One of the most beautiful elements of the Buddha’s teaching is that he has done most of the hard work for us. According to his teaching, it takes a long time to become a Buddha. Our Buddha spent many lifetimes building up enough merit to find the path of release from the suffering of the world. Now that he has done all of that work, there is comparably less for us to do to reach the goal of ending suffering. The main difference is that our achievement will have been with the Buddha as our teacher whereas the Buddha, by definition, enlightened without any teacher.
Now that we have the Buddha’s teaching to guide us, we need only to follow his clear instructions in order to begin our own journey to freedom. Those instructions are contained succinctly in the Noble Eightfold Path which is as follows:
1. Right View
2. Right Thought
3. Right Speech
4. Right Action
5. Right Livelihood
6. Right Effort
7. Right Mindfulness
8. Right Concentration
If we look at this path, we can see that it can be divided into 3 coherent categories. Right View and Right Thought are the wisdom leg of the path, Right Action, Right Speech and Right Livelihood contain our basic moral guidance and Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration contain our instructions for mental development, i.e., insight meditation practice.
Our teacher, Ven. Ajahn Tong Sirimangalo, has explained to us that while it is important and helpful to know the eight-fold path, what is most important is that we apply mindfulness. Ajahn Tong further explains that this part of the path is like the key that starts a car. We do not need to know how a car works or what makes up its constituent parts in order to drive it. All we need to do is to put the key in the ignition and start it.
When we apply mindfulness correctly, the eight-fold path arises naturally by itself. At a meditation retreat you will have the chance to learn how to develop mindfulness that is capable of penetrating deeply into the true nature of reality. The goal of these retreats is to hasten the arising of the eight-fold path.