About Eightfold Path

The Eightfold Path is the Buddha's practical framework for reducing suffering. It's not a set of commandments or beliefs you have to accept. It's more like a map, a guide for how to think more skillfully, act more intentionally, and train your mind to find greater peace.

The eight parts cover everything from how you see the world to how you speak, how you make a living, and how you focus your attention. It's remarkably practical. The Buddha wasn't interested in abstract philosophy. He was interested in what actually works.

That's what drew me to it. And that's why I named this platform after it.

EightfoldPath.com is a free learning platform for Buddhism. Not a Buddhist platform, but a place for anyone to learn about Buddhism from a secular, non-religious, non-dogmatic perspective.

Everything here, the podcast episodes, the transcripts, the introductory courses, is freely accessible. You don't have to pay to learn. You don't have to subscribe to anything. You don't even have to agree with anything. You just have to be curious.

For those who want to go deeper, there's a community of fellow learners and additional tools. But the teachings themselves? Those stay free. Always.

My mission for the past decade has been simple: make Buddhism accessible.

Not watered down. Not oversimplified. Accessible.

Buddhism has profound insights about the human mind, about suffering, about how we create our own problems and how we can stop. But too often, those insights get buried under jargon, ritual, and cultural barriers that make them feel foreign or intimidating to people in the West.

I wanted to change that. I wanted to take these ideas and explain them in plain English. To show how they apply to ordinary, everyday life. To help people who aren't looking to become Buddhists, just looking to be a better whatever they already are.

That's what led to the podcast. That's what led to the books. That's what led here.

I started the Secular Buddhism Podcast in 2015. Over the past decade, it's been downloaded more than 16 million times by roughly 2 million listeners around the world. My book, No Nonsense Buddhism for Beginners, has been the #1 bestselling Buddhism book on Amazon for years.

I don't say that to impress you. I say it because it explains something.

The book works because it's written as questions and answers. Real questions people actually ask, answered in plain language without jargon. The podcast works because it meets people where they are. No prerequisites. No assumptions about what you already know or believe.

That approach, taking big ideas and making them feel approachable, is what resonates. And it's what I've tried to build into every part of this platform.

One of the most common requests I get is: “Do you offer one-on-one teaching?”

I wish I could. But there's no way to scale myself to be available to everyone who wants that kind of direct guidance. For years, that felt like a limitation I just had to accept.

Then AI changed everything.

This platform includes an AI assistant trained on over 200 podcast episodes, my books, my courses, and hundreds of hours of teachings. You can ask it questions and have a real conversation. It's not me, but it draws from everything I've taught over the past decade. It's the closest thing to having a teacher available whenever you need one.

There's so much content here that it would take weeks to consume it all. Now you don't have to. You can simply ask what you want to know and get a thoughtful response that meets you where you are.

There's a famous Buddhist metaphor about a raft. A man needs to cross a river, so he builds a raft. Once he reaches the other shore, he doesn't strap the raft to his back and carry it forever. He leaves it behind. It served its purpose.

That's how I think about this platform.

Use it for as long as it helps you. Learn what you came to learn. And when it's served its purpose, let it go without guilt. I'm not trying to keep you here forever. I'm trying to help you get where you're going.

We succeed when you no longer need us.