categorical teachings—in other words, teachings that are always true and always beneficial. In fact, there are only two teachings that he classifies that way. The other one is a more general one: that you should abandon or avoid unskillful actions in thought, word, and deed, and you should try to develop skillful actions in thought, word, and deed.

That’s it. Those are the only teachings the Buddha said are true and beneficial across the board. The three characteristics, or the three perceptions, he said, are always true but they’re not always beneficial.

As we discussed today, if you apply them to the path too early, you can abort the whole thing. You see that the path is made out of aggregates? Well, you’re supposed to let go of aggregates, right? That’s what discernment is supposed to do, right? Even before you’ve got the mind in concentration, you try to develop you’ve heard is discernment, and that can stop you from developing what you need to develop.

Think of the image of the raft going across a river. You make a raft because this side of the river is dangerous and the other side is safe. What do you make the raft out of? You have to make it out of the things you find on this side, because there’s no nibbāna yacht that’s going to come over and pick you up, no nibbāna bridge already made over the river. You have to put things together yourself.

Make a raft out of the twigs and branches and leaves on this side of the river. Put it together as best you can, and then try to maintain it as best you can as you go across the river. You hold on tight to it, and if it looks like it’s getting loosened up, you have to tighten up the vines, you have to tighten up the different parts, so that the whole thing doesn’t just fall apart. When you get to the other side, that’s when you can let the raft go.

So there are stages in the path. The duty with regard to the path, to begin with, is to develop it. Whatever is needed to put it together, you put together the twigs and leaves. In other words, your discernment is made out of aggregates. Your concentration is made out of aggregates. Your intention to observe the precepts: Those are aggregates as well. So you don’t take them apart until they’ve gotten you over to the other side.

It’s important to keep remembering that we’re here training, that there’s a course of action with several steps. The Buddha could have spent his life talking about all the wonderful things he saw on the night of his awakening, and that he continued to see after his awakening.

There are passages where they talk about the Buddha going into the forest for seclusion. He didn’t want to see human beings except for the one monk who would bring him his food. So who knows what he was doing in the forest? Sitting and meditating? What was he learning in his meditation? The Canon doesn’t say. But there are times, periodically throughout his life, that he would go into seclusion like that.

He wasn’t just resting. There was the work the Buddha had to do, not only teaching human beings, but also teaching devas. When he came out, he could have talked about all the cool things he saw, but again he didn’t. He kept focused on his task, which was to teach people the path of practice that, when they followed it, would lead to the end of suffering.

His teachings are amazingly focused that way. So always keep that analogy in mind, keep that image in mind. We’re following a path. We want to stay on the path. Don’t wander off to the side, and don’t destroy the path in the meantime.

Some people are like a person who’s going to the Grand Canyon and knows that the Grand Canyon is like a big ditch, a really big ditch. He comes to a spot in the road, and he starts digging a ditch in the road. And he gets it so big that he can’t get across. He thinks it’s the Grand Canyon, but it’s not, and meanwhile he’s destroyed his path. So make sure that you do everything you can to keep that path together.

Or if you think of the raft, do everything you can to make sure the raft doesn’t start unraveling. Have a sense of time and place.

As for whatever teachings you learn that the Buddha taught, remember they’re part of a training—they’re meant to be used somehow and in a certain order. They’re not just there to decorate the inside of your brain. They’re tools. Some of the tools are like maps. Some of the tools actually work directly on your mind to make you see things in a new way, or to develop new strengths inside.

When you see them all as part of a training you’re more likely to get the best use out of them, and have a good sense of which tools you pick up at which point in the practice and when you put them down. That’s when you can be said to have right view about what you’re doing here.