Can other religions contain eightfold path?

[SarathW]

SarathW wrote

Then why it is called "Ariya Ashtangika Marga"?
What is the reason for the adjective "Ariya"?

Sarath why get up on adjectives, get hung up on Dhamma involved? Have you not heard the song "Turn Turn Turn" To everything there is a season...

To everything (turn, turn, turn)
There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
And a time to every purpose, under heaven

Even for the word Ariya, there is a turn. According to your argument, 8-fold path is not accessible to non-aryan. Then what is the point of the point of the path? I admit the way some scholars use words to draw out differentiation (perhaps Bodhi, perhaps Thanissaro) makes you think that there are two different buddhist paths. Sujatho wrote on SC, recently, that there are no two 8-fold paths. Sujatho is v. sensitive to the confusion created by use word by different Theravadin teachers.
Admitted that in the newbie it creates confusion, but you are not a newbie, and DNS has been struggling to convey this to you. I think he likes you and therefore he tries hard, yet to no avail. 


Sarath added

Why Buddha did not call it simply "Ashtangika Marga"?

Are you picking up a fight with Buddha? Madhupindika sutta wrote, Buddha does not dispute anyone
in the world, not the gods, not brahmas, not even Sarath...
With love

Agree.
All Buddhist, from lay person to Arahant follow the NEFP but at a diffrent level.
For instance, up to Sotapanna level it is called the mundane ( Lokiya) and from Sotapann to Arahant it is called supermundane (lokuttara)
Do not bog down in catogaries.

[Pulsar]

SarathW wrote

Agree.

I am happy that the Byrds were able to convince you.

A time for peace, I swear it is not too late

to make peace with the Buddha, and the 8-fold path.
Song, it sings of impermanence all the way

A time to be born, a time to die

How sad this world at times, yet then again happy in turn...
with love

[Crazy cloud]

That's the problem with using words. Words like "consciousness" and "awareness" is easier to personalize, but "knowing" is more precise or as they use the "poo roo" in TFL, I feel.

Yes, they all have a different meaning, but I haven't found any of the above to be permanent.

Here's a talk by Luang Por Sumedho where he explains in a more coherent way the permanent knowing field is here, and sense-consciousnesses arising and ceasing.

[Sam Vara]

That's the problem with using words. Words like "consciousness" and "awareness" is easier to personalize, but "knowing" is more precise or as they use the "poo roo" in TFL, I feel.

Yes, they all have a different meaning, but I haven't found any of the above to be permanent.

Here's a talk by Luang Por Sumedho where he explains in a more coherent way the permanent knowing field is here, and sense-consciousnesses arising and ceasing.

Many thanks - that's a very nice video.

In terms of the question about the permanence of consciousness, Ajahn says that consciousness can be a form of "empty consciousness", or consciousness being conscious of itself, not sent out to the objects of the senses. It is what is aware of sankharas, but is not itself a sankhara.

As I said earlier, I wouldn't dispute what other people say they experience. But how could a conscious being who has or who had that experience, know it to be a permanent consciousness? On what do they base the claim that it is a universal consciousness? Why is this not simply evidence that consciousness is, in the present moment, a precondition for having experience, and nothing more?

When I ask such questions to the Ajahn Sumedho fans who I know well - people who have known him for nearly forty years, practised as monks under him, and who love this sort of talk - they usually say that these are questions from the head/intellect, rather than from the heart.

[Mr. Seek]

Maybe it can be integrated into them, who knows. Whether it'd be 'right' or 'wrong' though...

Either way, you don't necessarily need to follow the concept of an 8-fold path to attain unbinding. Many of the to-be-arahants described in the five nikayas listened to just a couple of abstract lines of dhamma--nothing of the sort where you have 8 of this, 7 of that, 4 of this, 37 of that, etc.

[Crazy cloud]

Yes, they all have a different meaning, but I haven't found any of the above to be permanent.

Here's a talk by Luang Por Sumedho where he explains in a more coherent way the permanent knowing field is here, and sense-consciousnesses arising and ceasing.

Many thanks - that's a very nice video.

In terms of the question about the permanence of consciousness, Ajahn says that consciousness can be a form of "empty consciousness", or consciousness being conscious of itself, not sent out to the objects of the senses. It is what is aware of sankharas, but is not itself a sankhara.

As I said earlier, I wouldn't dispute what other people say they experience. But how could a conscious being who has or who had that experience, know it to be a permanent consciousness? On what do they base the claim that it is a universal consciousness? Why is this not simply evidence that consciousness is, in the present moment, a precondition for having experience, and nothing more?

When I ask such questions to the Ajahn Sumedho fans who I know well - people who have known him for nearly forty years, practised as monks under him, and who love this sort of talk - they usually say that these are questions from the head/intellect, rather than from the heart.

I agree fully with you about the "hard question or problem", and I have often asked myself this without making any sense to it. But as time goes by and one just keeps on practicing in accordance with Sumedho's suggestions, because I don't see any better to do, I have made peace in just trusting awareness and then another question arises: Is intuitive awareness intelligent itself?. And that's a question with no apparent answer, that is to say: No reliable answer that I can come up with ... And then sentences like "consider the lilies and how they grow", appear in a still mind, and one looks at nature around oneself and sees that all sentient forms have their perfect and right amount of intelligence to be exactly what they are all the time, and they do not make it suffer as this one does.

So the answer as I can see it is "trust" and keep coming back to pure awareness, simple and uncomplicated, like a blade of grass.

[Sam Vara]

as time goes by and one just keeps on practicing in accordance with Sumedho's suggestions, because I don't see any better to do, I have made peace in just trusting awareness
So the answer as I can see it is "trust" and keep coming back to pure awareness, simple and uncomplicated, like a blade of grass.

Yes, I guess trust and a real-life practice puts all such questions and issues to rest, and it's only "outsiders" who bother with them.

I've just heard today that Ajahn Sumedho has left Wat Ratanawan in Thailand where he has been living for some time, and is on his way back to Amaravati in the UK.

[Crazy cloud]

Thanks, that's very good news.

[StrivingforMonkhood]

I saw a video online where a group of Catholic nuns whose order lives in seclusion. One of the nuns said that she can guarantee they are the happiest people in the world.

These nuns do have a lifestyle similar to that of Buddhist monastics.

I am not sure saying you're the happiest group in the world is a wise statement. I am not saying this as a judgment.



Peace and enlightenment.