wrong view, right view, no view

Wrong View, Right View, No View

 I would like to talk about capacity. It involves telling you all how great you are and how you should cut yourselves some slack and become even greater

 In Buddhist circles they talk about Wrong View, Right View, No View. In Wrong View, we do things because we're selfish, e.g. we organise a Buddhist disco night because we want to be popular and get laid. In Right View, we do things because we are rigidly following some kind of view which hints us towards selflessness, e.g. we run a Buddhist disco night because we think it's good for us to bring joy to others. This is better than Wrong View, but it's just another place to be stuck.

Buddhism is a system of teachings and ethics all built around No View, the result of the Buddha's realisation. All the Right View is only there to support you to reach No View. So while is absolutely true that you need views, we should discard them as soon as we no longer need them. Views are like water-wings, or stabilisers on a bike. No-one should keep using water wings once they can swim safely, this would be daft.

So when are we ready to embrace No View? It seems like a very far away concept, something only for very advanced practitioners. But actually you are doing it, all the time, already. When you see someone floundering and you give them a hug, when you do spontaneous kind things that you didn't expect, like talk to someone you wouldn't usually, or feel moved to react to people on the street. When sometimes you react to emails or to people in a more patient way, without really thinking about it... this is No View in action.

Zen Master Dogen: "All buddhas’ compassion and sympathy for sentient beings are neither for their own sake nor for others. It is just the nature of buddha-dharma. Isn’t it apparent that insects and animals nurture their offspring, exhausting themselves with painful labors, yet in the end have no reward when their offspring are grown? In this way the compassion of small creatures for their offspring naturally resembles the thought of all buddhas for sentient beings."

Let me take a short detour to talk about capacity. In the East, 1000+ years ago, when a lot of the Buddha's stuff was put in writing for lay people and monks, the average person was uneducated, spent a lot of time just surviving, raising a massive family, and came from a relatively narrow mindset (family, farming, religious values). By contrast, we are all educated - we can understand and debate abstract things at a high level, compared to a 1st century illiterate Indian subsistence farmer. We have freedom that they could never imagine, freedom to use our time as we see fit. They spent literally all their time farming and caring for kids in very hard conditions. And we have a wealth of perspectives and experiences that they didn't.

In short, by those standards, we are the creme de la creme of practitioners, like the educated royals and princes that the Buddha would deliver the most direct, high-level teachings to. These teachings generally concerned wisdom, insight, and the nature of mind, not the day-to-day morality issues. When you have learned to ride, you take the stabilisers off. We should be aiming to overcome fixation to any view, as quickly as possible, for the benefit of all beings. The most important view to unfix is the view of self. People of our capacity should be practising hard to see all phenomena - thoughts, feelings, everything we see, everything we hear - as not self, not other. This, and only this, leads to liberation.

A common trap that we might get stuck in is fixing ourselves - by this I mean any kind of trying to fix our psychological problems. Say we notice we have issues with jealousy in relationships, or self-esteem. This is about as relevant to liberation as a broken leg - if we can still meditate, then it's not a problem. If we really think of anything as a problem e.g. my xyz issue, we are simply reinforcing the view of self. In the West we are so privileged to have these conditions - physical comfort, time to practice, education, and we should really aim high in Dharma practice, to do otherwise is cowardly. All the things that have apparently f+@cked us up, in my case, alcholic parent, too much education and then working in advertising for a few years, have actually given us incredible tools and materials, skills, experiences, for transforming the mind at the highest level, do not be fooled into thinking they are obstacles which must be overcome. Do not think that these conditions hinder your capacity, it is in fact the direct opposite! Do not get caught in another systems of rules about morals. Do not get caught in psychological fixing of our emotional stuff. We are like toddlers learning to ride bikes, the stabilisers are off, and we are pedalling, scared, with our dad holding us upright.. "don't let go Dad" we say again and again, and then we look back, see our dad 20 metres away, and we realise we have been pedalling alone for some time now

...such should be our relationship to the views of the Dharma...

If you would like some view meantime, then here is some beautiful prose from the most awesome Tibetan super-enlightened sage Longchenpa c1300. I don't have a clue what he's on about but it gives me a massive Dharma-boner.

"Pure mind is like the empty sky,
without memory, supreme meditation;
it is our own nature, unstirring, uncontrived,
and wherever that abides is the superior mind,
one in buddhahood without any sign,
one in view free of limiting elaboration,
one in meditation free of limiting ideation,
one in conduct free of limiting endeavor,
and one in fruition free of limiting attainment.
vast! spacious! released as it stands!
with neither realization nor non-realization;
experience consummate! no mind! it is open to infinity."