Noble Eightfold Path
Wisdom
Right Intention
Reality grows in the garden of the mind. Our world is the fruit of our thoughts that sprout from the seeds of ideas. We must therefore be discerning gardeners, looking carefully at what ideas we allow to take root within the mind. We must be able to recognize which ideas and thoughts are born of desire and which carry the seeds of desire that causes our suffering.
The seeds of suffering that take root within the mind are those of greed, ill-will, hostility, denigration, dominance, envy, jealousy, hypocrisy, fraud, obstinacy, presumption, conceit, arrogance, vanity and negligence. In Buddhism, these are known as the 15 defilements, and the Buddha realized 6 methods for removing such defilements from the mind:
1. Restraining:
Restrain from what pleases the senses but bears poison.2. Using:
Use all that we are, all that we have, all there is to cultivate peace.3. Tolerating:
Tolerate all adversity, and never abandon our gardens to the wild.4. Avoiding:
Avoid all that is impure and spoils the soil of the mind. Tend only to what is pure and that which nurtures the pure.5. Destroying:
Remove the defilements by destroying them from the root.6. Developing:
Never cease to develop our skills of peacefulness.