Right View: Seeing With New Eyes

The Eightfold Path consists of eight practices: right view, right resolve, right speech, right conduct, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, and right samadhi ('meditative absorption or union'). This talk focuses on the first aspect (right view) that helps you walk down an enlightened path.

*Please note this talk was recorded live so the audio quality is slightly compromised

Transcript

The Eightfold Path consists of right view or insight or understanding,

Of right attitude or thought or right intention,

Then of right speech or verbal communication,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

Right effort,

Right mindfulness or awareness,

I spoke on on Sunday,

And number eight,

Right collectiveness and steadiness,

Which I gave a talk last week.

And then again,

Right view or insight.

So right view is the first aspect of this Eightfold Path.

It's a samma-titti,

And samma means not just right,

But right,

Skillful,

Wholesome,

In accordance with reality,

Depending a little bit on the context.

This Eightfold Path is not a graduated path leading from A to B,

But rather a kind of spiral where every practice aspect influences all other seven.

But we have to start somewhere.

This is traditionally right view.

So the title of this talk is Right View,

Seeing with New Eyes.

First,

The famous quotation by Marcel Proust from his La Prisonnière.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes,

But in seeing with new eyes.

When we practice without having established a clear and correct view,

Our practice will not be so effective.

Of course,

We can meditate,

That is almost always good or very good.

But on a real path of liberation,

We are not likely to get too far.

In other words,

It's not enough to be mindful and collected.

You also need to know exactly what to do and where to go with this.

In order to go on a trip with a car,

It's not enough to be able to use gas and brake and steering wheel.

You also need to know exactly where the trip should go and how we get there.

For the same reason,

We need right view.

We have to look at the landscapes,

At our moment to moment experiences,

Which are happening right now,

With completely new eyes or with right view.

And right view is usually quite different from our habitual view.

Master Cheng Yan,

An amazing Chinese Chan master who taught the retreat here for us in 2004,

He writes,

Right view is fundamental to the whole Noble Eightfold Way.

Without the right perspective,

One cannot practice the Noble Eightfold Way correctly.

For practitioners,

Not to have the right view is like driving on a mountain road without headlights by night.

With right view,

It is relatively easy to walk the way.

Sariputta,

One of the two principal disciples of the Buddha,

Made this clear in a discourse.

Among others,

He mentioned three areas of understanding,

Emphasizing that one is not yet on the path to liberation,

As long as these three aspects have not been understood.

What is meant by liberation is being free of emotions and states of inner suffering,

Like desire,

Attachment,

Annoyance,

Anger,

Hatred,

Envy,

Conceit,

And ultimately delusion,

The whole range.

So there are three areas.

The first of these three areas is the understanding and realization of the four so-called noble truths,

Which Stephen Batchell calls the Four Ennobling Truths,

Which I think is very interesting,

Because it's not so much the truth that are noble,

But the understanding of them.

Well,

I sometimes call them Four Spiritually Relevant Facts.

Carol spoke about them the other night.

Assuming that most of you know them well,

I still repeat them,

Is to understand that existence is unsatisfactory and often distressful and painful.

The second one is to recognize the causes of this mostly inner suffering and to end it.

The third is to realize inner freedom from suffering,

And the fourth is to walk the path or to apply the correct practice.

It's a big and comprehensive program,

A lifetime program for most of us.

To make this seemingly philosophical statement more practical,

We need to observe with mindfulness how we react to any given momentary experience.

When we,

For example,

Have an unpleasant experience,

A headache,

Let's say,

We experience the first fact of truth,

Suffering.

When we react to it with aversion,

The second truth is at play,

Increasing the suffering of that moment.

When we meet the situation with mindful awareness,

Understanding an equanimity,

And change to an accepting mode,

It's the practice of the path,

It's the fourth truth.

When we feel that the mind has relaxed and become peaceful,

It's the experience of the third truth,

The truth of a,

In this case,

Momentary release from suffering.

The headache might still be there,

But the problem is gone.

Traditionally,

The four truths are illustrated as follows.

We have an ailment,

It's the first truth.

We see a doctor who recognizes the cause of this ailment,

The second truth.

We take the medication and or engage in the proper therapy,

That's the fourth truth.

We get cured and healthy again,

That's the third truth,

The cessation of that ailment.

Before we understand what is meant by these ennobling truths or relevant facts,

And have realized them to some extent,

We're still not on the path to liberation,

According to Sariputta.

I think,

Seriously,

We should at least know them by heart,

In order to get a clear sense of direction of what we're doing here,

Especially for those who practice much of their life.

The second area mentioned in this discourse,

In order to end the cause of all inner suffering,

Which is the second ennobling truth or fact,

We need to recognize and understand the effects of our actions,

Of thinking,

Of speaking,

And of doing,

Acting,

And in particular,

Their consequences on ourselves.

That's the important part,

What does what we think or speak or act,

How does that act on ourselves.

Padmasambhava pointed out,

If you want to understand the past,

Look to your present conditions,

Because it's from the past that we got to the point where we are.

If you want to know the future,

Look at your present actions,

And of course the intentions behind our present actions.

So at present we have the state of mind which we fostered in the past,

In the future we'll have those we cultivate now,

Through activities of thought,

Speech,

And action.

We develop tendencies each time we think,

Speak,

Or act.

I think Carol has spoken about this a lot.

It means happiness depends on our mind states,

The ones we have created and the ones we are now creating.

It's the Burmese master Mahasi Sayadaw who points this out.

Here's what the Sufi mystic Rumi has to say about this,

Somewhat different language.

You are cold,

But you expect kindness.

What you do comes back in the same form.

God is compassionate,

But if you plant barley,

Don't expect to harvest wheat.

Makes sense.

Accordingly,

We must learn to distinguish between those intentions and motivations behind our actions which are unwholesome and creates offering for ourselves,

And those which are wholesome and create inner well-being for ourselves.

Dwelling in craving,

Desire,

Irritation,

And delusion creates an oppressive,

Tight,

And unpleasant inner climate within ourselves and strengthens such unwholesome tendency in the future.

The interesting area we can look at what it does,

How it feels when the mind states are unwholesome.

I mean,

It's so obvious.

And then also if we dislike them and meet them with aversion,

Then we have more of the same.

Dwelling in states of generosity,

Of openness,

Of kindness,

Of compassion,

Of joy creates a lighthearted inner climate and strengthens such wholesome,

Positive tendency in the future.

In Buddhist jargon,

We have to understand karma and its effect on ourselves.

That's really what karma means.

If we understand this,

And this is quite simple,

I mean it's a very,

Very complex area to understand deeply in detail,

But the essence of it,

What's important is quite simple.

Unwholesome mind states create unhappy minds,

Wholesome mind states create happy minds,

And the corresponding tendency in ourselves in the future.

If we have understood this,

We have right view and are,

According to Sariputra,

On the path.

I was number two.

The third area,

Which is perhaps the most important one,

We must understand the fact that all of existence,

Including ourselves,

Is a process of dependent arising and passing away.

It's also what we watch day in,

Day out,

How things come and go,

Come and go,

Come and go.

This in turn means that at the same time all things are without the self.

Remember the word anatta,

Or the empty of self-existence.

It's like the two sides of the same coin.

It's all a process of dependent,

Conditioned arising,

As Carol explained in many,

Many examples yesterday and before.

And for exactly that reason,

Because it is this process,

It cannot possibly have an independent self somehow,

Or an independent,

Somehow solid or permanent soul,

Or I or me or whoever,

In the middle of all this process.

In Buddhist words,

Everything that is constantly changing is at the same time empty of self-existence.

Maybe it sounds somewhat theoretical or philosophical,

But the Buddha was very strong on this point.

It's a good quote to remember.

To see dependent arising is to understand the Dharma,

The teachings,

Reality.

To understand the Dharma means to see dependent arising.

It's essential to understand how they work.

Now I'll probably get somewhat repetitive.

All things in this world,

Including ourselves,

Appear and disappear in rapid,

Ever-changing sequences which follow a strict lawfulness.

It's not random.

It's not chaotic.

Yet if things can change constantly and rapidly from one thing into another,

There cannot be as much reality in them as we tend to attribute them to them.

In fact,

They're quite empty of any lasting or graspable substantiality.

They are dependently arising and empty at the same time,

Empty in the sense of you can't hold on to them,

You can't grasp them.

They're not solid in any way or static.

When we see and understand this point,

Our practice has become the path to liberation.

It doesn't mean that we completely understand it,

But it means that we see what is meant by it from looking into our experience.

That's what we're doing here.

That's what's so much more interesting than looking at this experience and then figuring out how I could change it and get rid of it,

And then looking at that experience and figuring out why I came and what my grandmother did and how I came here and how I could change it and how I could make it better.

It's to see the process.

And that's much easier even,

Because it's happening all the time,

Constantly,

Somehow to start to look at this.

To illustrate a practice without right view,

Perhaps we can imagine what happens when someone drives a car without knowing the rules,

Not being clear about whether he should drive on the left or on the right side of the road,

Not understanding the rules of the right of way,

Not being aware of the huge difference between going at 50 miles an hour or at 130,

Also not knowing the city and having no road map.

How would one ever get to Rome?

We need to know that.

Ludwig Fleck,

An epistemologist and historian of science said,

In order to see,

We first have to know.

Otherwise,

We look,

But we don't see.

I like that.

In order to see,

We first have to know.

Otherwise,

We look,

But we don't see.

We have to know what to look for,

How to look,

Before we actually see.

Zato Tejaniya explains,

Meditators have three jobs.

One is to cultivate mindful awareness,

And one is to cultivate continuity of mindful awareness.

That's nothing new.

But these are numbers two and three.

What's really interesting is number one.

In the first place comes what is right view.

It says number one,

The first job is right view.

And then comes mindfulness and continuity of mindfulness.

He places it in the first place.

It's interesting for us to hear that.

Right view means that we carefully observe the moment to moment experiences with realistic understanding and interest,

The seeing,

The hearing,

The sensing,

The feeling,

The thinking,

Which take place continuously every second.

And Tejaniya explains,

After some time you will realize that all this is just nature,

Like it's just life.

At work.

That it has got nothing to do with you.

That there are just mental and physical processes.

As long as we do not understand that mind and object are just natural phenomena,

We will believe that there is an eye who is observing.

Remember,

It's very close to what the Buddha said to Pahiya.

And he continues,

The mind is an aspect of nature.

It's not I,

It's not self,

It's not person.

The mind is a natural phenomenon.

Only when you have this right idea can you truly be aware.

You're practicing awareness to find out about this nature.

While you may not understand or realize right view at first,

You can relate to everything that happens with this right view.

Remembering,

It's just happening.

It's just happening.

Even when I decide to do it that way,

It's the outcome of a process of my conditioning and the situation,

My background.

And then the decision is made and they think it was I who did it.

I've read that the thought that it's me who does it comes almost half a second later.

I don't see that,

But this is sort of scientist's finding,

Which I don't know if it's true.

It's interesting.

But it's very obvious there's not somebody.

It's happening.

It's all nature.

So,

Sayadaw continues,

Why are we practicing awareness?

We want to know the truth,

The reality of things.

That is why we maintain awareness or mindfulness.

Do not forget this goal.

Right view means to recognize that the nature of our perceptions and of our life is an ever-changing process and that the other side of this is the non-self-existence of the person and of all things.

It's the non-solidity,

The non-graspability of I or anything else.

But our problem is that it feels like there is someone.

Me,

I,

Self.

It seems so self-evident that hardly anyone ever questions these I-feelings,

These I-thoughts.

It's like,

I think and feel,

Therefore I am.

Period.

It's really interesting too.

I had this list of all the mind states,

Like a few days ago,

That on the third foundation of mindfulness that we can observe,

That's where we can also observe I-thoughts and I-feelings.

Just to notice that it's sometimes there and it comes with an experience and often it's not there.

We start to be aware of that too.

It comes and goes depending on conditions.

Of course we do think and feel.

The problem is the deceptive,

Seemingly real and very important sense of self.

Through this diluted perception,

Through this deceptive optics,

Reality is experienced in distorted ways.

Perhaps this is what H.

M.

Tomlinson,

A British journalist,

Meant when he wrote,

We see things not as they are,

But as we are.

Also interesting and true.

Everything is life,

Everything is nature,

Everything is connected.

Only I seem to be different.

I is somewhat special,

Separate,

Independently existing.

And more than all of that,

It's of course the center of the universe.

With eight billion centers of the universe,

We get exactly this chaos which we are experiencing in our world.

In the Dharma teachings,

This looking with old,

Habitually fixated eyes is distorted and deceived perception is called vipalasa.

Something like perverted perception or reversed perception.

We see and experience as permanent what is actually transient and impermanent.

We see and hope for lasting satisfaction from what is actually inadequate or even painful,

Dukkha.

We see as an independent I or self what is actually a process of dependent arising.

Exactly this is meant by wrong view as opposed to right view.

It is precisely what causes our suffering again and again.

Internal conflicts,

Disappointments,

Worries,

Fears,

Grief,

Or as the Buddha expressed it,

When uneducated,

Ordinary people are hit by an unpleasant feeling or a pain,

They worry and grieve,

They lament,

Beat their breasts,

Weep,

And are distraught.

Normally in life we spend most of our time avoiding unpleasantness and looking for better,

More pleasant experiences.

That's the main job day in,

Day out really.

Yet as long as we see ourselves and life with the eyes of these distortions,

It does not help to search for new,

Different,

Better experiences again and again.

I mean we do it all life long but it doesn't lead that far.

We do that in everyday life,

We do it a lot in meditation.

We need a new way of seeing a different perspective.

Again as Marcel Proust says,

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in seeing with new eyes.

As long as we meditate in the hope or trying,

Managing to get better landscapes,

New landscapes,

Nicer landscapes,

It's not going to be that helpful.

We don't need to meditate for that.

We do that all day long anyway,

That's fine.

Actually I can imagine better ways than sitting here like a vegetable and walking up and down.

It means we also need a new perspective in relation to our moment to moment experience.

This wanting pleasant and not wanting unpleasant seems to be the impetus,

The direction and the sole purpose and goal of our existence.

And if you don't see this,

I think it's very interesting to take a day or two of a retreat and really look what moves us from the moment we wake up.

So interesting,

There's almost nothing else,

Then either we want to go away from it or we want to get it.

I mean really,

Honestly of course it takes some honesty.

Look at that,

Maybe tomorrow through the day,

Striking.

Unfortunately the moment to moment experiences that emerge and disappear at any moment,

Depending on changing conditions,

Are not able to permanently meet our hopes and expectations.

It's not their bad intentions,

They can't.

Because this perpetual inadequacy lies at the basis of all of life.

It's stuka.

In many ways stuka works.

The Buddha said,

Just as fire insatiably reaches for new fuel,

The craving for the desirable is not still through the fulfillment of this craving.

Even if we get what we want,

It's fulfilled for a moment,

But not longer.

That's stuka.

There is a constant unrest and never quite arriving.

Carol mentioned already the German monk and teacher Biko Onalai,

It translates this stuka as friction.

Things work alright for a moment and then it rattles and shakes again,

Subtly or dramatically.

And there's really no way to stop this.

Ruth Denison,

German-American Dharma teacher,

Offered a funny illustration for stuka.

It's called The Leak in the Canoe.

We're paddling along in our canoe on this fantastic lake,

With green woods and white snow mountains mirroring in placid waters.

The sun shines brightly and pleasantly.

Everything is perfect,

Except that there is a leak in the canoe.

The water keeps on seeping in.

Not too bad,

You know,

Just seeps in some.

Just so that we have to scoop out the water every few minutes.

It's okay again,

But it keeps on seeping in.

So we scoop it out again.

Keeps on seeping in.

Scoop it out again.

That's how samsara works,

Even at its best.

Ruth Denison also pointed out another way of explaining and experiencing stuka.

She said,

Stuka is the suffering that arises when we want things to be different from what they are.

That's obvious.

Unfortunately,

What we want almost every minute,

You know,

Something could be different,

Would be better.

Small things,

Just if it were a little better.

Stuka,

Inadequacy,

Friction,

Often suffering,

Was taught by the Buddha as the first ennobling truth of those four,

The first relevant fact of existence.

It's a fact we must recognize and understand.

Just as we need to recognize a disease at first,

We must realize,

Oh,

This is,

This and this problem.

To understand that we need to act in order to find the therapy by which we then get rid of the cause and get well again.

That's again those four truths.

So the first one is seeing what is impermanent,

What is impermanent as impermanent and not as permanent.

And this is seeing as stuka,

What is stuka,

Rather than the other way around.

We also need this new perspective in regard Oh,

It only comes to impermanence.

With regard to the impermanence and the transience of all things,

Of all happenings,

Of all human beings.

Patrul Rinpoche,

The great Sokchen master,

Wrote,

If you can choose only one Dharma practice,

If all the possibilities you had to choose one,

Then choose the meditation on impermanence.

When the beginning meditation on death and impermanence lead you to take up the Dharma,

Then it inspires you to practice what is wholesome.

The meditation of impermanence lead you to cut your ties with the things of this life that are impermanent.

Then it inspires you to cast off all clinging to samsara,

To that which creates suffering.

It leads you to practice with diligence.

And finally,

It helps you to give birth to liberating wisdom.

Whether we see things,

Our lives,

As permanent,

As self-existent and believing that they're ultimately fulfilling,

Or whether we see our existence,

Not just intellectually but directly,

As a river of constantly changing processes,

As a dynamic dance,

Makes a decisive difference to our life.

It all comes down to the question of how do we want to live our lives?

Fixed or flexible,

Weighed down or at ease,

On guard or open,

Constrained or free,

Dead or alive?

And the answer to this lies in right view.

In order to acquire new eyes or realistic views,

We need consistent practice.

And the $64 question,

Especially for the experienced practitioners among us,

Is do we truly practice for this purpose?

If we're quite deeply rooted in right view,

It will probably be the case.

It's part of looking at our motivation,

Which changes often and a lot.

Also part of what we can renew every morning.

Why do we practice?

What's the point?

What do we want from it?

Now I'd like to take a few minutes to point out very skillful traditional ways of developing right view.

It's the process of information,

Reflection and meditation.

In many Buddhist traditions,

One speaks of three methods or three kinds of wisdom that come as supports for the practice.

They are Sutta Mayapanna in the Theravada tradition or Thöpa in the Tibetan tradition,

Cintha Mayapanna or Sampa,

Bhavana Mayapanna or Gumpa.

And that means listening to Dharma information,

Or we do right now,

Reflecting on it,

Number two,

And meditating and applying it to our lives is number three.

The first is the understanding,

Which comes about through Dharma information,

From books,

From instructions by teachers and in our modern times,

You know,

From downloading talks or streaming talks and everything we find out from the internet.

Without correct and solid information,

We do not know what this practice is all about.

It would be like reading a few medical books,

Attending a few lectures at the university and then opening a doctor's cabinet.

Comprehensive,

Accurate information is a very important basis for the practice,

That's Sutta Mayapanna or Thöpa in Tibetan,

Listening information.

The second kind of understanding or wisdom comes about through contemplation and systematic reflection.

In this we think regularly,

Daily,

Over and over again about what we've learned through listening,

Through other channels of information,

And integrate it into our daily thinking and acting,

But mostly think about it,

Reflect about it.

It's maybe the most difficult for us,

You know,

We're so used now,

And there's something we're curious about,

We want to know,

You know,

With the handy it takes ten seconds and,

You know,

We've Googled it and there's the whole explanation.

I don't know how it is with you,

I'm very old,

I forget it within maybe the same amount of time.

It was too fast,

I can't keep it unless I think about it,

I reflect about it,

I make it consistent somehow for my brain.

Doing this we change our usual view and make it increasingly into a Dharma view,

So as to see with new eyes,

That is Chitta Mayapanna or Sampa reflecting.

I feel that our Western Vipassana tradition,

This aspect is somewhat lacking.

I don't think in Asia it's lacking because they grow up in that whole culture.

Through strong emphasis on formal retreats,

One may get the sense that the Dharma practice is exclusively about meditation.

That's what Dharma is,

You know,

You sit down and maybe you walk up and down and that's where it happens.

It's not the fault of the Theravada tradition out of which Vipassana evolved,

Since there is a lot of reflection and contemplation in the Theravada,

But also in the Tibetan and in many other traditions.

Even the chanting and the recitations,

Which the nuns and the monks and very often the lay people perform every day,

Are really reflections and enumerations of different Dharma practice themes.

One comes to think about them every day,

Regularly.

There are reflections on impermanence,

On death,

On unsatisfactoriness,

On oneself,

And there are also reflections on what is wholesome,

You know,

You think about what is wholesome,

Or honoring liberating wisdom,

Honoring thinking about full awakening,

Or like Carol mentioned,

The nuns,

You know,

The devotion they have for the Buddha when they're not texting.

That's what one can reflect about,

Or the appreciation of generosity and of goodness and of compassion,

Sympathetic joy.

The Buddha highly recommended wise reflection.

He said,

Just as dawn is the harbinger of the sun,

Harbinger is the forbote,

So is wise reflection the harbinger of the noble path of liberation.

Hearing,

Listening to Dharma information,

Reflecting and thinking about it.

The third kind of understanding and wisdom comes about from direct experience,

From meditation,

From spiritual development and its implementation in our daily life.

This is pavanamayapanya or kompa,

Meditating,

Applying one's understanding,

The practical application.

Marilyn Vossavante,

The person apparently with the highest IQ according to the Guinness Book of Records,

She wrote,

To acquire knowledge one must study,

But to acquire wisdom one must observe.

We need both.

We need all the help we can get.

We need first correct and extensive knowledge,

Followed by reflection and finally direct application of what we've learned,

In order to increasingly transform the view and the understanding of our life into right view.

Makes our practice more effective and our life much richer.

To meditate and practice with the right view is consistent with the intention of the Buddha,

Which is expressed as follows,

And I'll end with this.

In the past,

Monks,

And also now,

I teach only this,

Suffering and the ending of suffering,

The unshakable liberation of the heart.

Thank you for your interest.

It's 45 minutes for walking.

Visit dharmaseed.

Org slash donate.

Reviews

So very helpful to begin my day of practice contemplating right view.
Thank you.

I will come back to this excellent generous teaching again, thank you 🙏🏼

Excellent teaching, thank you💚

Really well done

Thank you for deepening our understanding of right view.

Very profoundly deep. I Didn’t grasp everything but will listen to it again and again. Thank you and namaste 🙏

Requires one to listen to it several times to absorb it all.

Wonderful talk. Very useful and practical information. Thank you

Created for me a better understanding of impermanence... beautiful