When Siddhartha Gautama gave his first teaching after enlightenment, it was to five friends in the deer park at Sarnath, not far from Varanasi in the Ganges Valley. Wanting to transmit to them the essence of his breakthrough, he crystallized his insights into what would become known as the four noble truths. These include the truth of the way out of suffering, known as the noble eightfold path: right view, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.
The eightfold path offers a way to touch awakening as Gautama did. These insights were not the result of thinking or study, nor were they a creed or philosophical doctrine. They were the fruit of Gautama’s own direct experience and meditative realization, and they conveyed a path that traced a “middle way” between the two extremes of asceticism and indulgence. It was a way, he believed, that could lead anyone to realize understanding, liberation, and peace.
As a species we’re still
