The Eightfold Path, Part 2: Right Resolve

The previous post in this series introduced the Eightfold Path, which outlines the eight basic elements of Buddhist commitment and life that they believe lead to freedom from the cycle of attachments, suffering, and karma, and discussed the first of these elements, right (or, skillful) understanding. This is about the way we understand the world and our place in it. But, as important as right understanding, it does nothing for us or the world if we don’t do anything with it. Today we’ll quickly explore the second part of the Eightfold Path, right resolve, and then look at how this idea might play out in Christian thought.

Right Resolve

Right resolve (Samma sankappa), also translated as right thought, is about the moment of truth, undertaken once but renewed every moment of every day, when we resolve on acting on the right understanding. If we think of the metaphor of the spiritual journey, right understanding is the recognition that the journey is there to be undertaken, while right resolve is the decision to set out on it, which is made once but renewed every day and in every step we take on it.

Practically speaking, this is the resolution to renounce attachments and the three poisons of greed, hatred, and ignorance and to cultivate detachment in their antidotes of generosity, lovingkindness, and wisdom. Again, this is done at the outset of the path, but is a commitment that must be renewed whenever we find selfish, covetous, stingy, hostile, or violent thoughts and feelings arising in us.

Right resolve means cultivating wholesome and ethical intentions. This includes our intentions to renounce harmful actions, to develop goodwill and compassion toward all beings, and to cultivate non-attachment or non-harming.

Christian Response

Last time we saw that for Christians, the content of right understanding ends up being the way of Christ. With this in mind, today’s second step becomes the decision to follow him. And, just like the resolve to renounce attachments, so too is this a decision made once and yet renewed every day and every moment.

This idea of a moment of decision or truth that must then be follow up upon and renewed daily is found throughout our Scriptures. We see this especially in the various calling stories. God called Abram to leave his home and found a new nation in a new land. Abram had to say yes and resolve to set out and leave home and then renew that resolve whenever things got complicated (which was often). When Moses reminds the Hebrews of the requirements of the Law as they were about to make their final stage of their journey into the land of Canaan, he likewise puts the decision before them: “I call heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live” (Deuteronomy 30.19). Likewise, after they arrived, Joshua again offers them the choice: “Now if you are unwilling to serve the LORD, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord” (Joshua 24.15). Or think of Isaiah’s response to the impossibly difficult call of being a prophet: “Here I am: Send me” (Isaiah 6.8).

In the New Testament this resolve becomes focused on the way of Christ. It finds its clearest expression in the words of Jesus himself:

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? (Matthew 16.24-26)

It’s no accident that this resolve too involves renunciation (”let them deny themselves”) and sacrifice and even danger (”take up their cross”). We find these elements also in Paul’s famous Philippians hymn, which I’ve quoted previously in this series. There, in cultivating the mind of Christ, the faithful are to “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves” and follow Christ’s example, who “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross” (Philippians 2.3-8). It’s a challenging way that is not to be undertaken lightly. Jesus even seems to go out of his way to dissuade people from following him because he knows just how challenging his way is:

Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? (Luke 14.27-28)

As much as following Jesus and taking up one’s cross is a one-time decision, it is also one that must be made time and time again. Indeed, in Luke’s version of the teaching from Matthew mentioned above, he even includes a clarifying “daily” to make just this point.

Do I put my desires first, or I do set them aside to embody Christ’s generosity? Do I put my anger first, or do I set it aside to embody Christ’s way of grace and forgiveness? Do I double-down on my beliefs about the way the world should be, or do I loosen my grip, accept the world as it is, and thereby come to love it as Christ loves it?

This is the stuff of right resolve.

Conclusions

The Buddhist teaching of right resolve involves the moment-by-moment decision to loosen the grip of our attachments by cultivating generosity, lovingkindness, and wisdom. As such it has direct parallels in the Gospel command to take up one’s cross and follow Christ daily.