The first step on the Eightfold Path is Right View, Seeing things as they truly are, not through the filters of our past experiences. This first step is critical to the practice of all the other steps. It’s taught first because it’s an excellent place to start the journey. We begin by waking up to the fact that we are causing our own suffering. I think of it in the same vein as the first step of the 12-step program, when people admit that they are powerless over some old conditioned unskillful behavior.
This last week, someone said to me that they were waiting to do something until they got their ducks in a row. I’m so glad that they said it because I could really relate. No matter how many things are going right in my life, I’m often focused on the one or two things that aren’t going so well. Preparing for the holidays, my dear family has swerved into a familiar pattern of dysfunction and I along with them, and I have found myself frustrated trying to get them all in a row to no avail. I’m hoping that some of you can relate to this way that we see the world and our families and ourselves as a project, something to be changed and improved upon in some way.
Obviously dealing with our families is a lifelong journey, so we have plenty of opportunity to practice seeing things differently, seeing things with fresh eyes. I have started to see how my clinging to things being a certain way often ensures that I’m never completely happy. I’m subtly trying to get those ducks in some arbitrary row that I’ve made up. I make to do lists of all sorts, subconsiously feeling like once everything is done, then I’ll be happy. For me, the first step of the Eightfold Path, Right View, reminds me to honestly examine why I want things to be different in the first place.
In his teachings, the Buddha was trying to point out that getting the ducks in a row is not the purpose of life. If we do happen to get the ducks in a row, it will probably be fleeting because, before we know it, those pesky ducks will be running amok again OR we will desire new ducks or all the other ways that our thoughts and emotions can be scattered. So, before we start chasing after the ducks again, we could try a new approach. We can try using mindful awareness to examine more closely what is actually happening, seeing more clearly our thoughts, our motivation and our actions from a fresh perspective.
“If only…”
Lama Surya Das encourages us to identify those subtle and not-so-subtle ways that we hide from the truth, by identifying what we’re wishing for. “If only….” How would you finish that sentence?
If someone were to ask you about your childhood, what would you tell them? What is your story about that? Now how does that color the way you see the world right now? Don’t we all have this story that we’ve used to rationalize our behavior? How we all cling to our story about our past experiences…
Most of us, we continually consciously or unconsciously defend the stories that we repetitively tell ourselves…in Buddhism there is a Sanskrit word called, “Samsara” that is literally translated as “perpetual wandering”. It is the symbol of this cyclic conditioned existence that we find ourselves in. We often keep doing the same things, telling ourselves the same stories about it, and having the same frustrating outcome. So, Right View helps us get off the hamster wheel.
A Zen proverb says if you cling to nothing, you can handle anything. So, we can take this opportunity right now to be more honest with ourselves, to imagine being more Teflon that Flypaper.
Some exercises to practice Right View:
1. I don’t know. Even if you think you know, it’s extremely valuable to rest in the place of not knowing. Imagine yourself being in your situation for the very first time. What would it feel like to let go of our previously held beliefs about ourselves, others and start from a place of not knowing?
“We’ve enclosed ourselves in a relatively small space by thinking life is only one certain way. It binds us in, and we’re not aware that we’re living in a tiny, cluttered room. BUT With the practice of mindful awareness and quiet reflection, it’s as if the walls of the room are torn down, and you realize there’s a sky out there.” Larry Rosenberg, The Art of Doing Nothing (Spring 1998)
2. Self-inquiry. What am I holding on to?
What are you clinging to? What are you not being honest with yourself about? In this moment, finish this sentence, “If I were being completely honest, I would tell myself….” What would each of us say? How can we commit to dropping the old stories, dropping the old way of explaining things or people or past events or even ourselves.
If you are in an accident and you break your arm, ignoring it, not looking at it, will not fix it. It’s only when you face the reality of the wound, only then you can begin to take appropriate action to heal.
3. Let go of any sense of struggle
Who or what are we fighting with or against anway? How can we try to surrendering to the moment, the deep truth in the moment? Imagine, even for a moment, that life isn’t about struggling against something or someone. That life can be about being in the flowing of living. Letting go of this sense of struggle can be incredibly powerful.
4. Cultivate compassion
Sylvia Boorstein says that the practice of seeing clearly is what finally moves us toward kindness. Seeing, again and again, the infinite variety of traps we create for seducing the mind into a struggle, seeing the endless rounds of meaningless suffering over lusts and aversions (which, although seemingly urgent, are not where true happiness lies), we begin to feel compassion for ourselves. And then, quite naturally, when we feel compassion for ourselves, we feel compassion for everyone else. We can know as we have never known before that we are stuck, all of us, with bodies and minds and instincts and impulses, “all in a tug-of-war with our basic compassionate nature that yearns to relax into love. Then we surrender. We love. We laugh. We appreciate.”
With this first step of Right View, we commit seeing ourselves and others with insight and compassion. When we feel a sense of struggle, we can remind ourselves to take refuge in mindful awareness, from this sense of having a fresh, new experience. When we get lost, we need only pause, relax, open to what is here, what is now and re-arrive in the natural presence of just being. We can give up the struggle, embraced the ducks wherever they are, and allow ourselves to be at peace
This week, as many of us go through spending time with old friends and family, imagine that you are experiencing them for the very first time. Imagine that you truly don’t know. That we can ask ourselves honestly what we’re holding on to, and perhaps just a little we can let go of any struggle, and be at peace with and have compassion for whatever situation arises.
From Ananda Baltrunas, "A Prison of Desire" is a man that was in prison for 20 years and now is a Pureland Buddhist priest
"When I look for freedom today I find it not in fantasy or in dreams, but in simple awareness. What kind of freedom is it that exists in doing nothing? It is the freedom not to knee-jerk react. It is the freedom to merely observe. I don’t have to judge the trauma that arises in my mind. I don’t have to get involved with the hundred narratives that might try to occupy my mind during any given day. In not clinging to thoughts and ideas, wants and desires, hatreds and resentments, the prison of my most negative thoughts and emotions have faded into a haze that still arises but no longer dominates my life. I have found freedom: it is the freedom of nonattachment, the freedom to not cling and to not resist. It is the freedom to allow myself to surrender to each moment and be at peace."
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