The Eightfold Path to Failure
Personal Project
This project is based around a Buddhist way of reaching enlightenment, it's called 'The Eightfold Path to Enlightenment'.
I found the idea of introducing this 'Eightfold Path' to my life really interesting and I was really excited by the concept and because I hoped it would be something I would apply to my everyday life even once the project was over.
However after I initially started this project as a research and personal development project, I very quickly realised it was just not something I could learn in a year let alone a 9 week period (which is how long i had for this project).
The bases of The Eightfold Path to Enlightenment is set by eight rules that you follow with everything you do.
1. The right view or way of perceiving the world: See things without expectation, judgment, or preconceived notions. See things as they are.
2. The right intention: Work from a place of pure intentions (no harm to anyone/ anything). No manipulating.
3. The right speech: Say what you need to say, and say it from the heart.
4. The right discipline: Give up your tendency to complicate things by imposing your fantasy perceptions and expectations on how things should be. Take life as it is.
5. The right life: “Bloom where you’re planted” and do the best you can, with attention to detail and integrity, no matter your job — even if you feel it’s totally wrong for you and your talents are better used elsewhere (yes, you can change jobs, but don’t spend your work hours wishing you were someplace else).
6. The right effort: Doing things the right way removes the need for struggle or the desire to overcome, just as seeing things as they allow us to work with what is.
7. The right mindfulness: You become mindful of the most minute, mundane, tiny details of your life experience: the way you talk, the way you stand, the way you walk, your thoughts, your emotions, the way you work, etc. — especially the actions that have become habits.
8. The right concentration: Most of the time, we run on autopilot and our minds are everywhere except the here and now. Meditation teaches you to discipline your mind so that it remains HERE and NOW instead of in the past, future, or any other location.
I had always planned on making an animation to make this project. I began making things that I could use to work along side the texts.
This structure of life is very time consuming and it took a lot of out me trying to live by these set of strict rules and that was only after about a week. This wasn't because I didn't agree with the rules that had been set morally. I think from my point of view they are rules that we should follow anyway to be good people and to make the most of life. However, I found myself constantly questioning all the things I was doing and saying and the way I was moving and it actually became too intense.
So after talking to my peers I decided to change the way I was going to be approaching this project, I decided to then make it about the way I had completely and utterly failed at bringing this way of living into my own life.
I then began to make to text. Each one was animated and i found it to be so rewarding and I was really pleased with the final outcome.
It's the first official stop-motion thing I have ever made by myself and I'm aware it can be a little painful to watch as it's a little jolty but I think this adds to point I'm trying to make about how I completely failed at introducing this eightfold path into my life.
These are some of the animations I made for a few of the different paths to enlightenment. It took a long time to make each one and it took a lot of patience to complete each one especially when one went wrong and I would have to start over.
