Eight Steps to an Authentic Life: Ancient Wisdom for Modern Times

By Patricia Ullman

Among the earliest teachings of the historical Buddha is his description of the Noble Eightfold Path, which is as complete and relevant today as it was more than 2,500 years ago. Though originally geared toward the monastic community, this teaching offers a complete and skillful way of integrating all aspects of life into a path of wakefulness and meaning, inviting you to contemplate all of life's important questions.

In Eight Steps to an Authentic Life, author Patricia Ullman offers a look at the Noble Eightfold Path, presented in a fresh and relevant style that inspires you to reconsider your life's potential. Joining ancient wisdom with living experience, she explains the eight aspects using both traditional teachings and up-to-date personal examples. Each section includes a simple, yet powerful, meditation technique that leads to a deeper understanding of each aspect of the path, along with a relevant daily slogan taken from the teachings of Atisha.

Giving a practical introduction to the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path and methods you might use to incorporate it into daily life, Eight Steps to an Authentic Life includes both philosophy and practice, synthesizing the eight aspects into a meaningful, authentic daily practice that embodies the entire path.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jan 30, 2018
• ISBN: 9781480856622

Patricia Ullman

Patricia Ullman, a senior teacher and meditation instructor in the Tibetan Buddhist and Shambhala traditions, studied and practiced for more than forty years with many renowned teachers. She earned a JD degree and has spent her professional life in law, mediation, restorative justice, and nonprofit leadership. Ullman lives in the Washington, DC, area and is a meditation instructor and consultant for mindfulness organizations, law firms, hospitals, and private clients. Visit her online at www.peaceofourminds.org.

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Copyright © 2018 Patricia Ullman.

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ISBN: 978-1-4808-5661-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5660-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-5662-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018901119

Archway Publishing rev. date: 01/26/2018

To my teacher,

Vidyadhara the Venerable Chögyam Trungpa, Rinpoche,

and to my children, Michal and Anna

CONTENTS

Introduction

Opening Your Eyes

Step 1: Right View

Clarifying Your Aspirations

Step 2: Right Intention

Telling the Truth

Step 3: Right Communication

Embodying Your Values

Step 4: Right Conduct

Living Ethically

Step 5: Right Livelihood

Loving the Journey

Step 6: Right Effort

Training Your Mind

Step 7: Right Mindfulness

Entering the Stream

Step 8: Complete Integration

Applying The Eight Steps Every Day

Dedication Of Merit

Bibliography

INTRODUCTION

T he most clear and thorough instructions on how to lead an authentic, intentional, and ethical life are over twenty-five hundred years old. These teachings have survived intact because they are as complete and relevant today as they were when first articulated by the historical Buddha to his monastic community. Known for centuries now as the Noble Eightfold Path, these teachings offer everyone, in any walk of life, a complete and skillful way of integrating all aspects of life into a path of wakefulness and meaning.

The eight aspects of this path invite us to contemplate the important questions we may too often ignore:

• What is the meaning and purpose of my life?

• What behaviors do I want to cultivate in myself, and why?

• Is there anything that doesn’t change and die?

• Is it necessary to suffer?

• Is there somewhere I can go, or something I can do, to be permanently happy?

• Does any of this really matter anyway?

There could hardly be more fundamental questions than these, and yet we tend to push them aside because they touch on issues that can make us feel uncertain and vulnerable. The conundrums such issues pose can be frustrating, and if we do venture into philosophical contemplations, it can be too easy to latch onto other people’s explanations and solidify them into personal beliefs.

The Noble Eightfold Path invites you to go beyond your reflexive, conventional responses to a more heartfelt meaning that can inform every moment of your life. Doesn’t this short life you have deserve your full attention?

The symbol for the Noble Eightfold Path is the eight-spoked dharma wheel. The spokes represent the aspects of a path that can lead to a realistic understanding of yourself and the world around you, guiding you to ways of behaving and living that are self-aware, non-polluting, and beneficial for yourself and others. This path is a moral code but is not moralistic; it simply provides tools that allow you to discern more clearly what you do that is harmful, while cultivating behaviors and attitudes that are helpful.

The dharma means the teachings of the Buddha, and Buddhism is often more accurately called the Buddhadharma by those familiar with its teachings and practices. Rather than being an ism that presents a set of proscriptive tenets and beliefs, the Buddhadharma lays out a path for discovering your own inherent nature. This path is based on the personal experience of the Buddha, a human being who lived in India sometime between the sixth and fourth centuries BCE. The teachings he gave based on his experience have been subsequently practiced and elaborated upon by countless practitioners over the centuries. It’s a living tradition that is handed down personally and directly from teacher to student, and it can only be understood through the balanced application of study and practice—intellectual understanding and direct personal experience.

A traditional analogy for the way this path works is the process of making a loaf of bread. There is an ancient recipe that has been passed down from person to person for countless generations, but each loaf that is baked is fresh and possesses the combined qualities of the instructions themselves, the way in which they were conveyed, the quality of the ingredients, and the skill, understanding, and disposition of the individual making it. If the baker doesn’t take bread baking fully to heart, the result will be halfhearted and s/he will probably give up and buy it ready-made. Similarly, to walk the path of your life with intentionality requires personal effort, guided by the experiences of others who have gone before you. If you opt for a ready-made version, you will never fully understand and experience its meaning directly.

The word dharma also refers to basic truth, what simply is, without any conceptual overlays. In this sense, the dharma is the living quality of things as they are—the true, basic nature of reality. Due to our conditioning and confusion, hopes and fears, likes and dislikes, we constantly struggle with the disjoint between the way things naturally are and our own versions of reality, which are somewhat shared with those around us but are uniquely ours at the same time. This results in an ongoing experience of frustration, anxiety, dissatisfaction, and other kinds of dis-ease.

The Noble Eightfold Path is a guide for seeing how we alternate between this limited, conditioned view of things and the experience of a bigger, braver, and more generous way of being. We cultivate the ability to go forward into this greater awareness through the application of the eight aspects of the path, which are traditionally called right view, right intention, right speech (communication), right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right meditation, and complete integration (right absorption or union).

It is important to point out that the use of the term right as the modifier of these eight aspects is an English translation convention that slipped into common usage a long time ago. It can unfortunately give the impression that this is a judgmental, moralistic discipline, another thing we can try that will probably end up making us feel bad about ourselves when we’re less than perfect. But this term actually originates from the ancient Pali word samma, which means right in the sense of complete, whole, as it ought to be, perfect—not right as opposed to wrong. Etymologically, it is related to the English word summit. We are using the word right in this sense when we say things like, I feel right when I’m with you—I feel complete and at home.

In the Tibetan culture and language, as well as in other Eastern languages, the word for mind includes the heart (Pali and Sanskrit: citta). So beyond the physical organ of the brain, our minds/hearts encompass the whole of our experience as human beings. When we have the courage and determination to look into the many riddles of this life of ours, we gain the opportunity to awaken our hearts and minds, see things with more clarity, and in this way become more genuine, skillful, and compassionate. There is no better way to be fully alive. Why not? Now is a good time to start.

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This book is divided into eight chapters, one for each aspect of the Noble Eightfold Path. Each chapter contains a description of that aspect, a related teaching from the Buddhist tradition, and a meditation practice to help you connect each aspect to your own experience. Finally, each chapter ends with a daily slogan that is taken from the Lojong (mind training)