The message of the Buddha is traditionally known as the Four Noble Truths. The last of these four truths sets out eight steps to happiness, which are: skillful understanding, skillful thinking, skillful speech, skillful action, skillful livelihood, skillful effort, skillful mindfulness, and skillful concentration.

Gunaratana explains in his book “Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness”, that the Buddha’s path is grounded in common sense and in careful observation of reality. The Buddha understood that if we looked carefully at our lives we would realize that the choices we make lead to either happiness or unhappiness. And once we understand this principle thoroughly, we will be able to make good choices, because we want to happy.

Gunaratana adds the following: “The basis of Buddhist morality is that acting in unskillful ways leads to unhappy results, and acting in skillful ways leads to happy results. This simple principle of cause and effect is an aspect of what Buddhists call kamma (or karma).”

Once we understand that everything we think, say, or do is a cause, which will inevitably lead to some effect, we will naturally want to think, say, and do things which will lead to positive results. At the same time, we will avoid having thoughts, saying things, and doing things that will lead to negative results. Taking this approach will allow us to focus our attention on making choices that will lead to a happier life.

In order to act wrongfully, Gunaratana adds, you have to be lying to yourself about cause and effect. That is, you would be acting against the basic truth that actions have consequences. If you train yourself to be mindful of what you do, and ask yourself whether it’s likely to lead to positive or negative results, you’ll be heading in the right direction. You’ll be heading toward happiness.

Chant meditation: Traditionally, monks would give thanks to their teachers as well try to gain insight from them through chants, which they would repeat over and over again. Other chants involve invoking a certain kind of feeling (often times love and compassion). You can create your own chant. This kind of meditation is great for changing a deep seated habit within yourself.

TM meditation: This is the most popular form of meditation in the West. Like chant meditation, it involves repetition, except in this case it is just one or two words. you have seen many different spins to this meditation. Some people use two words, others just one. You should do what is most comfortable for you. Experiment.

Sound meditation: You focus on a sound you hear. Many people choose to meditate to music (including me). Interestingly, it does not have to be relaxing music. Occasionally I will find it very easy to meditate to hard rock. Experiment, and see what works and when.

Body meditation: In this meditation, you focus on the sensations you feel. If you’re sitting down, you focus on how your butt feels on the chair. If you’re lying down, you can study how your body mass is spread across the bed.

Sight meditation: This form of meditation is great for beginners who wish to transition to inner-object meditation. You choose an object to look at and you focus on its shape, color, size. Keep that image in your mind. For example, Buddhists would choose a statue of Buddha to meditate on.

Inner-object meditation: This is when your object of focus is something that naturally occurs within your body, such as your breath or heartbeat. You study the occurrence as you would with any other meditation (you could say that TM and Chant is inner-object meditation).

Object-less meditation: This meditation is essential for increasing your self-awareness. The name of the meditation stands for what IT IS NOT. In this form of meditation, you pay attention to anything and everything to pops into your mind, and then let it go so another activity can take place.

That covers all the common ones. we have to mention that meditation can take any form. You can meditate on walking, and call it “walking meditation”. You can focus on playing your guitar, and call it the “guitar meditation”. It’s less important as to what your object of meditation is, than the process involved in the meditation. The process across these meditations is always the same.

There are a few levels of attainment for practitioners of Theravada Buddhism;

(1) Anagami (Non-Returner) – The person has eradicated a series of hindrances and would never be reborn into any worldly systems, but to a heavenly realm in which he would attain enlightenment from there.

(2) Sakadagami (Once-Returner) – The person has eradicated or weakened a series of hindrances whereby he would be reborn once again to a human or heavenly realm and would attain enlightenment from there, and

(3) Sottapanna (Stream-Returner) – whereby a person would be reborn no more than 7 times again into either the human or heavenly realm.

Apart from the Four Noble Truths, Theravada Buddhism also touched upon subjects such as karma and rebirth, interdependent origination, the three universal characteristics of existence, the five aggregates and meditation.

Meditation is a large subject within Theravada. There are two main branches of meditation practiced by Theravada Buddhists, namely the samatha and the vipassana. The most common technique is the awareness of breathing. The meditator closed off his senses to the outside world and examined inward using breathing as a calming technique.

Buddhists believe in the teachings of the Buddha, the Awakened One. The traditional summary of the teaching is given in four categories, the so called Four Noble Truths:

1. The Truth of Suffering (Dukkha)
2. The Arising of Suffering (Samudaya)
3. The Cessation of Suffering (Nirodha)
4. The Truth of the Way (Marga) that leads to the cessation of suffering.

If you understand the first Truth of Suffering, you understand all of the Four Noble Truths by implication. The truth of suffering is expressed in the simple claim that All is Suffering. All the things in human experience cause suffering.

The second Truth of The Arising of Suffering says that suffering arises essentially from ignorance. From that ignorance comes desire or craving. And then, out of that craving or desire comes reincarnation. Ignorance leads to desire, desire leads to birth. If you want to stop rebirth, what you have to do then is to remove ignorance. Somehow chip away at that basic misconception that people have about the world, and as a result, diminish desire.

The third Truth of the Cessation of Suffering is the famous Nirvana. Nirvana means literally to blow out. You might say that Nirvana is the cessation, is the extinction of “self” that wanders constantly from one life to the next. What’s so great about this? You must remember that the process of reincarnation is a burden for Buddhists and Indian religious people in general. They see it as a really serious problem, and Nirvana is the final solution.

Buddhists also see Nirvana as freedom from ignorance and the perfection of a human being. When the Buddha achieved Nirvana, he didn’t just stayed there enjoying his enlightenment, he went on to tell the secret of how to reach it to other people. During his life, the Buddha showed how people should be with his own example.

How do you achieve Nirvana? The fourth Noble Truth of way tell us how. The Path of Nirvana is often divided in eight categories, The Noble Eightfold Path. It includes the concept of right understanding, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration.

The Path becomes a little bit more clear if we take these eight categories and reduce them or group them together into three. Sila, or moral conduct. Samadhi, mental concentration. And Panna, or wisdom.

Well, but, what a Buddhist has to do to achieve Nirvana? First of all, you should abide basic rules of moral conduct. Why? Because otherwise you might end up coming back as a worm or a mosquito in a future life. It is very difficult to try to achieve Nirvana if you are a mosquito.

Which are the rules? No killing, no stealing, no lying, no abuse of sex and not drinking intoxicants. Pretty simple. This applies to lay people as well to monks. Monks observe other precepts and regulations, as you might expect. These rules form the Sila or moral conduct.

The next Buddhist practice is mental concentration. The term here is Samadhi, to concentrate the mind. Maybe you think that meditation is the most fundamental thing that Buddhists do, and that’s certainly true in many parts of the Buddhist tradition.

What you try to do is to situate yourself very stably, keep your back straight, and then just breath. Concentrate your attention as much as you can on that place where your breathing centers. With this you allow your thoughts in your head to simply drain out of your mind. It is a way to stop all of those distractions and all of that negative tendencies that tie you to the experience of death and rebirth.

Finally, and the most important thing you should do in Buddhism, is to cultivate wisdom. To try to know the nature of the world and to know where it is going, so you can become detached from it and begin the process that leads to Nirvana.

“Not to do any evil, to cultivate good, and to purify one’s mind. This is the teaching of the Buddha.”

To do good and to avoid evil. Every religion teaches you that. That last bit is what makes Buddhism unique: “To purify one’s mind.” That’s the Buddha speaking. You’ve got to find some way to purify the mind of ignorance and desire. Then you can really strike the root of the issues of evil and good. This is the teaching of the Buddha.

A prediction was made by a holy man regarding Siddhartha. The holy man prophesized that the young prince would either grow up to become a great ruler or he would become a wise holy man. The king was obviously dismayed that his son might abdicate his princely life and so tried to shelter the young man from the outside world. Unfortunately for Suddhodana, this did not stop the outside world from coming into contact with his son. At the age of 29, Siddhartha came into contact with what is now known as the “Four Sights.” He came across an elderly man, a corpse, a diseased man and a holy man. This gave him a glimpse into the sufferings of mankind and Siddhartha was so moved that he abandoned his princely throne to become a holy man himself.

The true path, when learning about Buddhism, is what Siddhartha found. The path to enlightenment, or Bodhi, can be found through the use of meditation. His previous attempts included fasting and enduring pain. It is a good thing for Buddhists everywhere that they do not have to use these methods in order to find enlightenment. The Buddhist teachings are ones of gentleness and concentration upon meditation.

Siddhartha’s meditation retreat came in the form of meditating beneath a tree outside of a village for forty-nine days. It was during these forty-nine days that he attained enlightenment and could begin teaching his findings to the rest of the world. From this point on, Siddhartha became known as Buddha. Buddhist studies teach followers that the true path to ending human suffering in this world is to follow a strict path set forth by the Buddha. It involves ritualized chants and meditations to alleviate the conflicts that plague humanity.