Page 9 - The Buddha‘s Noble Eightfold Path

in school after school, tradition after tradition, whether in India,
Tibet, Burma, Thailand, Japan or Ceylon, wherever Buddhism has
spread, we shall find reference is again and again made to the

Four Noble Truths, and especially to the Noble Eightfold Path.
Unless we know about these Truths, therefore, especially the

Truth of the Path, i.e. the Noble Eightfold-indeed, unless we
understand them in some detail - we know very little about
Buddhism.

.
The term 'Noble Eightfold Path' is a translation of the Sanskrit

arya astangika-marga (Pali ariya-atthangika- magga), the word
which we render in English as ‘noble' being arya. In India, in
ancient times, this word was originally used in a more or less

racial sense, designating the invaders who poured down into the
plains of India from Central Asia through the passes of the

Northwest and conquered the indigenous people. Gradually, as
the centuries went by, the term ‘arya‘ and its related form ‘aryan'
assumed an ethical and spiritual meaning. In Buddhism the word

connotes whatever pertains, either directly or indirectly, to the
realization of Ultimate Reality. Whatever is concerned with things

spiritual, be it the spiritual path itself, or the spiritual goal, or in
fact any aspect of the spiritual life, can be designated ‘arya'. Thus
‘arya' is not only 'noble' but also ‘holy'. Some translators

therefore speak not of the Four. Noble Truths and the Noble
Eightfold Path but of the Four Holy Truths and the Holy Eightfold

Path. (Lama Govinda once told me an amusing story. In the early
days of Buddhism in Germany there were two rival groups, one
insisting that ‘arya' meant 'noble', the other that it meant 'holy'.

These two groups, the Noble Truthers and the Holy Truthers, as
they were called, were always at loggerheads. Besides

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