The wisdom branch of the eight fold path may cause students some confusion. The reason for this is that right thought and right view are not things that we can just do because we want to. They arise naturally from the other branches of the path (morality and meditation practice). Nevertheless, it is a good thing to know what the Buddha meant by right view and right thought. Not so that we can berate ourselves for not meeting the ideal, but so that we can identify the areas where we have the potential to make progress.
Turning then to right thought, the Buddha listed three kinds of thought that are conducive to liberation from suffering and three kinds of thought that have the opposite effect (Iti 3.38). First, the latter three: thinking imbued with sensuality, thinking imbued with ill-will and thinking imbued with harmfulness. When a person is obsessed with his own pleasure or the destruction of his enemies, he will never be interested or inspired in practicing meditation because, to do so, would force him to let go of his obsession. Therefore, these kinds of thought are not conducive to lasting satisfaction.
By contrast, thinking, imbued with renunciation, thinking imbued with non-ill will, thinking imbued with harmlessness are conducive to liberation. This is so because when a person is determined to avoid creating new bad karma for himself, he will naturally gravitate to and be inspired to practice insight meditation as a vehicle to achieve his goals. When we declare to ourselves that existence solely in pursuit of material wealth is devoid of any lasting satisfaction, we have begun to think of renunciation and are then putting ourselves on the path to freedom from obsession about material security.
We call on you to take a step right now that leads to cultivation of right thought: register to start or continue your insight meditation practice today.