The Eightfold Path is the "how to" of the Buddha Way. It is a structure that encompasses the Buddhist teaching and shows us how to live those teachings. The core of the Eightfold Path includes wisdom, concentration, and ethics. These three essential practices comprise the most important teachings for twenty-first century Buddhism. If we understand the entirety of the Eightfold Path we can correct many of the problems of imbalance in our communities and in our personal lives. The purpose of a spiritual life is to align our action with our understanding. If we have the steadfastness to remember the three core practices of wisdom, concentration, and ethics, we can stop the swirling world of suffering and find freedom, we can find the universal perspective in the particulars of our ordinary lives and be free. We can move from a mind of complaint to a mind of gratitude. The Eightfold Path teaches us how to create a spiritual life and how to fully live it.

Eightfold Path, Jikyo Cheryl Wolfer, Temple Ground Press, Paperback, 172 pp, $13.99

Jikyo Cheryl Wolfer is a Soto Zen transmitted Dharma priest and teacher, and a Dharma heir of Eido Frances Carney. Jikyo lived at Olympia Zen Center for ten years during which time she earned a masters degree in counseling psychology from St. Martin's University. Following this, she moved to Port Angeles where she led a Dharma group for many years. She spent a year traveling in Australia where her daughter and grandchildren live before moving to Hutchinson, Kansas. She is an editor for Temple Ground Press currently working to produce an important text, A Blueprint of Enlightenment, A Contemporary Commentary on Dogen Zenji's Gakudo Yojinshu by Gien Inoue. The book is translated by Daigaku Rumm� and Keiko Ohmae. Gien Inoue is considered by some to be "Soto Zen's best kept secret." It is an honor to be editor of such a text and Jikyo brings her full editing skills to bear on this book. She is also editor of Seeds of Virtue, Seeds of Change, and The Eightfold Path also from Temple Ground. Jikyo is open to teach at any dharma center that would invite her to teach from the forthcoming text.