Emptiness, suchness, self, and the activity of karma are these types of things. Within Buddhist teachings and literature these are vast subjects. And yet even as a beginner, it is critical to begin cultivating an understanding of them due to the fact that all Buddhist practice flows from a central framework of understanding known as Right View which includes these topics as centerpieces.
As a beginner, it seems to me that an intellectual understanding is helpful. However, being intellectually informed is not enough. At some point knowledge becomes a hindrance, and can be a kind of prison. I can use knowledge to bring me to a certain point, but from this point the only way for me to truly understand what is being alluded to within the teachings, is to test them out directly within my day to day life.
Right View challenges the mind the way that Quantum Physics challenges our understanding of the world according to Classical Newtonian Physics. In fact, Right View demands that I go beyond my "ordinary" mind. It asks me to see things in ways that I've never looked before, in places where I'd never considered looking.
Developing an understanding of Right View requires me to let go of many foundational ideas about how I understand and approach my daily life that I often take for granted. It questions and challenges everything I have ever believed about who I am and the way that I believe that things truly exist. It requires me to dig deeply within, and then to let go.
In order to understand Right View I must develop a new capacity for understanding; one that is quite different from my normal way of thinking.Right View is not for the casual onlooker. Attempting to understand Right View in only a casual way as merely an intellectual exercise is a complete waste of time. However, for those who are ready and properly motivated to look more deeply into the nature of themselves and the world around them, Right View is a path of liberation.
More than candy for the intellect, Right View requires meditation, concentration and deep contemplation. It requires me to develop a new capacity for "looking deeply" into the nature of everything within my life and the world I live in. It is not something that happens all at once.
As my capacity for understanding deepens, as my daily practice of meditation, mindfulness and concentration deepens, I gradually begin to see a very different world from the one that I had thought I had known - from a brand new place with a totally fresh and new perspective.It is something which develops over time as I open myself to a deeper level of insight born from the daily practice of mindfulness and concentration. It is like planting a fresh seed in the soil. If I don't water the soil the seed won't grow. However, if I water the soil through my daily practice of mindfulness and concentration my seed will begin to grow until one day it will begin to push through the surface of the soil where it will see the sun for the first time, and begin to receive the fresh and dynamic rays of insight. If there is no watering, there will be no sunlight, or insight, to help the tiny sprout grow and eventually flourish.
I have been trying to understanding these subjects for many years, perhaps even my entire life. What I present here within this series of blog posts is a summary from several sources that lays out the basic understanding and logic of these topics in order to deepen my intellectual understanding as an aid to meditative contemplation.
As we are reminded by Buddha, the teachings themselves are like a boat that we can use to help us cross the river of our own ignorance. We can use the boat to cross the river, but in order to enter a new world of deeper understanding we must let go of the boat that brought us there.So it is very important to understand that the concepts about Right View are not Right View. As I understand it, an intellectual understanding of Right View provides the tools that we can apply to our direct experience of life as meditations and contemplations in order to develop a kind of living insight into the nature of what we are experiencing in the here and the now. At some point, in order to move directly into life's flow with immediacy and intimacy we must let go of all conceptual thinking, including that which has helped us to get there.
As far as I can tell, Right View cannot be understood in the traditional sense at all, as its nature includes the transcendence of the thinking from which such an understanding is being sought.According to the ancient Chinese wisdom of the Tao Te Ching, "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name."
Because we are part of what we are attempting to describe, we cannot describe it. And yet it is only because we are part of what we are attempting to describe that we have the capacity to experience it directly and understand.Someone else can point towards it, but we are the only ones that can take it out of the laboratory of intellectual jargon, and investigate it within the living of our daily lives. As I see it, it is only by living Right View through our daily practice of meditation, mindfulness and concentration, that Right View can be born and begin to flourish within us.
I am motivated to practice because I have tasted suffering.
For me, whatever effort there is, is well worth it.
And yet while effort is required, I understand and value non-effort just as much as effort.Understanding and living from the perspective of Right View has the power to transform our understanding and our minds in a deeply profound way. It has the capacity to introduce us to an expanded and very different way of relating with ourselves and with our world than what we have been living. And even though at first there is much that may seem contradictory to our old way of seeing things, in the end we may see that both views always remain helpful and, in fact, always exist in perfect harmony with each other.
To be continued...
