Satsang with Giten on Buddha:
The Way of the Buddha
– The Eightfold Way
From satsang with Giten, January 14, 2016, in Stockholm
BUDDHA SAID: THOSE WHO FOLLOW THE WAY ARE LIKE WARRIORS WHO FIGHT SINGLE-HANDED WITH A MULTITUDE OF FOES
THE MAY ALL GO OUT OF THE FORT IN FULL ARMOR; BUT AMONG THEM ARE SOME WHO ARE FAINT-HEARTED, AND SOME WHO GO HALF WAY AND BEAT A RETREAT , AND SOME WHO ARE KILLED IN THE AFFRAY, AND SOME WHO COME HOME VICTORIOUS.
O, MONKS, IF YOU DESIRE TO ATTAIN ENLIGHTENMENT YOU SHOULD STEADILY WALK IN YOUR WAY, WITH A RESOLUTE HEART, WITH COURAGE, AND SHOULD BE FEARLESS IN WHATEVER ENVIRONMENT YOU MAY HAPPEN TO BE, AND DESTROY EVERY EVIL THAT YOU MAY COME ACROSS; FOR THUS YOU SHALL REACH THE GOAL.
Buddha’s Way is called “The eightfold way”.
The Eightfold way consists of eight steps. It is divided in eight parts.
The way is not really divided.
The way is one.
Buddha’s eightfold way is divided so that you can understand easily.
All the eight steps are concerned with rightness – right view, right intention, right speech, right morality, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right samadhi.
Buddha’s word “right” is not against the wrong.
Right means that you are in tune with the whole.
When the individual is in tune with the universal, right exists.
When the individual fall out of tune with the universal wrongs arises.
Buddha says: Right is that which is not your intention.
If you go away from it you are wrong, if you come close to it you are right.
When you come home, you are perfectly right.
On Buddha’s eightfold way seven steps lead to samadhi.
Samadhi means that everything has fallen in tune with existence.
“Right” in the Buddhist meaning means: balanced, grounded, centered, harmonious.
The wrong is a human intention, the right is divine.
“Right” means balanced, centered – you are at home in existence.
Buddha says: if you are, you are wrong, because whenever you are, you are separate from existence.
When you are not, you are right.
When you are, you are wrong.
The ego, the separate “I”, creates the separation from existence.
When you are not, you are part of existence.
These eight steps are indicators to create the courage to take the jump to simply disappear into silence, to become nobody.
When the self disappears, the Universal self arises.
The first step of Buddha’s eightfold way is right view.
Buddha says: look at things without any opinion, otherwise you never look at reality.
Look at things without any judgement, prejudice, belief or scripture.
Just look at things as the are.
Buddha says: Go to reality without any belief.
Belief is the barrier to reality.
Right view is: having no belief, no prejudice, no opinion.
Right view is the way towards truth.
If you have any opinion, you will impose your opinion on the truth.
Right view means no conceptualization.
Right view means that you need to develop the inner eyes to see truth.
Right view means a mind without views.
You are simply open.
Your window is simply open without any hindrances.
Buddha says that right view is how to treat your blindness, how to get out of your blindness.
If you live with views, you cannot see the truth.
Your view always comes as a barrier to truth.
It does not allow you to see things as they are.
And God is that which is.
To know the real you do not need any views.
That is the real renunciation that Buddha teaches: to drop all views, and right view will arise.
Reality has no obligation to fit with you.
A man of understanding will change himself rather than demanding that reality will fit with him.
A man of understanding will find that there is no conflict between him and reality.
That is right view.
– Swami Dhyan Giten
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