The Four Noble Truths

At the Buddha’s very first teaching he presented The Four Noble Truths to the five wandering ascetics he had previously befriended on their search for enlightenment. He described awakening in very simple and direct terms. He would spend the next forty-five years teaching the Dhamma always in the context of these truths…

Awakening To The First Noble Truth

Awakening To The First Noble Truth is to fully comprehend the nature of Dukkha. In the Samyutta Nikaya 56.11[1], Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting the Wheel of Truth in Motion, The Buddha describes awakening very simply and directly…

Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood

Mindfulness of Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood, the three virtuous factors of The Eightfold Path, shows clearly where attachments to an ego-personality have formed. The ego-self or ego-personality is consciousness influenced by physical senses and interpreting the sensory stimulation from the perspective of clinging conditioned mind…

Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Meditation

The Eightfold Path is the Buddha’s framework for developing understanding leading to the cessation of stress. It is a path that develops heightened wisdom, heightened virtue and heightened concentration, or heightened Samadhi. Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Meditation are the concentration factors of the Eightfold Path…

Awakening to the Fourth Noble Truth

The Buddha taught that Awakening to the Fourth Noble Truth means that The Noble Eightfold Path has been developed. In the Samyutta Nikaya 56.11, [1] Dhammacakkappavattana Sutta: Setting the Wheel of Truth in Motion, The Buddha describes awakening very simply and directly…

Shamatha Vipassana Meditation

A guided recording and instruction on Shamatha-Vipassana meditation developing profound concentration supporting refined mindfulness of the Eightfold Path…

A Prince Becomes a Buddha

Siddartha Guatama was born into a royal family of a small kingdom, the Shakyan republic. His hometown, Kapilavastu was in what is now southern Nepal on the Indian border…