What the Buddha taught was not a just a set of meditation techniques or a method for inner transform...

1. The Buddha's Eightfold Path: An Advanced
Teaching | Lewis Richmond
What the Buddha taught was not a just a set of meditation techniques or a method for inner
transformation, but an entire way of life based on awakening.
The Buddha's Eightfold Path is typically thought of as an elementary or basic teaching--something
taught in Sunday school or in introductory college classes. Enlightenment has little practical value if
it is divorced from character. The person of wisdom responds to each situation appropriately in the
light of awakening. That was the Buddha's whole life, Ummon says, and that should be our whole life
too.
It is interesting that the practice of meditation has so captured the attention and imagination of the
West in its exploration of Buddhism. Now things are different; in the affluent West both men and
women now have the leisure time to explore the treasure of meditation without necessarily giving up
their worldly involvements or livelihoods. I sensed that I had lost some basic balance or grounding
that I needed to really understand and integrate what I had been doing. To my ear there is
something self-righteous, judgmental, even arrogant in it, especially when compared with other
faiths. In future posts I will explore this contrast further, and investigate, each in turn, the eight
practices that the Buddha enumerated as essential for the development and actualization of what the
Dalai Lama terms "a sincere human being." When I was young I wanted to be enlightened, utterly
transformed. The eightfold path could be seen as a map or guide for the development of character in
the light of awakening, and each of the eight practices of the path are equally important; none
should be neglected.
The eightfold path is usually translated as a series of
"rights": right view, right intention, right action, right
speech, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness,
and right meditation. The Sanskrit samma--usually
translated as "right"--means correct or appropriate; it
doesn't mean right as opposed to wrong. A monk once
asked Chinese Master Ummon, "What is the work of the
Buddha's whole life?" Ummon replied, "An appropriate
response." Ummon may have been speaking of
awakened character--the work of a person's whole life.
In this article I am taking the position that the eightfold path is actually an advanced or complete
teaching, one that meditation students of Buddhism would do well to study thoroughly. I remember
asking myself, "I wonder what has happened to the old Lew? I wonder what he would be like if I left
this exotic life, got a job, and lived once again like an ordinary person?"
So that's what I did. Now that I am older I am content if I can be a sincere human being helping
others to be that way too.
. This is good, but the pursuit of meditation separate from the other seven practices of the eightfold
path is prone to lead to an unbalanced character--one that is deep in its experience of the inner life
but possibly shallow in other areas such as ethical behavior and kindliness.

2. I myself spent the first fifteen years of my adult life as a resident monastic, spending long hours each
day in the meditation hall, living apart from the world, wearing a shaved head and robes. Meditation
is certainly one of the practices Buddha taught (it is the eighth of the eightfold path) but there were
many others.
The reason I choose to call the eightfold path an advanced teaching is that, while the definitions of
each of the practices are relatively easy to teach and understand, their full application and
integration takes a lifetime. Dogen, the 12th century Japanese founder of the Zen tradition I follow,
taught his students only to do zazen (Zen meditation) and set aside everything else--precepts, sutras,
chanting, everything; just do zazen, he said.
This approach may have made sense in Dogen's Japan where everyone was steeped in Buddhist
teachings and values from birth, but since the way of Buddha is relatively new in the West, and will
remain so for some time, we should not be so hasty. There came a point when I instinctively
rebelled. Another possibility is to use the word "awakened": awakened view, awakened intention,
and so on. My teacher Shunryu Suzuki said that while enlightenment is not unimportant, the deepest
practice is the development of character, which he said is a whole life's work and never ends.
Character means the kind of human being you are, and the quality of your interactions with other
people and the whole of the living world. Now as I look back I think I was instinctively looking for
the rest of the eightfold path, the one that leads to a balanced, generous character and an open-hearted
response to the tumult and difficulty of ordinary life. In the Zen tradition there is this story.
He called this way of life marga, or "path," and patiently laid out the various aspects and qualities of
this path in all of his sermons. For most of Buddhism's history, meditation was a practice exclusively
reserved for monks and nuns, lifelong ascetics living a cloistered and highly regulated life.
Laypeople had no time for meditation; it was hard enough for them simply to survive. My tradition is
Zen¸ which emphasizes meditation, and when I first went to a Zen center to learn meditation, I was
taught how to sit and to follow the simple rituals associated with sitting, and little else. I prefer to
simply say: Buddhist view, Buddhist intention, and so on. I am not fond of the word "right" in this
context