Questions

"I would love to know what you personally believe and how you practice your belief? For instance, how do you personally practice the Eightfold Path? I would also love to know how you chose to practice Buddhism or if you grew up in a Buddhist home?"

I believe in the teachings of the Buddha, in so far as they are good suggestions by someone who have gone far into Enlightenment, which is a higher evolution, and the community that supports those journeys. 

What I do is commune with others, fellowship, read, meditate, chant, and try to bring mindfulness and kindness to everything I do. It's like they say in AA, we're not perfect, but we're trying to improve.

Eightfold Path

1. Right View: Now it takes a while to hone the view, the goal that provides me with a direction. But basically I wish to be more creative, less reactive through mindfulness and kindness. The teachings are vast and glorious, but it takes time to assimilate them all and develop a vision. So even though this in #1, it is also something that I never stop adjusting.

2. Right Intention: I'm such a bundle of conflicting urges. Through meditation, the integration helps me to clarify my intention. I wish to move towards enlightenment effectively, through regular steps as much as possible.

3. Speech: What we say and don't say has a big impact. We can develop our communication by various techniques. One that I studied, which I absolutely loved was Non-violent Communication developed by Marshall Rosenberg. You observe an objective reality. There are no vegetables at home. Feeling: That makes me feel anxious that our daughter won't get enough healthy food. Need: I need to feel secure that you are committed to feeding our daughter, since your role is to buy the groceries. Request: Will you please monistor the fridge to make sure that are vegetables so that we can feed our daughter healthy food.

Saying peaceful, loving, harmonious, supportive things is the goal. Being truthful is the goal. Not harsh painful speech, but not avoiding the truth and speaking deep truths, avoiding superficial speech, though chit chat has a function of preparing to get to deeper speech, and isn't to be avoided. You shouldn't just blab your deepest truths to strangers, you have to warm up to it.

4. Right Action: I follow the 10 precepts to the best of my ability. I use confession to try and think about what I can improve on, and how I have fallen off my ideals. It's a constant struggle to be aware of myself and my impact on others to basically not harm others, trying to put good energy into the world.

5. Right Livelihood: For your own good, that means you don't sell or develop weapons, not a butcher, not a drug dealer or bartender, or liquor store worker or owner, don't work in the porn industry. These things lead you away from the path.

6. Right Effort: There is a kind of snowball effect, so right effort is about starting out in a good way to improve things, not get depressed and negative. The satta bojjhaṅgās are often referred to here, a list of seven I wont' go into. I try to guard the gates of my sense, not see thinks that encourage negative mental states, push myself to do the most wholesome things.

7. Right Mindfulness: You can be mindful about anything, we have a culture with many options for obsession. The traditional 4 are the body, feelings, mind (and not acting out of green, anger and hatred towards others) and the Dharma. You follow the wise ones who have gone before about what to focus on.

8. Right Samadhi is about cultivating positive mental states, the 4 dhyanas. First you get access concentration to enter the dhyanas. The first dhyana is about integration, the traditional metaphor is the soap ball. Soap can come in a powder, and if there's not dry soap and there's not too much water, it's perfectly integrated between soap and water. It's a bit like having a tidy mind, not too many obvious contradictions, you shadow is acknowledged and under control. In the second dhyana there is an upwelling of energy, piti, that is released by this integration, the harnessing of your energy in a coherent direction. No more fighting yourself, self sabotage, just positive movement forward to the good. In the third dhyana there is a calming that the energy of the 2nd dhyana further consolidates. In the 4th dhyana it's like you just got out of the shower and you put on a fresh bath robe. One time I did that literally, and I was like, "I'm in the 4th dhyana!" I felt clean, contented, warm, like nothing could stop me.

Unright mindfulness would be the Sith path from Star Wars. The magic and mindfulness does not have ethics, and thus is just about power grabs, no ideology, no concern for others. There is no higher vision in the Sith path. Profit for profit sake. The horrible things like polluting the environment for a fast buck. Thinking profit only comes through stepping on others. There can be no gladdening. The gladdening happens when you realize you've led a life that isn't hurting others. You don't feel distracted by ethical qualms, you lead a simple pure life that doesn't hurt others.