The Noble Eightfold Path is a set of Buddhist Practices leading to the liberation from samsara (The cycle of rebirth) in the form of nirvana.
Right View or Understanding: States that our actions have consequences in life and after death (karma), that death is not the end, and that the Buddha followed and taught a successful path out of this world and the other world (heaven and underworld or hell). The purpose of right view is to clear one's path from confusion, misunderstanding, and deluded thinking. It is a means to gain right understanding of reality.
Right Resolve or Intention: In this factor, the practitioner resolves to leave home, renounce the worldly life and dedicate himself to an ascetic pursuit. For lay practitioners (non-monks), this includes being harmless and refraining from ill will.
Right Speech: Abstaining from lying, from divisive speech, from abusive speech, and from idle chatter. Another way of looking at it is never speaking something that is not beneficial and only speaking what is true and beneficial.
Right Conduct or Action: Like right speech, expressed as abstentions but in terms of bodily action. Abstaining from killing (not just humans, but all sentient beings), abstaining from stealing, abstaining from sexual misconduct.
Right Livelihood: Livelihood that avoids causing suffering to sentient beings by cheating them, or killing or harming them in any way.
Right Effort: The generation of wholesome states and the prevention of unwholesome states. The unwholesome states (akusala) are described in the Buddhist texts, as those relating to thoughts, emotions, intentions, and these include pancanivarana (five hindrances) – sensual thoughts, doubts about the path, restlessness, drowsiness, and ill will of any kind.
Right Mindfulness: Mindfulness aids one not to crave and cling to any transitory state or thing, by complete and constant awareness of phenomena as impermanent, suffering, and without self. Right mindfulness according to the Buddha could have also simply just meant keeping in mind or "retaining" the dharma (teachings of the Buddha) in daily life.
Right Samadhi (Meditation) or Concentration: Reaching a one-pointedness of mind and unifying all mental factors. A state of awareness without any object or subject, and ultimately unto no-thingness and emptiness.
The eight steps on the path can be further broken down as follows:
Moral Virtue: Those parts linked to morals or ethics
Meditation: The goal in this group is to develop clarity and insight into the nature of reality, discard negative states and dispel avidya (ignorance), ultimately attaining nirvana.
Insight, wisdom: The culmination of the path, which is needed to understand why this path should be followed.
The Noble Eightfold Path is often represented by a wheel with 8 spokes, also known as "The Dharma Wheel", with each spoke representing one of the steps on the path. Much like a wheel, the steps can be practiced in any order and keeps turning continuously. Although some branches of Buddhism believe that Right Concentration is dependent on the other 7 path factors.
See also: Cunda Kammaraputta Sutta
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