What is the Noble Eightfold Path?

The Noble Eightfold Path (also known as “the Middle Way”) is the fourth noble truth: the path that leads to the cessation of suffering and to liberation. In SN 56.11 it is called the middle way between indulgence in sensual pleasures and self-torment.

The eight factors of the Noble Eightfold Path (SN 45.8):

• right view (sammā-diṭṭhi);
• right intention (sammā-saṅkappa);
• right speech (sammā-vācā);
• right action (sammā-kammanta);
• right livelihood (sammā-ājīva);
• right effort (sammā-vāyāma);
• right mindfulness (sammā-sati);
• right concentration (sammā-samādhi).

“Right” (sammā) here means “correct”, as opposed to wrong (micchā), not “perfect”. The factors are not steps to be passed through one after another - they are interconnected and develop together, though in MN 117 right view comes first and leads the other seven.

The eight factors are often gathered into three groups (for example, in MN 44): virtue, concentration and wisdom.

Virtue (sīla) - speech, action, livelihood.

• Right speech: no lying, no divisive speech, no harsh speech, no idle chatter.
• Right action: refraining from killing, from taking what is not given, and from misconduct in sensual pleasures (kāmesu micchācāra, usually sexual misconduct).
• Right livelihood: abandoning a wrong way of life and earning, or one that fosters the unwholesome. Lay people are separately given five kinds of trade to avoid: in weapons, in living beings, in meat, in intoxicants and in poisons (AN 5.177).

Concentration (samādhi) - effort, mindfulness, concentration.

• Right effort is aimed at four tasks: preventing new unwholesome (akusala) states of mind from arising, letting go of those already arisen, cultivating wholesome states (kusala) not yet arisen, and maintaining, developing and bringing to completion those already present.
• Right mindfulness: establishing attention and observation over four domains of experience - the satipatthanas (satipaṭṭhāna): contemplating body, feelings, mind and dhammas (mental phenomena), “ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having put away covetousness and grief for the world” (MN 10).
• Right concentration (per SN 45.8 and MN 141) leads to the four jhanas (jhāna). The higher attainments of concentration called the “formless spheres” are not part of this definition, and “access concentration” (upacāra-samādhi) is a term from the later commentaries.

Wisdom (paññā) - view and intention.

• Right view is understanding the four noble truths, the nature of suffering and the path to liberation. MN 117 separates the mundane view, which accepts that actions bear fruit, from the supramundane one, which is the factor of the noble path.
• Right intention comprises renunciation, first of all of passions and craving (nekkhamma), good will (abyāpāda) and harmlessness (avihiṃsā).

A widespread image illustrating the Noble Eightfold Path is the wheel of the Dhamma with eight spokes (the Dhammachakra). Buddhism borrowed the image from Indian culture and filled it with new meaning. Originally it was the emblem of the chakravartin - the ideal universal monarch turning the wheel of law and justice. The turning of the wheel of the Dhamma came to symbolise the exposition and spread of the teaching of the Buddha, which opens the path to release from suffering.

Where to read: MN 141, MN 117, MN 44.