Lesson video

Hello, welcome.

My name's Ms. Pauvaday, and welcome to another lesson in Buddhism.

Today, we are going to be looking at the Eightfold Path.

Some of you might remember that the final part of the Four Noble Truths points to how do you overcome suffering, and the final point is the Eightfold Path.

So today, we're going to go over these different actions that are going to help people, seekers, Buddhists, to overcome suffering and live a contented life.

So as usual, you'll need a few things before we start.

You definitely need a pen and some paper.

And we need to make sure that we are thinking, that our minds are nice and clear and ready to do some learning today.

Also there are going to be some discussions again about death, some discussions about suffering violence.

So do, if you wish to have a parent or a guardian with you whilst you go through these lessons.

And as always, I encourage that you talk to someone afterwards.

If anything, it's just interesting to pass this knowledge on.

So I encourage that you do that.

So take a moment now, pause the video, go and get those things, and make sure that you're somewhere nice and quiet, a place where there's no distractions and let's get ready to go.

So today we're going to be looking at the Four Noble Truths.

So we're going to be revisiting that.

We're going to be looking at the Eightfold Path in a bit more detail.

We've kind of touched upon it before, but now we're going to look at exactly what it is and exploring each path.

And we're going to link it to dharma.

And actually I should point out that spelling of dharma is a Sanskrit spelling.

So you might find that it kind of alternates between this version and dhamma, D-A-double M-A.

That's the Pali version.

They effectively mean the same thing, really.

But in Buddhism, dharma is also referring to the teachings of the Buddha.

So don't worry too much if you see different spellings.

So I'd like to ask you this question, I like to start off with a philosophical conundrum or problem.

This is an ethical thing.

What would you do now? I've spent a long time teaching and working in schools.

I really love it actually.

And one of the things that I've always done is man the lunch queue or that kind of thing.

I've always been around for that.

And I've seen this so many times.

So what would you do if someone pushed in front of you in the lunch queue? And if it's obvious that they knew that they were pushing in.

And then, later they start to let their friends in, in front of you.

So you're in the lunch queue.

You're waiting patiently, and you've been waiting patiently.

Someone pushes in front of you.

You know that they know, and then they start to let their friends in.

What would you do? So you can think about this.

Pause the video, if you wish to.

Have a good think.

If there's someone with you, it's good to have a discussion about it, and then join me again once you have finished thinking about it.

So what would you do? Right.

I'm guessing this is how some of you might react.

Some of you might call me, say, call me, say to me, "Look, there's a long queue of people.

"Can you please go back to the end of the queue?", asking politely, calmly, but some people might just.

Some of you might think, "No, I'm really angry." You might pick up a lunch tray and try and whack them with it, which I definitely don't recommend, but sometimes that kind of reaction happens.

You might scream and swear at them or get really, really angry, or you might try to flag down a teacher to try and whilst you're in the queue, you might try and get the attention of the teacher to come and try and help you sort it all out, but I suppose I'm interested in how would you feel? I mean, it would be hard not to get angry.

I think it would be hard to not take it personally and to keep your cool, yeah.

These kinds of things happen to us all the time.

There's often a lot of conflict in life.

Even though we don't mean it, it happens.

And our reactions can really have a impact on what happens next.

And this links us back to the skandhas, so this idea of how appearance is, how reality appears to us.

So remember, the Buddha deconstructed a single thought and showed how a thought comes together.

And he realised that our minds, they add certain distortions to what we're actually seeing.

So let's have a think about what happened in this scenario.

We observed something, but we already have an expectations of a certain rule, and that's not a bad thing.

It's a good thing to follow rules, but someone comes along and abruptly changes it.

So this is this sense of something changing quite quickly.

That's annica and we don't fare well with that.

Most people have an issue with it.

And then, we might take it personally.

You think, "Why did they choose me? "Is there something about me that he, "this person, thinks makes me weak," or something like that.

So our personal sense of self is attacked, our ego.

And again, that causes some suffering.

And we do that.

We attach that.

According to Buddhism, it's the human mind that attaches all of these ideas that might not necessarily be the case.

Whether this person cut into the queue unfairly, I think it's a pretty solid case that they did, but what we're interested in particularly for this lesson is how do we react as human beings when this kind of thing happens? And this is a really nice story that I like.

I like to tell it to my students, kind of exemplifies this.

And it's not Buddhist.

It's a Cherokee tale from the Native Americans in what is now the United States of America.

This is a story that is sometimes used in philosophy, but it's just a nice story.

It demonstrates this idea.

So a boy, he comes to his grandfather.

He's really angry.

There's been a disagreement with some other boys.

It's turned nasty.

He's really angry.

And he doesn't quite know how to deal with this, this anger.

He feels like his honour has been betrayed.

And he feels that he's been shafted by his friends or these boys.

So he comes to his grandfather and he's like, "I'm just really angry.

"I really want to kill them," or, "I really want to react." And his grandfather says, "Okay, there is.

"but you should know that there are two wolves inside of us competing, "and they're constantly fighting.

"And one of them is evil and represents.

"It's angry.

"It's jealous.

"It's greedy.

"It has false pride and it's egotistical.

"So it's very, very egocentric, "only thinking about what's good for itself, "but the other wolf is compassionate.

"It's truthful.

"It's kind.

"It's humble.

"And within us, they're constantly "having this tussle of pushing and pulling us.

"And they fight inside us all day long." The boy thinks about this and he says, "Well, how do I know which one's going to win?" And the grandfather says, "The one that wins is the one that you feed the most," which it's a really nice story.

Because from a Buddhist perspective, when we think about the Eightfold Path and the purpose of the Eightfold Path is that it's really a tool to feed the good wolf, to develop virtues.

So there are some similarities here with Aristotle and Greek philosophy here.

So these ideas had already existed long before Aristotle, but there is some symmetry.

And so, it's about developing virtuous habits and behaviours and ways of thinking.

And if you feed the good-will wolf, then you are creating good consequences in the world.

You're creating good karma.

And if you create good karma, then you're on your way to being an enlightened being and effectively one day breaking this cycle of samsara.

And we're just going to remind ourselves very quickly.

The Four Noble Truths is that life is suffering.

Just being part of this cycle means that beings suffer.

And the Buddha maintains, Buddhists maintain, this is because of desire and illusion.

They maintain there is a way out.

And that way out is the Eightfold Path, which will lead to this way of living, the Middle Way, which is living virtuously.

It's living in good, healthy ways.

It's feeding the good wolf.

So let's have a quick pause, a quick break.

I'm just going to move my camera.

Think back to the Four Noble Truths.

Which parts do you think refer to the Eightfold Path? So have a think and resume when you're finished.

Okay.

So really the Eightfold Path, sorry, the Four Noble Truths.

It's really the last two parts.

So when the Buddha talks about there's a way out of suffering and that way is the Eightfold Path, that's where the Eightfold Path actually comes in.

And this is talked about all the time.

Virtually all of his sermons, the Buddha spoke about this.

And his intention was always to help people out of this cycle, to stop this eternal wandering and suffering associated with being part of this endless stream of change, birth, death, and rebirth, and so forth.

And that's what the Eightfold Path is.

So let's think about how we can break down the Eightfold Path.

A good way thinking about it is in three streams. So paths that are related to practical behaviour, paths that are related to ethical behaviour and paths that are based on mental discipline.

And so, here's an image.

You might've seen this kind of image of the Eightfold Path.

And if you look at the picture of the Buddha, you'll see he's sitting in a lotus with surprise, surprise, eight petals.

So in Buddhism, you'll find lots, Buddhism and Hinduism, you'll find lots of symbolism that goes back to these teachings.

That'd be interesting for you to look out for in the following pictures.

And just a quick note on doctrines.

So the Buddha was just a man.

So he's not a god.

There isn't this ultimate being that's saying, "You need to behave like this.

"These are rules." The Eightfold Path are not rules.

The Buddha taught these as guidance.

And because he was a man, it's your call.

It's your call, whether you decide to take them or leave them.

And interestingly, when you look at other famous Buddhist teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh, and he's a famous Vietnamese Zen monk.

He famously said, "No one can impose these rules upon you." No one can impose anything on us.

We mostly are mostly free beings.

We decide how we behave.

However, he said, interestingly, most people can see that there's a kind of sickness in society.

There's a sickness in the way.

in ourselves.

Life doesn't seem so good all the time.

And therefore, the Eightfold Path is a bit like a medicine.

It can actually help us cope with life.

So that's something he says about doctrine and imposing rules and how the Eightfold Path can actually help and the precepts, as well.

So let's have a look.

So this is one of the first ones.

Again, we're looking at practise now.

So we're looking at the first set of paths that are related to practise.

So have a look at this picture, and I just want you to be as honest.

What comes to your mind immediately when you look at these pictures of people? So what kind of ideas come to your minds? Have a moment, have a think.

If you're with someone, talk to them.

Have a pause, have a think.

And unpause when you're ready.

Okay, so I hope you've had a good look.

I like to use these pictures or these images all the time, especially in philosophy, because it's good to challenge what we think and where we get our ideas from.

So when we look at the young man, the young black man, unfortunately there are some very negative stereotypes that are associated with particularly young black men, which are not really fair, to be honest.

So it's good to think about where do we get those stereotypes.

Many of you might not have thought about that at all, which is fantastic.

It's a great thing, but sadly, some people are going to look at an image of this young man and think, "Okay, he might be in a gang.

"He might be a bad person," that kind of thing.

He's not actually a male model, which is interesting, but some people do jump to those conclusions.

And that's not really fair, because you're not really judging that person fairly.

You're judging them on this preconception.

So go back to the standards and think about how the Buddha says that we actually attach rightness and wrongness.

We distort views.

We look at something on them.

We distort with our minds what that object actually is, and that can actually be unfair.

So one of the practical aspects that you can do in the Eightfold Path, Buddhists are encouraged to do, is to check their own unconscious bias.

And we do all the time.

So when you look at the young lady in the picture, she might be perceived.

Some people might perceive her as perhaps not being very intelligent, because there's a stereotype of women who are blonde, who might not be that smart, again not really fair.

What's that based upon? It's not really based upon anything.

And this can lead to misjudgment.

And sometimes, when you see people who are overweight, we might immediately think, "Oh, they must be really greedy or gluttonous," but there could be other reasons.

There could be health reasons, all sorts of things.

We don't know.

So right view and right understanding is all about checking your own unconscious bias, really thinking about where do these ideas come from.

Are they fair ideas? Are they truthful ideas? And really challenging them so that you are really starting to look at people as human beings or animals and objects in a real sense rather than in a biassed sense.

And this goes back to.

This is not later when you have people like Socrates who are saying, "Look, the unexamined life is not worth living." You need to examine things.

You can't just accept things, because then you're really a sheep.

You're just following what other people think.

You need to think for yourself.

And okay, so the next one is right intention.

So this is an interesting thought experiment.

Is there such a thing as unselfish acts of altruism? And some of you might be thinking, yeah, doing something nice without reward is a nice act.

And what has been lovely is I've seen Random Acts of Kindness Clubs popping up in schools all over the country, where people are just being nice.

And that's a great thing, but do we do it because we do it for the intention of doing something good, or do we like the feeling that we get from doing something good? So therefore, it possibly could be seen as selfish.

So some of you might say, no, all actions have consequences and you do it because you want something out of it, i.

e.

, the feeling of feeling good.

In Buddhism, it's kind of both.

It's okay to do a good act and there is a consequence of feeling good, that's okay, but the most important thing is having the right intention.

So the practise, the second path.

They're not in any particular order, but in this respect, we're going to say the second path.

The right intention is making sure that when you act, you really have thought about doing it for the act, for the sake of the act.

If you're going to help someone, do it to help them.

Don't do it because you are wanting a reward or something like that.

Think back to the karmic seeds, whatever you're planting, whatever you're trying to do.

You're going to receive karmic fruits because of that.

So if you are helping someone out, because maybe you've decided to help out your older brother, because you're hoping he'll let you play on his Xbox or something like that, that's not quite doing the right thing.

You do it for the right reasons.

And if you get rewarded, then great, but the intention has to be there.

And that's what right intention means.

So let's have a quick pause, a quick think.

Right livelihood and right action are practical parts of the Eightfold Path.

Is that true or false? So have a pause, have a think and join me in a moment.

It's false.

So it's right view and right intention.

Remember, right view is getting rid of our unconscious biases, getting rid of our stereotypes, really giving people a fair chance or giving experiences a fair chance.

And right intention is making sure that we act with the right intention in place, that we don't have any kind of alternative ulterior motive.

So let's move onto ethical behaviour.

Do we always act in the best way? Have a think about this.

Do you think that you always act in the best way? And you might not even be aware that your actions are hurting other people.

That's often the case, but do you think you always behave in the best way without hurting people? This is another question that I ask my students quite a lot.

And on the whole, I don't think I've ever come across any.

Most young people are.

They might have their issues, but most people are decent.

They're decent people and would never really intentionally hurt someone.

So this was quite a difficult question for many of my students, but then I mentioned things like fashion.

So for example, Primark awhile ago, they were in trouble with sweatshops.

H&M definitely.

They definitely have an issue with sweatshops.

Sweatshops is when people are paid a really, really low wage.

And often, it happens in countries outside of Europe.

Although they do happen over here, as well.

So people's rights aren't being respected.

They often are working in dangerous factories, dangerous conditions, often being locked in for weeks on end until a shipment or an order is filled.

Sometimes there's threat of violence.

It's really awful.

And those objects end up on our high streets.

Now, I mentioned fair trade before.

It's the same kind of thing.

Consumerism, can we be more ethical in terms of what we buy? Because according to Buddhism, we have to act in the best way.

And if we are buying things that are causing other people pain, or animals pain or the environment pain, that's going to create some negative karma.

And you can think of it on even a grander scale.

So there are examples of really large organisations that might not pay their taxes.

Amazon have been accused many, many times for not paying their taxes, not really abiding by those civil rules to pay, to pay government taxes.

Vegetarianism is another example because of this idea a hamsa hurting animals in order to feed us.

It's quite an interesting one in Hinduism and Buddhism, because it's seen as a path, particularly in the West.

So yeah, many, many Buddhists for that reason don't eat or have any animal products, because they don't want any animals to be hurt.

And they don't want to increase these negative karmic fruits.

Okay, and the next one is right speech.

So can you cause suffering with our words? I think many of us would be able to identify that, particularly maybe at home if you're arguing with your family or siblings, or maybe even school.

You've fallen out at school.

Even as adults, we are in situations where people.

We hear things that are deeply upsetting.

And throughout history, we can see how words have actually been quite powerful and have caused a lot damage.

This is a good example.

This is when the Nazis, when the Nazi party started really coming into power.

One of the first things they started to do to try and get German opposition against, some opposition against, the Jews was they humiliated the Jews.

So this picture is of some Jews who were forced to hold these placards that say.

The translation is a good German would never buy from a Jew.

Obviously, we can see how much damage that has happened.

So yes, speech can actually hurt.

So right speech is about making sure that whatever you say has the right intention behind it, that you are really trying to be as compassionate and as fair as possible.

Because hate speech, or even if you're perhaps a bit sharp with someone, it can have an impact.

And also, it can recreate this idea of unconscious bias.

So particularly when we think about the way the Jews were treated or anti-Semitism, which is racism towards the Jews, or any racism or sexism, how that gets passed down through generation and generation.

There isn't really a reason for it.

It's usually based in hate.

So Buddhists try to be very aware of what they actually say, because they don't want to create any more negativity.

And they don't want to create any negative karmic fruits, however.

Livelihood, right livelihood.

So can you think of some jobs that actually can do some harm? So if you were in a job in a few years, some of you will be thinking about getting a small job.

And then, many years after that, you'll be actually in the working world.

Are there any jobs that actually do, that cause harm? And I've got a picture here that should give you a clue.

Good.

So I'm sure many of you have said the Army.

Hundreds of years ago, if you were conscripted.

Sorry, not hundreds of years ago.

Even during the second world war, if you were conscripted, you had to go to war.

That was the basis of it.

And there are still several countries in Europe where particularly men, they have to serve for a small amount of time in the Army.

It's just the law.

What we have now is a paid army.

So it's a job.

You can join the Army and you can get paid.

But from a Buddhist perspective, and this is always a tricky one ethically, because there's obviously a purpose for the Army.

But I guess from a Buddhist perspective, any job that's going to cause harm is not a good thing.

So if you are in the paid army and you go to war, it's likely you're going to have to hurt some other beings.

And that goes against the Buddhist teachings of a hamsa but it could be things like a tax lawyer.

Certain tax lawyers, their whole job is to help rich people avoid paying taxes and moving their money into other kinds of safe havens, tax havens in other countries and that kind of thing so that they don't end up paying their dues in this country.

So they're not really contributing to the NHS or education or paying for the roads or anything like that.

They're keeping that money for themselves.

It's not legal.

It's legal, but these tax lawyers have found these loopholes in the tax system to get away with it.

So from a Buddhist perspective, that's not very ethical, because what you're doing is you're causing harm.

That money could be used to help schools with equipment.

It could be used to prop up the national health system.

It could help with policing all those services that we all use together.

So right action is an ethical part of the Eightfold Path.

What do you think? Is that true or false? It's true.

So alongside right livelihood and right speech, right action is part of the Eightfold Path, acting ethically.

So let's move on now to mental discipline.

So this is really about not letting your emotions impact on others.

And this again is an idea that has popped up in all sorts of different types of philosophy.

Some of you might go on to do philosophy, and you'll come across someone called Emmanuel Kant.

He was very, very much interested in how our emotions hijack our ability to reason actually.

So in a way, it's a similar idea.

So anger can, from when we're angry, it can impact on, again, the way we see things.

So if you come back to the skandhas, you observe something in reality.

But if you're already angry or there's already an underlying emotion, that emotion can distort things.

So you're not seeing the object or that experience in the way it actually is.

It's being distorted.

And anger can create more anger.

Really, the only way to come out of it is compassion, so compassion for yourself.

Mostly have compassion for yourself and others.

And by doing that, you start to extinguish this idea of anger.

And if you think about people like the Vietcong, they survive.

The Vietcong were the rebel army against the Americans during the Vietnam War.

And they were very, very hard to defeat, but they lived in very brutal circumstances and the Vietnam War was really brutal, really, really brutal.

And Vietnam is a Buddhist country.

So it's interesting that people actually used the Eightfold Path in order to cope with this, this terrible war that was happening.

So part of interviews with quite a few members of the Vietcong, surviving members of Vietcong, quite a few of them talked about the Eightfold Path and how it helped them survive this brutal war and how they began to develop a real compassion for their fellow countrymen, but also for other people as well.

So mental discipline.

So this is just about being mindful of your approach to life.

So that's putting efforts into meditation, taking care of yourself, eating the right way, definitely meditation, definitely being mindful and just trying to be as happy as possible, because the idea is that the happier.

A happy heart is a happy mind.

This is an old idea.

This has existed for a long time.

If you look at yoga in India, there is a laughing yoga in India where people just go.

They meet.

They come together and they laugh.

It's really weird, but it's really funny, as well.

And it's really infectious.

People come together and they just start laughing, and then 10 minutes of laughing.

Everyone's really, really having a really good time, laughing their heads off.

And it just lifts their mood.

Everything is just a lot more positive.

So right effort is about being really mindful of your approach to life, trying to develop compassion, trying to be aware, mentally aware, of what you're doing and putting the effort into meditation and taking care of yourself.

And this brings us to right concentration.

And I've got this picture of this iceberg, which is often used when we talk about the mind, how we only are aware of a certain amount of what's in our mind.

The rest seems hidden back there.

Developing focus, particularly meditation, it's about concentrating helps you see what's underneath.

That's really what meditation is about.

It's about allowing you to see and watch the mind, observe for yourself, observe what's happening in your mind.

And that's the thing about Buddhism.

Buddhism is not so much.

There is a belief, but the belief is based on other enlightened beings of people like the Buddha and other human beings who have moved towards this path of enlightenment and telling the same experiences, of reporting the same experiences.

So that's I guess where the element of belief is, but from the perspective of someone who was enlightened, what they've done is they've concentrated their mind so much that they are aware of what's in their mind, and they're aware of the whole space.

The reality of the Buddha, he was aware of his previous lives.

So it's quite incredible really that they had such incredible focus.

This is what the Buddhist tradition says, that these people are able to do that.

Okay, so I'm just going to move myself over so you can see.

Have a go at which path belongs to which titles.

So which is ethics, which is practise, which is mental discipline.

So have a look at these and pause, pause and resume when you're done.

Okay, so ethics is right action, speech and livelihood.

Practise is right view, right intention.

Mental discipline is mindfulness effort and concentration.

Now, if you do all of this, this is supposed to lead you to living in the Middle Way.

And again, this is cultivating behaviours.

Virtues are laid out in the Eightfold Path.

And if you do this, you achieve this sense of balance and contentment.

You can cope with life.

You can cope with all the conflicts and difficulties in life.

You're better prepared to deal with impermanence.

You're better to deal with the suffering that's associated with life.

It doesn't mean it's going to go away, because that's just the nature of being, but people who follow the Eightfold Path and find a way to exist in the Middle Way are better at coping with all of this and therefore happier.

So what I'd like you to do is have a go at this task, create a wheel showing each path of the Eightfold Path.

So it'd be good if you had a paper plate or even if you drew it on a piece of paper, stuck it to a piece of card, or if you want to do it on Word and be really fancy, go ahead, and draw out eight different paths and just maybe label them with an image of each path and what you need to do.

Give an example of what happens in that pathway and add an image.

And that's a nice visual prompt for what the Eightfold Path is.

So well done again, on another lesson.

Today, we looked at the different paths in the Eightfold Path, different actions, behaviours, how to be mindful of what's in our minds and what's in our.

and the subsequent consequences of what's in our minds, how that impacts on our actions.

So I hope that you found that interesting today.

As usual, two things for you to finish up with.

Have a look at the quiz at the end of lesson, and go and talk to the people in your life, explain what you've learned, because it's just a good way of helping you, for it to make sense to you and for you to understand what Buddhists believe and how they practise.

And it might be interesting for other people, as well.

It's good for your memory.

So go ahead and do that, and I will see you again next time.