!66 The Buddhist Path
basic structure can still be seen as revealing something general
about the nature of the spiritual path: the basic dependence;
of one's actions (items 3-5) upon one's beliefs and aspiration~
(items 1-2), and, in turn, of one's basic emotional state (items'
6-8) upon one's actions. In fact here is a certain parallelism
between the structure of the eightfold path and the chain of;
dependent arising, where ignorance conditions certain action&l
which in turn condition one's rebirth. The parallelism is clearer
when, as often in the early texts, we find talk of wrong view, wrong'
intention, wrong speech, wrong action, wrong livelihood, wron~'
endeavour, wrong mindfulness, wrong concentration. Moreover;!
as the positive sequence of dependent arising begins with faith\
(sraddhii/saddhii), so the sequence of the eightfold path begins;
with right view (samyag-dr~tilsammii-ditthi). Without some inP
tial trust in the fact that there is a way out of suffering, withouf
some seed of understanding of the nature of suffering and its cesJ
sation, we would never begin to look for the path and we would(
have no hope of finding it.
An ancient formula describes the beginning of the path in the
following terms:
A Tathagata appears in the world ... He teaches the Dharma that is,
beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle, and beautiful in the:
end. A householder or a householder's son or someone born into some^7
family hears that Dharma. And hearing the Dhafma, he gains faith in
the Tathagata.^2
Faith or confidence in the Buddha, his teaching (dharma/dhamma)
and the community (smigha) of those who have followed and real-
ized the teaching is the starting point of the Buddhist path that
is assumed both by the earliest texts and by those brought up
in traditional Buddhist cultures today. Yet those of us whose
sensibilities have been moulded by more recent Western inteiJ
lectual traditions are often uncomfortable in the presence of
religious faith and its devotional and ritual expression. Indeeq
nineteenth-and early twentieth-century enthusiasts have on occa~
sion presented Buddhism as the answer to the modern world's