EIGHTFOLD PATH

Each human being is responsible for the consequence of his own thoughts, words and deeds.  There is no savior, human or divine, who can give him enlightenment or prevent him attaining it.  The purpose of life is to attain complete enlightenment, a state of consciousness in which all sense of separate selfhood is purged away.  This purpose is fulfilled by treading the EIGHTFOLD PATH, which leads from the 'House of Self'; aflame with hatred, lust and illusion, to the end of suffering for oneself and all beings.

There are three signs of being. The first fact of existence is the law of change or impermanence. All that exists, from a man to a mountain, from a thought to a nation, passes through the same cycle of existence -- Birth, Growth, Decay and Death.  Life alone is continuous, ever seeking self-expression in new forms.  This life-force is a process of flow, and he who clings to any form, however splendid, will suffer by resisting the flow.

The law of change applies equally well to the 'self.'  There is no principle in an individual, which is immoral and unchanging. Only the ultimate reality, which the Easterners called The Unborn, The Unoriginated, The Unformed; is beyond change, and all forms of life, including man, are manifestations of this reality.  No one owns the life force, which flows in him any more than the electric lamp owns the current, which gives it, light.  It is the foolish belief in a separate self, with its own selfish desires, which causes most of human suffering.

The universe is the expression of law.  All effects have causes, and man's character is the sum total of his own previous thoughts, words and acts.  Karma, meaning action/reaction, governs all existence, and man is the sole creator of his final destiny.  By right thought and action he can gradually purify his nature, and so attain in time liberation from rebirth.

The life force in which Karma operates is one and indivisible though it’s ever changing forms are innumerable and perishable.  There is no death save of temporary forms, but every form must pass through the same cycle of Birth, Growth, Decay and Death.  From an understanding of life's unity arises compassion; a sense of identity with the life in other forms.  Compassion is wisdom in action; a deep awareness of universal harmony.  He who breaks this harmony by selfish action must restore it at the cost of suffering.

The interests of the part should be those of the whole.  In his ignorance, man thinks he can successfully strive for his own interests, and this wrongly directed energy of selfish desire produces suffering.  He learns from his suffering to reduce and finally eliminate its cause.  The four noble truths:

(A) The omnipresence of suffering; (B) its cause, wrongly-directed desire; (C) its cure, the removal of the cause; (D) and the noble eightfold path of self-development which leads to the end of suffering.

The eightfold path consists in right views (1) or preliminary understanding, right attitude of mind (2), right speech (3), right action (4), right livelihood (5), right effort (6), right concentration (7), and finally, right Samadhi (8), leading to full enlightenment.  As this is a way of living, not merely a theory of life, the treading of the path is essential to self-deliverance.  'Cease to do evil, learn to do good, cleanse your own heart'.  This is the teaching of Eastern thoughts and the foundation of the Eastern knighthood.  The supreme reality is 'the unborn, unoriginated, and unformed’.  The awareness of the reality, Nirvana, is a state of awakening (to the Truth within) or enlightment, and is the goal of the eightfold path.  This supreme statement of consciousness, the extinction of the limitations of selfhood, is attainable on Earth.  All men and all other forms of life contain the potentiality of enlightment, and the process therefore consists in consciously becoming what we already potentially are.  'Look Within'.

From potential to actual enlightenment, there lies the middle way, the eightfold path 'From desire to peace', a process of self-development between the 'opposites', avoiding all extremes.  The Buddha trod this way to the end, and faith in Buddhism includes the reasonable belief that where a guide has trodden it is worth our while to tread.  The whole man, not merely the intellect, must tread the way and compassion and wisdom must develop equally.  The Buddha was the all-compassionate as well as the all-enlightened one.

The thought lays stress on the need of inward concentration and meditation, which leads in time to the development of the inner spiritual faculties.  The subjective life is as important as the daily round, and periods of quietude for inner activity are essential for balanced life.  The man should at all times be 'mindful and self-possessed', refraining from mental and emotional attachment to the things and occasions of daily life.  This increasingly watchful attitude to circumstance, which he knows to be his own creation, helps him to keep his reaction to it always under control.

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