Eight Factor of the Eightfold Path with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path Eighth Factor - Concentration
The importance of concentration and the difference between mindfulness & concentration. Concentration can bring temporary relief to the human experience, but when we are no longer concentrating how do we find freedom?
The Buddha found that concentration on its own would not lead to full liberation, but understood that the ability to concentrate when mixed with the ability to have open awareness has more precision to see reality and to respond wisely.
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Seventh Factor - Fourth Foundation - with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path Seventh Factor - Mindfulness
There are four foundations of mindfulness. In this talk Noah will discuss the fourth foundation - Mindfulness of the Truth.
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Seventh Factor - Third Foundation - with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path Seventh Factor - Mindfulness
There are four foundations of mindfulness. In this talk Noah will discuss the third foundation - Awareness of the Mind.
When we bring awareness to the mind we are able to see the repetitive nature of our thoughts and how often we are stuck in craving, planning, past, or future. The goal is to become intimate with the habits of the mind in order to gain wisdom and change your relationship to those repetitive thoughts.
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Seventh Factor - Second Foundation - with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path Seventh Factor - Mindfulness
There are four foundations of mindfulness. In this talk Noah will discuss the second foundation - Feeling Tone.
The experience of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. For the majority of us pleasant and unpleasant are the common feeling tones, and because of this, neutrality can feel really foreign and uncomfortable.
When we begin to label our experiences in this way we can begin to see that our perception of an experience has a lot of control over how we feel about it.
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Seventh Factor of the Eightfold Path with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path Seventh Factor - Mindfulness
The Buddha found that the path to awakening was through mindfulness. Mindfulness asks us to turn towards and look at the mind, rather than ignore it or concentrate our thoughts away.
Mindfulness reveals the impersonal and impersonal nature of our human experience.
There are four foundations of mindfulness. In this talk Noah will discuss the first foundation and cover the other three over the next few weeks.
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Sixth Factor of the Eightfold Path with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path Sixth Factor - Effort
How much effort are you putting in and is that effort being put in the right place?
It takes a middle path of effort to reach freedom from suffering. We must be relaxed, yet engaged.
The Buddha said that there are four kinds of effort - The effort to avoid, the effort to overcome, the effort to develop, and the effort to maintain or turning towards.
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Fifth Factor of the Eightfold Path with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path Fifth Factor - Right Livelihood
The fifth factor prompts you to ask yourself - Am I creating negative karma for myself with how I earn money? Does how I earn money cause harm to myself or others?
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Fourth Factor of the Eightfold Path with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path Fourth Factor - Right Action
In order to get free there are some changes we will need to make, some action that will need to be taken. T
he path to Right Action is structured by the Five Precepts:
1. Abstain from killing
2. Abstain from stealing or taking what is not freely offered
3. Abstain from sexual misconduct
4. Abstain from lying
5. Abstain from intoxicants (drugs and alcohol)
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Third Factor of the Eightfold Path with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path Third Factor - Communication & Right Speech
The three aspects of wrong speech - unskillful speech - ways that we create negative karma for ourselves with our communications are gossiping, harsh speech, and dishonesty.
How often in a conversation with another are you talking about someone who is not present? How often are you using your language in an intentionally harsh way with the intention of causing harm. How often are you omitting the truth, exaggerating, minimizing, or rewriting the story to better serve you.
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Second Factor of the Eightfold Path with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path Second Factor - Intention
This Buddhist path of mindfulness is the key to changing our actions, to changing our intentions, and our relationship to our mind. The action of responding to what's happening, both internal and external is how we get free.
You decide what your intention is and the big picture, how free do you wanna be?
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First Factor of the Eightfold Path with Noah Levine
Eightfold Path First Factor - Understanding
Awareness and understanding are ultimately what will allow us to change our relationship to our present time experiences and end the cycles of craving and suffering.
The first part is understanding the Four Truths. As we gain this understanding we begin to see ourselves and our experiences through the lens of the Four Truths.
Finally, understanding that it's really quite simple - You're either attached or nonattached, you're either clinging and craving or not.
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Eightfold Path Overview with Noah Levine
The Eightfold Path - An Overview The Eightfold Path can be broken down into three sections - Meditation, ethics, and wisdom.
Meditation includes mindfulness and concentration based meditations, the heart practices - compassion, forgiveness, loving kindness.
Ethics is the renunciation of creating negative karma for ourselves. The intention to not cause harm to ourselves or each other.
Wisdom is understanding the reality that we live in and trying to be in harmony with the reality of impermanence.
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The Third Noble Truth with Noah Levine
The Third Noble Truth is Nibbana, which can be translated as removing from the fire. It is the extinguishing of that which has been burning us.
When we hold on to things that are impermanent, when we cling, when we are self-centered we get burned. Nibbana is freedom, Nibbana is learning to live life on life’s terms so that you can enjoy the human reality without making it worse.
When we reach Nibbana we are able to say - Right now it’s like this and it’s super unpleasant AND I am totally at ease with it.
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The Second Noble Truth with Noah Levine
The second noble truth explains that the cause of suffering is craving - our repetitive experience of craving. All of our suffering is caused by our craving, none of it is caused by external circumstances.
Craving also includes aversion - When we are aversive, we are craving for the painful experience to go away or be more pleasant than it is.
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The First Noble Truth with Noah Levine
After the Buddha reached enlightenment he had to figure out the best way to teach others this path to freedom. As he began to teach others he developed the Four Noble Truths and Eight Fold Path.
In this Dharma talk Noah will give a brief overview of the path, but in the following weeks will dive deeper into each of the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path.
We all have the ability to respond to what is happening in our lives without suffering about it.
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Finding The Path with Noah Levine
After the Buddha reached enlightenment he had to figure out the best way to teach others this path to freedom. As he began to teach others he developed the Four Noble Truths and Eight Fold Path.
In this Dharma talk Noah will give a brief overview of the path, but in the following weeks will dive deeper into each of the Four Noble Truths and the Eight Fold Path.
We all have the ability to respond to what is happening in our lives without suffering about it.
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Going Against the Stream with Noah Levine
The Buddha characterized this path as being counter-instinctual to human beings: the natural human instinct is to resist, avoid, or meet with aversion all things that are unpleasant, and to grasp at, hold on to, and crave all things that are pleasurable.
He explained that his experience along the whole spiritual path was one that went "against the stream" of ordinary human consciousness.
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The Middle Path with Noah Levine
After experiencing both extremes of life, from gluttonous attachment to pleasure to radical rejection of all things pleasant, from aversion to discomfort to attachment to pain. Suddenly the Buddha (then Sid) could see that he needed to find some balance, he needed to find a middle path
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The Story Of Buddha with Noah Levine
Mindfulness starts to reveal to us that it's not so much what's happening as how we are relating to what's happening. Mindfulness reveals the impermanent, the unreliable or unsatisfactory and the impersonal. Buddhism says, if you are mindful, if you practice, if you follow this path, you can come to a place of non suffering. Freedom, from the definition of Nirvana of enlightenment, is that you can be free from suffering in this lifetime.
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We're Here to Awaken with Noah Levine
Mindfulness starts to reveal to us that it's not so much what's happening as how we are relating to what's happening. Mindfulness reveals the impermanent, the unreliable or unsatisfactory and the impersonal. Buddhism says, if you are mindful, if you practice, if you follow this path, you can come to a place of non suffering. Freedom, from the definition of Nirvana of enlightenment, is that you can be free from suffering in this lifetime.
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