Editorial notes: This post was found in ‘Draft’ mode in the original blog and may be incomplete. It is published here in its original state. It was last updated on 23/01/2016.
Perspective of samma ditthi[I]
Right view is an achievement of comprehension, regarding the nature of experience. It is the answer to the question, “What is reality”, and also “What is the nature of existence”. An explication of its theory can be entered by multiple routes. This makes it difficult to be thorough or systematic (esp. with prejudice for ordinal priorities).
On my journey, it has appeared.
Consider right view as a perspective to be sought and engaged. Now back-up and consider the nature of a perspective that may be sought and engaged.
{{A paradigm is not a representation of reality; it is a key for its observation. “Key” implies a perfect fit, which is accurate, but it may also imply an exclusive fit, which is not. A perspective is a perfect fit insofar as it may sufficiently encompass all that it sees. Perspectives are exclusive only to the extent that they contradict one another. Often they may be irrelevant to each other’s scope of operation, despite overlapping magisteria.
Let it be assumed: In my reality: On my journey it has appeared:}}
Most often perspectives are worn blindly, as clothes on a corpse, self-fulfilling their own value by the power of momentum and the absence of overwhelming resistance. But every perspective may be observed; in the silence of self-awareness and the distance of reflection.
The ability to see that prism through which we visit sight fluctuates. For instance, a perspective is seen most vividly when conducted through the medium of novelty, and when contrasted against foreign vistas. The perspective may appear stark and bold at these times, obvious in the manner of its diffractions and the moulds of its transubstantiations. Yet these too fade along the axis of memories, and that which appeared astonishing (casting its rays into every name and place and form) becomes forgotten in the guise of subconscious presumptions (that serve practical needs sufficiently to rarely again be considered).
This means that perspectives need to be carefully delineated.
Right view may be studied as the geography of a distant moon – incidental, arbitrary, insular in its relativity – or as annotations upon the notes and motes of daily living (a dissipating mist of expectations, revelations, and the autobiography of responses). And if the latter is to be desired, then its code must be sought and appended to our own.
Seeking the footsteps that hide a dance that hides a path
Sariputta Thera seems to offer specific methods for achieving samma ditthi. It may be reached by comprehension of what is wholesome and unwholesome, what is their origin, what is their cessation, what is the means of their cessation. This is the general formula across the text:
Look and find something to look at. Study it and describe its nature. Study it and describe its cause. Study it and describe its cessation. Study it and determine the cause for its cessation.
It is not simple to achieve the transcendental revelations as described in the text, more so against the sobriety of mundane experience. When a phenomenon is experienced, it is experienced as this and no more. When its cause is sought, then reasons may be found in the causality of the material world, or in the chain of thought considerations, or behind the penumbra of spontaneous revelation. When its cessation is sought, then it can only be extrapolated as the absence of its causes (or, for whatever worth it is to note, the passage of time transforming presence into potential memory). When the means to its cessation is sought, this shall be as the causes of causes, which may lead into a morass of tangled possibilities that stretch too far and hide behind the blindness of horizons.
To this end it may be useful to consider the 16 means described by Sariputta Thera as enlightened opportunities, that target what is already known but supplement it with what is known by others.
Volitions may be wholesome or unwholesome according to their intrinsic nature, and not dependent on their direct or intentional causes. This evaluation is based on Kamma. This Kamma is a comprehension of the nature of conditioning. An unwholesome volition produces unwholesome Kamma.
Look at volitions, and identify their wholesome or unwholesome nature.
[I] “The Sammādiṭṭhi Sutta (Pali for “Right View Discourse”) is a Pali Canon discourse that provides an elaboration on the Buddhist notion of “right view” by the Buddha’s chief disciple, Ven. … Right view is the first factor of the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path, the path that leads to the cessation of suffering.” For further details see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sammaditthi_Sutta.
