BPS Newsletter Cover Essay #25 (Winter 1993-94)
                                           
                                           
                          FROM VIEWS TO VISION
                                           
                            by Bhikkhu Bodhi
                                           
                                           
   
   
   The Buddha's teaching repeatedly cautions us about the dangers in
   clinging -- in clinging to possessions, clinging to pleasures,
   clinging to people, clinging to views. The Buddha sounds such words
   of warning because he discerns in clinging a potent cause of
   suffering, and he thus advises us that the price we must pay to
   arrive at the "far shore" of liberation is the relinquishment of
   every type of clinging. In a move that at first glance may even seem
   self-destructive on the part of a religious founder, the Buddha says
   that we should not cling even to his teachings, that even the
   wholesome principles of the Dhamma have to be treated like the
   makeshift raft used to carry us across the stream.
   
   Such astringent words of advice can easily be misconstrued, and if
   misconstrued the consequences may be even more bitter than if we
   simply disregard them. One particular misinterpretation into which
   newcomers to the Dhamma (and some veterans too!) are especially prone
   to fall is to hold that the Buddha's counsel to transcend all views
   means that even the doctrines of Buddhism are ultimately of no vital
   importance. For these doctrines too, it is said, are merely views,
   intellectual constructs, filaments of thought, which may have been
   meaningful in the context of ancient Indian cosmology but have no
   binding claims on us today. After all, aren't the words and phrases
   of the Buddhist texts simply that -- words and phrases -- and aren't
   we admonished to get beyond words and phrases in order to arrive at
   direct experience, the only thing that really counts? And doesn't the
   Buddha enjoin us in the Kalama Sutta to judge things for ourselves
   and to let our own experience be the criterion for deciding what we
   will accept?
   
   Such an approach to the Dhamma may be sweet to chew upon and easy to
   digest, but we also need to beware of its effect upon our total
   spiritual organism. Too often this kind of slippery reasoning
   provides simply a convenient excuse for adhering, at a subtle level
   of the mind, to ideas which are fundamentally antithetical to the
   Dhamma. We hang on to such ideas, not because they are truly
   edifying, but in order to protect ourselves from the radical
   challenge with which the Buddha's message confronts us. In effect,
   such claims, though apparently aimed at safeguarding living
   experience from the encroachment of stodgy intellectualism, may be in
   reality a clever intellectual ploy for refusing to examine cherished
   assumptions -- assumptions we cherish primarily because they shield
   deep-rooted desires we do not want to expose to the tonic influence
   of the Dhamma.
   
   When we approach the Buddha's teachings, we should bear in mind that
   its vast array of doctrines have not been devised as elaborate
   exercises in philosophical sleight of hand. They are propounded
   because they constitute right view, and right view stands at the head
   of the Noble Eightfold Path, the chisel to be used to cut away the
   dross of wrong views and confused thoughts that impede the light of
   wisdom from illumining our minds. In the present-day world, far more
   than in the ancient Ganges Valley, wrong views have gained widespread
   currency and assumed more baneful forms than earlier epochs ever
   could have imagined. Today they are no longer the province of a few
   eccentric philosophers and their cliques. They have become, rather, a
   major determinant of cultural and social attitudes, a molder of the
   moral spirit of the age, a driving force behind economic empires and
   international relations. Under such circumstances, right view is our
   candle against the dark, our compass in the desert, our isle above
   the flood. Without a clear understanding of the truths enunciated by
   right view, and without a keen awareness of the areas where these
   truths collide with popular opinion, it is only too easy to stumble
   in the dark, to get stranded among the sand dunes, to be swept away
   from one's position above the deluge.
   
   Both right view and wrong view, though cognitive in character, do not
   remain locked up in a purely cognitive space of their own. Our views
   exercise an enormously potent influence upon all areas of our lives,
   and the Buddha, in his genius, recognized this when he placed right
   view and wrong view respectively at the beginning of the good and
   evil pathways of life. Views flow out and interlock with the
   practical dimension of our lives at many levels: they determine our
   values, they give birth to our goals and aspirations, they guide our
   choices in morally difficult dilemmas. Wrong view promotes wrong
   intentions, wrong modes of conduct, leads us in pursuit of a
   deceptive type of freedom. It draws us towards the freedom of
   license, by which we feel justified in casting off moral restraint
   for the sake of satisfying transient but harmful impulses. Though we
   may then pride ourselves on our spontaneity and creativity, may
   convince ourselves that we have discovered our true individuality,
   one with clear sight will see that this freedom is only a more subtle
   bondage to the chains of craving and delusion.
   
   Right view, even in its elementary form, as a recognition of the
   moral law of kamma, the capacity of our deeds to bring results,
   becomes our gentle guide towards true freedom. And when it matures
   into an accurate grasp of the three signs of existence, of dependent
   arising, of the Four Noble Truths, it then becomes our navigator up
   the mountain slope of final deliverance. It will lead us to right
   intentions, to virtuous conduct, to mental purification, and to the
   cloudless peak of unobstructed vision. Although we must eventually
   learn to let go of this guide in order to stand confidently on our
   own feet, without its astute eye and willing hand we would only
   meander in the foothills oblivious to the peak.
   
   The attainment of right view is not simply a matter of assenting to a
   particular roster of doctrinal formulas or of skill in juggling an
   impressive array of cryptic Pali terms. The attainment of right view
   is at its core essentially a matter of understanding -- of
   understanding in a deeply personal way the vital truths of existence
   upon which our lives devolve. Right view aims at the big picture. It
   seeks to comprehend our place in the total scheme of things and to
   discern the laws that govern the unfolding of our lives for better or
   for worse. The ground of right view is the Perfect Enlightenment of
   the Buddha, and by striving to rectify our view we seek nothing less
   than to align our own understanding of the nature of existence with
   that of the Buddha's Enlightenment. Right view may begin with
   concepts and propositional knowledge but it does not end with them.
   Through study, deep reflection and meditative development it
   gradually becomes transmuted into wisdom, the wisdom of insight that
   can cut asunder the beginningless fetters of the mind.
   
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