MIDL Talk 6: The Noble Eightfold Path In MIDL

A series of talks given by Stephen Procter explaining how to gain the most benefit from MIDL Mindfulness meditation training.

Mindfulness Meditation in Daily Life (MIDL) practice is designed to be brought into your everyday life. When practicing this style of Mindfulness Meditation there is no difference between sitting in formal seated meditation and your everyday activities. Systematic training during seated meditation is used to develop Investigation, Mindfulness and Concentration to a refined level so that the Mindfulness meditation practice transfers into everyday activites. This is a Soft path, it is the path of Softening Into, accepting whatever your are experiencing. It is a practice that leads to deep, unconditional peace that is not dependant on life situation or circumstances.

Transcript

M.

I.

D.

Or mindfulness meditation follows a very specific and clear path for practice.

This path for practice was first mentioned by the Buddha in the first talk he ever gave called the Dharmacakkha Parvantana Sutta or Setting the Will of Dharma in Motion.

He called this path the Noble Eightfold Path and it provides eight factors that need to be brought to maturity by the meditator.

Our task during M.

I.

D.

Or mindfulness meditation is to cause the Noble Eightfold Path to start to spin.

This is the Wheel of the Dharma turning.

There is a common belief today that mindfulness by itself is enough,

That it cures all mental ills.

This comes from a misunderstanding of mindfulness meditation practice and the functioning of the mind and heart.

For maturity to be reached,

All eight factors are necessary.

They not only define our path for practice,

But also the expression of what a fully mature human being looks like.

The eight factors that make up the path are right view,

Right intention,

Right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

Right effort,

Right mindfulness and right concentration.

When beginning meditation practice we always start with you.

If you did not believe that meditation could give you benefit in some way,

Be that an escape from pain or a way to experience pleasure,

Then you would not have come to meditation.

This is what is known as immature right view.

It is immature because it is based on escaping from suffering.

This is how I started meditation.

This is how most of us start.

We see meditation as offering something to us that is missing within our life.

This immature right view of suffering and the possibility of escape from it is a motivating factor.

It is necessary to make us take the first step on the path.

If we do not understand that there is suffering within our life and that meditation offers an end to it,

Then we will just keep chasing happiness and external pleasures and not realize that the way out is to go deeply within.

With proper guidance and a correct meditation technique we may start to experience benefits within our meditation practice.

We then start to feel that meditation may be real and that it offers a way out,

A way of making changes in the happiness levels within our life.

This then inspires us to practice more.

We are encouraged to investigate our experience.

Everything starts to arise and gradually our view starts to change.

We start to see the interdependence of all experience.

We see that everything arises due to specific conditions and that everything ceases dependent on specific conditions.

We start to see our responsibility for our own happiness.

The path factor of right view only starts to mature when we come to understand that what we are experiencing now and the way we are relating to it is due to past conditions.

We come to understand that everything we think,

Say and do has consequences.

That it is not possible to do anything within this world without it having an impact on someone or something else.

We start taking responsibility for the effects of our thoughts,

Speech and actions now.

We take responsibility for the effects of our thoughts,

Speech and actions in the past and also for their effects in the future.

We understand that our life situation now is a result of our relationship to what we experienced in the past and that every choice we made led to the life that we are experiencing now.

We stop looking outward blaming everyone and everything else for our life situation and take full responsibility for it.

This is not to say that we were in control of these past choices.

We weren't.

We were habitually reacting to escape pain and experience pleasure.

But taking full responsibility for these choices,

Fully owning our life situation now,

Empowers us and gives us the ability to turn our life around in a different direction.

Taking full responsibility for how we are now and understanding that we literally practice ourselves,

Practice our personality,

Practice our habitual tendencies.

Understanding this,

We become very careful in the way we relate to what we are experiencing now.

We understand that the past is fixed.

It cannot be changed.

The future is yet to be and right now is already here.

It is fixed.

We cannot change it.

We then focus on our relationship to what we are experiencing now.

It is within that relationship that defines our happiness and unhappiness.

If we resist what we are experiencing now,

Then the next experience will be defined by that resistance and we will suffer.

If we fully embrace and accept what we are experiencing now,

Softening deeply into our relationship to it,

Then the next experience to arise will be defined by non-resistance and we will experience contentment and peace.

We come to observe how resistance to the past,

Present and future define us and form to create defensive aspects of our personality.

To be free from this we need to define a path of meditation to unpractice those defensive personality traits and habitual tendencies that cause separation and pain within our life.

We need to define a clear path to tear down and rebuild ourselves in a way that leads to harmony and peace.

And this is how the first factor of right view leads into the second path factor,

Right intention.

Right intention in MIDL is an active part of the path.

It defines what we do in meditation and within our daily life.

It can be defined by four intentions that we actively cultivate,

To abandon,

Guard,

Cultivate and establish.

These four factors or intentions can be understood as,

To develop and act upon the intention to abandon any unwholesome qualities of heart or any unskillful thoughts,

Speech or action that has already arisen.

The second is to develop and act upon the intention to guard against the arising of any unwholesome qualities of heart or any unskillful thoughts,

Speech or action that have not yet arisen.

The third can be understood as,

To develop and act upon the intention to cultivate the arising of any wholesome qualities of heart or any skillful thoughts,

Speech or action that have not yet arisen.

The fourth can be understood as,

To develop and act upon the intention to establish any wholesome qualities of heart or any skillful thoughts,

Speech or action that has already arisen.

So we abandon the unwholesome,

We then guard against their arising,

We cultivate the wholesome and then what we do is we establish the wholesome as our way of being.

In MIDL these four intentions are applied in two layers.

First our formal seated meditation training and next to all our thoughts,

Speech and actions within our daily life.

During our seated meditation practice our intention should be first focused on abandoning the five hindrances to meditation.

The five hindrances are,

The desire to experience,

The desire to not experience so attraction and aversion,

Mental sluggishness,

Mental restlessness and doubt as these paralyse our meditation practice.

We abandon these five hindrances to meditation by developing the first MIDL pillar of flexible attention so that we can observe when they are present.

We then use the second MIDL pillar,

The softening into skill,

To deeply relax our mental engagement with them so they are no longer being fed.

Once the fuel is removed the hindrances will start to weaken.

This allows us to use the second intention of guarding.

During this second stage we guard against the arising of the five hindrances and any unwholesome qualities of heart or mind they produce such as obsessive thoughts by acknowledging and deeply softening our relationship to them.

As they settle we can then cultivate and establish wholesome and skillful qualities of heart and mind such as verified faith,

Investigation,

Mindfulness and concentration within our seated meditation practice.

In MIDL seated meditation is only training.

It is within daily life the real meditation practice begins.

During seated meditation we have some control over external conditions.

Within daily life we do not have that luxury.

While meditating in daily life the triggers for the five hindrances are numerous and unpredictable.

Daily life is the playground of the five hindrances.

Any unwholesome qualities of heart and unskillful thoughts,

Speech or actions arising out of these will be dominant and within their element.

Regardless this is what we have been training for and within daily life we follow the same four intentions.

To make this easier when practicing MIDL it is necessary to divide all our emotions,

Thoughts,

Speech and actions into those that are defensive that push away and those that combine bring together.

It is quite a simple system.

Emotions,

Thoughts,

Speech and actions that push away are those that if we identify with and act on them they have the result of making us feel further away from ourselves,

Family,

Friends,

Society,

The world.

Emotions,

Thoughts,

Speech and actions that combine are those that if we identify with and act upon them they have the result of making us feel closer to ourselves,

Family,

Friends,

Society,

The world.

We actively abandon those that separate by softening into the process when we notice ourselves reacting through it.

At first we can only catch the end of the cycle but we soften at that point and remove the residue of that reaction.

With practice in abandoning we can catch the cycle of reaction faster until we can catch and soften into its beginning.

We are now at the stage of guarding,

Guarding against its arising by softening into the beginning of the cycle.

Our next step in daily life is to cultivate and establish emotions,

Thoughts,

Speech and actions that combine.

This will not come naturally.

If we have spent our life cultivating emotions,

Thoughts,

Speech and actions that cause separation,

Then those that combine will be weak in us.

This is where we need to go against our tendencies,

Make the intention to live a life that combines,

Unites,

Brings together.

For this is a happy life for ourselves and those around us.

Whenever you find an opportunity within your life to be loving,

Kind,

Compassionate,

Empathetic,

Generous or grateful in thoughts,

Speech or action,

Encourage that response.

Softening into the wholesome and skillful positive qualities of heart and mind makes them stronger.

Softening combines.

Positive qualities combine,

So softening into the positive emotion,

Thoughts,

Speech or actions make it develop and establish as your natural way of being.

This then brings us to the next three path factors,

Right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood.

If you have not guessed already,

In MIDL the second path factor of right intention is applied to everything we think,

Say and do within our life.

We observe our speech,

We observe our actions,

We observe the way we make our living with one question in mind.

Do they combine or separate?

In answer to that question we then abandon,

Guard,

Cultivate and establish.

We refine the way that we live our life.

Happiness is not found on a meditation cushion,

It is found in the way that we live our life,

Is found within our life.

Often right thought,

Right speech,

Right action is spoken of as the morality factors that we refine so that when we sit down in meditation we can settle the five hindrances and develop concentration.

But I feel this is missing the point.

The Buddha did not put these three factors at the beginning of the path,

He put them right in the middle.

Why?

Because this is where our practice occurs,

This is where our habitual patterns are found and this is where they are brought to an end.

We actively abandon,

Guard,

Cultivate and establish within our life.

Seated meditation is just supportive training.

Abandoning,

Guarding,

Cultivating and establishing within seated practice and daily life stimulates the sixth path factor,

Right effort.

Right effort is about energy and balance.

Too much effort causes energy to rise and results in restlessness.

Not enough effort causes energy to sink and results in mental sluggishness and low awareness.

Initially right effort,

In them ideal practice,

Is concerned with creating a mental posture of investigation and mindfulness.

To create this mental posture we first need to apply our attention towards the experience of the sensations within our body until awareness sustains within it.

This establishment of awareness within our body in M.

I.

D.

L.

Creates a viewing platform for mindfulness meditation.

Once attention is sustained and the mental posture established,

Right effort then switches to investigation.

Initial investigation is the applying and sustaining of attention within our meditation object with the intention of cultivating concentration of awareness.

Once concentration is developed,

Investigation switches to investigating the nature of reality and our relationship to it.

This continuous turning of our attention towards the present experience to investigate stimulates the seventh path factor of mindfulness.

The task of mindfulness is to continuously remember the present experience and notice any time our attention moves away from it.

This mindfulness then causes awareness to concentrate,

Become one pointed.

Concentration is the eighth path factor.

When awareness concentrates the five hindrances are suppressed.

Awareness becomes clear and still.

This clarity and stillness allows us to see reality clearly,

As it is without judgment.

When developed and on maturity,

Wisdom arises.

Wisdom then affects the first path factor,

Right view,

And changes the way we view reality.

As our view changes,

Our understanding of the second path factor,

Right intention,

Also changes.

We refine the way that we abandon,

Guard,

Cultivate,

And establish,

Both in our seated meditation practice and within our daily life.

This refinement is then applied to the third,

Fourth,

And fifth path factors,

Right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

To cultivate understanding and wisdom.

This in turn changes our relationship to our life and the way that we live also changes.

Actively investigating in this way the final three path factors,

Right effort,

Right mindfulness and right concentration,

Strengthen and refine.

This creates more clarity,

Understanding,

And gives rise to deeper wisdom.

This then again changes the first path factor,

Of right view,

And the noble eightfold path starts to turn.

The wheel of Dharma is set in motion.

And as it spins it moves upwards in an ever tightening spiral until at its maturity the meditators themselves embody the eight path factors and their very being is an expression of this path.

And this then creates the path of M.

I.

D.

L.

From the beginning to the full maturity of the practice.

Thank you for spending this time with me.

Have a wonderful day.

Take care of yourself.

And goodbye.

Reviews

Very good explanation and reminder to maintain my practice daily and grow
Thank you 🙏

I had a hard time getting past the part about taking full responsibility for what your life is now because your choices led you here. I am stuck in an abusive situation of many years that is completely impossible for me to escape. My choices brought me into the situation many years ago but they cannot bring me out. I wish that abuse and oppression as current facts were more recognized in the world of spirituality.

A clear and elegant explanation of the step by step development of awakening factors in both meditation and our daily life. Thank you.

Very clarifying and helpful. Excellent voice and cadence so easy listening indeed! Thorough and thought provoking. www.gratefulness.org, ahimsa

Enjoyable brought a lot of concepts together in my mind and understanding

Beautiful talk on the Noble Eightfold Path. Thanks Stephen.

Excellent. Clearly presented. Thank you 🙏

Thank you Stephen I’ve never heard the eightfold path so connected and interwoven with the practice of seated meditation. How one is training for the other and how they create a virtuous cycle of mindfulness and behavior and being. Thank you as always for your prajna.

Thank you for the very clear and concise interpretation of the noble 8-fold path.
It is something I have been trying to commit to memory for a long time .

Explaining the hinderances and explaining the virtues then the concentration and mindfulness which then relates it all back to the cycle, which is the noble 8 fold path which will strengthen the practice. A very useful talk . Probably one of the buddha’s most important talks.

Instead of using divisive speech, thought and actions simply changing that to united and combining thoughts, speech and actions , changed my whole outlook. Thank you

I truly appreciate this insight

When practicing on the meditation cushion where we can control the hinderances to the outside world where we have little control.

This is truly mindfulness training in daily life

May you be happy, may you be content and free from suffering 🙏

Thankyou ,Excellent talk well thoughtout and delivered. Need to go back to the start of series.

This is an amazing plan to change your life. I love it.

Very good talk. Clear and succinct, gives an overview and inspires to learn more

Very thought provoking. Thanks for sharing.

Thank you for this talk about MIDL. I am interested in learning more about this practice so I can incorporate it into my daily life and will search for your other talks and meditations and will be listening to this one again.

Very good! Thank you!

Very clear informative and helpful

Thank you., very insightful. Namaste.

Thank you for the talk.

Informative analysis and very well presented