The Noble Eightfold Path

The Eightfold Noble Path: right speech, right action, right livelihood, right thought, right effort, right faith, right mindfulness, and right concentration (samādhi). Only when the practice of the Eightfold Noble Path is fulfilled, one has departed from the eightfold wrong path, and one is in accord with the noble nature, can one realize the fruits and thereby enter the ranks of the noble ones.

If a person is deceitful, sinister, despicable, crooked in mind, unscrupulous, and given to lies and deception, this clearly does not meet the requirements of the Eightfold Noble Path: it is not right speech, not right thought, without right mindfulness, not pursuing right livelihood, and the mind is not in right concentration—such a person does not possess the Eightfold Noble Path. Then even if such a person speaks of the Dharma eloquently and fluently, it cannot show that this person has genuine insight, cannot show that this person has achieved the eradication of the view of self (satkāya-dṛṣṭi-prahāṇa) and realized the fruit of srotāpanna or sakṛdāgāmin.

A person whose wrong thoughts are blazing cannot have meditative concentration (samādhi). A person who has meditative concentration cannot have wrong intentions; the mind is tranquil (praśama) and upright, with few delusive thoughts and little grasping at external conditions, restless thinking is gone, and the mind is honest and straight. Therefore, if a person is crooked in mind and full of schemes, it shows that the mind is not in concentration and there is no meditative concentration. As for right faith in the Eightfold Noble Path of the Small Vehicle, one must have faith in suffering, emptiness, impermanence, and non-self. As for right faith in the Eightfold Noble Path of the Great Vehicle, one must have faith that within one's own body there is the intrinsically pure, unborn and unceasing mind of self-nature—the tathāgatagarbha; one must have faith that because of this one can attain buddhahood, and faith that the tathāgatagarbha can give rise to the body of the five aggregates (pañca-skandha) and all dharmas. Only when Great Vehicle right faith is fulfilled and one cultivates the six pāramitās of the bodhisattva can one attain seeing the mind and realize enlightenment. Sentient beings, being foolish, always like to be dominated by others, like grandiose talk about principles, and worship those who speak glibly. But the truth is not mere lip service; the Path is not on the tongue. Those who speak eloquently do not necessarily possess the Path. If eloquence meant having the Path, then the literati of the past, such as Hu Shi, each with fluent speech and brilliant writings, with volumes of Buddhist works and Chan works to their name, long treatises that made people envious—yet they did not have the Path.