Page 8 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

maturity. This was not to be taken as meaning that experiences
of bereavement etc. were necessarily experiences of Perfect

Vision but only that, on occasion, they might be, and that Perfect
Vision could, so to speak, assume those forms. The lecture on
'Perfect Vision‘ being the first of the series, there was naturally

more ground to be covered in it than in any of the succeeding
lectures. With the observation that embarking on a new series of

lectures was always something of an adventure, both for the
speaker and the audience, I therefore plunged straight into the
heart of my subject.

However little we may know about Buddhism we will at least

know that it is a Path or Way. It is a Path or Way leading to a state
of realization of Truth, or of oneness with Reality, which we called
Enlightenment or Nirvana, or the realization of one's own innate

Buddhahood. This principial Path or Way finds expression in a
number of different formulations, and of these formulations that

of the Noble Eightfold Path is probably the best known. The
Noble Eightfold Path is also the fourth of the Four Noble Truth. If
we turn to the Buddha's First Discourse, the Discourse on the

Turning of the Wheel of the Dharma, which he delivered in the
Deer Park at Sarnath shortly after his attainment of Supreme

Enlightenment, we shall find that the principal contents of this
Discourse, in which the Buddha communicated his great spiritual
discovery to

humanity, were the Four Noble Truths: Suffering, the Cause of
Suffering, the Cessation of Suffering, and the Way leading to the

Cessation of Suffering, the last of these being none other than
the Noble Eightfold Path. Moreover, if we follow the course of
Buddhist history, then

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