1. Issues thinking is a trap
2. The Dharma is liberating
3. The poisons of greed, ill will, and delusion hinder our progress toward liberation

In this section, I’ll look at the eight factors of the Path to liberation, and try to see how each factor of the Path serves as a guide to proper engagement with a suffering world. With each Path factor, I’ll look briefly at the traditional understanding of that factor and then try to extend that to our behavior as socially engaged beings.

This is the first in a series of three essays dealing with this question:

“What distinguishes a Buddhist response to our current predicament from the response that might be made by someone who is not a Buddhist?”

In this first essay, I’ll look at the premises from which I will be arguing: the basic viewpoint from which I see our situation. In the second essay, I will examine how the eight factors of the Buddha’s Path can provide a framework for determining a purposeful, effective, and ethically justifiable response to the predicament present in that situation. Finally, in a third essay, I will present some tentative suggestions about what we can actually do to relieve the pain and suffering inherent in our situation and prepare ourselves for the changes that will come and that we must make.