Fabio Magnani - Pagina Pessoal

Essentials

Four Noble Truths
Noble Eightfold Path
Three Characteristics of Existence
Four Boundless States
Seven Factors of Enlightenment
Five Hindrances
Ten Perfections
Five Aggregates
Ten Fetters of Existence

Four Noble Truths

Suffering exists
Suffering arises from attachment to desires
Suffering ceases when attachment to desire ceases
Freedom from suffering is possible by practicing the Eightfold Path

The theoretical framework is provided by the teaching of the Four Noble Truths, which the Buddha had proclaimed already in his first sermon and upon which he placed so much stress in his many discourses that all schools of Buddhism have appropriated them as their common foundation. The four truths all centre around the fact of suffering (dukkha), understood not as mere experienced pain and sorrow, but as the pervasive unsatisfactoriness of everything conditioned. The first truth details the various forms of suffering--birth, old age, sickness and death, the misery of unpleasant encounters and painful separations, the suffering of not obtaining what one wants. It culminates in the declaration that all constituent phenomena of body and mind, "the aggregates of existence" (khandha), being impermanent and substanceless, are intrinsically unsatisfactory. The second truth points out that the cause of suffering is craving (tanha), the desire for pleasure and existence which drives us through the round of rebirths, bringing in its trail sorrow, anxiety, and despair. The third truth declares that the destruction of craving issues in release from suffering, and the fourth prescribes the means to gain release, the Noble Eightfold Path: right understanding, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right concentration.

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Noble Eightfold Path

Three Qualities	Eightfold Path
Wisdom (panna)	Right View
	Right Thought
Morality (sila)	Right Speech
	Right Action
	Right Livelihood
Meditation (samadhi)	Right Effort
	Right Mindfulness
	Right Contemplation

For practical purposes the eight factors of the path are arranged into three major groups which reveal more clearly the developmental structure of the training: moral discipline (including right speech, right action and right livelihood), concentration (including right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration), and wisdom (including right understanding and right thought). By the training in morality, the coarsest forms of the mental defilements, those erupting as unwholesome deeds and words, are checked and kept under control. By the training in concentration the mind is made calm, pure and unified, purged of the currents of distractive thoughts. By the training in wisdom the concentrated beam of attention is focused upon the constituent factors of mind and body to investigate and contemplate their salient characteristics. This wisdom, gradually ripened, climaxes in the understanding that brings complete purification and deliverance of mind.

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Three Characteristics of Existence

Transiency (anicca)
Sorrow (dukkha)
Selflessness (anatta)

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Four Boundless States

The boundless states or brahmaviharas are considered friends on the way to Nirvana. They help in dissolving the idea of a separate self.

Loving kindness
Compassion
Sympathetic Joy
Equanimity

Near enemy is a quality that can masquerade as the original, but is not the original. Far enemy is the clearly opposite quality. The boundless state serves as an antidote for the quality mentioned as the far enemy.

Pali	English	Description	Near Enemy	Far Enemy
metta	loving kindness	good-will, friendship, unconditional love for all beings	selfish love	hatred
karuna	compassion	empathy, to feel with someone instead of for someone	pity	cruelty
mudita	sympathetic joy	spontaneous joy in response to others success	hypocrisy	envy
upekkha	equanimity	even-mindedness based on insight into the nature of things	indifference	anxiety