Talk:Noble Eightfold Path

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Could someone explain the difference between 'the mind' and 'mental qualities' as described under 'Right Mindfulness'?

It's a very lengthy and in-depth topic, but a very basic distinction to make is that "the mind" is the perceiving/conceiving entity, while "mental qualities" are the perceptions/conceptions.
For instance, see the following site: http://buddhism.kalachakranet.org/mind.html. There, it defines the mind "as a non-physical phenomenon which perceives, thinks, recognises, experiences and reacts to the environment". Later, it points out the so-called "51 Mental Factors", which include such things as intention, concentration, regret, ignorance, etc. These latter are, more or less, what is referred to in the phrase "mental qualities".
Hope this has been of some help. —Saposcat 11:24, 31 October 2005 (GMT +02:00)
Yes, that's wonderful.

Contents

[edit] Huh?

Why quote most of the article from a text that is difficult to understand? I couldn't understand any of the points because of the unclear language. Why not explain the points? --MateoP 23:06, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

Strongly agreed. While it is a much longer article, that of the Judeo-Christian Ten Commandments does a better job of describing each item on its "list". My knowledge of the Eightfold Path is somewhat elementary, but I'm sure that there's someone out there that can put a CONCISE description of each item after its corresponding verse from the "Analysis of the Path" 24.172.223.73 20:12, 9 June 2006 (UTC) JD79 01:39, 23 June 2006 (UTC) (ex post facto signing - this still needs work, though!)
Hope my recent revisions (up to "Right mindfulness" and "Right concentration", whose distinctions are a goddamned doozy to explain in English) have cleared things up ever so little. —Saposcat 17:28, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Equivelants in Other Religions?

I'm researching the Eight Fold path, I am wondering what some equivelancies in other religions would be? I don't feel like the 10 commandments are all that analagous to the 8 fold path, I have no idea about Muslim or Jewish equivalncies are, can anyone share some insight? It would probably be a nice thing to add to the page LilDice 19:38, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

AFAIK, There are no such equivalents. - Nearfar 01:13, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
Interesting, that's what I figured :) LilDice 23:31, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I think there's a certain degree of guilt felt among many in the abrahamic religions today, maybe as a realization that the behaviours of extremists in the present and the mainstream in the past were (and are) pretty horrible. The tendency to look to other religions for equivalents serves a dual purpose: one, it justifies the thing being seen in multiple religions as something that, if not inherently true, must be inherently human; and two, it shows that the religion being compared to other religions can't be all that bad, and that there are redeemable qualities to it, namely, those qualities which resonate with other religions. It's also a tool used by extremists looking for converts. Early christians used to compare their faith to those of their neighbors, sometimes taking the gods of their neighbors religion and claiming that a saint equivalent to that god existed in christianity. Saints are clearly servants of the god, so therefore their neighbor's religion was reduced to the misplaced worship of one of the christian god's servants.

Buddhism eludes this mess, though, because it never focused on worshiping anyone. The christians tried to create a saint that had the qualities of Siddhartha, but they never presented much of a threat to Buddhism itself, since the central focus of Buddhism was never the worship of Siddhartha Guatama, but upon the use of the techniques he described to liberate the mind of the individual. It is impossible to compare the abrahamic religions to Buddhism, simply because they serve two altogether different purposes. One focuses inward (Buddhism's focus on the liberation of the mind), the other outward (the abrahamic religions' focus on staying on good terms with their god).

If you must compare Buddhism to anything, try the other religions from the region it sprang from. Jainism is a good one to use for comparison, as it has the same ultimate goal, but differs vastly from Buddhism in terms of what is seen as the way to get to that goal. Hinduism is also a good one to use, since that is what Buddhism sprang from. Also, consider the religions of China, such as Confucianism and Taoism. Wandering Star 01:53, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 'suffering' or 'stress'?

re: User:Rentwa's edit

Magga-vibhanga sutta says otherwise. - Nearfar 16:28, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

Do you have any points to make? Is the word you want represented in English as 'stress' the same word that is normally translated as 'suffering'? If so then presumably we should exchange every instance of the word 'suffering' in Buddhist articles to 'stress'.

As I said to the editor who originally made the change, I'm aware that various Buddhist scholars have suggested alternatives for 'suffering'. The current orthodox word in English is 'suffering'. Wikipedia represents orthodox views. It is not a place for debate on matters of orthodoxy.

The translation you cite is the work of an individual translator who chose the word 'stress' in this instance. Unless you can provide compelling evidence that original source meant 'stress' and not 'suffering' it should remain 'suffering'. Rentwa 17:03, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

What if we used Thanissaro's original with the word "stress"—which I, too, don't like as a translation, to be honest—but pointed out clearly in the preceding paragraph that he is using "stress" to mean "suffering" / "dukkha" (in a similar way to that with which I had originally pointed out he was using "view" instead of "understanding")? Apart from a few poor choices of words, Thanissaro's translation is otherwise largely good, I think, and worth using. Any thoughts on this proposal? —Saposcat 07:33, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. The meaning is 'suffering', regardless of what the translation is. These matters are of a somewhat academic nature, and the typical reader is looking for a simple explanation, not an insight into the history of translation (regardless of how interesting we may find it). As per my talk page, I suggest that if we cannot find a source with 'dukkha' translated as 'suffering' then we include a looser translation in the body of the text and avoid mention of Thanissaro, or remove the text entirely. Rentwa 07:49, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

I've changed it back to the original version (plus a prefatory explanation about terminology used); now let me explain why.

For one thing, the quote is best as a block quote because it's a long one; that's the orthographical side of things.

More importantly, even though I, too, don't much like the word "stress" to translate dukkha, Thanissaro Bhikkhu perfectly fits the criteria for a reliable source, and so—until a different translation is found, or another quote that could explain as well as the one from the Magga-vibhanga sutta—there's no solid reason to remove it. Using brackets to replace "stress" with "suffering" simply makes the text ugly and severely impedes readability, so that's not a very good option, really.

Let's just keep that part the way it is until something better can be found. I have explained in the article that Thanissaro translates dukkha as "stress" rather than "suffering", so the reader knows what is being referred to. Let's avoid an edit war that leads to versions of the article that are less clear than the one currently in place, and instead work on finding a more à propos translation and improving the rest of the article. Cheers. —Saposcat 05:50, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

The "stress"/"suffering" translation dispute has been taken care of with reference to Rewata Dhamma's translation of the passage in question. —Saposcat 09:39, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Some points

  1. 'Mind' and 'mindfulness' need to be distinguished explicitly and clearly in the article, possibly with the help of some basic commentary we can quote. Particularly confusing is the fact that 'mindfulness' has been used in the context of concentration (meditation) (not in this article as far as I can tell, but in the first section of mindfulness) and in the context of mindfulness (memory) (this article). This doesn't even deal with the use of mind in the sense of Buddha mind (original mind) and its use as in deluded mind.
  2. Terminology in general seems to be causing difficulties.
  3. The cognitive psychology may be useful to some readers in making sense of what is a difficult doctrine, but seems to be causing unecessary conflict. There is a strong case to be made for a section on 'Buddhism and/in Cognitive Psych.' or vice versa (if it doesn't exist already), since psychology is something which is familiar to english speakers and westerners generally.
  4. Generally the article seems to be showing the scars of various edit skirmishes (the last started by me :( ).

Rentwa 11:09, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

About those points ...
  1. There is, in this article, a certain amount of explanation as regards the use of the term "mind" in the context of "mindfulness". The notion of mindfulness as "memory" is not really discussed in this article, but rather, "memory" is just given as an alternative translation of the Pāli term sati. The notions of original mind and deluded mind are, admittedly, not discussed; that, however, is simply because the article still needs quite a bit of fleshing-out.
  2. Terminology may indeed be a problem; that's why the article needs, as just pointed out, some fleshing-out and explication.
  3. The cognitive psychology bit is not causing unnecessary conflict. It did for a bit, when it was first put into the article in a position prior to explanation of the Eightfold Path (which was nonsense), but since then it has stabilized and no one argues about it anymore. I think that it's actually quite a useful and interesting addition to the article. But I think the title should stay as is, because it's specifically discussing the Eightfold Path (and not all of Buddhism, which topic would require its own separate article along the lines of Buddhism and science) in relation to cognitive psychology.
  4. Actually, the faultlines in the article are not the result of edit wars (as, since I more or less rewrote the article from scratch, there have been only two of those—one yours, and the other the cognitive psychology one), but rather the result of the article's not really being "finished" and fully explicated yet.
Cheers. —Saposcat 11:09, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
My position is as follows:
1. Your general thrust that 'everything is OK' is wrong - the article's a mess as detailed above.
2. The article needs to be split into smaller seperate articles i) to clean it up ii) to make it simpler for a general readership and iii) to allow controversial teachings / translations / terminology to be dealt with in their proper context.
3. You are either POV pushing wrt Thanissaro or have been unduly influenced by his writings - these views are unorthodox and controversial and do not belong here. I quote from Thanissaro:
Many Westerners, when new to Buddhism, are struck by the uncanny familiarity of what seem to be its central concepts: interconnectedness, wholeness, ego-transcendence. But what they may not realize is that the concepts sound familiar because they are familiar. To a large extent, they come not from the Buddha’s teachings but from the dharma gate of Western psychology, through which the Buddha’s words have been filtered.
We don't need this filter here.
I'm not going to waste any more time arguing - I'm willing to work with you if you're willing to take my points on board, otherwise the article will have to go to arbitration. Rentwa 09:26, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Unfortunately, you seem to have misunderstood a bit of what I said. I don't think that "everything is OK" with the article per se; however, like most Wikipedia articles, it is still in the process of being built, and this still-under-construction status ought to be taken into account in identifying where the article's problems lie (and if you gave more detail on exactly what you consider those problems to be, preferably quoting the article itself if possible, that would help greatly towards the article's eventual improvement).
When you say that "[t]he article needs to be split into smaller seperate [sic] articles", do you mean actual articles, or do you mean more sections of this article? I would probably agree with the latter, but I think that, if you mean actual separate articles, it would be good for us all to have some general idea of what sort of articles those might be.
As for Thanissaro, I am neither POV-pushing nor have I been unduly influenced (since I've read fairly little by the man). In fact, I have repeatedly stated that I disagree with his translation of dukkha; however, until a preferable translation of the text is found—because I believe the Magga-vibhanga sutta is a very useful addition to the article, as you have also stated that you believe it to be—it is better to keep it, I think. There is, please note, a clear proviso before the quotation about the word "stress" not being a standard translation.
The primary reasoning behind leaving Thanissaro's translation (for the time being, at least) is that, a) we currently have no other translation to go with; and b) he fits the criteria for Wikipedia:Reliable sources, however much you and I both may disagree with his translation.
I have taken your points on board as far as is reasonable within Wikipedia guidelines (the only real disagreement is Thanissaro's translation); I just think that some patience is required in order to deal with the issues that you rightly raise. Good Wikipedia articles, after all, take time to develop, and that is basically what is happening with this article. Cheers. —Saposcat 11:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

If you want to keep 'stress' with the note that it's normally translated otherwise that's ok as a temporary solution. You didn't give any justification, btw, that the translation with 'dukkha' was via Thanissaro, but I may have missed something obvious. For the sake of general readers, clarity and simplicity is vital. I counted at least three references to Thanissaro - given the thousands of comentators over the years and hundreds of existing commentaries that's a little disproportionate.

Further to that, these are comments on the talk page, not by general readers, but by editors, whom we may assume are generally better educated than readers:

'Could someone explain the difference between 'the mind' and 'mental qualities' as described under 'Right Mindfulness'?'
'Why quote most of the article from a text that is difficult to understand? I couldn't understand any of the points because of the unclear language. Why not explain the points?'

If editors are having these difficulties, what are general readers making of the piece? I'm not an advocate of dumbing down, but it's pointless trying to provide so much detail for novices.

I'd like to see a shorter piece, with an introduction mentioning the Four Noble Truths and if necessary a note on 'conditioning ones thoughts' (but from a reliable orthodox source and not overtly psychological) and simple / practical explanations, eg right speech - do not speak ill of others.

Each section could then contain a link to 'Commentary...' - whether these follow or are in seperate articles (my preference, but perhaps too small for wikipedia policy) or a seperate article on commentary is debateable. It depends on the shape of the article as a whole probably. This would be in line with the doctrine of tactfulness, incidentally.

The next problem is cognitive psychology. By all means have a 'see also' to 'cog. psy. and B' or vice versa, but the current subsection is unacceptable. Thanissaro's approach is controversial and does not justify its inclusion. I'll even help research the 'cog psy and B.' if that will appease you. Or a larger 'B and science', whatever.

Finally, an article on translation and terms is needed, starting with original Pali and Sanskrit and discussing meaning, practical application and the various translations into English (and possibly notes on the trends in translation).

So that's:

1 shorter and simpler main section
2 detailed explanations given full and proper treatment (at the end of introductory text or seperate article(s))
3 cognitive psychology moved to a seperate article
4 comprehensive notes on terms etc. in a seperate article

I know you've spent a lot of time on this, but it's trying to be all things to all men and needs an overhaul. Rentwa 13:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I never wanted the note about the more standard translation to be anything but a temporary solution, until another translation—or another à propos text—is found and incorporated.
As for the translation that uses dukkha, if you read to the bottom of the page, there you'll see the following: "From Chanting Discourses and Samyutta Nikaya XLV.8 at the Access to Insight web site". If you follow the link to Samyutta Nikaya XLV.8, you'll see the Thanissaro text under dispute.
There are actually four references to Thanissaro, but they are all only translations (which can, admittedly, become a kind of commentary in itself) of the Magga-vibhanga sutta. While we would doubtlessly do well to find a translation that doesn't use "stress", I think the Magga-vibhanga sutta is an invaluable first reference insofar as it is (at least purported to be) the Buddha's words, and is the only in-depth, step-by-step explanation of the Eightfold Path that I know of in the Tipitaka (though I admit I haven't read the entire thing; it's quite massive, and often quite difficult).
You say that "it's pointless trying to provide so much detail for novices" ... I disagree. The detail is (or rather, can be) a very good thing; the important thing, as you rightly point out, is to try and make it clear to someone who couldn't tell the Buddha from a hole in the ground. While it would perhaps be well to sum up Right Speech as "do not speak ill of others", at the same time, I don't think that the Magga-vibhanga sutta's "Abstaining from lying, abstaining from divisive speech, abstaining from abusive speech, abstaining from idle chatter" is at all difficult to understand, and moreover it clarifies the different types of "ill speech" that should be avoided.
As for cognitive psychology, I admit it does seem a bit out of place (though it's quite interesting). A separate article (like Buddhism and psychology or something) would probably be a valuable addition, and the best way to go about the task. (Incidentally, I know nothing about the subject for the nonce, so I don't know if I could contribute much). By the way, in regards to the cognitive psychology section, you say, "Thanissaro's approach is controversial and does not justify its inclusion" ... but Thanissaro has nothing whatsoever to do with the section. The paper referenced is Gay Watson's.
Finally, I think that terminology could well be built up into separate articles (such as the already-existent article on Mindfulness), but this, of course, would take time.
I hope I've managed to address all the points you raised. If not, let me know, and I'll tackle the untackled ones. Cheers. —Saposcat 05:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Yep, looks about right, you're right on the commentary for right speech, too I think. I'll get started on a seperate article on 'B and psy'. Like you I have RL infringing on WP at the moment, so it may be a week or two before I have time to begin. I could have read the section on right speech before wading in with both feet, too 8) . Rentwa 13:04, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
An article on 'B and psy' would be cool. +1. - Nearfar 07:36, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Gender Neutrality

I reckon this article could do with some rewording to flow better using more sexually neutral language. Ie change all those (he/she)'s to they's and their's or other gender-neutral pronouns. - 61.68.217.50 08:09, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Hi 61.68.217.50 -
Thank you for identifying your changes as a matter of discussion here. I applaud your seeking consensus in this manner.
While I'm very sympathetic to the changes you desire, I have a few concerns about your changing them as you did. FWIW, I'd like to suggest that it might be best to revert back to the prior version (to maintain the article's coherence and intelligibility) and then let's have a discussion that could have a wide-ranging impact on WP's Buddhism articles (and other WP articles containing historical texts).
My concerns and basis for requesting that you revert your current changes is primarily that, in the quoted passage, the Buddha was directly addressing males (bhikkhaves, I suspect) and thus my personal preference would be to not change the words historically attributed to the Buddha. I realize that we all want to see the Buddha's vision presented in a universal way, to be meaningful to all. But there are other ways to go about it than to change his attributed words. For instance, a WP editor's text that surrounds the historical quote should be gender-neutral and promote gender equality. Also, commentaries from contemporary Dharma talks could model the inferred application of the Buddha's words to a gender-neutral audience.
A second matter is that the passage you changed is a direct quote from Thanissaro (1996). Thus, in the least, square brackets should be used when changing words.
Lastly, if I may also suggest, the use of "one" and "ones" might (??) be preferable to a singular "they" and "their" since the singular "they" and "their" is somewhat out-of-fashion (I've been told) although, admittedly, I go back and forth on this myself.
Just some thoughts. Welcome to WikiBuddhism! (And, if I may suggest, it might be helpful to others if you chose a Wikiname and let us know something of your experience, knowledge and interests. Thanks!) - LarryR 17:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)
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