Greetings,

Over the next 8 months we are going to look at each of the path factors in the Eightfold Path. This month we'll explore the first of these path factors which is Right View. I'd like to start by pointing out that the Buddha did not start the path with meditation. He put meditation (mindfulness/concentration) at the end of the path. But given that the path is not linear, it's actually circular, wherever you enter the path, you will go through all the path factors. The fact that most Western practitioners enter the path through meditation is not a problem because meditation will directly or indirectly challenge our view. On the other hand, starting with meditation can sometimes lead to spiritual bypass where we get caught up in the blissful states of meditation and ignore the pain connected to this practice. Which brings us to the word "right." Remember the Buddha used the word "samma" which is analogous with musical harmony. So our view needs to be harmonious to the other 3 truths, that dukkha exists, that our clinging is the cause of that dukkha and that dukkha can cease. I know I've said this before but it's important to remind ourselves over and over and over the interlacing aspects of Dhamma.

View is not just our opinion about experience. It's not about our assumptions or beliefs. View is practicing with how we are perceiving a given moment or situation or experience. Right view is about attending to whether our perception is harmonious with the 4 Noble Truths. There are many ways to talk about right view. I like talking about it from a sense of ownership because wrong view carries with it a sense of I, me or mine. We can tell we're in wrong view if we have a sense of tension in any given moment or situation or experience, but we can't see that we're holding a framing that this is saying something about me, what's mine or who I am. I think the whole point of practicing with right view is to begin to ease that sense of ownership. The more we can ease that sense of ownership, the clearer or "right-er" our view becomes. Much of our lives is spent in a muddled haze of habit. Habit and a sense of ownership go hand in hand. Once we think something is mine, we relate to it in this habitual way. We might be able to see the habits clearly, but we can't see the ignorance of ownership that's driving those habits. That ignorance is the engine behind all our movements, our attitudes, our judgments and reactivity. It's all very conditional and we know this intellectually. But we still go through life with this dust cloud of ownership over our perception. We don't see the fuzziness of this "ownership" dukkha. Right view is about fine tuning our perception so that we can see clearly. So we can move through the world with more intentionality.

I chose the above picture for this very reason. It is absolutely fantastic the way the water drop captures the flower in detail. It took me a couple of moments to realize that that detail was representing the larger fuzzier image behind it. This is what practicing with right view does. It brings the larger fuzzier aspects of our lives, that aspect of being human that is generally seen with just broad strokes, into pristine clarity. You know what I'm talking about. We've all been on retreats or sitting in meditation where something comes into the mind with this clarity and understanding that we completely missed previously. We could have missed it for years. Just living our lives, going about the routines of our daily activities and then in some random meditation, everything comes together and we see the conditionality with pristine clarity. This is the "samma" in right view. It's the harmonious resonance of perception. I don't know if you can tell this, but in that water drop above, we are actually seeing the harmonious nature of light and reflection. Beautiful!

There are 2 views that we see the world through - mundane and super mundane. Mundane view represents our relative reality. It's the conditioned nature of everything. It shows up in our speech, our thoughts and our actions, in other words, our karma. It is the fuzzy aspect of the random things we do in life. The comings and goings of phenomena in our lives. The conditionality of human existence. Having to accept things we don't want. Losing things we want. and generally dealing with the 8 worldly winds. When we move in harmony with the eightfold path we begin to see the mundanity of life in a more realistic sense. We see how our clinging to pushing away what we don't want, grabbing after what we do want, and only wanting the upside of the 8 worldly winds, is just leading to a lot of suffering because most conditions are out of our control. In other words, we don't own the results of the conditions of our lives. We have some influence, but very little control. We suffer because out of our confusion and habit, we thought we owned something. When we see the world in this more super mundane view, we can have more ease around both the truth of the difficulties of human life and the liberation of the path. It really isn't a one or the other. It's like the picture. You can see both the fuzziness of the flower behind the water drop and the clarity of the flower in the water drop. In fact, the clarity in the water drop is actually how you see the beauty of the flower. This is the interplay of mundane and super mundane view. We live both in the relative world with all its ups, downs and all arounds and we live in the absolute world where beauty, metta, generosity and liberation are all arising and passing at the same time. If you don't see this in this world of confusion and chaos, you need to adjust your view.

With a deep bow,

Tuere