Practicing Right View

This podcast has helped me to understand why I'd never really connected much with teachings about the Eightfold Path and why I'd been mystified about how to practice it. I've confused the results with the method, just as Ken describes. What a sense of joy to actually be able to connect with these very primary teachings!

Right View (from EFP01 00:09:20.70 - 00:20:54.00)

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The key in Buddhism is this quality we call attention, and one way of thinking about attention is that it's the ability to direct energy. There's energy in our system and it's going all over the place usually. And when we sit and rest in the experience of breathing we're actually encouraging the energy to move in certain ways. And we experience that as attention. And attention is not a conceptual thing. It's an emotional energy, and so forming a relationship with attention allows us to develop a very, very different relationship with our emotions. And that is key to this.

So how I regard the Noble Eightfold Path is a description of the areas of life in which we are enouraged to bring attention, and by bringing attention into those areas of life they start to change. And they change in ways which, when you read accounts of say, right view, then it will be like that. Let's take a look at right view because it's the first one.

Now, view here is nothing fancy, it's just how we look at the world. And right view is usually described as having faith in the three jewels; buddha, dharma and sangha, accepting karma as a working principle, accepting the four truths, and not seeing things in terms of matter or mind, or those extreme positions. But if we try to actually do that, I mean how do we do that? It's very, very difficult.

What I want to suggest is an alternative. How do you look at the world, right now? [aside about placement of microphone] We're sitting right now, how do you view the world? Anybody? Just right here, right now, what's happening? How do you view the world? How do you view yourselves?

Well, do any of you view yourselves as something that exists in its own right? Hands up, come on. [Ken snickers] Basically all of you are doing that, don't give me this. You know. That's how we ordinarily view ourselves. But if we bring attention into that, we see that it doesn't really hold.

How many of you have experienced a situation today where you had mixed feelings about something? Ah good, we've more response there. Now, if you are a single entity how can you have mixed feelings? You either feel this way or that. And I run into this all the time with people. Some people say to me, "Well I feel this way about that. I feel happy about this but then I feel...no then I'm not so happy about it. And you know part of me is really..." They always say part of me. "I am really sad but I'm...I'm angry." And they get all confused because they view themselves as a single entity, and yet they have all of these different feelings.

One of the things we get from the technique that's being developed recently called focusing is to change the vocabulary slightly to instead of saying "I" say "part of me." Say "part of me feels this" and "part of me feels that." Then there's no problem having all of those different feelings because if we shift from looking at ourselves not as one thing, but as being composed of many parts, then things become very simple. You can have all of these different feelings and even more. And now you don't struggle with them in the same way.

Now, this business about karma: a lot of people say that it involves belief. Well, I don't think it does. [said sweetly] For me karma is simply a way of saying that what we say and do and think, or everything that we say and do and think has actual consequences in our lives. What we say and do and think sets in motion processes in us that affect how we experience the world.

So if I'm angry all of the time, and I harbor anger and I tell myself that I'm angry then I will inevitably come to see the world in terms of opposition. And that's going to affect how people relate to me and how I relate to others. And if I feel needy then I will inevitably experience the world as not supplying what I need. And I'll be motivated to take shortcuts or even to steal to get what I need. That's going to affect how people regard me and how I experience the world. And these tend to become self-reinforcing patterns.

On the other side, if I give generously, if I give things to people then people like to be around me. So I'll have lots of companions and we'll all have a good time together. If I make a point of speaking gently then I won't be offensive to people. Again people will respond to me in a certain way. Just describing how the way we think, the way we talk, the way we act shapes our experience of life. There is really nothing more to than that.

This business about faith and the three jewels: well it's helpful here to have a proper understanding of the three jewels: buddha , dharma and sangha. Buddha is the emptiness of--let me not bring in too much Buddhist vocabulary right now. Buddha points to the fact that we can't say what we are. That when we look at what we are it's completely open. [Aside about sound system] Buddha refers to this open, ineffable, indescribable quality of experience.

Dharma refers to the clarity and vividness with which experience arises. And sangha refers to the fact that experience arises without any restriction. Now that 's just how things are for us. So not to have faith in buddha, and dharma and sangha would in a sense be to contradict the fact that we experience things. Doesn't make any sense.

So what I'm trying to point out here is that when, in the course of our lives, check in, bring attention to: "How am I looking at things right now?" For instance, when we find ourselves opposing or in conflict with somebody, ask ourselves,"How am I looking at that person?" And if it's our partner or our child at the moment that we're in conflict we're probably not looking at them as they actually are. We're viewing them differently. We're viewing them in terms of what's being projected by our own emotions. In another words, we've fallen into--quotation marks--wrong view.

And so just by this simple act of bringing attention to how we're looking at things in each moment we'll find that the way that we're looking at the world begins to change. And it changes into the various qualities that I've described. We don't get that way by trying to look at the world that way. We get that way by paying attention to or bringing attention into how we are looking at the world in each moment. How we are looking at ourselves. This make sense to you? Okay.

Attention is the key to all points

I heard someone summarise Ken's podcast on The Eightfold Path in one sentence: attention is the key to all points. I'm taking this pithy summary as the title of this blog post and of the clip of the very first section of the podcast where Ken introduces an approach to practicing the Eightfold Path.

Attention is the Key (from 8FP01: Eightfold Path (class) 00:00:00.00 - 00:15:07.00)

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... And one of the other characteristics of this period is that there is a love of reason because reason seemed to offer a way of transcending the messy world of emotions. And we find that same idea that was present in the early Greeks is also present in this period of Buddhism where the spiritual path was felt to be a path through philosophy through logic etc., etc. This is what we get with medieval Buddhism in India. And Tibet inherited this so when I was exposed to the Eightfold Path it had the Four Noble Truths and then you had four different levels of understanding for each of the Four Noble Truths, which made sixteen in all. And all of these different qualifications of the Eightfold Path, right view, these were the things that constituted right view and right intention and these were the things that consituted right intention, and right speech and right action and just lists and lists went on and on. This is so highly developed and it's absolutely impossible to practice. It's so elaborate, there's so many do's and don'ts that you end up frozen--you can't do anything.

And as I looked at this again and again, I came to the conclusion--and I learned this from a number of different sources--that what is presented as the Eightfold Path, what constitutes right view, what consititutes right intention are descriptions of the results of when you really practice them. They're what you evolve to or what you end up at. And one of the problems in practice that I've encountered over and over again in teaching is that people try to use the results as the method of practice.

Just to give you a very simple example of that which several of you have heard me talk about before: If you say to somebody, "Relax," what's the first thing they do? They tense up. Because relaxation is the result of a certain effort. If on the other hand you say to somebody, "Take a deep breath, now let it out slowly." Do that again. You do it once more for good luck. How do you feel? More relaxed. And many, many of the instructions for meditation or what are presented as instructions for meditation and instructions for practice are actually descriptions of the result. And yet, we tend to interpret them as prescriptions for action. And that just gets us into a big mess. So what I want to do this evening is to talk about the first four parts of the Eightfold Path, and talk about them making this distinction between the result and what you actually do, and see if we can get clear on that, and I'm sure we'll have time for questions after this.

So the usual claim is that in order to practice a path you have to understand it. And then practice consists of doing the right things and avoiding the wrong things. There are several problems with this approach. The first is, this is how we train children. So what tends to happen is that adults who take this approach to practice end up being infantilized. And I had a very vivid experience of this when I was at a retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh. We were divided up into groups for discussion and we were given a talking stick. And the first woman who talked was an elderly psychotherapist--this was a retreat for mental health professionals. And she said, "I don't know what's going on here, but I feel like a child all the time. And the stress of having this structure and things like that and having stress headaches that I haven't had for twenty years. I don't understand this." This is exactly what I'm talking about. Oh there's a right way to act and a wrong way to act and somewhere or other you're going to get punished or you're not going to fit in if you act the wrong way, and so forth. It's very childish. It's very much based on the reward/punishment on which earlier and simpler religions are based on.

It's also ineffective because when we try to practice that way, we model our behavior on somebody else and there's always an element of artificiality about that. [problems with sound system] And our behaviour is never really natural because it hasn't evolved out of us. We're emulating something outside us. And it's also untrue because understanding something and then trying to do it is only one way of learning. There are other ways of learning and developing skills and it may not be your way. So the point here is for us to try to find our way--the way that is appropriate for us.

And I have a student who now teaches in Colorado Springs and [unclear] perspectives, she [unclear] couldn't possibly produce any results; she makes things up on the spot, she just responds to what's in front of her, she doesn't plan particularly ahead. She doesn't itemize things in nice categories or lists or anything like that. There's nothing to understand, and yet she produces absolutely great results with the people that work with her, so each of us needs to find a way of practice that is appropriate and I hope that some of the ideas that I present to you this evening may open some doors for you.

The other thing is that so much of Buddhism is presented--and this is very much in keeping with this emphasis on the rational--that if we just understood why it is beneficial then we'd make the rational decision to do it that way. This theory that we're basically rational beings and make rational choices underlies most economics, most sociology a good deal of political theory and you can see what a mess that's got us into in the last couple of years, because we aren't rational people; we don't make decisions rationally. Emotions rule all the way down the line. That's even being corroborated now by neurological studies, so trying to approach practice from a rational perspective, in my opinion is just hopeless. It doesn't work very well.

The key in Buddhism is this quality we call attention and one way of thinking about attention is that it's the ability to direct energy. There's energy in our system and it's going all over the place usually, and when we sit and rest in the experience of breathing, we're actually encouraging the energy to move in certain ways. And we experience that as attention. And attention is not a conceptual thing. It's an emotional energy and so forming a relationship with attention allows us to develop a very, very different relationship with our emotions. And that is key to this.

So how I regard the Noble Eightfold Path is a description of the areas of life in which we are enouraged to bring attention, and by bringing attention into those areas of life they start to change. And they change in ways, which when you read accounts of say, right view, then it will be like that.

Let's take a look at right view because it's the first one. View here is nothing fancy, it's just how we look at the world. And right view is usually described as having faith in the three jewels: buddha, dharma and sangha, accepting karma as a working principle, accepting the four truths and not seeing things in terms of matter or mind, at those extreme positions. But if we try to actually do that; how do we do that? It's very, very difficult. What I want to suggest is an alternative. How do you look at the world? Right now for instance. Could we have the mike up here Steve? [sound system comments]

We're sitting right now, how do you view the world? Anybody? Just right here, right now, what's happening? How do you view the world? How do you view yourselves? Do any of you view yourselves as something that exists in its own right? Hands up. Come on. Basically all of you are doing that. Don't give me this--that's how we ordinarily view ourselves. But if we bring attention into that we see that it doesn't really hold.

How many of you have experienced a situation today where you have mixed feelings about something? Oh good. More response there. Now, if you're a single entity how can you have mixed feelings? You either feel this way or that. And I run into this all the time with people. Some people say to me, "Well, I feel this way about that; I feel happy about this, but then I'm not so happy about it. You know, I'm sad, I'm angry." And they get all confused because they view themselves as a single entity and yet they have all of these different feelings. And one of the things we get from a technique that's been developed recently called [unclear] is to change the vocabulary slightly. Instead of saying "I" say "part of me." Say "part of me feels this and part of me feels that." Then there's no problem having all of those different feelings because if we shift from looking at ourselves not as a one thing but as composed of many parts, then things become very simple. We can have all of these different feelings and even more. And now you don't struggle with them in the same way.