The post titled Right View is now up on Buddhism for All. Angela from the Buddhism.net team reflected on it, and invites you to do so too.
🌕 Angela’s Reflections:
Reflecting on right view, I’d like to share a metaphor. Suppose a person has jaundice since birth. He would see everything with a yellow tint. For instance, he would see a white conch as yellow. One day, he meets a doctor who tells him he has jaundice, and the white conch is actually white. He doesn’t know what “white” looks like! On the basis of faith in the doctor’s words, he believes there is “white”. The doctor prescribes him medicine and he faithfully takes the medicine, deeply believing that one day he will see “white”, and his jaundice will be cured. Finally his jaundice is cured, he sees white and is forever free of seeing a yellow tint. He is cured of seeing a yellow conch. Now he sees the conch as it is, white. But, where did the yellow go?
🌱 Journal Reflection Prompts for You:
- 📝 Did the conch become white after you were cured of jaundice? Did it turn white from yellow? Actually, the conch always has been white. It has been white from the very beginning, throughout the time you had jaundice, and after you were cured of jaundice. The conch did not become whiter even one tiny bit. Let us reflect on this.
- 📝 It is difficult to know the view we have. It is like if we had jaundice since birth, how would we know that things are actually not yellow (or white)? A common way to know that things are not yellow (i.e., white) is when we meet a doctor who points out: hey! things are actually white! You have had wrong view your whole life! How might you cultivate awareness to know what view you have?
- 📝 Do you have a view? What is your view based on? What worldview, beliefs, values, or cultural models shape your view? Might it be possible there is another view?
- 📝 The Buddhist view (right view) is based on knowing the nature of suffering, the causes of suffering, the nature of liberation from suffering, and the path to liberation from suffering. How would you know you have right view? Why would this be important to you?
Featured image, photograph of reflective sphere. Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/r9UWqwaBtWA
