With an understanding of The Four Noble Truths, you can now study and practice The Path to eliminate discontentedness from the mind and your life. You will need a detailed and thorough understanding and practice of The Eight Fold Path to attain Enlightenment.

Gotama Buddha gave us “The Path” forward to pursuing our own Enlightenment. In his explanation of The Eight Fold Path, we learn exactly how to achieve Enlightenment through a life practice or a better way of life.

You will need to learn The Eight Fold Path in detail, over time, to soak this Teaching into the mind. A Practitioner will need to apply time and effort to investigate this Teaching on multiple occasions to fully develop their life practice. The Eight Fold Path is your “life practice” and The Path to Enlightenment.

The Eight Fold Path is categorized into three (3) different sections, wisdom, moral conduct, and mental discipline. Referring to The Eight Fold Path as wisdom, moral conduct, and mental discipline is an easy way to reference The Eight Fold Path and the goal of each section of The Eight Fold Path, without needing to describe each step individually.

The following table will help you to understand the categorization of The Eight Fold Path into its three (3) separate categories which describes the goals of those individual steps.

For example, learning, reflecting, and practicing Right View and Right Intention leads to the development of “wisdom”. Learning, reflecting, and practicing Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood leads to the development of “moral conduct”. And, learning, reflecting, and practicing Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration leads to the development of “mental discipline”.

You will need to put the entire Eight Fold Path into practice within your daily life, over time, as you learn and grow.

You will not be able to achieve perfection in a couple of days, weeks, or months. Instead, you will need to learn, implement, see results, and continue the process of working to diligently apply all steps of The Eight Fold Path to your life. Through gradual training and gradual practice, the mind will experience gradual progress to becoming more peaceful and calm.

You must not master each step individually before moving onto the next.