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."

phases of spirituality

===== The Phases of Spirituality =====

1. No spirituality
============
In this mode we think that the causes of our problems are out there in the world. For example, we go from one bad relationship to another, and we think the problem is we just haven't found the right person yet. We are generally resistant to anything which makes us look closely into our own behaviour or psychological make up, unless all the wheels fall off, then we might see a counsellor or therapist as a last resort.
Due to the conditions of our lives we may or may not get tired of this mode of existing. Weirdly enough, it does work for most people! But as you're reading this you are probably not one of them, hard luck. Either we get tired of fighting the conditions of our life, or perhaps we are really winning life, great job, great relationship, nice friends, but still feel that there is something more. This leads us to...

2. Spirituality as self-development
===========================
Through some kind of practice that makes our own patterns clear to us, maybe meditation, maybe CBT, maybe therapy, we start to notice subtle things we are doing which cause our problems. Say we always end up working late, seemingly beyond our control. But maybe we start to see that actually we are not being assertive enough, or we have some strange hidden fear of saying no. As soon as we become aware of these patterns, we can start to change them. We stop hiding, and we see that actually as we change our own behaviour, incredible improvements happen in our lives. We notice that actually we create a lot, almost all of the stress and problems in our lives. We can see that if we keep working on ourselves, our lives will continue to become unimaginably better. We become more in control, more happy, more calm, more able to handle stressful situations. Great!

This is the realm that most spiritual practitioners are working in, it makes sense and it feels like improvement. However it is limited, and simply just another place to get stuck. How is this possible? Because it is still looking for improvements. It is someone seeking more happiness or more peace, or someone changing to try reduce their suffering. If we are dedicated or lucky we may catch on to the fact that we can continue to work on ourselves forever, and our lives may get infinitely better, our emotions and feelings may become infinitely happier, but we suspect there is something more, that this is just another treadmill ... they are right. And so we may find ourselves reluctantly led onto...

3. Spirituality as self-immolation
=========================
At this point, it is clear that there is nothing to do with the contents of our experience that is really fulfilling or meaningful. Sometimes we are happy, sometimes sad. We can work on ourselves to accept the sad times and spend more time happy. But something is still not making sense. This is the existential phase. There is nothing to do with the contents of experience, the problem is the way that experience appears to occur to a someone (us).

At this stage, one is bitten by the insight bug; the real spiritual path begins. Meaning that we leave the realm of trying to influence the contents of our experience, and start trying to relate to experience in a totally different way. People generally aren't really interested in this bit.
People might talk about surrender a lot these days, but what they actually mean is, I want to suffer less, so by surrendering to this moment, I believe than in the future I will be more ok with it. This appears to be the path of self-surrender but actually it's still just clinging to happiness. Any self-surrender undertaken with this mindset is tainted. It is like when we break up with someone, we do some work to just "be with" the grieving. But if there is still the belief, hope that we will get back together, all our efforts in letting go are sullied, there is no true healing happening there... so it is with letting go of the self.

At this point one can be described as "seeking". A knot of consciousness is trying to untie itself, someone in a dream is trying to awaken. Practices focus on trying see the true nature of reality (insight), contemplation, and willingness to face the existential fear of spiritual death (not as bad as it sounds). Then if we are lucky and aren't running from fear too much or using our Enlightenment quest to hide from our real lives, we awaken, hooray! A great illusory battle in unmasking a great fictitious self is won, and nothing at all happens. And so, somewhat anticlimactically, we begin...

4. spirituality as nothing whatsoever
============================
The giant quest is done, we are one with the universe, we are nothing, we are infinite, we are an illusion, so is the world, and the dream of an "I" is seen to be as laughable as a child's imaginary friend. And everything is exactly the same as it was before. The pain of loss still pain, fear of being rejected is still fear. Now the only thing which remains is just to stop doing anything at all, and especially stop being Enlightened, and double especially, trying to get more Enlightened. Anytime we notice ourselves trying to do something, having an opinion about how things should be, Reality asks us politely to drop it. If we refuse, we suffer. And the suffering is worse now, because we know deeply what truth is, and how ugly our false beliefs are. Reality asks us to just return to being totally human, just a mammal, nothing special, everything perfect. And in this giant game of doing nothing, anything and everything can happen.

When all of experience is shimmering and empty,
When each sliver of silence brings infinite plenty,
When it's abundantly clear that there's nothing to get,
When there's nothing inside to defend or protect,
When no-one can die, and no-one can be born.
When all is released as it even takes form
Then nothing remains but some tears and a smile,
And allowing this mammal to play for a while.

the path of least resistance

the spiritual path is by definition the path of least resistance, non-doing, effortlessness, etc etc.... and it is not hard.

It requires a bit of dedication but it is absolutely NOT "hard work". Working long hours in a job which we hate is hard work.

Spiritual development is the opposite, it is full of things which SEEM hard or scary, but are actually easy. 

Like telling someone we don't want to see them, or like stepping on stage - seems hard, difficult, but then it's actually very easy, and frees us.

If it seems like the path is a constant struggle - like hard work, fighting an uphill battle to get somewhere... then we have got things twisted... this is not the "spiritual bit".

If we feel our surrender as an ongoing exchange of painful effort for freedom, then this a sign that we are confusing surrender with resistance.

We are so conditioned to do the hard painful familiar thing rather than the easy scary thing and it is this whole way of being that needs to be surrendered... this SEEMS hard and scary :)