Sila, Dharma, and Prajna refer to sangaku or the three teaching. Teaching is the answer to Shakyamuni Buddha's question: can it be taught, or yes. Understanding is a mental construct. The construct Buddha intuited was the Four Noble Truths. As we discussed earlier. Right View is seeing deeping into this construct. We might say we feel strongly about the application of this theory to change suffering. So if we intuit this we see deeply into possibility. We are open. The five assectics of the first sangha were thus. Open to thought and linking speech are strong first steps.
Yoda was right when he told Luke to not try---do. While seeing the interplay of effort to action he also suggests that Right Effort is different from more or less effort. As for trying harder, we could rather, do something to just see/view what happens. Right Action is noble, in a sense pure or direct not ignoble or laced with greed, hate. or delusion. So Right View, Thought, and Speech set us up to act. To get on with it. Imagine alignment progressing through each of the eight steps. In Right Action we are aware of doing.
A whole bunch of action constitutes how we live our life---livelihood. Examples of Buddhist meaning here is what one does to earn a living (working), such as not to sell alcohol, drugs, weapons of mass destruction, or people. While the former examples are part, the whole is how one lives day-to-day. It is the interplay of all the other seven steps.
The interplay of each step with the other, spins at such a rate it is a blur. It is interconnected in such a way that we can't see it without Right Effort. Effort in this teisho is the Goldilocks Zone. The zone of the middle way one might ask? Could be I say. The effort is learned through actions setting parameters for how much is enough.
So if we recycle effort to livelihood to action to speech to thought and view, we "see" a wonderful six step feedback loop---wisdom connected with ethical conduct and onto mental discipline.
We have gone from a onestep, two step, three step, four step, five step to a six step dance. Soon we will add two more giving steps, the the same number of notes to music from which options are boundless. For many years I have compared the Eightfold Path to a dance in which we practice to adjust to variables, conditions, tempo and partners. The path dances us. Here is wonderful excerpt from Gary Zukav's original book, The Dancing Wu Li Masters:
At an Esalen Institute meeting in 1976, tai chi master Al Huang said that the Chinese word for physics is Wu Li, "patterns of organic energy." Journalist Gary Zukav and the others present developed the idea of physics as the dance of the Wu Li Masters--the teachers of physical essence. Zukav explains the concept further: The Wu Li Master dances with his student. The Wu Li Master does not teach, but the student learns. The Wu Li Master always begins at the center, the heart of the matter.... This book deals not with knowledge, which is always past tense anyway, but with imagination, which is physics come alive, which is Wu Li.... Most people believe that physicists are explaining the world. Some physicists even believe that, but the Wu Li Masters know that they are only dancing with it.
Please join us Tuesday night March 9, 2021 as we all dance the six-step...
Bowing
Sangaku
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