The Noble Eightfold Path teaches the ordinary person how to become an Arahant: the awakened one who is free, happy, equanimous, and filled with loving-kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy.

I practiced meditation for over 40 years. It was a lonely and challenging journey, and I certainly made many mistakes. Through it all, I learned that the Four Noble Truths (the theory) and the Noble Eightfold Path (the practice) are essential and include all that one needs to experience liberation and Nibbana. However, for a long time, instead of practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, I spent a lot of time exploring other training methods that abound in today’s world.

Reflecting on the various practice methods I have engaged in for many years, I eventually came up with a system of practice that was very effective for me. I call this system “Nancy’s Noble Eightfold Path Practice.” Nothing in this system deviates from what the Buddha taught in his Noble Eightfold Path. Why, then, some of you may wonder, would I add “Nancy” to the title of my system? As far as I know, my interpretation of the Noble Eightfold Path is unique and not widely known or taught. Therefore, I hope the name “Nancy” will pique your interest. Maybe you will try using it yourself!

After practicing the Noble Eightfold Path, I said this: “Ah! The Noble Eightfold Path is subtle yet precise; anyone can follow it. It’s an amazing system. Buddha is a great teacher! ‘Thank you, Buddha. To repay your grace, I will spend the rest of my life providing help to those who wish to receive guidance in their practice.’”

The Noble Eightfold Path takes us from the world of desire and leads us to the realms of the form and formless, the mundane and supramundane, and liberation and Nibbana. We can experience these realms sequentially, layer upon layer, or as causes and conditions. In Arahant, all elements of the Noble Eightfold Path are manifested. Therefore, we can say, “The Noble Eightfold Path is Arahant, and Arahant is the Noble Eightfold Path.”

As the name suggests, there are eight elements in the Noble Eightfold Path. These are the right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi. The practice of the Noble Eightfold Path must always begin with the right view. Only through the door of the right view can an ordinary person enter the Noble Eightfold Path. It is important to note that through the practice of the right view, one can travel from this humble beginning to the realms of liberation and Nibbana, the Nobles. Therefore, knowing how to practice the right view is essential.

Let me give you a summary of how I practiced the Noble Eightfold Path. Since this paper focuses on practice, I will forgo a more detailed doctrinal and academic explanation here.

Be aware of the thoughts and feelings that arise in your mind daily, outside of sleeping hours. Continue until awareness becomes natural and easy. Simply notice your thoughts or feelings without judging them or pursuing connecting thoughts.

When you can easily notice about a third of your thoughts and feelings, begin to see the lust, hatred, and delusion (the Three Poisons) at the root of your thoughts and feelings. At first, you look at these Three Poisons separately. You notice (without thoughts or inner voice), “This is lust, that is hatred, and this is delusion.” After this process becomes habitual, you will notice the Three Poisons as one, without distinguishing lust, hatred, and delusion separately. Please do not use your inner voice to label lust, hatred, and delusion; you need only be aware of their presence. You will see that the Three Poisons are intertwined: you lust after what you want, are hateful if you don’t get what you desire, and, mired in it all, you believe you have control of lust and hatred. In a way, the Three Poisons are how you try to make sense of your world: pushing and pulling with the world. Continue noticing this way until you can easily see sparks of the Three Poisons arising from the root of all your thoughts and feelings. It would be best not to blame yourself or feel shameful here—just notice.

Now, turn your attention to the outside and notice the Three Poisons in others. First, detect the Three Poisons in the words and actions of others, one by one, in the same manner as above, and then group the Three Poisons into one without using your inner voice. You can start with the people around you: your children, spouse, parents, siblings, relatives, friends, coworkers, and strangers. As you do this, do so without pondering, analyzing, commenting, etc. This training continues until you naturally and easily see the flashes of the Three Poisons within yourself and others.

It’s time to reflect and review. As you see the Three Poisons constantly flashing in you and others, you realize that all humans are a mass of the Three Poisons, using them as fuel to survive. You realize you are trapped in this hellish prison of the Three Poisons.

Consider this: every day, you sustain yourself with food made from killing something. Every day, your body and mind’s survival depends on killing. You were born into this reality without a choice. Through meditation practice, you will know that you are a lump of the Three Poisons. You compete fiercely for survival until you grow old and sick, and then you die. Through meditation, you come to realize that all humans were born into this hell without choice. At this point, you can begin to feel loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, generosity, open-mindedness, and understanding toward yourself and others. Through this practice, the Three Poisons will naturally subside and diminish within you.

Now, you can see the Three Poisons flashing at the six sense doors: eyes, nose, ears, tongue, body, and mind. The Three Poisons flash like lightning when you see something with your eyes or smell something with your nose. You also can recognize the Three Poisons with any of the other six sense doors (sound, taste, touch, mind).

At first, you slowly notice the Three Poisons occurring at the six sense doors. As you continue, you become increasingly aware of how fast your mind moves along with the Three Poisons. When you see, smell, hear, taste, touch, move, think, feel, etc., your mind moves quickly among the six sense doors. You know this by experiencing your mind’s movement. For instance, your mind sees something. It then moves to your foot in the next moment and then moves to a sound, etc.; the mind that arises at the six sense doors moves from one door to another in rapid succession.

Exercise: Observe the moving mind among the six sense doors for a few minutes at a time. Because you focus on your mind’s movement with a high concentration level, you will lack attention to your overall surroundings. Therefore, I do not recommend performing this exercise in potentially dangerous situations — e.g., while driving, handling hot objects, knives, sharp objects, operating machinery, walking on uneven roads, walking up or down the stairs, driving, etc.

Continue this practice until you can easily notice the momentary arising and passing away of your mind rooted in the Three Poisons at the six sense doors.

Experientially, from observing the momentary arising and passing away of the mind and the Three Poisons at the six sense doors, you come to understand the true nature of your mind: impermanent, suffering, and non-self.

First, impermanence: The more you practice, the more you realize how quickly the mind moves around, as if on a hamster’s wheel — constantly changing or “impermanent.” You cannot stop the Three Poisons in your mind from arising and passing away, flashing at the six sense doors. You may sometimes think you stopped the mind’s movements because you didn’t notice something, but that’s merely an illusion. The more you practice, the more you learn experientially that the speed of the mind’s movements is beyond human cognition; that is, it moves as fast as a high-speed computer.

A realization occurs here — awareness of the non-self: You experience that you were unaware of your mind’s true nature and could not control or command your mind. Thus, the “non-self” becomes more evident. Suffering: this mind that moves at an incredible speed that you cannot control, the mind that keeps changing without your input, the cognition of The Three Poisons that constantly flash in the mind — all of this is “suffering.”

Thus, at a very basic level, you experience impermanence, suffering, and non-self.

Now, it becomes clear and urgent why you seek to follow the path to liberation and Nibbana: you seek freedom, happiness, love, and equanimity. Buddha said that the Noble Eightfold Path is the way to liberation and Nibbana. You can escape this hell by practicing the Noble Eightfold Path. In other words, now the reason and purpose for practicing the Noble Eightfold Path are firmly established.

When the right view is established through the above practice, the Three Poisons decrease, and loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity (the Four Immeasurables) begin to take hold in your mind. Sometimes, I express loving-kindness, compassion, and sympathetic joy as “love.” Of course, it is “love” that occurs in the absence of the Three Poisons. Also, the Five Hindrances (sensual desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and regret, and doubt) are significantly reduced.

You have reached a new level of awareness in your practice by now. In this new manner of being fully “awake” at all times (other than when you sleep!), you become aware of the Three Poisons and the Four Immeasurables that arise in you. Naturally, the Three Poisons decrease through this practice and the Four Immeasurables increase.

Through the mindfulness practice, the Three Poisons decrease, and the Four Immeasurables increase. You will naturally move toward the right speech, action, and livelihood and observe the precepts. The five precepts that apply to ordinary people can be observed gradually. If you practice the Noble Eightfold Path, you will eventually observe all five precepts one day. Don’t beat yourself up if you can’t observe them all perfectly right away; don’t ignore the precepts, but do try to keep them consistent. When you break a precept, you must notice that you are breaking it. You must be accountable to the precepts. If you follow the precepts, your mind will be at ease and not disturbed. This will help your practice greatly.

Cultivate the Noble Eightfold Path with neither too much nor too little effort. It is helpful to remember that Buddha crossed the flood by not standing still but also without struggling to cross it.

Awareness (sati) and penetrating awareness (sampajanna), or always being awake, form the basis for cultivating all eight elements of the Noble Eightfold Path. The practice of Right Mindfulness, which must be present from the beginning to the end of the Noble Eightfold Path, is the basis of the Samatha (concentration) and Vipassana (insight) practice, in particular. Right Mindfulness also helps reduce suffering by allowing the mind to stay in the present rather than wandering into the past or future.

It is time to review the state of the Three Poisons and the Five Hindrances. With consistent practice of the above, you will notice a decrease of the Three Poisons and the Five Hindrances in general. However, the hindrance of “regret” may require greater attention. If something in your past evokes regret, you need to sit where you feel comfortable and safe and watch the event calmly, from a third-person perspective — as if you were watching a movie. If you do this repeatedly, one day, your heart will not tremble with regret, your agitated emotions will subside, and you will become calm. You will eventually be able to recall the event more objectively, as you might if it had happened to someone else.

Once the Three Poisons and the Five Hindrances have subsided reliably, it is time to get into Jhana practice. Sit comfortably on a chair or the floor, relax your body, smile with a joyful mindset, and take a few intentional breaths, noticing your breath on your philtrum. As you feel the sensation of your breath, breathe naturally and continue to focus your mind on the sensation of your breath on your philtrum. Avoid tension, impatience, greed, self-blame, anger, and irritation while doing this. Otherwise, you will fall victim to the Five Hindrances yet again. You will notice that your mind does not stay put, even when you tell it to do so. As experienced through the above practice, the mind wanders frantically around the six sense doors. That is the untrained mind’s true nature. Of course, there is no way that crazy fool (mind) would obey your words — there is no bossing it around! This is natural. You have to be patient. You must guide the mind slowly and patiently as if handling a fussy, crying child.

You will notice that the Five Hindrances settle down and subside easily when you have practiced the above well. When this happens, the mind will concentrate, and the bliss of the first jhana will arise. Joy may manifest differently from person to person. Usually, the body may rock and shake with pleasure initially. The breath may synchronize with the rhythm of your heartbeat and ignite a feeling of euphoria. This feeling is, in many cases, similar to sexual pleasure.

If you allow this rapture to arise and continue, it will eventually calm down to happy feelings. If you focus on your breath and immerse yourself in these happy feelings, your concentration will increase, and your thoughts will stop in time, followed by more sublime joy and happiness of the second jhana. Trying to reduce or stop your thinking at this point will be a hindrance to you. Your thoughts will eventually stop if you continue to sit and wait calmly. The rapture and happiness of the first jhana are rawer than the joy and happiness that arise in the second jhana. When you move to the third jhana, your mind becomes equanimous, and your body enjoys happiness. After a while, your body's happiness will subside. You have reached the fourth jhana, where only equanimity and concentration remain.

As you continue to focus on your breath in the fourth jhana, your breath will slow and intermittently cease. Do not try to control your breathing here; it will strain your body and break your concentration.

From this point on, you must continue practicing all four jhanas so you may enter, remain, and exit at will.

It would be best if you practiced from the first jhana to the fourth jhana until you can remain in the jhana state for about 1 hour and thirty minutes to 3 hours. It would help if you also practiced going up from the first jhana to the fourth jhana and then coming down from the fourth jhana to the first jhana.

After sufficient jhana practice, it is time to practice insight into the five jhana factors: applied thought, sustained thought, rapture, happiness, and one-pointedness of mind. Through insight, you will experientially know the nature of the jhana factors: impermanence, suffering, and non-self. The insight practice is done after exiting each jhana state. In addition to seeing the nature of the jhana factors, you also need to know everything about them and gain a mastery of them. In the same way, you must know everything about the first, second, third, and fourth jhana. Through the insight of the jhanas, you may avoid the attachment to the form realms, the sixth fetter among the ten fetters from arising.

Remember that jhana practice must be consistently maintained — like brushing your teeth daily. When the practice of jhana ceases, samadhi also disappears. This simple fact applies to everyone! When you have reached this benchmark in your practice, you must remain awake (sati and sampajanna) all the time (except when sleeping!) and practice jhana every day for thirty to 1 hour and thirty minutes.

The above will lead you through the primary stage of practicing the Noble Eightfold Path. This primary practice becomes the basis for higher practices: the Four Formless Realms, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, the Cessation of Perception and Feeling, Vipassana, and the Supernatural. My recommendation to those who have completed the above practice is to seek guidance from an Anāgāmi (non-returner) or an Arahant, who is free of lust, hatred, and delusion (the Three Poisons) and filled with loving-kindness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity (the Four Immeasurables).