The fourth noble truth is the path of practice to the cessation of suffering. It’s true in the sense that it’s a genuine possibility—it can be done—and it really leads to suffering’s end. Of the four noble truths, it’s the one you deliberately make true through your actions. It’s why the teachings on kamma and freedom of choice are so essential to the Dhamma. This truth is the one that shows their power to do the greatest possible good.
In his first talk, the Buddha introduced this path of practice as the Middle Way because it avoids two extremes: (1) indulgence in the pleasures of sensuality, and (2) devotion to the pain of self-torment. Yet this does not mean that the path pursues a course of middling pleasures and pains. Instead, it fosters the pleasures of concentration, along with insight into the pain of clinging, and treats these pleasures and pains not as ends in themselves but as tools to achieve a higher end: the deathless.
The path, however, doesn’t cause the deathless. After all, if the deathless were caused by anything, it wouldn’t be unconditioned. Instead, the path leads to the deathless—in the same way that a road to the Grand Canyon doesn’t cause the Grand Canyon to be, but following the road can take you there.
The path is composed of eight factors. Because these factors work together to achieve the goal of the noble search, the path as a whole is called the noble eightfold path. The factors are all said to be “right” in that they’re effective in reaching the goal of awakening. Like suffering and its causes, the factors of the path are directly experienced. Here are the factors:
• Right view: knowledge with regard to the four noble truths. This means not only knowing the truths, but also knowing how to use them to classify experiences. On top of that, it also means knowing their duties and how to follow them.
• Right resolve: being resolved on abandoning thoughts of sensuality, thoughts of ill will, and thoughts of harm.
• Right speech: abstaining from telling lies (intentionally misrepresenting the truth), speaking divisively (to break up friendships between other people, or to prevent such friendships from forming), speaking harshly (with the purpose of hurting another person’s feelings), and engaging in idle chatter (speaking with no clear intention in mind).
• Right action: abstaining from killing, stealing, and engaging in illicit sex.
• Right livelihood: abstaining from any ways of making a living that are dishonest or harmful, or that aim deliberately at giving rise to passion, aversion, or delusion within oneself or others.
• Right effort: generating the desire and carrying through with the effort to prevent unskillful states from arising in the mind; to abandon any unskillful states that have already arisen; to give rise to skillful states that are not yet there in the mind; and to develop fully any skillful states that already are.
• Right mindfulness: “Mindfulness” on its own means the ability to keep something in mind. Right mindfulness, in the most general terms, means keeping in mind the need to abandon unskillful qualities and to develop skillful qualities so as to get the mind into right concentration.
• Right concentration: stages of mental absorption, called jhāna. There are four:
- The first jhāna is composed of pleasure and rapture that come from temporarily abandoning sensuality and other unskillful qualities, and directing your thoughts to a single object—such as the breath.
- The second jhāna is composed of a stronger sense of pleasure and rapture that comes when you no longer need to direct your thoughts to the object or to evaluate it—in other words, you stop talking to yourself about it—and you can simply enter into a concentrated sense of oneness with the object.
- The third jhāna is composed of a sense of a more refined physical pleasure and mental equanimity that come when you no longer need to feed off the sense of rapture.
- The fourth jhāna is composed of a sense of equanimity and purified mindfulness, coming from the ability to let go of pleasure and the subtle stress that even refined pleasure entails. The in-and-out breath grows still, as the body’s oxygen needs are reduced, and the body is filled with a bright, clear awareness.
These eight factors fall under three headings:
- Discernment: Right View, Right Resolve
- Virtue: Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood
- Concentration: Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration
For this reason, the path is sometimes called the Triple Training: in heightened virtue, heightened mind (concentration), and heightened discernment. The duty with regard to this fourth noble truth is to develop it. The Canon suggests two ways in which to do this.
• The first is to develop the factors in sequence (SN 45:1). You start with a mundane level of right view (MN 117), which affirms the principles of kamma and rebirth: Your actions—bodily, verbal, and mental—come from your intentions, they have results that correspond to the quality of the intention, and those results can take widely varying lengths of time to be felt. Some are felt immediately; others may not be felt until future lifetimes. Based on this level of right view, you follow the first of the Buddha’s two categorical teachings: Unskillful actions—bodily, verbal, and mental—should be abandoned, and skillful actions should be developed in their place (AN 2:18; MN 41).
• The second way to develop the path is also sequential, but a bit more complex. As you develop each path factor, the three factors of right view, right mindfulness, and right effort circle around that factor: Of the three, right view comes first in seeing the distinction between the right and wrong versions of the factor; right mindfulness remembers to develop the right version and abandon the wrong version; right effort makes the effort to carry through with the instructions of right view and right mindfulness (MN 117).
When you’ve learned the Buddha’s step-by-step discourse and the four noble truths, you’ve gained some of the discernment that can come from listening, and you’ve taken your first foray into the second main step in awakening to the truth: Having found a truthful teacher, you’ve now heard the Dhamma that that teacher has to teach. The next step is to gain the discernment that comes from thinking the Dhamma through.
– Four Noble Truths, Chapter 8, The Fourth Noble Truth, Ṭhanissaro Bhikkhu