[Niiinioa]

What is the nature of asceticism? Questions and answers with Ajahn Jayasaro. (01)

[konanoileaski]

More on asceticism.... here

[MichaelfromSpace]

1:25 - Right Intention is essential to the wholesomeness of the practice.
1:50 - Right View of the practice is essential to the arising of Right Intention.

Thus I extrapolate: Right Speech will be in accord with this, and will be free of Wrong Intention such as intending to be able to say of oneself, "I, I practice dhutangas" and that sort of thing. Right Speech will, I expect, make no reference to the practices at all beyond consultation with the administrative monks who might need to know for some regulatory or other purpose.

Right Action, then will perform the dhutanga appropriately, with no corners cut and no excessive measures taken.

Right Livelihood, then is the beneficial result. Just as living as a monk is better than living as a butcher, so too living as a monk undergoing what might be called 'Right Dhutanga' is better than living as a monk. Notice that this step cannot be removed from the preceding context: for example, it might be critiqued that "to say a dhutanga was better for a monk than not is a judgment, shame shame i know your name", but as you see this is not accurately reflecting preceding steps.

Right Intention, Right Speech, and Right Action all precede this stage and it is in this way that it is not a judgment about other monks, but an expression of one's conviction that this practice is for your own good, efficacious for the elimination of greed, hatred, and ignorance. It must be seen this way in order to reflect the Right Intention. An unwholesome intention would be doing dhutanga in order to accrue status, for example, but this is precisely why I thought earlier that Right Speech would prevent even mentioning this sort of thing as being ongoing, and thus it can be seen how the interweaving of all previous steps of the Noble Eightfold Path intertwine to create the causes and conditions of the next step.

And what is the benefit? Here, it is easy to see that this momentum will carry directly over into a Nobler Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration, and thus is efficacious for attaining final liberation.