The Buddhist Path to Enlightenment (study)
by Dr Kala Acharya | 2016 | 118,883 words
This page relates ‘The Way to Nibbana’ of the study on the Buddhist path to enlightenment. The Buddha was born in the Lumbini grove near the present-day border of India and Nepal in the 6th century B.C. He had achieved enlightenment at the age of thirty–five under the ‘Bodhi-tree’ at Buddha-Gaya. This study investigates the teachings after his Enlightenment which the Buddha decided to teach ‘out of compassion for beings’.
6.7. The Way to Nibbāna
The way to nibbāna is the noble eightfold path, the middle way, which avoids the two extreme ways–self-mortification and self-indulgence. It is composed of the following eight factors: right understand, right though, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.
To direct the way to nibbāna the Buddha givens his first sermon to those monks in five-group. It runs as follows:
“O monks, there are the two extremes which should be avoided by one who has renounced the world. What are the two?
(1) Indulgence in sensual pleasures: this is base, vulgar, worldly, ignoble and profitless and
(2) Following to self-mortification: this is painful, ignoble and profitless.
Avoiding the two extreme ways the Tathāgata has realized the middle path which promotes sight and knowledge and which tends to peace, higher wisdom, enlightenment and nibbāna”.
Therefore whoever wants to attain nibbāna he must follow the middle path. The middle path is composed of the eightfold factor.