The Buddha's Way —
The Eightfold Path
& Zazen Meditation

The Buddha Is a Mirror for All of Us

Buddha's Life Is
About You and Me

Buddha's life is not just about Buddha. It is also about you and me and the world we live in. One way to understand this intimate relationship between Buddha and ourselves is to speak about it through the metaphor of a nurturing and supportive embryonic environment.

When each of us was in our mother's womb we did not have a name, we were not yet a person, but we were all living and growing human beings. Before we were born we were embryos. We did not have to breathe or eat or want for anything, because everything was taken care of in our mother's body. As embryos our minds did not know words and our hearts did not know about wanting things or food. Our mind was in a beautiful Silence because we did not have to think about anything. Our hearts were in a beautiful Peace, because we did not want or desire anything. This was a special time of heart-not-wanting and a mind-not-knowing. We wanted nothing and we knew nothing. We felt a Peaceful Love and a Wise Silence that took care of everything.

Then one day we were born into the world and left our mother's womb. We started to breathe by ourselves and we needed food. When we began to want food and nice feelings in our body, our heart forgot about the Peace of not-wanting anything. When we began to think about how to make others give us food and make us feel good, our mind forgot about the Great Silence.

Shakyamuni Buddha was an embryo once too. He was a prince who got all that his heart wanted — and yet, as he grew up, his heart and mind never felt completely satisfied and at ease. He always felt lonely inside, even around the people who loved him. He saw how other people suffer from wanting, from feeling separate and lonely, from loss, from aging, from sickness, from death, and from fighting with each other about all kinds of things and ideas.

Siddhartha felt very sad for himself and everyone, and decided to leave being a prince to find a Way to live so that people could understand, love, and care for themselves and each other. For six years he searched everywhere — asking wise teachers, practicing austerities, nearly dying — until one morning, seated beneath a tree, he aroused a deep Faith that the Wisdom inside himself and the Wisdom that created and maintained the Whole Universe are One. Sitting in meditation with his eyes open, listening with sincerity and determination to that Vast Wisdom inside and outside himself, he saw the brilliance of the morning star — and his mind knew itself before thinking, his heart realized itself before wanting.

"How wonderful! Everything and Everyone is a Part of a Great Silence, a Vast Wisdom, an Unconditional Love, and a Fulfilling Peace — whether they Know it or Not."

— Shakyamuni Buddha, at the moment of his awakening

After his awakening, Shakyamuni Buddha taught the Wisdom that he embodied in Meditation and called it the Four Noble Truths:

1. Life is Suffering.
2. There is a Cause for this Suffering.
3. The Cause is the Attachment to our Ego-self.
4. There is an Eightfold Path that Eases Suffering, Nourishes Peace, and Enlightens Our Life.

Shakyamuni Buddha's Eightfold Path

Eight Steps of
Wisdoming Practice

Zazen Meditation Is the True Template

Zazen and the
Living Eightfold Path

Zazen meditation is not separate from the Eightfold Path — it is its living root and true template. Each of the eight steps finds its deepest expression in the body of seated meditation:

1. As we completely yield to just sitting quietly in zazen meditation, we open ourselves to the felt experience that our bodymind and the Whole Universe is a wonderful Peace and a wise Silence just as It is.
2. When we experience the momentariness of our breath and heartbeat in meditation, we begin to have Right Understanding that birth and death are always immediately present to us — that to embrace life we must embrace death.
3. Zazen teaches Right Thought by helping us recognize the impermanent nature of all thoughts — we see that no thought, however compelling, is permanent, and that we need not identify with or act from them.
4. Breathing in silence in zazen, we naturally cultivate Right Speech — coming to rest in what is true, what is kind, what is necessary.
5. As the body softens and opens in meditation, Right Action arises naturally — not as a moral obligation but as the spontaneous expression of a heart that has found its ground in ease and compassion.
6. Zazen practice clarifies our values and deepens our commitment to Right Livelihood — we begin to see clearly what sustains life and what diminishes it.
7. Right Effort is zazen itself — the complete dedication of body, breath, and attention to just this moment, without holding back and without striving.
8. And Right Wakefulness — mindfulness — is the natural fruit of zazen: a moment-by-moment, body-based awareness that does not judge, grasp, or reject, but simply sees clearly.