Noble Eightfold Path Facts for Kids

The eight spoke Dharma wheel symbolizes the Noble Eightfold Path

The Noble Eightfold Path (Sanskrit: आर्याष्टाङ्गमार्ग, romanized: āryāṣṭāṅgamārga) or Eight Right Paths (Sanskrit: अष्टसम्यङ्मार्ग, romanized: aṣṭasamyaṅmārga) is an early summary of the path of Buddhist practices leading to liberation from samsara, the painful cycle of rebirth, in the form of nirvana.

The Eightfold Path consists of eight practices: right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi ('meditative absorption or union'; alternatively, equanimous meditative awareness).

In early Buddhism, these practices started with understanding that the body-mind works in a corrupted way (right view), followed by entering the Buddhist path of self-observance, self-restraint, and cultivating kindness and compassion; and culminating in dhyana or samadhi, which reinforces these practices for the development of the body-mind. In later Buddhism, insight (prajñā) became the central soteriological instrument, leading to a different concept and structure of the path, in which the "goal" of the Buddhist path came to be specified as ending ignorance and rebirth.

In Buddhist symbolism, the Noble Eightfold Path is often represented by means of the dharma wheel (dharmachakra), in which its eight spokes represent the eight elements of the path.

Here is a description of the path:

The eight Buddhist practices in the Noble Eightfold Path are:

Right View: our actions have consequences, death is not the end, and our actions and beliefs have consequences after death. The Buddha followed and taught a successful path out of this world and the other world (heaven and underworld/hell). Later on, right view came to explicitly include karma and rebirth, and the importance of the Four Noble Truths, when "insight" became central to Buddhist soteriology, especially in Theravada Buddhism.
Right Resolve (samyaka-saṃkalpa/sammā-saṅkappa) can also be known as "right thought", "right aspiration", or "right motivation". In this factor, the practitioner resolves to strive toward non-violence (ahimsa) and avoid violent and hateful conduct. It also includes the resolve to leave home, renounce the worldly life and follow the Buddhist path.
Right Speech: no lying, no rude speech, no telling one person what another says about him to cause discord or harm their relationship, no idle chatter.
Right Conduct or Action: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no material desires.
Right Livelihood: no trading in weapons, living beings, meat, liquor, or poisons.
Right Effort: preventing the arising of unwholesome states, and generating wholesome states, the bojjhaṅgā (Seven Factors of Awakening). This includes indriya-samvara, "guarding the sense-doors", restraint of the sense faculties.
Right Mindfulness (sati; Satipatthana; Sampajañña): a quality that guards or watches over the mind; the stronger it becomes, the weaker unwholesome states of mind become, weakening their power "to take over and dominate thought, word and deed." In the vipassana movement, sati is interpreted as "bare attention": never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing; this encourages the awareness of the impermanence of body, feeling and mind, as well as to experience the five aggregates (skandhas), the five hindrances, the four True Realities and seven factors of awakening.
Right samadhi (passaddhi; ekaggata; sampasadana): practicing four stages of dhyāna ("meditation"), which includes samadhi proper in the second stage, and reinforces the development of the bojjhaṅgā, culminating into upekkhā (equanimity) and mindfulness. In the Theravada tradition and the vipassana movement, this is interpreted as ekaggata, concentration or one-pointedness of the mind, and supplemented with vipassana meditation, which aims at insight.

Noble Eightfold Path facts for kids

See also