30 Challenges to Enlightenment: The Legendary Self-Development Obstacle Course

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1. I am a practicing Buddhist meditator and I would like to add some comment to enlightenment. The critical step of this journey starts with Noble Eightfold Path:-
   1.Right View: our actions have consequences; death is not the end, and our actions and beliefs have also consequences after death; the Buddha followed and taught a successful path out of this world and the other world (heaven and underworld/hell). Later on, right view came to explicitly include karma and rebirth, and the importance of the Four Noble Truths, when “insight” became central to Buddhist soteriology.
   2. Right Resolve: the giving up home and adopting the life of a religious mendicant in order to follow the path; this concept, states Harvey, aims at peaceful renunciation, into an environment of non-sensuality, non-ill-will (to loving kindness), away from cruelty (to compassion). Such an environment aids contemplation of impermanence, suffering, and non-Self.
   3. Right Speech: no lying, no rude speech, no telling one person what another says about him, speaking that which leads to salvation;
   4. Right Conduct: no killing or injuring, no taking what is not given, no sexual acts.
   5. Right Livelihood: beg to feed, only possessing what is essential to sustain life.
   6. Right Effort: guard against sensual thoughts; this concept, states Harvey, aims at preventing unwholesome states that disrupt meditation.
   7. Right Mindfulness: never be absent minded, being conscious of what one is doing; this, states Harvey, encourages the mindfulness about the impermanence of body, feeling and mind, as well as to experience the five aggregates (skandhas), the five hindrances, the four True Realities and seven factors of awakening.
   8. Right samadhi: practicing four stages of meditation (dhyāna) culminating into the unification of the mind.

   With those foundations, the journey for enlightenment begins. Through Vipassana Bhavana meditation, one attains the first stage of enlightenment: Sotapana Magga & Sotapana Phala, follows with the second stage enlightenment: Sakadagami Magga, & Sakadagami Phala, then the third stage enlightenment: Anāgāmi Magga & Anagami Phala and finally Arahant Magga & Arahant Phala. The stages could be reached in a matter of hours in the case of Gautama Buddha himself. But for all of us Puthujjana ordinary folk, several days, weeks, months even years to reach the final complete enlightenment.
   May you all reach the final stage of enlightenment in this lifetime and be liberated from Dukkha Sansara.

   Sardhu, Sardhu, Sardhu…

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